by Judith Tarr
“You aren’t like the others, either, are you?” she said, half in pride, half in sadness. “You can see, too. Your bones know.”
He nodded. He was calm about it. Of course he would be: he was half Apiru. Nothing their god did dismayed them. “The Lord is in me,” he said. “He chose me.”
She shook him, or tried. He was like a stone, rooted in the earth. “Don’t you grow proud,” she said. “Don’t you get so full of yourself you can’t see what’s below your nose.”
A flash of sulkiness recalled the boy he had been and still was. The sudden smile was pure Jehoshua. “Oh, Mother! You know I’ll never do that. You’ll always be there to bring me up short.”
“I hope so,” she said grimly. “Just remember it. Not,” she mused, “that you may have to remember long. We could die when the king drives his army against us.”
“The Lord—”
“—will protect us,” Nofret finished for him. “Maybe he will and maybe he won’t. I won’t expect either until it’s been and gone.”
He laughed, which did nothing to cool her temper. “O unbeliever,” he said, both mocking and tender. She nearly hit him, but he was too quick to dart away.
She was exhausted, footsore, sunburned, and terrified, but for an improbable moment she was happy. She could believe just then that they would live through this; that they would come to Sinai, and she would see the rest of her children again.
It was a pleasant dream to wander in. More pleasant than the desert, and the shimmer on the horizon that opened at last into the broad blue expanse of the sea.
A cry went up behind them, a long and swelling wail. “Egypt! Egypt has come!”
From the front of the march Nofret could see nothing but the wall of people behind her. But her bones knew. The king had caught them. He was in sight of the rearguard and closing fast.
He had taken his time in coming. He had chariots; he could ride more swiftly than any nation could walk. He had only to wait till they were trapped with the sea at their backs, and close in for the kill.
Nofret had never had much hope, even with visions to tempt her, but she was too stubborn for despair. She simply kept on walking because everyone else did. Moshe strode ahead of her, making nothing of the deepening sand, the long rolling descent to the shore. Above the murmur of wind in stones she heard the sigh of waves. It was a sound that she had seldom heard, and never since she was taken out of Mitanni. River-water flowed differently: smoother, steadier, like a serpent’s glide. The sea was like a great beast breathing in and out, endlessly.
oOo
The sun sank as they descended to the sea. The long column that had wound through the desert spread wide along the shore, driven by the army behind it.
But they were not defenseless. They had an army of their own, hundreds strong, set in order between them and the enemy. When the call went out to camp for the night, it was a guarded camp ringed with sentries, its heart the children and the flocks that would be their wealth in Sinai.
The king did not press battle. He saw maybe that they were defended, and that they could not retreat from him, not unless they could walk on the water. He made camp along the summit of the descent to the sea, just out of bowshot. Lesser camps sprang up to the north and south, surrounding the people of Yisroel, cutting them off from escape.
The deep desert night came down, and with it the cold after the heat of the day. They could not wander far to find fuel for the fires, but there was enough wrack on the shore to serve the purpose. There was a half-ring of fires about them, and a glitter of weapons. The neighing of horses was distinct in the stillness.
They sang in their beleaguered camp, songs of praise to the god, songs of defiance, songs of protection against the dark. There was no song in the Egyptian camp. It was silent but for the calling of stallion to stallion, or the squeal of a mare. Without the horses the army would have been utterly, deathly silent.
The Apiru fought silence with clamor. Even their animals were unwontedly noisy tonight, bleating and blatting and braying. Children shrieked as they played. Babies cried. Men called out to one another. And everyone sang, the louder the better, to drown out the stillness of the night.
Nofret’s head was ringing. She crawled into her tent and hid under all her blankets with her veil stuffed in her ears, and she could still hear the uproar. It bade fair to go on all night.
So would Johanan’s stint on guard. He had seen to it that the rest had at least part of the night to sleep, but he would not practice the same wisdom for himself. He would pace the night through from guardpost to guardpost in sleepless vigilance.
The Egyptians would not trouble to attack at night, not with a sitting target that would wait till the morning. But they might be fools, or some hothead might take a notion to try a raid while the Apiru were sleeping. Johanan’s sentries stood on guard against that. It did not harm them, either, to be seen as watchful and to display their weapons.
Nofret could not sleep alone. It was too cold, as much in the heart as on the skin. After a while she got up, wrapped her mantle about her, and went out into the light of the fires.
The noise had died down somewhat. People were being persuaded to sleep. Miriam was in the midst of that. Nofret watched her briefly, sighed, lent her own voice to the chorus. “Come now, rest as you can. It’s a long way till morning, and you’ll want to be strong for it.”
“For what?” one woman demanded of her. “To die?”
“If need be,” said Nofret. “Or to escape, if the god wills it.”
“We’re not escaping that,” another woman said, jabbing her chin at the fires strung on the hilltop like jewels on a thread. “If we run, we run right into Egyptian spears.”
“We have spears, too,” Nofret said, “and men who know how to use them. Trust them. Trust the god. And sleep.”
There were others too who followed Miriam’s lead, a skein of women and a few men coaxing the Apiru to their beds. Nofret was reminded of mothers with recalcitrant children, restive offspring who, though yawning, insisted that they were wide awake. The same persuasions prevailed on them, the same threats.
Little by little the camp quieted. On its edges the fires still burned. The men still sang softly as they stood guard. Within, the people slept.
Even Moshe was asleep in his tent. Miriam crouched in front of it, prodding at the fire, banking it till morning.
She looked as wide awake as Nofret felt, not tireless but shut away from sleep. Nofret sat on the sand that kept still the day’s warmth, clasping her knees. She rested her forehead on them—rather proud that she was still limber enough for that—and closed her eyes. Just for a while. Just until Miriam went to her own bed.
oOo
When she opened them she was lying in a hollow in the sand, and the fire was grey ashes over a faint glimmer of coals. The sky was the same, like a reflection in water.
The waves sighed on the shore. Their scent in the air was salt, like tears.
She unfolded limb by limb, groaning with stiffness. The women were awake, stirring fires, setting bread to bake in the coals. She heard the sleepy murmur of children, the wail of a baby cut off as its mother thrust the nipple in its mouth. Her own breast tightened in sympathy, though it had been years since she nursed a child.
The stars were fading. Eastward over the water, the sky had grown pale. She could see the line of hills beyond, for the sea was narrow here, the desert of Sinai close, with its stark ridges and sudden valleys. On that side Egypt had power only to threaten, not to conquer.
On this side the king’s army roused and took up weapons, hitching horse to chariot, setting soldiers in their ranks about the camp of Yisroel. They were shadows in the dawn light, shot with a cold gleam of metal: bronze and iron, edged and forged for war.
They waited now, spears at the rest, horses fretting against the bit but holding still till they should be freed to gallop down the long slope upon the camp below. A thin line of armed men defended it, motionless as the ki
ng’s men were, seeming even to be at ease.
That would be Johanan’s training. He taught his young men never to waste their substance in fretting, but to rest as they could, and wait in trained patience. It was hunter’s wisdom, such as Nofret herself had had once, before she was taken captive and sold into slavery.
She still had a little such wisdom left. She found it buried deep and lured it into the light. It was just enough to calm her thudding heart and let her mix and bake the morning’s bread, take count of the provisions, fill a cloth with bread and goat cheese and the last of the honeycomb.
Johanan was crouching in a circle of men with bows and spears, drawing battles in the sand. None of those seemed to bear much resemblance to this trapped hopelessness. They were proper battles, with armies on open plains or armies besieging cities or champion fighting champion on the field between their armies.
Nofret slipped through the circle and crouched beside him, and set his breakfast where he could see it. He finished what he was saying—yes, it was a lesson in warfare, not a plan for battle here—then offered the bread and cheese to any who would take it. He would have kept none for himself if she had not stopped his hand and met his glance with a glare.
“Eat,” she said, “or you’ll die of hunger before an Egyptian can get an arrow in you.”
He ate, but not before she had eaten half of what she reckoned to be his share. There were grins around the circle, boys whom she had known since they were clinging to their mothers’ skirts. By evening they might be dead with Egyptian arrows in their hearts.
A roar from the camp brought them all about. Fast upon it came a runner, a swift-footed child who cried out as he ran, his voice as shrill as a trumpet’s call: “Moshe calls you to gathering! Everybody come—even the soldiers.”
Johanan rose. Some of the young men protested: “But if we go, there’s no one to defend us.”
“We’ll go on guarding the edges of the people,” he said. “We’ll just do it from the middle of the camp.”
That was sense enough to silence them. They all went together, taking their weapons and such belongings as they had with them.
Nofret, following, glanced at the Egyptian army. They were staring, glancing at one another, wondering what led the Apiru to abandon their defenses and gather in the camp’s center.
The middle of it was open—those whose tents had been in it had struck them and loaded them on mules and donkeys. Moshe was standing where his own tent had been, and Aharon beside him. The ground rose a little there, not so much as to be a proper hill, but enough that people on the edge of the crowd could see them both.
Aharon spoke for Moshe as he did so often, the voice as strong as ever, reaching easily to the place where Nofret stood. There was nothing behind her but a bit of camp and the stretch of sand and the king’s army.
She should have felt naked and undefended. Strangely, she did not. Maybe this was what it was to be Apiru, to know always that one’s god stood at one’s back.
The great beautiful voice rolled over her. It had a surge like the sea. “We will gather,” it said, “as we have gathered every morning, each household in its place, each tribe in its rank and order. Let no possession be forgotten, no child left behind. Then when we are ready, we will march.”
Someone must have shouted near the front: the inevitable question.
“Where?” Aharon echoed it. He swept about, robes flaring, arm outflung. “There!”
Their eyes followed the sweep of his arm. There was nothing to see but a narrow strip of sand, and beyond it the water, broad and gleaming, blue in the morning light. A flock of birds wheeled and cried above it, seabirds, white and grey like clouds, or like foam on the sea.
“We will march,” said Aharon. “The Lord will show us the way. Trust in the Lord and be not afraid.”
Sixty-Nine
The people of Yisroel trusted in their god as always and as in nothing else. Nofret could feel their fear, see their glances at the army on the hill and at the sea in front of them. Some of them were weeping with terror. But Aharon’s voice roused any who faltered. Moshe and Miriam went among them, lending a hand here, offering comfort there.
It was strange to see them, to remember what they had been: royal, hallowed, set apart. They were hallowed still, but they were of these people, standing on the same earth, eating the same bread, lifting the same burdens that any mortal could carry. There was no divine kingship among the Apiru. Only their god was granted divinity.
oOo
Breaking camp was always a lengthy undertaking. This morning they had begun late, and they were afraid, even where they trusted in their god. Children and animals were unwontedly fractious. It was nearly noon before all the tents were taken down and packed, the pack animals laden and led to their places, the flocks and herds gathered, the people set in marching order. Their backs were to the Egyptians, their faces to the sea. Their own army, Johanan’s young men, stood between the last of them and the Egyptian chariots.
Nofret was in the rear with Johanan and Jehoshua. It was not a proper place for a woman, but she was past caring for that. They knew better than to object. She had taken charge of the mule that carried their waterskins and such of their weapons as they could not both carry and fight: spears, quivers of arrows, even a packet of bowstrings. She was useful, since she set one more of them free to fight rather than to tend the mule. And she was where she needed to be.
The king was biding his time. He stood on the hill beside the golden glitter of his chariot, watching, as curious perhaps as she was, to discover what the Apiru would do.
She was far in the rear and Moshe was in the front, on the water’s edge. Her eyes could not see him, but eyes had little to do with such sight as she had. She knew that he stood in the sand with the waves surging and subsiding about his feet.
He had his staff in his hand. The gilt had long since worn off the serpent that crowned it, baring the bronze. The rearing cobra seemed a living thing, supple and darkly gleaming.
He raised the staff and stretched it out over the water. If he spoke, she did not hear the words. She only saw how he stood as if rooted, with the waves now washing about the hem of his robe, now sinking far back along the sand.
The small wind that had played about them through the morning had died as the sun touched the zenith. Now it rose again. In the morning it had been a restless, playful thing, dancing from everywhere and nowhere. This new face of it was steadier. It came from the east across the water, ruffling the waves, toying with Moshe’s beard, catching at his sodden robe and tugging against the water’s resistance.
He might have been carved in stone, so still as he stood. His staff never wavered. The wind swelled and freshened. Nofret’s body, far back along the shore, felt it on its face. The mule’s head was up, its long ears alert, nostrils flaring as if to drink the wind.
It was a strong east wind. Such were not rare in Egypt, nor unexpected on the shores of this sea. But its steadiness, its sheer unvarying persistence, was not so common.
Nofret could not tell if the god rode on it. Perhaps he had no need. As with much else that Moshe had done in Egypt, any middling capable sorcerer could call up a wind. But to keep it blowing into a gale—that took such power as was only given to prophets, and to kings.
The king of Egypt was doing nothing to stop it, nor if he had priests in his army was any of them offering to come forward. Most likely he had left the priests behind, disgusted with their failure to protect the Two Lands against this one nameless god and his stammering fool of a prophet.
Nofret braced her feet against the wind. Sand whipped her cheeks. She raised her veil and fastened it tightly. The men were doing the same, she noticed, but keeping hand to weapon and an eye warily on the army that was growing less visible as the sand rose into a cloud. The Egyptians faded to shadows and vanished behind the red-dun wall.
The sand that swirled about them stung unprotected cheeks, but it was nothing to the storm that raged behind them
. Before them was clear air and windblown spray, and a murmur of wonder.
It began as a strangeness in the heave and surge of the waves. They swelled and rose and broke, ran back, gathered strength, swelled again as they had since the sea was made. But the wind drove through the midst of them, pressing like a hand, driving them down and down.
Or, thought Nofret, like a child playing with a shallow basin, blowing hard along it till the water was cloven in two. Only that child was a god, and the god wielded the wind to drive back the waters. He veiled his people in a cloud of dust and sand, protected them through the long slow hours. Maybe too he calmed them, bound them in a spell, so that even the beasts and the children were quiet, waiting in unnatural patience.
Nofret watched the sun sink slowly from the height of heaven. The waters divided with mighty dignity. Little by little a road came clear, a broad track of glistening sand. On either side was the sea, a wall of deep blue water, higher than any wall that men could raise. The road between ran straight from shore to shore.
It was a greater wonder, maybe, and more fearsome, for a god to destroy the firstborn of every house in Egypt. But this was power bare. This was impossible, unimaginable, terrible and splendid.
In the midst of the road between the walls of water rose a dazzle of light. Nofret might have taken it for a stone or a pillar uncovered by the waters’ parting, but it was nothing so solid or so earthly. It was a pillar of fire, growing brighter as the daylight waned.
Moshe stood at the beginning of the road. He had lowered his staff, grounding it in the wet sand. “Go,” he said to Aharon in a voice taut with effort and exhaustion. “Go quickly.”
oOo
It was Aharon who led the people of Yisroel out upon the road that had been the sea. They went blindly, most of them, shrinking between the walls of water. They were near witless with awe and terror. Those who hung back were herded forward by the throng of people behind.
They went in such order as they might, as they had on the march from Pi-Ramses. They were not what anyone would call swift, but neither did they drag their feet. The sand was firm underfoot, scattered with weed and shells. Here and there a fish flopped stranded, or a creature of the deep scuttled from the touch of human foot where none had ever been or been dreamed of.
