Moses

by Howard Fast

  Moses was astonished to see how apparently untouched by the march Seti-Keph was. Evidently, he bad long since mastered the art of conserving his strength, and though he had shared all the rigours of the journey, including a diet in no way different from that of his men, he appeared cheerful, rested and relaxed. He greeted Moses with the royal salute, touching the fingers of both hands to his eyes, and cried out warmly,

  “I find you in good case, O Prince of Egypt! Do you still like our way of life—the butcher’s market of warfare, as they call it?”

  “I like it well, Seti-Keph, and I have had plenty of dust and mud and heat, but I have yet to see this butchery you all talk about.”

  “You will have a bellyful of that, never fear. But between the two, it is the march that takes a measure of the man more than the battlefield. It is one thing to go berserk with a sword in your hand, but something else to keep your senses during the sixty days we have just seen. I like your way with dirt and monotony, Prince of Egypt, and now I want you alongside me with your chariot, as part of my own staff.”

  Overwhelmed with joy and pride, Moses protested that he had done nothing to earn this honour; but Seti-Keph assured him that there would be time enough. And turning to Sokar-Moses, whose chariot paced his on the other side, he asked whether his opinion was shared?

  “He’s young but promising,” Sokar-Moses answered drily.

  “How have your chariot and horses fared?” Seti-Keph asked.

  “Well enough. The horses are skinny, but their feet are good.”

  “Tomorrow, we will encamp and rest for three days,” Seti-Keph told him. “We will hold a war council, and you may join us, Prince of Egypt. The chariots will be repaired and checked and the horses will be turned out to graze—even this dry grass will be a healthy change from the small measure of grain we have been feeding them. For in so far as there is a boundary or measure to the Land of Kush, you might say that now we have entered it.”

  [16]

  ON THE AFTERNOON of the second day of the encampment, one of the sentries, who were stationed in a circle around the encampment, each of them some four hundred paces out on the plain, sounded the call to arms. Moses, running to be with Seti-Keph, saw Nun racing in from the plain with the team of chariot horses, astride of one and leading the other—and, even in the excitement of the alarm, had to reflect upon the coolness and efficiency of this Bedouin slave who hated him so. While Nun harnessed the team, Moses, armed with spear and shield, took his place alongside Seti-Keph and his staff, ready to fight on foot and without armour if what was approaching descended upon them too quickly. The whole encampment was in turmoil, captains gathering their hosts for action, officers roaring orders, men shouting with sheer excitement and release from the unbroken tension of months of journeying, horses catching the excitement, rearing, backing, sending their own nasal trumpeting into the wind—and among Seti-Keph and his staff, a calculated and cool observation of what the sentry had sighted.

  “It’s no army,” Sokar-Moses finally decided. “What do you think it is, Seti-Keph?”

  The Captain of Hosts, shading his eyes and squinting over the plain, shook his head impatiently. He leaped on to a chariot, that he might see better, and then be said, “I know what that is. I’ve seen it before. It’s a baggage train. A big one, too. When a Kushite army moves, they carry their supplies in this way, and here are their supplies, but where is the army? I see half a hundred spearmen at most—and there must be ten times that number of bearers in the baggage train.” He jumped to the ground, his short, muscular body throbbing with energy and excitement, and flung his orders in staccato rapidity: “I want two hundred chariots ready to action-fanwise, fifty on the left, fifty on the right, the rest clear at the centre, five abreast! I raise both arms—it signals the whole attack, centre and both wings to kill! I raise one arm, my left-it means gather in! My right arm for the wings to move out to circle! Let the footsoldiers and the rest of the chariots stand to case and wait orders. But keep all chariots in the clear. Meanwhile, Sokar-Moses, Atepher, you—you and you”—pointing to officers—”come with me. Shields but no spears. And Sokar-Moses, take twenty archers of Hatti and have them string their bows and stand ten paces behind us. If any weapon is lifted to us, let them shoot that man down.”

  Moses was impressed by the speed with which SetiKeph’s orders were obeyed, the ability of the Captain of Hosts to make decisions which appeared to require almost no thought or considered judgment. For himself, he was pleased to be with the commander, and it was with pride and pleasure that he accompanied the group of officers forward to meet whatever was coming. By now, Moses could see the approaching men clearly and his pulsebeat quickened when he realized that they were truly enough the black men of Kush.

  First, at the head of the long column, marching in two files, were the spearmen, tall black men with high bonnets of feathers, yellow leopard skins cast across their shoulders, carrying round shields that were painted white, and seven-foot spears. Behind them and between their files, two black men bore a litter, and upon this, under some sort of hood or shade, a child or a woman seemed to be sitting. Moses could not makeout which, the distance still being great, but it seemed too small a figure to be a man. And behind this litter, seemingly to the horizon, stretched four lines of black men, each one of them carrying an enormous bundle of stuff of some kind upon his head.

  Walking forward with the officers, Moses tried to guess what this might portend. All his fancies of war, as it would come on this campaign, were of a sudden, howling barbaric attack, and while he knew that his concepts of war were coloured by the panoply of lies that war breeds in all ages, he could not conceivably imagine that this was a hostile force coming to attack them. He could already make out that the porters were unarmed, and now he realized that the figure in the litter was neither woman nor child, but a small and very old man. This old man sat cross-legged under a canopy of woven feathers that was supported by four rods of gold. The litter was adorned with the short, furry tails of some animal, and the old man himself wore a bright cloak of yellow and white feathers and upon his head a thin circle of gold. A gold necklace and gold bracelets further bedecked him, but otherwise, except for his loincloth, he was naked. Both litter-bearers were huge men, taller than Moses, and they bore the litter and the old man without effort. On either side of him walked a black man, each with a leopard skin over one shoulder, each with a circle of gold for a headdress, each unarmed except for a dagger.

  When the procession was about fifty paces away, SetiKeph and his officers halted and waited—themselves about a hundred paces in advance of the encampment, and a moment or two later, the bowmen of Hatti took their places behind them. Meanwhile, one of the two men who walked alongside the litter held up his arm, giving the signal for the procession to stop. The other unarmed man shouted a series of orders in a strange tongue. The spearmen spread out, and the porters began to lay down their bundles, one against the other, directly behind the litter. The porters were barefoot and naked except for loincloths, strong, wiry black men, and as each of them laid down his burden, he made obeisance to the old man and then went to one side to squat patiently. Moses noticed that the porters each had one ear sliced away and he concluded that they were slaves, since he had heard of similar ways of marking slaves among the barbarians.

  Along with Seti-Keph, who waited in curious silence, and the other captains, Moses watched the area of bundles grow, until presently it began to give the effect of a huge quilt spreading out over the plain. The black spearmen leaned loosely upon their weapons, and the two men with the litter—they were well past middle age, Moses noticed—helped the old man to his feet. His movements were the slow, arthritic movements of old age, and he winced a bit with the pain of his joints as he stood erect. He was a very old man, past eighty years, Moses guessed, his head bald under the gold crown, his skin loose and flabby. But there was an evident and winning dignity about him as he came forward towards Seti-Keph, and his toothless smile of gr
eeting was direct and charming. He looked from face to face with the disarming courtesy of a good host, and then he spoke in a resonant and musical voice that was at odds with his wrinkled little face.

  The two men who had walked on either side of his litter had advanced with him, and now one of them said, in understandable but strangely accented Egyptian,

  “He greets you with the words—peace and plenty, and may your stomachs not know the pinch of hunger. It sounds strange in your tongue, but it is our greeting, our word-embrace. I am Kudelga, a prince as you would say, and this old mail is Irgebayn, King of the Baynya, who are the people you call Kush.”

  To this, the old man listened with a sort of astonished amusement, as if he were unable to accept the fact that his own son spoke this incredible tongue; and Moses, watching the king, was in turn amused by his mixture of courtly grace and down-to-earth intimacy. Finding the old man attractive, his reaction was to wonder whether Merit-Aton and her father would also like him—such had been his reaction to many things lately.

  Meanwhile, Seti-Keph had stepped forward from the others and said, “I greet Irgebayn,” but with no warmth in his voice. “I am Seti-Keph,” he went on, “Captain of Hosts, commander of this army, and the hard instrument of the King above Kings, the Ruler above Rulers, the God-King of the Great House of Egypt, the god whose justice is beyond all justice, whose anger is beyond all anger, and who leaves no wrong unrighted.”

  The son translated and the father listened, his head cocked attentively, the mischievous glint of amusement never leaving his eyes. He nodded as the titles were spelled out, and then he replied, smiling tentatively. Moses wondered whether his son did not temper the translation, for the younger man interposed,

  “If you wonder about my Egyptian, great Captain, I have traded a good deal with Karnak and once even at Tanis, but you must understand that I speak your language but poorly. Our language is different—more lowly, more intimate. My father says that he honours and reveres your great king—as who does not?—but he would be speechless were he to converse with such terrifying titles. Therefore, he asks, with due respect, whether he cannot talk to you as one man to another?”

  “He talks to me as the servant of the God-King, or not at all,” Seti-Keph answered harshly.

  Moses was at a loss to understand Seti-Keph’s attitude. This was not the man he. had known or the voice of the man he had known or the spirit of the man he had known. Some impossible metamorphosis had taken place in SetiKeph; this was a harsh and brutal man who knew neither love nor mercy. On the other hand, Moses realized, the old king was no fool and he was carefully taking the measure of the man he had pitted himself against. He bowed his head in defeat and in homage, and then he talked expressively, his voice mounting slowly to the emotional pitch of rhetoric and pleading. Not knowing the words, Moses was nevertheless impressed by the very intensity of the old man’s speech, by the earnest passion of his argument—and he noticed that not only his two sons, but the litter-beaters and the spearmen, were listening intently and not unmoved. When the son began to interpret, he had to control his own voice, telling Seti-Keph huskily.

  “My father addresses you as the servant of the God-King, and my father says that if any action he is capable of will move you to love instead of anger, he will perform that action—yes, he will go down on his knees and abase himself before you, if by so doing the life of one of his children can be spared. So he says. You see, I call him father because his blood runs in my veins, for he lay with my mother that I might be born. But all my people call him father. In our tongue, the word is podya and podya is also the word for king. He says he speaks as podya but not as king, because he is an old, old man, too old to bear any title but father. He knows that some of his people are bad and wild, and he asks—Where are there a people who do not have some who are bad and wild? It broke his heart when he learned that wild young men of the Baynya went down to Upper Egypt and killed and stole—not only because they brought suffering to you, but because they brought suffering and dishonour to him. Therefore, he banished them for ever—and among our people, that is the most awful of punishments. My father also knows that the great God-King of Egypt sees and hears all iniquity, and when he heard that an army was coming to mete out punishment for what these wild young men had done, he embarked on a long, painful journey—for he is very old and very sick-in the hope that bloodshed might be averted. Now be asks you, 0 Captain of Hosts, what profit will come to any if our people meet in battle? Will not the mothers of Egypt weep as bitterly as the mothers of Kush? Will not the maidens of Egypt be as bereaved as the maidens of Kush? And will it bring back your dead to inflict death upon my people? I come humbly, great Captain of Egypt, but not out of cowardice, not out of fear. Egypt has warred with Kush before, and she knows well that we black folk are not afraid. But I am afraid—afraid for the children made fatherless, afraid for my own children, whom I love! So I say, great Captain, let us embrace in love and not in hatred!”

  Listening to this, unaware even of the change of subject on the part of the son and listening as if the old man himself spoke, Moses felt his throat thicken and his heart went out to the wrinkled little black man. In his youthful impulsiveness, he found the arguments of the old man irresistible, and he had a sudden buoyant hope that the campaign would end right here and now and that only a matter of weeks would see him at the white house again. But there was no youthful impulsiveness in the stony features of Seti-Keph, who said coldly,

  “How is it that these men who murdered and destroyed on the sacred soil of Egypt are not handed over to me? What is this banishment? Am I being made a fool of?”

  The old man’s face became grave, and the last glint of humour left his eyes; Moses had the feeling that he had anticipated this yet hoped that it would not come. Now he replied slowly and earnestly, and after he had spoken a little, he gestured towards the great blanket of bundles that were spread upon the ground and here and there heaped in mounds. He began to enumerate on his fingers, watching Seti-Keph carefully and thoughtfully as he spoke, as if he could not believe that the Egyptian was unable to understand his tongue. When he had finished, he crossed his hands over his thin, loose-skinned breast, and bowed slightly.

  “Were he in Egypt,” his son said reflectively, as if he were uncertain that his father had taken the right tack, “he would worship the gods of Egypt and do their bidding. Here in Kush, he must do the bidding of the gods of Kush, and they would hate him were he to hand over his people to strangers. He acknowledges the truth and beauty of Egyptian justice, but he feels that we of Kush are also just. So he begs you to forgive him. Yet he knows that your God-King has been offended, and for that reason, he brings gifts which he pleads to ease the hurt. A thousand porters and a thousand bundles have marched with us, and they lie there. These gifts he humbly lays at your feet, in the hope that they will assuage your anger and the anger of your great king. We are not a wealthy people, and perhaps all the riches of our land are less than the wealth of one of your cities; but we have tried to bring gifts worthy of the God-King’s majesty. Of pure gold, cleaned and hammered into strips, we bring ten thousand shekels, to measure it by your unit. Of silver bars, we bring twenty thousand shekels. Of the finest ivory from the tusks of the wild elephant, we bring one hundred thousand shekels, and of the red and yellow and white plumes of our jungle birds—they are very light, you know—we bring a thousand shekels. We bring diamonds to the weight of a hundred shekels and rubies to the weight of a thousand shekels. Of pure, fine copper, we bring three hundred thousand shekels in weight, and of cumin and coriander, a weight of two hundred thousand shekels. Of white wool from lambs and woven as fine and light as your best linen, we bring you to the measure of two thousand of your royal cubit, and of the woven cloth from the black lamb, we bring wool to the measure of three thousand of the royal cubit. We bring you a thousand tanned leopard skins and a thousand gazelle hides, soft as butter to the touch. We bring you the honey of the wild bee to the weight of five tho
usand shekels—and lastly (for my father urged that this be spoken last) we lay at the feet of your God-King ten thousand pearls, in colour from pink to white, and in size from the size of a lentil to the size of the end of my thumb. These pearls are the bulk of the sacred treasures of our gods, and as insular as we are, we know that one of these pearls, one small one, will buy ten slaves or a fine iron sword of Hatti. Our priests give them to you as an offering to the gods of Egypt—in the hope that they will look kindly and with love upon our gods.”

  He finished the accounting and spread his hands before him, palms up. At first, Seti-Keph and his officers stood in silence; for even Moses, who from his childhood had been taught that wealth was of small matter and who had come to know that his own wealth was almost beyond measure, was amazed and astonished at the magnificence of these gifts. It gave him some inkling of how desperately they desired to avoid war—and also, for this was obvious, how far they would go to avoid meeting the Egyptian army in battle. Was the result then preordained, he wondered? Here was Seti-Keph with only fifteen thousand men—and a staggering distance from the southernmost cities of Egypt; surely a people who could provide such a gift could also do battle with an invader and drive him back! Yet it was obvious that they doubted the issue, while Seti-Keph was without doubts, for he replied harshly,

  “Is this how you measure the justice of Egypt, by bribes and petty gifts? My God-King could open one store-room in his great house and reveal more than this! Do you take me for a fool that I can be bought so cheaply?”