by Howard Fast
His arrows were gone, but the chariot thundered on to kill. The sun was overhead, so he knew fitfully, as much as he could know anything, that hours of battle had been—and motion slowed. The horses were tired. He saw a horse of another chariot go down on its knees, dying from earlier wounds, the chariot flung on its side, the men in it thrown like balls; but his thought process was unable to consider such matters. He was to kill, his long Hittite sword in hand, and Nun, his bronze hammer swinging from its bloody thong, was also to kill. They followed the men of Kush, hunting them like hares, and they killed and killed. They killed until Moses could hardly lift his arm and the horses could no longer run. They were far out on the plain now and the silence was paralysing and frightening. The battle was out of sight, and the noise of what remained of the battle came only as a murderous whisper. Here and there in the distance they saw chariots, and here and there they saw the fleeing men of Kush, but the will to kill was draining out of Moses. Life and the knowledge of life was returning, and it welled up inside of him as sickness and nausea….
The horses walked, and Nun dropped the reins and the whip and turned to face his master. He began to laugh mirthlessly, his face twitching, and without warning he swung his bloody hammer at Moses. Moses pulled away and the hammer whistled past his face, and then Moses struck with his sword, catching Nun a glancing cut on the brow, striking him full with the flat of the blade and cutting open a gash in the skin. For a moment, Nun stood there, the blood pouring down his face; then he took a step toward Moses, attempting to raise the hammer; then he stumbled, staggered and fell upon the tailboard, rolled over on to the ground and lay there. The horses continued to walk, and as the chariot moved away, Moses stared trancelike at the man he had struck down. The space between them increased. Nun attempted to raise himself, wiped the blood from his eyes and looked at Moses. Their eyes met, but Moses was without thought or reaction, empty—and bereft of hope or anger.
And then, as the chariot drew away, Moses saw a black man of Kush come staggering and running toward where Nun lay. The black man had thrown away his shield and spear, but when he saw the still-living enemy on the ground, his fear-fogged mind remembered hate and betrayal, and he drew his long dagger and raised it to kill once before he himself was killed. He saw no more than the narrow focus of fear, fatigue and hatred; he did not see the chariot or Moses—only Nun, struggling desperately to rise and defend himself.
“Let him die!” the tortured mind of Moses cried inwardly. “Let the Kushite kill him! He would have slain me, and let him die now!” What difference did it make? There was no real separation between life and death. To kill was to function. He had embraced death, and now death was a part of him. Life was worthless and cheap. Let Nun die—
So his thoughts went even as his body moved, and he sprang from the chariot and forced his weary body into a wild run. The Kushite stood over Nun, his arm lifted to strike, when Moses killed him. And then Moses let go his sword and stood weeping, while Nun watched.
[19]
MOSES TORE STRIPS from his dirty and bloody kilt and bound Nun’s head to stanch the flow of blood, and the slave’s eyes were puzzled and weary. “In Egypt,” Nun said slowly, “the law is that when a slave raises his hand against his master, so shall the master strike off the hand; but if the slave raises his hand with a weapon in it, then the master shall strike off his head—”
“I didn’t save your life to cut off your head,” Moses answered in disgust.
“It doesn’t matter, because Seti-Keph will do it.”
“No one knows what happened here and no one will know. I thought you were clever, but you are very stupid.”
Nun nodded.
“Hold your head still. Why do you hate me so?”
“I don’t hate you,” Nun whispered. “I am cleansed of hate. It ran out of me with my blood. I hated you because you are master and I am slave, because you are prince and I am Bedouin. I hated you and envied you, but it all ran out of me with my blood. I killed for Egypt and Egypt killed for me. My heart is empty. I belong to you.” And as Moses had before, he too began to weep.
Finished with the bandage, Moses sprawled back from the slave and said, speaking as he never had been able to speak before, since he too had lost blood and more than blood in the battle, “You make me sick, Nun—just to listen to that kind of rubbish makes me sick. You are a man and so am I. We have seen some awful things this day, but other men have seen worse and lived to talk sanely about it. I hate superstition and I hate your ignorant Bedouin talk. If you can’t talk intelligently, as a grown man should, then keep your dirty mouth shut!”
“Why don’t you kill me?” Nun muttered.
“That’s just it. That’s the kind of talk that makes me sick to death. It makes me want to vomit. Haven’t you seen killing enough here today?” Moses pointed to the dead Kushite, who lay face-down, only a few feet from them. “Look at him—a fine, strong young man, and I killed him! Who gave me the right to kill? Who gave any man the right to kill? When I was a boy I had good teachers who taught me love and brotherhood, and they said that man was holy because god’s own son came down to earth to make him holy and sacred—and look how holy and sacred he is, lying there with a sword-cut through his neck. Every vulture in Africa is here, hanging in the sky and waiting for the great feeding, and we are the dogs of the vultures. What did I have against this man, that I should kill him? Did I know him? Did I hate him? His heart was full of anger and hatred because we did a thing to his old king that even the stones and sand of Egypt will remember with shame and horror. He was right to want to kill me, for I am dirty with deceit and treachery—but why should I have killed him? How many we killed today! Can you remember? Can you count? Look at my bow-arm-how the skin is flayed off it, my string-guard whipped to shreds! Two hundred shafts I let fly today—and how many women will weep and how many children go hungry because the Prince of Egypt went to war against Kush? Macaat we were born with and lived with-I spit on it! And you—you ignorant, superstitious, wretched Bedouin—you lie there and whimper for me to kill you!”
Convulsively, his whole body racked with sobs, Nun wept; he wept like a little boy whipped unjustly yet uncertain of his own innocence.
“Kill you!” Moses cried. “In all my life, I had no friend of my own age—never, and I said to myself, this slave will become my comrade and we will know each other! There is my shame. A prince of Egypt said that because he was alone and afraid—and you tried to kill me! Why?”
“I don’t know, master,” Nun sobbed. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I thought I knew, but I don’t know.” He dragged himself over to Moses, pressing his face to Moses’ foot. “Forgive me, master. Forgive me.”
“Don’t do that,” Moses cried, suddenly full of his own guilt. “Be my friend, Nun.”
“I am your slave.”
“I want a man, a friend,” Moses pleaded.
Nun controlled his sobbing and stared at Moses. “Do you forgive me? Do you give me back my life?”
“I forgive you,” Moses sighed, utterly exhausted, unable to face the thought of further passion.
“Give me your right arm,” Nun entreated.
Moses nodded and held out his arm, covered with dirt and blood, the blood still oozing from cuts. Nun lifted his own right arm and pressed his open wounds to Moses’. “Now our blood is the same,” he whispered. “Now we are blood brothers and there can never be hate between us. I thank you, my master, I thank you.”
[20]
ONLY A HUNDRED paces away, the chariot horses had stopped, not to graze—for the beasts like the men were trembling with emotion and fatigue—but from loss of will to move; and as Moses came up to them, he wondered how the mind—if there was one—of a dumb beast reacted to the senseless carnage of this day. Blessed were the horses, if they knew no more than the whip on their backs. They were covered with dry spume and dry blood, and their legs were up to the fetlocks with blood, even as the chariot wheels were red with blood, and the same red
on the now bent and broken axle-swords and over the bronze facing of the chariot itself, as if someone had painted it imperfectly in this dark and awful crimson colour.
Moses vomited. Nun, clinging to the chariot to stay erect, said, “It is all right, master; you will vomit away the sickness.” Moses had not eaten that morning, but convulsively he continued to empty his stomach, staggering from the violence of his retching, and throwing the vomit upon himself. It did not matter to him; his sense of filth within and without was complete.
“Get into the chariot and ride,” he told Nun at last. “I will walk.”
“I will walk too,” Nun protested.
“You can barely stand. Get into the chariot!” Moses ordered him tiredly.
With Nun lying on the floor of the chariot, Moses led the horses back towards the battlefield. It was well into the afternoon now, and the chariot of Moses was not the only one returning to the place where the battle had begun. All over, to his right and to his left, ahead of him and behind him, Moses saw the chariots returning. They were alike in the slowness of pace; they were alike in their indifference to each other; and even when another chariot came near his, no greeting was exchanged. The victory was sombre and heavy and without any joy; “glory” would come later—there was no “glory” now.
As Moses walked on, he saw how the dead of Kush increased, and he wondered if even one of the black men had escaped the massacre. Some of the fallen black men were only wounded, and he noticed other chariots turning out of their way to put the wounded to death. Yet his mind made no comment, no judgment, except to direct him to avoid the wounded when he saw them.
He walked slowly for a full hour before he reached the battlefield itself, and here the dead Kushites lay so thick that often the ground was covered by the piles of their bodies, and the river of blood that had poured out of them turned the hard plain into mud. Vaguely, he wondered how large their army had been. Seen in the morning, it had appeared to be at least twice the size of the Egyptian Host—but now it seemed to Moses that more than thirty thousand dead lay upon the battlefield. The first stirring of judgment made him feel that his flesh was shrinking upon his bones. His reaction was not horror; at a point during the day, he had lost all ability to know horror; it was more of a beginning-sense of the vastness of the pain and waste that had come about here on this day. Not did he condemn in his mind the thousands of Egyptian and mercenary footmen who prowled among the fallen, turning each over, killing those who still breathed, tearing off the gold rings and bracelets and chains, decking and loading themselves with the necklaces of ivory beads, white claws, the silver girdles, leopard skins, unable to stop or contain their greed, staggering under the weight of useless spears and bullhide shields. There was a wall between himself and them; he watched them fight and squabble over the loot, and he remained indifferent.
Yet now he could not lead the horses over the bodies of the dead, nor have the chariot grind them any more. He turned here and there to find a path, and sometimes he stopped to drag the dead aside. He came to the place where the spearmen had made their shield-wall, and he felt a certain lightening of his heart at the sight of hundreds of Egyptian and mercenary dead. In proportion to the murdered army of Kush, they were few indeed, but he had felt that he could not live if Egypt had paid no price for this.
It was there that Sokar-Moses found him, and grasped his hand, and told him how thankful they would be to know that he lived. The last they had seen of him, he was driving down on Kush like some wild god of war, sowing death around him, the more glory to the holy House of Ramses. Seti-Keph had been asking for him constantly. He must now come to the commander.
“I don’t want to see Seti-Keph,” Moses said dully.
“I beg you, Prince of Egypt. I know what it is after a battle, and I know that this is your first battle. But Seti-Keph is dying.”
“Dying? Was he wounded?”
“Not by the hand of man. He fought like a lion until the victory was assured—and then the gods of Kush struck inside of him. There was a pain inside him like his heart breaking, and we bore him back to his pavilion, where he lies now. Come to him before he dies-I beg you, Prince of Egypt—come to him.”
Moses nodded silently, told Nun that he must go to the Captain of Hosts, and then followed Sokar-Moses to the pavilion they had raised for Seti-Keph. The group of officers around the couch upon which Seti-Keph lay stepped aside when Moses appeared, and Moses stood there, looking down at Seti-Keph—who now appeared very small, very old and tired. They had washed his body and covered him with a spread of clean white linen and raised his head upon soft pillows, but his face was knit with pain and the fierce bulldog look had left him. Already, his face had taken on the waxen quality of death. But when he saw Moses, he managed to smile with a strange, ingratiating warmth, and he held out one trembling hand and said,
“Give me your hand, my son,” his voice barely a whisper. “Come closer to me. Hold on to me. I managed to stay until you came, but I can’t stay much longer.”
All the accumulated, angry, bitter resentment he had directed towards this man, who—as Moses felt-had betrayed his entire trust, melted now. Death levels and makes atonement and forgives, and somehow Moses comprehended the pitiful and ignominious tragedy of the death of this man. All the dignity the world knew lay outside on the blood-soaked battlefield where the black men of Kush had defended their land and their gods—and perished in that defence. So they were defended in death. But this small, frightened and lonely man had no defences. Even as he tried to boast to Moses of his victory, less than a thousand dead among the Egyptians and the whole army of Kush destroyed, Moses realized that his boast was empty and pathetic. He lay there, Moses’ hand pressed to his lips, trying to find in this last act of tenderness towards one he believed to be a prince of Egypt, some meaning and reason, some quick, final taste of the love his life had been empty of. Born into a world from which meaning and reason had departed, he had attempted in terms of himself to make meaning and to live out reason as he saw it. By his own force of will, he had gained prestige, power and glory such as it was; and naked and afraid, he lay here now dying on the plains of Kush.
Moses understood. He knelt by the couch, and SetiKeph whispered to him, “I saw you no more after we met the old king with his gifts. Did the act of justice frighten you, my son?”
“It was not justice, Seti-Keph,” Moses answered.
“You turned your face from me. After you had become like a son to me—the only son I ever had.” His eyes pleaded with Moses.
“Don’t go away from me now”—a shade of a smile lighting up his face—“Moses of the half-name.”
“I won’t go away.”
“Until the end? It won’t be long. I won’t keep you long.”
“I will never leave you, Seti-Keph,” Moses whispered, the tears running down his face.
“They told me how bravely you bore yourself in battle. I said I knew. I always knew. I knew you, Moses, my son.” His voice dropped to a faint whisper, and Moses had to bend close to his face to hear his words. “I know you’re not the blood of Ramses. Who are you? What is your name? Tell me, and I’ll keep it secret even from the gods.”
“Aton-Moses.”
“Ah—like our friend the doctor. I open my heart to men with that name. I lived as a butcher and I die with blasphemy. Do you truly believe in your Aton, my son? We are far from the gods of Egypt. Who will greet me when I close my eyes and go away? Who will say, this is SetiKeph who was afraid to be humble and live out his life as a peasant? Who?”
Moses shook his head and Seti-Keph closed his eyes. His body stiffened and then he lay still. Moses stood up and walked out of the pavilion, nor did any of the captains there speak to him. It was in his mind now that he would go down to the river and wash the filth and blood from his body, and there he went. There he found Nun, who was washing the horses as they drank. Naked and powerful, like the very trunk and pillar of life, the Bedouin had thrown off his hurt and fatigue—an
d in his youth and health, he greeted Moses smilingly.
“Seti-Keph is dead,” Moses said.
“He was a great captain.”
“I wept for him,” Moses said. Then he lay down in the cool, rushing water of the Nile and let it wash away the pain, the memory and the dirt.
PART THREE
The Wanderer
[1]
IT WAS NOT three, but almost four years before Moses, Prince of Egypt and Captain of Kush, returned to the City of Ramses in the Delta. Boyhood and youth had passed and manhood marked him. Streaks of grey appeared in his black hair, a premature greying which was not unconnected with the service he performed as a captain in the Land of Kush, and around his eyes, narrowed against the burning desert sun, tiny wrinkles began to form. As with some men, he reached his full stature as he turned twenty, and his tall, large-boned figure filled out with great strength and commanding aspect.
Already he was a maker of legends in distant Egypt, and this and that was told of him, some true and some untrue. The legends grew in a field of their own, and long afterwards it was told that in the Land of Kush he became a mighty king of a walled city, over which he ruled for forty years. It was also said that he became captain over all the hosts of Egypt when Seti-Keph died, and that he led them to many victories.
