River God

by Wilbur Smith

  'I have removed the arrow,' I told him. 'But the wound I is deep and near the heart. He is very weak, but if he survives three days, then I will be able to save him.'

  'What of your mistress and her son?' He always asked this, whenever we met.

  'Queen Lostris is tired, for she helped me with the operation. But she is with the king now. The prince is as bonny as ever and sleeps now with his nurses.'

  I saw Tanus reel on his feet, and knew that he was close to the end of even his great strength. 'You must rest now—' "t began, but he shook off my hand.

  'Bring lamps here,' he ordered. 'Taita, fetch your writing-brushes and ink-pots and scrolls. I must send a warning to Nembet, lest he walk into the Hyksos trap even as I did.'

  So Tanus and I sat half that night on the open deck, and this was the despatch for Nembet that he dictated to me:

  I greet you Lord Nembet, Great Lion of Egypt, Commander of the Ra division of the army of Pharaoh. May you live for ever!

  Know you that we have encountered the enemy Hyksos at the plain of Abnub. The Hyksos in his strength and ferocity is a terrible foe, and possessed of strange, swift craft that we cannot resist.

  Know you further that we have suffered a defeat and that our army is destroyed. We can no longer oppose the Hyksos.

  Know you further that Pharaoh is gravely wounded and in danger of his life.

  We urge you not to meet the Hyksos in an open field, for his craft are like the wind. Therefore take refuge behind walls of stone, or wait aboard your ships, to turn the enemy aside.

  The Hyksos has no ships of his own, and it is by means of our ships alone that we may prevail against him.

  We urge you to await our coming before committing your forces to battle.

  I call the protection of Horus and all the gods down upon you.

  It is Tanus, Lord Harrab, Commander of the Ptah division of the army of Pharaoh, who speaks thus.

  I wrote out four copies of this message, and as I completed each, Tanus called for messengers to carry them to the Lord Nembet, Great Lion of Egypt, who was advancing from the south to reinforce us. Tanus sent two fast galleys speeding up-river, each with a fair copy of the despatches. Then he put his best runners ashore on the west bank, the opposite side of the river from the Hyksos army, and sent them off to find Nembet.

  'Surely one of your scrolls will win through to Nembet. You can do no more until morning,' I reassured him. 'You must sleep now, for if you destroy yourself, then all of Egypt is destroyed with you.'

  Even then he would not go to a cabin, but curled on the deck like a dog, so that he could be instantly ready for any new emergency. But I went to the cabin to be near my king " and to give comfort to my mistress.

  I was on deck again before the first glimmer of dawn. I arrived to hear Tanus giving orders to burn our fleet. It was not for me to question this decision, but he saw me gape incredulously at him, and when the messengers had been sent away he told me brusquely, 'I have just received the roll-call from my regimental commanders. Of the thirty thousand of my men who stood yesterday on the plain of Abnub to meet the chariots of the Hyksos, only seven thousand remain. Five thousand of those are wounded, and many will still die. Of those who are unwounded, very few are sailors. I am left with only sufficient men to work half our j fleet. I must abandon the rest of our ships, but I cannot let them fall into the hands of the Hyksos.'

  They used bundles of reeds to start the fires, and once they were set, they burned fiercely. It was a sad and terrible sight to watch, even for me and my mistress, who were not sailors. For Tanus it was far worse. He stood alone in the bows of the state barge, with despair and grief in every line of his face and in the set of those wide shoulders, as he watched his ships bum. For him they were living things, and beautiful.

  Before all the court my mistress could not go to his side where she belonged, but she took my hand surreptitiously, and the two of us mourned for Tanus and for all Egypt as we watched those gallant craft burn like torches. The roaring pillars of flame from each vessel were sullied with black smoke, but still their ruddy light rivalled the approach of the sunrise.

  At last Tanus gave the order to his hundred remaining galleys to weigh anchor, and our little fleet, laden with wounded and dying men, turned back into the south.

  Behind us, the smoke from the funeral pyre of our fleet stood high into the early morning sky, while ahead of us fee yellow dust-cloud stretched taller and wider along the east bank of the Nile as the chariot squadrons of the Hyksos drove deeper into the Upper Kingdom, towards helpless Thebes and all her treasures.

  It seemed that the gods had turned their backs on Egypt and deserted us completely, for the wind, which usually blew so strongly from the north at this season of the year, died away completely, and then sprang up again with renewed vigour from the south. Thus we were forced to contend with both current and wind, and our ships were deeply laden with their cargoes of wounded. We were slow and heavy in the water, with the depleted crews slaving at the oars. We could not keep pace with the Hyksos army, and it drew away from us inexorably.

  I was absorbed with my duties as physician to the king. However, on every other vessel in the fleet, men whom I could have saved were dying in their scores. Every time that

  I went on deck for a little fresh air and a short break from my vigil at the bedside of Pharaoh, I saw corpses being thrown over the side of the other galleys near us. At each

  splash there was a swirl of crocodiles beneath the surface. Those awful reptiles followed the fleet like vultures.

  Pharaoh rallied strongly, and on the second day I was able to feed him a small bowl of broth. That evening he asked to see the prince again, and Memnon was brought to him.

  Memnon was already at the age when he was as restless as a grasshopper and as noisy as a flock of starlings. Pharaoh had always been good with the boy, if inclined to over-indulgence, and Memnon delighted in his company. Already he was a beautiful boy, with clean, strong limbs and his mother's skin and great dark green eyes. His hair was curled like the pelt of a new-born black lamb, but in the sunlight, it was sparked with the flames of Tanus's ruddy mop.

  Pharaoh's delight in Memnon was even more poignant than usual. The child and the promise that he had wrung from my mistress were his hope of immortality. Against my wishes he kept the child with him until after.sunset. I knew that Memnon's boundless energy and his demands for attention were tiring the king, but I could not intervene until it was time for the prince's supper and he was led away by his nurses.

  My mistress and I stayed on at the king's bedside, but he fell almost instantly into a death-like sleep. Even without his white make-up, he was as pale as the linen sheets on which he lay.

  The next day was the third since the wounding, and therefore the most dangerous. If he could survive this day, then I knew I could save him. But when I woke in the dawn the cabin was thick with the musky stench of corruption. When I touched Pharaoh's skin, it burned my fingers like a kettle from the hearth. I called for my mistress, and she came stumbling through from her alcove behind the curtain where she slept.

  'What is it, Taita?' She got no further, for the answer was plain upon my face. She stood beside me as I unbound the wound. The binding-up is a high art of the surgeon's skills, and I had sewn the linen bandages in place. Now I snipped the threads that held them and peeled them away.

  'Merciful Hapi, pray for him!' Queen Lostris gagged at the stench. The crusted black scab that corked the mouth of the wound burst open, and thick green pus poured out in a slow and viscous stream.

  'Mortification!' I whispered. This was the surgeon's nightmare, this evil humour that struck upon the third day and spread through the body like winter fire in the dry papyrus beds.

  'What can we do?' she asked, and I shook my head.

  'He will be dead before nightfall,' I told her, but we waited beside his bed for the inevitable. As the word spread through the ship that Pharaoh was dying, so the cabin filled with priests and wom
en and courtiers. We waited in silence.

  Tanus was the last to arrive, and he stood at the back of the throng with his helmet under his arm, in the position of respect and mourning. His gaze rested not on the death-bed, but upon Queen Lostris. She kept her face averted from his, but I knew that she was aware of him in every fibre of her body.

  She covered her head with an embroidered linen shawl, but above the waistband of her skirt, she was naked. Since the prince had been weaned, her breasts had lost their heavy burden of milk. She was as slim as a virgin, and childbirth had not scarred her bosom or her supple belly with silver lines of striae. Her skin was as smooth and unblemished as though it had been freshly anointed with perfumed oil. I laid wet cloths upon Pharaoh's burning body in an attempt to cool the fever, but the heat evaporated the moisture and I was forced to change them at short intervals. Pharaoh tossed about restlessly and cried out in delirium, haunted by all the terrors and monsters of the other world, who waited to receive him.

  At times he recited snatches from the Book of the Dead. From childhood the priests had taught him to memorize the book that was the key and the map through the shades to the far fields of paradise:

  The crystal path has twenty-one turnings.

  The narrow way is thin as the blade of bronze.

  The goddess who guards the second pylon

  is treacherous and her ways are devious.

  Lady of flame, whore of the universe,

  with the mouth of a lioness,

  your vagina swallows men up,

  they are lost in your milky dugs.

  Gradually his voice and his movements became weaker, a little after the sun had made its noon, he gave one t shuddering sigh and was still. I stooped over him and : for the life-throb in his throat, but there was none, and skin was cooling under my touch.

  'Pharaoh is dead,' I said softly, and closed the lids over his staring eyes. 'May he live for ever!'

  The mourning cry went up from all who were assembled there, and my mistress led the royal women in the wild ululation of grief. It was a sound mat chilled me and made invisible insects crawl upon my skin, so I left the cabin as soon as I was able. Tanus followed me out on to the deck and seized my arm.

  'You did all in your power to save him?' he demanded roughly. 'This was not another of your devices?'

  I knew that this unkind treatment of me was an expression of his own guilt and fear, so I was gentle in my reply. 'He was slain by the Hyksos arrow. I did all that was in my power to save him. It was the destiny of the Mazes of Ammon-Ra, and there is no guilt or fault in any of us.'

  He sighed and placed one strong arm around my shoulders. 'I had not foreseen any of this. I thought only of my love for the queen and for our son. I should rejoice that she is free, but I cannot. Too much is lost and destroyed. All of us are merely grains of dhurra corn in the grinding-mill of the Mazes.'

  "There will be a time of happiness for all of us hereafter," I reassured him, although I had no basis for this claim. 'But there is still a sacred duty on my mistress, and through her, on you and me also.' And I reminded him of the oath that Queen Lostris had sworn to the king, that she would preserve his earthly body and give it proper burial to allow his Ka to move on to the fields of paradise.

  'Tell me how I can help in this,' Tanus replied simply, 'but remember that the Hyksos is sweeping through the Upper Kingdom ahead of us, and I cannot guarantee that Pharaoh's tomb will not be violated.'

  "Then, if needs be, we must find another tomb for him. Our first concern must be to preserve his body. In this heat it will be decaying and crawling with maggots before the sun sets. I am not skilled in the embalmer's art, but I know of only one way in which we can keep our trust.'

  Tanus sent his sailors down into the barge's hold, and they swung up one of the huge clay jars of pickled olives from our stores. Then, under my instructions, he emptied the jar and refilled it with boiling water. While the water was still hot, he mixed into it three sacks of the finest-quality sea salt. Then he filled four smaller wine jars with the same brine and set them all out on the deck to cool.

  In the meantime I was working alone in the cabin. My mistress had wanted to help me. She felt that it was part of her duty to her dead husband, but I sent her away to care for the prince.

  I slit open Pharaoh's corpse down his left flank from ribs to hip-bone. Through this opening I removed the contents of chest and belly, freeing them along the diaphragm with the knife. Naturally, I left his heart in place, for this is the organ of life and intelligence. I left the kidneys also, for these are the vessels of water and represent the sacred Nile. I packed the cavity with salt and then sutured it closed with cat-gut. I did not have an embalming-spoon to push up through the nostrils and remove that soft yellow mush from the gourd of the skull, so I left it in place. In any event, it was of no importance. The viscera I divided into its separate parts: liver, lungs, stomach and entrails. I washed out the stomach and intestines with brine, which was a loathsome task.

  When this was done, I took the opportunity to examine the king's lungs minutely. The right lung was healthy and pink, but the left lung had been pierced by the arrow, and had collapsed like a punctured bladder. It was filled with rotten black blood and pus. I was amazed that the old man had lived so long with such an injury. I felt that I was absolved. No physician could have saved him, and there was no fault or failure in my treatment.

  At last I ordered the sailors to bring in the cooled jars of brine. Tanus helped me to fold Pharaoh's body into the foetal position and we placed him in the olive vat. I made certain that he was completely immersed in the strong brine. We packed his viscera into the smaller Canopic wine jars. We sealed all the jars with pitch and wax, and lashed them securely into the reinforced compartment below decks in which the king stored his treasure. I think Pharaoh must have been content to rest thus, surrounded by gold and bars of silver.

  I had done my best to help my mistress make good her vow. In Thebes I would hand the king's body over to the embalmers, if the Hyksos had not arrived there first, and if the city and its inhabitants still existed by the time we reached it.

  WHEN WE REACHED THE WALLED CITY of Asyut, it was apparent that the Hyksos had left only a small force to invest it, and had continued southwards with their main army. Even though it was merely a detachment with less than a hundred chariots, the Hyksos besiegers were far too strong for us to attack them with our decimated army.

  Tanus' main aim was to rescue Remrem and his five thousand, who were within the city walls, and then to push on up-river to join forces with Lord Nembet and his thirty thousand reinforcements. Anchored out in the main stream of the river, secure from attack by those deadly chariots, Tanus was able to signal his intentions to Remrem on the city walls.

  Years before, I had helped Tanus draw up a system of signals, using two coloured flags by means of which he could spell out a message to any other within sight, across a valley, from peak to peak, or from city wall to plain and river. With the flags Tanus was able to warn Remrem to be ready for us that night. Then, under cover of darkness, twenty of our galleys raced into the beach below the city walls. At the same moment, Remrem threw open the side-gates, and, at the head of his regiment, fought his way through the Hyksos pickets. Before the enemy were able to harness their horses, Remrem and all his men were safely embarked.

  Immediately, Tanus signalled the rest of the flotilla to weigh anchor. He abandoned the city of Asyut to sack and plunder, and we bore on upstream under oars. For the rest of that night, whenever we looked back over the stern, we saw the flames of the burning city lighting the northern horizon.

  'Let those poor bastards forgive me,' Tanus muttered to me. 'I had no choice but to sacrifice them. My duty lies south of here in Thebes.'

  He was soldier enough to make the hard choice without flinching, but man enough to grieve bitterly over it. I admired him then as much as I loved him.

  REMREM TOLD US THAT OUR SIGNAL frigates had sailed past Asyut the prev
ious day, and that by now the despatches that I had drawn up on Tanus' behalf must be in Lord Nembet's hands.

  Remrem was also able to give us some intelligence and news of the Hyksos, and his sweep to the south. Remrem had captured two Egyptian deserters and traitors who had gone over to the enemy and who had entered Asyut to spy on the defenders. Under torture they had howled like the jackals they were, and before they died, had told Remrem much about the Hyksos that was of value and interest to us.

  The Hyksos king, whom we had so disastrously encountered on the plain of Abnub, was named Salitis. His tribe was of Semitic blood and originally a nomadic and pastoral people who had lived in the Zagros mountains near Lake Van. In this my first impression of these terrible Asians was confirmed. I had guessed at their Semitic origins from their features, but I wondered how a pastoral people had evolved such an extraordinary vehicle as a wheeled chariot, and where they had found that marvellous animal that we Egyptians now spoke of as a horse, and feared as though it were a creature from the underworld.

  In other areas it seemed that the Hyksos were a backward people. They were unable to read or write, and their government was a harsh tyranny by their single king and ruler, this bearded Salitis. We Egyptians hated him and feared him even more than we did those wild creatures that drew his chariot.

  The chief god of the Hyksos was named Sutekh, the god of storms. It needed no deep religious instruction to recognize in him our own dreaded Seth. Their choice of god was fitting, and their behaviour did the god honour.

  No civilized people would burn and plunder and murder as they did. The fact that we torture traitors cannot be weighed in the same scale as the atrocities committed by these barbarians.

  It is a truth that I have often observed, that a nation chooses its gods to suit its own nature. The Philistines worship Baal, and cast live infants into the fiery furnace that is his mouth. The black Cushite tribes worship monsters and creatures from the underworld with the most bizarre rituals. We Egyptians worship just and decent gods who are benevolent towards mankind and make no demands for human sacrifice. Then the Hyksos have Sutekh.