The Hippopotamus Marsh

by Pauline Gedge

  For a long time Si-Amun tried to negotiate the groups of panting, bloody men who were hacking at each other with dedication, but he finally had to admit defeat. The way was completely cut off. Seqenenra could hear him muttering, could sense him looking to the north, to the south, desperate for a place to hide his father, while Seqenenra lay huddled between the stalwart legs of the Brave defending him.

  The chariot came to a halt. Si-Amun crouched to peer into his father’s face. “We are slowly being squeezed together,” he said. His face was running sweat. “I cannot get you away. We are about to die, Prince.” Seqenenra nodded. He did not try to speak. Si-Amun leaned down and kissed him. “This is my fault,” he said. “All mine. May I take your axe and knives, Father?” Without waiting for an answer he lifted the heavy bronze weapon from Seqenenra’s belt and slipped the short daggers into his hands. Then he stood. Seqenenra tried to pray but found he could not. The din around him was reaching deafening proportions, and in it was an hysterical note of panic. His men were about to be routed. Suddenly the man above him gave a hiccup. Blood spattered Seqenenra, a warm red shower, and the Brave was gone. With his good hand Seqenenra lifted his kilt and wiped his face.

  Si-Amun shouted something. The chariot gave a great lurch and began to career. Seqenenra tried to brace himself but he was rolling towards the edge. He cried out, twisting, but Si-Amun could not help him. He was gone. The reins flapped loosely against the curved prow. With every ounce of strength he possessed Seqenenra tried to grab for them, while jamming his good leg against the side of the chariot, but the horses were in full flight. The reins slapped just out of reach of his straining fingers.

  All at once the chariot struck an obstacle, began to cant, and Seqenenra tumbled out. The chariot tottered and fell. Dazed, Seqenenra felt pain explode along his healthy leg. He was lying in the shade of the chariot which half-lay above him. He heard Si-Amun calling, “I’m coming, Father, I’m coming!” Where is Kamose? Seqenenra thought. Hor-Aha? Are they dead? Dear Ahmose, try to carry on, try to hold what is left of the family together even if you must run …

  He had a sudden, vivid vision of his garden in the cool silence of a long winter evening, the pool scarcely rippling, the trees scarcely quivering. Aahotep was sitting on the edge of the pool, one brown foot stirring the smooth depths. “It has been a glorious season, Seqenenra,” she was saying. “So bountiful, so beautiful. There will never be another like it.” Aahotep! he thought with anguish, teeth clenched against the pain. It has indeed been glorious, and terrible, and wondrously strange, this life of mine, yet I wish that I had been born in another time, a simpler time, when accepting my destiny might not have hurt so much.

  His hand, groping spasmodically through the filthy earth, felt the hilt of a knife and he shook it free and clutched it fiercely. A man loomed above him, feet bare, kilt torn, raised axe crusted with blood. Seeing Seqenenra’s helplessness he bared his teeth in a weary grin. Taking the axe in both hands he swung it over his head. Seqenenra swiftly jerked the knife towards the man’s ankles but the man simply stepped aside. Amun, Seqenenra thought in the split second before he died, grant me a favourable weighing …

  The last thing he saw was a glint of sombre red from the setting sun as the blade descended.

  The axe struck Seqenenra above the right eye, rebounded to smash his right cheek, then glanced off the bridge of his nose. The soldier was tired and had not put as much strength into the blow as he had thought. Swearing, he raised it again and this time it cracked the bone under Seqenenra’s left eye. Panting, the man clumsily wrenched it away and peered at the body. The chest was still trembling lightly. Catching up a spear from the disorder around him, he turned Seqenenra’s head with one foot and drove the weapon into the skull behind the left ear. The body convulsed once and then was still. The soldier stumbled away.

  Si-Amun had seen the man approach his father, consider, and heft his axe. With a scream he plunged forward, but one of Pezedkhu’s unhorsed charioteers blundered into his path, knife at the ready, and Si-Amun was forced to engage him. By the time the man lay jerking at his feet it was too late. Horrified, Si-Amun saw the spear haft protruding from his father’s neck. Once more he tried to cover the intervening ground and once more his way was blocked. Insane with grief and rage he began to lay about him, tears pouring unnoticed down his filthy cheeks. He was driven farther and farther away from his father’s body still pinned under the chariot.

  9

  BY THE TIME the sun had sunk red and sullen behind the western cliffs the field belonged to Pezedkhu. Those of Seqenenra’s pitiful army who had not been killed or did not lie wounded on the scorching ground had run for the shelter of the tumbled rocks beneath the cliffs and it was there, close to the defile through which they had marched such a short time before, that Si-Amun found Kamose and Hor-Aha together with a few officers. They were hidden in a sandy gap about a quarter of the way up the rocky incline. They could look out upon the chaos of the battlefield without being seen and could if necessary defend their position for a little while. Si-Amun, scrambling mindlessly among the boulders, had almost fallen on them. He greeted them without enthusiasm. Kamose had been wounded in the side and his cheek had been laid open by a knife thrust. Hor-Aha nursed a shattered shoulder with his usual taciturnity. “Where is Father?” Kamose demanded as Si-Amun collapsed into the sand and closed his eyes. “You were supposed to guard him, Si-Amun.”

  “Don’t be a fool, “ Si-Amun croaked. “I tried, the Braves tried, but what could we do once the battle began to go against us? I was knocked from the chariot when the horses panicked and ran. Father was pinned under it. He was helpless. Immediately I began to fight my way to him but I was too late.”

  “He is dead?” Hor-Aha demanded softly. Si-Amun nodded. Kamose stared at him, noting the tracks his tears had made in the dirt of his face, the blood and mire encrusting him.

  “Is there any water?” Si-Amun asked faintly. Kamose shook his head, fingering the red slit on his cheek and wincing.

  “No water, no food,” Hor-Aha answered. “We need both, and the physician, wherever he might be. If Amun has been merciful we will find all when we can go into the defile where the supply donkeys should be waiting. There is such a mess before the path. We must hope that the donkey drivers have been clever enough to withdraw towards the desert and Pezedkhu’s men are too tired to explore, particularly at night.”

  Si-Amun crawled to the tiny vertical split in the rock and looked down towards the river. The sun’s afterglow lit the land in a deep scarlet haze. The air was full of dust and still very hot. Pezedkhu’s soldiers were moving among the slain, knives drawn. Some were recovering the chariots that lay overturned and horseless among the dead, and others were gathering up the precious bows, but most were going methodically from body to body, kneeling to saw off a hand from each one. Si-Amun withdrew. “They are collecting our bows and taking hands for the tally,” he said. “How many died, I wonder? We must recover Father’s body as soon as possible. Pray Amun they do not find him to take a hand from him!”

  No one replied. Hor-Aha sat propped against a stone, his shoulder a mess of mangled flesh, his eyes drooping closed. Kamose lay with his head pillowed in a cloak, his hand pressing a wad of dirty kilt against his side. The officers sat or lay quietly, some nursing wounds, others trying to tend them. Si-Amun, his throat swollen with thirst, curled up in a hollow in the sand he had dug for himself. There was nothing any of them could do.

  They slept fitfully through the night. Occasionally one of them would wake and crawl to the crack to watch the activity below, lit by the fires of the army’s camp. Not much moved down there. Pezedkhu’s soldiers were also exhausted.

  Dawn came. To the men wracked with thirst and pain Ra seemed to leap into the sky with a spiteful speed and their hiding place was soon as hot as a crucible. Below, work began again. Few chariots remained. The bodies were being buried efficiently and quickly. “We must find Father soon,” Kamose whispered. “He must be be
autified, taken home to the House of the Dead. Otherwise, in this heat …” He left his sentence unfinished. Hor-Aha was in the grip of a fever and had begun to murmur nonsense. Si-Amun found a cloak and tried to make some shade for him.

  The day dragged on with frightening slowness. Si-Amun went to Kamose and lay beside him. Kamose turned his head and smiled faintly. “We were not able to fight side by side as I had hoped,” he whispered. “We have not been as close as we used to be, Si-Amun. I am so angry.”

  “It is not your fault,” Si-Amun assured him. “Try and sleep now, Kamose. It will make the time go faster.”

  With an impudent lack of haste Ra reached his zenith and sailed towards the west. On the plain the victorious soldiers sang and laughed as they leisurely prepared their evening meal, cleaned their fouled weapons, and tended to their cuts. In their hiding place the men, feeling the approaching blessing of darkness, stirred to life. Hor-Aha was weak but now lucid.

  At last the fires below were extinguished, the chariots yoked, the men formed into marching ranks. Si-Amun watched the activity as the sun sank behind him. There was a hush on the plain. In the last pink light a chariot rolled towards the cliffs and stopped. Its sides were of polished gold hammered into the likeness of Sutekh with his tall ears, his long snout and wolfish grin, his Setiu ribbons. Beside the chariot ran a soldier with a trumpet. At a gesture from the man standing in the chariot he raised it and blew. The sound echoed harsh and mournful among the rocks. Pezedkhu lifted an arm and Si-Amun saw his dark, kohled gaze travelling the face of the rocks.

  “Proud Princes of Weset!” the General called, his voice strong with a taunting triumph. “The Lord of the Two Lands has answered your act of treason with death. He is mighty! He is invincible! He is the Beloved of Set! Crawl home if you can, and lick your wounds in shame and disgrace. Meditate upon your folly and upon the King’s mercy, for he has granted you your lives. Life, health and prosperity be upon him who lives, like Ra, eternally!”

  Kamose groaned. Si-Amun watched and listened with a wildly beating heart. Pezedkhu’s arm dropped. The chariot wheeled away. Behind it Apepa’s army began to move, a ponderous worm, into the evening dusk. Si-Amun saw them go. It took a long time. Darkness had fully fallen before the plain dissolved into its customary silence, broken only by the screech of a hunting owl and the rustle of mice along the bank of the river.

  For a long time the men did not dare to stir. Then Si-Amun rose and stretched. His lips were cracked, his tongue swollen. “l will try to find the supply train and the physician,” he said. “Two of you,” he indicated the officers, “come with me. Another of you, go down to the river and bring back water. Have you a bottle?” One of them produced a leather skin. “Good. But go carefully. It is possible that Pezedkhu has left scouts to take us once we leave this place, although I am sure he does not really know who survived and was simply following the King’s orders when he addressed us so magnanimously. Kamose, are you awake? Did you hear me?” His brother’s faint assent came out of the darkness. Si-Amun glanced up at the sky. Soon the moon would rise and his going would be easier. Carefully he climbed out of the hollow and began to wind his way to the floor of the plain.

  It was not far to the break he was looking for, and as he picked his way through the debris Pezedkhu’s soldiers had reckoned not worthy of plunder, the moon rose above the eastern horizon, its blind fingers groping pale towards the river. Si-Amun breathed a prayer of thanks and shortly plunged into the blackness between the cliffs.

  He trudged for over an hour, aware of nothing but his thirst and the protesting of his abused muscles, stumbling over sharp stones, slipping on shelves of gravel, until at last he heard the braying of a donkey far ahead. Before long he saw a flicker of yellow light off to his left, deep in a tributary path. Too tired to be cautious he half-ran, half-fell up it, almost into the arms of one of the soldiers left to guard the supplies. The man challenged him and at his answer drew back. “I need food, litters and the physician,” Si-Amun managed. “Is he here? Have you water with you?” The man held out a bottle and Si-Amun snatched it and drank. It was the sweetest water he had ever tasted.

  “The physician arrived last evening,” the soldier told him. “He said the battle was lost. I will find him and bring you supplies.” Refreshed, Si-Amun sank onto a rock.

  “Keep the donkeys hidden here,” he commanded. “We need a light also.” The man went away and Si-Amun sat listening to the night silence, aware of the weight of stone around him, the black funnel of sky above. Suddenly, with a shock of horror, he thought of his father lying with the spear thrust through his skull. I am the governor of Weset now, he said to himself. Great Amun! I am the Prince. And I am also the rightful King of Egypt. As soon as I return to Weset I must send a message to Apepa, an apology, an expression of obedience. This family must not suffer any more.

  At the thought of the estate he was reminded of Mersu, of Teti and the courageous Ramose, and he squirmed and closed his eyes. I did not see Teti or Ramose in the battle, he went on in his mind, but I am sure they were there. May the gods have dealt Teti a swift death! How can I go home and have Mersu killed without a trial? For he must die. He opened his eyes. No. It must not begin again, the lies, the deceit, the shame. There on the battlefield I felt clean for the first time in months. I will tell Kamose everything and accept his judgement.

  He led the physician and servants carrying litters and food back along the track to the place where the wounded men huddled. The physician immediately set to work, loosing the strings on his pack and unfolding his herbs. One of the servants lit a fire so that he could have hot water. Another set a lamp on the sand. Si-Amun withdrew and watched, feeling normality creep back with the sure, absorbed movements of the physician, the quiet efficiency of the servant’s movements, the steady beam of the lamp. Hor-Aha’s shoulder was washed and immobilized. Kamose had his side packed with herbs, bound, and his cheek sewn shut. Both men were soon drowsing on a poppy sea. The physician sighed, sat back on his heels, and turned to Si-Amun. “Where is my greatest charge, Prince?” he asked. Si-Amun looked away.

  “My father is dead,” he replied tonelessly. “He fell in the battle. We will find his body in the morning.” The physician fell silent and presently returned his attention to his charges. The lamp was extinguished and the stars became visible, flaming stronger as the moon waned. Si-Amun left his rock and, wrapping himself in a cloak, fell asleep.

  As soon as they could see each other, Si-Amun took two servants and a litter and went down onto the plain. For a long time he paced the churned floor, trying desperately to remember exactly where the chariot had lain. Pezedkhu had removed them all and there was not a wandering horse to be seen. Si-Amun and his men stumbled over broken spears, stained axe heads, ripped and useless pieces of linen that had been kilts, scored leather harnesses. Occasionally they averted their eyes from a dismembered limb, black and grotesque in the grey dust. Dismally Si-Amun thought that they might be compelled to open the mounds that marked the mass graves of the combatants, but find his father they would. It was terrible enough that he had been maimed and then slaughtered while he lay helpless. Was he to be denied a place in the paradise of Osiris because his body could not be beautified?

  Then a servant shouted and Si-Amun hurried to where the man stood over a depression in the ground close to where they had left the cliff. The man was flinging clods of earth at a hyena who now slunk away, whimpering. Furious and terrified at the damage the beast might have done to his father’s corpse, Si-Amun raced forward. Seqenenra lay as Si-Amun had seen him last. The soldiers that had hauled the chariot upright and dragged it away had ignored him. There had been nothing to distinguish him as the lord of Weset. Somehow the spear that had pierced him had broken off near the tip and the corpse had slid down into the depression and been overlooked by the men taking hands for the tally.

  Si-Amun knelt and carefully withdrew the remains of the spear. Seqenenra’s eyes were full of sand. His lips were drawn back over
his teeth in his final agony. With one loving finger Si-Amun reverently traced the mutilated face, then emotion overcame him. Sitting, he drew his father’s body into his arms and wept, rocking to and fro in his grief. His men stood in silence, looking away.

  The morning heat began to intensify. Vultures began to congregate on the cliffs behind, their mighty wings sending shafts of shadow over the plain. At last Si-Amun laid the body down and rose awkwardly. “He is putrefying already,” he said unevenly. “How are we to return him to Weset for burial?” He gestured, and the litter was lowered. Seqenenra was laid on it and covered with linen. “Take him to the supply train,” Si-Amun decided. “Find a box long enough for a temporary coffin. Fill it with dry sand and place him in the middle. We must hurry home.” The thought of his mother, his grandmother, was too dreadful to contemplate. With an oath he began to run towards the cliffs.

  After a hasty meal Si-Amun had the donkeys brought to the edge of the river and Kamose and Hor-Aha were placed on litters and carried to join them. They set off for home in the long, coloured evening. Seqenenra’s makeshift coffin went first, guarded by Si-Amun, who strode beside it. As they moved slowly away from Dashlut, following the river road, other survivors joined them, soldiers who had fled to the cliffs as they did when all was lost. Si-Amun scarcely acknowledged their salutes as they took up positions in the rear, but Hor-Aha’s black eyes followed them as they paced dejectedly past his litter. By the time the accursed plain of Dashlut had disappeared from view, he had counted more than two hundred of them.

  It took the preoccupied and miserable cavalcade a night and almost all the next day to reach Qes. Many of the soldiers had minor wounds, and those carrying Kamose and Hor-Aha had to go carefully for fear of jolting their charges. Si-Amun, his thoughts on his father’s slowly rotting body, was feverish to keep going. While the servants made camp and the physician examined his patients, he scouted the riverbank for boats. The donkeys, laden with all the supplies Seqenenra had painstakingly gathered for the march north, could be returned at leisure to Weset, but Seqenenra himself must be properly embalmed so that both the gods and his ka might recognize the Prince and give him life in the next world. His father’s death weighed insupportably on Si-Amun’s conscience. He knew he would go mad if Seqenenra arrived at the House of the Dead too late. But Qes had nothing to offer but a few tiny reed fishing boats and Si-Amun had to wait, gnawing his lips impatiently, while the men ate and slept the following night away.