The Field of Reeds (Imhotep Book 4)

by Jerry Dubs

  His thoughts turned to women.

  Queen Satiah had, of course, been beyond his dreams. Queen Menwi had been constantly guarded. But little Queen Merti had spoken to him once and he had carried the image of her face into restless dreams.

  Then she had been sent to Waset to be with her sister, another of Thutmose’s brood mares. The temple was filled with young acolytes, all boys. And Queen Satiah had insisted that he stay nearby so he could never follow the narrowing streets of Men-Nefer that led to taverns and brothels.

  I haven’t had a woman in months, he thought. As the dusty trail flowed by beneath the chariot, he searched his memory for a woman’s face that could occupy his thoughts.

  His search was interrupted as the horses suddenly changed their gait. The chariot bounced and Thanuny, who was balanced on his left foot and the heel of his right, was thrown against the side of the chariot.

  The sharp edge of his elbow struck the wooden frame of the chariot cab sending a deadening jolt through his arm. He shouted, more in surprise than in pain, and lost his grip on the reins.

  Well-trained, the horses felt the slack and slowed to a walk.

  Thanuny gripped the chariot cab with both hands. Then feeling for the reins with one hand, his pushed himself upright with the other, forcing the numb arm to support his weight.

  He pulled on the reins and the horses stopped walking. Breathing deeply, he shook his lifeless arm angrily and wondered why the horses had misbehaved.

  Looking back to the road he saw what the horses had stumbled over: Imhotep’s walking staff.

  Amazed, Thanuny dismounted and started back to the road.

  The gods have given me a sign.

  Behind him one of the horses snorted. He looked back. The charioteers had always given someone the reins of the horses when they dismounted. He hoped the horses would wait for him, but he had no choice. He had to retrieve the magical staff.

  When he drew nearer, he saw that the staff was moving, curling and twisting on itself. Approaching cautiously he saw that the snakes carved on Imhotep’s magical staff had come to life.

  He pulled his khopesh from his waist.

  Slowly, cautiously, he moved forward, sword raised. The writhing snake slowed its movements and he saw that it was a single snake, not the pair that lived on Imhotep’s staff.

  As thick as his arm, the snake slowly twisted on itself and Thanuny could see now that the skin had been flattened where the wheels of the chariot had rolled over it. The snake curled into a coil now and Thanuny saw that it was the god Mehen, protector of Re.

  Khopesh raised overhead, Thanuny stepped toward the injured god. The snake began to uncoil and then as quickly curled again, fighting the broken bones that lay beneath its scales. Thanuny saw its pain, heard it asking him for release.

  Beside the tortured snake now, Thanuny bent at the waist and swung his arms. The khopesh was alive with the strength of Wepwawet now. It sang through the air, flashed though the light, and sliced through the heavy neck of Mehen.

  He heard a last hiss, the ka of Mehen taking flight. The snake’s head bounced on the dirt road while its body continued to writhe, the snake-god’s ba working free.

  I can kill a god, Thanuny thought as he watched Mehen’s ka flee to the Field of Reeds.

  ***

  Re’s flames had turned from white to yellow to orange to red by the time Thanuny’s chariot reached the edge of Tjaru.

  He slowed the horses and quickly realized that the edge of Tjaru was the same as the center of Tjaru and the same as the far edge of Tjaru. The town contained three buildings, one of them with only three sides and one without a roof. However, the third building had a low wall around its roof and there was movement there.

  Thanuny stepped from the chariot, careful to not entangle his feet in the coiled body of Mehen that he had raised from the road. He stood for a moment, enjoying the solid, non-swaying firmness of Geb’s back.

  Then he leaned toward the chariot, lifted Mehen’s lifeless coils onto his shoulder and shouted toward the movement on the roof of the nearby building.

  “I want a jar of wine and burial for a god!”

  Gaza

  Dragging swirling mountains of dust, the maryannu arrived in Gaza the same day that the fleet of supply ships sailed into view, their square sails crowding the horizon.

  Settling on the western edge of the city, the archers and charioteers set up camp in the shape of a circle with a large tent in the center for Pharaoh Thutmose, third of the name, beating heart of the Double House.

  While carpenters erected the ruler’s tent, Djehuty supervised the unloading of the first ship which carried pharaoh’s golden throne. Watching the longshoremen, Djehuty quickly realized that getting his fleet through the tangled delta and along the rocky coast of the Levant had been the easiest part of his duties. It was clear to him that Gaza did not have enough docks for even a tenth of his supply fleet and that the waves of the Great Green threatened to crush the waiting ships against the rocky coast.

  With three ships docked, Djehuty sent the others back into the sea, keeping an eye on the western skies for black clouds.

  Now he and Amenhotep stood by the shore watching the men unload the second ship.

  “There aren’t enough dock workers in Gaza,” Amenhotep said, as if the city’s small size were his fault.

  Djehuty nodded, although his attention was focused on two men who were struggling to carry sacks of grain from the ship. They kept losing their grip, setting the bags on the gangplank, walking around the bags and then lifting them once more before quickly losing their grip. Djehuty was silently counting how long it took them.

  He knew how many grain sacks were on the ships. He thought that Imhotep might know a way to figure out how long it would take to unload all of them. When they had been in Ta Netjer, the ancient man-god had demonstrated a magical skill in predicting how long it would take to load a ship.

  And how long it would take to load exactly thirty-one myrrh trees, Djehuty remembered with a smile.

  “We can bring our soldiers to help,” Amenhotep said, “but they should be training. And they use different muscles. They could be injured.”

  Hearing Amenhotep pause, Djehuty nodded again. The two men he was watching were still on the gangplank. One was shaking his arms, as if he was trying to chase away cramps. Djehuty frowned, thinking that he would soon need a water clock to measure their progress.

  “The streets are too narrow for the oxen,” Amenhotep said. “And we should let the horses and donkeys graze and rest for the last two legs of the advance.”

  Djehuty sighed heavily. The man who had been shaking his arms had dropped a sack and it had split open, spilling emmer wheat across the gangplank. The men, worried that someone would be blamed and beaten, were arguing now, each accusing the other of spilling the wheat.

  “We’ll be here for weeks,” Djehuty said under his breath.

  Amenhotep shook his head. “Let’s go find Imhotep,” he said. “Perhaps he will have an answer. After all, this expedition must be successful. He told Pharaoh Thutmose that he will win the battle.

  “What does Imhotep say, ‘It was, so it will be’? If what he says is true, then we will defeat the King of Kadesh, so, it follows that we must get the ships unloaded. Let’s go find Imhotep.”

  Djehuty saw that the two men had begun to push each other, kicking both the torn sack and then a second, undamaged one from the gangplank into the sea.

  “Perhaps we win because the King of Kadesh dies of old age,” Djehuty muttered.

  ***

  The horses had quieted, the loudest laughter from the camp had subsided, and the women of Gaza, who had brought food or themselves to trade for the silver of the soldiers, had returned to the low, mud-brick homes of the city.

  Pharaoh Thutmose and his generals had sent their prayers to aid Re in his nightly battle in the darkness of Duat. Now they gathered in a tent in the very center of the charioteers’ encampment.

 
; Almost as large as the audience hall in Pharaoh Thutmose’s palace in Waset, the tent was supported by twenty thick poles, each taller than two men. The poles had been bundled in rawhide and transported by ship.

  In addition to the golden throne, the tent held dozens of low-slung chairs, three long tables, covered now in maps, and eight wooden pedestals that supported oil lamps, each of them lit now, exhaling their yellow light into the heavy air.

  A square table sat to the left of Pharaoh Thutmose’s throne. A flat, rectangular reed basket holding sheets of papyrus sat on a stand beside the table. The stand also held a wooden case that contained shallow jars of compressed ashes and ochre, a low bowl of water and a cup that contained dozens of reeds, each of them cut to twice the length of Tjaneni’s longest finger.

  The scribe sat behind the table, his shoulders hunched forward, his eyes blinking eagerly. His right hand held a reed, its tapered tip bruised to hold more moisture. Waiting, Tjaneni slowly turned his head to the throne and watched Pharaoh Thutmose raise his arms to rest on his legs, square his shoulders and lift his chin.

  As his ruler opened his body to receive the ka of Horus, Tjaneni looked to the gathering generals.

  Commander Neferhotep, the youngest of the men, stood most distant from the throne. He had led the oxen caravan from Men-Nefer and kept the carpenters and cooks and other laborers moving and healthy. That task completed, he had rejoined the charioteers as their commander, but the homecoming had been strained because the men now looked upon Pharaoh Thutmose, who had ridden with them, as their true leader.

  Cocking his head, Tjaneni studied Neferhotep. There was a tenseness to the commander’s stance. He stood with legs stiff, his eyes looking downward rather than at his fellow generals. Others might attribute it to anxiety over the approaching battle, but Tjaneni thought otherwise.

  Pharaoh Thutmose believed that the god Ptah had lain with Queen Menwi, but everyone in the court turned their eyes away from the ruler’s face when he spoke of it. Tjaneni didn’t see into the future as Imhotep did, but he had trouble envisioning the myth of Queen Menwi’s divine pregnancy surviving if the child was born a female.

  Or if it died in birth.

  Or if it was deformed in some way.

  All were more likely to happen than for a healthy male child to be delivered.

  Still, Tjaneni thought, if Pharaoh Thutmose orders me to record the birth as divine, I will wet my reed and write the symbols. Once recorded, it will be true.

  He shifted his view to General Djehuty.

  Standing with arms crossed, Djehuty was studying the maps that were spread on the tables. Several paces beyond Djehuty stood his commanders, men from nomes throughout the upper and lower houses of the Two Lands. Some were professional soldiers, some led militias raised from larger cities for this war.

  The men were gathered together for the first time and Tjaneni had yet to record their names. The only one he knew was Kebu, the Medjay from beyond the first cataract. Arriving in the Two Lands seven years ago, the archer had gained favor with Imhotep. Some said Lord Imhotep had met the warrior in Ta Netjer and had sent him on a secret mission through the darkness of Duat.

  The black-skinned Medjay bore a long, puckered scar on one leg. It was within the wound, people whispered, that Imhotep had imprisoned the ancient goddess Neith who had taken the form of a spider to attack Pharaoh Hatshepsut in Ta Netjer. Unbowed, the imprisoned goddess had directed Kebu’s footsteps to Waset where she emerged from the warrior’s leg and tried again to kill Pharaoh Hatshepsut.

  Imhotep and his magical staff had defeated her again in a battle in the sanctuary of Amun. Knowing that Kebu had been a victim of the war goddess, Imhotep had healed the deadly Medjay and rewarded him by finding a position for him in service to Pharaoh Thutmose.

  Commander of the archers, Kebu was known to be fearless, deadly, and loyal to Lord Imhotep.

  Tjaneni turned his eyes to Lord Imhotep, the god who had given Kebu a new life. Imhotep also had raised Amenhotep to quartermaster. He trained me and presented me to Pharaoh Thutmose, Tjaneni thought. Glancing at the other men in the room, Tjaneni wondered how many of them owed their positions to Imhotep.

  Even Pharaoh Thutmose, he thought. Imhotep saved his life the night it rained fire.

  Dressed in a simple shendyt, Imhotep was, as always, leaning on his magical staff. He stood beside Amenhotep, who was smiling an absent smile, his eyes moving restlessly from Djehuty to Neferhotep to Pharaoh Thutmose.

  Tjaneni smiled to himself. He enjoyed working with Amenhotep, a man who organized his thoughts with the same precision that Tjaneni gave to the sacred symbols that recorded the history of the Two Lands.

  He saw Amenhotep’s restless eyes stop in the direction of the throne. Turning his head, Tjaneni saw that Pharaoh Thutmose was looking in his direction.

  “Pharaoh Thutmose, long life!” Tjaneni said, and the generals quickly echoed the greeting. “Mighty Bull, Shining in Waset; King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands; Menkheperre; Son of Re, I have received messages from your spies in Kadesh.”

  Pharaoh Thutmose, who had already read the reports and edited them to reflect his plans, nodded.

  Tjaneni lifted a papyrus.

  “The wretched enemy, the King of Kadesh, has come into Megiddo. He has gathered to himself the chiefs of all the countries that are on the water of the Two Lands. He has announced that he has arisen to fight against his majesty.”

  Pausing, Tjaneni skipped past the lines that Pharaoh Thutmose had crossed off, and then continued. “The wretched King of Kadesh brags that he has a million men in his army. However, our spies report that he has fewer than one thousand chariots.”

  Tjaneni glanced at Neferhotep, expecting to see relief on the commander’s face. However, the charioteer’s eyes were still downcast, his attention, Tjaneni thought, directed elsewhere.

  Gathering his breath, Tjaneni returned to his reading.

  ***

  “We will crush the King of Kadesh,” Djehuty said with a voice that managed to combine relief and conviction as he and Imhotep left the tent of Pharaoh Thutmose.

  Imhotep nodded. He had been happy to hear the report, although he suspected that its claims were less than accurate. He doubted that Pharaoh Thutmose would discourage his generals with news that their foe’s army was ten times larger than theirs. Or even that they were evenly matched.

  As Djehuty’s subordinates gathered around them, each of them smiling from the good news, Imhotep looked for Neferhotep. His grandson had been careful to stay away from the tent that Imhotep, Akila, and Queen Menwi shared, and Imhotep wanted to assure himself that Neferhotep was well.

  As he turned, he felt a light tug on his shendyt.

  A boy stood beside him, his head bowed.

  “Yes?” Imhotep said.

  The boy spoke, his voice too soft for Imhotep to hear. Imhotep touched the boy’s head, saw him flinch and then leaned closer to him.

  “There is nothing to fear, child. What do you want? Who are you?”

  The boy turned, took a step toward the side of Pharaoh Thutmose’s tent and then looked back to see if Imhotep was following him.

  Imhotep looked back to Djehuty. “Excuse me, Djehuty. I will catch up with you tomorrow morning.” When he looked back, he saw that the boy had moved to the edge of the tent, beyond the line of guards who stood by the tent opening.

  Confident that there was no place safer on earth than the very center of the Army of the Two Lands, Imhotep lifted his walking staff and followed the boy.

  ***

  Midway down the side of the tent, the boy stopped. Standing beside him, Imhotep looked down at the boy’s shaved head and wondered who he served. Not Pharaoh Thutmose: the ruler would simply have told Imhotep to stay after the meeting ended.

  A shadow approached from the back of Pharaoh Thutmose’s tent and, despite himself, Imhotep gripped his walking staff tighter and shifted his weight to allow himself to swing the heavy stick if he needed to
defend himself.

  “Thank you, Ahmose,” the shadow said and Imhotep relaxed as he recognized the soft voice of Tjaneni.

  “Greetings, Tjaneni,” Imhotep said.

  “Lord Imhotep,” Tjaneni said.

  “His name is Ahmose?” Imhotep said, as the boy disappeared into the darkness.

  Tjaneni smiled. “There are more Ahmoses in the Two Lands than charioteers in the King of Kadesh’s army. I keep a list of officials named Ahmose so that I can sort out which of them is seeking favor from Pharaoh Thutmose on which day.

  “This one,” he said, nodding toward the disappearing boy, “is the son of a cousin. He is from Waset and hopes to become a scribe. Perhaps he will name a child after me.”

  “It is a good name, Tjaneni.”

  “Thank you Lord Imhotep.” The scribe bowed his head, always grateful to hear Thoth pronounce his name.

  Imhotep waited, wondering why Tjaneni had called him away from everyone.

  A few moments passed and as Imhotep began to feel uneasy, Tjaneni said, “Pharaoh Thutmose does not know that we are meeting.”

  “Pharaoh Thutmose has no need to be concerned about two friends talking,” Imhotep said, trying to put the scribe at ease.

  “Still,” Tjaneni said, “the words I speak now are words I would hesitate to speak before Pharaoh Thutmose.” He paused a moment and then said, “Do you know a soldier named Thanuny?”

  Imhotep shook his head.

  “One foot is crippled,” Tjaneni prompted.

  “One of Pharaoh Thutmose’s personal guards had a bad foot,” Imhotep said, starting to feel uneasy.

  “Yes,” Tjaneni said, wondering if Imhotep knew that he was the one who had crippled Thanuny. “That is Thanuny. Now he is a personal guard to Queen Satiah.”

  “Tjaneni,” Imhotep said, “I don’t understand ... ”

  “He is here, in Gaza, not with Queen Satiah. He brought this with him.” Tjaneni held out a rolled papyrus.