Kitabı oku: «Pharaoh»

Although I would rather have swallowed my own sword than openly admit it, deep in my heart I knew that finally it was over.

Fifty years ago the Hyksos multitudes had appeared without warning within the borders of our very Egypt out of the eastern wilderness. They were a savage and cruel people with no redeeming features. They had one asset that made them invincible in battle. This was the horse and chariot, which we Egyptians had never seen or heard of previously, and which we looked upon as something vile and abhorrent.

We attempted to meet the Hyksos onslaught on foot but they swept us before them, circling us effortlessly in their chariots, and showering us with their arrows. We had no alternative but to take to our boats and fly before them southward up the mighty Nile River, dragging our craft over the cataracts and into the wilderness. There we lingered for over ten years, pining for our homeland.

Fortuitously I had managed to capture a large number of the enemy horses and spirit them away with us. I soon discovered that the horse, far from being abhorrent, is the most intelligent and tractable of all animals. I developed my own version of the chariot, which was lighter, faster and more manoeuvrable than the Hyksos version. I taught the lad who was later to become Tamose, the Pharaoh of Egypt, to be an expert charioteer.

At the appropriate time we Egyptians swept down the Nile in our fleet of river-boats, landed our chariots on the shores of our very Egypt and fell upon our enemies, driving them into the northern delta. Over the decades that followed we had been locked in the struggle with our Hyksos enemies.

But now the wheel had turned full circle. Pharaoh Tamose was an old man, lying in his tent mortally wound by a Hyksos arrow. The Egyptian army was melting away and tomorrow I would be faced by the inevitable.

Even my intrepid spirit, which had been vital in carrying Egypt forward over the past half-century of struggle, was no longer sufficient. In the last year we had been beaten in two successive great battles, both bitter and bloody but in vain. The Hyksos invaders who had seized the greater part of our fatherland from us were on the threshold of their final triumph. The whole of Egypt was almost within their grasp. Our legions were broken and beaten. No matter how desperately I attempted to rally them and urge them onwards, it seemed that they had resigned themselves to defeat and ignominy. More than half of our horses were down while those still standing were barely able to bear the weight of a man or chariot. As for the men, almost half of them bore fresh and open wounds that they had bound up with rags. Their numbers had been reduced by almost three thousand during those two battles that we had fought and lost since the beginning of the year. Most of the survivors staggered or limped into the fray with a sword in one hand and a crutch in the other.

It is true that this shortfall in our roster was caused more by desertion than by death or wounding in the field. The once proud legions of Pharaoh had finally lost heart, and they fled before the enemy in their multitudes. Tears of shame ran down my cheeks as I pleaded with them and threatened them with flogging, death and dishonour as they streamed past me on their way to the rear. They took no heed of me, would not even glance in my direction as they threw down their weapons and hurried or limped away. The Hyksos multitudes were gathered before the very gates of Luxor. And on the morrow I would lead what would almost certainly be our last feeble chance to avert bloody annihilation.

As night fell over the field of battle I had my manservants clean the fresh bloodstains from my shield and my armour, and beat out the dent in my helmet which earlier in the day had deflected a Hyksos blade. The plume was missing, sheared off by the same enemy blow. Then by the flickering flame of a torch and the reflection in my polished bronzed hand-mirror I contemplated my own image. As always it gave my sorry spirits a lift. Once again I was reminded how readily men will follow an image or a reputation when common sense warned of imminent annihilation. I forced a smile into the mirror, trying to ignore the melancholy shadows in the depths of my eyes; then I stooped out under the flap of my tent and went to pay my respects to my well-beloved Pharaoh.

Pharaoh Tamose lay on his litter attended by three of his surgeons and six of his numerous sons. In a wider circle around him were gathered his generals and high counsellors, and five of his favourite wives. All of them wore solemn expressions and his consorts were weeping, for Pharaoh was dying. Earlier in the day he had received a grievous wound on the field of battle. The shaft of the Hyksos arrow still protruded from between his ribs. None of his physicians present, including even me, the most skilled of them all, had had the temerity to attempt to withdraw the barbed arrowhead from so near to his heart. We had merely snapped off the shaft close to the lip of the wound and now we awaited the inevitable outcome. Before noon on the morrow Pharaoh would almost certainly have vacated the golden throne in favour of Utteric Turo, his eldest son, who was sitting by his side trying not to make it too obvious that he was relishing the moment when the sovereignty of this very Egypt would pass to him. Utteric was a vapid and ineffectual youth who could not even imagine that by the setting of tomorrow’s sun his empire might no longer exist; or rather that was what I believed of him at that time. I was soon to learn how sadly I had erred in judging him.

By now Tamose was an old man. I knew his age almost to the hour, for it was I who had delivered him as an infant into this harsh world. It was popular legend that his first act on arriving had been to piss copiously upon me. I suppressed a smile as I thought how over the ensuing sixty-odd years he had never hesitated to make even his mildest disapproval of me manifest in the same manner.

Now I went to him where he lay and knelt to kiss his hands. Pharaoh appeared even older than his actual years. Although he had recently taken to dyeing his hair and beard, I knew that beneath the bright ginger pigmentation he favoured it was actually white as sun-bleached seaweed. The skin of his face was deeply wrinkled and speckled with dark sun spots. There were bags of puckered skin beneath his eyes: eyes wherein the signs of approaching death were all too obvious.

I have not the faintest idea of my own age. However, I am considerably older than Pharaoh, but in my appearance I seem much less than half his age. This is because I am a long liver and blessed by the gods – most particularly by the goddess Inana. This is the secret name of the goddess Artemis.

Pharaoh looked up at me and he spoke with pain and difficulty, his voice husky and his breathing wheezing and laboured. ‘Tata!’ he greeted me with the pet name he had given me when he was but a child. ‘I knew that you would come. You always know when I need you most. Tell me, my dear old friend, what of the morrow?’

‘Tomorrow belongs to you and Egypt, my Lord King.’ I know not why I chose these words to reply to him, when it was a certainty that all our tomorrows now belonged to Anubis, the god of the cemeteries and the underworld. However, I loved my Pharaoh, and I wanted him to die as peacefully as was possible.

He smiled and said no more, but reached out with a hand that shook and fingers that trembled and took my own hand and held it to his chest until he fell asleep. The surgeons and his sons left his pavilion, and I swear I saw a faint smile cross Utteric’s lips as he sauntered out. I sat with Tamose until well after midnight, the same way I had sat with his mother at her parting, but finally the numbing fatigue of the day’s battle overwhelmed me. I freed my hand from his and, leaving him still smiling, I staggered to my own mattress and fell upon it in a death-like sleep.

My servants woke me before the first light had touched the dawn skies with gold. I dressed for battle with all haste and belted on my sword; then I hurried back to the royal pavilion. When I knelt once more at Pharaoh’s bedside he was smiling still, but his hands were cool to my touch and he was dead.

‘I will mourn for you later, my Mem,’ I promised him as I rose again to my feet, ‘but now I must go out and try once more to make good my oath to you and to our very Egypt.’

It is the curse of being a long liver: to survive all of those whom you love the best.

The remainder of our shattered legions were assembled in the neck of the pass before the golden city of Luxor where we had been holding the ravening hordes of the Hyksos at bay for the past thirty-five desperate days. In review I drove my war chariot along their decimated ranks and, as they recognized me, those who were still able to do so staggered to their feet. They stooped to drag their wounded comrades upright and to stand with them in their battle formations. Then all of them, men who were still hale and strong together with those who were more than halfway to their deaths, raised their weapons to the dawn sky and cheered me as I passed.

A rhythmic chant went up: ‘Taita! Taita! Taita!’

I choked back my tears to see these brave sons of Egypt in such desperate straits. I forced a smile to my lips and laughed and shouted encouragements back at them, calling to those stalwarts in the throng whom I knew so well, ‘Hey there, Osmen! I knew I would find you still in the front rank.’

‘Never more than a sword’s length behind you, my lord!’ he shouted back at me.

‘Lothan, you greedy old lion. Have you not already hacked down more than your fair share of the Hyksos dogs?’

‘Aye, but only half as many as you have, Lord Tata.’ Lothan was one of my especial favourites so I allowed him the use of my pet name. When I had passed the cheering dropped into a dreadful silence once more and they sank to their knees again and looked down the pass to where they knew the Hyksos legions were waiting only for the full light of dawn to renew their assault. The battleground around us was strewn thickly with the dead of the many long days of slaughter. The faint pre-dawn breeze bore the stench of death to where we waited. With each breath I drew it clung as thick as oil to my tongue and the back of my throat. I hawked and spat it over the side of my chariot, but with every subsequent breath it seemed to grow stronger and more repellent.

The carrion-eaters were already feasting on the piles of corpses that were scattered around us. The vultures and the crows hovered over the field on wide pinions and then dropped to the ground to compete with the jackals and hyenas in the shrieking and struggling mass, ripping at the rotting human flesh, tearing off lumps and tatters of it and swallowing them whole. I felt my own skin crawl with horror as I imagined the same end awaiting me when finally I succumbed to the Hyksos blades.

I shuddered and tried to put these thoughts aside as I shouted to my captains to send their archers forward to retrieve as many of the spent arrows from the corpses as they could find to refill their depleted quivers.

Then above the cacophony of squabbling birds and animals I heard the beat of a single drum echoing up the pass. My men heard it also. The sergeants bellowed orders and the archers hurried back from the field with the arrows they had salvaged. The men in the waiting ranks came to their feet and formed up shoulder to shoulder with their shields overlapping. The blades of their swords and the heads of their spears were chipped and blunted with hard use, but still they presented them towards the enemy. The limbs of their bows had been bound up with twine where the wood had cracked and many of the arrows they had retrieved from the battlefield were missing their fletchings, but they would still fly true enough to do the business at point-blank range. My men were veterans and they knew all the tricks for getting the very best out of damaged weapons and equipment.

In the distant mouth of the pass the enemy masses began to appear out of the pre-dawn gloom. At first their formations seemed shrunken and diminished by distance and the early light, but they swelled rapidly in size as they marched forward to engage us. The vultures shrieked and squawked and then rose into the air; the jackals and other scavengers scurried away before the advance of the enemy. The floor of the pass was filled from side to side by the Hyksos multitudes, and not for the first time I felt my spirits quail. It seemed that we were outnumbered by at least three or even four to our one.

However, as they drew closer I saw that we had mauled them as savagely in return for how they had treated us. Most of them had been wounded, and their injuries were bound up with bloodstained rags, as were ours. Some of them limped along on crutches, and others lurched and staggered as they were harried along by their sergeants, most of whom were wielding rawhide whips. I exulted to see them obliged to use such extreme measures to induce their men to hold their formations. I drove my chariot along the front rank of my own men shouting encouragement to them and pointing out the Hyksos captains’ use of their whips.

‘Men like you never need the whip to convince you of your duty.’ My voice carried clearly to them above the beat of the Hyksos drums and the tramp of their armoured feet. My men cheered me and shouted insults and derision at the approaching enemy ranks. All the time I was judging the dwindling distance that separated the leading ranks of our opposing armies. I had only 52 chariots remaining out of the 320 with which I had begun this campaign. The attrition of our horses had been bitterly hard to bear. But our only advantage was that we were in a strong position here at the head of the steep and rugged pass. I had chosen it with all the care and cunning learned in countless battles over my long lifetime.

The Hyksos relied heavily on their chariots to bring their archers within easy range of our ranks. Despite our example they had never developed the recurved bow, but had clung stubbornly to the straight-limbed bow which was incapable of loosing an arrow as fast and therefore as far as our superior weapons. By forcing them to abandon their chariots at the bottom of the rocky pass I had denied them the opportunity of getting their archers swiftly to within easy range of our infantry.

Now the critical moment arrived when I must deploy my remaining chariots. I led this squadron in person as we raced out in line ahead and swept down the front of the Hyksos advance. Loosing our arrows into their massed ranks from a range of sixty or seventy paces we were able to kill or maim almost thirty of the enemy before they were able to come at us.

When this happened I leaped down from the platform of my vehicle and while my driver whisked it away I squeezed myself into the centre of the front rank and locked my shield in between two of my companions and presented it towards the enemy.

Almost immediately followed the tumultuous moment when the battle was joined in earnest. The enemy phalanx crashed into our front with a mighty clangour of bronze on bronze. With shields interlocked the opposing armies shoved and heaved against each other, straining to force a breakthrough of the opposing line. It was a gargantuan struggle which wrapped us all in a state of intimacy more obscene than any sexually perverse act. Belly to belly and face to face we struggled so that when we grunted and screamed like animals in rut the spittle flew from our twisted mouths into the faces of the enemy that confronted us from merely inches away.

We were packed too closely to be able to use our long weapons. We were crushed between banks of bronze shields. To lose one’s footing was to go down and be grievously trampled if not killed by the bronze sandals of allies as well as those of our enemies.

I have fought so often in the shield wall as to have designed a particular weapon especially for the purpose. The long blade of the cavalry sword must stay firmly in its sheath, and be replaced by a thin dagger with a blade no longer than a hand’s span. When both your arms are trapped in the press of armoured bodies and the face of your enemy is only inches from your own, then you will still be able to make use of this tiny weapon and place the point of the blade in a chink in your enemy’s frontal armour and thrust home.

This day before the gates of Luxor I killed at least ten of the swarthy bearded Hyksos brutes on the same spot, and without moving my right hand more than a few inches. It gave me an inordinate sense of satisfaction to look into the eyes of my enemy, to watch his features contort in agony as he felt my blade pierce his vitals and finally to feel his last breath blow hot into my face as he expelled it from his lungs before he collapsed. I am not by nature a cruel or vindictive person, but the good god Horus knows that my people and I have suffered enough at the hands of this barbarous tribe to revel in whatever retaliation becomes available to us.

I do not know just how long we were locked in the shield wall. It seemed to me at the time to be many hours of brutal struggle, but I knew by the changing angle of the pitiless sun above us that it was less than an hour before the Hyksos hordes disengaged from our ranks and fell back a short distance. Both sides were exhausted by the ferocity of the struggle. We confronted each other across the narrow strip of ground, panting like wild animals, sodden with our own blood and sweat and reeling on our feet. However, I knew from hard experience that this respite would be short-lived, and then we would fly at each other again like rabid dogs. I also knew that this was our last battle. I looked at the men around me and saw that they were close to the end. They numbered no more than twelve hundred. Perhaps they could survive another hour in the shield wall, but little more than that. Then it would be over. My despair came close to overwhelming me.

Then suddenly there was somebody behind me, tugging at my arm and shouting words at me that at first made little sense. ‘My Lord Taita, there is another large detachment of the enemy coming up in our rear. They have us completely surrounded. Unless you can think of a way to save the day then we are done for.’

I spun around to confront the bearer of such terrible tidings. If this were true then we were damned and double damned. And yet the man who stood before me was someone that I knew I could trust. He was one of the most promising young officers in the army of Pharaoh. He commanded the 101st Squadron of heavy chariots. ‘Take me and show me, Merab!’ I ordered him.

‘This way, my lord! I have a fresh horse for you.’ He must have seen how near I was to complete exhaustion for he seized my arm and helped me back over the piles of dead and dying men and abandoned weapons and other warlike accoutrements that littered the field. We reached the small detachment of our own legionaries in the rear who held a pair of fresh horses for us. By then I had recovered sufficiently to shake off Merab’s helping hand. I hate to show even the slightest sign of weakness before my men.

I mounted one of the horses and led this small group back at a gallop over the ridge of high ground that lay between us and the lower reaches of the River Nile. On the crest I reined in my steed so abruptly that it arched its neck and pranced around in a tight circle. I found myself at a loss to express my despair.

From what Merab had told me earlier I expected to find perhaps three or four hundred fresh Hyksos troops marching up behind us to engage us. That would have been sufficient numbers to seal our fate. Instead I was confronted by a mighty army of literally thousands of infantry and at least five hundred chariots and as many again of mounted cavalry, which thronged the nearest bank of the Nile. They were in the process of disembarking from a flotilla of foreign warships that was now moored along the bank of the river below our golden city of Luxor.

The leading formation of enemy cavalry had already disembarked, and as soon as they spotted our pathetic little troop of a dozen or so men they came galloping up the slope to engage us. I found myself caught up in a hopeless quandary. Our horses were all but used up. If we turned tail and tried to out-run those magnificent and obviously fresh animals they would catch us before we had covered a hundred paces. If we stood at bay and tried to make a fight of it, they would cut us down without working up a sweat.

Then I forced back my despair and looked again at these strangers with fresh vision. I felt a faint tugging of relief, enough to bolster my spirits. Those were not Hyksos war helmets that they were wearing. Those were not typically Hyksos galleys from which they were disembarking

‘Hold your ground, Captain Merab!’ I snapped at him. ‘I am going forward to parley with these newcomers.’ Before he had a chance to argue with me I had unhooked my sword sheath from my belt and, without drawing the naked blade, I reversed it and held it aloft in the universal sign of peace. Then I trotted slowly down the slope to meet this troop of foreign horsemen.

I vividly recall the sense of doom that overshadowed me as we closed. I knew that this time I had pushed Tyche, the goddess of Providence, too far. Then to my astonishment the leader of the band of horsemen barked an order and his men obediently sheathed their swords in a sign of truce and halted in a tight formation behind him.

I followed their example and reined my own steed down to a halt, facing them but with a few dozen strides separating myself and the leader of the group. We studied each other in silence for the time it takes to draw a deep breath, and then I lifted the visor of my battered helmet to show my face.

The leader of this foreign band of horsemen laughed. It was a most unexpected sound in these fraught circumstances, but at the same time it was hauntingly familiar. I knew that laugh. However, I stared at him for fully half a minute before I recognized him. He was a greybeard now, but big and muscled and sure of himself. He was no longer the young buck with the fresh and eager face searching to find his place in this hard, unforgiving world. Clearly he had found that place. Now he had the air of high command about his person and a mighty army at his back.

‘Zaras?’ I said his name dubiously. ‘It cannot possibly be you, can it?’

‘Only the name is somewhat different but everything else about me is the same, Taita. Except possibly I am a trifle older and I trust a little wiser.’

‘You remember me still, after all these years. How long has it been?’ I demanded of him wonderingly.

‘It has been a mere thirty years, and yes, I remember you still. I will never forget you; not if I live for ten times longer than I have already.’

Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘You say your name is changed. What name are you known by now, good Zaras?’

‘I have taken the name Hurotas. My former name had certain unfortunate connotations to it,’ he replied. I smiled at this blatant understatement.

‘So now you have the same name as the King of Lacedaemon?’ I asked. I had heard that name before, and it was always uttered with the deepest awe and respect.

‘The exact same,’ he agreed, ‘for the young Zaras you once knew has become that king of whom you now speak.’

‘Surely you jest?’ I exclaimed in astonishment, for it seemed that my old subordinate of yesteryear had risen high in the world – in fact to the very pinnacle. ‘But if you speak the truth tell me what has happened to the sister of Pharaoh Tamose, the royal Princess Tehuti, whom you abducted out of my charge and care.’

‘The word you are groping for is wooed and not abducted. And she is no longer a princess.’ He shook his head firmly. ‘She is now a queen, because she showed the good sense to marry me.’

‘Is she still the most beautiful woman in the world?’ I asked more than a trifle wistfully.

‘In the vernacular of my kingdom, Sparta means “the loveliest one”. I named the city in her honour. So now the Princess Tehuti has become Queen Sparta of Lacedaemon.’

‘And what of the others who are also dear to my heart and memory that you took north with you, all those years ago—?’

‘Of course, you are speaking of Princess Bekatha and Hui.’ King Hurotas cut my questions short. ‘They are also now husband and wife. However, Hui is no longer a lowly captain. He is the Lord High Admiral and the commander of the Lacedaemon fleet; the same fleet that you see down there on the river.’ He pointed behind him at the tremendous array of shipping anchored against the bank of the Nile. ‘Right now he is supervising the landing of the remainder of my expeditionary force.’

‘And so, King Hurotas, why have you returned to Egypt now after all these years?’ I demanded.

His expression became fierce as he replied: ‘I came because at heart I am still an Egyptian. I heard from my spies that you in Egypt were hard pressed and on the verge of defeat at the hands of the Hyksos. These animals have despoiled our once lovely homeland. They have raped and murdered our women and children; among their victims were my own mother and my two young sisters. After they had violated them they threw them still alive on to the blazing ruins of our home and laughed as they watched them burn. I have returned to Egypt to avenge their deaths and to save more of our Egyptian people from a similar fate. If I succeed I hope to forge a lasting alliance between our two countries: Egypt and Lacedaemon.’

‘Why have you waited twenty-three years before you returned?’

‘As I am sure you will recall, Taita, when we last parted we were a mere handful of young runaways on three small galleys. We were flying from the tyranny of a Pharaoh who wanted to separate us from the women we loved.’

I acknowledged the truth of this with a nod. It was safe to do so now, for the Pharaoh in question was Tamose and, as of yesterday, he was dead.

King Hurotas, who had once been the young Zaras, went on, ‘We were seeking a new homeland. It took all this time for us to find one and build it up into a formidable power with an army of more than five thousand of the finest fighting men.’

‘How did you achieve that, Your Majesty?’ I asked.

‘By a little polite diplomacy,’ he replied guilelessly, but when I looked sceptical he chuckled and admitted, ‘together with more than a little blatant force of arms and outright conquest.’ With a wave of his hand he indicated the mighty army that he was disembarking on to the east bank of the Nile below us. ‘When one has a warlike array such as that you see before you, strangers are seldom disposed to argument.’

‘That sounds more like your style,’ I agreed, but Hurotas dismissed my retort with a nod and a smile and went on with his explanation.

‘I knew it was my patriotic duty to give you all the succour and assistance in my power. I would have come a year earlier, but my naval squadrons were not sufficient to carry my army. I had to build more ships.’

‘Then you are more than welcome, Your Majesty. You have arrived at precisely the critical moment. Another hour and you would have been too late.’ I swung down from the back of my horse, but he anticipated me and he jumped down from his own mount, as sprightly as a man half his age, and strode to meet me. We embraced like brothers, which was what we were at heart. However, I felt more than mere brotherly love for him, for not only had he brought me the means to save my very Egypt from this marauding pack of vicious predators, but it seemed also that he had brought back to me my darling Tehuti, the daughter of Queen Lostris. Mother and daughter, those two women are still the ones I have loved best in all my long life.