Daughter of the Gods (24 page)

“Fine,” Nomti growled, and she smiled into the dusk. She would have looked rather foolish walking onto the battlefield, but she’d have done it if she had to.

He offered his hand and pulled her back into the chariot. “But you’re not going within a stone’s throw of the city.”

“Or within an arrow’s shot.” Hatshepsut swallowed her laughter as Nomti glared again. She wouldn’t push her luck.

It didn’t take long before they came across the first body, that of a grizzled Nubian warrior past his prime. A bearded vulture perched on the man’s ribs, digging into exposed intestines. The bird looked at them, and the shiny innards clutched in its beak glistened in the setting sun. More buzzards circled overhead, drawn by the scent of blood.

Hatshepsut shuddered as they passed three massive burial mounds among the sands, the resting places of Nubia’s chiefs from the time before Egypt had conquered these uncivilized lands. In her youth, her tutor had often regaled her with tales of the hundreds of sacrificial victims forced to accompany their chief to the afterlife, their throats slit or, worse, heads removed. These people were savages.

The chariot continued to weave through the maze of slaughtered men and dead horses until they approached the rear of the Egyptian troops. The men were pitching tents and lighting celebratory bonfires as twilight fell, but wild cheers broke out as the soldiers spotted Hatshepsut.

She held up a hand to stop them. This was their victory, not hers. “Thanks to you, Egypt is secure once more!” she shouted into the roar of men’s voices. “Ammit gorges tonight on the hearts of Nubia’s vile betrayers!”

The soldiers laughed and gave a hearty cheer. Then the crowd parted as three Nubian chiefs bound at the neck were shoved forward, tripping as the men jeered at them.

The leaders of the resistance.

All wore giant gold hoops through their ears and spotted calfskin loincloths. Fans of ostrich feathers topped their crowns, but one also wore a black panther hide draped across his shoulders, scarcely darker than his skin. The Prince of Miam. Another of the princes tripped on his copper shackles and fell face-first into the sands, yanking the others to their knees. A group of women with bare breasts and rainbow-colored skirts followed, a gaggle of naked children trailing behind them. A girl about Neferure’s age had salty white streaks of dried tears down her cheeks, but she held tight to her little brother’s hand.

“Take the children away,” Hatshepsut said. The youngest amongst them would be judged worthy to be raised by Egypt’s nobles, and possibly sent back in future years as proper Egyptians to rule their native lands. For now they would be gifted to Amun’s temples as slaves.

One of the women howled and clawed at a soldier as he stole the infant from her back, but she quieted at the chief’s barked reprimand. Soldiers rounded up the children and herded them away, spears pointed.

“You are traitors and as such shall die traitors’ deaths,” Hatshepsut said, her voice strong. “Perhaps Nubia will learn its lesson this time.” At her signal, soldiers armed with axes stepped behind the rebels. They grasped the feathers of the men’s crowns and the women’s braided hair. The Nubians didn’t have time to protest before the copper axes hit their targets. The Prince of Miam clutched his neck in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of blood and slid to the ground, gurgling and gasping as the other men fell next to him. One of the women moaned as she sank to the ground, and the sand filled with pools of blood.

Hatshepsut swallowed the bile that rose in her throat and gritted her teeth before turning to address her men. She had done what she had come to do: subdue Nubia and ensure the love of her soldiers.

“Tonight is yours,” she told them, hoping no one would notice the hoarseness of her voice. Someone handed her a skin of fetid water and she took a swig, relishing its sour taste on her parched throat. The taste of life. “Tomorrow we attend to the dead, but tonight is for the living. Double rations and wine for all!”

Two of the soldiers—archers she remembered from this morning—came forward. Both brandished spotted black-and-white leather shields, but one wore the bronze armor that denoted his position as a company commander.

“Where are the rest of the officers?” Hatshepsut asked.

“Inside Dongola, securing the city,” the bronze officer said. “They wanted to lock down the storehouses.”

These men wore faces as somber as if they had lost the day instead of winning it.

“Please come with us,
Hemet,
” the commander said. “There’s been an injury. I’ve been sent to fetch you.”

The festive mood in the air was sucked away in that moment, leaving Hatshepsut alone in the night’s dark void.

Senenmut.

“An injury?” she echoed the words back, unable to force her tongue to form any other sentence.

He didn’t answer, only nodded.

The flames of the bonfires were suddenly too bright, the shouts from the men too loud, but she followed the officer toward one of the makeshift tents erected on the battlefield as a temporary infirmary. She tried desperately to see which god’s emblem the man wore on his leather armband, but it was too caked with dried blood and dust to tell.

Vivid images of the grizzled old Nubian she and Nomti had first come upon assailed her, forcing her to imagine the same death wounds on Senenmut. She stumbled and nearly fell.

“Are you all right,
Hemet
?” Nomti’s hand reached out to steady her, and the officer glanced over his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” she said.

She couldn’t bear the thought of losing Senenmut, and would never forgive herself if it was too late to tell him of her feelings for him. He carried the other half of her
ka
; she knew that now. She had forgotten the fickleness of the gods, how they loved to toy with mortals. She had barely survived the first time she thought Senenmut was dead; she wasn’t sure she could endure that again.

Her feet were boulders as they approached the infirmary tent, her tongue thick and heavy in her mouth. She clung to the safety of uncertainty, dreaded to see Senenmut stretched out as his lifeblood leaked from some fatal battle wound.

“Wait outside,” she said to Nomti.

He opened his mouth to argue, but she swept past him. This was her duty to see through, not his. She didn’t need witnesses if it truly was Senenmut inside. The officer lifted the tent flap, and the lamplight from within seeped into the dusk. Hatshepsut steeled herself and stepped inside.

Rows and rows of good Egyptian men were laid out before her, most on cots but some on the ground, all wrapped in bloody bandages. The tent was close and stuffy, thick with the metallic tang of so much blood. Some men nursed broken limbs braced by fresh wooden splints, but others were ashen, mumbling prayers to Anubis and preparing themselves for the journey to Ma’at’s scales. She stopped at the foot of each cot to give a gentle word to those who were not long for this world and offer congratulations for the few hardier souls. All the while, she managed to box up the panic that threatened to overwhelm her.

“Over here,
Hemet.”
The officer pulled back a sheet erected around one of the cots. Hatshepsut took a step forward, desperately hoping she wouldn’t see Senenmut lying there.

I
t was Pennekheb.

Her heart cried out in relief even as guilt stabbed that same miserable organ. The admiral had given Egypt the best years of his life and now lay on a plain military cot, his trunk wrapped in white linen that matched the sparse hair scattered upon his chest. The bandages and cot were wet with blood.

Hatshepsut sank next to him and clasped his age-spotted hand. His eyes fluttered and he gave a weak smile. “We’ve routed the rebels once again, haven’t we?”

“With your guidance,” she said. “Egypt couldn’t have done this without you, my friend.”

“I may have earned my retirement this time.” Pennekheb coughed, the sound wet. “One of their spears took a liking to my ribs.”

Hatshepsut looked to the physician for confirmation. He nodded and placed a golden Eye of Horus near the wound. She didn’t ask for the prognosis—the stain of blood had already overcome most of the bandages. A red drop pearled at the loose corner of the linen wrappings and finally fell, swallowed by the earth and followed by a steady trickle.

Pennekheb coughed again and spat out blood. A line of pink saliva oozed from the corner of his mouth. Hatshepsut wiped his chin with a clean bandage.

“You need to rest.” She tucked the scratchy blanket around his legs and swiped her eyes with the back of her arm while her back was turned.

“Your father would be proud of you.” Pennekheb managed a wan smile. He closed his eyes. “
I
am proud of you.”

Anubis prowled outside the tent, not yet sated by Egypt’s
kas
. It didn’t take long for the jackal god of death to come for the admiral. Pennekheb didn’t fight, only slipped peacefully into the dark sky, his body drained of its lifeblood.

Tears slid unchecked from Hatshepsut’s eyes. Pennekheb had given his life to Egypt, and now the Nubians had killed him before his time. Enraged, she slipped out of the tent to discover the victory celebration in full swing.

“Follow me,” she said to Nomti.

The horses had been unharnessed and stood nearby, chewing stray clumps of trampled grass and awaiting their grooms, but at a signal from Hatshepsut they were quickly bridled once again.

The chariot rolled back toward the desert, night falling fast.

The closest Nubian corpse, a young man with a pale dusting of sand on his dark skin, his arms and legs bent at impossible angles, lay just outside camp. A scorpion skittered into the open maw of a dead horse nearby. The rebel had been cut down by a battle-ax left in his abdomen. The entrails lay outside his tunic like giant worms, crusted with a thick film of black blood.

Hatshepsut steeled herself against the urge to retch and forced her eyes away. Nomti clicked the reins and the chariot started from the scene, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

“I need only a moment.”

As if in a dream, she stepped down from the chariot and walked to the dead man. The lavender intestines quivered as she pulled the ax from his stomach with a sickening squelch. She stared at his right hand.

“Don’t,
Hemet
. Someone else will do that.”

“Egypt’s men died today. Pennekheb died today.” She clenched the handle of the ax. “This is the only thing I can do for them.”

Stepping on the man’s outstretched forearm, Hatshepsut hacked into the dead man’s wrist.

She managed two strokes before the sound of bones crunching became too much to bear; then she collapsed into the desert’s unforgiving sands, gasping for breath.

“Hemet—”
Nomti was at her side, trying to pull her back to the chariot.

“Let me do this!” Since she was unable to fight and barely allowed to witness a battle waged in her name, the least she could do was collect the hands of the enemy for the official tally of Nubian casualties. Trapped in a woman’s body, today of all days she craved equal footing with the men who had risked their lives for her. This was a weak sort of vengeance for the men who had died, but it was all she could offer them.

Hatshepsut struggled to stand and made her way back to the half-butchered hand. Forcing herself to stare at the grains of sand above the mutilated wrist, she finally freed the hand from the rest of the arm and threw the offensive appendage into the basket. Her palms were sticky with blood and she wiped them on her kilt before clambering back into the chariot. They continued in silence, stopping every so often so she could free a Nubian rebel of his right hand.

Now the Nubians would pay for all eternity for their crimes in this life. If Ammit didn’t gobble up their hearts the instant their sacred organs were laid upon Ma’at’s scales, at least they would be forced to roam the afterlife without a hand. All the
kas
of the afterlife would know their shame. The hands would be smoked to preserve them and counted later, providing a tally of the enemy dead.

They returned to the Egyptian camp to find the evening revelry to Sekhmet far progressed. The Egyptians had taken several cows from Dongola as the spoils of war and the choicest cuts roasted over the bonfires’ flames. Wine flowed and the men belted out off-key verses, the ecstatic songs of men who have stepped to the boundary between this world and the next and been allowed to return.

Be faithful, resolute, alive,

You and the Two Lands that has no enemies;

This life is no more than a dream,

so seize the day before it passes!

The world snapped into focus. The fires cracked and popped with magnificent clarity and sharpened the smells of roasting ox and the empty desert air. Hatshepsut waded through the crowd, but stopped every few moments as a soldier with a belly of beer congratulated her or offered his exaggerated account of the battle. She asked if any of the officers had returned from Dongola, but no one knew.

Finally, Hatshepsut spied the glint of bronze armor working its way into the crowd. Her
ka
cried out in relief and she pushed through the mass of soldiers, heading in the direction of the bronze glare. But she realized her mistake as she got closer. It wasn’t Senenmut coming toward her, but Ti. Her treasurer smiled and waved as he jostled over to her. The thick armor plates seemed out of place on such a thin man.

“The rebels are dead, the gold shipments secure, and Dongola is safely delivered into your hands,
Hemet
.” He shouted over the din of the party, his grin contagious. “What a glorious day!”

“One for history.” Hatshepsut smiled, and looked past Ti to scan the crowd.

“And my tomb—I’m going to have this day plastered on the walls of my burial chamber,” Ti said. “The Nubians defeated, a woman regent out severing hands from the dead rebels—”

“You saw that?” She stared down at her hands, the skin taut with dried Nubian blood.

“The men are in love with you after that little display. You could ask them to jump from a cliff and they’d all race to be first.”

At least something good had come of Pennekheb’s death. Hatshepsut flushed at Ti’s compliment as he bowed to excuse himself. “Is there anything else I can get for you,
Hemet
? Some wine or ox flesh?”

“No, thank you. Although I haven’t seen the other officers return.” Hatshepsut hoped she sounded nonchalant. “Have you seen Senenmut?”

“He was finishing up an inventory of one of Dongola’s storehouses, trying to determine what we can take on our return trip to Waset,” Ti said. “He fought well today, not that he’d ever mention it. I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

Senenmut wouldn’t be in the thick of the festivities if he could avoid it. She and Ti parted ways, each in pursuit of the evening’s distractions. But it wasn’t to the bonfires or her tent that she walked.

A newly beaten trail wound away from the camp and met up with the main path from Dongola—the soldiers had been down to gather drinking water. The bonfires cast an ethereal glow into the sky and lit Nut’s dark belly with a translucent orange haze. The farther Hatshepsut traveled from camp, the more the cricket chirps and the murmur of the Nile’s lazy waters overtook the men’s laughter and song. Her feet tread less on sand and more on the moist vegetation clinging to the earth near the water. It was a fine line between the scant Black Land and the immense Red Land here.

The riverbank was empty and silent, save for the lonely call of an occasional frog. Hatshepsut had hoped to find Senenmut, but instead she found her first moment of solitude since leaving the City of Truth. The clean scent of the Nile and Nubia’s damp earth filled her nose, overpowering the smells of campfires and death that clung to her skin. Desert grit covered her body and filled her mouth, ears, and eyes. She splashed water over her face and scrubbed her forearms with river grass until they were raw and every trace of rebel blood had been washed downriver.

Finally clean, she felt exhaustion overwhelming her, seeping into her bones. Each step felt as if invisible hands clung to her feet. For a moment she imagined the
kas
of the dead dragging her down, but she willed the image from her mind.

Her newly erected tent sat on the outskirts of camp, dingy white and set apart from its companions, and identified by the red and white pennants it flew. Inside, her eyes were greeted with the warm glow of a single oil lamp and the interior’s profusion of colors. Vibrant hues of green, yellow, and red danced in a riot of geometric designs, a happy escape from the tedium of Nubia’s tawny sands.

Half-asleep, she kicked off her sandals and sat on her cot. Then something stirred in the shadows.

Someone else was in the tent with her, sitting on a low stool at the edge of the lantern’s circle.

Senenmut stood in one fluid motion, but she had already closed the gap between them. The blood in her veins sang with her need for him, the restraint of the past months shattered in an instant. He kissed her then, a kiss that radiated life, a kiss she’d waited three years to receive.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, gasping at how right it felt to have his arms around her, to know that he was finally hers.

“I may as well have been,” he said, one hand cradling the back of her head while his eyes burned for her. “I need you, Hatshepsut. I always have.”

His mouth was on hers then, ravenous, his hands in her hair and then everywhere. He picked her up and she clung to him, tasted the cinnamon of his lips and the sweat on his skin. The kiss chased away all the longing and worry that had haunted her these past months. It all dissolved as they fell together under the canopy of the rainbow-hued tent.

•   •   •

A loud crash and a muffled curse outside the tent woke Hatshepsut. Two men—one with a voice still slurred from Sekhmet’s feast and the other mostly sober—bickered over a broken beer jug until the latter realized they were outside the regent’s tent. There were several more curses, the shuffle of feet, and then silence fell again.

The hazy fingers of morning weaseled their way through cracks in the canvas. Senenmut lay stretched out on his back next to Hatshepsut, his bare chest gently rising and falling.

She sat up, fingering Sekhmet’s amulet still at her neck, and grinned at the scattered heaps of their clothes on the floor. The coarse wool blanket scratched her skin, her mouth was dry, and her muscles ached as if she’d been run over by a chariot. For the first time in years, she was happy. Truly and deliriously happy.

She watched Senenmut sleep, then reached out and traced his temple. He smiled, eyes still closed. “Good morning,” he said, making her wonder how long he’d been awake.

“Good morning.”

He rolled to his side and propped himself up on his elbow so he could explore the curves and valleys of her body. He smiled that lazy smile, the one she’d missed so much. “You know,” he said, his thumb brushing the indent of her hip, “I’d have started war with the Nubians long ago if I’d known this was the reward.”

“I wish you would have.” A heavy warmth seeped into her limbs and made it impossible to move. “We were utter fools to wait so long.”

Senenmut rolled nearer, one hand planted on either side of her as his head dipped lower. His lips made their way down her thigh, his light breath on her flesh making her shudder with pleasure. “I’d have had you on the floor of your throne room on the day I returned if I thought I could get away with it.”

“That would have given the slaves something to talk about.”

“I intend to give them plenty to talk about.”

She didn’t want to answer questions about her relationship with Senenmut—not yet. This was their secret and theirs alone, at least for now. She never wanted to leave the cot, this tent. If only they could stay like this forever.

But the camp was stirring. More sounds came from outside the tent, groans from soldiers paying for their dedication to Sekhmet last night, and laughter from those more fortunate. Men’s shadows marched across the rainbow panels of her tent.

She traced the scar on Senenmut’s forehead with a ragged nail. “I’ve always wondered how you got this.”

“I got caught stealing a set of pens from the offering table at the Temple of Thoth.” Senenmut smiled. “My father found them, introduced me to the back of his hand for the first time, and apprenticed me to the temple the next day.”

“And set you on your path to the army and to the palace,” Hatshepsut said. “To me.”

“I suppose so,” Senenmut said. “I’ll have to remember to thank my father for the beating when I meet him in the Field of Reeds.” His face hovered over hers, the intensity of his expression making her blush even as she wrapped her legs around him, teasing him. She must look like Ammit after all this time with the army, living like a man, but she’d give up all her perfumes and paints, gold and jewels, if it meant waking up next to this man every morning.

Yet she was regent. And as much as she might wish to, she couldn’t spend the morning abed with the man she loved.

Loved.

She knew without a doubt the word was true. She’d never sought Hathor’s blessing, but the cow goddess had granted it just the same. And for that she was grateful.

“You should go now,” she whispered to Senenmut, her back arching as his lips brushed the curve of her neck. “Before the whole camp wakes up.”