Moses (16 page)

Meanwhile, Seti-Hop walked forward and cried out, “Now see me, O Princes of Egypt, for you know me. I am old Seti-Hop, master-at-arms, and I trained the God Ramses to use a sword and chariot before any of you sucked your mother's milk. This is a fight of godly blood, and it's a cursed shame that such a thing should be. But things were done that can't be recalled, so fight you must. If blood is drawn, it will be no fight to the death—but end there!” And when the brothers began to shout in protest, his hard, cold voice quieted them.

“Not with me, young sirs—not with me. There isn't one of you I don't remember from when he crawled, and it was I who taught you to fight. I'll have no murder done here tonight—and by all the gods in Egypt, go to the God-King if you dare!”

“Then if you want no murder done, Seti-Hop,” one of the older brothers called out, “tell that nameless dirt to put away his stick and arm himself!”

“I tell the prince of Egypt nothing. He chose his weapon, as your brother did, and if he chooses to die, that is his affair and so much the sooner an end to this nonsense. And let no one interfere, for if I am armed only with a dagger, I've used it for half a century and used it well. I give you my word that, princes of Egypt or no, I'll hamstring anyone who dares enter this fight after it begins. If you want to limp your life through, disregard me.” He looked questioningly from face to face, but no one challenged him. The moon was above the trees now, and the little glade turned to silver, the silver rippling over the vine- and moss-covered pyramid—giving the scene an unearthly and gripping enchantment that even the royal brothers felt, quelling and quieting them. They were caught too by the picturesque and momentary immobility of the fighters—Ramses-em-Seti, broad-shouldered; his hunched, tense back bound over with great layers of muscle, like the broad back of his father, his armour glistening with moonlight and throwing off the leaping reflection of the torches—and Moses, taller, leaner; his strength hidden in the linear growth of bone and muscle; his brown body alert without tension; both his hands holding the stave at arm's length and loosely in front of him.

“I whistle to fight,” said, Seti-Hop, “and I whistle to stop. May the gods help either of you if you disobey me. Ready now!”

He put his fingers to his mouth and blew a wild, piercing whistle. Moses crouched just a little, balancing on the balls of his feet, one foot forward and both spread wide. Ramses-em-Seti swung his long Hittite sword high, put his shield in guard, and leaped at Moses, quick to end the fight in one clean blow that would cleave his seemingly defenceless cousin's skull in two. As he came in, Moses crouched a little more deeply, threw up the ebony stave—ten pounds of wood as thick as his wrist—and caught and parried the sword stroke upon it. The same motion allowed him to strike Ramses-em-Seti a glancing blow on the side that threw the prince off balance and gave Moses an instant in which to shorten his grasp on the stave and use it as a pole-axe. The great weight of the stave speeded Moses in the arc, a continuation of the first motion, a round, terrible blow in which he put all his strength and which sent the stave whipping into the other's bronze shield. The shield folded in like a thin copper plate, and above the crash of wood on metal came the clean, ugly sound of the prince's arm snapping. He screamed as he staggered back, spun, and then fell headlong on the ground; but he had kept his sword in his grasp, and as he attempted to rise with it, Moses brought down his stave again, crushing hand and wrist in one awful blow. Through the wild-animal-like screaming of Ramses-em-Seti, the piercing whistle of SetiHop sounded, for the second blow was given even as he raised his hand to his mouth, and the whole fight had lasted no more than a few seconds.

Dragging his stave, Moses deliberately turned his back and went to where he had dropped his cloak. As he did so, Re-em-Opet leaped to the screaming prince, scooped up his sword, and swung it over his head. At Seti-Hop's roar of anger, Moses spun around, saw the sword and swung at it with his stave, breaking the blow and knocking it out of Rem-em-Opet's hand. His fury exploded in him, like a spring released, and dropping the stave, he seized the prince by his fat neck and thigh, swung him overhead with a demonic surge of strength, and cast him across the glade like a sack of wheat. Re-em-Opet landed on his broad behind, howled with indignation and pain, and rolled over on hands and knees to rise. As he did so, Seti-Hop, dagger in hand, leaped at him and slashed both buttocks open. Then he wiped his knife on the cool grass, slipped it into its scabbard, and walked over to Moses. Then they put on their cloaks and Seti-Hop turned to face the royal brothers. Not one of them had moved; they sat frozen in silence and horror, while the glade rang with the anguished screams of the prince whose arm and hand were broken and the whining pain of the other prince, who had been hamstrung.

Seti-Hop and Moses went to where a slave held their horses, mounted and rode off. For a time they rode in silence, but then Seti-Hop said, with some admiration,

“You're a quick man and a terrible one, O Prince of Egypt. It comes as a shock in a quiet lad.”

“Did you think he would kill me?” Moses asked, still trembling with the effort and anger, his robe soaked with sweat.

“Who knew? One doesn't know in a fight. He thought he would. Anyway, it made a good night's work and I think you wiped out the insult. However, one of your cousins will never be able to use his hand again, and the other will limp through his life. He deserved that.”

“I'll survive it somehow,” Moses muttered. “But what about you, Seti-Hop?”

“What about me? Do you think me an utter fool, Prince of Egypt?”

“No. And I didn't say so.”

“Of course not, and you don't live to my age in a place like the Great House without common sense. I went to the God Ramses tonight before I came here, and he specified the rules of the fight. I explained that the odds were long against your dying, but he took them. And don't look at me as if I betrayed you, Prince of Egypt. I think I saved your life.”

[20]

STRANGELY—OR PERHAPS not so strangely—the fight at the pyramid remained a secret. Moses confided in no one, for aside from Neph, there was no one for him to confide in, and Neph was away at this time; Seti-Hop had long experience in keeping his silence, and evidently the royal brothers and sisters had decided that the affair brought them no credit and the less said about it, the better. The two wounded princes were confined to their chambers under the care of physicians—who were equally adept at silence-and so for three days, Moses moved about as if nothing had happened.

There was, however, a difference of degree; for now no member of the royal family spoke to him, nodded at him, or smiled at him; they went out of their way to avoid him, so he was forced to conclude that at least some inkling of what had happened at the pyramid had seeped out. And at the end of the three days, he was summoned to the throne room at the order of the God Ramses.

Eight years had passed since the God-King last had spoken to him, and for a child growing to manhood, eight years is an incredibly long time. During those eight years he had seen Ramses many times, but never closely, never to speak to him, never to be noticed by him. It struck Moses as strange indeed that while he himself had grown to manhood, the God Ramses seemed changed not at all.

Once again, as eight years ago, Moses was dressed in the best that a prince, of Egypt might wear—golden collars and golden bracelets, jewelled bracelets and jewelled headbands. Once again the pomp and ceremony, the blaze of colour and people, of mosaic and tapestry impressed him; once again he lay upon his breast, his check against the God-King's foot until he was bidden to rise; and once again, all others in the great chamber stood away so that Ramses might not be overheard.

Yet it was different. The mighty audience chamber had become merely a large room. The decorations seemed to verge on the garish and tasteless. The hieroglyphic tale of Ramses' mighty feats in the war against Hatti was studded with obvious lies. And the god was only a man—a man whom Moses hated, and feared, too.

Yet Ramses was no less at ease, and he smiled as he told Moses to step back, the better to look at him. His look was keen and searching, and his dark eyes fixed themselves upon Moses' so intently that the young man had to drop his own gaze. Then Ramses nodded and told Moses to come close to him, observing that this had become necessary since a good many priests had taken to practicing hearing the way an archer practises with his bow. Then he said,

“Well, Moses, you are a likely-looking young man. How old are you now?”

“Eighteen years, sacred god.”

“Don't call me by that ridiculous title. Call me father. And stop thinking that I killed your mother and get the murder out of your heart.”

“Yes, my father,” Moses answered flatly.

“A little more warmth, Moses, and a little more wit and understanding. A fool doesn't rule an empire like mine as long as I have, and the worst mistake you can make is to consider me a fool. Your mother was sick, very sick, and the pain she suffered is not to be understood by anyone so free of pain as you. Try to understand that I loved your mother.”

“Yes, my father.”

“‘Yes, my father,'” Ramses mimicked him. “Is that all you are going to say to me?”

“I will answer any questions you put to me, my father, as best I may.”

Ramses threw back his head and roared with laughter—so that all in the throne room turned to look at him curiously and wonderingly. His whole body shook with laughter, until finally he subsided, rubbing his knuckles into his wet eyes. “By all that is holy, Moses, you are a strange man and a brave one. A foolhardy one and without much sense as yet, but that may come. You remind me of the great ancient lords of Upper Egypt who fill our olden sagas, and you have the same knifelike look as the sculptures of them. I confess I half like you, but you are too stimulating for our quiet life on the Delta, and it seems that where you are trouble gathers. Why didn't you kill that wretched product of one of my less profitable nights in bed when he fought you?”

“I had no reason to kill him, my father,” Moses shrugged. “He had only insulted me, and that didn't seem to measure up to his life.”

“And your honour? Your pride?”

“My honour will survive. And as for my pride, my father, it died with my mother, the holy Enekhas-Amon, who gave it to me.”

“Now what do you mean by that?” Ramses snorted. “Don't talk in riddles, boy. I hate riddles. Yet I think you're right. You're not cut to the cloth of murder, for which, be sure, I am grateful—since Seti-Hop seems to think that when you are angry, no man in this palace could stand against you. War is something else. Seti-Hop considers that you will make a good soldier, and I am inclined to agree. Here you will bring only sorrow and trouble, Moses, for I think you were born to sorrow and trouble—but on our borders you can give much to Egypt. Also, it will be good for you to go away from here until tempers cool and fancied wrongs are forgotten. In ten days from now a punitive expedition of some fifteen thousand men leaves for the Land of Kush, where the black men have forgotten that while my patience is long, my forbearance is short. You will go along with them as a captain of chariots and you will remain away for three years. You will learn a good deal, I imagine, in three years; and after that time, you can return here to this city of mine.”

“Yes, my father,” Moses said, still flatly.

“A wiser man, I hope,” Ramses concluded, his voice as humourless as Moses' now.

So ended the audience with the God Ramses, and the childhood and youth of Moses as well.

PART TWO

The Captain of Kush

[1]

O
LD WAS THE Land of Egypt, but the Land of Kush was also old, and though there were a thousand of nations, cities and peoples the world over, there was only one Kush, and like the Kushite were no others. In the olden times, the Egyptian guarded one end of the world and the black man of Kush guarded the other; from Egypt's Delta, the blue sea tolled away, endless and boundless until it poured over the rocky edge of the world-to run underground and bubble anew from the dark and unknowable mystery of Kush. That was in the olden times, but long before the time of Moses, men had grown wiser and and had learned the art of shipbuilding, and the great ships of Egypt had sailed all over the blue Mediterranean—so that the edge of the world was no longer the edge of the world. So the Delta and the great City of Ramses became a gateway to the whole world beyond Egypt; but to the world beyond Kush, there were no gateways.

And as the world opened and unfolded, the armies of Egypt marched forth to conquer. If they were defeated now and again, it was the way a river is defeated by a log and brush jam; the block breaks eventually, and the river rolls on—and so did the armies of Egypt toll over the world. Nothing could resist them, seemingly, for with Egypt came organization, order, and planned lines of battle, and against these organized lines of spears and columns of chariots, neither the heroes of Philistia nor the warriors of Hatti could persist. The Babylonian fled in terror and the heroic Sea Rover cast his spear and ran back to his ships. But the men of Kush only returned to Kush—for Kush was as boundless as it was distant, and who had ever conquered it?

“
There
is a man of Kush,” Moses had been told once, long ago, by Amon-Teph as they walked in the market place of Tanis. “There is a man from far away, and with the things of far away, one should always be concerned, O Prince of Egypt—”

But more than with Amon-Teph's words was Moses held and entranced by the great black man who was occupied in trading a thick, hammered-gold bracelet for sacks of wheat and barley. To Moses, who was then still a boy, the man seemed a giant, and his towering headdress of red and yellow feathers made him appear even taller. Many brown men of all shades had Moses seen, but this man of Kush was black as ebony, so black that the sunlight danced and sparkled on the sheen of his skin; and the sight of his great frame with its broad shoulders and mighty muscles made the boy realize why the people of Kush were spoken of for their beauty as well as their valour. This man had a long, narrow head, a small, tilted nose, and a heavy-lipped, wide mouth. The bones of his face were large and strange, so that it was hard to tell at first whether he was more beautiful than he was ugly or more ugly than he was beautiful; but from the way the Egyptian women could hardly take their eyes from him, it did not seem to matter. He stood like a prince himself, not willing to bend his spine even a trifle to the bargaining, and his broken Egyptian came in deep, resonant tones from his great chest.