Sovereign of Stars (6 page)

“You did well,” Nehesi murmured.

Hatshepsut did not reply.

As night fell they gained the Egyptian plain. Nehesi
escorted her to her tent; she stood quietly while the women washed
her, hurried the basins of water from her presence so she would not
have to see how the water was tinged pink with the blood of the
Kushite bowman. Hatshepsut refused her supper and crept into her
bed, shivering and silent, while across the camp the sound of
celebration rang beneath the stars.

Not long after she had retired, she heard her women
whispering. Two bodies slid into her bed, warm and gentle; hands
caressed her shoulders, her back, brushed the tears from her
face.

“I miss the children,” Hatshepsut confessed in a
voice barely louder than a sigh. She could not banish the image of
the baby in the doorway, or its mother, from her thoughts.
“Neferure – Thutmose. I want them.”

“I know.” It was Tabiry. Her voice in the darkness
was soothing as balm.

“And Senenmut.”
And Iset.

“Yes,” Tabiry said.

The woman lying at Hatshepsut's back threw a soft
arm around her, pulled her tight against a comforting chest. “Weep,
Great Lady. You are safe with us.” She recognized the voice of
Keminub, the soft-eyed, silly-hearted woman who had sighed like a
little girl when Hatshepsut had come south to bed her brother. Her
voice and her smell were warm and spicy, comforting.

“I killed a man.”

“Ah, Great Lady.”

“I never had before. Nebseny was different; he
killed Iset. But that man – the Kushite – he was only trying to
defend his family, his woman and his child.”

They went on holding her in silence. Nearby in the
camp a group of men burst into drunken song.

When Sinuhe came home

To the fair and green Black Land

Oh, the Pharaoh bent his knee to him,

When Sinuhe came home!

Tabiry dabbed tears from Hatshepsut's face with a
corner of the linen sheet.

“I did not need to kill him. I did not need to
follow him. I chased him down like a leopard after a gazelle. He
was only one man – just a young father. His only sin was firing an
arrow.”

“He would have killed you, if he could have done
so.”

“Can I ever be who I was before, now that I have
killed?”

“This is what it means to be Pharaoh. Your brother
never understood, but you see it plainly.”

“I do not want to be Pharaoh. Not anymore.”

Tabiry chuckled like a mawat at a child's foolish
declarations. Hatshepsut felt warm lips press against her forehead.
“You do not mean that. I know it.”

Hatshepsut lapsed once again into silence.
She is
right.
For she could still feel her kas burning with a rage
that cut through her shock and horror and grief.
No one will
take my throne from me. It is mine. Amun gave it to me.

This is what it means to be Pharaoh – to be the son
of the god.

CHAPTER SIX

Hatshepsut's chariot swung onto the main avenue of
the cowering city at an undaunted trot. Above the rhythm of her
horses' hooves she could hear Egyptian voices raised in cheers.
Beyond the flat roofs of the mud-washed homes, the spindly dark
point of a pyramid rose into the air, and about its peak billowed a
cloud of dust shining in the mid-day sun. It was from the pyramid's
base that the cheering rose. Not a single man accosted Hatshepsut
from the houses lining the broad street. The city was thoroughly
conquered.

It was her fifth victory in the kingdom of Kush.
Five days she had been in the southernmost reaches of her empire,
and five settlements had fallen to her spear: the tiny farming
village first, but each victory larger, until at last she had taken
a city of at least five thousand. Each day she rose from her camp
brimming with fire, stoking her wrath with the sharp pain of
memory: Iset's face, her body, her voice raised in song. She
thought of her children, the feel of them in her arms, and strapped
her ferocity to defend them like armor to her chest. Each morning
she set out with her men at her heels, prepared to fight and wound
and kill if it meant the army would be hers, loyal and ready to do
her bidding no matter what whispering dogs like Ankhhor might tell
them, now or in years to come.

But each night when she returned she fell into her
bed buffeted by grief. She wrestled with it deep in the innermost
seclusion of her heart, that quiet, dark place where her kas lived.
She fought to overcome a suffocating weight of horror, always the
same weight, always the same horrors, each night as the camp grew
more wild with celebration. For now she understood what it meant to
rule a kingdom. Now she knew that the Pharaoh must wield not only
wealth and fair judgment and cleverness, but terror as well, when
the gods required it. Each was but a tool in her hand, to carve the
kingdom into whatever design best pleased Amun. And she must raise
and wield each tool with equal ease, and never let the weight of
her burden show on her face.

This would be her duty and her privilege, until the
gods called her to the Field of Reeds.

She found the certainty of her task exhausting, and
yet somehow exhilarating, too.

Hatshepsut's horses broke from the rows of shops and
homes into a wide common square. At its heart rose the pyramid.
Quarried from black stone, far too narrow at its base, it rose to
an eerily slender point in the burning mid-day sky. A short hall,
roofed in black, protruded from its foot. The hall was flanked by
two pylons not unlike those which guarded Egyptian temples, yet
they were far too alien in their darkness. The deep, light-eating
blackness of the monument seemed to spurn the very idea of Re.

The conquered men of the city crouched near the
mouth of the pyramid, kneeling in the dust with their heads bowed.
They numbered perhaps a hundred, all told.

Hatshepsut landed from her chariot and paced the
line of Kushite men, gazing down upon their stooped shoulders and
heaving chests. Ramose joined her. He squinted as he approached,
for the sun glinted sharply off her long tunic of polished bronze
scales and the shining pinnacle of her bright blue war crown. She
had worn the ceremonial battle garb of the Pharaoh since her second
conquest. It was heavier than she could believe, and the dragging
weight of it surprised her each time she put it on. Yet once she
was in the thick of battle she did not seem to notice its weight or
heat.

“When they heard you had given word that their women
and children were not be harmed, they fell back here, to defend
their god,” Ramose said.

“Dedwen.”

When she said the god's name two or three of the
nearest Kushites looked up in surprise. The glinting in their eyes
quickly turned to anger. She could see it burning, this rage at
hearing the name of their god on the tongue of the Egyptian king.
And an uglier emotion dwelt in their hard stares: loathing for the
fact – so obvious now, in the slenderness of her form, the
lightness of her features, the pitch of her voice – that the new
Pharaoh was a woman.

“I know of Dedwen.” She emphasized the name, glaring
into the face of one of her captives. He and his brothers dropped
their eyes again.

Hatshepsut clasped her hands behind her back, turned
to survey the square. Bodies lay scattered about – the still forms
of Kushites in their strangely fashioned, bright-colored kilts, and
here and there the white kilt of an Egyptian spotted with blood.
Her men worked to remove their fallen brothers from the square,
lifting bodies by arms and legs as if they were goats being carried
from a butcher. She swallowed hard. The wreckage of a chariot lay
nearby, splintered; one of its horses was splayed before it, the
poor creature's neck resting at an unnatural angle to its body. A
wide, dark pool spread from its throat – cut by its driver, no
doubt, to spare its suffering.

She rounded again on the captives.

“And what am I to do with these?” She said the words
in the Kushites’ own harsh language.

Ramose answered in kind, a wry smile tightening his
face. “I suppose you could take their hands, O Good God, but do it
while they still live. Take their manhood, too.”

One of the men whimpered, then stifled himself when
his brother shot him a hateful look.

Hatshepsut lapsed back into Egyptian. “I would see
this god of theirs for myself. Nehesi?”

Both her guard and the general accompanied her
between the strange dark pylons, into the mouth of Dedwen's
temple.

The interior was very dim, and cold as moving water.
Hatshepsut found it a pleasant relief from the beating sun outside.
She pulled the war helmet from her head, tucked it under her arm,
swiped at her sweaty brow with her dusty forearm. The scent of
incense was so thick here that she nearly choked on it. A thin
stream of light fell in from between the pylons; in its
bronze-colored cast she could just make out carvings on the walls.
They were depictions of Dedwen striding to face his enemies, of
Kushite kings making offerings to this, the greatest of their gods.
The style of the carvings was not as foreign as she had expected.
But for the unfamiliar faces and trappings, the scenes might have
been at home on the walls of an Egyptian temple.

Deeper within, at the pyramid's dark heart, the
figure of Dedwen himself sat upon a black stone pedestal. He was
carved from a lighter rock, so he stood out amidst the dense
blackness of the pyramid's interior with disturbing vividness.
Hatshepsut gazed up at him. A wide, unkempt beard fanned out above
his chest, dense and curly. His hands rested in fists upon his
knees. His face, with the broad nose and mouth of a Kushite and
hard, staring eyes, seemed to promise her a wealth of
unpleasantness.

“I do not want to do this again,” she said
quietly.

“Great Lady?” Nehesi was at her side, as ever.

“I must find a way to keep Kush subdued now and for
all time.”

“Kush, subdued for all time?” Ramose shook his head.
“An impossible task, Majesty. Subjugation is not in the nature of
such a people.”

“And yet I must find a way. I must force a peace,
and it must hold at least as long as I live.”

“There are not only Kushites in the world,” Nehesi
said, his voice low and amused. “What of the Heqa-Khasewet? What of
Mitanni, and Hatti, and the Greeks?”

“I will have peace from them all.”

“You will have war. It is the lot of a king.”

“You presume to tell me what is the lot of a
king?”

In the darkness she felt Nehesi's familiar,
care-nothing shrug.

Hatshepsut returned her eyes to Dedwen's menacing
stare. “I have no stomach for war.”

Nehesi chuckled. “You have made me a fool, then.
I've never seen such confidence on the field. The way you lead the
men...”

“Ah, Majesty,” Ramose interjected. “You are the very
image of your father. The men say you are possessed by the spirit
of Sekhmet.”

“Do they?”

“They call you seshep.”

Seshep
. The name did not displease her. The
mythical beast embodied the warrior's power: a crouching lion with
the head of a man. She tried to imagine herself with a lion's body.
The image made her smile.

“All the same,” she said, somewhat cheered, “if this
is the last I ever see of war, I shall die a happy Pharaoh.”

She returned the war helmet to her head, spun on her
heel, and led them back out into the painful glare of the commons.
“You,” she called, gesturing to the nearest Egyptian soldier.
“Bring me the reins from that dead horse's bridle.”

When she had the reins in hand, she summoned more
men, and led them, whispering and looking about them in
apprehension, into the black pyramid. The men hung well back from
Dedwen's stone feet. Soldiers were ever superstitious.

“Nehesi, Dedwen wants a garland about his neck.” She
tossed the reins into her guard's hands. He moved quickly, lofting
them up to fall across the god's shoulders. They landed against his
divine body with a soft slap.

“Bring him down,” she ordered her men, and stood
watching impassively as they hauled on the reins, rocking Dedwen
upon his base until he tipped up on the edge of his carven throne,
hung balanced for one breathless heartbeat, then crashed to the
floor of the temple.

They dragged the god into the stark light of his
courtyard. The Kushites crouching in the dust seemed to moan as
one, burying their eyes against bloodied shoulders, rocking in
dread.

Her Egyptians raised their spears and their voices,
hailing her.

Seshep! Seshep! Seshep!

Hatshepsut remained still as they chanted. A small,
quivering uneasiness gripped her stomach, threaded its way into her
heart. This thing she did – it was blasphemy. She had never
blasphemed.
But after all, who is Dedwen beside Amun? He is not
even an Egyptian god. And I am Amun's own representative on the
earth. It is given to me, to lead the Two Lands, the greatest
kingdom in all the world. It is given to me, to make it known that
Amun rules all the sun touches. Even the land of Kush.

From the roofs of the city, the piercing cries of
women rose into the sky with the commons' dust and the groaning of
the men. The sound clambered above the chant –
Seshep!
Seshep!

Peace – for Iset. For my little ones.

Hatshepsut lifted her foot. The scales of her armor
clattered like Amun's holy rattles. She drew in one long breath
that tasted of hot earth and blood, then brought her heel down on
the side of Dedwen's face.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Amun Strides from Darkness
rocked as
Hatshepsut's personal guardsmen boarded, followed by Tabiry and
Keminub, who had agreed to tend the king on her own ship for the
long trek back to Waset. Seven days had come and gone since she had
taken her first village, and each day brought another settlement
conquered.