The Hippopotamus Marsh (26 page)

The chariot swung about and began to move, bumping over the bodies of the slain. Seqenenra’s line of vision changed. All at once he saw in the distance a chariot whose sides gleamed gold and whose spokes shot fire into the
broiling afternoon. He took no notice of the charioteer, for behind him stood a tall young man whose arms sported silver Commander’s armbands and whose blue and white helmet was banded in gold. He was pointing and shouting. It was Pezedkhu. Around him clustered his Braves, and beyond them the lines of the southern defence were grimly disciplined and orderly.

Before them, Seqenenra’s soldiers were falling back, dying, fighting desperately, blocking any retreat through the mountain cleft. Their courage was a pathetic thing to see, bringing tears of anger to Seqenenra’s eyes, but they were outnumbered. Desperately he sought Kamose and found him, his horses felled, fighting hand to hand from the rear of his chariot, his face and arms and the front of his kilt mired in blood.

Suddenly Seqenenra knew what Si-Amun was doing. He was trying to circle the conflict and slip into the rocky break in the cliffs. “I forbid you!” Seqenenra tried to shout up at him. “I do not want to be saved, Si-Amun! I do not want the shame of it!” But he found that he was groaning gibberish. Under such stress his deformed mouth no longer obeyed him.

For a long time Si-Amun tried to negotiate the groups of panting, bloody men who were hacking at each other with dedication, but he finally had to admit defeat. The way was completely cut off. Seqenenra could hear him muttering, could sense him looking to the north, to the south, desperate for a place to hide his father, while Seqenenra lay huddled between the stalwart legs of the Brave defending him.

The chariot came to a halt. Si-Amun crouched to peer into his father’s face. “We are slowly being squeezed together,”
he said. His face was running sweat. “I cannot get you away. We are about to die, Prince.” Seqenenra nodded. He did not try to speak. Si-Amun leaned down and kissed him. “This is my fault,” he said. “All mine. May I take your axe and knives, Father?” Without waiting for an answer he lifted the heavy bronze weapon from Seqenenra’s belt and slipped the short daggers into his hands. Then he stood. Seqenenra tried to pray but found he could not. The din around him was reaching deafening proportions, and in it was an hysterical note of panic. His men were about to be routed. Suddenly the man above him gave a hiccup. Blood spattered Seqenenra, a warm red shower, and the Brave was gone. With his good hand Seqenenra lifted his kilt and wiped his face.

Si-Amun shouted something. The chariot gave a great lurch and began to career. Seqenenra tried to brace himself but he was rolling towards the edge. He cried out, twisting, but Si-Amun could not help him. He was gone. The reins flapped loosely against the curved prow. With every ounce of strength he possessed Seqenenra tried to grab for them, while jamming his good leg against the side of the chariot, but the horses were in full flight. The reins slapped just out of reach of his straining fingers.

All at once the chariot struck an obstacle, began to cant, and Seqenenra tumbled out. The chariot tottered and fell. Dazed, Seqenenra felt pain explode along his healthy leg. He was lying in the shade of the chariot which half-lay above him. He heard Si-Amun calling, “I’m coming, Father, I’m coming!” Where is Kamose? Seqenenra thought. Hor-Aha? Are they dead? Dear Ahmose, try to carry on, try to hold what is left of the family together even if you must run …

He had a sudden, vivid vision of his garden in the cool silence of a long winter evening, the pool scarcely rippling, the trees scarcely quivering. Aahotep was sitting on the edge of the pool, one brown foot stirring the smooth depths. “It has been a glorious season, Seqenenra,” she was saying. “So bountiful, so beautiful. There will never be another like it.” Aahotep! he thought with anguish, teeth clenched against the pain. It has indeed been glorious, and terrible, and wondrously strange, this life of mine, yet I wish that I had been born in another time, a simpler time, when accepting my destiny might not have hurt so much.

His hand, groping spasmodically through the filthy earth, felt the hilt of a knife and he shook it free and clutched it fiercely. A man loomed above him, feet bare, kilt torn, raised axe crusted with blood. Seeing Seqenenra’s helplessness he bared his teeth in a weary grin. Taking the axe in both hands he swung it over his head. Seqenenra swiftly jerked the knife towards the man’s ankles but the man simply stepped aside. Amun, Seqenenra thought in the split second before he died, grant me a favourable weighing …

The last thing he saw was a glint of sombre red from the setting sun as the blade descended.

The axe struck Seqenenra above the right eye, rebounded to smash his right cheek, then glanced off the bridge of his nose. The soldier was tired and had not put as much strength into the blow as he had thought. Swearing, he raised it again and this time it cracked the bone under Seqenenra’s left eye. Panting, the man clumsily wrenched it away and peered at the body. The chest was still trembling lightly. Catching up a spear from the disorder around him,
he turned Seqenenra’s head with one foot and drove the weapon into the skull behind the left ear. The body convulsed once and then was still. The soldier stumbled away.

Si-Amun had seen the man approach his father, consider, and heft his axe. With a scream he plunged forward, but one of Pezedkhu’s unhorsed charioteers blundered into his path, knife at the ready, and Si-Amun was forced to engage him. By the time the man lay jerking at his feet it was too late. Horrified, Si-Amun saw the spear haft protruding from his father’s neck. Once more he tried to cover the intervening ground and once more his way was blocked. Insane with grief and rage he began to lay about him, tears pouring unnoticed down his filthy cheeks. He was driven farther and farther away from his father’s body still pinned under the chariot.

9

BY THE TIME
the sun had sunk red and sullen behind the western cliffs the field belonged to Pezedkhu. Those of Seqenenra’s pitiful army who had not been killed or did not lie wounded on the scorching ground had run for the shelter of the tumbled rocks beneath the cliffs and it was there, close to the defile through which they had marched such a short time before, that Si-Amun found Kamose and Hor-Aha together with a few officers. They were hidden in a sandy gap about a quarter of the way up the rocky incline. They could look out upon the chaos of the battlefield without being seen and could if necessary defend their position for a little while. Si-Amun, scrambling mindlessly among the boulders, had almost fallen on them. He greeted them without enthusiasm. Kamose had been wounded in the side and his cheek had been laid open by a knife thrust. Hor-Aha nursed a shattered shoulder with his usual taciturnity. “Where is Father?” Kamose demanded as Si-Amun collapsed into the sand and closed his eyes. “You were supposed to guard him, Si-Amun.”

“Don’t be a fool, “ Si-Amun croaked. “I tried, the Braves tried, but what could we do once the battle began to go against us? I was knocked from the chariot when the horses panicked and ran. Father was pinned under it. He
was helpless. Immediately I began to fight my way to him but I was too late.”

“He is dead?” Hor-Aha demanded softly. Si-Amun nodded. Kamose stared at him, noting the tracks his tears had made in the dirt of his face, the blood and mire encrusting him.

“Is there any water?” Si-Amun asked faintly. Kamose shook his head, fingering the red slit on his cheek and wincing.

“No water, no food,” Hor-Aha answered. “We need both, and the physician, wherever he might be. If Amun has been merciful we will find all when we can go into the defile where the supply donkeys should be waiting. There is such a mess before the path. We must hope that the donkey drivers have been clever enough to withdraw towards the desert and Pezedkhu’s men are too tired to explore, particularly at night.”

Si-Amun crawled to the tiny vertical split in the rock and looked down towards the river. The sun’s afterglow lit the land in a deep scarlet haze. The air was full of dust and still very hot. Pezedkhu’s soldiers were moving among the slain, knives drawn. Some were recovering the chariots that lay overturned and horseless among the dead, and others were gathering up the precious bows, but most were going methodically from body to body, kneeling to saw off a hand from each one. Si-Amun withdrew. “They are collecting our bows and taking hands for the tally,” he said. “How many died, I wonder? We must recover Father’s body as soon as possible. Pray Amun they do not find him to take a hand from him!”

No one replied. Hor-Aha sat propped against a stone, his shoulder a mess of mangled flesh,
his eyes drooping closed. Kamose lay with his head pillowed in a cloak, his hand pressing a wad of dirty kilt against his side. The officers sat or lay quietly, some nursing wounds, others trying to tend them. Si-Amun, his throat swollen with thirst, curled up in a hollow in the sand he had dug for himself. There was nothing any of them could do.

They slept fitfully through the night. Occasionally one of them would wake and crawl to the crack to watch the activity below, lit by the fires of the army’s camp. Not much moved down there. Pezedkhu’s soldiers were also exhausted.

Dawn came. To the men wracked with thirst and pain Ra seemed to leap into the sky with a spiteful speed and their hiding place was soon as hot as a crucible. Below, work began again. Few chariots remained. The bodies were being buried efficiently and quickly. “We must find Father soon,” Kamose whispered. “He must be beautified, taken home to the House of the Dead. Otherwise, in this heat …” He left his sentence unfinished. Hor-Aha was in the grip of a fever and had begun to murmur nonsense. Si-Amun found a cloak and tried to make some shade for him.

The day dragged on with frightening slowness. Si-Amun went to Kamose and lay beside him. Kamose turned his head and smiled faintly. “We were not able to fight side by side as I had hoped,” he whispered. “We have not been as close as we used to be, Si-Amun. I am so angry.”

“It is not your fault,” Si-Amun assured him. “Try and sleep now, Kamose. It will make the time go faster.”

With an impudent lack of haste Ra reached his zenith and sailed towards the west. On the plain the victorious
soldiers sang and laughed as they leisurely prepared their evening meal, cleaned their fouled weapons, and tended to their cuts. In their hiding place the men, feeling the approaching blessing of darkness, stirred to life. Hor-Aha was weak but now lucid.

At last the fires below were extinguished, the chariots yoked, the men formed into marching ranks. Si-Amun watched the activity as the sun sank behind him. There was a hush on the plain. In the last pink light a chariot rolled towards the cliffs and stopped. Its sides were of polished gold hammered into the likeness of Sutekh with his tall ears, his long snout and wolfish grin, his Setiu ribbons. Beside the chariot ran a soldier with a trumpet. At a gesture from the man standing in the chariot he raised it and blew. The sound echoed harsh and mournful among the rocks. Pezedkhu lifted an arm and Si-Amun saw his dark, kohled gaze travelling the face of the rocks.

“Proud Princes of Weset!” the General called, his voice strong with a taunting triumph. “The Lord of the Two Lands has answered your act of treason with death. He is mighty! He is invincible! He is the Beloved of Set! Crawl home if you can, and lick your wounds in shame and disgrace. Meditate upon your folly and upon the King’s mercy, for he has granted you your lives. Life, health and prosperity be upon him who lives, like Ra, eternally!”

Kamose groaned. Si-Amun watched and listened with a wildly beating heart. Pezedkhu’s arm dropped. The chariot wheeled away. Behind it Apepa’s army began to move, a ponderous worm, into the evening dusk. Si-Amun saw them go. It took a long time. Darkness had fully fallen before the plain dissolved into its customary silence, broken
only by the screech of a hunting owl and the rustle of mice along the bank of the river.

For a long time the men did not dare to stir. Then Si-Amun rose and stretched. His lips were cracked, his tongue swollen. “l will try to find the supply train and the physician,” he said. “Two of you,” he indicated the officers, “come with me. Another of you, go down to the river and bring back water. Have you a bottle?” One of them produced a leather skin. “Good. But go carefully. It is possible that Pezedkhu has left scouts to take us once we leave this place, although I am sure he does not really know who survived and was simply following the King’s orders when he addressed us so magnanimously. Kamose, are you awake? Did you hear me?” His brother’s faint assent came out of the darkness. Si-Amun glanced up at the sky. Soon the moon would rise and his going would be easier. Carefully he climbed out of the hollow and began to wind his way to the floor of the plain.

It was not far to the break he was looking for, and as he picked his way through the debris Pezedkhu’s soldiers had reckoned not worthy of plunder, the moon rose above the eastern horizon, its blind fingers groping pale towards the river. Si-Amun breathed a prayer of thanks and shortly plunged into the blackness between the cliffs.