The Horus Road (16 page)

They came up to him and prostrated themselves, pressing their foreheads to the carpeted floor, before rising at his curt word. He studied them carefully and they gazed back at him solemnly, Mesehti’s eyes steady in his weathered face, Makhu betraying anxiety in the clenching of his strong jaw. “Well,” Ahmose said at last. “What do you wish to say to me?” Mesehti, as Ahmose might have expected, came straight to the point.

“Majesty, you have brought us with you to the Delta and you have kept us idle,” he began. “We have no designated office here. We understand that we are under your divine discipline, that we accompanied you because you do not trust us, but we chafe at our inactivity. We humbly beg you to tell us how long we must dwell in the coldness of your disapproval.” He glanced at Makhu. “We are aware that Your Majesty reads our letters to our families in Djawati and Akhmin and their letters to us. They dictate nothing more than the affairs of our estates, the abundance of the harvest, the progress of our tombs and suchlike. As for us, we wander about the camp with our shame displayed for every active officer to see. We would rather be imprisoned than that!”

“Would you indeed?” Ahmose broke in, his tone deceptively mild. “You were greatly averse to any such fate when you returned to Weset with Ramose and fell on your knees before me and the Queen. You were a hair’s breadth away from losing your heads. Indeed, if it had not been for the Queen’s clemency, you would even now be lying beautified in your tombs. And you dare to complain of such a small matter as your shame?” Makhu took one step forward.

“It is not a small matter, our shame,” he said earnestly. “It is a disfigurement that we will carry on our kas for the rest of the lives the Queen so mercifully gave back to us. But, Majesty, we are not peasants. We are not stupid men. We erred from a confusion of loyalties, not from cowardice or indecision. We are Princes, with knowledge and skills that are at your disposal as our King. Do not waste us, Divine One! Give us work. Let us earn your trust once again!”

Ahmose turned away from them and began to pace. Letters and trust, he thought grimly. Perhaps it is I who need to learn a lesson today. Are you speaking to me, Amun, King of Gods? Are you admonishing me or giving me a warning? “It is certain that I cannot send you to your homes,” he said, hands behind his back as he measured out the confined space of the tent. “It is also certain that I would be pleased to restore two nobles to my favour by allowing them to make amends for their mistakes. Such an indulgence would be most agreeable to Ma’at. But what atonement should I command?” He was half-playing with them, having already decided to bend his back to the caution of the god. “Oh sit down, both of you!” he snapped. “Take those stools. I understood your dilemma weeks ago and I fully expect you to understand mine. I can risk no more rebellions.” They loosened, pulling up the stools and lowering themselves even as Ahmose flung himself into his chair. “Akhtoy left some wine on the table,” he said. “Makhu, pour for us. I know that the divisions are short of charioteers and few Egyptians apart from the Princes know anything about horses. I desperately need someone to train drivers and organize the stables. It is an honourable position, well suited to ancient blood. You can both begin by becoming Overseers of the Stables, inspecting the state of the horses belonging to each division and putting the fledgling charioteers through their paces. With the Inundation imminent the chariots will soon be of little use but next summer they will come into their own and one day, I hope, they will be matched with the Setiu chariots right here on the flood plains outside Het-Uart. Is this acceptable to you?” They nodded gravely, relief on their faces but not the servility that would have hidden an insincerity Ahmose feared. “Good. Then let us drink to the restoration of Ma’at and the health of our loved ones.” But I will still order your letters unsealed and read to me, Ahmose said to them silently as all three of them drank. And my eye will be on you constantly.

It was another week before reports from the six divisions fighting in the Delta began to dribble in and Ahmose read them with increasing disquiet. The situation was less reassuring than he had hoped. It was not dire, as Hor-Aha pointed out during the strategy meeting Ahmose had called to discuss the news, but it was troubling nonetheless. “Kamose ignored the Horus Road for too long,” Turi remarked as the five men sat about the table in the shade of Ahmose’s tent. “It is like an untended hole in an irrigation dyke. As long as troops from Rethennu keep flowing into Egypt, we will be unable to lure Apepa from the safety of his stronghold. His fellow Princes in the east will keep us in a state of impotence.”

“He had little choice,” Khety objected. “His immediate concern was the need to secure the rest of Egypt and that is where his energy went. He accomplished that goal.”

“It seems as though Rethennu has an unlimited supply of men and arms,” Sebek-khu said irritably. “Where are they coming from?”

“Do not forget that Rethennu is an alliance of several tribal chieftains who call themselves Princes,” Ahmose reminded them. “Apepa’s grandfather Sekerher was only one of them. I have no doubt that they are pledged to help one another in times of war.”

“And in trade,” Hor-Aha put in. “Much of the wealth of the Delta has surely been channelled into their coffers. We must plug up that hole.”

“These foreign soldiers are not phantoms,” Ahmose said. “Nor can the women of Rethennu produce them fully grown on demand.” He went on speaking through a ripple of laughter. “There must be a time when the supply is exhausted. But we cannot wait. Het-Uart must fall, and soon.”

He had a quick vision of discouraged generals, discontented and homesick troops, desertions, and through it all his enemy feasting at a table laden with all manner of delicacies in an impregnable palace, the Double Crown on his head and Tani at his right hand, weighed down with the gold of Wawat. Mentally shaking himself, he placed both hands flat on the table.“I must venture farther into the Delta and see for myself what is happening,” he told them. “You all know what must be done here. Hor-Aha, keep the soldiers and citizens from the walls. Have the Medjay shoot at anyone who shows his head. The docks are destroyed. No Keftian or Asi trading vessels will be appearing until the Inundation fills the tributary, but if you spot any coming in from the Great Green to the north have them boarded, denuded and sent home politely. We do not wish to antagonize our future partners in prosperity.” Hor-Aha nodded. Ahmose turned to the others. “Khety, defend the perimeter of the northern mound. Keep the soldiers bottled up inside it and prevent anyone from entering. Turi, Sebek-khu, see that the gates of Het-Uart do not open. Nothing must pass in or out.”

For a while longer they discussed details, then Ahmose left them, signalling to Khabekhnet as he went. “Delegate your position to your second and prepare to travel with me,” he ordered. “Make sure that your heralds continue their nightly challenge. Send to Kay Abana. If I do not return before the Nile begins to rise, he is to do his utmost to prevent the irrigation canals from being opened. He has my authority to summon other ships from Het nefer Apu if necessary. Bring me the Scribes of Victualling, the Army and Distribution.” Khabekhnet saluted. Ankhmahor, conferring with a group of the Followers, turned to Ahmose inquiringly as he strode up. “We are moving into the Delta,” Ahmose told him. “Your men can strike their tents. Have them ready to leave tomorrow morning.”

He found Akhtoy and Ipi sitting together on the bank where several of the army’s servants were washing linen, standing knee-deep while they beat the surface of the placid water with skeins of sopping white cloth. “Pack up my belongings,” he said to Akhtoy, “and you, Ipi, bring plenty of papyrus and ink. It is time to see what my other thirty thousand men are doing.”

He did not sleep much that night. His tent was empty, his effects shut away in the chests Akhtoy had piled up outside. Drowsing occasionally, he would wake to a series of random but worrying thoughts that flitted in succession across his mind and would not let him rest. Mesore was almost over. Thoth would mark the beginning of a new year and, if the gods willed it, a copious flood. The Horus Road wound tortuously between pools that would become lakes and reed-filled moist ground that turned into treacherous swamps, a thoroughfare that never became impassable, but that would have to be held by infantry alone without the aid of chariots. And what of the Wall of Princes? he asked himself, as he turned and turned again, his body tense. Can it be reinforced against the Setiu infiltrators without bleeding my army dry of men? Those are the keys to the eventual destruction of Het-Uart, the Wall of Princes and the Horus Road, and I am condemned to remain in the north until they are utterly mine.

Towards dawn he was finally able to drift into an unconsciousness broken only by the regular calling of the heralds as they drove around the towering walls of the city, and a dream in which he stood on one side of a Nile that was dangerously and uncharacteristically raging. Aahmes-nefertari stood on the other, pale and motionless, staring at him, while darkness grew between them and eventually she was lost to sight. Akhtoy’s voice mingling with the new sunlight and the aroma of warm bread woke him, and he swung his legs over the edge of his cot and greeted his steward with massive relief. “I must make sure that Mesehti and Makhu travel with us,” he said aloud as the cloud of preoccupations returned. Akhtoy did not reply, and Ahmose began his morning meal.

6

IT WAS A FULL SIX WEEKS
before Ahmose turned his chariot back towards Het-Uart, and in that time the river had begun its swift rise towards the fullness of its flood two months away. The celebration of the new year took place on the first day of Thoth, when the rising of the Sopdet Star was marked by the solemn panoply of ritual in the temples and the full festivity of a holiday throughout the country.

Ahmose hardly noticed its passing, for the soldiers from Rethennu had no knowledge of true religion and no respect for its necessary observances. The fighting in the Delta did not stop for gods or men. Ahmose found himself plunged into the kind of frustrating, unresolved warfare he had thought left behind in the years with Kamose and before that, his father. Sallying forth from the outskirts of Het-Uart with Ramose, Ankhmahor and the Followers—Akhtoy, Ipi and his personal staff behind and Khabekhnet and his scouts ahead—he had rapidly been made aware of his defencelessness. A contingent of troops from the Division of Ptah intercepted him three days east of the city as he was about to enter a deceptively peaceful village of whitewashed huts and shady groves of tamarisk and acacia. Their senior officer pushed past the Followers’ challenges and came up to Ahmose’s chariot, while his men quickly formed a protective cordon around Ahmose’s entourage. “General Akhethotep sent me to escort you to his headquarters, Majesty,” he explained. “Your scouts found the Division yesterday, but we are continually on the move and the General was afraid that you might come too late to find him.” He pointed at the cluster of little houses half-hidden amongst the random trees. “We fought the Setiu in that place,” he said. “In and out of the dwellings. But we had to leave it before the whole area was secure. The Division of Khonsu needed our support.”

“Why?” Ahmose asked sharply. “Where were they?” As he looked down into the officer’s strained face, he felt the first intimations of genuine anxiety.

“Twenty-five miles farther along the Horus Road, Majesty,” the man replied. “General Iymery was attempting to hold off a large force of the enemy that had converged by one of the lakes. Most of the fighting is a matter of small skirmishes,” he went on, almost apologetically, “but this was a standing battle for which Iymery was not prepared. None of the generals expected such concerted opposition.”

Ahmose’s gaze wandered over the sun-drenched walls of the village without seeing them. All my time and energy has been bent on the siege around Het-Uart while the real battle for Egypt is taking place elsewhere, he thought with a spurt of panic. How could I have been so blind? Even while my mouth was speaking of the necessity for scouring the Delta of foreign troops, my mind was fully on a vision of the city’s daunting gates. I was not listening. What was I imagining? That Kamose had cleaned out the Delta once and for all? That somehow the foreigners would dissolve and melt away once their feet touched Egyptian soil? Or is it simply that my brush with death has left me afraid to face yet again the sheer sweat and terror and brutality of firsthand combat? A siege is relatively bloodless. It is a slow and predictable enterprise. Amun help me, I cannot yet afford to slip comfortably into any slow and predictable enterprise. I have been deluding myself. Realizing that his men had fallen silent and were watching him inquiringly, he gestured.

“Come up and stand behind me,” he ordered the officer. “Let your charioteer drive on alone and we will follow. Tell me what has been happening.” The soldier sketched a bow and swung himself onto the floor of Ahmose’s chariot. Ahmose signalled and the cavalcade began to move. The slumbering village gradually receded, lost behind a dappled confusion of dense foliage.

As they rolled over the flood plain, as yet still dry and hard-packed, although bordered by a swamp full of dark green reeds and noisy with water birds on one side and a young orchard criss-crossed with irrigation ditches on the other, the officer from the Division of Ptah spoke of the battle for control of the eastern Delta. His words were terse, his descriptions unadorned, yet he gave Ahmose a vivid and chilling picture of hand-to-hand combat in knee-deep quagmires, of sudden ambushes among fields of grazing cattle, of massacres in the white dust of the Horus Road itself. “We no longer pitch tents, Majesty,” he said with an offhandedness that told Ahmose far more than his statements. “We have all become Shock Troops, free-wheeling, forced to adapt to any situation that may arise. That is why my General sent me out to greet you.”

“Who is attempting to cut off the flow from Rethennu along the Road?” Ahmose wanted to know. The man smiled grimly.

“General Neferseshemptah with the Anubis Division had intended to do so,” he answered. “But there are nests of Setiu everywhere. He has not yet managed to reach so far.” The chieftains of Rethennu are throwing every army they have at us, Ahmose concluded to himself as the officer fell silent. They are emptying their lands to keep Apepa safe in his stronghold, hoping that in the end we will become exhausted and demoralized and go home, leaving the north to him. Egypt will be won or lost right here. And I have been too stupid to see it.

He had anticipated a dignified progression from one of his six divisions to another, an inspection of his eastern forces combined with leisurely consultations by lamplight in orderly camps. What he found were preoccupied, hard-pressed men sleeping on the ground in full battle attire with one ear open for the erratic reports of their scouts and one eye on the possibility of dawn attacks. The Setiu did not march in formation. They surged past the Wall of Princes and then broke up into small, compact units, moving quickly and easily among the Delta’s many pools and marshes, often lost but still able to hide and inflict damage on Egypt’s more disciplined forces by their sheer manœuvrability. And there are so many of them, Ahmose thought dismally, as he himself became part of the ebb and flow of the vicious, elusive shadowy war. The villages remember Kamose, the looting and burning and killing. They shelter the Setiu as their kinsmen, and the gods know that I do not want to rape the Delta again unless as a last resort.

Other gods’ days came and went, the Uaga Feast on the eighteenth day of Thoth, the Feast of the Great Manifestation of Osiris on the twenty-second. But they belonged to a reality of peace and uniformity where families gathered in the outer court of their local temples before going home to mark the holiday with festive food and games. For Ahmose they were simply periods between dawn and dusk filled with the urgent words of dishevelled scouts, hurried and sketchy deliberations with officers who knew that in the end they could only adapt to the vicissitudes of the moment, and long, nerve-racking treks through a maze of pools whose thickly choked verges could hide any number of desperate Setiu.

Sometimes scouts from Het-Uart found him with their news. Sometimes not. They were risking their lives to bring him word that nothing had changed around the city, and Ahmose considered ordering the link between himself and his western commanders temporarily broken, but decided against it. Circumstances could change very rapidly, or so he told himself. But he also admitted that the scouts returning to Turi, Sebekh-khu and Hor-Aha were taking his presence back with them. His unspoken fear of another rebellion was irrational, he knew. He was too tired to suppress it.

Then it was Paophi, the second month of the year, and the flood plains began to narrow imperceptibly. Far away to the south, Isis was crying. Reluctantly Ahmose decided to turn back. The fighting around him had lessened in frequency if not in intensity. His soldiers were gaining the upper hand in the Delta and could now give their attention to sealing off the Horus Road. He dictated his orders to that effect, commanding four divisions to make a winter camp where the road veered to the north-east between two large bodies of water and the other two divisions to continue the hunt for any stray Setiu cut off by the rising waters.

Few of the thousands of foreign troops headed for Het-Uart had been able to evade the Egyptians. Many were dead and the rest were hiding in scattered villages or wandering in the marshes. But the price had been high in both casualties and fatigue. I must begin a rotation of the men, Ahmose thought, as he at last faced west with his weary Followers and saw the Horus Road winding towards Het-Uart. I must allow them to go home and plant their crops if all goes well. It is time to summon the navy. He glanced across at Ramose. “We will pray for a good flood,” he said. Ramose smiled.

“Today is the Eve of the Amun-feast of Hapi,” he remarked, “and the rest of this month is also devoted to the god of the Nile. We ought to pause and make sacrifice, Ahmose.” Why, so it is, Ahmose remembered with a shock. Today is the seventeenth day of Paophi and I have been away from Het-Uart for only six weeks. It feels like six years. Nodding briefly at Ramose, he turned to Ankhmahor.

“Drive on,” he said.

It seemed to him that nothing had changed when he finally dismounted stiffly from his chariot beside the familiar campsite outside Het-Uart and his retainers scattered to their old duties. Akhtoy began to issue a flood of orders that would result in the erection of the royal tent, hot food, a cot with clean sheets, a replenished container of incense grains beside the Amun shrine. The mighty tributary was perhaps flowing a little faster but the city still squatted fortress-like upon its wide mound, its sloping walls towering to the sky, the air above it hazed from the smoke of its innumerable cooking fires, its mysterious life coming to him in a low susurration of constant noise. His soldiers were still coming and going, the Medjay’s ships still rocked gently on the water’s breast; it was as though he had never left. Except that I feel dazed and battered, he thought ruefully. Removing his sword belt and handing it to his body servant, he lowered himself into the chair Akhtoy had set in the shade of the trees and beckoned to Khabekhnet, waiting patiently for instructions. “Send to Paheri at Het nefer Apu,” he said. “I want the navy here as soon as possible. Enquire of your heralds whether or not there has been any response from the city to their challenges. Ask the three generals and Hor-Aha to present themselves to me after the evening meal. That is all, Khabekhnet.” The Chief Herald bowed and walked briskly away. Ramose had gone to see to his own living quarters. Ipi had also disappeared, but just as Ahmose’s tent was raised in a graceful unfolding of heavy linen, he returned, his arms full of scrolls.

“There are letters from the Queens Tetisheri, Aahotep and your wife, Majesty,” he said as he came up. “Also one from Prince Sebek-nakht. One from Paheri. One from the mayor of Aabtu.” Ahmose sighed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Makhu go past, leading one of his chariot horses towards the water, a stable servant trailing behind with a brush in each hand. The flies of winter, always thickening as the river rose, were gathered in a black cloud around the beast’s head and Makhu was irritably waving them away as he went. His own servant was unrolling the carpet that covered the floor of his tent and another was unpacking his lamps.

“What does the mayor of Aabtu want?” he asked. Ipi set his burden on the grass, selected the appropriate scroll, and broke its seal with practised efficiency. He scanned it quickly.

“He wants to know if Your Majesty is able to be present at the sacred Osiris plays this year. Most of the month of Khoiak is devoted to the god. He has four feast days.”

“Aabtu is in the Abetch nome and is under Prince Ankh-mahor’s jurisdiction,” Ahmose mused. “But the flood will have reached its apex during Khoiak and I cannot predict what that will mean for us here. We have never continued the siege through a winter before. Tell the mayor that due to circumstances here in the Delta, of which I am sure he is aware, I cannot commit myself to be present at the plays but that if possible I will send Prince Ankhmahor as my representative. Now Sebek-nakht.” Ipi bent and lifted another scroll.

“The Prince wishes you to know that he has arrived in Weset and has assessed the work the Queen requires of him. He has been accorded the greatest courtesy, is occupying quarters within your house itself, and confers daily with the Queen whom he calls ‘Egypt’s most beautiful and illustrious lady.’” Ipi looked up. “He has no request, Majesty.” Jealousy shot through Ahmose but he forced it back. Sebek-nakht is both handsome and accomplished, he thought darkly. He is far from his home, as I am. He sees her every day. They hold intimate discussions. Amun have mercy, what is wrong with me? The scar behind his ear prickled and he scratched at it with annoyance.

“The rest can wait until I can read them myself at my leisure,” he said. “Thank you, Ipi. Be ready to record my meeting with the generals this evening.” I cannot go home, let alone journey all the way to Aabtu for the sacred plays, he thought grimly as his Chief Scribe gathered up the scrolls and hurried away. If I begin to entertain these evil imaginings, I shall go mad. Aahmes-nefertari loves me and I trust her utterly. I must hold to those two beliefs alone and firmly reject all else. Yet the phantom pain continued to lurk at the back of his mind, its source grounded in nothing but his own sick fantasy, and he could not purge it away.