The Horus Road (48 page)

He had made sure that Hekayib attired him as sumptuously as possible, in a kilt shot through with gold thread that would catch the sunlight and a starched linen helmet of blue and white, also glittering with gold. The massive pectoral that Kamose had commissioned and that Ahmose had adapted for himself covered his breast, alive with turquoise and jasper and the sacred lapis. Golden ankhs swung from his earlobes. Moonstone and carnelian rings encircled his hennaed fingers and lapis scarabs set in gold adorned his wrists and arms. He mounted the chariot, Khabekhnet beside him, Ankhmahor carrying the flag behind, and at a word Mesehti shook the reins. “Majesty, it is a grave risk to drive too close to the gate,” Ankhmahor warned him as they picked up speed. “You will be within range of their archers.”

“I know,” Ahmose shouted back at him against the rushing wind of their passage. “But it is a chance I must take. If I do not appear with Khabekhnet, the ultimatum will not be taken seriously and anyway, I will seem to be a coward.”

It did not take long to cross the mile of gravelled sand between his camp and the fort. The space was full of soldiers bent on their errands, who paused to reverence the sun-fired figure flashing by them, one jewelled hand raised in acknowledgement, the symbol of his authority fluttering audibly above him. Ahmose noted their respect absently. All his attention was fixed on those massive stone walls drawing nearer and beginning to loom over him.

The motley crowd of people on their summit set up a concerted roar when they saw him come. It did not abate until Mesehti had brought the vehicle to a halt before the tall gate. Ahmose waited, looking up calmly. Gradually an expectant silence fell. Khabekhnet drew in a deep breath. “To the commander of the fort of Sharuhen, greetings from Uatch-Kheperu Ahmose, Son of the Sun,” he began, his well-trained herald’s voice ringing out clearly and forcefully on the limpid morning air. No sound from above disturbed the remainder of the challenge, but the moment the listeners realized that he had finished, a chorus of jeers and insults went up.

“Go home to Egypt, scum of the Nile!”

“Die of boredom, desert rats!”

“Baal-Reshep hates you, murderers!”

At a curt word from Ahmose, Mesehti wheeled the chariot and began to traverse the long curve that would take them to the eastern gate, several miles distant. “Savages and vermin!” Khabekhnet growled. “I hope our soldiers heard their taunts. Then they will be more than willing to slit a few throats when we finally breach these accursed defences.” Such an outburst was unusual for the Chief Herald. Ahmose agreed with him. He himself was seething with rage, but he pressed his lips together and gazed grimly ahead as the huge chunks of stone flitted by.

It was noon before they drew up before the fourth gate, having endured the same taunts and ridicule at the eastern and northern portals. The Followers who had run beside the chariot were panting and pouring sweat. Ahmose himself was damp and tired and Khabekhnet surreptitiously tested the strength of his throat before looking up, squaring his shoulders, and delivering the last call. Behind the chariot the road to the ocean lay white and empty. The sun stood at its zenith, almost blinding Ahmose as he followed the direction of his Chief Herald’s gaze.

He squinted into its glare and saw that here the crest of the wall was naked save for three men who stood limned against the bright sky, listening impassively. They were bearded and hawk-faced, their heads encircled by decorated and tasselled cloth bands, their bodies hidden under thick calf-length tunics bearing many-coloured geometric patterns with fringed necks and hems. All held spears and the one in the centre also had a huge axe resting by his ankle with the haft against his palm.

Khabekhnet ended his delivery. Ahmose waited for some response from those motionless sentinels, some indication that they had heard and understood the message, but they continued to stare down at him with seeming indifference and before he could be made to feel foolish he tapped Mesehti on his moist spine. The weary horses turned away. “I wonder who they were,” Khabekhnet said as the chariot neared Ahmose’s tent and stopped. “The commander’s personal guard perhaps.” He stepped down stiffly and Ahmose followed. His head was pounding after a morning in the sun and wind.

“I have a feeling that the man in the middle was the commander himself,” Ahmose replied. “There was plenty of time for him to be told that we were circling the city with our challenge and he climbed up above the western gate to hear it for himself. I fear it was an act of hollow bluster on our part, Khabekhnet, but it had to be done.” Khabekhnet set the flag back in its place, bowed, and strode away.

Ahmose dismissed Mesehti and entered his quarters. “My head is splitting,” he said to Akhtoy as he dragged off his kilt and helmet and slumped onto the couch. “Go to my physician and get me poppy.” He lay with eyes squeezed shut and fingers pressed against the pain throbbing in his temples. Outside, Ankhmahor was releasing some of the Followers and giving the rest their instructions for the afternoon, his familiar tones bringing a sense of security to Ahmose as he waited tensely for the relief the drug would bring.

You did this to me, he spoke to Apepa in his mind. It was your hand that guided the assassin who murdered Kamose and left me with this demon in my skull. If it swallows up the rest of my life, I will siege Sharuhen until you give in. Akhtoy returned with Hekayib and together they helped him to sit. Carefully Akhtoy spooned the milky liquid into his mouth and lowered him back onto his pillow then Hekayib bathed him gently. Ahmose began to doze under the body servant’s soothing touch. “Where is Tani?” he asked drowsily.

“Her Majesty has gone to see the Great Green with Heket and her guards,” Akhtoy answered from across the tent.

“She is avoiding me,” Ahmose commented, already almost asleep. He did not hear his steward’s murmured reply.

He woke to eat at sunset with the pulse in his head reduced to a dull ache, then slept again. There was nothing to do, no orders to give, no change in his army’s deployment. Akhtoy told him the next morning that Tani had come to his tent, been told that he was not well, and had gone away again. Ahmose was glad that he had been unconscious at the time. He did not want to talk to his sister any more, to sit with her in an atmosphere of awkwardness and hidden anger, to see her eyes slide away from his at the introduction of any remark other than the lightest observation. The poppy had left him with a slight nausea. He refused the first meal but drank some beer, had Hekayib dress him in the same sumptuous clothes he had worn the day before, and ventured out into the freshness of the early air.

Khabekhnet and Ankhmahor were squatting on the ground deep in conversation and Mesehti was sitting on the edge of Ahmose’s chariot, legs swinging, face turned into the morning breeze. All three straightened at his approach. “We will take up our station beneath the southern gate and we will stay there until Ra stands overhead or Sharuhen gives us an answer,” he told them as he stepped into the vehicle. He nodded at Khabekhnet who climbed in behind him, and once more they rolled towards the fort, coming to a halt almost at the gate. This time the wall was deserted. The citizens have been ordered to stay away from the summit, Ahmose surmised. Not to spare us the indignity of hours of abuse but to lengthen every minute we wait here in heat and silence. They will make no counter until the afternoon comes. Someone is watching us although we cannot see him, a sentry directed to record every bead of sweat, every shift of weight from one weary foot to the other, every sigh, until the commander deigns to appear. He settled his hip against the wicker frame of the chariot and closed his eyes, deliberately imagining himself sitting on his watersteps at Weset with the Nile running cool and shaded before him and the fishing skiff of his boyhood tugging invitingly at the pole to which it was moored.

As he had thought, the sun had travelled half the sky before there was movement on the wall above the gate. At first Ahmose and his men had talked sporadically, but before long all conversation had been sacrificed to the need to remain upright and still. Ahmose, having exhausted all visions of his home, had fallen into a grim trance when Khabekhnet leaned forward and whispered, “They are here, Majesty.” Ahmose lifted his head. The same three men had come out and were bending over the waist-high lip of stone that ran around the battlements, but this time the figure in the middle had a tall bird’s feather stuck in his headband and the one to his right lifted a horn to his mouth. The tone, when it came, was shockingly harsh and Ahmose felt his exhaustion blow away with its strident blast.

“Ahmose Tao, self-styled King of Egypt,” the man in the centre called down. “I am the hik-khase of this fortress city. My word is the law. You insolently demand the surrender of Awoserra Apepa, true ruler of Egypt whom you hounded from his country like the desert dog you are. He is here under my protection and so he will remain. I laugh at your presumption and I mock your boastful threats. Take your toy soldiers and go back to the hovel from which you came. Sharuhen will never open to such as you.” Then he was gone as quickly and quietly as he had come and Ahmose found himself staring at nothing but the rim of the wall.

“He did not even bother to tell us his name, Majesty,” Ankhmahor said in a strangled voice. “We are certainly in a country without Ma’at when the lord of a city, even an enemy, treats with another lord in so rude a fashion.”

At that moment something struck Khabekhnet on the side of the head. He cried out and raised a hand and as he did so the whole top of the wall came alive with people screaming, shouting and throwing missiles that Mesehti, bending to retrieve one that had fallen with a soft thud into the chariot, identified with a spasm of disgust.

“It is donkey dung!” he exclaimed, flinging it away and rubbing his palm on his kilt. “They are pelting us with animal excrement, Majesty!” Tightening the reins, he jerked the horses savagely around. Several Followers jumped into the chariot to shield Ahmose from the barrage and with Ankhmahor and the remainder of Ahmose’s guard they dashed out of range of the hysterical crowd.

Once safely dismounted by his tent, Ahmose told Mesehti to wait. Taking up a handful of waste he walked unsteadily to where Tani’s small tent had been pitched and wrenching up the flap he strode inside. She was standing by her cot in a loose robe, her hair falling down her back, obviously about to take her afternoon rest. Ahmose came right up to her and thrust the offending matter under her nose. “This is donkey dung, scraped off the streets of Sharuhen and showered on me when I was placed before the gate to hear the answer to my ultimatum!” he ground out. “This is the insult your fine husband and his Setiu brother commanded to be heaped on me and my nobles! These are the brutes you have chosen above your own family, above Ramose, an honourable man who loved you!” He tossed it onto the carpet at her feet. “Have Heket pack up your belongs and leave this camp at once. Mesehti will drive you to the gate. I do not want to see you any more, Tani. Your presence is an affront to every loyal Egyptian here.” She had gone pale and was beginning to tremble at this furious outpouring of his wrath. Tears slipped down her cheeks and Ahmose was too enraged to care whether they were from fear of him or shame for her husband’s race.

“Ahmose, I am so sorry …” she stammered, but a wail from Heket, cowering in a corner, cut her off.

“Majesty, I do not want to go to the Setiu! I want to go home to Weset!” she cried. Running to Tani she flung herself down. “Release me from your service, I beseech you!” She twisted towards Ahmose. “Divine One, have pity on me,” she sobbed. “I am not a slave. I have been faithful to your family, even within the stinking confines of Het-Uart. Please, let me go!” Ahmose answered before Tani could speak.

“I would not order the scruffiest cur that scavenged for food by the docks at Weset to enter that accursed place,” he said. It was a deliberate affront to his sister and she gave a strangled whimper. “Put your mistress’s possessions in order and then you are free. I will arrange passage for you on the next ship sailing to the Delta.” He stepped away from the grateful mouth that was seeking his foot. “As for you, Tani, I do not think that I wish to kiss you goodbye.”

“Ahmose, please … For the sake of our youth together …” She was weeping openly now, her neck and the front of her robe already soaked with her tears. “We must not part like this. If you send me forth without your blessing, I will be walking unprotected under the eyes of foreign gods. You may regret such withholding in the days to come.“ He spun on his heel and stalked to the tent opening, his heart so full of pain, anger and sadness that he felt it would choke him.

“My only regret is that Ramose did not strangle you when he saw what you had become,” he snarled, and pushed his way out into the warm afternoon.

He did not see her go. After a brusque word to Mesehti he shut himself up in his tent. His eyes burned, and although he washed his hands, he fancied that the stench of the donkey excrement still clung to his skin and fouled the air around him. He sat in his chair, and after a long time he heard his chariot’s harness rattle as Mesehti drove her away. He was still sprawled in the same position when his charioteer returned to tell him that the gate had opened for her and a small contingent of soldiers had hurried out to pick up her belongings and usher her quickly inside.

The evening was warm and Ahmose was eating his meal just beyond the door to his tent so that he could enjoy its unusual softness when Ipi came up to him and bowed. The Chief Scribe had a scroll in his hand. “From Weset, Majesty,” he said. “The herald saw me as he was crossing to you. He will rest and then present himself to you for a reply.” Ahmose nodded and pushed his plate away.

“Read it to me,” he ordered. Ipi sank to the earth at once and broke the seal.

“It is from your esteemed mother,” he said, unrolling it and peering at the characters in the fading light. “‘My greetings to you, Ahmose, Lord of All Life. Know that on the twelfth day of Mekhir your wife gave birth to a daughter. Aahmes-nefertari has recovered well but the baby is thin. She vomits back her nurse’s milk and cries a great deal. I have obtained goat’s milk for her which she seems able to retain a little longer than the other but the physician’s prediction for her survival is not good. Neither is the name chosen for her by the astrologers. I have waited to dictate this to you so that I could include it. Also I had hoped that Aahmes-nefertari would give you this news herself but she refuses to communicate with you. She has seemed very melancholy since Tetisheri and I returned from Djeb and I fear for her health also.