Sovereign of Stars (4 page)

“My good men,” she said, and though her youth and
her sex pitched her voice high, still her words rang out clear and
strong. “Never has a new king come to the throne in peace. Always
the strength of Egypt is tested, by Kush or by Hatti, or by the
Heqa-Khasewet. When my brother reigned as Horus, Kush picked at our
southern towns for two years, as cringing dogs pick at bones. I
tell you Kush will rise to plague us again. They are flies on a
horse's hide – no more than that. But they thirst for Egyptian
blood.”

Voices swelled at her feet.
Never! They are dogs!
Cowards hiding amongst their rocks!

“I say this: if the Kushites want our blood, let us
bring it to them! Let us bring it still in our veins, still in our
strong Egyptian hearts! Let them see how hot our blood runs. Let
them feel Egypt fall upon them as Horus falls upon his prey, swift
and sharp-taloned!”

She drew Nehesi's sword from its sheath and held it
high. The camp erupted into cheers; the crude hunting spears and
bludgeons of Behdet's youth raised alongside the fine bronze blades
of her Waset soldiers. The roar of the cheering crowd settled into
a rhythmic chant: the name she had chosen on her ascension to the
throne, the only name by which her subjects might address her.
Maatkare! Maatkare!

Nehesi lifted her down from the pyramid's step, and
made the way through the crowd back toward her tent. “The men of
Behdet are welcome at every cook fire,” she told the stewards of
her camp, shouting the command so that all might hear. “They are
mine now; all my soldiers are brothers. Bring casks of wine from my
ships and share it amongst my brothers equally.”

Inside her tent she relinquished the blades to
Nehesi while her women fussed over her bed. Night was falling
outside; Tabiry struck the tent's small braziers alight. The smell
of sweet oil and dark smoke enveloped the king.

“A fine show,” Nehesi admitted. “Brewers' boys and
farmers' whelps are often eager to prove themselves in battle, but
you brought them running like loosed horses toward the stables.
I've never seen men so ready to be shot full of Kushite
arrows.”

“I suppose it was the procession this morning that
did the trick.”

“You made them feel welcomed,” Tabiry said, “and
fierce. The last king never did as much for his men.”

“The last king was a fool.”

“Ah, Majesty; you will hear no argument from
me.”

Hatshepsut dismissed Nehesi and, when she had
finished her supper of boiled eggs, melons, and wine from a jar
unsealed by her own hands, she summoned harps and flutes to play
for her. She lay on her cot drifting in and out of a strange,
exultant half-dream in which she flew up to the sun on falcon's
wings and dove like an arrow to strike at a strange, shadowy enemy
whose face she could not see. Now and then a shout of
Maatkare
drew her back to bleary consciousness as outside
the men celebrated around their fires. She was only partially aware
of Tabiry and Keminub dismissing the musicians, tamping out the
flames in the braziers, straightening the fine, light sheet over
her body.

“Iset,” she murmured, but the only answer was the
din of her camp, celebrating its victories long before they were
won.

CHAPTER FOUR

Hatshepsut arrived once more at Egypt's southernmost
fortress, deep in the tjati of Ta-Seti, as she had done a year ago
when she had carried the tiny spark of Neferure in her womb. This
time when she passed the thunderous cataracts spilling white froth
between dark claws of stone she was not afraid. A year ago the
journey had filled her with anxiety. Now, the roar of the water
seemed to swell a great surge of rage and power within her heart,
raising and spreading it as the demon wind spreads walls of sand in
the desert.

The trek south had taken three weeks – longer than
usual, for she had stopped in every city along the way to raise her
troops and to inspire the courage and loyalty of Egypt's young men.
At first she had maneuvered the same as she had done in Behdet,
parading to the garrison in a show of vitality and pomp, then
camping just outside each city with wine flowing freely and every
cook fire ringing with camaraderie for new recruits.

But after a handful of days, word raced ahead of her
ships, as she knew it would, and soon it was she who was greeted
with parades, with soldiers turned out in their finest and generals
boasting of their swelled ranks, of the boys who clamored to
conscript themselves to Egypt's cause. By the time she reached
Ta-Seti her fleet had more than doubled, sailing on a current of
masculine fervor, the rails of the boats ringing with warriors'
calls and the clangor of bronze. Amidst Waset's fine war ships
sailed the boats of fishermen and merchants, laden with soldiers.
Their encampment filled the plain below Ta-Seti's fortress from
hill to hill.

Now she stood on the walls of the fortress –
her
fortress, the one she had restored with her own riches,
her first achievement as Great Royal Wife. The general Ramose
detailed his strategy while she and Nehesi observed the camp
growing across the plain below. She had sent three small, fast
messenger boats up the Iteru ahead of her war fleet, carrying words
for Ramose's ears only. They had reached Ta-Seti days before the
Pharaoh, and Ramose was well prepared.

“I have kept my men monitoring the ravines since I
received word from Your Majesty,” the general said. “A few Kushite
scouts have come near, but none survived to carry word home
again.”

“Good.”

The plain where the fortress stood was separated
from the settlements of Kush by a half-circle of steep hills. Four
or five ravines cut through these hills, ancient stream beds, now
dry, that afforded stealthy access to Kushite raiders.

“Nevertheless, they will learn of your presence
here. We will not hold the advantage of surprise for long.”

“I agree. And I tasked you with putting that
advantage to good use.”

“Ah, Majesty; I believe I have.”

Ramose turned his back on the plain, looking down
instead to the interior of the fortress. Hatshepsut followed his
gaze. In the pale stone courtyards between barracks and stables,
dozens of men worked in the hot sun, readying chariots, backing
horses into their traces, strapping hard leather armor to one
another's chests and backs.

“We move today,” Ramose said. “Within the hour. The
northernmost ravine leads to a village beyond the hills.”

“Within the hour?” Nehesi shook his head. “Her men
cannot move so soon. They have been aboard ships for days. They
need time to sort their gear, to ready themselves.”

“My men need no such time. Leave yours to prepare
their encampment, Majesty. By moonrise my captains will take yours
in squadrons into the ravines. With such great numbers we can hold
all the passages into Kush easily; they will have no access to this
plain, nor to any of Ta-Seti's villages or farms. And we shall move
freely between here and there.”

“I shall find my own captains, and tell them what we
intend.”

“No time. Let me send a man into camp to spread the
word. We must move quickly if we are to maintain our
advantage.”

**

Hatshepsut's body had never been lithe and curved
like Iset's or Tabiry's. She was almost as straight and blocky as a
man, and so Nehesi had no trouble choosing armor that fit her well.
In the shade of the barracks she stood and allowed him to wrap
about her a thick vest of layered linen hardened with linseed oil;
it crossed over her breasts and was immediately stifling in the
daytime heat. A sheen of sweat broke out on her bare belly and in
the hollow of her lower back. He tied hardened leather breast- and
backplates to her, fore and aft, until she felt as stiff and solid
as a dung beetle. The plates were thin but quite rigid, and scarred
from use by many of the fortress's soldiers. The leather smelled
powerfully of horses and of men's sweat. The scent drove home the
immediacy of the moment.
I am going into battle. Here and now.
Bless me, Amun; protect your son.

Nehesi belted her with a wide, soft band of linen.
It soaked the sweat from her skin. To this belt he fastened a groin
shield, a dense inverted teardrop of thick-braided flax stems,
dried hard and tough. It hung to her knees.

“I haven't got much there to protect,” she said,
trying to laugh away her sudden anxiety.

“Ah, Lady, you have.” Nehesi tapped his own thigh,
high up near the knot of his kilt. “This vein, here. One nick to it
and you'll bleed out like a butchered goat.”

“I see.” She turned away, trembling under the
unaccustomed weight of her armor.

Most of the chariots were ready now; their drivers
walked their teams in tight circles or allowed the horses to dance
forward and back in the sun and dust of the bare courtyard.

Nehesi bent near her ear. “You do not need to ride
into battle yourself, Great Lady. Let Ramose take the lead. You can
stay here in the fortress and allow him to pledge his victory to
your name when he returns.”

“No; it will not do. I have come all this way to
bind Ramose and all his men – and all the generals and all the
soldiers in the Two Lands – to me.”

Nehesi's face softened with something approaching
genuine worry. “You don't even know how to use a spear.”

“It seems a fairly simple concept.”

He rumbled a laugh. “Ah, I suppose it is.”

A collection of spears stood leaning against the
barracks wall, ready for the soldiers' hands to take them up and
carry them into battle. Nehesi sorted through them, testing the
length and heft of a few before he settled on one and carried it to
her. He showed her how to balance it for a thrust, where to place
her hand.

“Don't grip it so tightly. You'll fatigue your
arm.”

She loosened her hand, made a few experimental
thrusts at her shadow on the barracks wall.

“I have it, I think.”

“You don't,” he said, not unkindly. “No amount of
practice can prepare you for battle, what it's truly like to face
your enemy and kill him if you can.”

She knew she blanched as she looked up at him; she
could feel the blood drain from her face.

“Come along,” he said, glancing past her, his voice
suddenly cheery. “Your chariot is ready, Great Lady.”

**

Hatshepsut was certain as they left the fortress
that none of her men gathered on the plain knew it was she who rode
into battle. There was nothing to declare the Pharaoh's presence to
the casual observer – no banners, no gilding on her chariot, not
even the blue war crown of royal tradition. She looked like any
other soldier, gripping her spear with one hand and the chariot's
rail with the other, swaying beside her driver, her head and neck
shielded from the sun by a simple white cloth. She prayed the men
nearest her – the men she now led toward the hills and the dark
cleft of the ravine – could not see how her spear hand shook. Only
her inexperience set her apart, but by the gods, what a great
difference it made.

Ramose's face was imperturbable as his cart glided
beside her own. He held his weapon with an easy confidence she knew
she would never attain. His body shifted this way and that in an
unconscious dance, absorbing the jolts and sways of travel. Their
horses moved at a brisk walk toward the hills, and Hatshepsut
watched Ramose grimly, silently, until at last he ordered his
driver to draw rein at the mouth of the ravine.

Hatshepsut glanced back over her shoulder. The ranks
of chariots slowed and milled in the grassy flat behind her. Far
beyond, the fortress was a bar of pale light against the slight
haze that demarcated the presence of the Iteru. Her camp's tents
were as small as pebbles from this distance.

“The ravines are dangerous to traverse,” Ramose
said.

Nehesi, clutching the reins of Hatshepsut's chariot,
eyed the ravine's floor. It angled sharply between two yellow cliff
faces, bending into deep blue shadows. “The floor seems sandy
enough. The rocks don't look so terrible.”

“Ah, it's not the horses' legs we fear for.” Ramose
jerked his chin upward to where the cliffs rose above them, jagged
and streaked here and there with dark desert varnish. “Kushites
hide up there. My men have held this ravine for days, Majesty, and
I have had no word that any raiders have overtaken them. Still, one
can never tell with Kushites. They are fierce as demons and far
cleverer.”

Hatshepsut swallowed a mouthful of saliva. “And
so?”

“And so we go quickly through, and hope that the
cliffs are not full of enemy bowmen.”

“Ah.”

Ramose shrugged. “I believe we would have had word
if our sentries had been displaced.”

“You believe?” Nehesi said.

“Most likely.”

He nodded to his driver, and the man hissed to the
horses. They sprang into a run, rattling Ramose behind them,
raising a wake of yellow sand.

“Amun's eyes,” Nehesi muttered, and shouted to their
own beasts.

Hatshepsut clung to the chariot's rail. The walls of
the ravine closed around her immediately; they seemed to lean over
her, and she felt the prickle of eyes watching from above, though
whether they were Egyptian eyes or Kushite – or only the eyes of
the cliffs, stony and impassive – she could not tell. For one brief
moment she allowed herself to feel relief – it was cool in the
ravine, almost cold, and the respite from the heat of sun and armor
was welcome. Then her chariot jolted across a rut, and she lurched
against Nehesi, righted herself on wobbling legs. The ravine walls
shouted back at her with the tumult of their passage, magnifying
it. It was a terrifying sound, and it drowned out her other senses.
She was vaguely aware that she must keep her eyes sharp, must be
alert for the sight of Kushites – but all she could do was hold
tight to her chariot's rail and fight against the roaring in her
ears that threatened to sweep her away like an unmanned boat down
the cataracts.