The Hippopotamus Marsh (23 page)

The shouts and scuffles around them grew, then slowly faded into a waiting silence. Gradually the dust cleared.
Amunmose was mounting the dais in his long tunic and leopard skin, an acolyte beside him bearing a smoking censer. He began the prayers for victory and protection. Taking the censer, he moved it above the stiff ranks. By his side was a large gold cup brimming with bull’s blood that would be sprinkled on the soldiers as they marched past the dais.

Seqenenra listened to the clear, echoing voice of his friend, his heart constricting with foreboding, wondering if any but he knew the full fruitlessness of this gesture of his. He was the instrument of destruction for Tani, for Aahmesnefertari and her unborn child, for his wife. He dared not think of the twins, both standing tall and thoughtful on the dais in their battle gear. He dared not consider the King more than six hundred miles away. Only the thought of his own fate gave him peace. Selfish, he said to himself. I had no choice, yet I wish that he and I could have met in single combat before I became the useless hulk I am now.

Ra had lifted above the eastern desert to spark gold on the tips of the hundreds of spears forested on the plain and slide brightly along the spokes of the chariot wheels that rolled to and fro as the restless horses whickered and fidgeted. Beyond the Nile the walls of Seqenenra’s estate rose tall and the temple glowed sturdy and brown. On the shrunken surface of the river the light splintered and sank into the gentle, constant swells lapping the bank. The western cliffs lit suddenly, jagged and beautiful. Ah, Weset, Seqenenra thought. Quiet, hot and sleepy. A place where a man might dream his life away in perfect contentment. The pain of losing you is like a knife under my ribs. Farewell.

Amunmose had fallen silent. Si-Amun left the dais and came to assist his father who went slowly to meet him.
Together they mounted the few steps, Si-Amun’s arm around Seqenenra. Kamose began his address but Seqenenra, balanced precariously on his crutch, hardly listened to his son’s powerful tones. Words of Ma’at, majesty and cause flowed over him. He surveyed the orderly lines, his eyes wandering from the stern faces of the Braves of the King directly below, bows slung over their massive shoulders, past the chariots with their blue-plumed horses and blue-helmeted drivers, to the files of infantry standing attentively and soberly beyond.

The Medjay stood out with their black bodies, a head taller than their Egyptian fellows. Their hair, like Hor-Aha’s, lay long and plaited on their naked chests. The Egyptian conscripts had also grown their hair, a soldier’s superstition and an attempt at protection, and it hung darkly gleaming to their shoulders. More bowmen than I had hoped, Seqenenra thought. That is good. How fine they look, how predatory! But how few, my Division of Amun that is not a division. Amun, you of the Double Plumes, be with us in the coming days and shield us with your might!

Kamose had finished. Hor-Aha called hoarsely and the men began to stride past the dais as Amunmose took the cup of blood and began to sprinkle them as they came. Their eyes fled from him to the Prince, his distorted face watching each one as they received the blessing and went to form marching ranks along the river road. Si-Amun touched his arm and obediently he left the dais, waiting at the foot while his chariot was brought. A chair had been tied to the chariot’s frame, with a high back against which he could lean. Over it arched a canopy. Aahotep and the
girls came to embrace him and their hands followed him as he climbed into the chariot and Si-Amun settled him on the chair, tying him into it securely. Seeing him thus, immobile, his spear now in his hand, Aahotep flung herself into the chariot. Her arms went around him. “I love you, Seqenenra,” she cried out, her head pressed into his neck. “It is hard to see you go like this!”

For one delirious moment he inhaled her warm odour, then he pushed her away. “Ahmose will need you,” he said steadily, “and you must comfort the girls. See that a shrine to Montu is kept open in the house, and the sacrifices made. The god of war will listen.” She recovered herself and got out of the chariot. The girls stood with her. Seqenenra heard the order to march. Presently Si-Amun leaped up before him and picked up the reins.

The chariot jerked and began to roll. Si-Amun waved to his mother and brandished his whip. With difficulty Seqenenra looked back. They were still standing where he had left them beside the track in the dust churned afresh by the marching feet behind him. Aahotep had her arms around the girls. Tetisheri, well back and surrounded by her servants, had come to her feet in salute. They seemed so small against the backdrop of the river, their figures framed by the temple pylon beyond the water where the flags rippled in the new breeze. The farther bank was crowded with a sea of quiet citizens who had come out to watch their Prince go off to war. They had not cheered. There was no mood of joyous anticipation. Their faces were anxious and solemn.

After one long look Seqenenra turned away. Before him were the splayed legs and flexing back of his son and the
thud of the horses’ little hooves in the hard-packed sand. Behind him some of the men were singing. He glanced back once more but a bend in the road led through a straggle of trees and hid his view. Only the tips of the temple flagstaffs could be seen, even now dropping to be lost in the jerking palm leaves. Weset was gone.

8

THEY MADE GOOD TIME
that day. Spirits were high in spite of the fiery heat and three hours after Ra had been swallowed by Nut they made camp beside the river at Kift. Seqenenra was exhausted. They had stopped briefly once to eat, but he had nibbled his bread and drunk his water still tied in the chariot. In spite of the shade his canopy afforded he was weak and dizzy by the time Hor-Aha came to help him down. “A good day, Prince,” the General remarked as they entered the tent and Seqenenra’s body servant came forward. “If we continue to cover twenty miles a day we should arrive at Qes in another ten or eleven days. But, of course, we will not. We must allow for lame horses, sick men and other mishaps. Say twelve days.” Seqenenra smiled at Hor-Aha as he sank gratefully onto the camp cot.

“I will need twelve days to become hardened,” he admitted ruefully. “See to the men, Hor-Aha, and when you have eaten, bring me my sons. Qes marks the boundary of my governorship according to our ancient agreement with Het-Uart. We must decide how to proceed once it is behind us.” The General bowed and went out.

Seqenenra’s body servant gently removed his sweat-stained helmet and rumpled kilt and began to wash him. Seqenenra lay with eyes closed against the blinding
headache that knifed every time he moved, feeling his bruised, tired muscles relax under the trickles of the blessed cool water. He heard his bodyguard take up their station outside with a cough and a low word or two. Beyond them the soldiers were still arriving and breaking step, scattering to their assigned eating fires with much shouting and laughter. The body servant covered Seqenenra with a sheet, and lighting the one lamp that hung from the central tent pole, he went away to fetch the evening meal. Seqenenra dozed. He was woken by the man setting a tray containing smoked fish, bread and dried fruit beside him and he struggled to sit up and eat. He was suddenly ravenous.

He was nursing a cup of wine when Kamose, Si-Amun and Hor-Aha pushed into the tent. Dismissing the servant he told the men to sit and they folded onto the carpeted floor. Si-Amun was enveloped in a white tunic and his feet were bare. His face was red and his nose blistering from the long hours under the sun. Kamose had also changed, but into a fresh kilt and helmet. Hor-Aha wore his customary woollen cloak under which his weapons could be glimpsed. Seqenenra poured them wine and they drank greedily. “Kamose, dictate a message to the family,” he said. “Tell them we are well. Has there been any activity on the river?” Hor-Aha shook his head.

“No royal skiffs or barges,” he answered. “I have scouts well ahead of us. Things must be quiet in Kush, and of course now that Apepa has decided to build the temple at Weset he need send no more letters until the architects and masons arrive.”

“If any heralds are intercepted, they must be killed,” Seqenenra warned. “We cannot risk detection yet. We
are still passing through my nomes, so we are safe for a while.”

“What do you intend to do once Qes is past?” Si-Amun asked. “Do we push on to Het-Uart with all speed or conquer as we go?”

“We must conquer as we go,” Seqenenra said slowly, his words more unintelligible than usual because of his fatigue. Speaking was an effort. “We cannot become an island in a sea of enemies. I wish to absorb any mayors or governors who can be persuaded to join us and who have warriors at their disposal.”

“That is not likely after Qes,” Kamose cut in. “From there north, all the men with power are Setiu.”

“But their subjects are not, nor their minor officials. The villages are isolated along the river. We will take the men as we go. At the seats of government we will meet with the ministers and try to persuade them, and if that is not possible we will kill them and then sweep up their underlings.” Seqenenra paused to summon his strength. His eyelid was pricking. “Did we lose any donkeys?”

“No, Prince,” Hor-Aha assured him. “The supplies have now caught up with us. The men are being fed and guards have been set. We may look to a quiet night.” The words were balm to Seqenenra’s throbbing ears.

“Then you are dismissed. Si-Amun, find my physician. I need something to still my head.” Seeing his distress they murmured their good nights and left.

Presently the physician came, examined him, and saying little, poured a draught of poppy. Seqenenra drank eagerly. For a while he thought of Aahotep, of Ahmose and Tetisheri probably still closeted together with mountains of
administrative scrolls, of Tani perhaps sleepless and alone, but his thoughts ran together and dissolved into dreams and he slept.

At Iunet and Quena he was received by the towns’ administrators, nervous and worried men who had already provided peasants for Kamose’s conscription. They had no news for Seqenenra. As far as they knew, all was quiet in the few miles north where their jurisdiction extended. A summer lassitude lay on the countryside.

Seqenenra thanked them and resumed his march. He felt weaker every day, knowing that this journey taxed even hardened soldiers accustomed to Hor-Aha’s strenuous training. His own small programme of exercise saved him from complete collapse, but he began to suffer fevers that rose in the evening and kept him alternately shivering and sweating until the dawn. His physician begged him to turn back, to deliver the army into the hands of his sons, but Seqenenra knew that, maimed and useless as he was, the common soldiers still regarded him as their talisman and the heart would go out of them if he crawled back to Weset with his tail between his legs. He did not know how he was to reach Het-Uart, weeks away. He tried not to think of it. He concentrated on Qes.

At Aabtu the whole army went into the temple where the head of Osiris was buried and did homage to Egypt’s most venerated deity. The Prince of Aabtu, Ankhmahor, had sent many soldiers to Kamose and he had brought together a further two hundred men for Seqenenra. “But these are good farmers, Highness,” he reminded Seqenenra. “They are needed in this nome once the Inundation recedes. Please send them home as soon as you have taken
Het-Uart.” Seqenenra, overcome with gratitude and giddy with fever, agreed. They were five days out of Weset.

The following time passed like the sullen, muddy flow of the river itself. During the day Seqenenra grimly endured the heat and dust, the ever-present flies, the jolting of the chariot. At night there were the fires, the tents, a brief conference, then the blessed release of drugged sleep.

He had sailed by these towns—Thinis where the first Kings of Egypt had built their palaces, Akhmin where he had personal acres under cultivation, Badari of the doum palms—innumerable times, gliding past on his barge, beer in his hand as he lounged under the shade of canopies with Aahotep on their way to Khemennu. But to roll through them in a chariot, mile following weary mile of dead fields, dry canals, barren shrubs and knotted bare trees, was to experience a different Egypt, a merciless country of ugliness and waste. He knew it was only summer, only the discomfort and misery of a land lying parched and waiting for its miraculous rebirth, but more than once he asked himself if this was what he was risking his titles, his estate and his very life for, this sun-beaten strip of aridity beside a stinking, thin dribble of water. Only pride kept his head high behind the sweating back of his son as the hours crawled by.

They reached Qes without incident on the eleventh day. No fort or physical boundary marked the limit of Seqenenra’s contro; indeed, there was not even a sizeable town. The cultivated land on the west bank gave way to a large patch of desert that was interrupted by cliffs through which a narrow defile snaked. The desert continued untrammelled on the other side. Beyond the cliffs was a small village.

Here also was a temple to Hathor. With her gold-sheathed cow’s horns and her bovine, enigmatic smile she presided over a silence broken only by the few villagers who came to lay bread and flowers at her feet. With the coming of the Setiu her support had waned. Her priests had been forced to look elsewhere for their livelihood, and Hathor dreamed on alone. Seqenenra had promised Aahotep that he would visit the temple and make prayers to the goddess on her behalf. On a windswept, golden evening, while the army spread out on the plain before the cliffs and gathered in groups to polish weapons, wolf down their rations or sleep, he had himself carried through the short cut in the cliffs and into Hathor’s forecourt.