The Hippopotamus Marsh (43 page)

“I will begin with men from Weset and the nomes. I will not ask for those who can be spared. I intend to conscript every male fourteen and over. I will not march as my father did but sail swiftly from village to village, making them mine by oath or force, I do not care which, and taking away the men. If the soldiers ride in boats they will not become tired with marching. They will be fresh at every stop along the way. If necessary, I will slaughter the headman of the villages and the mayors of the towns, but I do not think it will be necessary. They will swear allegiance to me and give me aid.” He glanced up at an indignant Uni. “It is what my father should have done.”

“Highness,” Uni countered with a patience he obviously did not feel, for he was tapping a scroll rhythmically and unconsciously against his palm. “The boats can be ready in two months but the men and boys you intend to conscript will be needed on the land. The sowing is less than two months away. And how will you pay them?” Kamose drew in his legs and folded his arms.

“They will not be paid until my campaign is over. I will
promise them booty in the Delta and we will commandeer grain and supplies as we go. I shall take my women’s jewels and trinkets, everything of value from the house, and have it traded for initial supplies. I will not leave anything for either Teti or the King. As for the sowing, let the women and children do it.”

“Highness!” Uni was speechless.

“Is that all?” Kamose asked, amused in spite of himself at the steward’s affront. Uni bowed. “Good. Ipi?” The scribe left his corner and came to sit at Kamose’s feet, his brush ready. “Send to the south, to Nekheb. I need navigators, and Nekheb breeds good sailors. Word the message in any way you wish, but make it a command. Do you have Dudu’s seal, Uni?” The steward nodded. “Then it is time to dictate a scroll to Apepa from the General, telling him how very well behaved the Weset wildmen have become, and how resigned their women.”

Ipi dipped his brush in the black paint and held it poised expectantly over the papyrus but Kamose was suddenly sunk in thought. “Uni,” he said after a while, “is it difficult to obtain lapis lazuli?” Uni blinked at him.

“Why yes,” he replied. “It must be mined in the desert and is quite rare. Even the King pays much gold for it, but it is said that he and his Queen own a great deal and have had it inlaid in their chairs and tiring boxes and suchlike.” Kamose looked up.

“Send someone to the temple and ask Amunmose if there is any in Amun’s storehouses. Tell him to deliver it to my jeweller. I have a fancy for a lapis pectoral.”

“But High—” Kamose cut him short with a slapped palm on the desk.

“I am a King,” he said peremptorily. “I am the son of Amun, his Incarnation, am I not? The people will see me arrayed in lapis as I sail and they will remember. Do I have to explain my every command to you, Uni?” Uni bowed stiffly.

“No, Prince. I am sorry.”

“Get about my business then. And do not forget to find a runner who can wear the insignia of a herald. Someone entirely trustworthy to carry the scroll north. He can say that he was accompanying the regular herald who fell ill at Aabtu, in case Dudu’s real herald is well known in Het-Uart. Choose someone reasonably cultured, Uni. Apepa will doubtless question him. Send him to me before he leaves. Now, Ipi. I will dictate.”

The message to the King was brief, but Kamose could not resist a comment on Tani as though from Dudu’s mouth, a hope that she was being treated well. He did not dare to ask for news of her. That night, lying sleepless on his couch, the ivory headrest cool under his neck and the night light flickering spasmodically on the walls of his room, he thought of her with pain. I did not spend enough time with her, he told himself. None of us did. She was always little Tani, underfoot, sometimes a pleasure to indulge but more often dismissed absently. Her strengths were submerged under our other preoccupations. Amun care for her and give her courage. He was barely dozing when there was a light knock on the door and Uni peered around it.

“I am awake,” Kamose said, sitting up.

“Your Highness, the General Hor-Aha is here and wishes to speak with you.” All drowsiness fled.

“Let him come in,” Kamose bade, rising, his heart lightening as the familiar tall, cloaked figure strode into the dimness. Uni closed the door behind him. Hor-Aha came to a halt and began to bow but Kamose with an uncharacteristic impulse embraced him. The Medjay warrior smelled of sand and stones. His long plaited hair and white cloak were dusty. Kamose felt the thin whipcord muscles flex as the embrace was answered, then Hor-Aha completed his bow. “Welcome back,” Kamose said. “I am more relieved to see you than I can say. Have you heard the news?”

“Yes, Prince.” Hor-Aha shed his cloak and it fell to the floor in a cloud of fine grit. He had a dirty loincloth twisted about his hips. Against his naked waist lay his leather belt hung still with his knife and an axe. Kamose felt as though he had never left. “The priest waiting for me out on the desert told me everything. The execution of the Setiu soldiers was unfortunate.”

“Was there an alternative?”

Hor-Aha’s white teeth gleamed briefly. “No. But I hate to see good men wasted.”

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

Hor-Aha shook his head. “I am very tired, Highness, that is all. I shared food with the priest before his servant packed up his things and they returned to the temple. So we go to war again?”

Kamose indicated a stool. He sat on the edge of the couch and watched the lean figure fold forward. Hor-Aha sighed in relief.

“We do. Let me tell you how.” Quickly he outlined his strategy, scanning Hor-Aha’s dark face for approval or
doubt. When he had finished, the General sat very still, considering. Then he nodded.

“You have no choice,” he said. “The decisive moment is approaching. Many Medjay were killed in Seqenenra’s battle, but if I send one of my tribesmen together with an Egyptian officer, it should be possible to recruit more. Wawat craves the protection of Egypt from the ever-present threat of a Kushite invasion and Apepa ignored the Medjay, preferring to treaty with Teti-en in Kush. A successful conclusion to your war will mean security for Wawat. Have you begun the conscription?”

“Not yet. I was waiting for you.” For a minute they fell silent, Kamose becoming aware that for the first time in many days he was completely relaxed.

Then Hor-Aha said, “I regret the exile of Princess Tani. I would have done the same thing in Apepa’s place but it was cruel all the same.” Kamose rose and immediately Hor-Aha was on his feet.

“Go and rest,” Kamose advised. “There is much to do tomorrow.” Hor-Aha retrieved his cloak and shook it vigorously before swinging it around his shoulders.

“I will check the barracks first,” he said. “The soldiers’ village your father had built still lies unmolested on the west bank, Highness?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Tomorrow, then.” Kamose lay down again once the door had closed behind the General. Tomorrow, he thought with a pang, whether of excitement or apprehension, he did not know. Tomorrow.

In two months the hundred reed ships lay rocking at anchor along the east bank of the river, vast golden hulks
so light that they drew little draught and so would be able to navigate the shrinking Nile until well into the summer. Kamose had deeded his land to the builders without a qualm, although his mother had cried with despair when he had told her what he intended to do. She, Tetisheri and Aahmes-nefertari had gathered together their jewels and handed them to him in mute resignation to a fate they all accepted as the sodden earth began to emerge from the slowly sinking water. Kamose had the precious things traded for last year’s grain and onions, beer and linen.

Armed with the conscription edict his officers travelled dozens of villages, herding the peasants away from the fields and commanding that their women should see to the sowing. There were few protests. Men began once more to stream across the Nile, fill the barracks and soldiers’ village on the west bank, and finally overflow into tents that mushroomed over the desert. Kamose did not bother with chariots and horses. His plan of campaign relied almost exclusively on the ships, still swarming with the builders who perched on the high prows tying the last of the reed bundles and overseeing the attaching of steering oars and cabins.

The Medjay returned in stronger numbers than his father had drawn, and Kamose suspected that Hor-Aha had concluded treaties with other Wawat tribes about which he had not told his Prince. Kamose was grateful. The wild sons of the desert had no love of water and would doubtless embark with hesitant wariness, but when the fighting began their confidence and skill would return.

Kamose continued to send regular scrolls north, dreading possible replies brought by the hand of some Setiu
herald or officer who would have to be detained or killed, but Het-Uart was silent. Nor did any word come from Ramose. Kamose had not expected any. He wondered if Teti and his son were receiving news from the capital that also included indirect references to Tani’s welfare. He also wondered, in the small hours of the morning when the night grew stale and he paced, sleepless with the thousand eventualities on which success depended, what he would do once he won through to Khemennu and what Ramose would do. Teti must die, that was certain, but he did not want to fight Ramose to do it. The worry was fruitless. It belonged to the future and as such should have been dismissed.

But Kamose found that he could not set his problems in a sensible order. Tomorrow’s need for sustained target practice, with the bows the craftsmen were frantically turning out to replace the ones the Setiu had retrieved, battled for attention with the nebulous directives associated with a siege of Het-Uart many weeks away, and in his feverish state of mind Kamose could not separate the two. To run from burdens that threatened his reason was not in his nature, but on several nights he went to bed drunk on palm wine and more than once he invited a servant girl to his couch before turning from her in something like disgust because her skin did not have the dull sheen of the woman of his dreams, or her hips did not curve to flow into the long, graceful legs whose movement he knew now as well as his own.

She has ruined me, he thought without emotion on the occasions when he lay watching the servant’s naked back disappear out his door. She has forced an obsession on me,
this beloved stranger who does not bow to the gods and who handles my dagger, my bow, as though they belong to her. My flesh cries out only for her, for her.

Amunmose sent him a quantity of lapis lazuli from the temple storerooms without comment. Kamose stood for a long time holding the dark blue, gold-shot stones under the shaft of white sunlight that fell between the pillars into the office before sending them to his jeweller. He knew he held the value of a ship and all its men in his admiring fingers but he did not regret his vanity. The lapis was a symbol of his right to revenge and divine justification.

In the third month Kamose invited the Egyptian nobles of the cities in his nomes to join him in Weset and captain themselves the men he had conscripted from them. He did not want to do so. It was customary for a King to assemble a war council made up of his generals and the two viziers, but Seqenenra had had no senior officers and Kamose would have preferred to go on relying on Hor-Aha and Ahmose alone. He hated delegating authority or power, but he knew that the household had become dangerously self-reliant, turning in on itself with every onslaught against it. If the campaign grew, it would become unwieldy without men in charge who could act independently when necessary.

Kamose intended to keep the officers he knew for the command of his personal bodyguard, the Followers of His Majesty, and for the shock troops, the Braves of the King. He would offer the Princes good commands under Hor-Aha as General-in-Chief. Military training was part of every young noble’s education. They would perform well and in return he would promise them court positions. Eyes and Ears of the King, Fanbearer on the Right Hand
and Fanbearer on the Left Hand, Vizier of the South, of the North … of the North …

They came respectfully and warily, Mesehti of Djawati with his light eyes and weatherbeaten face, Intef of Qebt, the great ancient trading centre of the south in the days of the old Kings, Iasen of Badari, Makhu of Akhmin and the haughty Ankh-mahor of Aabtu, whose blood ran almost as blue as Kamose’s own. At the same time Paheri, mayor of Nekheb, arrived, and with him the sailors Kamose had requested that Uni send for, including the same Abana who had served under Seqenenra as Guardian of Vessels and his son Kay. Kamose immediately sent them across the river.

Tetisheri greeted the Princes with the pomp only she could summon and Aahotep saw to their quarters. Kamose feted them as grandly as he could, aware that their pride was as touchy as his own. They had polite words for him, looked askance at Hor-Aha, and inspected the ships and the burgeoning army without comment.

On the fourth day Kamose summoned them to the office, seating them around Seqenenra’s huge desk, with Hor-Aha on his right hand, and laid his plans before them, his eyes going deliberately from one to another. When he had finished speaking, there was a long silence, full of busy conjecture. Mesehti’s pale gaze was fixed on the foliage tossing in a high wind beyond the pillars, his face blank. Intef tapped the table with one ringed finger. Prince Ankhmahor openly studied Kamose over the rim of his wine cup, eyebrows raised. Ahmose, also present, was sitting back in his chair, one arm hooked over the back, seemingly indifferent, but Kamose felt his tension.

Finally Ankhmahor put down his cup and passed a slow tongue over his lips. “We are all nobles here,” he said. “I myself, as everyone knows, am an hereditary Prince and erpa-ha of Egypt. None of us deny your superiority, Kamose, as governor of the Weset nomes, or your claim to godhead through Osiris Mentuhotep-neb-hapet-Ra Glorified. Yet next month your control over the nomes ceases and you go into internal exile.” He folded his carefully manicured hands around the cup before him and leaned forward. “For a few more weeks you are within your rights to conscript our peasants and commandeer what supplies you wish from us and for this we are blameless before Apepa. You are the governor. But you ask much more of us. Much more.” His glance went coolly round the table and was answered by nods from the others. “You request active co-operation in your revolt. You want us to form new divisions as men are collected on your way north. In other words, you want us to choose between you and the King and not passively either. Is this not too much to ask of us, Prince?”