The Horus Road (22 page)

“Very well. Open the shrine and then you can go,” Ahmose said. “I want to see Amun.” A faint smile, part sympathy, part affection, flitted across the Chief Steward’s face.

“Perhaps Your Majesty would like to be dressed before I do so,” he suggested and Ahmose realized with a shock that he was still naked, one sturdy bare thigh crossed over the other and between them a nest of curly pubic hair. He rose, disconcerted, all at once filled with a ridiculous urge to burst into tears. Akhtoy nodded at the body servant who went to the rear of the tent and lifted the lid of Ahmose’s tiring chest. Akhtoy himself swung the doors to the little shrine quietly open and then backed reverently out.

Decently clad in a fresh kilt, Ahmose ate and drank without conscious appreciation, his eyes and his thoughts on the small golden figure of his god while his servant silently attended to the dishes on the table. He knew that the events since dawn had rendered him numb, that later he would be flooded with gratitude to Amun for the granting of both victory and his life, but for now just the sight of Amun’s enigmatic smile under the graceful plumes of his crown brought a certain peace. When he noticed to his surprise that nothing but crumbs remained on the plates the servant was lifting onto a tray, he got up, closed the doors of the shrine, and slipping on a pair of sandals he left the tent.

No Followers came to fill the space around him as he stepped outside, but Mesehti was there holding the reins of the horses harnessed to Ahmose’s chariot and he bowed as Ahmose approached. The sun had just gone down and the shadowless landscape was suffused with a soft golden light tinged with a pink flush that would soon deepen to scarlet as night crept in. Ahmose gestured. Mesehti swung himself up onto the floor of the vehicle and Ahmose followed. “Harkhuf’s tent,” he said curtly. Mesehti tightened the reins and had opened his mouth to call to the horses when there was a shout. Ahmose turned to see Ankhmahor come running up, his face drawn.

“Majesty, I have only just disembarked,” he panted. “The men on the bank are talking of a slaughter of the Followers. Is it true? Are you safe? Where is my son?”

“It is true,” Ahmose replied, privately marvelling at the sequence of the Prince’s urgent questions. “Get up behind me, Ankhmahor. Harkhuf was wounded. I am on my way to see how he fares.” Ankhmahor needed no further invitation. The chariot began to roll. Ahmose felt the man’s extreme consternation and said nothing, although he wanted to tell Ankhmahor how relieved he was to have him back. Ankhmahor himself did not speak.

Both men jumped from the chariot as it neared Harkhuf’s tent. Ahmose strode inside, Ankhmahor on his heels, and the physician who had been bending over the form on the cot straightened and bowed. “The arrow was barbed and difficult to remove,” he said in answer to Ahmose’s curt enquiry. “The Prince has suffered much pain, but he will recover in time if no ukhedu develops. I have packed the wound with ground willow and honey and have made up a large amount of poppy infusion which his servant must give him whenever he requires it. I will continue to attend the Prince if Your Majesty so desires.” Ankhmahor had moved to the other side of the cot. Ahmose nodded his thanks to the physician and looked down expecting to see Harkhuf’s eyes closed in unconsciousness but the gaze that met his was fully aware although the pupils were huge and hazed with poppy. Sweat beaded on a face grey with agony. The afflicted shoulder was swathed in linen pads. Harkhuf licked his dry lips, and at once Ahmose knelt, lifting the damp head and holding a cup of water from the table beside the cot to the young man’s mouth. Harkhuf groaned at the movement but drank briefly.

“Majesty, how goes the battle?” he whispered as Ahmose set his head carefully back on the pillow, and Ahmose realized first that he had not seen Ankhmahor and second that of course he would know nothing of any event after he was shot.

“It is all but won,” he said. “I am waiting for a final word of confirmation from my generals. Pezedkhu is dead. Harkhuf, your father is here.”

“Here?” Harkhuf’s drugged eyes slid away. He smiled as Ankhmahor leaned forward and touched his cheek. “Father, I did my duty,” he breathed.

“Of course you did,” Ankhmahor reassured him. “The physician says that your wound will heal. You must sleep now, Harkhuf, if you can. I will come back in the morning.”

“It hurts,” Harkhuf muttered, but his eyelids were drooping and even before Ankhmahor had rejoined Ahmose he had slipped into a restless unconsciousness.

“My physician is a clever man,” Ahmose told Ankhmahor as together they walked back to the chariot. “I do not think that Harkhuf is in any real danger. He has acquitted himself well during your absence, Ankhmahor. So did the other officers who died trying to defend me. You will have to recruit new Followers immediately.”

“Tell me what has happened while I have been in Aabtu, Majesty,” Ankhmahor said. “It is as though the whole world changed while I worshipped in the temple of Osiris. I feel utterly bewildered.”

They mounted the chariot and were driven back to Ahmose’s tent, but while Ahmose spoke of the opening of the gates and the ensuing battles, his mind was busy with other things. The Followers who were killed must be beautified, he was thinking. Where is the nearest House of the Dead? And what of the hundreds of others we must bury without embalming and trust to the mercy of the gods? Where is Ramose? Have I lost any of my generals? Word should come soon regarding the fighting in the eastern Delta which must be secured if we are to hold onto the great gain we have made today.

Ankhmahor left him outside the tent, for the matter of a new bodyguard was urgent. Ahmose went in to find Akhtoy lighting the lamps and two scrolls lying on the table. Ahmose picked them up. One bore his wife’s seal but he did not recognize the imprint pressed deep into the wax of the other. Frowning, he cracked it, but before he could unroll it he heard Khabekhnet’s voice requesting entrance. Behind him came Ramose. “It is all over, Majesty,” Ramose exclaimed, grinning, his white teeth gleaming out of a mud-grimed face. “The northern mound is yours and most of the Setiu soldiers are slain. When the survivors realized that the hand impaled on Khabekhnet’s spear was Pezedkhu’s, they began to lay down their weapons.” He swept an airy hand down his body. “Give me permission to clean myself,” he requested. “I stink.” Ahmose smiled back.

“It is the scent of victory,” he said. “More seductive than the perfume of Hathor herself. I am glad that you are unscathed, Ramose. Go and rest.” Ramose bowed, clapped Khabekhnet heartily on the shoulder, and vanished quickly into the shadows gathering beyond the tent. Ahmose turned to his herald. “The hand?” For answer Khabekhnet laid a leather pouch on the table.

“It is very mangled and has begun to rot, Majesty,” he said. “Our men are even now taking the hands of the enemy dead for the tally. Shall I add Pezedkhu’s to one of the piles?” Ahmose considered for a moment. There was something distasteful, even disrespectful, in the image of a part of Pezedkhu’s strong body being flung onto a heap with hundreds of other hands, all anonymous in their sameness.

“No,” he said, making up his mind. “Throw it into the river. Give it to Hapi for an offering. But first remove the ring and deliver it to Kay Abana. He killed the man. It is his trophy.”

“The hand is very swollen,” Khabekhnet remarked. “I will have to cut off the finger.” Ahmose suppressed a surge of groundless irritation. “Then do so,” he said shortly. “What of the body itself, Khabekhnet?” The herald shook his head.

“I do not know, Majesty. I have not heard. But I presume that by now it has been added to the other Setiu corpses for burning.” I should like to have given him a proper burial, Ahmose thought rather sadly, or at least had him embalmed and sent east to his family. It does not seem in the way of Ma’at to treat the remains of such a formidable enemy as though he was of little account but in the heat of the moment my attention was fixed on my own survival. You will never again see your forests and your ocean, General. I am both glad and full of regret.

“Your heralds have been calling for the city’s surrender?” he asked. Khabekhnet nodded.

“They continue to do so but it is too early for a response from the usurper I think,” he replied. “The loss of his General and of the battle must first sink below the level of mere shock.”

“Very well.” Ahmose gestured. “Detail some of your subordinates to tell the officers in every division that when the Scribe of the Army has completed his tally and the burnings begin, all Egyptian soldiers apart from the sentries are to be allowed food and plenty of beer and one day in which to sleep. Remind them also that the wounded must be given whatever the divisions’ physicians deem necessary. Try to discover if there are any Houses of the Dead nearby, although I suppose that even if there are, the sem-priests could not possibly beautify every Egyptian corpse.” Khabekhnet hesitated.

“Forgive me, Majesty, but such a task is a waste of time. Until now the Delta has belonged to the Setiu blasphemers who do not preserve their dead but allow them to decay under the floors of their houses. Any temples close to us will belong to foreign gods and the only sem-priests nearby reside within Het-Uart itself to serve the Egyptians living on the northern mound. Our soldiers know that if they fall in battle they will be buried without beautification. It is a risk they take for their King. To try to embalm all our dead is not logical.”

“You are right,” Ahmose said unwillingly after a pause. “It is a foolish quest. You are dismissed, Khabekhnet.” The herald bowed at once and retreated and Ahmose blew out his cheeks as he turned to the table. A foolish quest but one that would go a long way towards assuaging my guilt, he thought. Kamose took them from their homes and I have kept them away. Now many of them are dead. They may all be my possessions under the law of Ma’at but I have never regarded them as a vast herd of cattle to be milked or slaughtered according to my whim or the urgency of my need. “I will read the scrolls now,” he said to Akhtoy who had been waiting for an order. “Send for Ipi.”

Pulling his chair up to the table, he unrolled the thinner papyrus whose seal he had already broken. The penmanship was familiar. It belonged to his wife’s new scribe, Khunes, but the signature at the bottom was little more than a large and laborious scrawl. Ahmose made it out with a dawning delight. “Your loving son, the Hawk-in-the-Nest Ahmoseonkh, Prince of the Two Lands,” he read. “Akhtoy, this is the first letter I have ever received from Ahmose-onkh and he has signed it himself!” he exclaimed, looking up, but Akhtoy had gone. Eagerly Ahmose’s attention returned to the scroll.

“To Uatch-Kheperu Ahmose, Neb-pehti-Ra, Horus, the Horus of Gold, and my esteemed Father, greetings from your loyal son,” he read. “I humbly and sadly offer you my sympathy on the death of my sister the Princess Hent-ta-Hent. Khunes told me to say it like that but I really am sorry. I will miss her even though she cried a lot. Khunes is going to show me how to sign my name and titles myself. I hope you are well and have beaten the evil Setiu and will be coming home soon. Your loving son, the Hawk-in-the-Nest …” Stunned, Ahmose tossed the scroll aside and tore the seal from the other, unrolling it in one savage movement. It had been written throughout in Aahmesnefertari’s own neat, orderly hand.

“My dearest husband,” it began. “Forgive me for burdening you with this terrible news when all your energies must be engaged in defeating the enemy, but when would it ever be a good time to tell you something that will cause you grief? Our daughter, Hent-ta-Hent, died yesterday of a fever that Amunmose was unable to exorcise. He tried many incantations but the demon was too strong. She had been fretful for some days before succumbing. Raa and I believed her distress to be caused by teething until the fever took hold with unshakeable force. She died still unconscious. She will, of course, be beautified and correctly mourned and we will place her in a temporary tomb until ours has been finished. She was walking quite steadily until she became ill and had mastered a few simple words which she would say loudly over and over again with such pride! She had begun to try and follow Ahmose-onkh about, a fact that either exasperated or charmed him depending on his mood. He was most distressed when I prevented him from being with her once I realized how the demon had filled her. I miss you so much, and never more than now when the house is in mourning. Send me some word as soon as you are able. Your loving wife and obedient subject, Aahmes-nefertari.”

Ahmose let the scroll roll up with a small rustle. For many minutes he sat with the dry papyrus under his motionless fingers, gazing unseeing into the quivering glow of the lamp flame inside its alabaster sphere. Little Hent-ta-Hent, he thought. I remember the feel of her tiny body on my chest as I lay in the garden, the endearing light weight of her, her skin feeding warmth into mine and her sleeping breath making her dark curls stir rhythmically. I can smell her, that wonderful pure smell of freshness and babyhood. Poor Aahmes-nefertari. Of the three children to whom she has given birth only one survives, and though I keenly feel the loss of my little girl, I cannot know the depth of a mother’s pain.

Pushing the scrolls aside, he rested his elbows on the table and his chin sank into his palms. It is no accident that this news came to me in the very hour of my triumph, his thoughts ran on. There is a price for everything. Even Kings must pay for what they want. Hent-ta-Hent is the price the gods have exacted for all those who have fallen here today so that I may move ever closer to my goal. Was Kamose also a part of that cost? Even though my destiny to be a King is not so much my own desire as the decree of those same gods who have snatched my daughter in payment and destroyed my brother? A chill shook him, and then all at once the tears that had threatened to overwhelm him earlier came flooding back through his fingers. He heard someone come into the tent behind him, heard Ipi and Akhtoy whispering together in alarm, but he could not move. It is not good for servants to see a god weep, he thought incoherently, but tonight I do not care.

When he was spent, he lifted his head and immediately a square of clean linen was gently presented to him. Taking it, he wiped his face and rose. Ipi bowed and Akhtoy retrieved the linen. “The Princess Hent-ta-Hent is dead,” Ahmose said tonelessly. “She died of a fever. Take these letters, Ipi. Read and file them. I will dictate replies tomorrow. Stay here. The Scribe of the Army will arrive soon with his report.” He turned clumsily to his steward. “Akhtoy, bring wine.” Akhtoy bowed low, spreading out his hands in the ancient gesture of pleading or commiseration.