The Oasis (8 page)

“It will be here early tomorrow, Highness,” Hor-Aha assured him.

Ahmose took two soldiers and a skiff and disappeared into the tall, cool reed beds that filled many of the small bays the flow of the water created. Kamose had warned him not to stray too far from the boats, feeling his seniority as he did so, but Ahmose had merely grinned, shot his brother an oblique look, and sauntered off, his throwing stick in one hand and his rod trailing from the other. It is no use worrying about him, Kamose had thought, watching him go. Somehow the gods protect him and I envy him their especial attention. Would that we could change places, he and I!

The afternoon passed uneventfully enough. Kamose debated whether or not to call in his officers but decided that he would council with all of them, including the Princes, in the morning. He drank a little beer, played a board game with Akhtoy, and spent a rather sad hour reminiscing about his father with Hor-Aha. He walked the zone of safety he had ordered established on the west bank beyond the boats and spoke briefly to the sentries, and on his way back to the river he noticed several tiny groups of women and children begging furtively from the Medjay who had gone ashore to dice with each other or simply lie in the cool grass under the trees. He was momentarily annoyed. Dashlut had not been robbed of its stores. Nor had its crops been destroyed. The women had plenty of food both for today and next year but perhaps, he mused as he ran up the ramp of his boat, they beg not so much for food as for a small acknowledgement of what the archers took away from them. What I took away from them, he corrected himself. Bread and the green shoots of new barley are no compensation at all for the lonely nights and empty days that lie ahead for them.

Ahmose did not return until just before sunset. Kamose was beginning to worry about him when his skiff was spotted tacking swiftly from the east bank. Soon he was bounding exuberantly up the ramp, calling for beer and gracing his brother with a wide smile. He lowered himself onto the stool beside Kamose, and taking the wet linen his servant had immediately offered, he mopped his face. “Did you catch many fish?” Kamose enquired, his concern turning to relief. Ahmose looked at him blankly for a moment, then his expression cleared and became sheepish.

“Fish? No, they were not biting, Kamose, so I decided to have a look at Khemmenu instead.”

“You did what?” Relief became anger. “How stupid can you be? Supposing you had been recognized and captured, Ahmose? The town is surely on the alert! We have scouts to shoulder that danger!” Ahmose tossed the cloth into the basin the servant held out and took a long swallow from his beer cup.

“Well, no one saw me,” he said obstinately. “Really, Kamose, do you take me for a fool? I approached it when every sensible inhabitant was snoring away the afternoon heat. Shemu has begun and it will get hotter. The scouts make good reports, but I wanted to see for myself whether or not Khemmenu had changed since I was there last and if any preparations had been made following the warning the Dashlut survivors have certainly given by now.” Kamose did not want to ask him what he had seen. Furiously he wanted to punish his brother for his escapade by refusing to betray any interest at all, but with a great effort he swallowed his ire.

“Please, Ahmose, do not do such a thing again,” he managed. “What did you see?”

“Khemmenu has not changed at all,” Ahmose replied promptly. “It is still very beautiful. The palms are the biggest in Egypt and cluster together more thickly than anywhere else. Is it the soil do you think, Kamose? The dates are forming nicely.” His gaze slid sideways to his brother and he laughed. “Forgive me,” he went on. “Sometimes I feel compelled to exaggerate the very traits in myself that you find the most alarming. Or endearing.” He drained the beer and set the cup beside him on the deck. “The roofs of the buildings are crowded, mostly with women and a few soldiers, all looking south,” he told Kamose. “Word of our coming has definitely reached them. There are even men standing on the walls of Thoth’s temple. Many soldiers fill the paths and groves between the river and the town. I think that the story of Dashlut’s downfall has grown in the telling.”

“It will not matter,” Kamose said slowly. “Our army has grown also, and if we cannot defeat Teti’s Setiu forces, we should not even be here.”

“Agreed.” Ahmose sighed. “There was a bevy of ducks just out of range of my throwing stick,” he said wistfully. “They were too close to the town’s watersteps for safety so I had to leave them alone.” He yawned. “The sun has made me sleepy,” he added. “I think I will sleep now before it is time to eat.” As he rose, he met Kamose’s eyes. “It is all right, Kamose, really it is,” he said quietly. “I do not need you for a bodyguard. I have plenty of my own.”

Night fell at last, but Kamose, lying on his cot and listening to the regular challenges as the sentries changed and the hours wore away, did not want to sleep. He thought of Khemmenu as he remembered it, the dense fig trees everywhere, the bright whiteness of the painted houses glimpsed through the smooth trunks of many palms, the glory of Thoth’s mighty temple where Teti’s wife fulfilled her obligations as one of the god’s servants. He had shared in the feasting at Teti’s sumptuous house, its blue-tiled lake and sycamore groves overshadowed by that other temple, the one Teti’s father had built to Set in order to curry favour with the King. He thought of his brother Si-Amun, subtly corrupted amid those trellised grapevines and sun-drenched lawns, and of Ramose, whom he might or might not have to kill. Finally, before unconsciousness claimed him, his mind turned to Tani. Was she still safe? Did she still yearn for Ramose or had the strength of her emotion been nothing more than a puppy love now turned to indifference? Kamose hoped so. He wished he knew.

The army arrived in a cloud of dust and commotion two hours after dawn and Kamose called his council at once. He held it on the bank, for his cabin was too cramped to accommodate them all. They had marched through Dashlut not long before and the faces turned to him as he rose to address them were solemn. “Dashlut was a warning to Apepa and a promise of retribution to the north,” he told them. “I do not regret what I did there. I would do it again. But Khemmenu will not be such an easy massacre. Its population is larger and the proportion of soldiers stationed there much higher. They have been alerted. They are waiting for us. But they only know about the infantry by rumour. They will be too confident. I intend to approach the town from the river with the Medjay and attempt to parley with Teti. The soldiers there must be put to the sword, of course, even if Teti surrenders, but I hope to spare the inhabitants.”

“And what of Teti himself?” The sharp question came from Prince Intef of Qebt. Kamose had not missed his restlessness or the wary glances he had been giving an imperturbable Hor-Aha. He is still not resigned to my policies, Kamose thought with exasperation. He will have to be carefully watched. “Teti is your kinsman,” the Prince was saying. “Moreover, he is a nobleman. Surely you will not harm him!” The atmosphere around the table immediately changed at his words. All heads lifted and turned to Kamose. I know what you are thinking, Kamose said to them silently. If I can murder a nobleman, then none of you are immune. Good. Ponder your own insecurity. It will help to keep you all loyal to me.

“Teti will be executed,” he said deliberately. “He is completely committed to Apepa. He seduced my brother Si-Amun into betraying my father and took an active although indirect part in the cowardly attack on Seqenenra. These deceits are unworthy of any nobleman, let alone any honest peasant, and Teti is an erpa-ha. But if you still have doubts about his culpability, consider the fact that he was promised possession of my nomes and my estate once my family had been separated and scattered. He is indeed my kinsman, but it is a connection of which I am ashamed.” Without looking from one to the other, he swiftly gauged their responses. Intef sighed and placed his hands on the table. Makhu and Iasen appeared to be pondering. Their frowns matched. But Prince Ankhmahor was nodding, and a faint smile came and went on Mesehti’s mouth.

“It is just,” Ankhmahor agreed. “We are risking everything we have. The cost of sparing Teti is too high.”

“Of course you would have no qualms, Ankhmahor,” Iasen objected. “You have been given the honour of commanding the Braves of the King. Why would you jeopardize a position of such trust by arguing against your lord?”

“That is exactly the sort of crooked reasoning that appealed to the baser side of Teti’s nature,” Mesehti snapped back. “If Ankhmahor commands, it is because our lord has recognized his ability to do so. A little humility is a welcome ingredient in the character of a noble, Iasen. Let us not become mired in this issue, although we agree that it is a painful one.”

“I welcome dissent, Iasen,” Kamose cut in. “I would not have my nobles and officers hide their thoughts from me for fear of some petty penalty. Yet all ultimate decisions are mine, and I have decided that for the sake of our security as we move north and for the sake of Ma’at, Teti will die for his treason. Does anyone wish to voice a formal dissent?” No one spoke. After a moment in which Kamose saw their faces go blank, he sat down and signalled Akhtoy to have the waiting servants pour wine and offer the sweetmeats they held. “Very well,” he continued. “I will now hear reports from each of you on the state of the peasants under you, and I will take your suggestions regarding the dispersal of expertise within the divisions. Dashlut yielded a few more weapons and they must go to those men who have shown a talent for using them.”

“There are many chariots and horses in Khemmenu,” Ahmose interposed. “We must capture all of them we can. We have no charioteers but we can train some as we go. Ask your officers to keep their ears and eyes open for that particular aptitude in the ranks.”

“Charioteers should be officers,” Makhu muttered, and Kamose clenched his fists under cover of the table’s edge.

“Then we will promote those men who show such promise,” he said coolly. “Let us move on to other things.”

When the council was over and the Princes had retired to their tents or boats, Kamose took his brother and Hor-Aha and, walking as far away from the din of the army as possible, they stripped and swam for a while. Then they lay in the sun beside the water. “What will you really do at Khemmenu?” Ahmose asked him. “Do you intend to spare the civilians, as you told the Princes you would?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Hor-Aha said. He had loosened his braids and was running his fingers through the waves of his long black hair. “It is a dangerous idea, Majesty. Why decimate Dashlut and spare Khemmenu, a town full of Setiu? Traders, artisans, wealthy merchants, by far the bulk of the town’s population is foreign and the remainder have mixed with them happily for many years, taking on the colour of their thoughts and their modes of worship. Khemmenu is as diseased as Het-Uart.”

Kamose studied his General. No emotion played across those even, dark features. Water from his thick hair ran down his brawny arm to spatter in the sand between his parted thighs. His brows were drawn together in a frown, but Kamose was sure that the grimace had more to do with Hor-Aha’s thoughts than any feeling for the people he wished to see killed.

“I shrink from such a slaughter because of Dashlut,” he replied. “It was not easy to do what I did there and another butchery at Khemmenu would be doubly horrible.” Hor-Aha shot him a keen glance.

“So my King has had enough already?” he said.

“I do not like your tone, General,” Ahmose interposed. “It may be that in Wawat the life of a tribesman is worth no more than an animal but we are not barbarians in Egypt.” Hor-Aha eyed him with composure.

“Forgive me my words, Highness,” he said evenly. “I meant no offence. But the Setiu are barbarians. They are not people. Only the members of my tribe in Wawat and those born within the borders of my adopted country are people.” Ahmose looked nonplussed but Kamose smiled. He knew of the quaint belief held by most primitive tribes that nothing human existed outside the bloodlines of their own communities. But is such a conviction so far removed from the Egyptian suspicion of everyone outside our borders? he mused. Ma’at is our treasure. It belongs nowhere else. Egypt is the blessed land, uniquely favoured by the gods. Once every citizen believed this fervently, but that certainty has dissolved, been diluted in the Setiu’s attempt to corrupt our gods and pervert our way of life. Hor-Aha is right. Egypt must be restored to its former purity. Yet his mind filled with the vision of the woman who had stood at the foot of the ramp and screamed up at him. Would she have understood his answer to her agonized question?

“Dashlut shook my nerve,” he said to his brother. “But Hor-Aha sees clearly, Ahmose. Why one town and not another? Khemmenu must be razed.”

“The Princes will not like it,” Ahmose responded.

“The Princes want to go to war soldier to soldier as our ancestors did,” Kamose said. “That is the honourable way. But such a philosophy can only be held if one’s enemy is as scrupulous as oneself. We do not yet fight a war. At Het-Uart we may, but until then we are disposing of the rats infesting our granaries.” Hor-Aha had begun to plait his hair again. He was smiling and nodding at Kamose’s words and in that moment Ahmose realized that he did not like the General at all.

In the afternoon Kamose sat under a tree, with Ipi folded beside him, and dictated a letter to his family at Weset, telling them of the events at Dashlut and wishing them well. He was tempted to issue orders to them regarding the care of the estate and the watch on the river but he desisted. They were entirely capable of making those decisions themselves. As he spoke, he watched the barge and the boats swing slowly across the river to the east bank and return, only to repeat the exercise, for Khemmenu had been built to the east and all twenty thousand men had to be ferried from one bank to the other.

They were still embarking and disembarking when targets were set up on the west bank and he and Ahmose spent several hours with the Princes, practising their archery. There was much laughter and good-natured scoffing. Ankhmahor and Ahmose proved themselves the best shots until several of the Medjay officers who had been watching with barely concealed impatience were invited to join in. Their calm skill easily defeated the Egyptians who conceded with good grace, but Kamose privately wondered if allowing the tribesmen to compete had been a good idea. On the one hand the Princes might now see why they were playing a major role in his plans. On the other their jealousy might intensify. Still, it was better to be jealous than dead. Kamose gave the Medjay archers a cow taken from Dashlut to roast, and an extra issue of beer.