Pharaoh Read online

  While this was all happening Serrena released three more arrows in quick succession. I saw each one of them fly true and three more of the enemy riders were knocked from their saddles and trampled by their mounts. Unlike the arrow that she had aimed at Panmasi every one of these ripped through the chest cavity, piercing heart or lungs or both organs, killing almost instantly.

  ‘Nock! Draw! Loose!’ I screamed as I brought up my own bow, trying to catch up with Serrena’s initiative. The rest of our men sprang to their feet and started letting fly a hail of their arrows into the column of enemy horsemen. With the first few volleys I saw at least fifteen of the enemy knocked down, bristling with arrows. And others continued to drop, as the subsequent volleys swept over them.

  I had estimated when I first saw them from a distance that their total numbers did not exceed sixty men. Thus we had reduced their numbers to a par with our own with less than a dozen volleys of arrows. But now they had realized the predicament they were in and were dismounting and trying to string their bows to enable them to retaliate to our salvos.

  Nonetheless, I was very much aware of the fact that these were Egyptians whom we were killing, misguided Egyptians for sure, but Egyptians none the less. Very soon I could take no more of the slaughter and I shouted across to them, ‘Throw down your bows at once, or face annihilation.’ Then I turned to our own men. ‘Hold your arrows. Give them a chance to capitulate.’ Slowly a silence fell over the field. Nobody moved at first. Then abruptly one of the opposing archers broke ranks and stepped forward.

  ‘I know who you are, Lord Taita. I fought beside you in the ranks of Pharaoh Tamose’s legions against the Hyksos, in the field of Signium. You stood over me when I was wounded, and you carried me from the field when those Hyksos bastards broke and ran.’

  His features were vaguely familiar but much older than any that I remembered. We stared at each other and it seemed that all of creation held its breath. Then I smiled at last as my memory caught up with me. ‘Do not ask me to carry you from the field again, Merimose. For I swear you have doubled or trebled your weight since our last meeting.’

  Merimose let out a hearty guffaw and then dropped to his knees in obeisance. ‘All hail, Lord Taita. You should have been made Pharaoh in place of the one who now desecrates the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt.’

  It always amuses me to learn just how fickle the common man can be. Merimose had changed his allegiance in the time it takes to nock an arrow and loose it.

  ‘Nay, Merimose! I give you Pharaoh Rameses and his Pharaohin Princess Serrena of Lacedaemon whose duty and honour that now is, rather than mine.’

  A murmur of awe ran through their ranks as they recognized the names. First one and then another and finally all of them threw down their weapons and fell to their knees, pressing their foreheads to the ground.

  I summoned Rameses and Serrena to me and led them across the now quiescent field of battle and down the capitulated ranks of our erstwhile enemies. As we came to each of them I made them state their name and rank and swear an oath of fealty to the royal couple. There were only thirty-two of them who had survived the encounter. However, every one of them declared himself to be an ardent convert to the reign of the new Pharaoh.

  We came at last to General Panmasi who was still lying where Serrena’s arrow had felled him. No one had attended to his injuries. His erstwhile loyal warriors were paying scant attention to his moaning and raving and delirious pleas for water to drink. They were all keeping well clear of him. But they watched the three of us with fascination as we went to stand over him.

  I have told you how bitterly I hated him. However, there are limits even to my hatred. I wondered if I was not reducing myself to the same base level by allowing him to endure the outer limits of agony, when I had in my power the means to end it cleanly and quickly. I felt myself wavering. Almost of its own accord my right hand reached down for the hilt of the dagger that hung on my belt. I had honed the edge on the blade that very morning as we waited in ambush. As an accomplished surgeon I knew precisely where the main arteries in the neck were situated. Furthermore I knew how quick it would be and almost completely painless for a man in Panmasi’s condition. But this was not for the sake of Panmasi, who was an unregenerate villain. This was for myself and my own self-esteem.

  Before my fingers touched the hilt of my dagger, I felt another set of fingers close around my wrist. They were warm and smooth, but hard as polished marble or the blade of the blue sword which they wielded so skilfully.

  Slowly I turned my head and looked at the woman that held me. She did not return my gaze, but she spoke so quietly that no one else could hear her, except her husband who stood at her other hand.

  ‘No!’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I want him to suffer,’ she replied.

  ‘I have no choice,’ I answered her.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘So that I do not descend to his level,’ I said simply.

  She was silent for twenty beats of my heart. And then her fingers opened and my hand was freed. Even now she still did not look at me, but she closed her eyes and nodded her head in an infinitesimal gesture of acquiescence.

  I drew my dagger from its sheath and stooped to take a handful of Panmasi’s beard in my other hand. I pulled back his chin to expose the full length of his throat. I placed the razor edge of my blade behind his ear and cut down so deeply that the metal rasped against his vertebrae and his blood pumped in sullen jets from the carotid artery. His final breath hissed out of his ruptured larynx. His body convulsed for the last time and he died.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘You did the right thing, as always, Tata. You have become my counsellor and my conscience.’

  We left Panmasi where he died: food for the jackals and the birds. We retraced our route to the ford over the Sattakin River, taking with us Merimose and his companions who had so recently changed their allegiance. I decided to stop there and rest our horses and our men until the following day. That evening as we sat around the fire, eating our frugal dinner and washing it down with a jug of red wine, the three of us had deliberately separated from the other ranks to enable us to converse freely.

  Of course we touched lightly on the passing of Panmasi, which left us brooding quietly for a while, but then Serrena dramatically changed the subject in her inimitable fashion.

  ‘So why are we returning to Luxor?’ she asked.

  ‘Because it is the loveliest city in Egypt.’ Her question took me so much aback that my response was equally vacuous.

  ‘My father and my mother are probably in Abu Naskos by now,’ Serrena said wistfully. ‘Not to mention my uncle Hui and my aunt Bekatha and all my cousins. They will have come to rescue me from Utteric.’

  ‘I agree that your entire family is probably camped on the bank of the Nile, busily feeding the mosquitoes with their blood, while Utteric and all his sycophants are comfortably ensconced inside the walls of the city.’ I could see where this conversation was bound, and I was trying to head it off. ‘Any way you look at it, it is a long ride from here to Abu Naskos …’

  ‘I was not suggesting that we ride. We have over fifty fine ships that we captured from Panmasi lying in Luxor docks,’ she reminded me. ‘If we push our horses we can be back in Luxor before sunrise tomorrow morning. Then in a fast cutter with twin masts, a team of stout slaves on the oars, and a good river pilot at the helm, we could be in Abu Naskos two or three days later. Now explain to me where I have gone wrong in my calculations, I beg of you, my darling Tata.’

  I always try to avoid argument with a pretty woman, especially a smart one. ‘That is precisely what I was about to suggest,’ I agreed. ‘But I thought it was your plan to rest here tonight and only begin the journey back to Luxor in the morning.’

  ‘All good plans are subject to change at short notice,’ she said seriously. I sighed with resignation. She was not even giving me the opportunity to finish the contents of my wine
jug.

  We rode through the night and reached Luxor the following morning just as the dawn was breaking. The guards at the gates recognized us immediately and ushered us into the city with the utmost respect and ceremony. They formed an escort around Rameses, and led us to the golden palace of Luxor, where Weneg was already in conclave with the Interim Governing Committee, which was composed almost completely of those men that we had assembled in the Garden of Joy. Many of them wore bloody bandages like badges of honour, and seemed rejuvenated by their recent warlike endeavours.

  They were overjoyed to welcome us to their midst. Their first official act was to unanimously ratify the ascension of Pharaoh Rameses I to the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt. Rameses formally accepted the honour and swore the royal oath from the throne. He then declared the Interim to be his final and fully legitimate Committee. He also announced that he had chosen Lord Taita to act as the First and Senior Minister of his new parliament.

  While Rameses was occupied with these commonplace proceedings, his wife was engaged with the more significant aspects of our existence, such as requisitioning a fast ship to convey us down the Nile to a reunion with her family. To be fair to Serrena, her marriage to Rameses was a secret shared only by the three of us. Her state wedding could only be celebrated once certain other trivialities had been taken care of, such as the presence of her father’s royal allies to witness the proceedings. So it was wiser and more diplomatic that Serrena make no public or official appearances until those aims were achieved.

  Late that same afternoon I placed my personal hieroglyphic on an official document appointing Weneg to act in my absence in the capacity of Senior First Minister. Then Rameses and I melted into the background, only to reappear a short time later in the dock area of the river harbour, where we unobtrusively boarded a twin-masted cutter named the Four Winds, which immediately cast off her moorings and headed out into the current, bearing away on a northerly heading towards Abu Naskos and the Middle Sea.

  Serrena remained below deck in the master cabin until the lights of Luxor merged with the darkness behind us. Then she appeared on the deck as mysteriously and as beautifully as the evening star above her. She laughed with joy to see us both, kissed me on both my cheeks and then disappeared below deck again. Rameses went with her and I saw neither of them again until morning. There followed three of the happiest and most peaceful days I can remember as the Four Winds ran north for Abu Naskos with the current driving her on apace.

  On the third night I woke a little before midnight. I knew that we should arrive at our destination early the next morning. So for me further sleep was no longer possible. I went to sit in the bows and wait for the dawn. The ship’s pilot, whose name was Ganord, came forward to join me, and as always I was grateful for his company. He was an elderly man with a countenance the same texture as that of one of the river crocodiles. He possessed a pair of deep-set eyes the indeterminate brown of river pebbles that missed nothing, and a luxuriant and creamy beard which flowed down to his waist. He had spent his entire life since early childhood plying the river and the shores of the great northern sea.

  He knew these waters as did no other; not even I. He knew the names of the river sprites and water gnomes, even those that had disappeared back in antiquity with the passing of the ancient tribes. He had travelled from the source of the Nile where it tumbled down from the sky to its culmination where it poured through the rocky Gates of Hathor and cascaded into the abyss, falling away through all eternity.

  This night Ganord spoke about the river where it flowed past the city of Abu Naskos, for that was our final destination. According to him, the city was inhabited for the first time approximately a thousand years ago by a superior tribe of people; Ganord referred to them as a race of demi-gods. They were accomplished in most of the higher skills such as building, reading and writing, and horticulture. They irrigated both banks of the Nile and built fortifications to protect themselves from the savage peoples that surrounded them. It seemed that they had developed the means of crossing swiftly from one bank of the river to the other, probably on a system of bridges, although Ganord suggested it was by witchcraft. According to him, there was still much evidence of their former presence in the multiple layers of ruins beneath the present city Abu Naskos.

  This presence ended abruptly around five hundred years ago, probably as a result of a cataclysmic series of earthquakes. It seems that the surviving population moved away from the Nile and disappeared in a north-easterly direction towards the Euphrates River and Babylon. Abu Naskos remained deserted for five hundred years thereafter.

  Ganord realized that I found his discourse fascinating and he went below decks and returned with a souvenir of these demi-gods which he gave me as a gift. This was a small bright green tile, no wider than the span of my own hand, which depicted a strange fish with long flowing fins and a golden head. He claimed to have found the tile in the rubble of the ancient city ruins. He told me that it was the only remaining relic of the original tribe.

  I felt mildly cheated when our discussion was terminated by the sunrise and the arrival on deck of my two most favourite people. It seemed to me that they might so easily have occupied themselves in their cabin for another short while without suffering any serious discomfort.

  However, Ganord excused himself the moment they appeared; backing and bowing he hurried away to join the captain of the Four Winds at the stern where he immediately ordered a shortening of sail, and we tacked across the river to anticipate the final bend before the city of Abu Naskos opened ahead of us.

  The sun rose at almost the same time, so we had a fine view of the city stretched out before us along the western bank of the Nile. At this point the river was well over a league wide, which is the distance that a man can walk in an hour. Thus the tops of its walls were well out of arrow range from the opposite bank.

  They were built of massive slabs of golden-yellow sandstone. They were tall and intricately turreted in the style of the Hyksos who had rebuilt the city after seizing it from us Egyptians. It had taken almost a century for us to drive out the invader and to take back what was rightfully our heritage, only to lose it again to a mad and tyrannical Pharaoh who was now ensconced behind that formidable structure.

  I must have seen a hundred or more battlefields during my lifetime, but this one will remain forever in my memory. It seemed to epitomize both the grandeur and the folly of men caught up in the mindless fury of war.

  The walls of the city were separated from the waters of the Nile by a narrow strip of sand upon which Utteric had beached the ships of his fleet. I counted these as we drew closer. There were over almost a hundred flat-bottomed vessels, each capable of carrying thirty or forty men. The stone battlements of the city walls hung almost directly over the ships. At a glance I could make out the piles of rocks on top of the walls which could be hurled down on an enemy coming ashore to seize, burn or plunder any of the vessels lying there.

  There were no gates in the wall facing the river; no openings through which even the most determined invader could press his attack and gain access. The loopholes and arrow slits were halfway up the wall, over one hundred cubits above ground level.

  Utteric’s troops marched and counter-marched along the parapets, their helmets and breastplates glinting in the sunlight; obviously hoping by their presence to deter our assault troops. Above them stood a forest of flag posts upon which waved and fluttered the flags and colours of Utteric’s regiments. They were a flagrant challenge and warning to the armies of Hurotas that faced them from across the river.

  The bulk of Utteric’s army was hidden by the massive castle walls, and their numbers could only be estimated by their vessels and flags and the herds of horses that grazed on the hillside behind the city walls. Whereas on the opposing bank of the river Hurotas’ legions with their multitudinous equipment and accoutrements were clear for all to see.

  The Laconian fleet was moored along the eastern shore of the river with heavy cabl
es anchoring them to the bank. These were to prevent the enemy from cutting them out in a sneak night attack. Anchor watches, armed and alert, guarded their decks. Their masts and rigging were decked out with an array of coloured flags to challenge those on the battlements of the castle of Abu Naskos facing them across the river.

  On the eastern bank occupied by Hurotas and his allies there were no fortress walls or permanent structures. It did my heart good to see the camp of my old friend and ally. Open forest spread over the low rolling hills as far as the eye could see. But now this was covered by hundreds of tents and pavilions. These had been laid out in neat blocks, keeping the barracks and command posts for each of the sixteen invading armies separate. Beyond these there were the stables for the horses, and the parking grounds for almost a thousand chariots, and even more numerous heavy luggage wagons.

  On the outskirts of this huge agglomeration of warriors there were the huts and hovels of those who barely qualified for the title of human. These were the whores and vagabonds, the misfits and the ne’er-do-wells, and all the other riff-raff that follow an army of warriors into battle – if only to scavenge and loot the corpses.

  ‘There is my father’s battle flag!’ Suddenly Serrena was dancing beside me, pounding my shoulder with her clenched fists presumably to focus my attention. She has a powerful and painful punch.

  ‘Which one is his? Point it out to me,’ I pleaded, mainly to induce her to discontinue the punishment.

  ‘There! That one with the red Laconian boar.’ My ploy worked. Now she was pointing rather than pounding.

  Of course Hurotas’ standard was the tallest on the field and the closest to the bank of the river, just as his headquarters tent was the largest in the entire battle array. I shaded my eyes with both hands the better to appraise the tall and lissom feminine figure that at that moment stooped out of the entrance of Hurotas’ tent. Then as I recognized her I could not restrain my excitement and my voice matched Serrena’s for volume: ‘And there is your mother, coming out from your father’s tent!’