“Prince!” The captain vaulted the wall and supported the other who grinned at him through a gray mask of dust.
“Behold how we hunt lions of another sort, kinsman--” Between panting gasps Ahmose got out the words, pointing to the man lying at his feet, his head back at such an angle that the oiled and curled beard pointed an accusing finger at the opponent who had brought him down. “Horfui does not ride again, and in Avaris there will be a gnashing of teeth--for this commander was the guardian of the south!”
Steadying himself with a grip on Rahotep’s ready arm, the prince leaned over to pick out of the churned-up chaff and debris a fine belt ax, hefting it critically in his hand to test balance and grip, before he thrust it into his own belt, following the custom of one victorious in a personal battle duel. It was a beautiful copper weapon with a cedar handle, overlaid in gold and electrum, the head decorated with a griffin design set in carnelian and turquoise, showing plainly when the dust was rubbed from it.
“No Hyksos arm this,” commented Ahmose. “It came from someone of the People of the Sea, some noble or prince of Minos. Perhaps it was Horfui’s by right of war--as now it is mine.”
“Yaaahhhh!” That was the victory shout of the troops. The chariots that had fled had been rounded up. A handful of men surrendered; the rest went down fighting. Then a plumed horse galloped to the storehouses and the Prince Kamose gave his reins to another, coming to join his brother. Ahmose greeted him with a wide smile.
“Here lies Horfui, brother. It is well?”
The elder prince showed no signs of elation as he regarded the dead Hyksos commander. But when he spoke it was with quiet commendation.
“It is well, my brother. Horfui was a mighty man in their ranks. This time his daring betrayed him--to our profit. But not always can daring win for us. Had not your messenger reached me--then what would have chanced with you?”
Ahmose shook himself as might a hound emerging from a swim in the river. “We have proved ourselves to some purpose--” He looked out over the tumble of chariots and dead horses and men. “Give me these archers, brother, and I shall undertake to go up against Avaris itself!”
Kamose’s lips curved in a faint smile, and for a moment the weight of responsibility seemed to slip from him. There was a warm affection smoothing the usual sharp urgency of his voice as he made answer to the impulsive offer.
“In time, impatient one, in time. For this day the toll is sufficient. As for the archers”--he looked past the younger prince to Rahotep and the men who had followed him to join their fellows by the domes--”I will agree that the account they have set on the tallies is high. Captain!”
Rahotep saluted.
“Pharaoh shall hear of your stand. He has given you to be my men. Now I shall give you back to him for his own guard. Deal with him as you have dealt with my brother and your days shall be long and full of honor--”
“May the Son of Re live forever!” Rahotep acknowledged the promotion.
To be attached to the person of the Pharaoh was such an honor as no humble officer of a barbarian frontier force might hope for. But it was one he did not wish. A man ambitious to rise in royal service might well relish being under the royal eye, but Rahotep wanted army service in the field, even if it meant again the stark frontier posts of the south. He was ill at ease in the stultifying ceremony of a life for which he had not been trained and which to him was almost as alien as the life of Avaris or of a Kush village.
Kawak, the archer who had been speared in the defense of the domes, was not dead. Kheti and Rahotep, with a knowledge of rough field surgery that had come with experience, agreed together that he had a good chance of survival could he be transported to Thebes without delay or too much handling. With permission from the Prince Kamose, they commandeered a cargo boat that had followed the Hyksos’ ill-fated expedition with supplies. Loading the archer and three other seriously wounded on board, they trailed the land forces back to the city.
Their spoil was mainly horses. Ahmose had held on to the mares taken from the picket lines. In addition, the fruits of victory numbered ten trained stallions. Six of these were in harness, and they and their chariots were simply incorporated into the Egyptian force, while in the core of the company of spearmen was their handful of prisoners, all of common rank. The archers had shared among them the weapons and ornaments of those they had slain.
“A good fight.” Kheti sighed with satisfaction as he sat cross-legged beside Rahotep on the deck of the boat. “This is a lion hunt well to my liking, brother. May we have many such.”
Rahotep shook his head. “Think you that the Pharaoh’s guard forays into the desert?”
But Kheti remained cheerful. “These Pharaohs of Egypt do not send their men into the fight and lurk themselves behind shields--the first blow they strike with their own hands. I have heard their warriors speak of that, brother. When a town is to be taken, the foremost upon the siege ladder must be a Royal Son. When wheels turn and horses race, then does the blue crown advance at the crest of the attack. These are men that we serve, Lord, and the guards of such will see action aplenty.”
Rahotep eyed the force paralleling them in march along the bank. Aye, by tradition those of royal blood must be leaders in body as well as in mind and spirit. But the foreboding he had felt within him since the Prince Kamose had named him to the guard remained, a cloud he could not throw off.
Chapter 9: THE JACKAL BARKS
The glory of Sekenenre’s court was faded, slightly tarnished. But to one who had heard of the magnificence of the earlier Pharaohs merely in old tales, who had spent all his recent years in the stripped bareness of frontier posts, the outer courtyard with its red granite pavement, where were ranged the Royal Bodyguard statue stiff, and the inner audience hall with its seven-stepped black throne were at first overwhelming. Only later did they become the core of a growing and eternal boredom.
Pharaoh was more a prisoner of his divine duties than any Kush slave toiling in the mines. The hours of his life, from his ritual arising to his bedding at night, were rigidly numbered, and there was an assigned rite or duty for each. Even the food that passed his lips and the drink carried to him in the selected wine jars were prescribed by the physicians of the household as to land and quantity. He was no mortal man but the symbol of the link between Egypt and the Great Ones, and as such he was allowed no personal desires at all.
Or was he? No one could live long within the confines of any household--even a household as diverse and sprawling as the royal court--without hearing as many or more rumors than those which haunted any camp or barracks. Hedged about by age-old ceremony and pressured by rite and custom as the Pharaoh might be, he still had some free choices to make as Sekenenre himself was in the process of proving, to the confusion and covert opposition of some of those about him.
When this Pharaoh had stood for the first time in the sanctuary of Amon-Re, grasping the Flail and Crook and fronting the image of the god whose earthly representative he was, what had he said? The words were carved now for all men to read, and they were bold words for a shadow king on the shadow throne of a torn-apart kingdom.
“Re made me the herdsman of this land, for He saw that I would keep it in order for Him; He entrusted to me that which He protected.”
And to Sekenenre that guardianship was not a passive thing; it was a duty that led him to front the might of the Hyksos, to pit the small remnant of what was once Egypt against the fury of a well-entrenched foreign empire. But if Sekenenre saw revolt as his sacred duty, there were others who did not, as Rahotep had come to understand.
Wearing the scarlet-and-yellow-striped headdress of the guard, with the insignia of their service emblazoned on their leather lappets, the ten archers served their tours of duty with other detachments under the Chief of the Guard and the nominal command of their own captain. If by royal favor they were accepted in theory, the facts of the matter were not quite the same, for ambition led a man into court service, and it also nourish
ed intrigues and hidden maneuvering for royal notice.
To have a body of Nubians from what was considered in Thebes a province not only barbarous but suspect as to loyalty, under a landless officer, come into close service under Pharaoh was more than many a young, or not so young, Commander of a Hundred, or Commandant of Chariots, could accept with grace.
Rahotep walked softly, as any Scout in enemy territory. He might be new to court life, but he was not new to the atmosphere that clung to the dark corners, having contended too long with something very like it in the household of the Lady Meri-Mut. His early schooling at Unis’s hands made him sense quickly veiled animosity and recognize slights for what they were. He learned more of the subtle forces warring among the officials and the household from day to day.
One by one he sorted out and marked those he believed to be the hard core of resistance to Pharaoh’s will. There was the Vizier Zau, who reminded the young captain only too strongly of Pen-Seti. Not as old as the priest of Anubis, perhaps, but truly a man of intellectual powers, a worthy administrator, precise in the detailed handling of executive duties, able in a post that was intended to take much of the burden of rule from the shoulders of Pharaoh. Within those limits Zau was all any ruler could ask of the gods. But his limits were too narrow, and Rahotep pieced together words, half-understood whispers, small actions, which made him guess that Zau was sincerely convinced that the Two Lands must not break the pattern-of-things-as-they-are, and that the Vizier believed Sekenenre’s proposed vigorous action was courting disaster for the land. A fanatical man completely sure of his own righteousness, he was as dangerous as Pen-Seti--more so because of the power he held beneath the royal seal.
To Zau Rahotep added Sebni of the Prince Ahmose’s household. Though the younger prince appeared to go his own way with some freedom, Rahotep knew now that the scribe Sebni had been set in the Royal Son’s following to act as a restraint and a curb. Only Ahmose’s own strong will gave him the power to flaunt the scribe--as he had done during the lion hunt.
There were others; the captain could recite names. Some were men of power holding hereditary offices from which they could not be removed without some proof of open treason or incompetence. The Treasurer of the South, Kheruef; two judges; General Sheshang; and a few high-ranking priests.
Perhaps his own dealings with Pen-Seti, his danger in the necropolis of Semna, had made the Scout officer especially wary of the Temple of Anubis and its priesthood. But Rahotep believed that he had no lasting prejudices against the followers of the jackal-headed god--that Seeker who was set at the portals of the other world to guide the wandering spirits to judgment. Once in Egypt the priests of Anubis had truly been “seekers,” students of knowledge--not only for its own sake as scholars, but for the general benefit of the people. They had trained forelookers--those who could see a little into the future--and cast horoscopes of men, striving to avert danger and ill to come, advising and helping when it struck.
But the wisdom of any god must filter through the minds and emotions of his or her servants. While those servants were in themselves true worshipers, not misusing any power for their own gain, then did the immortal knowledge come clean and fresh. But when those servants turned from the inner laws of the Great Ones, claimed advantages to themselves, then what they had to give was muddy and befouled. There were two faces to learning, one bright, one dark. And to seek out the dark deliberately was to turn from the service of Amon-Re to that of Set.
So Rahotep, standing at attention to the left of the throne during the “small audience” of the early morning, surveyed Tothotep, High One of Anubis, and disliked what he saw. The cold serenity of Khephren was here, but with it something far more deadly smouldering underneath. Yet he could not mistake, even though it was not directed at a captain of the Bodyguard, the impact of the man’s personal power.
And Sekenenre gave close attention to Tothotep, whereas he brushed aside the veiled protests of Zau. On one of his rare off-duty periods Rahotep commented on this privately to Methen. The veteran officer of the Hawk had been given the drilling of newly raised spearmen and so was stationed at the Theban barracks. Now, as he lounged at ease with Rahotep on a reed raft as they fished, he frowned.
“A man does not shout aloud his presence when scouting a Kush encampment,” he observed obliquely.
“Nor does he walk barefoot among serpents!” Rahotep countered. “I am no simple savage to be befooled by traders. But I must ask some questions lest I paddle unknowingly into a nesting place of crocodiles. Is it because I have no cause to remember those of Anubis with liking that I distrust their high priest here?”
“No one speaks ill of a temple.” Again Methen talked around the question. “But any Pharaoh’s face turns to the Jackal with respect, for there is an old bond between them, one not spoken of openly in these days. My younger brother was of that shrine. When the Hyksos overran the Hawk Nome, his throat was cut on his own altar as a pleasing gift to Him Who Dwells in the Darkness. But thus it is that I know some of the secrets of Anubis. And the greatest of these is that in the ancient days the Jackal held Pharaoh’s life between His jaws--and more straightly than the gods hold the lives of us all.”
Rahotep sat up, setting the light craft to bobbing under them. “How so?”
“Long ago--before the pyramids were built, before Menes united the Two Lands, North and South, making them one, then did Pharaoh live only as long as he was strong and vigorous. And when he aged, the Jackal came to him--for those who served Anubis cast his horoscope and so foresaw his death date. They sped him toward his horizon so that a younger and more virile man could occupy the Great Throne. To the Jackal alone--and those who served Him--was given the power of Pharaoh’s fate. And now His priests still cast the royal horoscope. Also they have the power of forelooking so that they may warn of ills to come.”
“I would not like to stand opposed to Tothotep,” Rahotep said slowly.
“Neither would I. You wish now that the prince had not shown you the favor of court promotion?”
Rahotep, having ventured one confidence, now released a flood. He needed both reassurance and advice.
“I hate the court--it is no better than Semna. Also I feel now that I am but a piece in some game played by those hidden from me. Were we from Nubia put where we stand to be a defense--or a weapon? I am as one treading a strange path with a cloth about my eyes!”
There was no sign of sympathy on Methen’s face. Instead, his features had taken on the expression with which he had so often met unnecessary stupidity in the past, giving Rahotep a momentary but nostalgic memory of less complicated days.
“Do you wish to return again to the House of Captains as a boy, refusing to play a man’s role? It is time for you to awaken and be true to your inheritance. You are not a simple soldier of the forces--you are what you were born to be--the Nomarch of the Hawk. What matter if there be no nome under that standard now? The day will come when it is restored, and you must be ready to take your place as its ruler. Use your eyes, your ears, your mind, and do not act the sullen child whose playthings have been stolen from him. This is more your life than that of Kah-hi. Learn, learn so that when the right time comes, you shall be prepared to act! You compare yourself to a piece in a game--prepare to play such games yourself. On the border you strove to think as the Kush in order to entrap them. Here you must be taught a new way of survival. Do you understand?”
The veteran’s momentary anger changed into a serious pleading. It was as if he were pointing out to the younger man a path that must be dutifully followed but for which he could not be the guide.
Rahotep laughed shortly and bent almost double to present his bare back to his companion.
“Use your flail, Commander. Is it not rightfully said, ‘A boy’s ears are on his back, he hears best when well beaten’?”
“As long as the beating is from my hand, then it is well. But, oh, Rahotep, walk carefully, lest the beating be another’s!”
“And tho
se words shall I wear as a shield on my arm. Be sure I have ears to hear that!”
Thereafter he tried earnestly to follow the veteran’s advice, knowing it to be good. Though the life of Pharaoh was so hedged about by ritual and ceremony that he seemed more the symbol the priests claimed him than a living man, yet Sekenenre was no puppet. He lacked the boundless, exuberant energy of his younger son; he even appeared to lack the force and drive of his heir. Yet, as Rahotep came again and again into his presence when on duty, the captain began to see and appreciate the way this frail, dedicated man was working to achieve his own ends.
Physically the Pharaoh had that delicacy of form that Kamose had inherited. His features were finely sculptured, almost feminine in their beauty. But his mouth and jaw were firm, giving a truer clue to his inner strength. He was a master of chariots, and Rahotep guessed that he only approached a measure of happiness when he was freed from the confines of the court to lead his army in the field, where custom not only allowed, but decreed, that he take an active and vigorous part.
The dry season was nearing its end, and the Nile was showing the first signs of the approaching flood. Rahotep had been a month of long days in royal service. And, as the river darkened and began to swell, so did tensions within the court heighten.
The captain was on duty the night that the Queen’s scribe Pepinecht, that same stranger who had guided him to the Hall of Royal Women on his first night in Thebes, came to him with an order that bypassed the Chief of the Guard and yet was given under the royal seal.
“A week from now Pharaoh must travel for the measuring of the river rise. Tonight there will come those to read what lies before him. Admit them.”
To Rahotep that statement meant little. But when later he was making the rounds of the archers he had posted at the inner doors of the private quarters, he witnessed the arrival of a party of priests from the Temple of Anubis. Tothotep, wearing his robes of ceremony, was accompanied by a thin, dried wisp of a man whose ascetic face was like a single sheet of papyrus through which shone torch light. This elderly priest carried carefully in his two hands, breast-high, a bowl of blackened silver, and by that token Rahotep recognized him as a “seer,” one of the small number of those who could by some Great One’s favor look into the past or the future.