People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze) (40 page)

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Mízriyans of all provinces were asking much the same questions of the ram-god, Amún, and the mummy-god, Ptáha.  Why had the great gods abandoned the Two Lands?  The Great House of the southern empire sought to answer his people's doubts in the time-honored, Mízriyan tradition.  Siptáha blamed the country's problems on his predecessor, whose crimes must have angered the divinities.  However, despite a near complete erasure of the name of the wicked Amumusís from all monuments and papyrus records, the land's fortunes did not improve under the new sovereign.

In the north, bordering the desert, Libúwa was a greater threat than ever.  Mirurí's name might indeed be cursed by his family, as the deceased Amun-musís had once claimed.  But when his father, Dawúd, passed to the land of the sunset, the brother of Odushéyu's one-time companion filled the old man's sandals just the same.  Kaprá became paramount chieftain of the desert nomads and de facto king of the entire delta, and no Libúwan raised a hand to stop him from taking power.  The western provinces had never returned to Mízriya's tax lists.  Once the Great House, Siptáha, pulled his Sharudín mercenaries from the rest of the Lower Kingdom, the provinces of the eastern delta quietly sent their tribute to Kaprá and happily withheld their much larger tax burden from Siptáha.

Mízriya's Káushan mercenaries did not attempt to halt the process.  Hearing that governor Satí had effectively broken from Siptáha's control, the longbow men slipped away from the despised northern marshlands.  As quickly as they could, these darkest of men returned to their native land, in the far south.  There, they found that governor Satí had ended Kaush's yearly payments of tribute to the Great House of Mízriya.  Even the southernmost provinces of Mízriya's Upper Kingdom fearfully sent their taxes to him, to Satí, rather than to the supposedly rightful king, Siptáha.  One day, all men knew, Satí would march north, at the head of his private army of southern longbow men, alongside their allied contingent of Ak'áyan mercenaries.  Satí would depose the ineffective Siptáha and declare himself the only true son of the royal gods, mummiform Ptáha and ram-headed Amún.  At that time, the new Great House, Satí, would remember who had supported him and the Káushans and Ak'áyans who had fought bravely would be rewarded handsomely.

Under Siptáha's whimsical rule, meanwhile, only a fraction of the old Upper Kingdom remained of what had once been Mízriya's huge empire.  The taxes that should have paid Siptáha's remaining soldiers decreased at every harvest.  With its own income severely restricted, the imperial treasury ceased its customary gifts to the many temples of the Black Land.  Impoverished priests and their unpaid workers, both enslaved and free, abandoned the formerly wealthy estates, in despair.  Without food for their own mouths, the Mízriyans could not afford to feed their many gods.  Offerings to the spirits of the dead kings came to an end.  Men without farms of their own came and built their huts on the grain lands belonging to the gods' houses.  These squatters planted crops for their own families and, without Káushan policemen to enforce payment, delivered no taxes to either the local god or the Great King in Manufrí.  Each temple's livestock was soon carried off by whichever local man was strong enough to take it.  The country's roads, never reliable, became completely unsafe.  Every province closed its borders to men from other places, each provincial governor becoming, in effect, a petty king.

"Why, great Ptáha, why, Father Amún, why have you allowed this to happen to Mízriya?" Tusirát prayed, at her little household shrine.  "Why have you turned your back on us, your children?"

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As Ainyáh left Tíruns, starving refugees continued to make their way to the Argive port, in a steady stream.  Following T'érsite's advice, Diwoméde put the people to work, as they came.  The low-born began adding storerooms to the hilltop fortress, buttressing the clay-brick walls, and adding stepped battlements to protect the archers stationed on the heights.  The work was hard and the men grumbled.  But, with bread in their bellies and watered wine to wash it down, they did as they were told.  In the meantime, they waited for the gods' anger to dissipate so that they could return to their old homes once more.

High-born men came to the citadel as well, driven from the other southern kingdoms by rebellious farmers and shepherds.  Or the nobles simply abandoned their parched hills in the interior of the country, for the wealthier fortress on the shore of the Inner Sea.  Such men of rank were trained warriors and would take no direction from such a low-born commoner as T'érsite.  For them, Diwoméde had ships constructed by the carpenters who also flocked to the seaside.  Out into the Inner Sea, the qasiléyu sent these varied, homeless soldiers.  If their ships contained too little in their holds to buy what such armed men valued, they made piratical raids on the hostile lands of the P'ilístas, in northern Ak'áyan nations, or they assaulted small cities and smaller villages on the islands owing allegiance to Assúwan kings.  Wheat was worth more than the finest gold or tin, in those days of scarcity.  In the same way, barley was more highly valued than horses, women, or even bronze.  If grain could be had in any country facing the Inner Sea, Argo's fleet discovered a way to obtain it and bring it back to Tíruns.  When hostile kingdoms proved unable to provide enough grain for Argo, then bronze could be taken from them, to buy from the merchants of northerly Qoyotíya or Mízriya's ports in the distant south.

"You see what a good choice I made," Dáuniya whispered in Diwoméde's ear, as he rested his bare body upon hers, sweating despite the cold of winter.  "I picked the one man who could sail to prosperity through a sea of disasters."

Diwoméde nuzzled at her neck, still breathing hard from the exertion of a moment earlier.  "Ai, captives always say things like that," he grunted.

"Not all captives," Dáuniya argued cheerfully.  "In Tróya, the 'Elléniyan queen used to say, 'It is the end of the world, the end of the world.'"  She spoke in an undertone, a rhythmic, choked sound that raised the hairs on the back of the qasiléyu's neck.  "Meneláwo's wife had us all frightened," Dáuniya went on, more solemnly.  "People said that she was a priestess and they thought her every word must be a prophecy.  She used to sit and spin from morning to night, whispering strange things about bulls and bees and doves.  It was as if she spoke for the goddess who spins the fate of men and nations.  But even when they took the spindle away from her, her hands continued to move, turning a thread that could not be seen.  The servants began to say that she was a mainád and that her capture meant that the world would soon come to an end, just as she whispered constantly.  You can imagine how we felt when prince Paqúr told his sister about the 'Elléniya's words during their love-making.  We were sure that Tróya would fall and we would all be taken captive again."

"What did Kashánda say to Paqúr, when he told her about the prophecy?" Diwoméde asked.  He moved to his concubine's side and spread fleeces over himself and her, cold now that they were lying still.

"She made the sign of the Evil Eye and said that he should give the woman back to Meneláwo.  But he would not listen to her."

"Maybe the 'Elléniyan woman was right," Diwoméde whispered, awed by the thought, and he felt sickness rising in his throat.  "The drought may never end…"

But Dáuniya only took him tightly in her arms and smiled.  "No, no, beloved, it is not the end of the world but the beginning.  I have not had the woman's bleeding for two months now.  We are going to have a child.  Diwiyána would not put a new life in my womb if the world was going to end, now, would she!"  She pressed her full lips against Diwoméde's, and moaned happily at a growing pressure against her thigh.