The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) (22 page)

Even I, inexperienced in war, recognised that the usurper faced disaster. No greater force exists than massed Egyptian chariots at loose amongst enemy foot. Horses and wheels alone wreak hideous damage. If a man jumped aside, he would usually fall into the path of another chariot, and even if he escaped, there was the constant rain of javelins and arrows to face!

The enemy foot were paid mercenaries, more used to pillaging villages than battling against the elite corps of Egypt. They fell back, their left wing seeking protection in the centre. Horemheb then committed his whole battle line. The enemy were pushed back, away from the fortress, across the plain into the green shrubbery which divided the market town from the ancient city of Avaris. The noise and screams were blood-curdling. Men staggered around, holding gruesome wounds to head or body. Horemheb had ordered the imperial colours to be clearly displayed, a sign that no prisoners were to be taken. The battle turned into a rout, which slipped into a massacre. Sobeck and I faced no danger. Occasionally a mercenary would try to board our chariot or bring our horses down, only to be easily dispatched by an arrow or, if he came too close, javelin or club. The ground grew streaked with blood, and littered with corpses. We came up against the Hittite corps, professional fighters who, for a while, stopped our advance. Nevertheless, our chariots milled around them whilst our archers and foot danced in between seeking a gap in their line, a chance to hamstring horses or loose arrows at the chariot crew. Eventually they broke, leaping down from their chariots to join the fleeing mercenaries.

By now we were in front of the fortress. All the guards had disappeared. I drew my chariot alongside Nebamun’s, screaming my request at him. The heat of the battle had rejuvenated the old colonel. Lines and furrows had disappeared, eyes gleamed bright in his dusty, blood-streaked face. He listened to my request and turned, shouting at a staff officer. We guided our chariot out of the mêlée, followed by a dozen others. Accompanied by archers and a unit of Nakhtu-aa, we thundered towards the main gate of the fortress. We met no opposition. The gates hung half open, and the Nakhtu-aa pulled them aside and charged in. Other units of Horemheb’s battle line, realising the battle was over, followed us, eager for plunder. The camp was now given over to pillage and the rape of women left behind.

‘What do you want?’ Sobeck, weak with exhaustion, reined in his horses.

We’d reached the Royal Enclosure. Its gates were held open by the corpse of a priest whom our foot soldiers had disembowelled. From within I could hear the shrieks of a woman. I jumped down from the chariot and raced into the usurper’s pavilion, its beautiful gold-fringed cloths flapping in the breeze. Inside there was chaos. Corpses sprawled about in widening pools of blood. Two Kushite mercenaries had seized a kitchen maid and were holding her down whilst their companions were tipping over chests and pots. A soldier had found a jug of wine and was busy laying out cups, filling them to the brim, screaming at his companions to join him. I found an enemy scribe hiding behind a large couch; pinch-faced and bald-headed, he jabbered for his life. I seized him by his robe and pulled him to his feet.

‘Your life will be spared,’ I shouted, ‘on one condition. Where are the records? Where are the usurper’s letters, his proclamations?’

The man’s jaw quivered in fright.

‘The records?’ I repeated.

He pointed to the far corner of the tent, where three or four reed baskets had escaped the attention of the marauders. I went across and emptied the contents out on to the ground. Sobeck, using all his authority, ordered five of the mercenaries to come over and protect us whilst I went through the contents. The records were a mixture of papyrus rolls and clay tablets; all of them bore the cartouche or seal of Akenhaten. I wondered where the usurper had obtained this. Sobeck found me a leather sack and threw it at my feet. I filled it with anything which looked interesting. By the time I had finished, the scribe had disappeared. Sobeck told me he’d thrown off his robe, crawled under the awning of the tent and fled. He would do what many of the enemy would, dispose of anything which marked him as a follower of the usurper and merge with the victorious troops.

I sat for a while, soaked in sweat. The girl had stopped her screaming. She lay at the far end of the pavilion, throat cut, eyes staring sightlessly. Virtually all the furniture and furnishings had disappeared: chests, chairs, stools and weapons. As Sobeck grimly remarked, ‘If it was on two legs it was killed, otherwise it was taken.’ He dismissed our guard and crouched down beside me.

‘Is this what you were after, Mahu?’

‘It is my treasure trove.’ I pressed the sack to my chest. ‘My plunder.’

‘And?’ Sobeck asked.

Figures danced outside the tent, shouts and yells echoed, a firebrand was thrown in, whilst at the same time the awning around us was put to the torch. We left hastily. The Royal Enclosure had ceased to exist. The palisade had been broken down, the altars overturned, the fortress given over to wholesale devastation. Sobeck and I forced our way through. Our men were now fighting each other, some already drunk, quarrelling and bartering over the spoils of battle. The main gates had also been torched. Two great bonfires flared on either side of the entrance, flames leaping up into the afternoon sky, billows of smoke curling about. From the plain below we could still hear the clatter and clash of battle, the screams of dying men. Sobeck found a wineskin propped against the corpse of a Hittite officer and we went searching for our chariot. One of Nebamun’s officers, fearful of fire in the camp, had ordered it, together with the rest, to withdraw to the plain below. Drinking the wine and clutching my precious burden, we forced our way through the press of men down to where Nebamun’s men were milling about before the gates leading to the Field of Fire and the House of Darkness.

‘What’s in there?’ Nebamun demanded. His face was smudged with dust and smoke, and splashes of blood spoiled the finery and glitter of his leather mailed jacket and war kilt. ‘I daren’t go in lest there be a trap, yet the place seems deserted. What’s beyond there?’

I recalled the day we took the oath. ‘Why, Colonel, a vision of the Underworld. You are right to be prudent. Send across a few archers first.’

Nebamun repeated my request. A group of nimble-footed archers scaled the palisade; we heard their exclamations of surprise. The gates swung open. Nebamun, surrounded by his officers, walked in and stared speechlessly around.

‘By all that is in heaven and earth,’ he whispered. ‘How many, Mahu?’

‘Well over a hundred stakes, Colonel. Possibly two hundred. This is only a fraction of those the usurper killed.’

‘Shall we remove them?’ one of the officers shouted. ‘Sir, this is an abomination.’

‘No, no.’ Nebamun, hand raised, walked towards the grotesque statue of the Destroyer. He paused at the roar from that hideous Mastaba. The ramp leading up to the great door was now unguarded.

‘Is it the din of the battle, or did I hear a lion roar?’ Sobeck explained what the Mastaba contained. Nebamun, shaking his head, told us to withdraw.

‘We will touch nothing here,’ he said, ‘until General Horemheb sees it for himself.’

We left that gruesome place and sat down on the grass outside, sharing the wineskin, half listening to the chatter of Nebamun’s officers. Now and again the Colonel would go back to convince himself of what he had seen; that he had not suffered a nightmare. Somebody asked him if we should rejoin the battle.

‘It’s no longer a battle.’ The old colonel shook his head. ‘It’s a massacre. General Horemheb’s orders are strict. We led the advance; let others finish it.’

The aftermath of a battle is always haunting, as if you have left life hanging between heaven and earth. All around us men were groaning, pleading for water, only to be dispatched with a swift thrust of a knife. Smoke billowed across the fortress. The late afternoon air was rent with ghastly cries and yells. Soldiers drunk on wine staggered about, arms laden with booty or leading away female captives. Hideous cruelties and brutalities were inflicted upon the dead as well as the dying. The sky blackened with smoke, through which the vultures curled, drawn by the scent of blood. The cacophony of sound eased, and was followed by the onset of a chilling silence, like sweat on your body after you have run a race. The sun began to set. Soldiers drifted back from where the massacre had ended, down near the river. They too were eager to plunder and were busy looting the dead, showing no mercy whatsoever to the enemy.

Horemheb must have called a halt to the killing. Lines of prisoners began to appear; most of them were naked except for their loincloths, arms and hands bound tightly behind their backs. They were forced to kneel. Some of them begged piteously for help for wounds, others cried for water, as their thirst must have been dreadful. They were herded together like frightened sheep under the guard of Nakhtu-aa, and a makeshift fence was formed around them: chariots were unhitched, the carriages used to pen them in whilst the horses were led away. At first there was only a trickle of prisoners, but eventually they came in one long, dusty column. Most were mercenaries, though Horemheb had captured a number of high-ranking Hittite officers. They too were shown no mercy but treated like the rest. Following them came the chariot squadrons, their horses exhausted. Finally, amidst a blare of trumpets and preceded by his fan-bearers and standard-carriers, Horemheb himself arrived, exulting in his moment of glory.

The entire plain outside the fortress now became a vast barracks housing victor and vanquished alike. The cries of the wounded faded. Officers moved through the ranks imposing order, beating the drunks with their sticks, confiscating booty, ordering the dead to be dragged out, their right hands chopped off so that Horemheb’s scribes could draw up a tally of the slain. Makeshift hospitals were set up with cloths and coverings filched from camp awnings. A line of water carriers was organised. Stretcher-bearers began to comb the entire battlefield. Armed with sharp knives, they finished off the enemy wounded but tenderly lifted on to pallets the Egyptian injured. Horemheb ignored us; surrounded by his own staff officers and entourage, he had solemnly processed around the fiercely burning fortress to receive the plaudits and salutes of his victorious troops. The triumphant procession ended in front of us. Horemheb, still clutching his bloody sword, his right arm splattered with gore up to his shoulder, stepped off his chariot. Staff officers gathered round clapping their hands, kneeling before him to offer their congratulations. Standard-bearers came hurrying up to brief him and provide news of what was happening. Horemheb listened to them all, now and again turning to the scribe crouched on the ground beside him. He then climbed back into his chariot and raised his bloody sword skyward. A gust of smoke from the fortress came billowing down, carrying black soot. Horemheb waited until it had passed.

‘Gentlemen.’ His voice was hoarse. I was standing pressed against the chariot and noticed how his eyes were red-rimmed, his lips dry and caked with dust. I offered him a wineskin but he shook his head. ‘Gentlemen,’ he repeated, ‘a great victory! Our dead lie only in hundreds, but the enemy are in thousands. We have taken much plunder and booty. To be fair, all spoils of war must be gathered together and distributed evenly. No man shall profit more than another. Here.’ He gestured towards the main gates of the fortress. ‘Here I shall set up my altar and give thanks to Amun-Ra, the Ever Silent but All-Seeing God, who has provided us with victory.’

I caught Sobeck’s eye and grinned. Horemheb was getting the protocols right. The day of the Aten, of the One, was over. This was a victory for the old Gods of Egypt, especially Amun-Ra of Thebes.

‘Before this altar I shall sacrifice the prisoners, or at least their chiefs and princes. I shall make a tally of the hands, a true count of those Horus had delivered into our power. I give thanks to Horus of Henes.’ This was a reference to his birthplace, not far from where the battle had taken place.

On and on Horemheb went, the same message over and over again. How Amun-Ra and Horus had chosen him, their divine son, to shatter the power of Egypt’s enemies. As Sobeck drily remarked later, if the Lord Ay wished for any evidence about Horemheb’s secret dreams, then this speech provided it. Horemheb saw himself as divinely selected, a man anointed by God himself. Of course, he was carried away with elation and the victory of the moment; only when he caught me staring at him did he begin to falter and bring his bombastic speech to an end.

He climbed off the chariot.

‘Now, Lord Mahu, I will take the wine.’ His rugged face was wreathed in smiles as he realised he might have said too much and, perhaps, not acknowledged the contribution of others. ‘You know how it is,’ he declared, wiping the dust from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘When the blood is hot, the tongue babbles.’

He paused as a staff officer pushed his way through the throng and whispered in his ear. Horemheb’s smile faded.

‘My lord General.’ I stepped forward. ‘I too am a member of the Royal Circle. What has happened?’

Horemheb’s eyes, full of fury, glared at me. ‘I know who you are Mahu,’ he whispered. ‘I recognise what you have done, but the usurper and his entourage have escaped!’

Senfiu
(Ancient Egyptian for ‘the Gods of Blood’)

Other books

Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker

In Love With a Wicked Man by Liz Carlyle

Camelia by Camelia Entekhabifard

Bardo thodol: El libro tibetano de los muertos by Padmasambhava

Jumper by Alexes Razevich

A Fool Again by Eloisa James

Corsets and Crossbows: A Drake Chronicles Novella in Letters by Harvey, Alyxandra

First Man by Ava Martell

Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The by White, Mark

An Inconvenient Husband by Karen Van Der Zee