Chapter 8
Horemheb listened to the reports from his officers.
‘At least twenty,’ the standard-bearer declared. ‘The usurper, his woman, the two priests, Djoser and Khufu, and Prince Aziru, escorted by Hittite officers, left the fortress early. Scouts saw them heading due east.’
‘The Horus Road,’ I intervened. ‘They’ll take the Horus Road across the Sinai. They are hoping to flee back to Canaan to plot again.’
‘And what do you advise?’ Horemheb demanded.
‘That we pursue and kill them.’ I pointed to a line of horses being taken away. ‘Your mounts are exhausted, they need food, water and rest, and so do we.’
Horemheb wiped the sweat from his face. ‘They left the battle early?’
‘They never struck a blow,’ the standard-bearer confirmed. ‘One of the Hittite captains is very bitter; he believes they were deserted.’
‘I can well understand that,’ Horemheb replied. He walked forward, staring out over the plain, oblivious to the groans and moans coming from the lines of prisoners and the war cries and cheers of his own men.
‘We trapped them near the river, my lord Mahu,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘The dead are piled five or six deep there, the waters tinged with blood. Oh! I mustn’t forget.’ He called across a herald. ‘Tell the men to be careful: the crocodiles and other night prowlers will feast well tonight. Now,’ he pointed to the entrance of the palisade leading to the Field of Fire, ‘show me this.’
We took him in. Horemheb later confessed to me that, despite the blood-spilling, bitter conflict he had just won, never had a place provoked such a sense of horror. He advanced towards the Mastaba, climbed the ramp and listened to the roar of the savage beasts within.
‘I am tempted,’ he declared, walking back to where his officers and I waited, fearful of those blood-curdling growls, ‘to take the Hittite commanders and thrust them through that trap-door.’ His harsh face creased into a smile. ‘But we never know how fortune may turn: one day Egyptian officers may be taken prisoner.’
Horemheb promptly ordered archers to bring scaling ladders, remove the trap-door and loose arrow after arrow into the darkness. The roars and growling were fearsome; as one archer became exhausted, another took his place. The beasts within, maddened and hungry, flung themselves at the doorway, making easy targets. Darkness was falling when the captain of archers pronounced both beasts dead. Horemheb ordered the door to be broken down. Torches were brought, and those who dared followed their general into the foul-smelling interior.
Although the Mastaba looked large from the outside, it housed only a passageway leading into a grim square chamber. Bones and human remains, globules of fat and flesh, caked floor and walls. The place reeked like a charnel house. Two of Nebamun’s officers had to leave to be sick. Horemheb inspected both the chamber and the lions; these were the African kind, huge and powerful black-maned beasts. We could tell from the wounds on their hides that they had been turned into man-eaters, possibly because they had been injured by hunters and found humans easier prey than the fleet-footed gazelles. If anyone ever asks me, ‘Have you visited the Halls of the Underworld, the Place of the Scavengers?’ I always answer that I have. Now, years later, when I have nightmares, that chamber in the Mastaba comes back to haunt me, with its brooding aura of unspoken horror, of cruel death and torture.
Horemheb ordered the place to be fired. Oil skins were emptied, flooding the floor; brushwood, anything which could burn, was thrown in. The same happened to the Field of Fire. The stakes were knocked down, the entire ground soaked in oil, into which the archers loosed fiery shafts. The night was lit up by roaring flames and clouds of smoke. The fortress too was levelled, its bothies and tents now cleared of all plunder. Once their right hands had been severed, the enemy dead were thrown on to the fire.
A gruesome, fearful night of fire and smoke. All sound was drowned by the roar of the flames. The destruction continued until the early hours. Horemheb seemed to have forgotten those who had fled. He had his great camp chair brought into the pool of light from the fires and held a summary court-martial of the prisoners. I, as a member of the Royal Circle, sat on his right, with Colonel Nebamun on his left. The Hittite officers were brought first. Horemheb asked for their defence. Why had they invaded the land of Egypt? Of course they could only reply that they were mercenaries hired by the usurper.
‘In which case,’ Horemheb declared, ‘you are no better than outlaws and pirates.’
He ordered their execution by decapitation, and the men were hustled away into the darkness. Soon after came the hideous sound of the falling axe as it smote through necks, cutting into the log on which they had to place their heads. Horemheb then dealt with the other prisoners. Any Egyptian was condemned immediately as a traitor and a rebel; they were to be dispatched to Sile, Avaris and the other cities of the Nile to be executed and hung upside down in chains above the city gates. Some of the other nationalities were to be executed; the rest would serve as slaves in the mines and quarries of Egypt.
Horemheb paused now and again for food or wine. My limbs began to ache. I felt cold. I wanted to sleep. Horemheb, however, was not only a general but an expert on military law; he was insistent that justice be done quickly and ruthlessly as a warning to every other rebel. At the same time his officers were busy in the camp enforcing discipline, putting drunkards under arrest, taking the women they had found into the slave pens and demanding, on pain of death, that all booty be handed over. A makeshift altar to Amun-Ra had been set up, surrounded by Horemheb’s standards, and through the night the mound of severed hands grew higher. The place reeked of smoke, blood and burning flesh.
Once Horemheb announced himself satisfied, he turned and gestured at the leather bag Sobeck was jealously guarding.
‘My lord Mahu, I said all plunder.’
‘My lord Horemheb,’ I replied. ‘If we may have a word in private?’
Groaning and muttering, he pushed himself up from his chair. He wiped his face and washed his hands in natron and water, though he still remained smeared with blood, streaks of sweat marking his dusty face. Horemheb, at peace, was not the most easy of men, but when the blood lust of battle was upon him, he was truculent and dangerous. He had imposed his will on the imperial army, his men regarded him as a God, and the stream of orders he had given as we sat in judgement on the prisoners had been accepted without protest. The mound of plunder was at least two yards high and about five yards across. It comprised chairs, tables, gleaming cabinets, couches and beds, personal jewellery, precious jars, skins full of wine and pots of spices. Horemheb grunted in satisfaction and, gesturing at me, left the place of judgement to stand some distance away from his entourage.
‘My lord Mahu, you have difficulty with my orders?’
‘My lord Horemheb, do you have difficulty with mine? May I remind you I am a member of the Royal Circle? I am official Protector of the Crown Prince, an imperial envoy.’
‘You don’t look it!’
‘What I look and what I am, General, are two different things. I am your equal, not some junior officer.’
‘The leather bag?’ Horemheb snarled, pushing his face closer. ‘You left the battle to search for it, I understand?’
‘I am the Chief of Police of Eastern and Western Thebes, my lord General. My writ runs from the Delta south to beyond the Third Cataract. I too, am a Child of the Kap, a member of the Royal Council, adviser to the Prince. You have won a great victory today in which I too played a part. I discovered the usurper to be just that. I gauged the enemy strength and gave that information to you. I judged Meryre was a traitor and should be confined. If he had continued his journey north, only the Gods know what would have happened to me, or indeed, to you. Now what I found in the usurper’s tent is not my property or your property but that of the Royal Circle. I shall not let it go.’
‘I could kill you,’ Horemheb whispered through the darkness. ‘I could kill you now.’ His hand fell to the bronze dagger in its elaborate sheath. ‘Or I could put you on trial.’
‘Do so, General, and there will be those in Thebes only too quick to point out how you usurped your power. If you kill one of the Royal Circle, my lord,’ I stepped closer, ‘why not kill the rest? I am sure God’s Father Ay and his brother Nakhtimin have been very busy in Thebes. Let me guess! I suspect they have been raising fresh regiments. They can’t control yours at Memphis, but God’s Father Ay will ensure that within the year there are two armies: one of Upper and one of Lower Egypt. Kill me, General, and it would start a civil war.’
Horemheb stood, hands on hips, staring at the sky, the very pose he used to adopt in the House of Instruction when he was wondering whether to hit someone or not.
‘Do you believe I am a traitor, Mahu?’
‘Why no, General, of course not. I found none of your letters in the usurper’s archives.’
‘I am sure you didn’t. What did you find, Mahu, you cunning baboon? Trust you in the heat of battle to think of documents.’
‘Let me put it this way, General. Those documents are no threat to you. You have your regiments to protect you.’
‘And you have your papers.’ Horemheb smiled. ‘Mahu, we are friends, aren’t we?’
‘And allies,’ I added cheerily.
Horemheb snorted with laughter. ‘I heard what you did to Meryre. You should hold on to your leather sack, Mahu. My lord Ay and other members of the Royal Circle are moving up to Memphis. They’ll move a little quicker when they hear the news of our great victory; they’ll wish to reflect and bask in its glory. You are correct about Lord Ay: he and his brother Nakhtimin, and the rest, are busy raising regiments. There are already two: the Glory of Kush and the Power of Ra. They are building new granaries outside Thebes and every member of the Akhmin gang is being given posts of power in the Houses of Life, the temples.’ He waved his hands. ‘Or whatever.’
‘Huy and Maya?’
‘They are with Lord Ay, body and soul.’
‘And at Buhen?’ I demanded. ‘Tutu and the rest?’
‘I don’t know. There’s been some unrest in Kush, but once the news of this victory seeps out, I suspect Meryre and the Atenists will either flee or take poison. You have enough in that leather sack, haven’t you, to send them to the slaughter yard?’
‘They are traitors,’ I replied. ‘Do you know how they did it? Meryre was such an eager proselytiser for the cult of Aten, he sent statues of the Sun Disc across Sinai as gifts to the princes of Canaan. He even had the impudence, under the guise of his office, to send similar statues to the Hittite court.’
‘And?’ Horemheb demanded.
‘Oh, let me finish, General. Statues from Egypt’s High Priest are sacred; no border guard would interfere with them.’
Horemheb opened his mouth. ‘Of course!’ He struck the heel of his hand against his forehead. ‘Meryre’s person is sacred, and the same goes for his gifts.’
‘The statues were hollow,’ I explained. ‘They were made in the temple workshops at the City of the Aten, fashioned to contain a roll of parchment, not necessarily written by Meryre, but by one of his scribes. I have yet to read the entire collection, but he gives information about the disposition of troops, the level of supplies in granaries, the quality of the harvest …’
‘And the situation in Thebes? Keep your leather sack,’ Horemheb growled. He gripped me by the shoulder. ‘How the wheel turns, eh, Mahu? Do you remember when we were Children in the Kap and we used to squabble over a piece of bread smeared with honey or a ripe date in sesame oil?’
‘The only thing that’s changed, General,’ I replied, ‘is that what we squabble over now are matters of life and death.’
‘Will you go tomorrow?’ Horemheb asked. ‘I am dispatching Nebamun and his squadron after the usurper. Will you accompany them, my lord Mahu, and bring the bastard back? Dead or alive, I don’t give a damn.’
I promised I would. I wanted to be away from the place of slaughter. I was also beginning to feel faint and weary from lack of sleep and food. I went back to collect Sobeck and we both retreated, away from the camp and into the palm groves which separated the plain from the small market town. I was too exhausted to answer Sobeck’s questions but seized a cloak from someone and, rolling myself up, fell into the deepest sleep.
Sobeck woke me the next morning. He had found a pot of fire and was now cooking a meal: dried strips of meat on a makeshift grill, some overripe vegetables, and bread from the army bakers. We ate hungrily, sharing a jug of beer, staring out at the devastation before us. Horemheb’s army occupied the plain. Most of the camp was still asleep; only the occasional fire glowed, pinpricks of light in that half-waking time between night and day. I felt stiff; my knees and ankles groaned in protest. When Nebamun’s herald came calling our names, I found it difficult to stagger to my feet. The Colonel was on the other side of the camp, seated on a three-legged stool, a barber shaving his face and head. A short distance away the squadron was preparing to leave. The chariots had been cleaned, the horses groomed, even the harness polished.
Nebamun had dispensed with his armour. He was dressed in a simple white robe, sandals on his feet. He grinned up at us, telling the barber to stop his chatter.