Andre Norton - Shadow Hawk (30 page)

The captain kicked off his sandals for a better grip on that narrow path and took off, the portal seeming to him to sway dangerously under his weight. But at last dark hands stretched down to him and he was drawn up as he had been out of the dungeon of Anubis.

Breathing hard, he stood on the new attack point looking about him. It was now possible for one to make a way from roof to roof into the heart of the city. And he was not alone in that idea. Small parties of warriors, both Egyptian and Hyksos were appearing aloft now, moving back and forth, disputing advances in small fierce melees, which were only samples of the conflict in the streets.

Now the Egyptians held more than half of the wall surface. More and more men were climbing up the ropes and sliding down into Neferusi. The Hyksos, prevented from using their chariots to any advantage in the streets, harassed by the looters and freed slaves, rolled down in determined, enraged companies upon the section about the gates and the walls, hoping to trap their enemies against those barriers and to grind them to defeat. Again and again groups of well-trained foot soldiers charged. But the bowmen on the walls, which the Egyptians now held, and the small parties on the house roofs opposite, cut them down from above until some of the narrow lanes were so choked with dead and wounded that they were walled off to both defenders and invaders.

These fortifications had been built to withstand sieges, against the possibilities of assaults from without. But Neferusi was an ancient Egyptian town to which the foreigner's walls had been added as an afterthought. And the Hyksos found themselves now being forced back, away from the few open spaces where they could have used their more telling weapons, into places where no man could sling a spear or draw a bow cord without ramming his arm ineffectively against his neighbor.

But there was a second place for them to rally, and it was there they prepared to make their stand—the old hall of judgment, where the nomarch of this nome in the old days had once held court, and the temple of their god had been knitted together into an inner fortress where again there were strong walls—with a wide space about them.

Slowly, as the long minutes passed and the royal forces bored in from all sides, the Hyksos, in spite of their skill at arms, their confidence and training, fell back to that fortification for their last stand.

Rahotep gulped water out of an earthenware bowl, his eyes upon that second wall and the bristle of spears and bows along it, which told that it would be no nut easy for the cracking. A squadron of chariots was drawn up before its gate, facing toward the encircling city through which the boil of battle was advancing, slowly but relentlessly. There was no hope of using those vehicles in any but a few streets leading to this center, but here in the open they might prove of some value.

Kheti crossed to the roof where Rahotep stood, and the captain offered him a drink from the jar of water Kakaw had found while prowling the deserted house under them. The Nubian underofficer drank as if savoring every drop, making his report between gulps.

"They have left us no other way in, Lord, save to batter through those gates yonder. And that will be like facing a lioness with cubs when one has but a broken spear. We cannot play that cart trick on them a second time—"

Rahotep, granted this short breathing space to examine their gains, knew a growing wonder over their success so far. He had been used to the short punitive expeditions and attacks along the border, and had a healthy respect for such chieftains as Haptke. Warfare there was something of a grim game between usually evenly matched opponents. But since his birth his ears had been filled with tales of the unconquerable Hyksos and their skill in battle, their superior strength of arms, then- unbeatable regiments. Was it now true that their long years of consuming the fat of a supine Egypt had set up an inner rot in their organization? Or had they never been the super warriors legend had painted them?

Now he could understand why this first victory was so important to the royal army. It would destroy that legend of the enemies' invincibility, provide a cushion for any future defeat. And so—he faced that smaller fortress before them—this, for the sake of their whole cause, must be cracked open and utterly destroyed! Though how it was to be done, a captain of Desert Scouts could not see.

What he
could,
do, he would. So, he dispatched Ikui to bring up a supply of arrows, gathering them where he could along their back trail. Kakaw, having once proven he could provide water, was sent to nose out food. And Rahotep made preparations for fortifying the roof on which they had taken their stand.

"Aim at the officers—and the drivers of those chariots." He gave what he knew to be unnecessary orders, but he added one other, which was a stern warning. "Be sure of your mark. We cannot present these sons of Set with the contents of our quivers unless they pay well in return!"

Kheti was measuring the distance from their roof to the wall of the inner fortress with a wishful eye. With the right wind and a great deal of luck, he might be able to nick some unwary defender. But it looked as if there were none of those, for no man showed more than a portion of helmet or shield, unless he were well out of range.

"So, Hawk, you have found a vantage point from which to strike?"

Rahotep spun about to face the Prince Ahmose. The Royal Son's broad face was banded with a crust of blood and dust, and he had a strip of stained linen, torn from some kilt, bound about his upper right arm, while only the ragged end of his prince's tassel bobbed from his headdress. But he crossed the flat surface of the room with the tread of an unwearied lion, coming to survey that space where the chariots shifted and waited to charge, with an eye that marked every advantage and disadvantage of their own position.

Stationed at every good point the Nubian archers nursed their dwindling supply of arrows, waiting for the return of Ikui. Now and again one would loose a shaft. And three out of five of such found their mark. But it was far from enough to turn the scales of battle in Egypt's favor.

"Your will, Royal Son?" Rahotep took his stand behind the prince.

He had done the best he could in locating this station. But he and his men, he knew, were only a small fraction of the forces Ahmose had to move about, and the prince might see fit to order them elsewhere.

"You cannot reach the walls from here?"

"With a lucky shot—perhaps. But many arrows would be wasted, Royal Son."

Men were coming into the square below, the first of the Hyksos forces pressed back by the Egyptian invaders. They were pushed, against their will, back into the circle of the chariots. A few had won behind the horses to the fortress gates. But those portals remained closed. For a moment or two they milled about as if puzzled and then turned to face outward again.

"They have sealed the gates," Ahmose stated. "Those below are to be left without—either to conquer or be our meat!"

But it appeared that not only those huddled below were to harass the advancing Egyptians, for Ikui, a bundle of arrows of all lengths and kinds under his arm, came across the roofs at a messenger's pace, shouting a warning that turned them all around to look at the city at their back.

"Fire!"

Chapter 18

BEAUTIFUL IN VICTORY

Smoke streamed up into the brazen sky—a dirty-yellow stuff that reminded Rahotep vaguely of another time and place. Looters? Or had the Hyksos set it going to cut off the invading force? Most of the city buildings were of sun-dried brick. But their inner walls, their roofs were well cured wood and would be eaten out speedily by fire.

Ahmose made a decision. He waved one hand toward the filling square.

"Shoot the horses!"

Though the captain was no charioteer, he had been long enough with Pharaoh's army to know what a bleak choice that was for the prince. If the Egyptians were able to capture only half of the well-trained animals below, they would double their own strildng power. To kill a horse was like cutting off part of their own future. But now they must be sacrificed.

The archers snatched shafts from those Ikui had salvaged. Some they discarded as useless for their bows. But within seconds they were facing back into the square ready for a volley.

"Loose!" Rahotep gave the order and the bow cords thrummed. Hands reached for other shafts, and animals went down kicking, or, maddened with pain, charged out of control into the lines of Hyksos footmen.

"Loose!" A second—third—fourth volley blasted the chariot lines in the square. And they could not retreat out of range since the doors of the citadel were barred at their backs. It was a nasty business, sheer slaughter of the helpless horses, and the prince watched it with his hands gripping the slight parapet of the roof until the knuckles stood out.

More and more the Hyksos were being driven back into the open space. These men did not come running, some weaponless, as had the first wave. They backed in, their faces still to the enemy, contesting grimly for every foot of space they had to concede. The smoke was thicker also. As a tendril of it set Rahotep coughing, he at last captured the fugitive memory of a few moments earlier. Just so had the fire eaten out Haptke's raider's nest on the Kush border. Kush— He did not give the signal for the next volley; instead he caught at Kheti's arm to deter him from shooting.

"Kheti—fire arrows!"

The Nubian lowered his bow and then raised it again at another angle so that his shaft was now aimed into the sky, rather than at that tangle below. He drew cord to the fullest extent and loosed, while all of them stood watching that arrow spiral up into the air. Up and up as if Kheti's target had been the sun disc of Re! Up and now down—spinning— But could it reach? Was the angle right?

Down—behind the fortress walls! Only chance could make it a lethal weapon there without better aim. But fire arrows need not be aimed for killing, only for a safe landing. And if

the roofs of the buildings within that circle of wall were like those in the rest of Neferusi, fire arrows would find tinder to eat upon!

Rahotep knew that such a feat of strength was beyond his own powers. But Kheti could do it, had just proved it could be done. And Mereruka, while he had not the exact eye for expert aim at such a distance, had in his wrestler's arms and shoulders the ability to send a shaft the right distance. Kheti, Mereruka—perhaps Kakaw and Intef—

"Oil—" He turned to Kakaw. "Search out if any lies in the house below. And rags—or we can tear our kilts if need be— and live coals—"

The prince needed no more explanation, since he had seen that arrow land true behind the fortification walls. He was squatting on the roof, selecting from the pile of arrows those best suited to the new purpose, choosing with a critical eye. "To stampede game," he observed, "it is sometimes necessary to fire the reed beds. Perhaps these reeds will also give up their lurkers. Do you as you can here. It shall be done the same elsewhere." He got to his feet and went to the edge of the roof, jumping to the next without any word of farewell, making his way so to a small Egyptian detachment who had taken to the heights two houses away—though Rahotep doubted whether any Egyptian archer, no matter how skilled, could hope to put arrows over that wall.

Kakaw came back driving before him a wrinkled house slave. The latter was burdened with lengths of linen to supply half the army with either bandages or fire tow, and he was close to gibbering with fright as the Nubian, his own hands occupied with an oil jar and a basin containing coals, barked at him to start tearing the material smaller.

They worked together at fashioning the arrows until Mereruka and Kheti each had a supply at his feet—though their concentration was not so great that they did not keep a wary eye on their surroundings. The portion of the city that had been fired was sending up smoke trails, and the distant din of battle was swollen now and again by rumbles that might have signalized falling walls—perhaps destroyed deliberately to choke out flames with their enveloping rubble. Had a portion of the army been forced to fight the fire to escape?

It was not until later that Rahotep learned that the mob from the stews had finally been better organized under Icar, Huy, and Nebet and flogged back to fight against the fire. Their fear for their own forfeited lives turned them not only against the Hyksos they routed and harried, but against the flames as well.

Now removed from the inferno of fighting and fire, the Nubians made their arrows, to introduce the same foe they were fighting elsewhere into the enemy stronghold. Kheti sent the first arrow up and out. His effort was echoed from other points facing the fortress. The Nubian's shot went in; the majority of the others fell short. One set a chariot ablaze and the driver lost his head, leaping free, while his horse, terrorized, tried to flee from the danger behind and only dragged the fire with it through the ranks of a spear company forming up after having been routed from a street. The Egyptians pursuing them were scattered in turn, opening lines to let the flaming vehicle through.

With the care of men shooting at a mark, those on Rahotep's rooftop sent their arrows one by one over the walls. Rahotep's hopes sank as there was no sign of any answering conflagration. At the best, it had been a slender chance, but it might have made all the difference in the world for his own side. Even a fire that did not flush the Hyksos out of hiding but that drew men from the walls to fight it would have had a small advantage.

"Waaaah—" Kheti raised the shout, holding his bow at arm's length above his head and shaking it in triumph at the sky while his feet shuffled in the warrior's dance. "Dedun, smile upon your elephants! This army moves in victory! Aye, we fire the walls of the enemy!" He added to the song they had earlier voiced.