The Oasis (42 page)

A small smile came and went on Ankhmahor’s mouth, and nodding once, he stepped from the chariot. Bowing low, he walked to where his own charioteer waited. Kamose watched him spring up onto the floor of the vehicle, white kilt swirling about his long thighs, golden commander’s armbands flashing in the brightness of the afternoon. “Let us go,” Kamose said to his own charioteer. With a jerk, his chariot pulled free of the clotting sand, and with Ankhmahor and the Followers behind he set off towards Het nefer Apu.

He had just rolled in under the shade of the trees when he saw his brother’s chariot coming towards him. He had scarcely come to a halt before Ahmose began to shout. “Pezedkhu has pulled his troops! He is leaving, Kamose! The scouts told me that you have made a massacre. Re-form your divisions and let us give chase! Eighty thousand men against his sixty! Look!” He was pointing excitedly north to where clouds of dust were blowing. Kamose thought quickly.

“Did you engage him at all?” he snapped.

“A few skirmishes, nothing more. Kay Abana took his men off his ship and chased Pezedkhu’s eastern flank as it withdrew. There was some bloodshed but I have no details yet. Pezedkhu would not commit to a battle, Kamose. He knew the state of the men coming out of the desert. He weighed the odds and decided to flee. Hurry!” The chariots were abreast now. Ahmose was beating the rim of his vehicle with the flat of his hand in an agony of impatience, his entourage tense behind him, their faces upturned to Kamose. A dozen scenes were played out in Kamose’s mind before he spoke. He shook his head.

“No, Ahmose. Let him go. It would not be eighty thousand against sixty. Four of our divisions are out there tired and filthy, with blunt swords and spent arrows. They need rest and refurbishment before they can chase any more Setiu. That leaves forty thousand men. Of those, twenty-five belong to the ships. We would have to take them from the river. Pezedkhu will be moving fast. Have him scouted, but I think we must let him return unharmed to Het-Uart.”

“The coward!” Ahmose blurted. “He did not send one man to help his fellows. Not one, Kamose!”

“Of course not,” Kamose replied quietly. “And neither would we. He knew that they were doomed and he would not send good men to die as well. He will have a disturbing report to make to his master, Ahmose. I pity him. But think. We have reduced the Setiu strength in Egypt by at least sixty thousand. Turn your chariot around and I will meet you in the tent.”

They were cheered as they approached the Nile. Townsmen as well as the troops that had waited with Ahmose set up a cheerful clamour. Paheri and both Abanas stood before the brothers’ tent. Only the younger Abana looked sour, his expression pained as he rose from his obeisance. Kamose paused and looked him up and down. “I am told that you emptied the
North
and pursued the enemy,” he remarked. “Who ordered you to do that, my impulsive young firebrand?” Kay flushed.

“Majesty, I could see them flitting through the trees, angling west towards the desert,” he answered hotly. “Our orders were to remain where we were for the present, but my ship was berthed in the most northerly position on the river. I saw the Setiu moving to enter the desert fray. I could not wait to be told what to do! I had to harry them!”

“They were in fact retreating towards the desert so as to leave Het nefer Apu and return to the Delta,” Kamose pointed out gently. “Did you lose any of my marines?” Kay was affronted.

“Certainly not, Lord! We managed to kill twenty-eight Setiu. They refused to stand and fight. They kept running away.”

“And you were compelled to restore the reputation of your ship after its poor showing at the mock battle,” Kamose said. “Did you take the hands?”

“No, Majesty.” Kay’s face lit up. “But we stripped them of some very fine swords and axes.” There was a burst of spontaneous laughter from the assembled men.

“It was bravely done but very foolish, Kay,” Kamose warned. “In the future I expect you to follow the orders of your superiors, who might perhaps know a little more than you regarding the strategies of engagement. Do not be impatient. Your day will come.” He pushed past them, knowing that unlike theirs, his laughter had been forced. The anger that had burst forth at Ankhmahor was the only spurt of emotion he had felt and his heart had returned to a stony insensibility.

Ankhmahor had followed them inside while the Followers took up their station around the tent. Kamose motioned him to a stool and himself sank onto the edge of his cot. “Wine, Akhtoy,” he requested. “But not too much. We must absorb the reports that will begin to pour in soon from the battlefield.” There was a silence fraught with a sense of anticlimax while the steward poured. Then Ahmose stirred and raised his cup.

“A thanks to Amun,” he said solemnly and they drank. The bitter liquid caught in Kamose’s throat, scoring its way into his stomach and spreading its instant warmth, but it did not quench his thirst. With a strange compulsion he reached for the jug of water kept fresh beside his cot and drained it, allowing the last few drops to splatter onto his neck and trickle down his chest. “What happened out there?” Ahmose wanted to know. “Have we lost any men?”

Kamose did not reply and after some hesitation Ankhmahor spoke.

“I do not think so, Highness, but we will know better when the officers make their reports,” he said. “Nor do we know what strength we defeated. The hand count will tell.” Kamose grunted.

“Defeated?” he said harshly. “I will not use that word until Het-Uart is ours and Apepa strung up on his palace wall. No one was defeated. Many men were slaughtered, massacred, butchered, however you wish to say it.” He emphasized his speech, trying to take its meaning into himself, but it remained without and himself invulnerable. “I want to know what fate has overtaken Ramose. None of this would have been possible unless he had seduced Apepa.”

“We may never know,” Ahmose said. “What now, Kamose? Do we march north and institute a belated siege on Het-Uart? Do we have any idea how many soldiers Apepa still has?” Kamose sighed. The jug was empty, yet still he craved water.

“We will assess this day, allow the men to celebrate and sleep, hold a meeting with the Princes, and then decide what to do,” he told his brother. “I must dictate a letter to Tetisheri, but later. Truthfully, Ahmose, all I want is to be lying in our bath house in Weset while the masseur pounds scented oil into my skin and my skiff waits by the watersteps with my fishing rod and throwing stick.” A voice requesting admittance came muffled through the tent flap and Kamose roused himself with a sigh. “The first report is here,” he finished. “Let him come in.”

For the rest of the afternoon and long after sunset the brothers listened to a steadily multiplying account of the victory. First in the tent and later in the coolness of the evening beside the river they received one officer after another. The hand count had finally been made. Ten thousand and nineteen Setiu lay slain, their bodies now food for the desert predators, their weapons in the possession of the exultant Egyptians who began to drink and sing as soon as the cooking fires were lit. There were no serious injuries among Kamose’s divisions. Not a man had been lost.

The Princes began to gather under the torchlight where Kamose and Ahmose sat sipping their wine, answering Kamose’s queries with the assurances that weapons were being cleaned and sharpened, harness repaired, and the soldiers fed. “They will whore and carouse until dawn,” Intef grumbled, “but I suppose they deserve it. I only hope that in their drunkenness they do not antagonize the townspeople.”

“The officers patrol the town tonight,” Iasen answered him. “I do not think we need to worry. Indeed, the citizens of Het nefer Apu seem almost as relieved as we are to see the Setiu destroyed. Pezedkhu would not have been kind to them if he had won.”

“What a noise!” Makhu exclaimed, looking beyond the area of peace around them where the Followers formed a circle of protection to the darkness under the trees and the fitful glare of the fires along the bank. “They will be a sorry sight tomorrow. Will you give them a day of laziness, Majesty?”

“Yes.” Kamose straightened in his chair. “One day to sleep. Perhaps two. I am waiting for word regarding the Setiu chariots before we quit this place.” He smiled. “I envy the soldiers their celebration,” he went on. “If we get drunk, it must be politely, in the privacy of our tents and at a time when we expect no threats. Where is your son, Ankhmahor?”

“Patrolling the streets,” Ankhmahor told him. “Majesty, I think I speak for all of us when I ask to know your mind regarding the remainder of the campaigning season. The month of Pakhons is now far advanced. In another three the river will begin to rise. You command a vast number of troops, and if you intend to continue north to Het-Uart, you will have little time for a siege.” He hesitated and Intef stepped in.

“We are your nobles,” he said bluntly. “Your mind is opened to us first.” He cast a sidelong glance at Hor-Aha sitting quietly on the ground just out of reach of the light from the two lamps flickering on the table. “In return we are honoured when you seek our advice. May we give it now?” Kamose sighed inwardly, seeing the anxious set of their faces.

“Very well,” he responded. Intef leaned forward eagerly.

“We have struck a formidable blow against Apepa this year,” he began. “Not only has Pezedkhu been forced to retrench but there is no longer any doubt that all Egypt but for a portion of the Delta is in your hands. We wish you to relinquish any thought of another siege until next year.” His gaze travelled across his companions. Iasen nodded. “We have all been receiving regular letters from our nomes and our families,” Intef pressed on. “We are needed elsewhere, Majesty. The harvest approaches and the men who should be in the fields are in your army. The task is too great for the women alone. Every grain of wheat, every bulb of garlic is precious, given the depredations of the campaign last year.”

“So you want me to disband the army, temporarily of course, and let you take your peasants home for the harvest.” There was something in Intef’s avidity that Kamose did not like. The man’s eyes, feverish in the yellow glow, were roving restlessly and his beringed fingers scraped against one another. “When did you have the time to discuss this proposition, my lords?”

“While we waited for the arrival of Apepa’s eastern army, Majesty,” Iasen explained, his voice soothing. “We debated the matter and decided that if we were victorious we would ask this of you.”

“And if not?” Ahmose’s tone was cold. Iasen spread out his hands in a questioning gesture.

“We did not doubt that His Majesty’s plan for the destruction of the enemy would work, therefore we spent little time on the alternative,” he said. “As it happens, the plan did work.”

“You have not answered His Highness,” Kamose said curtly. “And do not forget that my brother and I were only responsible for the details of the plan. Its overall conception belonged to the Prince Hor-Aha.” There was an uncomfortable hiatus. Intef looked down at his busy fingers. Iasen made a small moue. Mesehti, Makhu and Ankhmahor simply watched Kamose, who after a moment began to smile slowly.

“As you have probably noted, there have been promotions among my sailors and marines,” he said conversationally and with a seeming irrelevance. “For instance, on the recommendation of Paheri, I appointed Kay Abana captain of his own ship. There have also been promotions among the ranks of your soldiers, particularly of common men from infantry to charioteers with the concomitant title of officer, on your advice. But I have done nothing to elevate any member of the Medjay archers in spite of the fact that they have acquitted themselves with exemplary skill and obeyed their Prince without demur.” He inclined his head at Hor-Aha who had remained motionless, his dark body blending with the night around him, only the shine of his eyes and the white smudge of his kilt betraying his presence. Ahmose placed a warning hand on Kamose’s knee but he ignored the gesture. “The captains of the ships in which they sailed have spoken highly of them but their Prince has said nothing,” Kamose went on crisply. “Why is that?” He leaned across the table and fixed them with a stare. “It is because, like a good commander, the Prince has no wish to cause dissent among his fellows.” His palm came down on the surface of the table with a resounding slap. “I had thought that by now, having marched and fought together, you were beyond this dangerous prejudice,” he almost shouted, “but I can see that I am mistaken. I intend to promote one hundred Medjay to the rank of Instructor of Retainers and distribute them among your divisions. They will each have one hundred of your best archers under them and they in turn will train others. They will be given officer privileges and responsibilities. Now you will hear my will.” He sat back again and folded his arms. “You may disband your divisions. Three thousand of your troops may go home until the Inundation is over. One thousand stay here to guard us from the north. One thousand come to Weset with me on active duty. Thus I leave eleven thousand men at Het nefer Apu and take eleven thousand to Weset. I will discuss with Paheri the disposition of the navy. All of you will travel with me to make sacrifices in the temple of Amun before you go to your several nomes. While you fritter away your time before the next battle season, you will send me regular reports on the state of your governorships and other holdings. Are we agreed?” It was obvious that they longed to meet each other’s eyes but did not dare. Solemnly they regarded Kamose, sitting smiling across at them, until Intef cleared his throat.

“We are your servants, Majesty,” he croaked. And then more confidently, “It is wise to secure our northern border with the Setiu and of course with Teti the Handsome in Kush, and we thank you for allowing us and our peasants a chance to greet our loved ones again. As to the matter of the Medjay …” He swallowed, and it was Iasen who continued.

“I think we would all agree that the tribesmen have acquitted themselves magnificently, Majesty,” he said. “Many deserve promotion. But let it be within their own ranks. Let those selected to be officers command their own kin. If you place them over Egyptians, there will be trouble.” Kamose inclined his head mockingly.