Alternate Generals II

Nomads bring word of the Hittite prince's progress, nomads who not long ago laid themselves seven times on the belly and seven times on the back before the Great King of Egypt, whose widow has bade the Hittites come. "Through Kizzuwadna we tracked them," they tell Horemheb, General of the Army. "Make ready, because the prince, he comes."

Hearing this, soldiers put away their games of twenty-squares and lay aside letters written home. They have been at war with the Hittites for a very long time. "How soon?" they ask. "Tomorrow? The next day?"

"Soon enough," Horemheb says, wondering if it can be soon enough, for he is afraid. Will the Queen betray Egypt, betray him who was her husband? He does not know. When he is certain of the Queen's will, then he will act.

The Egyptian army, camped along the Syrian frontier, waits in eager anticipation.

Nebmaatre Son-of-Re Amenhotep was, no denying, an old man. It seemed impossible that once he had sailed to Shat-meru and there, in the span of dawn to dusk, slain fifty-five wild bulls, or that he could have dispatched any of the lions credited to his arrows. When he sat upon the throne, rolls of fat obscured his belt. Now, illuminated by a broken pattern of sunset passing through a stone grille, they merely spread like half-melted wax across the wooden bed.

It was a waste, Akhenaten thought. Indolence. O, but here was his father, his god, the Dazzling Sun, spoilt by such common pleasures as even peasants might have: bread and beer and the pleasures of the bed. But even the peasant tempered himself with labor.

Not weakness, Akhenaten thought. It could not be weakness. It was the fading colors of dusk. What appeared to be softness and indolence was the inevitable bloating of the disk at sunset.

The Great Queen Tiye sat beside him, grim and patient, indulgently suckling her newborn Tutankhaten. But even so, she was no longer an image of youth. "Amenhotep will never see your new city again. He is dying."

"Does it truly please him, mother, what he has seen?"

"The god told you to build the Horizon of the Aten. How could anything so created fail to please him?"

Neferkheprure-Sole-One-of-Re Son-of-Re Akhenaten longed to return to his new city, to Akhet-Aten. For seven years now he had overseen its construction on a virgin plain to which the self-created Aten had directed him, following the dictates of the one god and none other. Here in Thebes Akhenaten felt smothered beneath the long shadow of Amon, the Hidden One, whose priesthood had long ago eclipsed Righteousness. At Akhet-Aten Egypt was being born anew, purged of the darkness and the weakness of falsehood.

Akhenaten replied, "The Aten rises from the eastern horizon and fills every land with his beauty. His Righteousness demands to be recognized."

"The Aten is strong in Akhet-Aten."

Akhenaten knew what Tiye was thinking: if Tushratta, Great King of Mitanni, sent Ishtar of Nineveh to Egypt again, perhaps Nebmaatre might rally. But that statue had not cured the King's illness, nor had the hundreds of statues of the lion goddess Sekhmet that his father had erected throughout Egypt. That had proven that there was no power in such things. Power emanated only from the disk of the sun, the Aten, creator of life.

What had been radiant would become black. There would be a night. Then there would be a tomorrow. There would always be a tomorrow, for so long as it was the will of the Aten to rise.

Nebmaatre died as Akhenaten knew he would: in the hours of darkness, when lions came forth from their dens and all serpents bit.

In the roofless temple ambassadors waited while Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their daughters sang hymns before scores of altars laden with fruit and flowers. Beyond the walls could be heard the sounds of block slid upon block, of bronze struck against stone, of men laboring to expand Akhet-Aten. Some years ago Nefertiti had asked Akhenaten when the Horizon of the Aten would be wide enough. "It will never be," was his reply. "Too long has Righteousness been neglected on the earth."

When at last they gathered beneath the Window of Appearance, where a wall might provide a little shade, the ambassadors complained amongst themselves that for too long hadthey been neglected. From the Window, with Nefertiti at his side and the little princesses at his feet, Akhenaten could see their robes were soaked in sweat, their faces reddened, their tongues grown thick in their mouths.

Had they no endurance? No, they too were soft, like those graven images of wax once used in the false temples. Arrayed alongside the ambassadors, the courtiers, soldiers, Egyptian princes and foreign hostages of the Royal Academy displayed no such weakness, not anymore. The rays of the sun annealed the Egyptians.

Tutu the chamberlain read a letter from Ribaddi of Byblos, who complained, as he had for years, about Aziru, the new ruler of Amurru. The city of Sumura had fallen to Aziru's siege, and Byblos might be next. Send archers and ships, Ribaddi begged. Why had Egypt let Sumura fall?

"This is only as it should be," Tutu said at the end. "Aziru is merely reclaiming his patrimony. He has your anointing. Aziru also writes to you and promises to rebuild Sumura."

Akhenaten remembered Aziru. Years ago they had stood shoulder to shoulder in Thebes among the youths of the Royal Academy while Nebmaatre held court. Akhenaten remembered a quiet, crafty boy, good at games of chance. Like Aziru, many of the rulers in Nubia, Canaan and Syria had grown up like brothers to Akhenaten, hostage princes in Egypt. Fight amongst themselves though they did, they all swore loyalty to Egypt. It was best this way, Nebmaatre had said: a fragmented Syria and Canaan could not effectively rebel.

But how each fragment warred with the other, overwatched by the Aten! How could this be pleasing to the god who had given life to each in the womb?

"Everyone wants troops from me today," Akhenaten said, "just as they wanted them from my father yesterday. Is there even one among you who does not want soldiers?"

Of all the men assembled below, only one came forward. Akhenaten knew him well: Keliya, Tushratta's trusted ambassador. "The Great King of Mitanni asks for no troops, your majesty."

Tutu snorted. "No, not troops!"

"Years ago, your majesty," said Keliya, "your father promised Tushratta-who loves you as he loved Nebmaatre-two statues of solid gold. I saw them before your father died. They are very fine."

Tutu said, "My lord, it is always the same from Tushratta, with you or with your father: 'Gold is like dirt in your country, as plentiful as dust, he says, and it is! But a house may be swept clean."

Keliya implored, "Your father himself promised this gold! How has Tushratta, my lord, failed you, O King of Egypt, to cause you to deny him this gift? Tell us, for we know of nothing!"

"How has he failed?" Akhenaten pointed the royal flail at Keliya and shook it so it rattled. "Keliya, you are no fool. You know that Nebmaatre became unhappy with Tushratta and withheld those statues for good cause. Tushratta cannot even hold together his own country. Your vassals rebel and make peace with the vile Hittites. It was because of Tushratta that the Hittites captured my father's vassal Shutarna of Kadesh and his son Aitakama and brought them as hostages to Hatte. For ten years Tushratta has slept like a lion in his den while dogs scavenge Syria!"

Keliya pressed his forehead to the floor. "Have there never been troubles in Egypt? Has your majesty never sent soldiers out into your own countryside to make things right?"

"Don't listen to the man of Mitanni!" A Canaanite man flanked by two Nubian spearmen broke from the ranks of Asiatics. "I am Ilumilku and I speak for Abimilki of Tyre who is your loyal servant! I kept my tongue, your majesty, because like everyone else here I have come to beg for soldiers. I'll not deny it, but listen to me, your majesty. You wrote to Abimilki asking what he has heard. He himself would have come here to tell you, but Zimreda of Sidon covets our mainland and plots against us with Aziru. Your good servant Horemheb saved us from Zimreda and dispatched Nubians from his garrison to guard my caravan, so important is what Abimilki sent me to tell you." Ilumilku dropped to his knees but raised his voice: "Half of the palace in Ugarit was burned by Hittite troops! And Aitakama has become prince of Kadesh."

A shadow passed over the Window, as if darkness hovered before its appointed hour. Aitakama, long a hostage of the Hittites, had returned to Syria? Akhenaten remembered Aitakama in the Royal Academy, too.

Tutu stood over the prostrate Keliya. "Aitakama in Kadesh! The Hittites at Ugarit! And to think that Tushratta would claim to guard our interests in Syria against the Hittites! He has brought them to our threshold!"

Against this Keliya said nothing.

The King asked, "And who would do better, Chamberlain?"

"Aziru of Amurru, your majesty. His capture of Sumura and the other cities speaks well for his competence. He pledges loyalty to you and will rebuild the city."

Keliya sat back on his heels. "The goodwill of Mitanni goes forth to every loyal vassal of Egypt, may they prosper from your generosity. Even as Tushratta sent the statue of Ishtar of Nineveh with blessings for Nebmaatre, would it not be in the spirit of goodwill and kindness for Nebmaatre's son to send these two gold statues to bless Tushratta?"

Akhenaten said, "Your king made a gesture without substance. There are no blessings but from the Aten."

"And do gifts from the King's hands account for nothing?" Keliya pressed his belly hard to the floor. He rolled over onto his back, arms outstretched. "May the Son of the Sun grant blessings upon Mitanni!"

Blessings, indeed. The statues would pay for Tushratta's chariotry and infantry. They would inspire fear in the hearts of Mitanni's restless vassals. Such a gift from Egypt would renew Mitanni's standing in the world, but what good would it do Egypt? Gold had gone to Tushratta before, and what did Egypt get in return? Hittites in Syria.

"I will take the matter under advisement."

The King stood, Nefertiti and their daughters following. The crowd prostrated itself.

"Let us give thanks to the cause of all being, and let us pray for Righteousness."

And he brought them all out into the sun.

Akhenaten presented two statues to Keliya for his lord Tushratta. Finely gilded cedar they were, well appointed with colored stone, rock crystal, and glass, but they were wood nonetheless. Keliya, under Egyptian guard, accepted them. He had no choice.

"The statues that your father had made," Nefertiti asked, "what have you done with the gold?"

"In the beginning of time, Re said that gold was his flesh. Gold is as dust in Egypt, my beloved," Akhenaten replied. "The world will see."

Akhenaten did not deny the truth of what Keliya had said: the army was everywhere in Egypt. Since the death of Nebmaatre, temples had been stripped of gold and silver and every precious thing, their estates had been seized, their ships had been confiscated. Everything now belonged to the Aten and to the King. Everywhere the name of the Hidden One occurred, wherever gods were written of, such was hacked out. Even in the birth-name of Nebmaatre it was not spared.

As if pursuing some lingering shadow of the Hidden One, Akhenaten drove every weakness from the backs and limbs of his soldiers, hardened them with labor, sparing neither prince born to the chariot nor conscripted peasant boy.

Daily they quarried stone and trimmed it and expanded Akhet-Aten. Under the watchful gaze of Ay, Master of the Horse, Akhenaten's young brother Smenkhkare and the other youths of the Royal Academy-noble Egyptian boys and hostage sons from Asia and Nubia alike-drilled to perfection in their chariots. Soldiers paraded and wrestled and fenced before their commanders. Under the scorching sun they stood to worship the Aten, the King, and the Queen.

In time, commanders, standard-bearers, the chariotry, the infantry and all the army scribes converged at harbors and riverbanks, in Upper and Lower Egypt alike.

Since the days of Akhenaten's grandfather, some fifty years ago, a king had not stirred from Egypt into Asia. But that was yesterday.

This was today.

And soon tomorrow would dawn at Byblos.

Horemheb remembers his astonishment when he learned that the King was in Byblos at the head of an army. At last, the King of Egypt was doing what his father never properly did! The army would be effective. How Horemheb had prayed for that.

Today he knows that his prayer was granted. Today the army is strong and ready for the Hittites approaching at the Queen's request.

At dusk Hapiru scouts come into camp with new word of the Hittite prince's progress: Hani, the Queen's messenger, travels with him as guarantee of safety through the kingdom of Kizzuwadna.

The Hapiru also say: "And we met the Ignorant along the way." That is the word the nomads use for those who have not pledged loyalty to Egypt. They hold out a bag, which Horemheb instructs a scribe to weigh. Shortly there is the sharp ting of small bits of metal being dumped onto the ground.

Horemheb also remembers the first time he heard exactly this sound.

Ianhamu, the highest commissioner in Syria, was leading him through Byblos to meet with the King. They passed a native smith working under the direction of an Egyptian soldier. People passed by, dropping before him little statuettes and amulets of bronze. Horemheb used to see vast quantities of such things offered for sale in the markets. The smith was melting them again, casting images of gods, of Reshef, Baal, and Baalat, into tips for arrows, blades for daggers and axes, and scales for armored shirts.

What pleasure that sound gave him, assurance that the troops would be well armed. Ianhamu assigned him reinforcements, a bureaucracy of scribes and workmen under the direction of Hotep, whose father had been commissioner of Sumura. Despite his promises, Ianhamu said, Aziru had not rebuilt Sumura. Hotep would correct that oversight.

The efficiency of it all, the promise of arms, a competent bureaucracy, blinded Horemheb.

He sees well enough now, even though darkness hovers over the land and the Hittite prince comes closer yet. Sumura opened Horemheb's eyes very wide, and he must pray that it likewise opened the Queen's.

Sumura indeed remained in ruins.

The siege had been hard. The surrounding plain, once fertile cropland and pasture, had been churned up by horses and charred by flames, and was only now coming to life again under the half-hearted efforts of farmers and herdsmen. Much of the city had burned. Plague had claimed many. Those who remained shuffled along, their faces slack, their hearts as broken as their city. The sky itself wept for Sumura.

Amurrite chariots and foot soldiers swarmed through the ruined ramparts to meet Horemheb. Among the chariots Horemheb recognized none of Hittite make, which gave him small comfort. Ribaddi and Abimilki had claimed that Aziru honored a treaty with the Hittites.

Horemheb demanded: "Where is Aziru?"

"In Tunip," said an Amurrite. This was one of Aziru's brothers, Pubahla. "The Hittites are near Ugarit, which is not far from there."

"Would Aziru prefer to be near the King of Hatte or the King of Egypt?"

Pubahla blanched. "Near…? We had heard such a thing but did not believe."

"Did not believe or did not want to believe?"

Horemheb struck Pubahla with his staff and had him tied behind his chariot. Pubahla trotted along wretchedly, ordering the Amurrites to lay down arms and to dismount. "Aziru your lord is an anointed vassal of Egypt and these are royal troops! Obey!"

The Amurrites obeyed, warily. Horemheb led his troops in, dragging Pubahla along when he fell.

The people of Sumura stared. They who formerly cooked in ovens now made open fires like nomads. Those who had lived under timber roofs now slept beneath tents of uncured hides of animals butchered prematurely for food during the siege. Women cried and wept, tears of joy for the presence of the Egyptian army commingled with tears of anger that they had not come sooner. Why, they asked, O why had Sumura been handed to the Amurrites? Why had Egypt abandoned them?

Horemheb had his officers round up the Amurrite troops, who had little choice but to cooperate as Pubahla lay bleeding and shackled beneath Horemheb's foot. By nightfall the Amurrites had been evicted and encamped outside the ramparts, corralled by Egyptian soldiers, while Nubians roamed the city so that the destitute did not loot each other. Soldiers and masons cleared rubble from the streets and brought baskets of earth to begin repairs on the ruined ramparts.

The troops of Hotep, the ones with writing-boxes tucked under their arms and rolls of papyrus in their hands, walked through the city like tax assessors. Everything that they could find for bread and beer, all the butchered flesh and fowl, they brought to an altar Hotep had constructed from stones dragged from the temple.

There Hotep summoned the city elders, who received amulets of gold, bright disks hung on braided gold chains.

One of the army officers, Troop Commander Sety, spoke with Horemheb that evening while they ate sitting in the shadow of the half-ruined temple. "Hotep's men carry gold as one Great King might give to another. I've seen the likes of this only when I brought royal caravans from Egypt to Babylon, and the Babylonian King was pleased indeed."

"Much gold for one Great King, or many little ones. Sumura will not be the end of our labors," Horemheb said, and Sety could only agree.

As they watched, Hotep redistributed the offerings from the altar to all the households of Sumura. "Ah, grain." Horemheb bit off a mouthful of bread. "Now that is the poor man's gold. And Amon goes hungry, even if the commonest lad of Sumura never does." He made a silent prayer to Amon now. What good, Horemheb wondered, was a common man's prayer without the rituals of the temples? What strength had an army without the blessings of the gods? He was afraid to learn.

"Hey, now," said Sety, "what's this?"

To each household in which a man or his wife could read, Hotep's men passed a clay tablet. This was something neither Horemheb nor Sety had ever seen before. Horemheb would ask Hotep about this, come morning.

Sety roused Horemheb before dawn. "There has been bloodshed."

Horemheb rolled from his camp bed, cursing. "How dare you engage in action without consulting me!"

When he emerged from his tent, it at once became apparent that neither Sety nor any of his men had shed this blood.

Bodies hung from the wall of the temple. Bodies not of Pubahla's men, nor even Egyptians or Nubians. Farmers and potters these were, housewives and priests, fourteen citizens of Sumura.

Horemheb raged: "The Amurrites will pay for this with their lives, and every Egyptian or Nubian lax at his guard shall lose his hand!"

Sety stayed Horemheb's hand and pointed to another wall.

The sun had emerged from the eastern horizon from which it drove away the clouds. Long rays of dawn reached over the hills to embrace the men who stood atop and below the wall with ropes, stringing up a fifteenth corpse by its feet.

At the ropes were men dressed in white linen. They were scribes and masons. Hotep's men.

To the elders of Sumura Hotep explained that Sumura had been abandoned to Aziru because the gods to whom they prayed were false. To Horemheb Hotep said, "They were vessels of treachery. This is the will of the King."

Citizens came forward, begging the Egyptians, but not for the bodies of their loved ones; they were afraid, Horemheb suspected, to admit kinship to the dead. Nor did they beg for gold, nor for their share of the morning's offerings of bread. The literate begged for tablets, the rest for spoken words.

By the time the King of Egypt arrived from Byblos with Prince Smenkhkare and a large retinue, none in Sumura wanted for shelter or for food. These had been provided in the name of the god the Egyptians worshipped and their King.

God, they had learned, was good. God provided all.

God, they had learned, was the Aten, and Neferkheprure-Sole-One-of-Re Akhenaten was his only son.

At last, at the direct command of the King, Aziru came south from Tunip. He bowed low and lower before the King, and never did Horemheb's archers lose their sight on him. Horemheb himself never ventured farther from Aziru than arm's reach, and his dagger was always near to hand. From the cities he had seized, the Amurrite chief brought gifts and, by the King's demand, his own young son as another hostage for the Royal Academy.

Akhenaten received him in the palace of Sumura. In exchange for Aziru's gifts, Akhenaten presented a large offering table bearing a single loaf of bread.

"I have heard," Akhenaten said, "that you have shared food and strong drink with Aitakama of Kadesh."

Aziru raised his hands in supplication. "O, but I am like a son to his majesty of Egypt. We were youths together in the Royal Academy."

"As was Aitakama. Then the Hittites took him in."

"O, but I am a vassal anointed by his majesty of Egypt," Aziru protested, touching his forehead to the ground at the King's feet. "I am loyal."

"Aitakama says the same, and Aitakama is an enemy. He and his father were captured years ago by Suppililiuma, King of Hatte, and now Aitakama is as a son of Hatte's royal academy. While protesting his loyalty to me he honors a treaty with the Hittites. Ribaddi and Abimilki and others say that Aziru does the same. They beg me to deal with him, just as they begged me to deal with his father. Remind Aziru of his father, Horemheb."

Horemheb, who remembered how Abdi-Ashirta had died, grabbed up Aziru by the shoulder. His dagger touched Aziru in exactly the same place it had pierced his father, near the liver.

Aziru shook with fear, but fear was not loyalty.

At the King's nod, Horemheb released the Amurrite, but not before pressing his blade a little into Aziru's flesh. Aziru cast himself at the King's feet, seven times on the belly and seven times on the back. "It has been so long since your majesty's forefathers came forth into Asia! Aitakama has firsthand seen the strength of Hatte and forgets the might of Egypt!"

"The sun is everywhere," Akhenaten said. "He created the earth according to his own desire. Without the Aten we would not exist. How can Aitakama doubt the Sole-One-of-Re?"

"He is an ignorant dog, my lord."

"And Hatte holds his lead. You will break bread with him again."

"My lord! I would not break your trust, not even give the appearance."

The King held out the loaf of bread. "You have perceived the Aten, Aziru."

"It is the sun, my lord, your god, the creator of life."

"You observe the Aten in relationship to yourself. Every man does." The King dropped the loaf to the ground and crushed it beneath his heel. "When the Aten is gone, nothing can exist. There is no perception, for there is no thing."

The King dismissed everyone from the hall but Aziru. Horemheb began to protest-this was the bandit chief of Amurru! — but what could he say against the King's command? Obedient, Horemheb made his way back to his tent that night, keenly aware of his own hunger, and keenly aware of the dark.

Aziru's troops departed Sumura with Horemheb's, heading for Kadesh. They displayed no knowledge of military discipline in the Egyptian fashion, but Horemheb did not underestimate their effectiveness. They had, after all, seized a great deal of territory under Aziru's command, and some had served Aziru's father equally well. Their proficiency, in fact, caused him some concern, which he made known to his officers. The Amurrites were not prisoners in tow. They were fighting men, properly armed, to be treated as such.

Six days they marched, six days in which the sky was as dull as tarnished silver. "Is this the strength of your Aten, that he cannot even shine in summer?" Aziru said. "For a long time Syria has been like this, cool and damp. There is illness afoot, too many rats."

Horemheb said, "Too many Amurrites."

Each night they camped with the Amurrites in the midst of the Egyptians. Aziru dined with Horemheb and his officers, hostage as much as guest, and slept under Nubian guard. Without Aziru the Amurrite army was like a brick without straw, and the Amurrites themselves knew this.

Three hours' travel from Kadesh, the army made camp for the night. Again Horemheb dined with Aziru, for perhaps the last time. Dislike the King's command though he did, Horemheb was about to cut Aziru's leash.

"We will be an hour's ride behind you; scouts will be even closer."

"I rely on that," Aziru replied. "Aitakama may have Hittite troops with him."

"And do you rely upon that too?"

Aziru smiled around the meat in his mouth. "General, do you doubt my intentions to do the King's will?"

"Yes."

Aziru's smile faded. "The King of Egypt resides in Sumura and I am to defy him? He speaks of the oneness of god, rebuilds a city nearly overnight, and I am to disobey? He is the Son of the Sun. I do not doubt him."

"He has paid you."

Aziru shrugged and laid aside his meal unfinished. "What is gold compared to Righteousness?"

That evening Horemheb prayed that the King was right, that the Aten alone was god, because if the other gods were not false, then the Hittites, the Amurrites, none of them were hindered by heresy.

The King had instructed Aziru to lay a trap, and indeed he was doing just so. But, Horemheb wondered, for whom?

The Egyptians lay beneath cover in the pass that led through the hills to Kadesh. Like so many before it, this day too dawned cool and damp, the sky veiled by clouds as it almost never was in Egypt. On the plain before them, west of the River Orontes, Aziru and Aitakama had joined their troops and exercised together like brother princes. As brothers they once might have been in Egypt, but they were no longer sons of the Royal Academy. Aitakama had among his troops Hittite chariotry.

Horemheb ordered Sety forward with a light force, the sort that would pursue a fleeing enemy on the road. Aitakama's men saw Sety at once. Troops fell into a defensive formation about Aitakama with startling precision.

"In the name of the King of Egypt, Neferkheprure, I come for Aziru son of Abdi-Ashirta!" Sety called. "Aitakama, you swore loyalty to the King of Egypt. Aziru is a dog who has slipped his lead. Return him to prove your loyalty to the King in deeds rather than words."

The audacity of this challenge-in the face of Hittite troops at Aitakama's flank-amused the prince of Kadesh. Not, however, Aziru, who fervently begged Aitakama's protection.

Horemheb admired how well Aziru was playing his role, if indeed it was a role at all. Suspecting nothing, Aitakama moved his troops between Sety and the Amurrites. "It would violate the laws of hospitality to surrender one who is as my brother. Would you take him by force?"

Sety's troops-six chariots, twelve men in all-fanned out in a line. As Sety raised his hand, his archers raised their bows. When his hand dropped-

Horses of Aitakama's guard fell or bolted as arrows struck them. Confusion seized the enemy, who had not expected so small a force to attack. Aitakama quickly restored order and commanded the Hittite chariots to swing about.

The heavy Hittite chariots charged the light Egyptian ones, raining arrows before them. They came around wide and drove eastward, forcing the Egyptians toward the Orontes, where Aziru's troops blocked the ford. If Aziru's men did not give them quarter at the riverbank, Sety would have to make a stand, and with such numbers a stand would be brief and fatal.

But now Aitakama's forces had turned their backs on Horemheb.

At Horemheb's command, the Egyptian troops abandoned their cover. Asiatic foot soldiers staggered with Egyptian arrows pinning their backs. At first these losses went unnoticed by the charioteers, the cries of the wounded lost in the thunder of wheels and hoofs. But soon shieldmen began to shift their positions to guard the backs of their archers and drivers, who did not understand what was happening until a slingstone picked off someone nearby or an arrow stung their shoulders. Enraged by this blatant trickery, Aitakama's officers bellowed orders to reverse! reverse! but the heavy Hittite chariots needed room to turn. More perished as the Egyptian chariots, built for the hunt as much as for battle, darted through the enemy ranks and cut commanders from soldiers, severed chariotry from infantry.

New infantry poured from Kadesh, men with slings and bows and daggers, and fresh arrows for the charioteers. The balance was swiftly tipping back to Aitakama, who had what Horemheb realized he himself lacked: reserves and reinforcements at hand, for Aziru remained passive at the river.

So the fighting fell into two battles: an outer of chariots and arrows, of which Horemheb struggled to retain the upper hand; and an inner, near the river, in which Sety's dwindling force fought to stay alive against the crush of Aitakama's troops. Sety himself had lost his chariot.

Aitakama bore down upon him.

As the sun was now high and strong, its rays at last pierced the thick cloud cover. A flash of light-the glint of the sun from Sety's gilded shield, perhaps, or the bronze scale of his armor-startled Aitakama's horses, which reared and bolted. Aitakama fell and, as if tied to his shoulders, the clouds cleared away to the horizon, burned off by the sun. Horemheb lost sight of Sety and Aitakama as the battle surged in again.

Now through the din came another sound, faint but unmistakable in its cadence. As Horemheb drove nearer to the river, smiting chariot runners and slaying horses and drivers in his path, he could hear it:

Kadesh surrendered, its people begging for the installment of Aitakama's brother, Biriawaza, who was ever loyal to Egypt. Aitakama they declared to be a criminal and a traitor who had destroyed much of the city when he returned from Hatte. He now sat with his wrists thrust through a wooden shackle strung from his neck. Aziru asked to cut off Aitakama's hand for the King, but Horemheb refused him the honor. He wished it for himself: his trusted Sety was dead. The sun had inspired Aziru's determination too late.

"The King will decide what to do with the traitor of Kadesh. Even," Horemheb said, "as he decided what to do with you."

"Aitakama you spare, yet me you would have slain when I entered Sumura."

"I would have slain you when I slew your father."

"And now?"

"The King declared you to be a loyal vassal. I did not believe him then. But as the King speaks, so the world becomes."

Before nightfall, more Egyptians approached Kadesh in chariots and on foot.

Hotep and his men.

Horemheb let them in, and by dawn blood ran down the walls of Kadesh.

Throughout Canaan and Syria cities fell before Akhenaten's army and the Amurrites who had joined him. Cities whose ramparts were damaged, whose homes and workshops were burned, whose fields were ruined, these Akhenaten renewed. He sent physicians to treat those ravaged by war and hunger and disease. At his command scribes took stock of livestock, food, copper, slaves, everything, and restored order. His troops were tireless, enduring, generous, for this was the will of the Aten who rose from the horizon every morning for the sake of all humanity.

True, old men, youths, and suckling mothers, tanners, smiths, and glassmakers sometimes died in the night with knives in their backs, arrows through their throats, amulets ripped from their fingers and necks. Akhenaten deeply regretted that this had to be. But those who abandoned these little bits of bronze and clay and wood and falsehood received greater things. By the grace of the Sole-One-of-Re, they received the flesh and the prayers of the sun, Righteousness, and they also received their lives.

The King of Egypt and his army met the King of Hatte and his army outside the city of Ugarit, invited there by King Niqmandu and his Egyptian wife. Niqmandu spread offerings between them, fish, flesh, fruit and wine for the troops, gold and ivory and other precious things for the Great Kings. Their war had much disrupted commerce, the lifeblood of Ugarit. Niqmandu begged Egypt and Hatte for peace.

This meeting did not please Horemheb, but Niqmandu King of Ugarit was a faithful ally of Egypt, no friend of the Hittites who had burned half of his palace. Moreover, Akhenaten had long wished to see his enemy Suppililiuma of Hatte.

Horemheb and his men kept close watch on the Hittites; he permitted the soldiers to drink none of the wine offered by Niqmandu's servants and to eat none of the fish or fruit, lest they become sated and slow.

To honor their host's hospitality, like brothers the Kings spoke about their wives at home, the sons and brothers who sat beside them here today.

"There is a god you favor above all others, I hear," Suppililiuma said through his interpreter.

"He is the only god, my brother," Akhenaten said. "He is the creator, mine as well as yours. He appointed your skin and your tongue."

"And my kingdom?"

"The Aten has appointed every man his place."

"Then I like this god of yours, my brother!" And Suppililiuma laughed. "All is from the Aten, then?"

"Everything."

"Including this?"

Suppililiuma gave a signal with his hand, and as he did so, Horemheb's men, who had been waiting for such a thing, rose up with spears and daggers and axes and rushed to shield their King. Niqmandu's servants dropped their jugs of wine and platters of food and withdrew behind the Egyptian line. The Hittites stood behind their shields, motionless.

"What is this?" Akhenaten demanded. "You would defy the hospitality of Niqmandu, my loyal ally?"

"We destroyed half of Niqmandu's palace," Suppililiuma said. "The other half we did not destroy. We made it ours. This, then, is the will of your god, my brother."

A great pain seized Horemheb's side. The cupbearer beside him held a bloody knife. Horemheb shouted, "Kadesh!" and his men understood. As Aitakama had fallen, so were the Egyptians to fall, impaled on the blades of their allies. The Hittites withdrew from the banquet.

Horemheb was struck again, and he fell upon the body of another. On his back he lay, blinded by blood, while above him the Egyptians and Amurrites rallied around the King and butchered Ugarit's army of servants. Then an arrow struck Horemheb's thigh. Horemheb shouted for all to fall back. Hittite archers had come up to finish the battle.

Someone pulled him to his feet and thrust a shoulder beneath his arm. Horemheb wiped an arm across his face to clear away the blood, and found Aziru at his side. And at his feet, in a pool of crimson that spread from his neck like the Nile in flood, lay Prince Smenkhkare.

The Hittites retreated from Ugarit, scarcely beaten but it was late in the season, time to head home. They would return.

Whereas the Hittites had burned half the palace, Akhenaten burned the entire city. Everything in the treasury, all the copper and tin and glass, was put aboard ships seized at the harbor and sent straightaway to Egypt. The bodies of Niqmandu and his Egyptian wife, of all the royal family and all the servants and all the servants' families, hung from the city walls.

And then the King beat Aitakama with his own hands, Aitakama's blood spreading like sacred oil upon his skin. When would this war end? His brother! His beloved brother!

"It will not end," Aitakama said. "The Hittites will always return. In Hatte they are strengthened and refreshed. There is no relief."

"No night is eternal. Dawn always comes to the horizon."

"Likewise dusk."

The King broke Aitakama in the end. To do it he removed both hands and one ear, and pinned Aitakama's severed nose to a wall. "In the city of Hattusa, their capital," Aitakama said with the tongue Akhenaten had left him, "there is a tunnel leading to the south, to safety, for Suppililiuma greatly fears what lies to the north."

And he told Akhenaten of Kaska, of the tribes there who harried shepherds and merchants and burned Hittite crops, and how they had ever been the bane of Hatte. In the days of Suppililiuma's father, the Kaska-tribes had destroyed the kingdom of Hatte. "Don't you remember that once your father called for them? But the Kaska-tribes never came, my brother. Not for Nebmaatre Amenhotep."

At that instant Akhenaten killed him.

He hung Aitakama's body in a cage suspended from the rudder of his royal ship and sailed north and then south again, so that all from Kizzuwadna to Libya might see the wrath of the King of Egypt, and that word of it might travel to Nubia and the Isles in the Midst of the Sea. Then he returned to Akhet-Aten to bury his brother Smenkhkare in the hills from which the Aten rose every day.

The Hittites delayed the next campaign in Syria. Akhenaten remained in Egypt, learning from Horemheb's letters that the Hittite Upper Lands had been overrun from Kaska, and that Tushratta of Mitanni had at last reclaimed his rebel vassals. Akhenaten dispatched messengers through the lands of Mitanni. They rode tirelessly to Kaska and back again, bringing with them the flesh of Re stripped from the false temples of Canaan and Syria.

Hittite troops came into Syria that summer and several summers thereafter. Harried from Kaska, they could do little more than burn fields before Horemheb's chariots and infantry fell upon them and cut them up. In the wake of destruction, as always, came renewal: Hotep, tirelessly at work, establishing Righteousness in the name of the Sole-One-of-Re. Seated beside Nefertiti, with the princesses at their feet, Akhenaten heard of all of this from Tutu. It pleased him, as it pleased the Aten.

Then one campaign season was not delayed. It did not come at all. Tutu announced that the Kaska-tribes had destroyed a holy city and wrecked a number of outposts. Lands to the west had rebelled. Kizzuwadna joined its border with Mitanni, so now if the Hittites wished to enter Syria, they would have to fight through every pass, do battle on every plain, and risk leaving their homes open to attack. And there was, too, the plague.

It struck Egypt no less than Hatte, carried in the breath or the sweat of supplicants, messengers, and prisoners. The youngest princesses died, and soon thereafter Tiye as well. Akhenaten himself took ill throughout his entire body, and today, seated at the Window of Appearance, shivered with cold as though the warmth of the Aten could no longer reach him.

"I feel enveloped by night, but it is not yet noon," he whispered to Nefertiti, who held him and fondled him as she had always done.

Below, the hostage sons and royal princes of the Royal Academy paraded before the ambassadors to present the newly orphaned prince, Tutankhaten. The three remaining princesses leaned over the ledge of the Window, curious to see the youths whom they might someday marry. Already they looked to tomorrow.

The King said, "It is too soon for this. O my father who gives breath to all you create, it is not yet noon!"

The next day he died, collapsed upon an altar, thin and wasted before the ambassadors of Asia, as the sun descended to the horizon on the shortest day of the year, never to know whether there would be another tomorrow.

Encamped outside Aleppo, where Hotep had strung more bodies from the wall, Horemheb received news of the King's death. His widow had shed her old name and, as Ankhetkheprure-Beloved-of-the-Sole-One-of-Re Neferneferuaten, sat alone upon the throne of Egypt.

"The war that you have waged is to end," Ankhetkheprure wrote to Horemheb. "I have written to Suppililiuma, King of Hatte, to send a son."

At the hour of dawn, one of Horemheb's aides, Paramessu son of Sety, comes to him. "General, they are here. Shall I go out to meet them?"

Horemheb studies Paramessu. He is much like his father, hawk-nosed and tall. "No. This time let the Hittites come to us." He orders his troops into formation, a show of strength and precision.

Into the camp Hani, the Queen's messenger, leads a caravan of laden carts and asses, chariots and horses finely arrayed. Riding in a heavy chariot of the sort defeated at Kadesh, the prince, scarcely in the flush of adolescence, wears weapons tucked in his belt, but it is the gold amulet around his neck, a pendant in the form of some Hittite god, that most worries Horemheb. The length of Canaan and the breadth of Syria are the horizon of the Aten. What will become of it without the Sole-One-of-Re on the throne? What is the Queen's will?

Horemheb greets the prince in the names of Ankhetkheprure and of the Aten. "Which son of Suppililiuma are you?"

"Mursili, his second," replies the boy in a voice still high and fine.

Hani reaches out and snaps the amulet from around Mursili's neck. In two hands he holds it high, to the east, and, uttering the name of Ankhetkheprure-Beloved-of-the-Sole-One-of-Re, rolls his knuckles together. The soft gold bends in his hands before he drops it to the ground, where it glitters in the dawn. Mursili stares at it, broken-hearted.

But Horemheb's heart rises with the sun into the expanse of clear sky. The Horizon established by the Sole-One-of-Re shall indeed be preserved by his Beloved. The Aten is god.

"Your coming is a great occasion for me," Horemheb says to Mursili as the soldiers break camp. "I have not been home to Egypt in a very long time."

"Bring me home to Hattusa."

"My prince, now your home is Akhet-Aten."

As the sun rises toward its height, Horemheb directs the soldiers and the caravan and the prince southward.

He will obey Mursili, but not yet. Not until the tutors of the Royal Academy have taught the prince to pray to the Aten and his only bodily son. Not until he is returned to Hatte as a loyal vassal duly anointed by the Queen of Egypt.