River god

'By Horus, I hope you are right. I hope that Apachan is not planning a pretty little surprise for us.' He touched my shoulder. 'The dice are hi the cup, Tata. It is too late to change them now. We must play this coup with what the gods have given us. Drive out in review.'

I took up the reins and wheeled the chariot out in front of our army. The king was showing himself to his troops. His presence would give them heart, and stiffen their spines. I took the horses down the long ranks at a tight hand-trot. Rock and Chain were brushed until their coats shone like polished copper in the sunlight. The carriage of the royal chariot was dressed in a thin skin of gold-leaf. This was the only concession I had made, in my quest for lightness.

The gold was beaten thinner than a papyrus sheet, and it added less than a hundred deben to the overall weight of our vehicle, yet it made a dazzling display. Friend or enemy who looked upon it could not doubt that this was Pharaoh's chariot, and take heart or be struck by awe in the thick of battle. On its long, whippy bamboo rod the blue pennant nodded and streamed in the breeze high above our heads, and the men cheered us as we drove down their ranks.

On the day we had left Qebui to begin the Return, I had made a vow not to cut my hah- until I had made sacrifice in the temple of Horus in the centre of Thebes. Now my hah- reached to my waist, and to hide the streaks of grey hi it, I had dyed it with henna imported from those lands beyond the Indus river. It was a ruddy gold mane that set off my beauty to perfection. I wore a simple starched kilt of the whitest linen, and the Gold of Praise upon my naked chest. I did not wish in any way to detract from the glory of my young pharaoh, so I wore no make-up and no other ornament.

We passed in front of the massed regiments of the Shilluk spearmen in the centre. Those magnificent bloodthirsty pagans were the rock that anchored our line. They cheered us as we rode by, 'Kajan! Tanus! Kajan! Tamose!' Their ostrich feathers seethed white as the foam of the river in the cataracts as they raised their spears in salute. I saw Lord Kratas there in the midst of them, and he shouted at me. His words were lost in the roar of ten thousand voices, but I read his lips: 'You and I will get puking drunk tonight in Thebes, you old hooligan.'

The Shilluk were stacked in depth, file upon file and regiment upon regiment. Kratas had exercised them ceaselessly in the tactics that I had helped him evolve to deal with chariots. Apart from their long spears, each of them carried a bundle of javelins, and a sling of wood and leather to launch these with added power. They had set the sharpened wooden staves into the earth to form a palisade in front of then" line. The Hyksos chariots had to break through that spiny barrier to reach them.

The Egyptian archers were drawn up behind them, ready to move forward through their ranks or retreat again, as the vagaries of the battle called for each differing tactic. They raised their recurved bows on high and cheered Pharaoh. 'Tamose! Egypt and Tamose!'

Pharaoh wore the blue war crown, with the golden circlet of the uraeus around his brow, the heads of the vulture and the cobra of the two kingdoms entwined, their jewelled eyes glittering. He returned their salute with the bare blade of the blue sword held high.

We wheeled around our own left flank, and before we started back, Memnon stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. For a short while we looked back over the field. The Hyksos were moving forward already. Their front line was twice the length of our own.

'From your own treatise, Tata,' he quoted, ' "A circumspect defence until the enemy is committed, and then the rapid and audacious attack." '

'You have remembered the lesson well, sire.'

'It is certain we will be outflanked, and Apachan will probably throw in his first five chariot divisions at the start.'

'I agree with you, Mem.'

'But we know what we have to do, don't we, Tata?' He tapped my shoulder and we started back to where our own chariots were holding in the rear.

Remrem headed the first division, Astes had the second, and Lord Aqer the third. Newly promoted to the rank of Best of Ten Thousand, Captain Hui commanded the fourth division. Two regiments of Shilluk guarded our baggage and the spare horses.

'Look at that old hunting dog,' Memnon nodded at Remrem. 'He is chafing to be away. By Horus, I'll teach him a little patience before this day is done.'

We heard the horns sounding in the centre.

'It begins now.' Memnon pointed to the front, and we saw the Hyksos chariots looming through the dust-clouds. 'Yes, Apachan has turned loose his chariots.'

He looked back at our divisions, and Remrem raised his sword high. "The first is ready, Majesty,' he called ®agerly, but Memnon ignored him and signalled to Lord Aqer. The third division came forward in column of fours behind us, and Pharaoh led them out.

The Hyksos chariots lumbered forward, heavy and majestic, aimed at the centre of our line. Memnon cut across in front of them, interposing our thin column between their hordes and the infantry. Then, at his signal, we wheeled into line abreast and we flew straight at them. It seemed suicidal, as futile as charging one of our frail wooden galleys at the rocks of the cataract.

As we came together, our archers fired head-on into the Hyksos, aiming for the horses. Gaps opened in their line as the animals were brought down by our arrows, then at the last possible moment our own line dissolved like wind-driven smoke. Our drivers used their superior speed and manoeuvrability. Instead of coming into collision with the Hyksos line and being crushed beneath the juggernaut, we swerved into the gaps and raced through them. Not all our chariots escaped, and some were broken and overturned, but Lord Aqer led four out of every five of them through.

We emerged in the rear of the Hyksos charge and spun around in a full-locked turn, re-forming the line at the gallop and again using our speed to overhaul the Hyksos, coming into them from the rear, firing our arrows into them at shortening range.

The Hyksos chariots were designed to give protection to the crew from the front, and their archers were stationed on the footplate to fire their arrows forward. Confusion spread down their line as they tried to meet our attack from the rear. Hard-pressed, some of the drivers attempted to turn back to confront us, and they collided with the chariots alongside. Those fearsome wheel-scythes cut into the legs of the neighbouring horses, and brought them down in a screaming, whinnying tangle.

The confusion spread among them just as the first volley of arrows from the Egyptian archers rose up over the massed ranks of Shilluk and dropped among the Hyksos. Immediately this happened, Memnon gave the order, and we wheeled away and let them run down on that palisade of sharpened staves. Half their horses were maimed or killed by those fierce points. Those who broke through were met by the Shilluk and a cloud of javelins. Struck by stake and arrow and javelin, their horses panicked, kicking and rearing in the traces.

Those chariots that were still under control hurled themselves into the Shilluk phalanx. They met no resistance. The black ranks opened before them, allowing the horses to run through, but then they closed up behind them.

Every one of those tall, willowy black devils was an athlete and an acrobat. They leaped up on to the footplate of the racing chariots from behind, and they stabbed and hacked at the crew with dagger and spear. They swallowed that first charge of chariots the same way a jellyfish engulfs a swift silver sardine in its myriad arms and amorphous body.

The Hyksos spearmen were moving forward to follow up and exploit the chariot charge, but now they were exposed. Loose horses and the surviving chariots tore back into their massed ranks, and forced them to open up and let them through. For the moment they were stranded in disorder in the middle of the field, and Memnon skilfully seized the opportunity.

Lord Aqer's horses were blown, and Memnon led them back into reserve. He and I changed teams. It was but a moment's work for the grooms to loosen the tack that coupled Rock and Chain, and to lead in a fresh team from the horses being held in reserve. We had six thousand fresh horses ready in the rear. I wondered how many Hyksos horses had escaped the Strangler, how many fresh teams they were holding.

As we wheeled back into line, Remrem called to us desperately, 'Your Majesty! The first! Let my first division go!'

Pharaoh ignored him and signalled to Astes. The second moved forward behind us and formed up at the trot.

The Hyksos infantry was still tangled in the middle of the field. They had extended to overlap our shorter line, but had lost their dressing. The line was crumpled and twisted. With a general's eye, Memnon picked out the weakest point, a salient in their left flank.

'The second division will advance. Trot-march! Forward! Pods of eight, charge!'

We tore into the salient in the line, eight chariots abreast. Pod after pod, we crashed into them and ripped them open. Their left flank buckled, while their right still pressed forward. We had them canted across the field, their centre was shearing, and Memnon re-formed the third division at the gallop, and set them up to tear open the enemy centre.

At the moment before we were committed to the charge, I glanced across at the city. Dust had almost obscured the range, but I glimpsed the two white flags on the summit of the Finger of Horus. It was the warning signal from my lookout posted there, and I swivelled round and looked back at the eastern fort of the city.

'Sire!' I cried, and pointed back. The king followed my arm, and saw the first squadron of Hyksos chariots trot out from concealment behind the curve of the wall. The others followed, like a column of black warrior ants on the march.

'Apachan is throwing in his reserves to save his infantry,' Memnon shouted, above the din of battle. 'A moment more, and he would have had us in enfilade. Well done, Tata.'

We had to let the infantry escape, as we wheeled into line to face Apachan's chariots. We charged at each other across a field littered with smashed and overturned chariots, loose arrows and javelins, dead and wounded horses and dying men. As we came together, I stood taller on the footplate and peered ahead. There was something unusual about the run of the enemy chariots, and then it dawned upon me.

'Sire,' I cried, 'look at the horses! They are running sick animals.' The chests of the leading teams were painted with a glistening coat of yellow mucus that streamed from their gaping mouths. Even as I watched, one of the horses coming towards us staggered and fell headlong, bringing its teammate down with it.

'Sweet Isis, you are right. Their horses are finished before they have begun,' Memnon answered. He saw instantly what he had to do. It was the measure of his superb control that he was able to deflect a charge of his chariots once it was fully launched. At this very last moment he declined the head-on engagement.

We opened like a flower before their charge, peeling away on either side of them, turning and running back for our own lines, drawing them on, straining their sick and gasping horses to their utmost.

We ran before them in a tight, compact formation. Their own line began to waver and fall apart as the weaker horses broke down. Some of them fell as though struck in the head by an arrow. Others merely slowed and stopped, standing with their heads hanging, mucus pouring from their mouths in shiny golden ropes.

Lord Aqer's own horses were almost blown by now. They had driven two furious charges without a rest. Still pursued by the remnants of Apachan's division, Memnon led them back to where Hui's fourth division was drawn up alongside Remrem and his first.

'Pharaoh! The first is ready. Let me go! In the name of all the gods, let me go!' Remrem howled with frustration.

Memnon hardly glanced in his direction. I turned my chariot in alongside that of Hui. A team of grooms slipped our sweat-soaked horses from the traces and led in a fresh pair. While Lord Aqer's exhausted division streamed back past us, we faced the oncoming Hyksos.

'Are you ready, Captain Hui?' Memnon called to him, and Hui raised his bow in salute.

'For Egypt and Tamose!' he shouted.

'Then forward march. Charge!' Memnon laughed, and our horses jumped against the traces and we shot forward.

There were six full divisions of Apachan's chariots scattered across the field in front of us. Half of them were broken down, with the horses fallen or drooping in the traces, suffocated and dying from the Yellow Strangler. Most of the others were reduced to a walk, the horses staggering and wheezing. However, the remaining chariots came on in good order.

We went out to meet them face to face. In the centre of their charge rode a tall chariot, its coachwork clad in shining bronze. On the footplate stood a man so tall that he towered above his driver. He wore the high golden helmet of Hyksos royalty, and his dark beard was plaited with coloured ribbons that fluttered in the wind like pretty butterflies hovering over a flowering shrub.

'Apachan!' Memnon challenged him. 'You are a dead man.'

Apachan heard him, and he picked out our golden chariot. He swerved to meet us, and Memnon tapped my shoulder.

'Lay me alongside the bearded hog. It's time for the sword, at last.'

Apachan loosed two arrows at us as we closed. Memnon caught one on his shield. I ducked under the other, but I never lost my concentration. I was watching those terrible spinning scythes on the hubs of Apachan's wheels. They could hack my horses' legs out from under them.

Behind me I heard the gravelly rasp as Memnon drew the blue sword from its scabbard on the side panel, and from the corner of my eye I caught the steely flash of the blade as he went on guard.

I swung my horses' heads over, feinting to the right to confuse the Hyksos driver, but the instant we started to turn away, I changed direction again. I avoided his scythes and passed him close, then I turned in sharply behind him. With my free hand I snatched up the grappling-hook and tossed it over the side-panel of the other chariot. Now we were locked together, but I had achieved the advantage, for we lay across his stern.

Apachan swivelled around, and aimed a sword-cut at me, but I fell to my knees under it, and Memnon gathered up the blow on his shield, then swung the blue sword. A shard of bronze curled from the edge of Apachan's weapon, sliced away by the steel, and he shouted in angry disbelief, and flung up his copper shield at the next blow.

Apachan was a superb swordsman, but no match for my king and the blue sword. Memnon mangled his shield to strips, and then swung hard at his bronze blade, as Apachan tried to defend his head. The blue blade sheared the bronze cleanly, and Apachan was left with only the hilt in his fist.

He opened his mouth wide and bellowed at us. The teeth in the back of his jaw were black and rotten, and his spittle blew into my face in a cloud. Memnon used that classic straight thrust to end it. He drove the point of the blue blade through Apachan's open mouth, deeply into the back of his throat. His angry bellow was drowned out by the torrent of bright blood that burst through his hairy lips.

I cut the rope of the grappling-hook, and let the Hyksos chariot run free. The horses were out of control and they slewed away and ran down the line of locked and battling chariots. Apachan clutched at the dashboard, holding himself erect even though he was dying, and the blood spurted from his mouth and cascaded down his breastplate.

It was a sight that struck dismay into the hearts of his charioteers. They tried to disengage their sick and staggering-horses, but we ran hub-to-hub with them and hurled our javelins into them. We followed them all the way back, until we came within range of their archers, and flocks of arrows fell around us and forced us to break off.

'It is not over yet,' I warned Memnon, as we walked our tired horses back. 'You have broken Apachan's chariots, but you still have to deal with Beon's infantry.'

'Take me to Kratas,' Pharaoh ordered.

I stopped our chariot in front of the massed regiments of Shilluk, and Memnon called across to Kratas, 'What heart, my Lord?'

'I fear, sire, that my fellows will fall asleep if you cannot find a little work for us to do.'

'Then let us hear a tune from them as you take them forward to seek employment.'

The Shilluk began their advance. They moved with a curious shuffling gait, and every third pace they stamped in unison with a force that made the ground jump beneath their horny bare feet. They sang in those deep, melodious African voices, a sound like a swarm of angry black bees, and they drummed their spears upon their rawhide shields.

The Hyksos were disciplined and brave, they could not have conquered half the world if they had not been so. We had smashed up their chariots, but they stood to meet Kratas' advance behind a wall of bronze shields.

The two armies came together like fighting temple bulls. The black and the white bulls locked horns and fought it out breast-to-breast and spear-to-spear.

While the two armies of foot-soldiers mauled each other, Pharaoh held back his chariots, using them with skill and daring only when there was an opening or a weakness in the enemy positions. When a pocket of the Hyksos infantry was isolated on the left, he sent in Aqer's division, and annihilated them with two swift charges. When Lord Beon tried to send reinforcements forward to assist his beleaguered front, Pharaoh despatched Astes with five hundred chariots to frustrate him.

The Hyksos rallied every one of their remaining chariots, and every one of their horses that could still stand, and threw them against our right. Memnon sent Hui and Astes out to meet them, and to break up their attack. He left Remrem cursing and pleading and stamping up and down beside his chariot, and ignored his pleas.

Pharaoh and I circled the fighting in the golden chariot, watching each shift and change in the conflict. He pushed in his reserves in exactly those places where they were most needed, and with the timing and anticipation that can never be taught or learned. It was as though the pulse and the tempo of the battle beat in his heart, and he sensed it in his blood.

Always I looked for Kratas in the thick of it. Many times I lost him, and I dreaded that he was down, but then his helmet showed again with the ostrich-feather plume cut away, and the bronze splattered with his own blood and the blood of other men.

It was there in the centre where Kratas fought that the Hyksos ranks began to give. It was like the first trickle through the earth wall of a dam, their line bulged and stretched to the breaking-point. Their rear ranks began to fall in upon themselves under the relentless pressure.

'By the love of Horus and the compassion of all the gods, Tata, this is the moment of our victory.' Memnon saw it even before I did.

We galloped across to where Remrem still waited, and Pharaoh hailed him, 'Are you ready, my Lord Remrem?'

'I have been ready since dawn, sire, but I am no lord.'

'Would you argue with your king, sir? You are a lord now. The enemy centre is breaking. Take your chariots and chase them back to Memphis!'

'May you live for ever, Pharaoh!' Lord Remrem roared, and he sprang to the footplate. He led out the first. Their horses were fresh and strong, and their fighting spirit was chafed raw and angry with long restraint.

They crashed into the Hyksos right flank. They cut through them with barely a check, and swung round1 and went into the enemy centre from the rear. It was the perfect moment when the battle teetered, and the Hyksos centre broke. Within the time it takes to draw and hold a long breath, they were in rout.

They streamed back towards the city gates, but even Kra-tas' Shilluk were too far-gone to follow them. They stood knee-deep in the piles of dead and dying men, they rested on their spears and let the Hyksos go. This was when the genius of Memnon was made apparent. He had kept the first in hand for this moment. They took up the chase, and I saw Remrem's sword rise and fall to a terrible rhythm as he drove them on.

The first of the fleeing enemy reached the city gates, but they found them slammed closed in their faces. My spies and agents had done their work well. The populace of Thebes was in revolt, and the city was ours. They barred the gates to the broken Hyksos legions.

Remrem pursued the Hyksos until night fell and his horses were exhausted. He drove them back thirty miles, and every yard of the north road was littered with their discarded weapons and the bodies of the slain.

I DROVE PHARAOH'S GOLDEN CHARIOT up to the main gate of the city, and he stood tall on the footplate and shouted to the sentinels on the parapet above us. 'Open the gates! Let me pass through!'

'Who is it that demands entry to Thebes?' they called down.

'I am Tamose, ruler of the two kingdoms.'

'Hail Pharaoh! May you live for ever!'

The gates swung open, and Memnon touched my shoulder. 'Drive through, Tata.'

I turned to face him. 'Forgive me, Majesty. I have taken oath that I will not enter the city, except at the side of my mistress, Queen Lostris. I must pass the reins to you.'

'Dismount,' he ordered me gently. 'Go! Fetch your mistress and make good your oath.'

He took the reins from my hand, and I climbed down into the dusty roadway. I watched him drive the golden chariot through the gateway, and the sound of cheering was like the thunder of waters in the cataracts at high flood. The people of Thebes greeted their king.

I stood at the roadside as our depleted and battered army followed Pharaoh into the city. I realized what a bitter price we had paid for our victory. We would not be fit to pursue the Hyksos until we had rebuilt our army. By this time King Salitis would be strong again, and his horses recovered from the Yellow Strangler. We had won the first battle, but I knew that many more lay ahead of us before the tyrant could be cast out of this very Egypt.

I looked for Kratas as the Shilluk regiments marched past, but he was not there.

Hui had a chariot and fresh horses for me. 'I will ride with you, Taita,' he offered, but I shook my head.

'I will travel faster alone,' I told him. 'Go into the city and enjoy your triumph. A thousand pretty maids are waiting to welcome you home.'

Before I took the south road, I drove first to the battlefield. The jackals and the hyena were already at the feast that we had set for them, their growls and howls blended with the groans of the dying. The dead were piled like the flotsam on the river-bank when the flood-waters recede.

I drove the chariot through to where I had last seen Kratas, but this was the most gruesome corner of that awful field. The corpses were piled high as my chariot wheels. I saw his helmet lying in the dust that blood had turned to thick mud. I dismounted and took it up. The crest was gone and the helm was all dented and battered in by heavy blows.

I threw the helmet aside and began to search for Kratas' body. I saw his leg protruding like the branch of a giant acacia from beneath a pile of bodies. They were Shilluk and Hyksos lying together in the truce of death. I dragged them aside and found Kratas on his back. He was drenched in clotted black blood, his hair was matted with it and his face was a black, crusted mask.

I knelt beside him, and I whispered softly, 'Must they all die? Every one I truly love, must they all die?' I leaned forward and kissed his bloody lips.

He sat up and stared at me. Then he grinned that wide boyish grin of his. 'By the plug of dried snot in Seth's left nostril, that was a real fight,' he greeted me.

'Kratas!' I stared at him with delight. 'You will truly live for ever.'

'Never doubt it for a moment, my lad. But right now I need a noggin.'

I ran to the chariot and fetched the wine flask. He held it at arm's-length and let the red wine squirt down his throat without swallowing. When the flask was empty he threw it aside and belched.

'That will do well enough for a start,' he winked at me. 'Now point me towards the nearest tavern, you old reprobate.'

FASTER THAN ANY SHIP COULD SAIL against the current, I carried the news to Elephantine. I was one man in the chariot, and the horses ran lightly. I changed the teams at every relay station along the south road, and galloped on without a check. The grooms handed me a flask or a crust of corn-bread and cheese as they changed the horses, and I never slept or even rested.

During the night, the stars and the moon revealed the path to me, and Horus guided my weary hands upon the traces,

for though' I ached in every limb and I reeled on the footplate with fatigue, I met with no mishap.

At each relay station and in each village along the way, I shouted the joyous news. 'A victory! A mighty victory! Pharaoh has triumphed at Thebes. The Hyksos is cast down.'

'Praise to all the gods!' they cheered me. 'Egypt and Ta-mose.'

I galloped on, and they still speak of my ride to this day along the south road. They tell of the gaunt rider with wild bloodshot eyes, his robe thick with dust and the stains of dried blood, his long hair blowing in the wind, the harbinger of victory, bringing the news to Elephantine of the battle that set Egypt on the road to freedom.

I drove from Thebes to Elephantine in two days and two nights, and when I reached the palace, I barely had the strength left to stagger into the water-garden where my mistress lay, and throw myself down beside her couch.

'Mistress,' I croaked through cracked lips and a throat that was parched with dust, 'Pharaoh has won a mighty victory. I have come to take you home.'

WE SAILED DOWN-RIVER TO THEBES. THE princesses were with me to keep their mother company and to cheer her. They sat with her on the open deck and sang to her. They rhymed and riddled and laughed, but there were tones of sadness in their laughter and deep concern in their eyes as they watched over my mistress.

Queen Lostris was as frail as a wounded bird. There was no weight to her bones and her flesh was as translucent as mother-of-pearl. I could lift and carry her as easily as I had done when she was ten years of age. The powder of the sleeping-flower was no longer able to still the pain that gnawed into her belly like some terrible clawed crab.

I carried her to the bows of the galley when at last the walls of Thebes opened to our view around the last bend in the river. With an arm around her thin shoulders I supported her, as we delighted together in all those long-remembered scenes, and lived again a thousand joyous memories of our youth.

But the effort tired her. When we docked below the Palace of Memnon, half the populace of Thebes was waiting to welcome her. Pharaoh Tamose stood at the head of this vast throng.

When the litter-bearers carried her ashore, they cheered her. Although most of them had never laid eyes upon her, the legend of the compassionate queen had persisted during her long exile. Mothers lifted up their infants for her blessing, and they reached out to touch her hand as it trailed from the edge of the litter.

'Pray to Hapi for us,' they pleaded. 'Pray for us, Mother of Egypt.'

Pharaoh Tamose walked beside her litter like the son of a commoner, and Tehuti and Bekatha followed close behind. Both the princesses smiled brightly, though the tears jewelled their eyelids.

Aton had prepared quarters for the queen. At the door I sent them all away, even the king. I laid her on the couch beneath the vine arbour on the terrace. From there she could look across the river to the shining walls of her beloved Thebes.

When darkness fell, I carried her to her bedchamber. As she lay upon the linen sheets, she looked up at me. 'Taita,' she murmured, 'one last time, will you work the Mazes of Ammon-Ra for me?'

'Mistress, I can refuse you nothing.' I bowed my head and went to fetch my medicine chest.

I sat beside her bed, cross-legged upon the stone slabs, and she watched me prepare the herbs. I crushed them in the alabaster pestle and mortar, and heated the water in the copper kettle.

I raised the steaming cup and saluted her with it.

'Thank you,' she whispered, and I drained the cup. I closed my eyes and waited for the familiar but dreaded slide, over the edge of reality, into the world of dreams and visions.

When I returned, the lamps were guttering and smoking in their brackets, and the palace was silent. There was no sound from the river or from the sleeping city on the far bank, only the sweet trill of a nightingale in the gardens, and the light breath of my mistress as she lay upon her silken pillow.

I thought she was sleeping. But the moment I lifted my trembling hand to wipe the cold and nauseous sweat from my face, she opened her eyes. 'Poor Taita, was it so bad?'

It had been worse than ever before. My head ached and my vision swam. I knew that I would never work the Mazes again. This was the last time, and I had done it for her alone.

'I saw the vulture and the cobra stand on either side of the river, divided by the waters. I saw the waters rise and fall one hundred seasons. I saw one hundred sheaths of corn, and one hundred birds fly over the river. Below them, I saw the dust of battle and the flash of swords. I saw the smoke of burning cities mingle with the dust.

'At last I saw the cobra and the vulture come together in congress. I saw them mating and entwined on a sheet of pure blue silk. There were blue banners on the city walls and banners of blue flew on the temple pylons.

'I saw the blue pennants on the chariots that drove out across the world. I saw monuments so tall and mighty that they would stand for ten thousand years. I saw the peoples of fifty different nations bow down before them.'

I sighed and pressed my fingers into my temples to still the throbbing in my skull, and then I said, 'That was all my vision.'

Neither of us spoke or moved for a long while thereafter, then my mistress said quietly, 'One hundred seasons must pass before the two kingdoms are united, one hundred years of war and striving before the Hyksos are at last driven from the sacred soil of this very Egypt. It will be hard and bitter for my people to bear.'

'But they will be united under the blue banner, and the kings of your line will conquer the world. All the nations of the world will pay homage to them,' I interpreted the rest of my vision for her.

'With this I am content.' She sighed and fell asleep.

I did not sleep, for I knew that she still needed me near her.

She woke again in that hour before dawn which is the darkest of the night. She cried Out, 'The pain! Sweet Isis, the pain!'

I mixed the Red Shepenn for her. After a while she said, 'The pain has passed, but I am cold. Hold me, Taita, warm me with your body.'

I took her in my arms and held her while she slept.

She awoke once more as the first timid rays of dawn crept in through the doorway from the terrace.

'I have loved only two men in my life,' she murmured, 'and you were one of those. Perhaps in the next life, the gods will treat our love more kindly.'

There was no reply I could give. She closed her eyes for the last time. She stole away quietly and left me. Her last breath was no louder than the one before, but I felt the chill in her lips when I kissed them.

'Goodbye, my mistress,' I whispered. 'Farewell, my. heart.'

I HAVE WRITTEN THESE SCROLLS DURING the seventy days and nights of the royal embalming. They are my last tribute to my mistress.

Before the undertakers took her away from me, I made the incision in her left flank, as I had done for Tanus. I opened her womb and took from it that terrible incubus that had killed her. It was a thing of flesh and blood, but it was not human. When I cast it into the fire, I cursed it, and I cursed the foul god Seth who had placed it in her.

I have prepared ten alabaster jars to hold these scrolls. I will leave them with her. I am painting all the murals of her tomb with my own hand. They are the finest I have ever created. Each stroke of my brush is an expression of my love.

I wish that I could rest with her in this tomb, for I am sick and weary with grief. But I still have my two princesses and my king to care for. They need me.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

On 5 January 1988, Doctor Duraid ibn al Simma of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities opened and entered a tomb on the west bank of the Nile in the Valley of the Nobles. The reason why this tomb had not been previously excavated was that in the ninth century AD an Islamic mosque had been built over the site. It was only after long and delicate negotiations with the religious authorities that the excavation was permitted.

Immediately upon entering the passage that led to the burial chamber, Dr Al Simma was greeted by a marvellous display of murals which covered all the walls and the ceilings. They were the most elaborate and vivacious that he had ever encountered in a lifetime spent studying the monuments.

He told me that he knew at once that he had made a significant find, for from amongst the hieroglyphics on the walls stood out the royal cartouche of an Egyptian queen who had not been previously recorded.

His excitement and anticipation increased as he approached the burial chamber, only to be dashed as he saw that the seals upon the doorway had been damaged, and the entrance had been forced. In ancient times, the tomb had been robbed and stripped of its sarcophagus and all its treasures.

Nevertheless, Dr Al Simma was able to date the tomb with reasonable accuracy to that dark night of strife and disaster that overwhelmed Egypt in about 1780 BC. For the next century the Two Kingdoms were in a state of flux. We have little record of the events of this period, but from the chaos eventually rose a line of princes and pharaohs that finally expelled the Hyksos invader, and lifted Egypt into its period of greatest glory. It gives me pleasure to think that the blood of Lostris and Tanus and Memnon ran strongly in their veins.

It was almost a year after the tomb was first opened, while Dr Al Simma's assistants were copying and photographing the decorations of the walls, that a section of the plaster fell away to reveal a hidden niche in which stood ten sealed alabaster vases.

When Dr Al Simma asked me to assist in the transcription of the scrolls contained in the vases, I was both honoured and filled with trepidation. I was not, of course, qualified to work on the original scrolls, which were written in the hieratic script. This work was done at Cairo Museum by a team of international Egyptologists.

Dr Al Simma asked me to rewrite this original transcription in a style that would make it more accessible to the modern reader. With this end in view I have included some anachronisms in the text. For instance I have, in places, used such comparatively modern measures of distance and weight as miles and ounces. I have also indulged myself with words such as 'djinn' and 'houri' and 'hooligan' which Taita never employed, but which, I feel certain, he would have used if they had formed part of his vocabulary.

Very soon after beginning work on the texts all my reservations began to evaporate as I became totally involved in the times and character of the ancient author. Despite all his bombast and vainglory, I developed an affinity and affection for the slave Taita that reached back over the millennium.

I am left with a realization of how little the emotions and aspirations of man have changed in all that time, and a lingering excitement that to this day somewhere in the Abyssinian mountains near the source of the Blue Nile the mummy of Tanus still lies in the unviolated tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.

EXPLORE THE MYSTERIES OF THE SEVENTH SCROLL?

WILBUR SMITH'S NEXT UNFORGETTABLE

EPIC NOVEL, COMING SOON FROM

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS. AN EXCERPT FOLLOWS:

"The Seventh Scroll." She whispered, and steeled herself to touch it. It was three thousand years old, written by a genius out of time with history, a man who had been dust for all these millennia, but who she had come to know and respect as she did her own husband. His words were eternal, and they spoke to her clearly from beyond the grave, from the fields of paradise, from the presence of the great Trinity, Osiris and Isis and Horus, in whom he had believed so devoutly. As devoutly as she believed in another more recent Trinity.

She carried the scroll to the long table at which Duraid, her husband, was already at work. He looked up as she laid it on the table-top before him and for a moment she saw the same mystical mood in his eyes that had affected her. He always wanted the scroll there on the table, even when there was no real call for it. He had the photographs and the microfilm to work with. It was as though he needed the unseen presence of the ancient author close to him as he studied the texts.

Then he threw off the mood and was the dispassionate scientist once more. "Your eyes are better than mine, my flower," he said. "What do you make of this letter?"

She leaned over his shoulder and studied the hieroglyph on the photograph of the scroll that he pointed out to her. She puzzled over the character for a moment before she took the magnifying glass from Duraid's hand, and peered through it again.

"It looks as though Taita has thrown in another cryptic of his own creation just to bedevil us." She spoke of the ancient author as though he were a dear, but sometimes exasperating, friend who still lived and breathed, and played tricks upon them.

"We'll just have to puzzle it out, then," Duraid declared with obvious relish. He loved the ancient game. It was his life's work.

The two of them laboured on into the cool of the night. This was when they did their best work. Sometimes they spoke Arabic and sometimes English; for them the two languages were as one. Less often they used French, which was their third common language. They had both received their education at universities in England and the United States, so far from this Very Egypt of theirs. Royan loved the expression "This Very Egypt" that Taita used so often in the scrolls.

She felt a peculiar affinity with this ancient Egyptian in so many ways. After all she was his direct descendant. She was a Coptic Christian, not of the Arab line that had so recently conquered Egypt, less than two thousand years ago. The Arabs were newcomers in this Very Egypt of hers; while her own blood line ran back to the dawn of sanguine man, to the time of the pharaohs and the great pyramids.

At ten o'clock Royan made coffee for them, heating it on the charcoal stove that Alia had left for them before she went off to her own family in the village. They drank the sweet strong brew from thin cups that were half filled with the heavy grounds. While they sipped they talked as old friends.

For Royan that was their relationship, old friends. She had known Duraid ever since she had returned from England with her doctorate in archaeology and won her job with the Department of Antiquities, of which he was the director and professor.

She had been his assistant when he had opened the tomb in the Valley of the Nobles; the tomb of Queen Lostris of the Ramessidian line of pharaohs, the tomb that dated from 1780 BC.

She had shared his disappointment when they discovered that the tomb had been robbed in ancient times and all its treasures plundered. All that remained were the marvellous murals that covered the walls and the ceilings of the tomb.

It was Royan herself who had been working at the wall behind the plinth on which the sarcophagus had once stood, photographing the murals, when a section of the plaster had fallen away to reveal in their niche the ten alabaster jars. Each of the jars had contained a papyrus scroll. Every one of them had been written and placed there by Taita, the slave of the queen.

Since then their lives, Duraid's and her own, seemed to have revolved around those scraps of parchment. Although there was some damage and deterioration, in the main they had survived three and a half thousand years remarkably intact.

What a fascinating story they contained of a nation attacked by a superior enemy, armed with horse and chariot that were still alien to the Egyptians of that time. Crushed by the Hyksos hordes, the people of the Nile were forced to flee. Led by their queen, Lostris of the tomb, they followed the great river southwards almost to its source amongst the brutal mountains of the Ethiopian highlands.

Here amongst those forbidding mountains, Lostris had entombed the mummified body of her husband, the Pharaoh Mamose, who had been slain in battle against the Hyksos.

Long afterwards Queen Lostris had led her people back northwards to this Very Egypt. Armed now with their own horses and chariots, forged into hard warriors in the African wilderness they had come storming back down the cataracts of the great river to challenge once more the Hyksos invader, and in the end to triumph over him and wrest the double crown of upper and lower Egypt from his grasp.

It was a story that appealed to every fibre of her being, and that had fascinated her as they had unravelled each hieroglyph that the old slave had penned on the papyrus.

It had taken them all these years, working at night here in the villa of the oasis after all their daily routine work at the museum in Cairo was done, but at last all of the ten scrolls had been deciphered, all except the seventh scroll. This was the one that was the enigma, the one which the author had cloaked in layers of esoteric shorthand and allusions so obscure that they were unfathomable at this remove of time. Some of the symbols he used they had never encountered before in all the thousands of texts that they had studied in their combined lifetimes. It was obvious to them both that Taita had not intended that the scrolls should be read and understood by any eyes other than those of his beloved queen. These were his last gift for her to take with her beyond the grave.

It had taken all their combined skills, all their imagination and ingenuity, but at last they were approaching the conclusion of the task. There were still many gaps in the translation and many areas where they were uncertain whether or not they had captured the true meaning, but they had laid out the bones of the manuscript in such order that they were able to discern the outline of the creature it represented.

Now Duraid sipped his coffee and shook his head as he had done so often before as he said, "It frightens me. The responsibility. What to do with this knowledge we have gleaned? If it should fall into the wrong hands." He sipped and sighed before he spoke again. "Even if we take it to the right people, will they believe this story that is three and a half thousand years old?"

"Why must we bring in others?" Royan asked with an edge of exasperation in her voice. "Why can we not do alone what has to be done?" At times like these the differences between them were most apparent. His was the caution of age, while hers was the impetuosity of youth.

"You do not understand," he said. It always annoyed her when he said that; when he treated her as the Arabs treated their women in a totally masculine world. She had known the other world where women demanded and received the right to be treated as equals. She was a creature caught between those worlds?the Western world and the Arab world.

Duraid was still speaking and she had not been listening to him. She gave him her full attention once more. "I have spoken to the Minister again, but I do not think he believes in me. I think that Nahoot has convinced him that I am a little mad." He smiled sadly. Nahoot Guddabi was his ambitious and well-connected deputy. "At any rate the minister says that there are no government funds available, and that I will have to seek outside finance. So, I have been over the list of possible sponsors again, and have narrowed it down to four. There is the Getty Museum, of course?but I never like to work with a big impersonal institution. I prefer to have a single man to answer to. Decisions are always easier to reach." None of this was new to her, but she listened dutifully.

"Then there is Herr Von Schiller. He has the money and the interest in the subject, but I do not know him well enough to trust him entirely." He paused, and Royan had listened to these musings so often before that she could anticipate him.

"What about the American? He is a famous collector." She forestalled him.

"Peter Walsh is a difficult man to work with. His passion to accumulate makes him unscrupulous. He frightens me a little."

"So who does that leave?" she asked.

He did not answer for they both knew the answer to her question. Instead he turned his attention back to the material mat littered the working table.

"It looks so innocent, so mundane. An old papyrus scroll, a few photographs and notebooks, a computer print-out. It is difficult to believer how dangerous these might be in the wrong hands." He sighed again. "You might almost say that they are deadly dangerous."

Then he laughed. "I am being fanciful. Perhaps it is the late hour. Shall we get back to work? We can worry about these other matters once we have worked out all the conundrums set for us by this old rogue, Taita, and completed the translation."

He picked up the top photograph from the pile in front of him. It was an extract from the central section of the scroll. "It is the worst luck that the damaged piece of papyrus falls where it does." He picked up his reading glasses and placed them on his nose before he read aloud.

"There are many steps to ascend on the staircase to the abode of Hapi. With much hardship and endeavour we reached the second step and proceeded no further, for it was here that the prince received a divine revelation. In a dream his father, the dead God Pharaoh visited him and commanded him, 'I have travelled far and I am grown weary. It is here that I will rest for all eternity.' "

Duraid removed his glasses and looked across at Royan. "The second step. It is a very precise description for once. Taita is not being his usual devious self."

"Let's go back to the satellite photographs," Royan suggested, and drew the glossy sheets toward her. Duraid came around the table to stand behind her.

"To me it seems most logical that the natural feature that would obstruct them in the gorge would be something like a set of rapids or a waterfall. If it were the second waterfall that would put them here?" Royan placed her finger on a spot on the satellite photograph where the narrow snake of the river threaded itself through the dark massifs of the mountains on either hand.

At that moment she was distracted and she lifted her head. "Listen!" Her voice changed, sharpening with alarm.

"What is it?" Duraid looked up also.

"The dog." She answered.

"That damn mongrel." He agreed. "It's always making the night hideous with its yapping. I have promised myself to get rid of it."

At that moment the lights went out.

They froze with surprise in the darkness. The soft thudding of the decrepit diesel generator in its shed at the back of the palm grove had ceased. It was so much a part of the oasis night that they noticed it only when it was silent.

Their eyes adjusted to the faint starlight that came in through the terrace doors. Duraid crossed the room and took the oil lamp down from the shelf beside the door where it waited for just such a contingency. He lit it, and looked across at Royan with an expression of comical resignation.

"I will have to go down?"

"Duraid." She interrupted him. "The dog!"

He listened for a moment, and his expression changed to mild concern. The dog was silent out there in the night.

"I am sure it is nothing to be alarmed about." He went to the door, and for no good reason she suddenly called after him.

"Duraid, be careful!" He shrugged dismissively and stepped out onto the terrace.

She thought for an instant that it was the shadow of the vine over the trellis moving in the night breeze off the desert, but the night was still. Then she realized that it was a human figure crossing the flagstones silently and swiftly,coming in behind Duraid as he skirted the fish pond in the centre of the paved terrace.

"Duraid!" She screamed a warning, and he spun around, lifting the lamp high.

"Who are you?" he shouted. "What do you want here?"

The intruder closed with him silently. The traditional full length dishdaasha robe swirled around his legs, and the white ghutrah head cloth covered his head. In the light of the lamp Duraid saw that he had drawn the corner of the head cloth over his face to mask his features.

The intruder's back was turned towards her so Royan did not see the knife in his right hand, but she could not mistake the upward stabbing motion that he aimed at Duraid's stomach. Duraid grunted with pain and doubled up at the blow, and his attacker drew the blade free and stabbed again, but this time Duraid dropped the lamp and seized the knife arm.

The flame of the fallen oil lamp was guttering and flaring. The two men struggled in the gloom, but Royan saw a dark stain spreading over her husband's white shirt front.

"Run!" He bellowed at her. "Go! fetch help! I cannot hold him?" The Duraid she knew was a gentle person, a soft man of books and learning. She could see that he was outmatched by his assailant.

The pain roused Duraid. It had to be that intense to bring him back from that far place on the very edge of life to which he had drifted.

He groaned. The first thing he was aware of as he regained consciousness was the smell of his own flesh burning, and then the agony struck him with full force. A violent tremor shook his whole body and he opened his eyes and looked down at himself.

His clothing was blackening and smouldering, and the pain was as nothing he had ever experienced in his entire life. He realized in a vague way that the room was on fire all around him. Smoke and waves of heat washed over him so that he could barely make out the shape of the doorway through them.

The pain was so terrible that he wanted it to end. He wanted to die then and not to have to endure it further. Then he remembered Royan. He tried to say her name through his scorched and blackened lips but no sound came.

Only the thought of her gave him the strength to move. He rolled over once and the heat attacked his back that up until that moment had been shielded. He groaned aloud and rolled again, just a little nearer to the doorway.

Each movement was a mighty effort and evoked fresh paroxysms of agony, but when he rolled onto his back again he realized that a gale of fresh air was being sucked through the open doorway to feed the flames. A lungful of the sweet desert air revived him and gave him just sufficient strength to lunge down the step onto the cool stones of the terrace. His clothes and his body were still on fire. He beat feebly at his chest to try to extinguish them but his hands were black burning claws.

Then he remembered the fish pond. The thought of plunging his tortured body into that cold water spurred him to one last effort and he wriggled and wormed his way across the flags like a snake with a crushed spine.

The pungent smoke from his still cremating flesh choked him and he coughed weakly, but kept doggedly on. He left slabs of his own grilled skin on the stone coping as he rolled across it and flopped into the pond. There was a hiss of steam and a pale cloud of it obscured his vision so that for a moment he thought he was blinded. The agony of cold water on his raw burned flesh was so intense that he slid back over the edge of consciousness.

When he came back to reality through the dark clouds he raised his dripping head, and he saw a figure staggering up the steps at the far end of the terrace, coming up out of the garden.

For a moment he thought it was a phantom of his agony, but when the light of the burning villa fell full upon her, he recognized Royan. Her wet hair hung in tangled disarray over her face, and her clothing was torn and running with lake water and stained with mud and green algae. Her right arm was wrapped in muddy rags and her blood oozed through, diluted pink by the dirty water.

She did not see him. She stopped in the centre of the terrace and stared in horror into the burning room. It was like looking into the depths of a furnace, and she believed Duraid must still be in there. She started forward but the heat was like a solid wall and it stopped her dead. At that moment the roof collapsed, sending a roaring column of sparks and flames high into the night sky. She backed away from it, shielding her face with an upraised arm.

Duraid tried to call to her but no sound issued from his smoke-scorched throat. Royan turned away and started down the steps. He realized that she must be going to call help. Duraid made a supreme effort and a crow-like croak came out between his black and blistered lips.

Royan spun around and stared at him, and then she screamed. His head was not human. His hair was gone, frizzled away, and his skin hung in tatters from his cheeks and chin. Patches of raw meat showed through the black crusted mask. She backed away from him as though he were some hideous monster.

"Royan." He croaked and his voice was just recognizable. He lifted one hand towards her in appeal and she ran to the pond and seized the outstretched hand.

"In the name of the Virgin, what have they done to you?" She sobbed, but when she tried to pull him from the pond the skin of his hand came away in hers in a single piece, like some horrible surgical rubber glove, leaving the bleeding claw naked and raw.

Royan fell on her knees beside the coping and leaned over the pond to take him in her arms. She knew that she did not have the strength to lift him out without doing him further dreadful injury. All she could do was hold him and try to comfort him. She realized that he was dying; no man could survive such fearsome injury.

"They will come soon to help us," she whispered to him in Arabic. "Someone must see the flames. Be brave, my husband, help will come very soon."

He was twitching and convulsing in her arm, tortured by his mortal injuries and racked by the effort to speak.

"The scroll?" His voice was barely intelligible. Royan looked up at the holocaust that enveloped their home, and she shook her head.

"It's gone," she said. "Burned or stolen."

"Don't give it up." He mumbled, "All our work?"

"It's gone," she repeated. "No one will believe us without?"

" No." His voice was faint but fierce.'' For me, my last?'' "Don't say that." She pleaded, "You will be all right." "Promise." He demanded, "Promise me!" "We have no sponsor. I am alone. I cannot dp it alone." "Harper!" he said. Royan leaned closer so that her ear touched his fire-ravaged lips.

"I don't understand." She told him. "Harper." He repeated, "Strong?hard?clever man?" and she understood then. Harper was the fourth and last name on the list of sponsors that he had drawn up. Although he was the last on the list, somehow she had always known that Duraid's order of preference was inverted. Nicholas Quenton-Harper was his first choice. He had spoken so often of this man with respect and warmth, and sometimes even with awe.

"But what do I tell him? He does not know me. How will I convince him? The seventh Scroll is gone?"

"Trust him." He whispered, "Good man. Trust him?" There was a terrible appeal in his, "Promise me!"

Then she remembered the notebook in the Giza flat, and the Taita material on the hard drive of her P.C. Not everything was gone. "Yes," she agreed, "I promise you, My Husband, I promise you."

THE SEVENTH SCROLL

BY WILBUR SMITH?

A MAY HARDCOVER FROM ST. MARTIN'S PRESS!

WILBUR SMITH has written twenty-four novels, meticulously researched during his

numerous world-wide expeditions. His books are now published in twenty-seven countries and have sold more than 65 million copies.