That fat, arrogantFeldwebel stayed behind. His jowls jiggled like calves'-foot jelly as he asked me, "How did you know this? How did you hold them all, you alone, until we came?"
"A man of iron will can do anything," I declared, and he did not dare argue with me, for the result had proved me right. He walked away instead, shaking his stupid, empty head.
And, when I return to Munich, I will show you exactly what a man with iron in his will-and elsewhere! oh, yes, and elsewhere! — can do. In the meantime, I remain, most fondly, your loving-
Uncle Alf
31 May 1929
To my sweet and most delicious Geli,
Hello, my darling. I wonder whether this letter will get to Munich ahead of me, for I have earned leave following the end of duty today. Nevertheless I must write, so full of triumph am I.
Today I saw Brigadier Engelhardt once more. I wondered if I would. In fact, he made a point of summoning me to his office. He proved himself a true gentleman, I must admit.
When I came in, he made a production of lighting up his pipe. Only after he has it going to his satisfaction does he say, "Well, Ade, you were right all along." A true gentleman, as I told you!
"Yes, sir," I reply. "I knew it from the start."
He blows out a cloud of smoke, then sighs. "Well, I will certainly write you a letter of commendation, for you've earned it. But I want to say one thing to you, man to man, under four eyes and no more."
"Yes, sir," I say again. When dealing with officers, least said is always safest.
He sighs again. "One of these days, Ade, that damned arrogance of yours will trip you up and let you down as badly as it's helped you up till now. I don't know where and I don't know how, but it will. You'd do best to be more careful. Do you understand what I'm telling you? Do you understand even one word?"
"No, sir," I say, with all the truth in my heart.
Yet another sigh from him. "Well, I didn't think you would, but I knew I ought to make the effort. Today you're a hero, no doubt about it. Enjoy the moment. But, as the slave used to whisper at a Roman triumph, 'Remember, thou art mortal. Dismissed, Ade."
I saluted. I went out. I sat down to write this letter. I will be home soon. Wear a skirt that flips up easily, for I intend to show you just what a hero, just what a conqueror, is your iron-hard-
Uncle Alf
Horizon
Noreen Doyle
… he granted the request of the Lady and concerned himself with the matter of a son.
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.
I shall make it as the horizon for the Aten, my father.
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?