‘Mahu, you’d best come!’
‘What’s the matter?’
Sobeck wiped sweat from his face. ‘Weni has been found dead, drowned in a pool.’
I recalled that olive grove, the dark reedfilled pond, Weni leaning against the tree, beer jug in hand. I hurried back to the barracks where Weni’s green-slimed, water-drenched corpse had already been laid out on the bench on which he had so often stood to lecture and berate us. Death is always pathetic but Weni’s was even more so. He lay, eyes, nostrils and mouth clogged with brackish mud, his loincloth sopping wet, trickles of dark water running down his legs. With his swollen belly he looked like a landed fish and his face had the same look of surprised horror. I took a napkin and covered his features and recalled what Weni had done the previous day. Orderlies brought a stretcher to convey the corpse to the House of Death. The others drifted around, muttering amongst themselves. Meryre had tried to intone a mortuary prayer but the others were not interested.
‘Get him prepared quickly,’ Horemheb bawled at the orderlies, ‘before he begins to smell.’
I crouched down and took the ring from Weni’s stubby fingers. He’d always been proud of that, a gift from the Magnificent One’s father. I placed this on the corpse and looked carefully at the nail of that finger, plucking at the little strips of leather. The corpse was removed. I walked around the barracks through the side gate and into the olive grove. I found Weni’s tree; the beer jug lay cracked on the ground beside it. The muddy edges of the pool were marked with the feet of those who had pulled him out. I noticed something gleaming in the grass and picked it up. It was a small copper stud, certainly not from the war-kilts of anyone in the Kap. I had seen such studs on the war-kilts of the Veiled One’s Kushite retinue. I weighed this in my hand and got to my feet. Weni was an old soldier, a drunkard, but sure on his feet, careful what he did. Going back to the olive tree, I sat down and imagined Weni sitting there, half-drunk, those dark shapes creeping through the trees. A sharp, short struggle, the jug being thrown to the ground, Weni being dragged to the pool and forced in, his head and face held underwater until all life left his heart. I recalled Weni laughing mockingly the night before.
‘Is there anything wrong?’
I whirled around. Sobeck stood staring at me curiously.
‘No, no, nothing.’ I got to my feet and threw the copper stud into the pool. ‘No, there’s nothing wrong, Sobeck, at least for the moment.’
‘Such is he who has decayed,
All his bones are corrupt …
His flesh is turned into foul water.’
(Spell 154: The Book of the Dead)
Chapter 3
In the second month of the summer season shortly after the Festival of the Valley in the thirty-third year of the Magnificent One’s reign, the Land of Egypt went to war. Fires were lit in the Temple of Montu and the priestly chorus of Amun-Ra began their verbal assault on the assembled deities of Egypt. The Word of War had come from the King’s own mouth to be carried the length and breadth of the Kingdom of the Two Lands. The vile Kushites in the Eastern Desert had risen in revolt. They had put small garrisons to the sword and slaughtered the workers in the mines and settlements which produced the copper, gold and amethyst which had been placed there for the Divine One’s use. The reports brought by the Sand Dwellers were truly horrific. Royal roads had been attacked, imperial messengers butchered and the honour of Egypt gravely insulted. The King’s messengers, fleet of foot, took the decisions of the imperial will to every corner of the kingdom. The Kushite rebels were to be crushed.
Hotep himself, God’s Father, came down with Colonel Perra to announce that the entire division, the ‘Glory of Amun’, of 5,000 men, not counting mercenaries, foragers, scouts and commissariat, would be despatched to deal with the rebels. The Horus unit, the Children of the Kap, would be included. Hotep raised a hand to quell our excitement as we crouched around him in the courtyard.
‘Both Royal Princes will join the expedition. We depart in three days.’ He raised his fan, spreading it out with one flick of his wrist. ‘You, too, will go with them and bring glory to the Divine One’s name.’ His clever eyes searched each of our faces. ‘We live for Pharaoh! We die for Pharaoh!’ he added.
We thanked the Divine One for this opportunity to demonstrate our loyalty. Once he had left, accompanied by the palace guard, Colonel Perra provided further details: the Veiled One would be a member of the Horus unit. Weni’s untimely death was now forgotten. My suspicions were suppressed in the stirring preparations. We all readied to leave, though Maya fell ill of a fever. We found him sweating in the early hours, his fat body shaking so much he was despatched to the House of Life.
‘We won’t miss him,’ Horemheb muttered.
I doubt if any of us would have missed each other. Weni’s corpse had been embalmed and despatched to the Far West without a second thought. Maya sent us messages of good will and begged Sobeck to visit him but he was caught up in the frenetic preparation of war. Armour was distributed, weapons brought out of store, chariots readied, the horses carefully checked by leeches from the Royal Stud. The regimental units began to mass in the fertile Black Lands north of Thebes. Hotep was given the temporary title of ‘King’s Son of Eastern Kush’, with all the powers of a viceroy. We took our oaths of loyalty in the incense-filled outer courtyard of the Temple of Montu where the unit received its standard, the falcon head of Horus perched on the back of a crocodile. The Divine One himself deigned to show his face and the citizens of Thebes lined the Avenues of Sphinxes and Rams to throw flowers and greenery as we left the city in full battle regalia surrounded by the priests, choirs and imperial orchestras providing string music.
The army moved South by barge and boat, then force-marched to the great Fortress of Buhen just above the Second Cataract. By the time we reached it we were all sore, bruised, tired and dusty whilst the army could only be described as chaotic and confused. The High Command, the Viceroy, Scribes of the Army and the Lieutenants of Chariotry stayed in the fort whilst order was brutally restored. Both foot and chariots had organised into corps of companies of fifty under a pedjet. Our commanding officer was nominally Crown Prince Tuthmosis with Colonel Perra as second-in-command, being Standard Bearer of our platoon of fifty chariots. Our unit, now called the ‘Glory of Horus’, was composed of ten chariots, a small squadron with Horemheb as Captain.
The entire army paraded on the hard flat ground in front of the fortress, magnificent in its battle array. The Menfyt came first, the grizzled, battle-hardened veteran infantry in their stiffened body armour, wearing groin guards, khopesh swords thrust through their sashes, and carrying spears and shields, the latter adorned with the insignia of their unit. Behind them came the frightened raw recruits, similarly dressed — the Nakhtu-aa, the ‘Strong-Arm Boys’, who, in conflict, would stiffen the battleline. On our flanks marched irregular troops, hordes of Nubian archers, white plumes in their curled, bobbed hair, leopard or lion kilts around their waists, coloured baldrics stretching across their left shoulders then wrapped round their waists to form a sash. They wore thick, white tight collars round their necks and bracelets of a similar colour on their wrists. There were others: mercenaries from the Islands in the Great Green dressed in leather and carrying rounded shields and long swords, Libyan archers, virtually naked except for a phallus guard, their shoulders draped in ox or giraffe skin. All around these paraded the true power of Egypt led by the Maryannou, the Braves of the King, squadron after squadron of war-chariots, moving to the sound of rumbling wheels and neighing horses, a vivid array of different colours.