The swirl of battle pushed me back towards the carts, away from my companions. I grasped my shield and slippery-handled khopesh. I was knocked, spun around and came face to face with a Kushite standing on a cart, ostrich plumes in his hair. He’d speared the driver and, weapon up and shield to one side, was preparing to jump down. We clashed in a bloody sweaty embrace, his breath hot on me. A war-painted face, glaring eyes, body soaked in oil. There was a fierce tussle, but then he stumbled on a corpse. I drove my sword into the soft part of his neck, ripping through flesh and muscle. He fell, body slackening, blood gushing out of his nose and mouth. I thrust him away; my stomach felt heavy and sick, my legs were trembling. I had killed. Bending over, I hacked off his right hand, lifting the bloody flesh up to the sky. I forgot my pains, the heaviness in my chest and belly, but now attacked with fury, eyes half-closed, lashing out to the left and right.
The attack faded, our assailants retreating like shadows under the sun. Some of our men were wounded grievously and had to be despatched with a dagger-thrust across the throat. The Nakhtu-aa, the Strong-Arm Boys, did this, moving quickly along our column, speaking gently to those who were beyond our care and slicing with a knife. There’d be a gargle, a last sigh, as they turned the body over. Our unit was safe. Horemheb had killed four times, the bloody hands piled at his feet, Rameses twice and Sobeck once. Rameses had the bloodlust on him. I am not too sure whether it was from anger or fear. He was insistent that the enemy dead be mutilated and, when I objected, he just shrugged and, moving off, began to hack at bellies. The enemy wounded were bound hand and foot, pushed out into the hot sand and buried alive. Two were saved for questioning, spread across fires and tortured but they were brave and told us nothing. Sobeck cut their throats and left their flesh to burn. The vultures were now flocking in above us, black shapes against the blue sky. Perra ordered all the enemy dead to be decapitated, their heads placed on stakes thrust into the sand.
A lector priest led us in a hymn of victorious thanks to Amun-Ra: ‘Oh you who are All-Mighty, All-Seeing and All-Powerful …!’
Our dried throats croaked the words then we moved on. The column was now battle-ready, scouts and flankers out. I was congratulated on my kill. Horemheb noted the severed hand and placed it with the rest, a grisly pile for the hyenas to eat once the scribe had estimated the number slain. I made enquiries about the Veiled One: he had taken cover in his cart, untouched and untroubled — the Nakhtu-aa had seen to that.
As the days passed, such attacks became common, the enemy taking full advantage of the terrain with its hidden gullies, outcrops, ravines and shallow valleys. The attacks were always the same bloody, terrifying hand-to-hand clashes. The Kushite chiefs were intent on damaging our carts and causing as much destruction as possible amongst our horses and oxen. A second column began to follow us, the lions, hyenas and jackals and, above us, Pharaoh’s birds, the vultures, all keen on the bloody trail we left behind us.
Even at night we were not safe. Figures, like wraiths from the Underworld, leaped across our defences, scrambled under our carts, bringing death with a swift spearthrust. Horemheb came into his own now; albeit not as experienced, he proved to be a better combat officer than Perra. Every night when we camped he insisted on digging a shallow ditch and throwing up an escarpment on which the Menfyt placed their war-shields to form an interlocking wall. The night attacks stopped but, during the day, they still came, these stealthy warriors, fighting for their homes and families. We killed and killed again. My number of hands increased. My fears disappeared, the trembling stopped. I was a butcher doing what I was supposed to do. In truth I was more concerned at betraying my fear in front of my comrades than to the enemy.
Horemheb declared himself proud of our unit. No one mentioned how Pentju and Meryre always disappeared during these attacks though, I suppose, Meryre prayed and Pentju did tend to our cuts and bruises. Horemheb said he would recommend me for the Gold Collar of Valour. I shrugged, more desperate for pure water, soft bread and succulent meat. The Veiled One sent me another amulet, of purest gold, depicting a rampant sphinx trampling an Asian. The gift was delivered secretly. I did not show it to the rest but kept it close, as I did the other, during that long frenetic march. The number of our dead rose. Corpses were given quick burial but the Horus unit remained untouched. Pentju took a cut across his cheek which Horemheb claimed would mark him for life as a brave man. Pentju didn’t understand the sarcasm. Meryre, ever gabbling his prayers, lost a tooth from a slingshot. Huy took a spearthrust in the fleshy part of his leg which made him dance, as Rameses remarked, ‘like a temple heset’. Sobeck remained untouched: a cold, resolute fighter, quick and deadly as a striking snake. Horemheb and Rameses positively thrived, as Huy murmured, ‘like the true drinkers of blood they were’. As the attacks continued, Horemheb and Rameses often came to confer with me; ‘The Mighty General’, as I now called Horemheb, studying me with those small black eyes in that strong face, Rameses, his perpetual shadow, smirking behind him as he clicked his tongue, nodding at my replies. The mood in our corps had changed and Horemheb was deeply worried.
‘I am concerned,’ he confided one night, as we sheltered in a small oasis eager for its water which the Kushites hadn’t polluted. ‘I am most concerned, Baboon of the South,’ he repeated. ‘The Kushites are great in number, more than we thought. It’s as if …’ He played with the bracelets on his wrist.
‘It’s as if what?’ I snapped. I was tired and they had stopped me on my way to fill a waterskin. I wasn’t in the mood for military strategy.
‘It’s as if the Kushites are concentrating on us.’ Rameses finished the sentence for his companion. ‘Their attacks are persistent. Two other corps are also moving East, the Glory of Ptah to the North and the Vengeance of Isis to the South.’
‘We also know,’ Horemheb took up the complaint, ‘that behind us are the supply wagons and reserves, not to mention our main force. The Magnificent One’s ships are sailing down the coast yet the enemy seem to be massing solely against us.’
‘Perhaps they know you are here?’ I teased.
Horemheb tapped me on the cheek and walked away shaking his head, his evil genius trotting behind him.
Eventually we entered the mining area and discovered the true devastation caused by the Kushite attacks. Whole villages had been wiped out, houses burned, the small temples polluted, the inhabitants slaughtered in every way the human heart can devise. Men, women and children had been bound hand and foot, placed in thornbushes which were then saturated with oil and set alight. Corpses, stripped by the vultures and animals, were impaled on stakes; the wells were swollen with carcasses. Miners, priests, officials and soldiers had been bound, staked out under the blazing sun or buried alive. In one village we found a cauldron, taken from the mine workings, filled to the brim with severed limbs.
We secured the mines, left a protective force and moved on. Horemheb’s agitation deepened. Our force was being slowly reduced and we were now in the heart of enemy country. We entered their villages, abandoned and deserted, except for the old and weak who had been left behind. Rameses delighted in lining these people up, then moving quickly down the line, slitting one throat after the other. We came across refugees, or so they claimed, destitute, naked and unarmed. Horemheb ordered the war-chariots out to disperse or crush them. The Horus unit became the cutting edge of our corps, the point of the spear, the razor edge of the sword. As our tally of dead rose, the Veiled One’s words came back to haunt me. What did it really matter? We were nothing but marauders moving across the landscape of Helclass="underline" the life-force of those men killed was a mere puff of breath, smoke from a dying fire, glimpsed briefly then quickly forgotten.