"Come on, I haven't got all day," the courier said, standing there with an air of iron and horse sweat, letting in a little of the heat and white light of the street behind him. It was routine, but also somehow out of place in this world of quiet and rustling paper and well-bathed men.
"Thumbprint here," Philowos said.
The courier obeyed, and then slowly and laboriously wrote his name, tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth.
Good, Philowos thought.
A full literate might have noticed that the date partly concealed under the scribe's own thumb was that for tomorrow, not today. Not likely, but possible.
Philowos waited while the swaggering courier threw his saddlebags over his shoulder with the arrogance of a sword-bearing man and clanked away. Then he walked on into the corridor that led toward his own cubicle, pausing at a large ceramic container of water. Casually he twisted the bungstopper and filled himself a cup, gossiping a little with acquaintances passing by and leaving the dispatches waiting on a ledge. When he turned around they were gone.
His heart beat a little faster as he went on to his desk. Tomorrow the dispatches would be there, and a little chamois sack of sweet-sounding coins, the King's good dinars. No problem, no fuss… and the dating would be accurate.
"They come," the Medjay scout wheezed, pointing behind himself with his spear. His body was naked save for a gourd penis sheath and his skin shone like polished onyx with sweat. "Their scouts chased me, but I lost them in rough ground."
Djehuty nodded; the Nubian mercenaries in Pharaoh's host were recruited from desert nomads south of the great bend of the Nile-hunters, herders, and bandits. They could outrun horses, given time, loping along at their tireless long-legged trot. And they could track a ghost over naked rock, or hide in their own shadows. Djehuty knew it too well. His first command had been patrols against the Medjay along the southern frontier. You didn't forget waking up and finding a sentry with his throat cut and his genitals stuffed into his mouth, and nobody in camp any the wiser until the Ark of Ra lifted over the horizon. That was Medjay humor… but they were useful, no doubt of that, and true to their salt.
"Many?" he said.
"Many," the barbarian confirmed, opening and closing his hands rapidly. "As one of the True Folk runs"-that was their heathen name for themselves-"an hour's distance."
"Fetch my war harness," he said to his son. To a runner: "A message to the captains that the enemy approaches."
His chariot came up, the plumes on the team's heads nodding, and the Egyptian commander ducked into the leather shirt of iron scales. Sweat soaked the linen backing almost immediately; he lowered the helmet over his head and buckled the strap below his chin. The sunlight was painful on the bronze and gold that decked the light wicker and bentwood of the car, and the iron tires shrunk onto the wooden wheels. He climbed aboard, his son after him; the boy made a production of checking the priming on shotguns and pistols, but he was a good lad, conscientious. More eager than was sensible, but this would be his first real battle.
"Keep your head," his father warned, his voice gruff. "It's the cool-blooded man lives long on the threshing ground of battle."
"I'm not afraid, Father!" Sennedjem said. His voice started low but broke in a humiliating squeak halfway through. He, flushed angrily; his mother had been Djehuty's first woman, a fair-skinned Libyan captive, and the boy's olive tan was a little lighter than most men of Lower Egypt.
"That's the problem, lad," Djehuty grinned. "You should be frightened." He turned his attention to the work of the day.
The signal fire on top of the bare-sloped hill to the southeast went out. "Soon now," Djehuty said.
Dust gave the chariots away. The Egyptian squinted; his vision had grown better for distant things in the last few years, worse for close work. Chariot screen, he thought. Thrown forward to keep the Egyptians from getting a close look at their enemy's force before they deployed for battle. Whoever commanded the enemy host was no fool. Now he must do the same. Without a close description of his position, the enemy commander would be handicapped.
"Forward!" he barked.
Well drilled, the squadrons fanned out before him. The driver clucked to his charges, touched their backs gently with the reins, and the willing beasts went forward. Walk, canter, trot; the dry hard ground hammered at his feet below the wicker floor of the war-cart. He compensated with an instinctive flexing of knees and balance, learned since childhood. The enemy grew closer swiftly with the combined speed of both chariot fleets, and he could feel his lips draw back in a grin of carnivore anticipation.
Syrians, he thought, as details became plain-spiked bronze helmets, horsehair plumes, long coats of brass scales rippling like the skins of serpents, curled black beards, and harsh beak-nosed faces. Mariyannu warriors of the northern cities, some rebellious vassals of Pharaoh, some from the Hittite domains or the ungoverned borderlands.
They came in straggling clumps and bands, by ones and twos, fighting as ever by town and by clan. He could.see the drivers leaning forward, shouting to the horses in their uncouth gutturals, the fighters reaching for arrows to set to their bows.
"We'll show them our fire," he said.
A feather fan mounted on a yard-long handle stood in a holder at his side. He snatched it out and waved to left and right. The Egyptian formation curled smoothly forward on either hand. Fast as ever, he thought-the new harness let a team pull the heavier chariots without losing speed or agility. A drumming of hooves filled the air with thunder, a choking white dust curled up like the sandstorms of Sinai. The horses rocked into a gallop, nostrils flared and red, foam flecking their necks. The first arrows arched out, the bright sun winking off their points. Djehuty sneered: much too far for effective archery. Dust boiled up into the unmerciful sky, thick and acrid on his tongue.
"Amun! Amun! The Divine Horus!" the Egyptians roared. Savage war cries echoed back from the enemy.
"Gun!" he barked, holding out a hand. Check-patterned acacia wood slapped into it as Sennedjem put the weapon into his hand.
Thumping sounds smashed through the roar of hooves and thunder of wheels. Syrian chariots went over, and the high womanish screaming of wounded horses was added to the up-roar. Djehuty crouched, raking back the hammers with his left palm and then leveling the weapon.
Now. An enemy chariot dashing forward out of the dust in a dangerously tight curve, one wheel off the ground. Close enough to see the wild-eyed glare of the warrior poised with a javelin in one hand. Bring the wedge at the front of the paired barrels to the notch at the back. It wasn't so different from using a bow; the body adjusting like a machine of balanced springs, but easier, easier, no effort of holding the draw. Squeeze the trigger, nothing jerky about the motion…
Whump. The metal-shod butt of the shotgun punished his shoulder. Flame and sulfur-stinking smoke vomited from the barrels, along with thirty lead balls. Those were invisible- strange to think of something moving too fast to see-but he shouted in exultation as he saw them strike home. The horses reared and screamed and tripped as the lead raked them, and the driver went over backward.
"Gun!" Djehuty roared, and Sennedjem snatched away the empty one and slapped the next into his father's grasp, then went to work biting open cartridges, hands swift on ramrod and priming horn. Djehuty fired again. "Gun!"
They plunged through the dust cloud and out into the open; the surviving Syrian chariots were in full retreat. Others lay broken, some with upturned wheels still spinning. A wounded Syrian warrior stumbled forward with a long spear held in both hands; Djehuty shot him at ten paces distance, and the bearded face splashed away from its understructure of pink bone. Some of the shot carved grooves of brightness through the green-coated bronze of the man's helmet. Out of the corner of his eye he was conscious of Sennedjem reloading the spent shotgun, priming the pans, and waiting poised.