"Pull up," Djehuty rasped. "Sound rally."
The driver brought the team to a halt. Sennedjem sheathed the shotgun and brought out a slender brass horn. Its call sounded shrill and urgent through the dull diminishing roar of the skirmish. Man after man heard it; the Captains of a Hundred brought their commands back into formation. Djehuty took the signal fan from its holder and waved it.
Meanwhile he looked to the northeast. More dust there, a low sullen cloud of it that caught the bright sunlight. He waited, and a rippling sparkle came from it, filling vision from side to side of the world ahead of them like stars on a night-bound sea.
"Father, what's that!" Sennedjem blurted; he was looking pale, but his eyes and mouth were steady. Djehuty clipped him across the side of the head for speaking without leave, but lightly. "Light on spearheads, lad," he said grimly. "Now it begins."
The redoubt was a five-sided figure of earth berms; there were notches cut in the walls for the muzzles of the cannon, and obstacles made of wooden bars set with sharp iron blades in the ditches before it.
Djehuty waited atop the rampart for the enemy heralds, come for the usual parley, an attacker's inevitable demand for surrender after the first skirmish. They carried a green branch for peace, and a white cloth on a pole as well-evidently the same thing, by somebody else's customs. And flags, one with white stars on a blue ground, and red and white stripes. His eyes widened a little. He had heard of that flag. Another beside it had similar symbols, and cryptic glyphs, thus: R.O.N. COAST GUARD. He shivered a little, inwardly. What wizardry was woven into that cloth? A touch at his amulet stiffened him with knowledge of the favor of the Gods of Khem. Gilded eagles topped the staffs, not the double-headed version of the Hittites, but sculpted as if alive with their wings thrust behind them and their claws clutching arrows and olive branches. So that is why the strangers from the far west are called the Eagle People, he thought. It must be their protector-God.
"I am Djehuty, Commander of the Brigade of Seth in the army of Pharaoh, User-Ma'at-Ra, son of Ra, Ramses of the line of Ramses, the ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt," he barked. "Speak."
"Commodore Marian Alston-Kurlelo," the figure in the odd blue clothing said. He lifted off his helm. No, she, by the Gods-the rumors speak truth. Odd, but we had a woman as Pharaoh once, and she led armies. Djehuty's eyes went wider. The enemy commander was a Nubian; not part-blood like Mek-Andrus, but black as polished ebony. His eyes flicked to the others sitting their horses beside her. One was a woman, too, yellow-haired like some Achaeans; another was a man of no race he knew, with skin the color of amber and eyes slanted at the outer ends; the other two looked like Sherden from the north shore of the Middle Sea as far as their coloring went, although their hair was cropped close. A Sudunu stood uneasily by the foreign woman's stirrup; he stepped forward and bowed with one hand to his flowerpot hat to keep it from falling off.
"I shall interpret, noble Djehuty," he said uneasily; the Egyptian was fluent, but with the throaty accent of his people. Djehuty glared for a second. Byblos, Sidon, and the other coastal cities of Canaan south of Ugarit were vassals of Pharaoh; what was this treacherous dog doing aiding his enemies? Sudunu would do anything for wealth.
"Tell this woman that no foreigner goes armed in Pharaoh's dominions without his leave, on pain of death. If she and her rabble leave at once, I may be merciful."
The Sudunu began to speak in Akkadian, the Babylonian tongue. Djehuty could follow it a little; it was the tongue Kings used to write to each other, and not impossibly different from the language of the western Semites, which he did speak after a fashion. The interpreter was shading the meaning. That often happened, since such a man was eager to avoid offending anyone.
"Tell her exactly, as I told you-don't drip honey on it," he broke in.
The swarthy, scrawny man in the embroidered robe swallowed hard, and the black woman gave a slight, bleak smile.
"Lord Djehuty," the interpreter began. "Commodore-that is a rank, lord-Alston says that she is empowered by her… lord, the word she uses means ruler, I think-Ruler of an island across the River Ocean-and the Great King of the Hittites, and the Great King of Kar-Duniash, and their other allies, to demand the return of George McAndrews, a renegade of her people. If you will give us this man, the allied forces will return past the border of the Pharaoh Ramses's dominions, and peace may prevail."
Djehuty puzzled over the words for a moment before he realized that the name was Mek-Andrus.
"Barbarians make no demands of Pharaoh," he snapped. Although I would send him to you dragged by the ankles behind my chariot, if the choice were mine. "They beg for favors, or feel the flail of his wrath. Go, or die."
The coal-black face gave a slight nod. No, not a Medjay, Djehuty thought with an inner chill. They were fierce children, their ka plain on their faces. This one had discipline; doubly remarkable in a woman. And she showed no sign of fear, under the muzzles of his guns. She must know what they can do. Mek-Andrus is of her people.
If the stranger was a renegade from the service of his own King, much was explained. He schooled his own face.
"Pharaoh commands; as it is written, so shall it be done," he replied. "This parley is over. Depart his soil, at once, or the battle will commence."
BAAAAAAAMMMM.
The twelve-pounder leaped back, up the sloping ramp of dirt the gunners had shoveled behind it, then back down again into battery. Stripped to their loincloths, the crew threw themselves into action. Stinking smoke drifted about them, and the confused roaring noise of battle, but the men labored on, wet with sweat, their faces blackened by powder fumes until their eyes stared out like white flecks in black masks, burns on their limbs where they had brushed against the scorching bronze of the cannon.
These are men, Djehuty thought, slightly surprised. More than that, they are men worthy to be called iw'yt, real soldiers.
He wasn't sure about the warriors surging against his line, but whatever they were, they didn't discourage easily. He squinted through the thick smoke that stung his eyes, ignoring the dry-ness of his tongue-they were short of water, and he meant to make what he had last.
Here they came again, over ground covered with their dead. Swarms of them, sending a shower of javelins before them as they came closer.
BAAAAMMMM. BAAAAMMMM. The guns were firing more slowly now, conserving their ammunition. Grapeshot cut bloody swaths through the attackers, but they kept on. Dead men dropped improvised ladders of logs and sticks; others picked them up and came forward. Their cries grew into a deep bellowing; the first ranks dropped into the ditch around the redoubt, where the spiked barricades were covered with bodies. Others climbed up, standing on their shoulders to scramble up the sloping dirt or set up their scaling ladders. Only a few of them knew enough to cringe at the sound that came through shouts and cannonade-the sound of thumbs cocking back the hammers of their muskets.
"Now!" Djehuty shouted, swinging his fan downward.
All along the parapet, hundreds of musketeers stood up from their crouch and leveled their pieces downward into the press of attackers.