Andre Norton - Shadow Hawk (28 page)

He tugged a signal, and one after another the fugitive slaves joined them. Then with an archer beside each as a guide, they progressed—by way of irrigation ditch and dried-up garden, by house walls of villas and every other piece of cover the Nubians had scouted through the waiting hours—into the borders of the wasteland and so on the trail back to camp.

"Pharaoh has come." Kheti supplied news as they trotted ahead, hid for a space, and then went on again. "Paugh— those Hyksos patrol like the elephant—one can hear them a league away!" He lay beside Rahotep in a muddy ditch into which Nile water was seeping, as they heard a body of men moving warily, but with far too much noise, half a field from them. "Pharaoh has come and there is talk of a battle. But the river rises fast, and soon it will cover the fields. Can a man fight up to his waist in water, Lord? That we have not tried as yet."

"Let us petition the Great Ones that we shall not have to! They are far enough away now—let us go!" Rahotep was consumed with eagerness to give his report. If the Pharaoh was in camp, then indeed the time had grown very short and the army must be preparing to move.

Kamose must welcome field service for more than one reason, Rahotep thought some hours later when, close to exhaustion, he was brought to the royal tent. Hedged about with stiff ceremonial as the ruler was in the royal city and on his neces- saty progresses through the land, only in a war camp did he have a measure of freedom from the tight hold of custom and the past. It was no dread half-divine ruler that Rahotep faced now, but the keen-faced officer he had first seen on the quays of Thebes.

"Thus it was—" He finished his report of the period within Neferusi and added his own suggestion as to how this first outpost city of the Hyksos might be cracked open for Egyptian taking.

The final decision, any decision, would be Pharaoh's alone. But Kamose had gathered a backing of military and naval advisers who represented the best native might of his sadly shrunken and invaded land. Besides General Amony there was a second "Leader of Standards"—Thesh—who had dealt with the Bwedanii of the western deserts to some purpose and whose reputation as a fighter under stark circumstances had penetrated into Nubia, so that the men of the border patrol held him in high respect—though he was seldom to be found in any formal gathering of his peers.

He was a sun-dried stick of a man, his beaked nose jutting from under the wrapped headdress of a roving tribesman so that he resembled the very foe he had spent a lifetime in warring upon for the protection of upper Egypt. And he fidgeted now, his dark eyes never still, as if the fight walls of the tent confined him in some way and he would be out and gone.

Amony, Thesh, Meniptah—a naval officer under whose placid but firm control lay the transportation of supplies and men up the Nile, the fleet of small war vessels intended to harry the Hyksos' shipping and river towns. Meniptah was a sleepy mountain of a man whose mind appeared occupied with distant matters until he shot out some penetrating question, which was apt to startle the unwary—as he did now.

"So it is tribute carts, is it? But this is not the season for the paying of tribute, Captain. Those in the fields will shortly sow, not reap."

"It was said within Neferusi, Lord," Rahotep returned respectfully but holding to his point, "that the invaders are sweeping all but a bare minimum from the storehouses because they are about to launch an attack to the east where mountaineers threaten their Asiatic holdings."

"And you saw these wagons enter into Neferusi?" persisted the naval commander.

"It is so, Lord. In my time of labor on the wall I counted twenty—in three different trains—all guarded by small parties of Bwedanii under a Hyksos officer."

"Bwedanii—" Kamose looked to Thesh.

"They hire their warriors to the Hyksos when they need food for their bellies, Son of Re." The border officer answered that half question. "If it is a matter of sending a force under the outer guise of Bwedanii—then we have no problem."

Rahotep fought down all sign of elation at this promise of backing from such a general as Thesh. Now he began to fear that the project might be taken out of his hands entirely and that he would be allowed no part in it. And that fear almost became a certainty when the Prince Ahmose broke in.

"It is a way to pass those walls. And armed slaves within might cause such confusion that the enemy would be divided and hampered until too late. One cart could be halted halfway through the inner gate so that it could not close—"

Amony laughed. "Young blood, young blood! But this I say also, Son of Re." He turned to Kamose. "The big battles must come later; we cannot hope to take Avaris in a day. And we have no men to waste in siege or open assault upon a well- defended city. So must we use the secret fangs of a serpent, rather than the open claws of a lion—until we have such a force at our backs that Apophis himself will see the dust cloud of our marching from leagues away!"

"Then you advise this plan?" the Pharaoh asked.

"I advise any and all plans which have the thinnest chance of success. Son of Re, we need a victory against odds! Let us take Neferusi and those nomarchs who have shaken their heads against our folly will muster their hundreds under standards for the march. Aye, they are close to traitors now—since they will not rise at the bidding of the great seal. But they will have no excuse after a victory! And this plan does not call for the risking of more than a company. A cautious man does not win wars—one needs to have that caution edged with audacity when the need arises!"

"Thesh?" Pharaoh appealed to his second general.

"I have seen wilder action succeed, Son of Re. Thanks to your captain here, we do not venture in wholly blind. To risk a company is not too much."

"Meniptah?"

The stout naval officer shrugged. "Were it to be done with water under the keel, then I would wag my jaws aye or nay. But this is not my kind of war. Only I say this: we must have Neferusi in our hands before we dare to advance downriver. It is the rallying point of the Hyksos in the south, and to leave it untaken is to plant a burr under the tail of a wild horse—we dare not do it!"

Amony laughed for the second time. "And when, Meniptah, worthy driver of ships, have you also taken over the schooling of wild horses? Nevertheless, you speak with the tongue of Maat in this matter. The Nile rises; soon we shall not be able to attack—lest we sink to our necks in field muck. Therefore, if we capture Neferusi, we must do it at once. And this plan of tribute wagons has some points of worth in it."

The Prince Ahmose tapped the sheet of papyrus they had unrolled and pinned down upon the floor. The generals sat cross-legged on mats about its edge with the prince while the Pharaoh had a stool, his greater height causing him to lean forward at an angle to follow the route his brother was tracing with the end of a writing brush as a pointer.

"Five columns to come in—with the city for a core. Lord Meniptah has transport enough to take men up to here and here—" He jabbed the map in two places along the curve that was the river. "They will ride on reed rafts, towed by oared barges of light draft. And upon signal they will cut loose and head for the shore. Any who spy upon them will believe until the last moment that they hope to pass Neferusi.

"To Lord Thesh the desert approach from the east—one column—and he also must provide us with Bwedanii robes—"

"Us—?" Kamose asked softly.

For a moment his energetic younger brother was plainly disconcerted and looked his few years. Then he answered with a firmness with which Amony might have questioned an order.

"Son of Re, I claim the rights of a Royal Son. The first attack must be led by the eldest prince of our line as is the custom!"

He did not speak defiantly, but with the certainty of one stating his position, and Rahotep knew that the ancient custom was in his favor. Though there were only two males of the royal house alive now in Thebes, it was not only Ahmose's right, but his duty, to lead the first assault upon Neferusi— under the prince's standard.

"And I, Royal Son"—Amony consciously or unconsciously acknowledged that right in his address—"am to bring up from the south—?"

"Pharaoh advances from the south," Kamose replied with the same quiet sureness his brother had used a moment earlier. "Lords, it is in our mind that our cause shall flourish or die here at Neferusi, though this is but a small city, the farthest and least of Apophis's outposts to the south. If the Great Ones look upon us with favor, then shall we take Neferusi and cleanse it of the foreign evil. It shall be a symbol of a land freed from darkness. And if we fail at Neferusi, then we are broken men, for our army shall melt away and not again in this lifetime shall we be able to challenge Apophis and his hundreds in any field. The plan seems to us to be good. No man can foresee all sequences of action; much depends upon the ability of separate commanders. Let us start to move by sundown—the Nile waters wait upon no man's convenience."

Rahotep drew near to Ahmose as the meeting broke up. He was still uncertain as to his part in the attack. Greatly daring he spoke first.

"Royal Son, by your favor I claim the right to be one to enter Neferusi with the carts," he blurted out.

The prince's broad lips drew back from his prominent teeth, giving him some resemblance to a happy Kush. "How else, kinsman? Do I not need eyes which have been there before to seek out weak points? Pick your men quickly—your Scouts— perhaps those slaves you brought out of the city, if you can trust them. Twenty determined men can cause much disaster when they strike in surprise. See your men are well fed and have their best weapons. Let the former slaves draw such arms as they favor from the smiths. We assemble beyond the horse lines at the tenth hour, and then we shall see what else we need in the way of equipment."

But the tenth hour was none too far away as Rahotep discovered when he plunged into the preparation of his command. He found time to shed his own slave guise and put on the dress of a captain. And when he joined his chosen party, he was astounded at the change in the men who had come with him out of Neferusi.

Though Menon's bush of red beard, startling enough in the crowd of closely shaven Egyptians, still decorated his square chin, he had a clean kilt belted about him and carried across his shoulder the heaviest mace he had been able to find. The Nubians were examining bows with some dissatisfaction, finding the lighter Egyptian weapons far below their standards. But the biggest alteration lay in the seaman Icar. Bathed, his face clean of beard, his fair hair drawn back by a bronze circlet, he looked like a sea prince of Minos. And he moved and spoke with the authority of a man who had captained his own ship. In shedding his beard and his rags, he had also shed years, so that now he appeared little older than Rahotep. Icar had selected from the supplies of the weaponsmiths a sword of unusual length, foreign war spoil, the Egyptian captain thought, and he was swinging it as he joined their party, as if to learn its balance against future use.

Rahotep's party were the first at the assembly point. Ten Scouts were drawn up behind Kheti, the other two Nubians from the city hesitatingly joining that group a pace to the rear, not yet accepted by their countrymen as equals, but eager to be with their own ldnd. Icar and his late steersman lingered to one side. They were hot enough for the promised action, but they had never been part of an army before.

Rahotep swung his sistrum, and his archers stood to attention as he inspected their arms and equipment with close attention. They had already passed Kheti's hawk eyes, but no officer would forego a second inspection in this case.

The captain heard the creak of cart wheels and turned around. Two of the clumsy carts, each with a team of six oxen instead of the usual four, were turning to join them. And he had just time to signal the salute to his men as Ahmose tramped up.

Chapter 17
A MATTER OF TRIBUTE

For the second time Rahotep drew close to the gates of Neferusi. But now before him rolled one of the oxcarts, and behind his shuffling feet was the other. They were heavily laden carts, and as such should be welcomed by the unsuspecting Hyksos officers at the gate. But those bulging bags on the top held only dried marsh grass, and under them, in sultry confinement, lay the Scouts and some picked men from Nereb's command.

The driver who pricked the lead oxen of the first team into their best pace wore the loose cloak of a Bwedani with its hood drawn well over its head. Rahotep and the man matching step with him at the second cart were similarly disguised, as were the six men playing the role of guards—straggling now in the slight disorder of bone-weary men. Under those cloaks, supplied by Thesh, were two veterans chosen from the desert general's small force, Icar, Huy, Kheti, Nereb, and Nereb's principal Leader of Fifty, while the driver of the foremost cart, swinging his goad pole with all the concentration he brought to any necessary action, was the Royal Son Ahmose.

They had rested an hour before dawn and were fresh enough, though they put on the semblance of weariness to deceive the gate guard. Rahotep rounded the cart ahead to be near the prince as they approached the city walls. He had told all he knew about that gate in the exhaustive questioning to which Ahmose and the Pharaoh had subjected him hours before. It was his turn now to put that knowledge to the test.

At least there was no sign of suspicion along the walls—they could not have sighted those other lines of men who were using all the natural cover afforded by irrigation ditches and reeds to ring in Neferusi. There were Egyptian scouts avidly watching the carts, and when the last of those entered, Kamose would signal the general attack.