The Crook and Flail (29 page)

Tabiry took the bundle from her hands.  She chuckled with relief.  “Then it worked.  I wasn't sure, when I saw Keminub climb aboard him.  I wasn't sure he would even wake again, as much wine as he'd drunk, much less rise.  I am glad to hear it, Great Lady.”

“Won't you stay a few days more?” Rekhetre held out a bowl of figs, but Hatshepsut waved them away.  Her stomach was tender again.

“I cannot.  There is much to be done in Waset – the Hathor Festival, you know.  I hope the lot of you will return by then.  I should like to see you again soon.  You have been good to me, and I am pleased.”

“> Oh, certainly,” Tabiry said.  “I am sure the Pharaoh would not miss the festival.  He loves...”

The sound of men shouting rang outside the tent walls, a sudden, clamoring urgency.  Nehesi burst through the tent door, his sword half-drawn.

“With me, Great Lady.  Now!”

“Nehesi, what is it?”

“Follow me to the ship.  I'll put you aboard and the captain will take you out into the river where you'll be safe.”

“Safe from what?”  She followed him outside.  The rising sun shone bright; she squinted into a confusion of white kilts flashing as men ran from tent to tent, fumbling sword belts about their hips.  She glanced toward the fortress.  A line of men stood along the top of the nearest wall, spears at the ready.  From one of the towers a horn blared.

“Oh gods,” Keminub wailed.  The women gathered behind her, clutching one another.  “It's the Kushites.  Look!”

A band of men scurried down the face of the nearest hill; a sheet of pallid dust rose behind them.  The soldiers of Thutmose's camp ranged to meet them.  The gate of the fortress opened, but the fortress was a half mile or more from the encampment, and Thutmose's soldiers were few.  The Kushite troop would be on them long before the garrison could intervene.  She spun on her heel, looking for the Pharaoh. 
There
– before his blue-and-white pavilion!  He clambered into a chariot and took up the reins while two men still worked to secure the horses' trappings.

“Nehesi, take these women to the boat.  Put it out into the river, well beyond bow-shot.”

“You're coming with me.”  He made as if to seize her arm, but she stepped back, her eyes cold with command.

“I gave you an order, Nehesi!”

“Great Lady,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice.  But she sprinted for the Pharaoh's chariot before he could say more.

When her weight landed on the platform beside him, Thutmose yelped, then glared when he recognized his sister.  “Get out of here, Hatshepsut.”

“And go where?  Wait inside your tent for a Kushite blade to come cut me from it?  I think not.” 

Thutmose shouted to his horses; they lurched for the eastern edge of camp, toward the river, spraying mud from their hooves.  Hatshepsut grabbed the rail with both hands.  The wheels slammed into the rut of a cart-track and her wig flew from her head, into the crowd of servants who leapt from the chariot's path. 

“You're going the wrong way!”

“Shut your mouth!”

“Name of Amun, Thutmose, where is your sword?”  She saw now that he wore nothing at his belt, not even a dagger.  “I thought you were going to drive out with your men, fight the raiders!”

Thutmose did not answer.  He made the edge of the camp where the ground firmed, unchurned by so many feet, and slapped the reins against the horses' flanks.  They lengthened their stride, speeding along the river bank.

“You coward!  Turn this chariot and fight!”

Thutmose drove intently for the southern edge of the plain.  He said nothing, did not so much as glance around at her admonishment.  She reached for the reins and managed to lay hold of one; she tore it from his hand, struggled to turn the horses.  Thutmose slapped at her, shoved her shoulder, struck her face until she nearly lost her balance.  She let go of the rein and resumed her grip on the rail.

“Thutmose!  Listen to me –
listen!
  You are the king.  What will it do to your men to see you fleeing from a fight?  You will lose it all, Thutmose – their loyalty, and mine.  Turn this chariot now and fight!”

The grass of the plain gave way to the dry, stony earth of the hills.  The horses grunted and snorted as they struggled up the incline.  Thorny brush hissed along the sides of the chariot, snicked in the spokes of its wheels.

“You know why they've attacked.  They saw your tent.  They knew you were here.  They mean to kill you.  Men will die defending you while you hide like a child.”

“I am the Pharaoh; it is their duty to die in my defense.”

“Are you?  Even this woman would stay and fight, and yet the
Pharaoh
flees.” 

He dropped the rein again and hit her in the mouth.  She shouted, wordless, full of rage, tasting the blood from her split lip but never feeling the pain.

At the crown of the hill he slowed the horses to pick his way behind a crest of exposed red rock.  They were high above the valley now.  The tents were spots of color against the open wound of muddied land, and the fortress's walls seemed too low, too fragile from this distance.  She could see the army advancing from the fortress's gates, crawling across the plain to where the Pharaoh's few soldiers met the Kushite force in a ragged, straggling line.  In the river, her ship crept under oar to the safety of the open water.  She hoped the harem women were aboard.  Her heart beat painfully in her ears, throbbed in her head, wigless and exposed as it was to the strengthening sun.  Her pulse pounded a hot rhythm in her swollen lip.  She stared about desperately, trying to find something to inspire her brother to return and fight.

Below the hill to the east, a dry gully leveled out at the edge of the plain.  She followed the scar of it into the heart of the hills, tcreрo where its walls lengthened and darkened, exposing stern faces of the same sharp stone that had daunted her at the cataracts.  From deep in the ravine a banner of dust wended up into the sky, thin at first, but growing larger, wider.

“Name of Amun,” she said.  “Thutmose, look!  There's another Kushite force there – the ravine!”

Thutmose peered at the wall of dust, whimpering.

“We have to warn them!  The garrison will close with the first group of Kushites and your camp and the garrison's rear will be exposed to the attack!”

Thutmose clutched at his belly.  His face was pale. 

“There's no time to be sick.  Go!  Back to the camp; warn them!  Thutmose, you must!”

He shook his head.

“By the gods,” she said, the words thick in her mouth, heavy with disgust.  “Are you our father's son, or am I?”  She raised her foot to his belly and thrust hard.  He toppled backward from the chariot, grunting as he fell into the dust. 

Hatshepsut seized the reins.  It had been years since she had driven a chariot; she sent a brief prayer to Amun that the skill would return to her, and quickly.  She hissed the horses down the slope, giving them their heads, trusting the gods to guide them past rocks, around the hidden burrows of desert rats.  As she rode, the wind stealing her breath, the dust stinging tears into her eyes, she watched the betraying banner of the advancing Kushites.  Their number must be great, to raise such a trail.  But her horses were swift, and the gods were good.  In a rattle of wheels, a tumult of hooves and the guttural grunts of her straining horses, he pulled ahead of the ambush, and ahead yet more.  By the time she reached the level plain the ravine was well behind her.  She whooped at the horses, sent them flying all the faster along the river, past the encampment, past the fearful din of the fight at its western edge.  She did not draw rein until she had intercepted the first chariot from the fortress.  Her horses stood blowing, lathered, trembling with the effort. 

“General,” she shouted.  “A Kushite force from the south, from the heart of the hills!”

The general stared at her, startled, as his foot troops approached behind him.  He seemed about to question her, but his eyes drifted beyond to the ravine in the southern hills.

“Sekhmet's teats,” he swore.  “Change course,” he bellowed, gesturing with his spear to the south.  “Ambush!  Change course!”

The Egyptian force surged around her, past her.  She fumbled the reins as her horses screamed and danced, and then the army rushed beyond her, charging to the exposed, vulnerable flank of Thutmose's camp.

A dark hand laid hold of her horse's bridle.  “Nehesi!”  His sword was drawn, his small shield slung over one shoulder.  He pulled himself into the chariot.

“To the fortress,” he said.  “And this time, do not argue.”

***

From the nearest tower, she watched as the garrison ringed the camp, met the raiders with a clash of bronze, a shout of anger and hatred, a sound that rang and carried across the distance to her ears.  Nehesi tore linen from his kilt, soaked it with water from a soldier's discarded skin.  He dabbed at her broken lip. 

Hatshepsut stared beyond her guardsman's shoulder to the battle.  A tent had caught fire; the smoke obscured the field, and she growled in her impotent fury, waving her hands in desperation as if she might clear the view, as if she could will the Egyptians to victory if only she could see.

“Easy,” Nehesi said.  “This lip is bad.  Let me clean it.”

She winced.  Suddenly she could feel the pain of it, and she burned with hatred for Thutmose.

“We must go out to them.  We must help.”

“And what can you do for them, begging your pardon, Great Lady?  You are seventeen, and a woman.”

“I can fight.”  Tears flooded her eyes.  The field obscured further, bled into a mess of smoke and brilliant color, the banners and blood of men.  “I will fight! Give me a spear; I will kill them all, every last Kushite!  I could do it.  I could.”

“I know.”

The eerie brazen wail of a Kushite horn sounded.  And again, a quavering call.  Nehesi made an abrupt sound, part laugh, part grunt.  “They're sounding the retreat.  We have beaten them, Lady!”

Hatshepsut dashed the tears from her eyes.  She leaned from the tower, across the parapet, the rough new stone pressing the breath from her lungs.  A breeze lifted on the river, and the smoke moved into the hills, sluggish and dark.  Several tents had collapsed and two had burned, but the Pharaoh's striped pavilion still stood.  The Egyptian forces had drawn into a tight ring around the pavilion.  Bodies lay scattered across the plain.  And far beyond the remains of the encampment, a ragged band of men made for the mouth of the ravine, pursued by a handful of chariots. 

She turned from the scene, her body tingling with relief              .  She shook violently as the madness of the battle left her, leaving in its place a watery, dizzy weakness.  She laughed, threw herself into Nehesi's arms.  He supported her down the tower steps, into the fortress's yard, through the gate.  A lone chariot drove to meet them: the general, who reined his horses to a stop, leapt to the ground and raised both his palms to her in awed salute.

“Great Lady,” he said.  “The gods alone know how many men you saved today.  At the pace we were moving, we would never have seen the ambush before it had taken our rear.”

She did not know what to say.  She stood leaning on her guardsman, blinking at the general.  Suddenly aware that she had lost her wig, she raised a trembling hand to her head, self-conscious and overwhelmed.

“Come, Great Lady.  This battle is yours.”

Nehesi helped her into the chariot.  Her knees felt on the verge of collapse; she held tight to the rail, swaying.  The general drove at a trot toward the ring of Egyptians, toward the king's pavilion.  She raised a pale hand to the army, and they shook their spears at the sky, roaring their acclaim.  The sound invigorated her.  When the general halted she stepped into the mud without his assistance.  She raised both arms above her head, a salute to Egypt's brave men; they shouted her name. 
Hatshepsut!  Hatshepsut!  The God's Wife, Hatshepsut!

The general conferred with a few of his men.  At his nod, the ring of soldiers parted.  On the bare ground before the Pharaoh's tent a handful of Kushites knelt, their arms lashed behind their backs, their heads downcast, the points of Egyptian spears pressed to their backs.

“They are yours.”  The general leaned close to her ear.  She could scarcely hear his words over the sound of her own name in half a hundred throats.  “Your captives.”  He thrust the nearest Kushite onto his belly, face in the mud.  Hatshepsut approached, watched the bound man at her feet as he struggled then lay still. The soldiers fell silent.  Then she raised her foot and placed it upon the Kushite's head, the symbolic gesture of the king conquering his enemy.

Amidst the roar of her soldiers' approval, Hatshepsut glanced across the crowd.  Thutmose had made his way out of the hills on foot, bedraggled and limping.  He froze when their eyes met, tense and twitching, a lion in a crouch.  Never before had Hatshepsut seen such a look of hatred on her brother's face.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Senenmut waited in the shadow of a great pillar.  His lady's voice carried across the great hall, detailing her plans, her expectations for the Hathor Festival to come.  From where he stood he could not see her seated on her small throne, the Pharaoh's own golden chair empty beside her.  He preferred to lean there in the umber dimness, the cool carved stone against his skin, and listen to the music of her voice.  It was an unlovely music, he knew.  She lacked the refined timbre, the delicate inflection of a lady of the court.  When she spoke it was with the brazen blare of a soldier's horn, sharp and commanding.  But was that not music all the same, surely as the sound of harp or pipe or flute?  He liked this game of isolating her to but one of his senses.  Gladly he worked at the task of her, memorizing each of her facets.  This was the way her voice rose when she issued a decree, a sharp ascent, sure and swift, an arrow shot toward the sun; this the way it settled again as she pondered the advice of her stewards, their scrolls of tallies and sums.  His lady's voice moved like a ship at full sail, taut with power, smooth and confident.