Pharaoh. Уилбур Смит

of them wore solemn expressions and his consorts were weeping, for Pharaoh was dying. Earlier in the day he had received a grievous wound on the field of battle. The shaft of the Hyksos arrow still protruded from between his ribs. None of his physicians present, including even me, the most skilled of them all, had had the temerity to attempt to withdraw the barbed arrowhead from so near to his heart. We had merely snapped off the shaft close to the lip of the wound and now we awaited the inevitable outcome. Before noon on the morrow Pharaoh would almost certainly have vacated the golden throne in favour of Utteric Turo, his eldest son, who was sitting by his side trying not to make it too obvious that he was relishing the moment when the sovereignty of this very Egypt would pass to him. Utteric was a vapid and ineffectual youth who could not even imagine that by the setting of tomorrow’s sun his empire might no longer exist; or rather that was what I believed of him at that time. I was soon to learn how sadly I had erred in judging him.

      By now Tamose was an old man. I knew his age almost to the hour, for it was I who had delivered him as an infant into this harsh world. It was popular legend that his first act on arriving had been to piss copiously upon me. I suppressed a smile as I thought how over the ensuing sixty-odd years he had never hesitated to make even his mildest disapproval of me manifest in the same manner.

      Now I went to him where he lay and knelt to kiss his hands. Pharaoh appeared even older than his actual years. Although he had recently taken to dyeing his hair and beard, I knew that beneath the bright ginger pigmentation he favoured it was actually white as sun-bleached seaweed. The skin of his face was deeply wrinkled and speckled with dark sun spots. There were bags of puckered skin beneath his eyes: eyes wherein the signs of approaching death were all too obvious.

      I have not the faintest idea of my own age. However, I am considerably older than Pharaoh, but in my appearance I seem much less than half his age. This is because I am a long liver and blessed by the gods – most particularly by the goddess Inana. This is the secret name of the goddess Artemis.

      Pharaoh looked up at me and he spoke with pain and difficulty, his voice husky and his breathing wheezing and laboured. ‘Tata!’ he greeted me with the pet name he had given me when he was but a child. ‘I knew that you would come. You always know when I need you most. Tell me, my dear old friend, what of the morrow?’

      ‘Tomorrow belongs to you and Egypt, my Lord King.’ I know not why I chose these words to reply to him, when it was a certainty that all our tomorrows now belonged to Anubis, the god of the cemeteries and the underworld. However, I loved my Pharaoh, and I wanted him to die as peacefully as was possible.

      He smiled and said no more, but reached out with a hand that shook and fingers that trembled and took my own hand and held it to his chest until he fell asleep. The surgeons and his sons left his pavilion, and I swear I saw a faint smile cross Utteric’s lips as he sauntered out. I sat with Tamose until well after midnight, the same way I had sat with his mother at her parting, but finally the numbing fatigue of the day’s battle overwhelmed me. I freed my hand from his and, leaving him still smiling, I staggered to my own mattress and fell upon it in a death-like sleep.

      My servants woke me before the first light had touched the dawn skies with gold. I dressed for battle with all haste and belted on my sword; then I hurried back to the royal pavilion. When I knelt once more at Pharaoh’s bedside he was smiling still, but his hands were cool to my touch and he was dead.

      ‘I will mourn for you later, my Mem,’ I promised him as I rose again to my feet, ‘but now I must go out and try once more to make good my oath to you and to our very Egypt.’

      It is the curse of being a long liver: to survive all of those whom you love the best.

      The remainder of our shattered legions were assembled in the neck of the pass before the golden city of Luxor where we had been holding the ravening hordes of the Hyksos at bay for the past thirty-five desperate days. In review I drove my war chariot along their decimated ranks and, as they recognized me, those who were still able to do so staggered to their feet. They stooped to drag their wounded comrades upright and to stand with them in their battle formations. Then all of them, men who were still hale and strong together with those who were more than halfway to their deaths, raised their weapons to the dawn sky and cheered me as I passed.

      A rhythmic chant went up: ‘Taita! Taita! Taita!’

      I choked back my tears to see these brave sons of Egypt in such desperate straits. I forced a smile to my lips and laughed and shouted encouragements back at them, calling to those stalwarts in the throng whom I knew so well, ‘Hey there, Osmen! I knew I would find you still in the front rank.’

      ‘Never more than a sword’s length behind you, my lord!’ he shouted back at me.

      ‘Lothan, you greedy old lion. Have you not already hacked down more than your fair share of the Hyksos dogs?’

      ‘Aye, but only half as many as you have, Lord Tata.’ Lothan was one of my especial favourites so I allowed him the use of my pet name. When I had passed the cheering dropped into a dreadful silence once more and they sank to their knees again and looked down the pass to where they knew the Hyksos legions were waiting only for the full light of dawn to renew their assault. The battleground around us was strewn thickly with the dead of the many long days of slaughter. The faint pre-dawn breeze bore the stench of death to where we waited. With each breath I drew it clung as thick as oil to my tongue and the back of my throat. I hawked and spat it over the side of my chariot, but with every subsequent breath it seemed to grow stronger and more repellent.

      The carrion-eaters were already feasting on the piles of corpses that were scattered around us. The vultures and the crows hovered over the field on wide pinions and then dropped to the ground to compete with the jackals and hyenas in the shrieking and struggling mass, ripping at the rotting human flesh, tearing off lumps and tatters of it and swallowing them whole. I felt my own skin crawl with horror as I imagined the same end awaiting me when finally I succumbed to the Hyksos blades.

      I shuddered and tried to put these thoughts aside as I shouted to my captains to send their archers forward to retrieve as many of the spent arrows from the corpses as they could find to refill their depleted quivers.

      Then above the cacophony of squabbling birds and animals I heard the beat of a single drum echoing up the pass. My men heard it also. The sergeants bellowed orders and the archers hurried back from the field with the arrows they had salvaged. The men in the waiting ranks came to their feet and formed up shoulder to shoulder with their shields overlapping. The blades of their swords and the heads of their spears were chipped and blunted with hard use, but still they presented them towards the enemy. The limbs of their bows had been bound up with twine where the wood had cracked and many of the arrows they had retrieved from the battlefield were missing their fletchings, but they would still fly true enough to do the business at point-blank range. My men were veterans and they knew all the tricks for getting the very best out of damaged weapons and equipment.

      In the distant mouth of the pass the enemy masses began to appear out of the pre-dawn gloom. At first their formations seemed shrunken and diminished by distance and the early light, but they swelled rapidly in size as they marched forward to engage us. The vultures shrieked and squawked and then rose into the air; the jackals and other scavengers scurried away before the advance of the enemy. The floor of the pass was filled from side to side by the Hyksos multitudes, and not for the first time I felt my spirits quail. It seemed that we were outnumbered by at least three or even four to our one.

      However, as they drew closer I saw that we had mauled them as savagely in return for how they had treated us. Most of them had been wounded, and their injuries were bound up with bloodstained rags, as were ours. Some of them limped along on crutches, and others lurched and staggered as they were harried along by their sergeants, most of whom were wielding rawhide whips. I exulted to see them obliged to use such extreme measures to induce their men to hold their formations. I drove my chariot along the front rank of my own men shouting encouragement to them and pointing out the Hyksos captains’ use of their whips.

      ‘Men like you never need the whip to convince you of your duty.’ My voice carried clearly to them above the beat of the Hyksos drums and the tramp of their armoured feet.