Desert God. Wilbur Smith

I admit that I was playing to my audience. I deliberately nailed Beon’s sword-arm to the plank, so he was stretched out on the timber baulk in the attitude of crucifixion. He howled like the cringing jackal he was.

      I am by nature a compassionate man, so I did not allow him to suffer much longer than he richly deserved. My third arrow went into the precise centre of his throat.

      The crews of all three of my triremes followed my example. They seized their bows and crowded to the sides of our vessels to shower arrows on the floundering wretches in the water below them.

      I was powerless to prevent it happening, or perhaps I lacked the motivation and inclination to do so. Many of my men had lost their fathers and brothers to these unwholesome wretches. Their sisters and mothers had been ravished and their homes burned to the ground by them.

      So I stood by and watched the flower of Hyksos nobility being pruned down to the very quick. When the last floating corpse, bristling with arrows, was carried away on the current I regained control of my men and cursed them back to their seats on the rowing benches.

      Totally unrepentant, still howling with bloodthirsty glee, they hoisted the sails and heaved back on the oars. We left the Hyksos to the mercy of their foul god Seth, and we raced on southwards towards Thebes and the true Kingdom of Egypt.

      The border between our very Egypt and the territory that the Hyksos hordes had overrun was never clearly demarcated. The fighting seemed to fluctuate on a daily basis as attack followed counter-attack, and the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed across the land.

      We had left from Thebes on the fifth day of the month of Payni. At that time Lord Kratas had driven the Hyksos invaders back twenty leagues north of the town of Sheik Abada. However, we were now well into the month of Epiphi, so much could have changed in our absence. But we still had the element of surprise on our side.

      Neither the Hyksos front-line troops nor our own men fighting under Lord Kratas would be expecting the miraculous appearance of a fleet of Minoan warships in our Nile, over four hundred leagues from the shores of the Middle Sea.

      There were no ships on the southern stretches of the Nile, either Hyksos or Egyptian, that could oppose our triremes. We had just proven that we were unstoppable. Of course, the Hyksos might fly pigeons to try and warn their troops who stood between us and Egypt. But pigeons are free spirits and fly only to where they were hatched, and not to any other destination that their handlers might prefer.

      We did not anchor at nightfall; because we were now in familiar waters and we knew every bend and sandbar, every channel and every obstacle in this section of the river.

      Six days and nights after we left Memphis, a few hours before midnight, just as the moon in its first quarter was rising, we passed through the encamped armies.

      The watch fires of the opposing legions were spread out for several leagues along both banks of the Nile. There was merely a narrow strip of darkness between them, which demarcated no-man’s-land.

      Our own ships showed no lights, except a tiny shaded lamp on the stern so we could keep contact with each other in the darkness. These dim lights were not visible from the river-banks. I did not wish to be recognized by either army so we kept to the middle of the river. We sailed through unchallenged, until at last we were back in our very Egypt.

      In the dawn we ran into a small flotilla of eight river galleys coming towards us from the direction of Thebes. Even at a distance I could see that they were laden with Egyptian troops, and they were flying the blue colours of Pharaoh Tamose. I knew that these must be Egyptian supply vessels bringing up reinforcements for Lord Kratas’ army.

      As soon as they saw our strange squadron bearing down on them every one of them put over the helm and tried to fly from us in panic. During the previous few days I had ordered my men to stitch together crude but effective blue pennants in preparation for just such an encounter. Each of our triremes hoisted one of these at the masthead and the galleys pulled into the bank and let us pass. The crews stared after us in astonishment as we sailed on towards Thebes with only a passing salutation. I am certain none of them had ever seen ships like our triremes.

      This was a meeting that I would have avoided if it were at all possible. It was far better that the fate of the treasure triremes remain forever a mystery to the Supreme Minos in Crete. He must never doubt that the Hyksos were the false allies that robbed him of his hoard of silver bullion. To achieve this I had to ensure that our captured prizes, colossal and conspicuous as they might be, disappeared without trace. This was a task that might have daunted a lesser man, but I had already devised the solution.

      In the time before our people were driven from their homeland by the Hyksos, before the exodus, our ruler had been Pharaoh Mamose. At that time I, Taita, was the slave of Lord Intef who was the Nomarch of Karnak and grand vizier of all the twenty-two nomes of Upper Egypt. However, amongst his numerous other titles and honorifics my master was also the Lord of the Necropolis and the Keeper of the Royal Tombs.

      He was responsible for the upkeep of the tombs of all the pharaohs past and present, living and dead. But much more importantly he was also the official architect of the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.

      My Lord Intef had never been gifted with any creative skills. His talents were vested more in havoc and destruction. I doubt that he could have designed a cattle pen or even a pigeon coop, let alone an elaborate royal tomb fit for a pharaoh. While retaining for himself the royal gratitude and favours that went with the title, he left the arduous work, that which was not to his liking or which was beyond his limited abilities and skills, for me to attend to.

      My memories of Lord Intef are not happy ones. It was he who commanded one of his minions to take the gelding knife to me. He was a cruel man and utterly ruthless. But, in the end, I had decisively settled the score between us.

      Long before that happy day it was I who designed every chamber and tunnel and funerary hall of Pharaoh Mamose’s magnificent tomb. Then I supervised and directed the builders, the masons, the artists and all the artisans that were called upon to labour in this enterprise.

      Pharaoh Mamose’s outer sarcophagus was carved from a gigantic single block of granite. It was sufficiently commodious to encompass a nest of seven silver coffins, which fitted neatly one within the other. The innermost of these was intended to contain Pharaoh’s embalmed corpse. All this added up to a burden of massive bulk and weight. This had to be transported in great reverence two thousand yards from the funerary temple on the banks of the Nile River to the tomb in the foothills of the Valley of the Kings.

      To accomplish this transit I surveyed and built a canal that ran as straight as any arrow from the bank of the Nile across the riparian plain of black soil to the entrance of the royal tomb. This canal was wide enough and deep enough to accept Pharaoh’s funeral barge.

      Pharaoh Mamose had been overtaken by destiny and had never lain a single day in his tomb before the Hyksos drove us out of our land. When we embarked on the long exodus we were commanded by his wife, Queen Lostris, to carry his embalmed body with us.

      Many years later, Queen Lostris ordered me to design and build another tomb in the savage Nubian wilderness thousands of leagues further south. That was where Mamose now lay.

      The original tomb in the Valley of the Kings had stood empty all these years. More importantly for my plans, the canal that I had built from the funerary temple on the bank of the Nile to the royal tomb was still in an excellent state of repair. I knew this because only a short while previously I had ridden along the bank with my two little princesses to show them their father’s empty tomb. I must admit that neither of them showed much interest in this lesson in the history of their own family.

      Even after all these years I was able to recall the precise dimensions of Mamose’s funeral barge. My memory is infallible. I never forget a fact, a figure or a face.

      Now I measured the overall dimensions of our requisitioned Minoan treasure triremes. Then I ordered Zaras to anchor briefly in calm water, while I swam down to the trireme’s keel and measured the amount of water she drew with her full cargo of bullion in the hold. These measurements varied somewhat from ship to ship.

      I