River god - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные онлайн книги читаем полные версии .txt) 📗

  'What did she say to us?' Queen Lostris asked in awe.

  'She said, "Let my child come to me. I will make her strong so that she will prevail and my people will not perish in the face of the barbarian." * I repeated the words that still beat like a drum in my head.

  'I am the child of the river goddess,' said my mistress simply. 'At birth I was dedicated to her. Now she summons me, and I must go to the place where she dwells at the end of the Nile.'

  'This is the same voyage that Taita and I contemplated once before,' Tanus mused. 'And now the goddess commands it. We cannot refuse her.'

  'Yes, we must go, but we will come back,' my mistress vowed. 'This is my land, this very Egypt. This is my city, this beautiful Thebes of the hundred gates. I cannot leave them for ever. I will return to Thebes. This I swear and I call upon the goddess Hapi to witness my oath. We shall return!'

  THE DECISION TO FLY TO THE SOUTH, UP above the cataracts into the wild and unexplored land beyond, was one that Tanus and I had made once before. The first time had been to escape the wrath and vengeance of Pharaoh. Now we were flying from an even more merciless foe. It was almost as though the gods were determined that we should undertake this voyage, and that they would not be denied.

  There was little time for us to make our preparations for such a fateful departure. The Hyksos were coming down on us from two directions, and our pickets reported that their cohorts would be in view from the roof of the Palace of Memnon within three days at the very latest.

  Tanus placed Kratas in charge of half his available force and sent him to meet King Salitis who was driving hard from Asyut in the north and was likely to be the first column to reach the necropolis and the palace. Kratas had orders to fight a running battle. Using the staves and defending every fortified position, he was to delay Salitis as long as was possible, without risking being cut off or overwhelmed. When he could hold them no longer, he was to evacuate his men on to the galleys.

  Tanus himself took the other half of our army and moved south to fight another delaying battle against the Hyksos division coming at us from Esna.

  While they were thus engaged, my mistress was to embark our people and all their possessions aboard the remaining ships of our fleet. My mistress delegated this duty to Lord Merkeset, but of course she made me his assistant. Lord Merkeset was not ®nly well into his dotage, but had recently taken to himself a sixteen-year-old wife. He was not, therefore, of much use either to himself or to me. The entire planning and execution of the evacuation fell squarely on my shoulders.

  However, before I could turn my mind to this, I had to take care of my horses. Even at this early stage I realized with stark clarity that they were the key to our survival as a, nation and a civilized people. With those animals that we had captured at Esna, we now had several thousand in our herd. I split this herd into four parts so that they could more readily find grazing on the march. Further, the smaller herds would throw up less dust, and it would be easier for them to avoid the Hyksos scouts.

  I sent Hui and my charioteers and grooms south with these herds towards Elephantine, with orders to avoid the river-bank down which the Hyksos chariots were advancing and to keep inland, closer to the edge of the desert.

  Once the horses were despatched, I could turn my attention to the humans. I realized that we were limited by the number of ships available as to how many of our people were able to accompany us on the long voyage. I was certain that almost every Egyptian wanted to be part of the exodus. The cruelty and ferocity of the Hyksos were evident in every city they burned and in every atrocity that they inflicted on our people. All the unknown dangers of the African wilderness were preferable to these bloodthirsty monsters who were racing down upon us in their chariots.

  In the end I calculated that we could accommodate only twelve thousand souls aboard the escaping fleet, and I reported this to my mistress.

  'We will have to be ruthless in those we select and those we leave behind,' I told her, but she would not listen to my advice.

  'These are my people. I would give up my own place rather than leave one of them to the Hyksos.'

  'But, Majesty, what about the old and the decrepit? The sick and the very young?'

  'Every citizen will be given the choice of coming with us. I will not leave a greybeard or a beggar, a day-old infant or a leper. They are my people, and if they cannot go, then Prince Memnon and I will stay with them.' Of course, she mentioned the prince to make doubly certain of her victory over me.

  The ships would be gunwale-deep under this great weight of humanity, but I had no choice. Still, I had some satisfaction in first embarking all the most useful and creative citizens. I chose men from every trade and profession, masons and weavers, coppersmiths and potters, tanners and sail-makers, scribes and artists, shipbuilders and carpenters, all of them leaders in their particular discipline. These I saw safely on board the waiting transports. It gave me a particular pleasure to allocate the most uncomfortable berths in the most squalid vessels to the priesthood and the law scribes, those blood-sucking fleas on the healthy body of the state.

  When all of these were boarded, I allowed the rabble to come swarming on to the wharf below the temple.

  As a result of my mistress's intransigence, I had to be careful in choosing what cargo we would load. There would be no room for idle fripperies. I gathered up the weapons and tools and the raw materials that we would need to build up another fcivilization in the unknown lands. For the rest of the cargo I tried in every way to reduce weight and bulk. For instance, rather than grain and fruits, I loaded the seeds of every desirable plant in clay jars sealed with pitch and wax.

  Every deben-weight of cargo that we loaded in our holds meant that something else must be left behind. Our voyage might last ten years or a lifetime. The road would be hard. We knew that the great cataracts lay ahead of us. We dared not burden ourselves with anything but the most essential, but then there remained my mistress's promise to Pharaoh. There was barely room for the living?how much space could we afford to give over to the dead?

  'I gave my vow to the king as he lay dying,' my mistress insisted. 'I cannot leave him here.'

  'Your Majesty, I will find a secure hiding-place for the king's body, an unmarked grave in the hills where no man will find him. When we return to Thebes, we will exhume him, and give him the royal burial that you promised him.'

  'If I break my vow, the gods will desert us and our voyage will be doomed. The, body of the king must go with us.'

  One glance at her expression warned me that there would be no profit in further argument. We opened the massive granite sarcophagus and lifted out the six inner coffins. Even these were so bulky that it would have needed a galley to carry them alone.

  I made a decision without consulting Queen Lostris. I had the workmen remove only the two innermost golden coffins. These we covered with a thick linen canvas shroud which we stitched over them as protection. The size and weight were thus reduced to acceptable proportions, and we stowed these two canvas-covered coffins in the hold of the Breath of Horus.

  The bulk of Pharaoh's treasure, all the gold and silver and the precious stones, was packed into cedar-wood boxes. I ordered the goldsmiths to strip the bullion from the discarded coffins and from the wooden frame of the great funeral sledge, and melt it down into bars. I was secretly delighted to be the instrument of destruction of that tasteless monstrosity. The treasure chests and the bars of bullion were carried down to the wharf and loaded on board the waiting ships. I distributed these so that every ship carried at least one chest or a stack of bullion bars. In this way, the risk that the entire treasure could be lost at a single stroke of misfortune was greatly reduced.