Qa'a (The First Dynasty Book 3) Read online

  “When shall we do this?” Khenti’s captain asked.

  “Now, immediately!” the General responded as if the answer was obvious. “We will give you, what… an hour’s head start?” the General offered, looking at Khenti.

  “I’d think more like three hours, General,” Khenti replied. “The ridge is sandy and harder to climb than it first appears. The men will need to rest once they attain the summit.”

  “Fine, but make haste. We do not want those damned mut spirits to escape our grasp once again.” Before Khenti’s captain left, the General motioned with his head for him to stay.

  “You will send Djal’s unit into battle first. Be sure that your unit follows, for the life of the Prince will be in your hands. Your men are not to leave his side under any circumstances. It is your lives before his,” the General emphasized, pointing toward the Prince. The Captain swallowed hard, then nodded and ran off to prepare his unit.

  By time Ra’s disk was half-way in its descent, the General saw the mirror flashing from the summit. He called for ranks to form. In minutes he stood before his troops. “We go now, men. Make the King, brother of Horus, proud of you today. We fight for the Two Lands. Fight bravely and we will eliminate this Ta-Tjehenu scourge from this nome. Fight so that your family will whisper your name in tribute.” With that he turned and started out in double-time.

  As they marched, the rust-colored rock walls of the wadi loomed larger, their ledges scoured over the eons by wind-blown sand. The General knew that by now the Ta-Tjehenus would have spotted the columns and were frantically packing their gear, ready to flee. He ordered his men into a slow run.

  “Four units abreast!” the General yelled to his Captains, and the units fanned out into their battle formations. With two of the units off the trail, the soldiers began to slip in the deep sand, causing them to slow their advance. As the opening to the wadi loomed before them, the General noticed that none of the enemy stood ready to battle.

  “They have started their retreat!” the General yelled to the Captains. “The Prince is in danger. Charge!” With that the soldiers ran at full speed into the wadi.

  Confronting them was a scene of mass confusion. The Ta-Tjehenus were in a state of disarray, their retreat suddenly blocked by the two flanking units, who were engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat. The General saw several of his troops laying on the sand, a few of them not moving. The Ta-Tjehenus tried running back to the front of the wadi, but the arriving troops cut off their escape route. The General frantically scanned the scene for the Prince, but could not pick him out. His heart sank, thinking of the men he saw laying in the sand.

  “Engage!” the General shouted and immediately his personal detail surrounded him as he ran to the center of the battle. As he cut down an opposing warrior, he spotted the Prince wielding his sword with a much larger enemy. In seconds, the Prince feigned one way, turned quickly and thrust his dagger into the abdomen of the enemy, then parried with a sword blow to his neck.

  “To the Prince!” the General shouted, pointing. As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized his mistake. At once a group of five Ta-Tjehenu raiders that were at the periphery of the battle followed the General’s finger to the lone figure fighting near a group of rocks. They descended immediately toward the Prince, their traditional war cries rising in pitch as they ran.

  The General’s route to the Prince was quickly cut off by a mass of men furiously engaged in close fighting. The sounds of battle were all around them, as swords met, flesh was hacked and maces found their terrible marks on the skulls of their enemies. Screams and groans of agony pierced the air and the fetid smells of intestinal wounds and feces assaulted their senses. The General and his men fought frantically, trying to punch through to their Prince.

  As the General’s troops hacked their way to the Prince’s position, the group of five Ta-Tjehenus scurried along the rock face to the boulders that surrounded Khenti. The Prince was surrounded. He stood his ground, pivoting from side to side to follow their shifting positions, his sword at the ready. From his training he knew that to give the enemy the first blows could prove deadly. Impulsively, he dove to the sands, rolled over and came up with a hard sword thrust to the nearest Ta-Tjehenu, cutting him in the groin and thigh so that his leg was nearly severed. The man dropped to the sands with an agonizing cry, blood spurting from arteries in the gash.

  The man to the wounded soldier’s right made the mistake of looking at his fallen comrade. Khenti lifted his sword high and sliced it cleanly into the enemy’s neck and it tilted grotesquely to the side as the man collapsed. With that the three remaining Ta-Tjehenus tried to run, but they were cut down quickly by the General’s guards. In a few minutes the skirmish was over. Forty-two Ta-Tjehenus lay dead or grievously wounded and ten were captured as slaves. By nightfall, two of those captured had somehow found or stolen a dagger and taken their own lives, rather than submit to Kemian justice.

  “You fought bravely and well,” the General said to Khenti as they stood near the campfire later that night. The Prince had a cloth wrapped around his arm. A Horus priest poured juniper juice onto the linen bandage to keep the wound from festering. The desert night chill was upon them and they wore tunics to protect against it. “I will not soon forget it. You did your father, and all of Kem, proud. As we say in the King’s army, you are no longer a virgin.”

  As soon as the priest left, the Prince looked down and shuffled his feet. “I did what needed to be done, sir. No more and no less than the other men in my unit to rid us of the Ta-Tjehenu plague.” The two turned to watch a commotion at the far side of the fire circle. A soldier was being held up by two colleagues as the man grieved the loss of his only brother in the skirmish.

  “He’s in your unit, right?” the General said with a tilt of his head.

  “Yes, sir. We lost two men, both of them as close to me as brothers. My heart aches...”

  “Their names will be whispered for all time,” the General replied, softly. “They died as heroes and will be honored when we return to Inabu-hedj. Their journey to the Afterlife will be short.”

  Khenti looked toward the fire, obviously shaken. The General noted the boy’s vacant eyes and his slumped shoulders. “What is it, son?”

  Khenti turned back, but hesitated before speaking. “It… it is just that you were right, sir.”

  “About what?”

  “Battle, sir. It was not what I supposed. Not at all.”

  SCROLL TWO

  The Loneliest Day

  Merkha

  The Royal Court was in its sixtieth day of mourning. Coarse black burlap, already beginning to fade from Ra’s harsh rays, draped the white walls of the palace in Inabu-hedj. Ra shined his light fiercely upon us, for it was the season of Shomu, when the crops throughout the Two Lands, along the narrow green ribbon of Mother Nile, were ready for harvest. Yet this life-sustaining harvest would not be celebrated, not this year. Instead, farmers looked uneasily over their shoulders for signs of locusts, wild beasts skulking down from the hills, or other plagues. They avoided strangers in the marketplaces, for the Evil Eye roamed dangerously through the Land of the Lotus and the Land of the Papyrus.

  Servants in the Royal Court scurried about silently in deference to the departed King. Fear could be read on the faces of all who passed under my gaze, for who could afford to be unafraid when the King’s ka was in limbo, roaming uneasily in the Netherworld?

  The mortuary priests sent from Nekhen worked steadily in the bowels of the temple of Horus in Inabu-hedj to prepare the King’s body for the Afterlife. His organs had already been removed and placed in the appropriate canopic jars. Now, his body, filled with natron salts and various herbs, waited for the final wrappings that would preserve him for the Afterlife, where his body would be reconstituted for all eternity. His mastaba was being provisioned with his favorite furnishings and with all manner of foods to sustain him during his journey. In a matter of days he would join his ancestors and laugh with the gods. />
  Servants busily prepared the palace for the funeral, which was to take place in just ten days. Wood tables were stacked one atop the other against the interior brown mud-brick walls of the palace. They would soon be arranged with food and desserts for the governors from all the nomes of Kem and for the dignitaries from the many countries that were our most important trading partners who would attend. Then there were those foreigners who would attend the funerary events to curry favor with the nobles in order to join those favored nations.

  Women servants, dressed in the simple, rough burlap dress of grieving, wielded reed brooms, constantly sweeping from the mud brick floors the sand that the workers continually treaded back into the palace. Caravans of dried figs and dates, dried fish, ducks, cheeses, grapes and spices arrived every so often from throughout the Two Lands, sorted by the kitchen staff and apportioned to the cooks whose job it was to prepare foods for the multitude of guests.

  Yet even as the servants worked, none dared to make eye contact with their fellow workers, for all feared the terrible effects of the Evil Eye in such auspicious times. Throughout Kem business deals were put on hold, marriage contracts delayed, even marital relations avoided for fear of incurring the anger of the mut spirits that roamed the land at will while the King’s ka floated in the confused ether of Nun. Wives refused their husbands advances, for any woman who conceived now would live in fear for nine months to see if their pregnancies would be cursed as a sacrilege by the King’s unsettled ka. Window openings and doorways were shut tight at night to prevent the mut desert spirits from invading their peaceful domiciles. And some crops rotted in the field for lack of workers who would stay past Ra’s setting in the west.

  But on a rocky and sand-dusted hill above the city, one group labored on through day and night. Of all whose job it was to prepare the King for his journey, surely none were as important as the Horus mortuary priests. For to them alone lay the task of preparing the King’s body for its arduous journey.

  The entire Temple of Horus, sitting at the highest point of the city, was cordoned off by soldiers of the King’s Guard so that no one could approach within a hundred cubits of it. Still, throughout the day thousands of the curious pressed against the cordon, although I wondered what it was they expected to see, for the King’s body lay in the secret mortuary room, below the holy inner sanctum of the Temple. Perhaps it was more about what the people expected to hear, for rumors spread quickly that the Horus priests sang otherworldly chants over the King’s body in the darkest hours of the night, rising and lowering in pitch in what to the rekhi would be frightening incantations. But, I knew better than to be swayed by simple rumors from the uneducated rekhi. I knew exactly what the priests chanted, for I am Merkha, Horus Priest of Nekhen, Keeper of the Holy Scrolls, and trusted advisor to the departed King Semerkhet who travels now to weigh his fate before Anubis. It is I, in fact, who led those very priests in their holy nighttime work of creating a safe passage for our King’s journey to the Afterworld through our magical singing.

  But, for now, with Ra shining brightly, and with only three hours sleep, my duties lay in another direction. In just a few more hurried steps I entered the Prince’s modest quarters in the palace.

  “Merkha!” the Prince shouted with obvious relief. “Thanks to Ra you are here!” The Prince was dressed only in his white loincloth, revealing his youthful muscular torso, defined and hardened by his recent military training. “You are late this morning,” he continued. His eyes appeared red and I instantly knew that he had another bout of grieving. The room still smelled of the incense he offered to his father.

  “Yes, my Prince, there is much to be done. Your father’s funeral is but a ten-day away.” I sat in one of the rush chairs that were scattered about his room, while Khenti paced before me. “You seem agitated today,” I noted.

  “I am,” the Prince replied, stopping and dropping into the chair opposite mine. “I know less of what is going on than the rekhi in the streets. Other than you, no one tells me anything of what goes on.”

  I could see how his youthful exuberance was being frustrated by the slow pace of the funeral preparations. “It is not some secret that is being kept from you, Khenti. It is just that everyone has many jobs to do and we have but seventy days in which to do them. I, for one, am in the Temple from the rising of Ra’s silver disk to just before his transformation to his golden disk. Then I have duties here at the palace.” I could see from Khenti’s head hanging low that he understood his own impatience.

  “But for now, as we are in the final ten-day, I will be spending more time preparing you for your role. Khenemet will also be part of these discussions, beginning today with the mid-day meal.”

  “Why Khenemet?” Khenti shot back.

  “He is the Chief…”

  “I know, I know, he is the Chief Priest of the Temple of Horus at Nekhen,” Khenti interrupted. “But what role can he play with me that you cannot?”

  I knew that from his youth Khenti disliked Khenemet, who presented a frightening figure with his leopard skin ceremonial dress, his pockmarked face and his severe countenance. “It’s not like you are a child anymore, Khenti. You are sixteen years now and have been a hero in battle. You must learn to understand and accept Khenemet.”

  “He is so serious. He never smiles.”

  “That may be true,” I answered, “but he carries many things in his heart for which he is responsible. The Horus priesthood is the highest in the land, with far-flung posts that he must oversee. He is also the person who must maintain ma’at throughout your rule, as well as the Houses of Life that hold all our records. Without his ministrations, ma’at would be endangered. Truth, balance, order, law, justice, even morality would hang by a thread. I do not envy his role at all. He has every right to be serious.”

  “I imagine,” Khenti replied, in a way that I knew he hardly imagined at all. He fidgeted in his seat and then quickly arose. “So what is in store for today?” he asked.

  “I would like to go over matters concerning the funeral itself,” I said, “from the day before the event to the day after. Then we can discuss…”

  “I am afraid,” the Prince suddenly blurted out. He stood and put his hands on the back of the chair, his head hanging down, his eyes watching as he kicked his sandaled foot at a beetle that crept along the floor and scurried away.

  “Of what?” I asked. In all my years as Khenti’s tutor and personal scribe, I had never known him to utter those words.

  “Of rule,” he answered, sitting again and tapping his fingers on the chair. “I know nothing of it, nothing at all. It is all a mystery to me. My father, he… he just did it. He taught me nothing of how one goes about it.” The Prince sat again, his knees swaying to and fro with nervous energy.

  “I think of it every day now. How does one decide on grain stores? How does one appoint army leaders? How does one learn about ceremonial duties? All I know is what I saw from my father, but I never gave it a thought.” He slowly rubbed his hands together anxiously.

  We sat in silence for a moment. “You know, Khenti, it is said since ancient times that the loneliest day in a man’s life is the day his father dies, for he now must assume the cloak of leadership and has no other shoulder to lean upon, nor to blame for his own failures.” I let that sink into Khenti’s heart.

  “It is not easy to know where to begin,” I continued, “but let me first say this. It is true that your father intentionally kept you from affairs of Kem, although he did intend to begin your formal instruction as soon as you completed your military training. However, in another sense he has already taught you about leadership by the best method I know. He led by example.”

  “I suppose that is true,” Khenti said after a moment’s reflection.

  “No, more than true, for in moments of self-doubt you would do well to just imagine your father acting in a similar situation and only then will you understand how deep were his lessons to you. Those remembrances will come as gifts from him in t
he Afterworld.” Khenti nodded his head as he stared at the patterned mud-brick floor.