Desert God

I had with me wagons laden with authentic Hyksos helmets, armour, uniforms and weapons. This was just a small part of the booty we had captured from the enemy at the battle of Thebes.

From Akita we marched on eastwards to the shores of the Gulf of Suez at the northern end of the Red Sea. The men wore Bedouin robes over their uniforms and weapons.

Zaras and I had ridden ahead of the main party. We were waiting at the little fishing village of Al Nadas on the shore of the gulf when they caught up with us.

Zaras had hired a guide whom he had employed before, and whom he recommended highly. His name was Al Namjoo. He was a tall silent man with one eye. He was waiting for us at Al Nadas.

Al Namjoo had chartered all the available fishing vessels from the villagers to ferry us across to the eastern shore. The gulf was less than twenty leagues wide at this point and we could see the low hills of the Sinai on the far side.

We crossed in the night, with only the stars to light our way. We disembarked on the eastern shore of the gulf near another tiny fishing village. This was Zuba, where one of Al Namjoo’s sons was waiting for us. He had a string of over a hundred donkeys which he had hired to carry our heavy gear. We still faced a march of almost two hundred leagues northwards to reach the Middle Sea, but the men were trained to peak condition and we moved fast.

Al Namjoo kept well to the east of the Sinai isthmus which links Africa to Asia to minimize the risk of us encountering any Hyksos troops. Finally we came out on the rocky southern coast of the Middle Sea near the Phoenician port of Ushu. This was approximately midway between the Sumerian border and that part of northern Egypt still in the hands of the Hyksos invaders.

I left Zaras and his men encamped outside the port and went ahead with two donkeys loaded with gold ingots concealed in leather sacks of corn and four picked men to help me. After three days of bargaining with the merchants of the port I had three medium-sized galleys drawn up on the beach below the Phoenician Temple of Melkart. Each of these ships was capable of carrying a hundred men. They had cost me dearly, and there was very little gold remaining in the corn sacks we had brought with us from Thebes.

I let it be known in the port that we were a band of mercenaries travelling eastwards to sell our services to the Assyrian King Al Haturr who was laying siege to the city of Birrayut. As soon as the men were embarked we shoved off from the beach. When we reached deep water and while we were still visible to the watchers in Ushu we turned and rowed eastwards towards Lebanon. However, once we were out of sight of land I reversed our course and headed back towards Egypt and the delta of the Nile.

There was a light offshore breeze blowing that favoured us. We hoisted the mainsails, and relieved the rowers at the long oars at regular intervals. We passed Ushu once again, but heading in the opposite direction. I kept our ships below the horizon, and out of sight of the port.

Although each galley was crowded with seventy men or more, we made good speed and there was curling white water under the bows of every vessel. By late afternoon of the second day I calculated that the Cretan fortress of Tamiat lay less than a hundred leagues ahead of us.

Of course I was in the leading galley with Zaras and I suggested to him that as we had left Ushu far behind us, we could now close in and keep within sight of the shore. It was much easier for me to navigate and judge our position when I had sight of solid land to guide me. At last, as the sun touched the surface of the sea ahead of us and darkness gathered behind us, I pointed out to the helmsman a sheltered but deserted bay with sandy beaches. We ran in until our keels grounded and then the men jumped overboard and dragged the boats up the sand.

The journey from Thebes to where we now lay had been long and gruelling but we were within a few leagues of our goal. There was a contagious sense of excitement and anticipation in our camp that evening, tempered by the foreboding which even the bravest men feel on the eve of battle.

Zaras had selected two of his best men to command our other galleys. The first of these was named Dilbar. He was a tall and handsome man, with muscled forearms and powerful hands. From our first meeting he had particularly engaged my attention and earned my approval. His eyes were dark and piercing, but he had a glossy pink scar from a sword-cut across his right cheek. This detracted not in the least from his good looks. When he gave an order the men responded to him readily and swiftly.

The commander of the third galley was a stocky man with broad shoulders and a bull neck. His name was Akemi. He was a jovial man with a bull voice and an infectious laugh. His weapon of choice was a long-handled axe. Akemi was the one who came to me after the men had eaten.

‘My Lord Taita.’ He saluted me. When first the men had used that title I had protested mildly that I was not entitled to it. They had ignored my protestations and I did not persist. ‘The men have asked me if you will do them the honour of singing for them tonight.’

I have an exceptional voice and under my fingers the lute becomes a celestial object. I can seldom find it within me to deny entreaties of this kind.

That night before the Battle of Tamiat I chose for them ‘The Lament for Queen Lostris’. This is one of my most famous compositions. They gathered around me at the camp-fire and I sang for them all 150 verses. The best singers amongst them joined in the chorus while the others hummed the refrain. At the end there were very few dry eyes amongst my audience. My own tears did not detract in any way from the power and beauty of my performance.

With the first glimmering of dawn the next day our camp was astir. Now the men could strip off their Bedouin robes and head-dresses and open the sacks that contained their Hyksos body armour and weapons. The armour was for the most part made of padded leather, but the helmets were bronze skull-caps with a metal nose-piece. Every man was armed with a powerful recurved bow and a quiver of flint-headed arrows, which were fletched with coloured feathers in the Hyksos style. Their swords were carried in a scabbard strapped to their backs, so the handle stood up behind their left shoulder, ready to hand. The bronze blades were not straight-edged as those of regular Egyptian weapons, but were curved in the eastern fashion.

The armour and weapons were too heavy and too hot to wear while they worked the oars in the direct sunlight. So the men stripped to their loin-cloths and laid their battle gear on the deck beneath the rowing benches between their feet.

Most of my men were of light complexion and many of them had fair hair. I ordered them to use soot from the cooking fires to darken their beards and skin, until they were all as swarthy as any Hyksos legionnaire.

When our three crowded galleys pushed off from the beach and rowed out of the bay, I was once again in the leading ship with Zaras. I stood beside the helmsman who wielded the long steering-oar in the stern. From the same merchant in the port of Ushu who had sold me the boats I had also purchased a papyrus map which purported to set out the details of the southern shore of the Middle Sea between Gebel and Wadi al Nilam. He claimed to have drawn this map with his own hand from his own observations. Now I spread it on the deck between my feet and anchored the corners with pebbles that I had picked up on the beach. Almost at once I was able to identify some of the features on the shore. It seemed that my chart was gratifyingly accurate.

Twice during the morning we spotted the sails of other vessels on the horizon, but we sheered off and gave them a wide berth. Then, when the sun was directly overhead, the lookout in the bows shouted another warning and pointed ahead. I shaded my eyes and peered in the direction he was indicating. I was astonished to see the surface of the sea along the entire horizon was churning white water as though a heavy squall were bearing down on us. This was not the season of storms.

‘Get the sails down!’ I snapped at Zaras. ‘Ship oars and have the sea anchors rigged by the bows and ready for streaming.’

The furious waters raced towards us and we braced ourselves for the onslaught of the wind. The white water emitted a mounting roar as it approached.

I took a firm grip on the wooden coaming of the hatch in front of me and braced myself. Then the seething water enveloped the hull. The uproar became deafening, with men shouting orders and oaths, and the waters dashing against the ships’ sides. However, to my astonishment there was no wind. I knew at once that this storm without wind was a supernatural phenomenon. I closed my eyes and began to chant a prayer to the great god Horus for his protection, and I clung to the coaming with both hands.

Then there was a hand upon my shoulder shaking me rudely and a voice shouting in my ear. I knew it was Zaras but I refused to open my eyes. I waited for the gods to dispose of me as they saw fit. But Zaras kept shaking me and I remained alive. I opened my eyes cautiously. But I kept on praying under my breath. Now I realized what Zaras was saying to me, and I risked a quick glance over the side.

The sea was alive with enormous gleaming bodies that were shaped like arrowheads. Again it took me a moment to realize that they were living creatures, and that each of them was at least the size of a horse. However, these were gigantic fish. They were packed so densely that those below were forcing the others to the surface in a tumult of waves and spray. Their multitudes stretched to the limit of the eye.

‘Tuna!’ Zaras was yelling at me. ‘These are tuna fish.’

Upper Egypt is a landlocked country so I have never had the opportunity to spend enough time on the open sea to have witnessed a tuna migration of this magnitude. I had read so much about the subject that I should have known what was happening. I realized that I was in danger of looking ridiculous, so I opened my eyes and yelled as loudly as Zaras, ‘Of course they are tuna. Get the harpoons ready!’

I had noticed the harpoons when I came aboard for the first time. They were stowed under the rowing benches. I had supposed that they were used to repel pirates and corsairs if they tried to board the ship. The shafts were about twice as long as a tall man. The heads were of razor-sharp flint. There was an eye behind the barb to which the coir line was spliced. And at the other end of the line was tied a carved wooded float.

Although I had given the order for harpoons, it was typical of Zaras that he was the first of any of them to act upon it. He always led by his own example.

He snatched one of the long weapons from where it had been strapped under the thwart, and as he ran with it to the ship’s side he unwrapped the retaining line. He jumped up on to the gunwale of the galley and balanced the long harpoon easily, with the shaft resting on his shoulder and the barbed flint head pointing down at the flashing shoal of fish that was streaming past him like a river of molten silver. They looked up at him with great round eyes that seemed to be dilated with terror.

I watched him gather himself and then hurl the harpoon, point first, straight down into the water below him. The shaft of the heavy weapon shuddered as the point struck and the harpoon was whipped away below the surface by the rush of the huge fish that was impaled by the flint point.

Zaras jumped back on to the deck and seized the running line as it streamed away, blurring with speed and beginning to smoke with the friction of the coarse rope against the wood of the gunwale. Three other men of the crew leaped forward to help him and they latched on to the rope and battled to subdue the fish and bring it alongside.

Four other men had followed Zaras’ example and each of them grabbed a harpoon from its place below the thwarts and ran with it to the gunwale. Soon there were knots of struggling men on each side of the boat, shouting with excitement, swearing and bellowing incoherent orders at each other as they struggled with the massive creatures.

One after another the fish were heaved on board and clubbed to death. Before the last of the harpooned fish had been killed and butchered, the rest of the mighty shoal had disappeared back into the depths as suddenly and miraculously as they had appeared.

We went ashore again that night, and by the light of the cooking fires on the beach we feasted on the succulent flesh of the tuna. It is the most highly prized delicacy in all the seas. The men seasoned the flesh with just a little salt. Some of them could not wait for it to be thrown on the coals, and they wolfed it down raw and bleeding. Then they followed it with a swallow from the wine-skins.

I knew that the next morning they would be strong and eager for the first sight of the enemy. Unlike corn or other insipid foods, meat rouses the demon in the heart of a warrior.

So that night I sang for them ‘The Ballad of Tanus and the Blue Sword’. It is the battle hymn of the Blues, and it set them afire. Every man joined in the chorus, no matter how rough his voice, and afterwards I could see the light of war shining in their eyes. They were ready to meet any enemy.

We launched the galleys again the next morning as soon as it was light enough to make out the reefs below the surface, and to find a safe passage through them.

The closer we came to the many mouths of the Nile Delta the more certain I became of our position, until in the late afternoon we sailed past an estuarine mouth which was bounded on the east side by a low forested headland and on the west by an exposed mud-bank. On the headland facing the sea stood a rudimentary tower of mud-bricks that were painted with limewash. The roof of the tower had collapsed, as had most of the wall on the seaward side of the construction. However, enough of it was still standing for me to be certain that this was the navigational marker for the Tamiat channel, probably erected there by some long-dead Egyptian mariner.

I ran to the foot of the single mast and clambered up it until I reached the sloping yard of the lateen sail. I wrapped my legs around it and hugged the mainmast. From this vantage I had a clear view inland and I immediately picked up the square outline of a man-made structure which just showed above the treetops far inland. Like the channel marker it also was painted with limewash. I was in no doubt at all that this was the watchtower of the Minoan trading fort and treasury which we were seeking. I slid back down the yard and as my feet hit the deck I shouted at the helmsman: ‘Put up your helm! Turn three points to starboard!’

Zaras strode across to where I stood. ‘Yes?’ he asked. Usually he is genial and gregarious, but at a time such as this he becomes a man of quick decisions and even quicker reactions.

‘Yes!’ I agreed, and he gave a brief cold smile and a curt nod to the helm to confirm my order. We turned out towards the open sea. The other two galleys followed us around. Now we headed obliquely away from the shore. However, as soon as we passed the next headland and were screened from the surveillance of any sentry on the tower of the Tamiat fortress, I ordered another change of course. We headed back directly towards the labyrinthine swamps of the delta.

I knew from my map where to find what looked to be a secure anchorage. We lowered the masts and laid them flat on the decks while we poled our way through the dense banks of papyrus and bulrushes into the sheltered lagoon that I had chosen. Here we were completely screened by dense vegetation. We anchored a boat’s length apart in the shallow murky water with our keels only just clear of the mud of the bottom. We were able to wade between the boats with the water at the deepest parts of the lagoon reaching only as high as our chins.

While we watched the sun set and the moon rise, the men feasted on what remained of the smoked tuna steaks. Zaras waded quietly from galley to galley, selecting eight of his best men and warning them to be ready before sunrise the next morning to accompany us on a reconnaissance.

An hour before dawn we crowded into two of the skiffs that we had towed behind the galleys. We paddled across the wide lagoon to the shore nearest the headland on which I had spotted the watchtower of the fort.

I could hear the cries of swamp birds and the susurration of their wings passing over us in the darkness. As the light strengthened I could make out the long flighting lines of waterfowl and their arrowhead formations against the brightening sky. There were wild ducks and geese, storks, herons, cranes with long necks and trailing legs, ibis and egrets and fifty or more other species. They rose in huge flocks from the surface of the lagoon as we rowed through them. At last the sun pushed itself above the horizon and the vast expanses of the delta around us were revealed. It is a wild and desolate place, unfit for human habitation.

We had to drag the skiffs through the shallows and hide them in the reeds when we at last reached firmer ground. I was uncertain of the layout of the fort and its surroundings so we groped our way through the dense stands of reeds and bulrushes ever more cautiously.