River god - Smith Wilbur - Страница 101

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  Then I saw the cloud suspended on the horizon beneath the unblemished aquamarine sheen of the sky. It was no larger than the end of my thumb, and my gaze wandered past it and then drifted back to it. I felt no initial alarm, for I had to stare at it for a while before I realized that it was moving.

  'How strange,' I murmured aloud. 'The beginning of the khamsin, perhaps.' But it was out of season, and there had been no charging of the air with those malevolent forces which herald the desert storms. The morning was cool and balmy.

  Even as I pondered it, the distant cloud spread and grew taller. The base of the cloud was upon the earth, not suspended above it, and yet it was too swift and wide to be of any earthly origin. A flock of birds might move that fast, locusts may rise that thickly to the skies, but this was neither of these things.

  The cloud was ochre-yellow, but at first I could not believe it was dust. I have watched herds of scimitar-horned oryx galloping through the dunes in their hundreds upon their annual migrations, but they had never raised a dust-cloud such as this. It might have been the smoke from a fire, but there was nothing out there in the desert to burn. It had to be dust, and yet I still could not wholly believe it. . Swiftly it grew, and drew ever closer, while I stared in wonder and in awe.

  Suddenly I saw reflected light twinkle at the base of the towering cloud. Instantly I was transported back to the vision of the Mazes of Ammon-Ra. This was the same scene. The first had been fantasy, but this was reality. I knew that those beams of light were shot from war armour and from blades of polished bronze. I started to my feet, and alone upon the hilltop I shouted to the wind a warning that nobody heard.

  Then I heard the war trumpets sounding in the camp below me. The pickets on the heights had at last seen the approaching dust-cloud and sounded the alarm. The sound of the trumpets was a part of my vision. Their urgent warning shrilled in my ears and threatened to split my skull, it thrilled my blood and chilled my heart. I knew from my vision that on this fateful day a dynasty would fall and the locusts from the East would devour the substance of this very Egypt. I was filled with dread, and with terror for my mistress and the child that was part of the dynasty.

  The camp below me was a tumult of men running to arms. Their armour glinted and their spear-heads sparkled as they brandished them on high. They were bees from the overturned hive, massing and swarming in disarray. The shouts of the sergeants and the rallying cries of the captains were almost drowned by the braying horns.

  I saw Pharaoh carried from his tent in the centre of a knot of armed men. They hustled him up the slope of the hill to where his throne was set amongst the rocks, overlooking the plain and the wide sweep of the river. They lifted him to the throne and placed the crook and the flail in his hands and the tall double crown upon his head. Pharaoh sat like a marble statue with an ash-white face, while below him his regiments fell into their battle formations. Tanus had trained and exercised them well, and out of the confusion of the first alarm, order swiftly emerged.

  I ran down the hill to be near the king, and so rapid was the response of Lord Tanus' divisions that by the time I reached the foot of his throne, his army lay upon the plain like a coiled serpent to meet the menace of that boiling yellow dust-cloud that swept down upon it.

  Kratas stood with his division on the right flank. I could recognize his tall figure on the first slope of the hill. His regimental officers were grouped around him, their plumes nodding and waving in the light morning breeze from the river. Tanus and his staff were directly below me, close enough for me to overhear their conversation. They discussed the advance of the enemy in cool, academic tones, as though this were a sandbox problem at an officers' training course.

  Tanus had disposed his force in the classical formations. His heavy spearmen formed the front ranks. Their shields were interlocked and the spears' butts grounded. The bronze spear-heads sparkled in the early sunlight, and the men's demeanour was calm and grave. Drawn up behind them were the archers. Their bows were strung and ready. Behind each man stood his quiver boy with bundles of spare arrows. During the battle they would gather up the expended arrows of the enemy to replenish their own bundles. The swordsmen were in reserve, light and quick troops that could rush in to stop a breach or to exploit a weak point in the enemy formations.

  The moves of any battle were like those of the bao board. There were classic openings with set defences that had been developed over the centuries. I had studied these and written three of the definitive scrolls on military tactics that were the prescribed reading of officers training in Thebes.

  Now, reviewing Tanus' dispositions, I could find no fault in them, and my confidence soared. How could an enemy preVail against this mighty host of trained and battle-hardened veterans, and their brilliant young general, who had never lost a battle?

  Then I looked once more beyond our ranks at that ominous, rolling yellow cloud, and my confidence wavered. This was something beyond military tradition, beyond the experience of any general in all our long, proud history. Were these mortal men that we were facing, or, as rumour suggested, were they fiends?

  When I stared into the swirling clouds, they were now so close that I could make out dark shapes in the dun and gloomy veils of dust. My skin crawled with a kind of religious horror as I recognized the shiplike shapes that our prisoners had warned us of. But these were smaller and swifter than any vessel that had ever been launched on water, swifter even than any creature that had ever moved upon the surface of the earth.

  It was difficult to follow one of these shapes with the eye, for they were ethereal and quick as moths in the light of a lantern. They wheeled and wove and disappeared in the moving clouds, so that when they reappeared, it was impossible to tell whether it was the same or another like it. There was no way to count their numbers, or even to guess at what followed the first ranks of their advance. Behind them, the dust-cloud extended back to the horizon from which they had come.

  Although our own ranks stood firm and steady in the sunlight,! could sense the wonder and trepidation that gripped them all. The studied conversation of Tanus' officers had dried up, and they stood in silent awe and watched the enemy deploy before us.

  Then I realized that the dust-cloud was no longer advancing upon us. It hung in the sky, and gradually began to settle and clear, so that I was able dimly to make out the stationary vehicles in the vanguard. But I was now so confused and alarmed that I could not tell whether there were a thousand of them or more.

  We would learn later that this hiatus was always part of the Shepherd King's attack plan. I did not know it then, but during this lull they were regrouping and watering and gathering themselves for the final advance.

  A terrible stillness had fallen on our ranks. It was so profound that the whisper of the breeze was loud through the rocks and the wadis of the hill on which we stood. The only movement was the flutter and swirl of our battle standards at the head of each division. I saw the Blue Crocodile banner waving in the centre of our line, and I took comfort from it.

  Slowly, the dust-clouds subsided and row after row of the Hyksos' craft were revealed to us. They were still too distant to make out details, but I saw that those in the rear were much larger than those leading their army. It seemed to me that they were roofed over with sails of cloth or leather. From these I saw that men were unloading what looked like large water jars and carrying them forward. I wondered what men could consume such large quantities of water. Everything these foreigners did was a puzzle and made no sense to me.

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