royal procession with one galley coming up behind the other, stem to stern. Ten thousand men and nearly a thousand horses were in the traces at any one time.
There were over a hundred vessels moored along the bank in the quiet, deep green reach of the Nile above the rapids, when the Hyksos fell upon us once more.
King Salitis had been delayed by his sack and plunder of the city of Elephantine, and he had not realized immediately that we had continued on up-river with the great bulk of Pharaoh's treasure in the holds of our galleys. Everything that he knew about the river, all that his spies and Lord Intef had been able to tell him, had convinced him that the cataracts were a barrier that could not be navigated. He had wasted all that time in the city of Elephantine before setting after us again.
He had ransacked the city and the palace on the island; he had paid informers and tortured captives in an attempt to learn what had become of the treasure and the prince. The citizens of Elephantine had served their prince well. They had held out against the Hyksos in order to give our flotilla a chance to complete the transit.
Of course, it could not last indefinitely, and at last some poor soul broke under the torture of the tyrant. King Salitis harnessed up his horses yet again and came storming after us into the gorge of the cataract.
However, Tanus was well prepared to meet him. Under his command, Kratas and Remrem and Astes had made their dispositions with care. Every single man who could be spared from the work of hauling the ships through the gorge was sent back to help defend it.
The terrain was our greatest ally. The gorge was steep and rocky. The path along the bank was narrow and twisted with the broken ground crowding down upon it. At every turn of the river there rose high bluffs and cave- riddled cliffs, each of them a natural fortress for us to exploit.
In the confines of the gorge the chariots were unable to manoeuvre. They were unable to leave the river and make a detour around the gorge through the open desert. There was neither water nor fodder for their horses out there in the sandy wastes, and the going was soft and treacherous. Their heavy chariots would have bogged down and been lost in the trackless desert, before they could reach the river again. There was no alternative for them, they were forced to come at us in single file along the narrow river-bank.
On the other hand, Kratas had been given ample grace in which to improve the natural defences of the ground by building stone walls in the most readily defensible places. He positioned his archers in the cliffs above these obstacles, and set up man-made rock-slides on the high ground overlooking the pathway.
As the Hyksos vanguard came up the gorge, they were met with a downpour of arrows from stone-walled redoubts on the high ground above them. Then, when they dismounted from their chariots and went forward to clear the stone barriers that had been placed across the track, Kratas yelled the order and the wedges were knocked from under the rock-slides balanced on the lip of the precipice.
The landslides came tumbling and rolling down upon the Hyksos, sweeping men and horses and chariots off the bank into the surging green waters of the Nile. Standing on the top of the cliff with Kratas, I watched their heads go bobbing and spinning through the cascades, and heard their faint and desperate cries echoing from the cliffs, before the weight of their armour pulled them below the surface and the river overwhelmed them.
King Salitis was tenacious. He sent still more of his legions forward to clear the pathway, and others to climb up the cliffs and dislodge our troops from the heights. The Hyksos' losses in men and horses were frightful, while we were almost unscathed. When they laboured up the cliffs in their heavy bronze armour, we rained our arrows down upon them. Then, before they could reach our positions, Kratas ordered our men to fall back to the next prepared strong-point.
There'could be only one outcome to this one-sided encounter. Before he had fought his way halfway up the gorge, King Salitis was forced to abandon the pursuit.
Tanus and my mistress were with us on the cliff-tops when the Hyksos began their retreat back down the gorge. They left the path strewn with the wreckage of then- chariots and cluttered with abandoned equipment and the detritus of their defeat.
'Sound the trumpets!' Tanus gave the order, and the gorge echoed to the mocking fanfare that he sent after the retreating Hyksos legions. The last chariot in that sorry cavalcade was the gilded and embossed vehicle of the king himself. Even from our perch on top of the precipice, we could recognize the tall and savage figure of Salitis, with his high bronze helmet and his black beard flowing back over his shoulders. He raised his bow, that he held in his right hand, and shook it at us. His face was contorted with frustration and rage.
We watched him out of sight. Then Tanus sent our scouts after them to follow them back to Elephantine, in case this was a ruse, a false withdrawal. In my heart I knew that Salitis would not come after us again. Hapi had fulfilled her promise, and offered us her protection once more.
Then we turned, and followed the pathway made by the wild goats along the precipice, back to where the flotilla was moored.
THE MASONS HAD FINISHED WORK ON the obelisk. It was a shaft of solid granite three times the height of a man. I had marked out the proportions and the shape of it upon the mother rock before the masons had made their first cut. Because of this, the lines of the monument were so elegant and pleasing that it appeared to be much taller, once it was set on the summit of the bluff above the last wild stretch of the cataract, overlooking the scene of our triumph. All our people gathered below it, as Queen Lostris dedicated the stone to the goddess of the river. She read aloud the inscription that the masons had engraved upon the polished stone.
I, Queen Lostris, Regent of Egypt and widow of Pharaoh Mamose, the eighth of that name, mother of the Crown Prince Memnon, who shall rule the two kingdoms after me, have ordained the raising of this monument.
This is the mark and covenant of my vow to the people of this very Egypt, that I shall return to them from the wilderness whence I have been driven by the barbarian.
This stone was placed here in the first year of my rule, the nine-hundredth year after the building of the great pyramid of Pharaoh Cheops.
Let this stone stand immovable as the pyramid until I make good my promise to return.
Then, in sight of all the people, she placed the Gold of Valour upon the shoulders of Tanus and Kratas and Remrem and Astes, all those heroes who had made possible the transit of the cataract.
Then, last of all, she called me to her, and as I knelt at her feet, she whispered so I alone might hear, 'How could I forget you, my dear and faithful Taita? We could never have come this far without your help,' she touched my cheek lightly, 'and I know how dearly you love these pretty baubles.' And she placed around my neck the heavy Gold of Praise. I weighed it later at thirty deben, five deben heavier than the chain that Pharaoh had bestowed upon me.
