man who avoids war, and who feels for his soldiers as though they were made for something other than fighting.”
“Do not speak of Pharaoh this way, O Prince,” said Meresankh. “Our father served our homeland in the days when he was strong. And he will go on serving it doubly so — with his wisdom.”
Yet not all her visits to the prince's palace — were spent in conversations like this one. For, when twenty days had passed since the Egyptian army's departure, she found the heir apparent pleased and happy. As she looked at him, she saw the tough features soften briefly with a smile, and her heart fluttered, her thoughts flying away to her distant sweetheart.
“What's behind this, O Your Highness?” she asked her brother.
“The wonderful news has reached me that our army has won some outstanding victories,” he said. “Soon they will take the enemy's fortress.”
She cried out to him, “Do you have more of this happy news to tell me?”
“The messenger says that our soldiers advanced behind their shields until they came to within an arm's length of the wall — on which it was impossible for the tribesmen to appear without being hit. And so our arrows brought many of them down.”
This was the happiest news she had heard from her brother in her life. She left the prince's palace headed for the Temple of Ptah, and prayed to the mighty lord that the army would be victorious and her sweetheart safe. She remained deeply immersed in prayer for a long time, in the way that only lovers know. But as she returned to Pharaoh's palace, unease crept into her heart — whose patience diminished the closer she came to its goal.
29
The egyptian troops had gotten so close to the fortress's wall that they could touch it with the tips of their spears. Faced by marksmen all around, each time a man appeared on it, they would sight him — with their bows — and fell him. There was no means left for the enemy but to throw rocks down upon them, or to hunt — with their arrows anyone — who tried to scale the wall. Things remained in this state for a time, each side lying in — wait for his adversary. Then at dawn on the twenty-fifth day of siege, Djedef issued his order to the archers to make a general attack. They broke into two groups: one to watch the wall, and the other to advance bearing wooden ladders, protected by their great shields, and armed with bows and arrows. They leaned their ladders against the wall and climbed up, holding their shields before them like standards. Then they secured their shields on top of the wall, making it look like the rampart of an Egyptian citadel armored with “domes.” Once on the wall they were met with thousands of arrows, shot at them from every direction, and more than a few men perished. They answered their enemy's fire, continuously filling the air with the terrifying whoosh of their lethal shafts, as loud cries pierced the clouds in the sky, the cheers of hitting a target mixing with the moans of pain and the screams of fear. During the desperate struggle, a group of foot soldiers attacked the great gate with battering rams made from the trunks of date palms. They rattled it immensely, creating an appalling din.
Djedef stood astride his war chariot, surveying the battle apprehensively, his heart braced for combat. His head turned from side to side as he shifted his gaze from the soldiers scaling the wall and those rushing to do so, then to the men assaulting the towering doorway whose four corners had begun to loosen, and whose frame to throb.
After some time, he saw the archers leaping down inside the wall. Then he saw the infantrymen, their spears at the ready, climbing the ladders, brandishing their shields. He then knew that the enemy had started to abandon an area behind the wall, and was retreating — within the peninsula.
Hours of grueling combat and anxious suspense went by. The squadron of chariots — the young commander at its lead — was waiting tensely, when suddenly the gate flew open after the Egyptian troops inside the — wall raised its bolt. The horses — were given free rein as the vehicles charged through it, with a rumble like the sound of a falling mountain, kicking up a gale of dust and sand behind them. One by one they flew past the portal, this going to the right, that to the left, forming two broad wings that joined behind the commander's chariot.
They smote the enemy as a massive fist mashes a fragile bird, while the bowmen seized all the fortified positions and the overlooking hills. Meanwhile, the spearmen moved forward behind them to protect the chariots, and to fight whoever doubled back to encircle them.
The decisive engagement ended in just a few hours. The tribesmen's villages spent that night at the mercy of the occupying army. The ground was strewn with the bodies of those killed or wounded, as the soldiers roamed here and there without any order. The Egyptians devoted themselves to searching among the corpses for their brothers in battle who had fallen on the field of honor. They kept carrying them to the encampment outside the wall, while others gathered the remains of the enemy dead in order to count them. Yet others bound the prisoners with ropes as they stripped them of their weapons, lining them up, row upon row. Then the little hamlets were emptied of their women and children and bunched into different groups, where they screamed and wailed beside their captured menfolk, guards surrounding them on every side. As the troops returned, each went to where the standard of his own unit was raised. The brigades then stood in formation, all headed by officers that had made it through the scourge of battle alive.
The commander came, followed by the leaders of the brigades, and reviewed the victorious army that saluted him with a prodigious fervor. He greeted his gallant officers, congratulating them for their success and their survival, as he paid tribute to those who had given themselves as martyrs. Then he walked with his war chiefs to the spot where the cadavers of the fallen foe were thrown. Some of their bodies were stretched out next to each other; their blood flowed from them in rivers. Djedef found a detachment watching over them, and asked the officer in command, “How many killed and wounded?”
“Three thousand enemy killed, and five thousand wounded,” the man replied.
“And our losses were how many?”
“One thousand of our own killed, and three thousand wounded.”
The youth's face darkened. “Have the Bedouin tribes cost us so dear?” he wondered aloud.
Next, the commander went to see the place where the prisoners were held. They were gathered under guard, the long ropes splitting them into groups, their arms tied behind their backs, their heads bent down until their beards touched their breasts. Djedef glanced at them, then said to those around him, “They shall work the mines of Qift that complain of being short of labor, where they'll be glad indeed to get these strong men.”
He and his consort then moved on to a raucous area, from which there was no escape, where the noncombatant captives were kept. The children bawled and cried, as the parents slapped their faces and shrieked at them. The women beat their own faces, lamenting their menfolk who were killed or wounded, or taken prisoner, or gone fugitive. While Djedef did not know their language, he gazed at them from his chariot with a look not lacking in sympathy. His sight fell upon a band of them who seemed more affluent than the rest.
“Who are these women?” he asked the officer supervising their guards.
“They're the harem of the tribesmen's leader,” answered the officer.
The commander considered them with a smile. They regarded him with cold eyes, which no doubt concealed behind them a blazing fire, — wishing that they could overpower this conquering commander — who had taken them and their master captive — and who had turned them from privileged persons into the lowest of the low in a single blow.
One of them broke free from the others and wanted to approach the commander. Between her and her goal was a soldier, who signaled to her threateningly — but she called out to Djedef in clear Egyptian, “O Commander, let me come close to you, and may the Lord Ra bless you!”
Djedef was dumbfounded, as they all were, at what issued from her tongue — she spoke Egyptian with a native accent. The commander ordered the soldier to let her approach him. She did so with slow, deliberate steps until she neared the youth, then bowed before him in deference and respect. She was a woman of fifty, of dignified appearance, her face showing the traces of an ancient beauty that time and misery had destroyed. Her features bore an uncanny resemblance to the daughters of the Nile.
“I see that you know our language, madam,” Djedef addressed her.
The woman was moved so intensely that her eyes drowned in tears. “How could I not know it, since I was raised to know no other?” she said. “I am Egyptian, my lord.”
