S. Stirling - On the Oceans of Eternity

"Kat'ryn, I have been months gone from the land of Kar-Duniash."

She nodded, suddenly slightly wary. "Yes… has anyone made trouble back home?"

"No," he snorted. "Nor will any, so long as they know I would come down the Euphrates with the New Troops and the cannon should a usurper arise; also my half brothers are here with us-and you know that is not chance. But… the Egyptians are moving, and they threaten our line of communications."

"You're worried about rebellion?" she said.

"I have no son of my Great Wife as yet," he said quietly. "My others are children. If I were cut off here…"

"You're going to pull the army out, Kash?" she asked steadily. Lamplight glinted in the alien blue eyes.

"No," he shook his head. "My word is good. But if our line to Babylon is threatened, I must send part of these troops to secure it. I must; the safety of my House and the realm require it."

She threw down the towel and came to him. "I understand," she said. A sudden lynx grin. "So, let's finish Walker first, and then it'll be Pharaoh's turn, eh?"

Ramses stood as erect as a granite monolith, wearing the military kilt and the drum-shaped red crown of war with the golden cobra rearing at his brows, waiting as still as the statue of a God. The officers knelt and bowed their heads to the carpet before him in the shade of the great striped canvas pavilion. There was a silence broken only by the clank of armor scales and creak of leather. Then the eunuch herald's voice rang like silver in the cool air of dawn:

" He is The Horus, Strong Bull, Beloved of Ma'at; He of the Two Goddesses, Protector of Khem who Subdues the Foreign Lands; the Golden Horus, Rich in Years, Great in Victories; He is King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Strong in Right; He is User-Ma'at-Ra, Son of Ra; Ramses, Beloved of Amun ."

The officers bowed again to the living God, and Pharaoh made a quick gesture with one hand. The officers bowed once more and rose.

Djehuty came to his feet with the rest. Servants pulled a cover off a long table. It was covered by a shallow-sided box, and within the box was a model made of sand mixed with Nubian gum, smelling like a temple on a festival day. Its maker stood waiting.

The outland dog , Djehuty thought. Mek-Andrus the foreigner, the one who'd risen so high in Pharaoh's service. He wore Egyptian headdress and military kilt but foreign armor-a long tunic of linked iron rings. Foreign dog. Disturber of custom .

"The servants of Pharaoh will listen to this man, now Chief of Chariots," Ramses said. "So let it be written. So let it be done."

Djehuty bowed his head again. If Pharaoh commands that I obey a baboon with a purple arse, I will obey , he thought. Mek-Andrus was obviously part Nubian, too, with skin the color of a barley loaf and a flat nose. The will of Pharaoh is as the decrees of fate .

The foreigner moved to the sand table and picked up a wooden pointer. "This is the ground on which we must fight," he said. His Egyptian was fluent, but it had a sharp nasal accent like nothing any of the Khemites had ever heard before. "As seen from far above."

All the officers had had the concept explained to them. Some were still looking blank-eyed: Djehuty nodded and looked down with keen interest. There was the straight north-south reach of the coast of Canaan, with the coastal plan narrowing to nothing where the inland hills ran almost to water's edge; a bay north of that, where a river into the sea. The river marked a long trough, between the hills and the mountains of Galilee to the north, and it was the easiest way from the sea inland to the big lake and the Jordan valley.

"The Hittites, the men of Kar-Duniash, the mariyannu of the Asiatic cities, the Armanaean tribes, and their allies are approaching from the northeast, thirty-five thousand strong not counting their auxiliaries and camp followers, according to the latest reports."

The pointer traced a line down through Damascus, over the heights, along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, then northwest from Bet Shean.

"Of those, at least five thousand are infantry equipped with fire weapons, with thirty cannon, and four thousand chariots."

None of the Egyptian commanders stirred; there was a low mutter of sound as the Sherdana mercenary leader translated for his monoglot subordinates, their odd-looking helmets with the circle of feathers all around bending together.

"Favored of the Son of Ra," Djehuty said. "If we are here"-he pointed to a place half a day's march before the place where the coastal plain pinched out-"can they reach the sea and hold the passes over Carmel against us?"

Mek-Andrus nodded; he no longer smiled with such boorish frequency as he had when he first came to Egypt. "That is the question. They were here"-he tapped the place where the Jordan emerged from Galilee-"yesterday at sunset.

Another rustling. That left the enemy further from the plain of Jezreel than the Egyptians, but the path the northerners must cross was over flat land with supplies to hand; the Egyptian force must cross mountains.

"Thutmose did it," Mek-Andrus said. "If we take this pass"- his finger tapped-"as the Great One's predecessor did, we can be here and deployed to meet them before they expect us."

Thutmose … Djehuty thought. Then: Ah . One of the great Pharaohs of the previous dynasty, the one that had petered out when the Accursed of Amun, the Enemy, tried to throw down the worship of the Gods in favor of Atun.

His eyes narrowed as he watched Mek-Andrus. How did the outland dog know so much of Khem? Djehuty knew the barbarian didn't read the Egyptian script, so he couldn't have simply read the story off a temple wall the way a literate, civilized man might. The fire-weapons themselves weren't sorcery, just a recipe, like cooking-plain saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal, whatever the peasants might think. But there was something not quite canny about Mek-Andrus himself.

Yet the Gods have sent him to us . Without Mek-Andrus, the Hittites and Achaeans and other demon-begotten foreigners who knew not the Black Land or the Red would have had the new weapons all to their own. That would have been as bad as the time long ago when the Hyksos came with their chariots, before any Egyptian had seen a horse, and it had taken a long night of subjection and war to expel them .

"Who should take the vanguard?" Pharaoh asked.

Mek-Andrus bowed. "Let Pharaoh choose the commander who has both wisdom and bravery… and many cannon, so that they can hold off the enemy host until the whole army of Pharaoh is deployed."

Remote as jackal-headed Anubis deciding the fate of a soul in the afterworld, Pharaoh's eyes scanned his generals.

Djehuty fell on his face as the flail pointed to him. "Djehuty of the Brigade of Seth. The vanguard shall be yours. Prepare to move as soon as you may. You shall cross the pass and hold the ground for the rest of our armies. So let it be written! So let it be done!"

It was a great honor-and possibly the death sentence for the Brigade of Seth.

The courier threw back his head and drank, water running down his chin into the stubble and soaking into the filthy gray wool of his uniform tunic. The smithy was scorching, its thick adobe walls soaking up the heat of the two charcoal hearths, steam hissing as the hot shoe was plunged into the water. The man whose horse was being shod kept an eye on it even as he stuck the cup into the well bucket again; cooler out here… and even now, a certain magic clung to ironworking.

It had been a long ride overland from his landfall in Athens, even with good roads. The almond trees in the field across from the smithy and relay station were in bloom, their scent a breath of freshness amid the dust and dung of the roadside smithy. Soon he would be in Walkeropolis, where he could rest.