Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

"Now embrace your neighbors. You will bury all of your dead," Ankhtifi said, wiping the blood from his ax but ignoring that which spilled down his thigh. "There will be no more filth upon the land. Cleanse the District of Edfu."

The men of Edfu complained bitterly. "He killed my brother," said each man, pointing to another.

"And you," replied Ankhtifi, pointing at them with his clean ax and they shied away, "have killed my sons. I will deal with you, the slayers of my sons, as you deal with the slayers of your brothers." Leaving Minnefer behind to implement his orders, Ankhtifi went home to Hefat.

"And so you won Edfu," Idy says. "Great Overlord of the Districts of Edfu and Nekhen." He pronounces this dual title as if he can taste it in his own mouth at once with his own name. Ankhtifi's mouth is too dry to taste anything. Sasobek is sweeping again, and it is as if he has brushed away all the moisture from Ankhtifi's tongue. His thigh aches.

Ankhtifi says, "Edfu was given to me. By Horus, by Hemen."

Why? He would ask the King but the falcon is gone now. In the Residence far downstream the King has awoken. "Because," says Idy, as if Ankhtifi spoke his question aloud, "you are the hero without equal!" And he goes about pointing to where the texts say this very thing, here and here and here. Ankhtifi-wafcfot. The Brave. Ankhtifi-wafcfoi. The Hero. Ankhtifi. He-Who-Shall-Live.

The fields grew a little better in those days than now, but only a little. The days when the floodwaters reached all of the good fields and blessed them with new black mud were generations past, the memories of forefathers long ago laid into the tomb. Ankhtifi dispatched scribes to account for the grain in the granaries, not only in the District of Edfu but likewise in the District of Nekhen, so that he knew his resources to the smallest detail. He ascertained what was in Khuu's treasury, and made note of mines and the places of good clay and the herds of cattle in Edfu. He became aware of the smiths and the potters, of the fishermen and the hunters, of the scribes and the priests. And he noted what goods came down from Elephantine and Nubia beyond it, and what goods came up through the Districts of Thebes and of Kop-tos and from the Faiyum far beyond them. He noted what came from the Sand-farers of the Eastern Desert and what came from the Libyans of the Western Desert.

He appointed treasurers to oversee the granaries, ordering them to take a fair measure of each harvest and set it aside. No one questioned his demands because Ankhtifi ever took but a fair measure. Ankhtifi marveled that his power stretched so far from the District of Nekhen, and that he was well-loved, even by those whom he had made to bury the murderers of their brothers. As Ankhtifi gave an order, so it was carried out by those far distant from him, his judges and his treasurers and his troops. And it was always well done, because he was well-loved.

Every third night, even as a few hungry men watched after him, he went out to the pyramid of a mountain, where he set out two khenmet-loaves and the foreleg of a calf for the falcon. And every third morning, unlike any other offering Ankhtifi had ever set out for any other god, these were gone, vanished from the earth, devoured in their entirety, the basket clean and undisturbed.

"This is the secret to power," said the falcon one evening when Ankhtifi again met him on the pyramid-mountain with these offerings, "its judicious giving-away. I was profligate in my youth, before I flew to the sky, and I gave too much to too many. The kingship suffered and so Egypt is now in such a state that rebels defy Truth. I diluted rather than tempered. This is not a mistake I will make again. You are well-chosen, Ankhtifi."

"I am touched by the trust you have put in me, my King."

"As I give to you, Ankhtifi, so you give to me. That is the agreement between us. I give you authority, for I am the arms at the end of which are you, my hands. And in turn you give me effectiveness, for you are the hands upon my arms." He blinked his eyes, the bright and the brighter, toward the offerings in the basket.

"There has never been another man like you, Ankhtifi. Not even Harkhuf, who so dutifully brought me my pygmy from beyond Yam. You have no peer. You are to be my sole receptacle, you, and yours ever after, in ways that not even my favorite general from the days of my first youth could ever be. In the earth beneath my perch, within this pyramid-mountain, build yourself a tomb, which I will guard with spells taught to me by the pygmy of the Horizon-Dwellers. He knew these spells as well as he knew life.

"No, he knew them better than life," the falcon said, thinking perhaps of the eight short reigns that had been his after the first lengthy one. "This is my boon to you. By the hand of men your house of eternity will be hewn, by the spells of gods it will endure and protect you and yours. Even as you and yours will protect me."

And the falcon described the tomb as it was to be, hewn from the earth itself, columns growing thick like reeds in the swamp on the day of creation, a roof of stone, a great copper door, a burial shaft sunk into its floor. The threshold must be of stone brought from Elephantine, the architrave carved with uraei, like the cobra that guards the King's brow. Ankhtifi took due note of everything and planned for how to acquire it.

"Everything must be honestly gotten, in accordance with Truth, and maintained in Truth and purity," said the falcon. "That is why I have chosen you, Ankhtifi, for you are not only brave but trustworthy. You are unique and have no peer."

Ankhtifi bowed before his lord, his god, his King. Subsequently he took a fair measure of the fair measure of the harvest for himself, and he did the same with every trade-good that came into his districts and the livestock and the catch of the hunters and fishermen, the products of the mines. Carefully he apportioned the labor of stonecutters and masons, and when they might be spared from erecting defensive walls, he set them to hewing his tomb exactly as the falcon had dictated. They did precisely what they were told, for to do otherwise would be disobedience, and they loved Ankhtifi too much for that.

Traders did not complain of what they had to give to Ankhtifi, but they voiced bitter opinion of what they had to give to others, even when it was less. Ankhtifi listened carefully to what they had to say, to learn what was happening in Elephantine and Nubia, in Thebes and Koptos.

"The Great Overlord of Thebes," travelers said, "he claims control of the ways of the Eastern Desert. The King may not pass to the God's-Land." At this Ankhtifi might have laughed, for every third night the falcon came to him perfumed with incense of the God's-Land, but matters were too serious for that. He spoke of this to the King. "With Thebes and Koptos together, Antef grows," the falcon replied. "He threatens to fill up the land with his vile seed. The House of Khety is not big enough to contain him."

"Khuu called him lord and spoke of a Great Cackler, a Hidden god."

"Khuu is a wretch and dead, deader than you will ever know, boiled in the lake of fire, which was all too good for him. His name, Khuu, means baseness and wrongdoing. You do not remember, but that was not always his name. You will never remember that name given him by his mother." And indeed, such was the strength of the King's words that Ankhtifi could never remember any name but Khuu.

"Be judicious, my hands, my precious hands. Make peace with them to the south, make war with them to the north, and make your tomb here exactly as I told you. Now I will tell you what must be written within it. This is Truth, all shall believe, there will be no doubt: "You are the beginning of men and the end of men. Such a man as you has never before been born and will never after be born. You will have no peer in the course of this million of years. You, Ankhtifi, are the hero without equal."