Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

The falcon flew into the air, circling Ankhtifi's head, filling his nose with perfume.

"And as for any overlord who shall be overlord in Hefat and who commits a bad deed—"

Ankhtifi breathed in the perfume, memorizing and wondering at the terribleness in the falcon's next words and not for a moment doubting the truth of them.

In the following days Ankhtifi gathered his scribes and his overseers about him at the necropolis. The mountain where he had first met the falcon swarmed with men, smelling sharply of salt and urine, a stink that obliterated the lingering trace of the incense-terraces. But these were the strong arms of the Districts of Nekhen and Edfu. That smell should he as a perfume to me, Ankhtifi thought.

And he told his scribes everything the falcon had ordered inscribed within the tomb. They agreed with every word, peerless, beginning and end, the hero.

Three times they had him repeat the last of the falcon's words: "As for any overlord who shall be overlord in Hefat and who commits a bad deed or an evil act against this tomb—" and then the butchery that would be performed upon him in the netherworld, an arm struck away for each offense. "Hemen will refuse his offerings on his festival-day, Hemen will not accept any of his offerings, and his heir will not inherit from him."

The scribes took note, collating their copies in order that the text might be perfect, murmuring approval of its thoroughness and efficacy.

When the scribes had gone off to their work, Minnefer came to Ankhtifi. "Your troops are eager to go north, my lord. Every sailor who comes from the north with tales of Thebes and Koptos only blows his breath across the fire in their hearts. They would fight and defeat An-tef for you and the King."

Ankhtifi told Minnefer what the falcon had said, that together these two districts made Antef too great to fight at this moment. "And to think that once you said that I was too eager to fight, Minnefer!"

Minnefer made no jest in return, as once he might have. He only smiled and obeyed.

As Ankhtifi bided time, earth came away from the tomb like the swollen river receding from the fields, and the smells of labor became Ankhtifi's perfume.

It did not go as well with the river, which he watched with hope. It had not risen well, and this was the second month of Inundation. With offerings farmers tried to coax the waters to rise a little higher, to stand a little deeper, on the fields to lay down more precious, fertile mud. One might as well have tried to coax a flood down from the sky. Ankhtifi even dared to hope that while digging the burial shaft in the floor of his tomb-chapel the workmen would strike water and so make a well. But they did not.

Peerless that he might be—peerless that he was, the falcon had so said—such things were not within the purview of Ankhtifi's authority.

Boats yet came and went with little trouble along the river, and one windless morning a boat tracked from the north by six men put to shore at Hefat. There was nothing special with regard to this: boats tracked by six men or four came and went by Hefat every day that the wind did not blow exactly right. This boat had a round-topped cabin woven of reeds, with shields of cattle-hide covering its windows. From this cabin emerged a man with a quiver of arrows and a good bow. Sailors of other boats who were at the riverbank called for Ankhtifi, for they recognized this man as the Overseer of the Troops of Armant. Armant was a town of the District of Thebes, its Overseer a follower of Antef.

"Come!" the Overseer called, waving his arms.

Ankhtifi watched from the apex of his pyramid-mountain. The Overseer's voice was small to him.

"Come!" the Overseer called again.

Because he did not nock an arrow or leave his boat, Ankhtifi did not come. He went about his business at the tomb and then, after a time when the Overseer had finished shouting and sat down at the bow, Ankhtifi made his way to the river. When he came to the shore, the Overseer leapt up. "Come, you hero!" he said, swinging his bow like a sickle. "I have come to bid you north to our camp."

"Have you come or have you been sent?"

"You are bade to Armant," the Overseer replied evenly. "My lord Antef would speak with you."

"This Antef may speak with me here, at Hefat. His district is not so very far. Even your sailors have scarcely beaded their brows with sweat."

The Overseer dropped his voice, but not so much that Ankhtifi could not hear him clearly. "Thebes and Koptos have parted ways. Antef dares not come farther south than the Mount of Semekhsen, does not dare pass the boundaries of his district, for fear that Koptos will attack while he's away. Come, in my boat or your own. Armant is not so very far."

Ankhtifi demanded of the sailors of other boats who had lately come from the north what they knew of this, but none could say. The lords of those districts were like lions, they said, and when lions gorged on a single kill, who was to tell at what moment they might argue over the choicest bits and part company?

"I will not come," said Ankhtifi.

He sent the Overseer of the Troops of Armant back the way he had come; he knew that by nightfall the man would be back in the District of Thebes. It was not so very far indeed.

Idy and Minnefer and his councilors came to him and, having learned the Overseer's news, offered to ready the boats so that, if it was true, Ankhtifi might take advantage, in the name of the King.

Ankhtifi shook his head. "I will not come," he said, "but in my own time, I will go."

He offered loaves and a foreleg to the falcon that night. "It is your time," he said to Ankhtifi, his eyes shining more brightly. "This is a boon I grant you: your opponents will always fall to you in battle. You have no equal."

And he went the next day, before dawn, with two boats and twenty men. They rowed with stealth, the spoon blades of their oars kissing the water and speeding the craft along faster than the flooding current. Here the river branched, and Ankhtifi's boats slipped into the little channel that flowed nearest the Mount of Semekhsen.

There were men at the hill, many men and a half-built fortified camp, with the standards of Thebes and of Koptos.

"He lied!" Idy said, as if such a thing had never before occurred to him.

"He lies, like a hippopotamus in the mud," Ankhtifi said. He hefted his spear, the shadow of which grew longer in the morning light. "And like a hippopotamus in the mud, he dies."

They disembarked, having staked their boats out of sight. A shadow fell over them, winged, perfumed, like a moment of night that was not yet scattered by dawn. His troops did not question Ankhtifi, although he was leading them, a trustworthy band of twenty, against five, six, seven times as many, or more, as they counted by the growing light.

They came to the boundary of the camp, which had stirred and began to break fast. Men scratched themselves and shoved bread into their mouths. The Overseer of the Troops of Armant walked among his soldiers, shoulder to shoulder with other overseers of troops from other towns. These men were the nose, the breath, of this army. The soldiers among whom they walked were the tusks and the flesh, lolling in the mud. Yet there was no sign of the heart, no sign of Antef of Thebes.

"Stand beside me, my strong arms, my harpoons," Ankhtifi said, "and I will pierce the nose."

Ankhtifi stood tall, like the sun suddenly birthed from the horizon, and the scented shadow fell away: the King, far away in the Residence, awoke and rose from his bed. Cries of terror rose from the troops of Armant and their allies. These quickly turned to whoops and they grabbed their weapons.

"You! You there!" Ankhtifi called, giving them neither name nor title nor sobriquet. "I am Ankhtifi, Seal-bearer of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lector-priest, Great Overlord of the Districts of Edfu and Nekhen. I have prevailed in the south over Khuu the wretch of Edfu. I am the hero without peer. By Horus and by Hemen I am here to fight you, all of you, and I will smite you, all of you, and I will carry north through your own districts your herds and your fleets and present them before King Neferkare in the Residence at Neni-Nesut! I will fight all of you. Who among you will fight me?"