Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

The Overseer of the Troops of Armant came forward and quieted his men. If he gave his name, now or ever, Ankhtifi has long ago forgotten it, perhaps at the falcon's word. "Neferkare, so far as we are concerned, is as dead."

Ankhtifi laughed now, and laughed and laughed, for the Overseer spoke more truth than he could ever know.

"Antef is our lord," the Overseer went on, sounding something less than certain in the face of Ankhtifi's laughter. "You would be wise to make him your own. Join Thebes and Koptos, Ankhtifi. Would you rather that Antef overrun Nekhen and Edfu and leave you and your heirs with nothing at all?"

"Will you fight me?"

The Overseer perhaps thought of Khuu, or perhaps he thought of the victorious troops of the Districts of Nekhen and Edfu. Or perhaps he thought of the god that had brought Ankhtifi unseen to the boundary of his camp. Whatever he thought of, at the end of it he said: "I will fight you. My troops will fight you."

And they did.

At Ankhtifi's signal the trustworthy troops of Nekhen and Edfu stormed the encampment, piercing it like harpoons. They brought down their axes upon the shields and the arms and the heads of Armant and Thebes and Koptos. Their slingstones smashed in eyes and tore off ears, their arrows pierced limbs and chests and skewered the very hearts of men, and their spears transfixed whatever they touched.

What the spears did not transfix, and what could move eyeless or earless or with arrows feathering their arms, and what had lost merely hands and not limbs to axes, these fled north, like a single wounded beast. Ankhtifi pursued their leaders, the overseers of troops, and fixed them with his spear. He laid waste to their camp, destroying it utterly, carrying away whatever of value could be carried away, burning whatever would burn.

Then Ankhtifi's men went home, injured but valiant. They went against the current, and this time no wind filled their sails, but they did not care. Home was near, and all the way the trackers hauled while bleeding and singing, "Ankhtifi the Brave, the hero who has no peer."

"Seven, perhaps eight, perhaps nine, against one," Idy says, marveling at the memory to which he himself was witness, of which he himself bears old scars. Ankhtifi is startled: has he been speaking?

He thought the dryness in his throat was from crying battle-orders to his men. "You have no equal, my lord, my father."

Ankhtifi looks at his son, who stares at him wide-eyed, adoring, no different from the workmen. It is so now. But someday men will not question Idy, when he is overlord and the authority of Neferkare, of Horus, of Hemen, fills him.

Ankhtifi steps away from the burial shaft in the spotless floor of his tomb.

For some time no one came south from Koptos or Thebes. No one traveled south at all, unless they began in the District of Nekhen or Edfu and went upstream to Elephantine. Scouts dispatched by Ankhtifi through the desert to look upon the District of Thebes reported that Antef strangled the ways of the desert, that King Neferkare had but hard access to the mines and quarries in the east. When boats came again, their crews and passengers said the same.

The falcon did not speak of these things. Ankhtifi wondered if they felt it showed some weakness the King did not wish to admit, or if he did not so keenly feel this loss, or if there were simply more pressing matters always at hand. And there were. The river was sluggish. Each year it rose as high as it had the year before, but it never seemed quite so high as the year before that. Ankhtifi ordered his treasurers to appropriate a little more than a fair share, and farmers complained to the treasurers. Ankhtifi sent men among them to tell them that this share was going into the granary like the rest, as proof against the fickleness of the river, and the farmers gave even more than they were asked.

Ankhtifi marveled at this with the falcon as he laid before him offerings.

The falcon said, "A king's strong arm is his tongue."

"And the strength of the land is the river," Ankhtifi replied. "It is low, even at its height."

"Horus grants the flood."

"You are Horus. You are Hemen. Grant us the power of the river. Give it away, make us, make yourself, thereby all the stronger." The falcon blinked his bright eye, then his brighter one. "Put my name into your tomb, just once, asking Horus to grant in my name what you most desire. There is power in that."

"Once only?"

"It will be for your son to multiply my name, and for his son, and his son, they who will be overlords after you. Fear will be in them, and love and respect. Your tomb will be unpolluted until the end of time, because none will ever question your authority. Even as I have assured their inheritance, so they will assure mine. The Thebans would take this from me. They would take this from us both."

It startled Ankhtifi to hear the falcon speak of this now. It had been such a long time since the falcon had spoken of Thebes.

"I have thought to go north," said Ankhtifi. "My troops, I can call them from their fields for a little while. The time to plant comes earlier and earlier each year, yet the growing season is shorter and shorter. The river is quick to retreat from the land, and the drought of summer is quicker to descend upon it."

"Go north, then, hero," the falcon said. "Go north and lay my hands about the throat of my enemy." Before going north, Ankhtifi went to his scribes and told them what to write upon one wall of his tomb: "May Horus grant that the river will flood for his son Neferkare."

Then, over the course of ten days, he summoned his trustworthy troops from their fields and their barracks and from their labors. They rowed past the Mount of Semekhsen, where it seemed that the smell of burning staves and a whiff of incense lingered still. They slipped past the town of Armant on the great channel of the river. Those who were along the riverbank in the dark hours gasped in fear. They sent runners northward.

Then Ankhtifi's best archers made ready to shoot them. They were sure of their mark even in moonlight because confidence in their overlord filled them, but Ankhtifi stopped them. "Someone must tell Antef that I have come to challenge him. Let them go. Their fear will inform him well." They rowed until at dawn they came to Tjemy's fine estate on the west bank, whose fields were not so deeply flooded as once they might have been, whose quay was no longer so convenient as once it might have been. Soldiers stood along its walls.

The fleet moored at the riverbank, and out poured the valiant troops of Edfu and Nekhen. Ankhtifi at their lead, they marched to the walls.

"Come out, you! Come out! Who will fight Ankhtifi the Brave, the Great Overlord of Edfu and Nekhen1? Tjemy! You, there! Who?"

Ankhtifi raised his ax.

None replied. Even a volley of arrows, aimed at the walls, did not stir the soldie rs from their places. Shadows grew short and then long again, now stretching back toward the river. The runners from Armant at last came by and Ankhtifi let them pass. "Let them tell Antef of Thebes," he said. "Let them proclaim in Thebes that cowardice perches like sparrows on the walls of Tjemy." Then he turned to the walls again: "I thought Montu was the god of Armant and the god of Thebes! Have you abandoned the god of war for a cackling goose? This Hidden god of Thebes has hidden your courage!"

When none replied he divided his troops. Southward again he sent them, with Idy and Minnefer. By foot and by boat they went, seeking villages and farms, estates and camps. For two days they scoured the western shore of the river, north and south, the muddy fields and the sandy hills. None came out to fight them.

So they crossed the river and went to the north, to that place where one Imby had built his tomb. A camp had been made there not long ago. Warm ash from campfires still lay in little pits, and the tracks of men and donkeys were still fresh. The camp-men had come from the north, but they were gone now, headed south, and, on the river, Ankhtifi's fleet followed while scouts marked the trail of footprints and hoof prints.