Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals II

Three hours' travel from Kadesh, the army made camp for the night. Again Horemheb dined with Aziru, for perhaps the last time. Dislike the King's command though he did, Horemheb was about to cut Aziru's leash.

"We will be an hour's ride behind you; scouts will be even closer."

"I rely on that," Aziru replied. "Aitakama may have Hittite troops with him."

"And do you rely upon that too?"

Aziru smiled around the meat in his mouth. "General, do you doubt my intentions to do the King's will?"

"Yes."

Aziru's smile faded. "The King of Egypt resides in Sumura and I am to defy him? He speaks of the oneness of god, rebuilds a city nearly overnight, and I am to disobey? He is the Son of the Sun. I do not doubt him."

"He has paid you."

Aziru shrugged and laid aside his meal unfinished. "What is gold compared to Righteousness?"

That evening Horemheb prayed that the King was right, that the Aten alone was god, because if the other gods were not false, then the Hittites, the Amurrites, none of them were hindered by heresy.

The King had instructed Aziru to lay a trap, and indeed he was doing just so. But, Horemheb wondered, for whom?

The Egyptians lay beneath cover in the pass that led through the hills to Kadesh. Like so many before it, this day too dawned cool and damp, the sky veiled by clouds as it almost never was in Egypt. On the plain before them, west of the River Orontes, Aziru and Aitakama had joined their troops and exercised together like brother princes. As brothers they once might have been in Egypt, but they were no longer sons of the Royal Academy. Aitakama had among his troops Hittite chariotry.

Horemheb ordered Sety forward with a light force, the sort that would pursue a fleeing enemy on the road. Aitakama's men saw Sety at once. Troops fell into a defensive formation about Aitakama with startling precision.

"In the name of the King of Egypt, Neferkheprure, I come for Aziru son of Abdi-Ashirta!" Sety called. "Aitakama, you swore loyalty to the King of Egypt. Aziru is a dog who has slipped his lead. Return him to prove your loyalty to the King in deeds rather than words."

The audacity of this challenge-in the face of Hittite troops at Aitakama's flank-amused the prince of Kadesh. Not, however, Aziru, who fervently begged Aitakama's protection.

Horemheb admired how well Aziru was playing his role, if indeed it was a role at all. Suspecting nothing, Aitakama moved his troops between Sety and the Amurrites. "It would violate the laws of hospitality to surrender one who is as my brother. Would you take him by force?"

Sety's troops-six chariots, twelve men in all-fanned out in a line. As Sety raised his hand, his archers raised their bows. When his hand dropped-

Horses of Aitakama's guard fell or bolted as arrows struck them. Confusion seized the enemy, who had not expected so small a force to attack. Aitakama quickly restored order and commanded the Hittite chariots to swing about.

The heavy Hittite chariots charged the light Egyptian ones, raining arrows before them. They came around wide and drove eastward, forcing the Egyptians toward the Orontes, where Aziru's troops blocked the ford. If Aziru's men did not give them quarter at the riverbank, Sety would have to make a stand, and with such numbers a stand would be brief and fatal.

But now Aitakama's forces had turned their backs on Horemheb.

At Horemheb's command, the Egyptian troops abandoned their cover. Asiatic foot soldiers staggered with Egyptian arrows pinning their backs. At first these losses went unnoticed by the charioteers, the cries of the wounded lost in the thunder of wheels and hoofs. But soon shieldmen began to shift their positions to guard the backs of their archers and drivers, who did not understand what was happening until a slingstone picked off someone nearby or an arrow stung their shoulders. Enraged by this blatant trickery, Aitakama's officers bellowed orders to reverse! reverse! but the heavy Hittite chariots needed room to turn. More perished as the Egyptian chariots, built for the hunt as much as for battle, darted through the enemy ranks and cut commanders from soldiers, severed chariotry from infantry.

New infantry poured from Kadesh, men with slings and bows and daggers, and fresh arrows for the charioteers. The balance was swiftly tipping back to Aitakama, who had what Horemheb realized he himself lacked: reserves and reinforcements at hand, for Aziru remained passive at the river.

So the fighting fell into two battles: an outer of chariots and arrows, of which Horemheb struggled to retain the upper hand; and an inner, near the river, in which Sety's dwindling force fought to stay alive against the crush of Aitakama's troops. Sety himself had lost his chariot.

Aitakama bore down upon him.

As the sun was now high and strong, its rays at last pierced the thick cloud cover. A flash of light-the glint of the sun from Sety's gilded shield, perhaps, or the bronze scale of his armor-startled Aitakama's horses, which reared and bolted. Aitakama fell and, as if tied to his shoulders, the clouds cleared away to the horizon, burned off by the sun. Horemheb lost sight of Sety and Aitakama as the battle surged in again.

Now through the din came another sound, faint but unmistakable in its cadence. As Horemheb drove nearer to the river, smiting chariot runners and slaying horses and drivers in his path, he could hear it:

Kadesh surrendered, its people begging for the installment of Aitakama's brother, Biriawaza, who was ever loyal to Egypt. Aitakama they declared to be a criminal and a traitor who had destroyed much of the city when he returned from Hatte. He now sat with his wrists thrust through a wooden shackle strung from his neck. Aziru asked to cut off Aitakama's hand for the King, but Horemheb refused him the honor. He wished it for himself: his trusted Sety was dead. The sun had inspired Aziru's determination too late.

"The King will decide what to do with the traitor of Kadesh. Even," Horemheb said, "as he decided what to do with you."

"Aitakama you spare, yet me you would have slain when I entered Sumura."

"I would have slain you when I slew your father."

"And now?"

"The King declared you to be a loyal vassal. I did not believe him then. But as the King speaks, so the world becomes."

Before nightfall, more Egyptians approached Kadesh in chariots and on foot.

Hotep and his men.

Horemheb let them in, and by dawn blood ran down the walls of Kadesh.

Throughout Canaan and Syria cities fell before Akhenaten's army and the Amurrites who had joined him. Cities whose ramparts were damaged, whose homes and workshops were burned, whose fields were ruined, these Akhenaten renewed. He sent physicians to treat those ravaged by war and hunger and disease. At his command scribes took stock of livestock, food, copper, slaves, everything, and restored order. His troops were tireless, enduring, generous, for this was the will of the Aten who rose from the horizon every morning for the sake of all humanity.

True, old men, youths, and suckling mothers, tanners, smiths, and glassmakers sometimes died in the night with knives in their backs, arrows through their throats, amulets ripped from their fingers and necks. Akhenaten deeply regretted that this had to be. But those who abandoned these little bits of bronze and clay and wood and falsehood received greater things. By the grace of the Sole-One-of-Re, they received the flesh and the prayers of the sun, Righteousness, and they also received their lives.