fat little legs apart, and when she placed her hands back on her hips, I knew that there would be no arguing with her. “What do I prepare?”
“Linens and sandals,” I said swiftly.
“And for the princes?”
I kissed each of my sons on their soft cheeks. They were the brightest babies, always wanting to touch, and grab, and explore. “All they truly need is each other,” I told her. They had recently stopped nursing, and now they drank their milk from clay bottles and ate chicken from my bowl when it was cut small enough. They ate together, played together, and now they would see their first battle together, watching from the hills. I laid my sons back on their linen, and felt the thrill of knowing that by Epiphi the gods would recognize them. It might only be a small thing, and their names might not echo in Amun’s ears just yet, but to share in Egypt’s conquests was certainly a beginning.
In the Audience Chamber that morning, petitioners had been forbidden, and from a dozen polished tables, generals and viziers debated the strategy that Egypt would use to take back Kadesh. I sat listening to Asha and his father as they described the Hittite army.
“They have allies from eighteen kingdoms,” Anhuri warned. “Nearly two thousand chariots and thirty thousand soldiers. They have men from Aleppo, Ugarit, Dardany, Keshkesh, Arzawa, Shasu . . .”
“Aradus, Mese, Pedes, and many more,” Asha finished. “There is no doubt we will need all our twenty thousand soldiers.”
“Then we will break the army into five divisions,” Ramesses decided. We had stayed up for nights looking at maps, translating cuneiform messages that spies had intercepted. “There will be the division of Amun, which I will lead. The division of Ra, with Kofu at its head. General Anhuri will take the division of Ptah and name a general to the division of Set. Each division will march a day apart, so that if Hittite spies should see Amun’s division, they will think we are only five thousand strong. Then Asha will take a final, smaller army by river. If we can surround the Hittites and cut off their supplies, they will face starvation and will surrender within a month.”
The viziers frowned at one another. “You are going to divide the army, Your Highness?” Paser was wary. “No Pharaoh in my memory has done this.”
Around the tables, men shifted in their seats. It was either a brilliant plan or madness.
“I think it can work,” General Kofu spoke up.
“Can work, or will work?” Paser challenged.
“Will work,” Ramesses said fearlessly.
Rahotep remained silent, his bloody eye fixed on Ramesses’s throne. But Paser was braver. “If there is any chance of success in this, there will need to be excellent communication between the divisions.”
“And I have grave reservations,” General Anhuri admitted.
Ramesses hadn’t expected dissent from Asha’s father. “Tell me why.”
“You will lead four divisions up through Canaan, then on through the woods of Labwi. It will be a month’s march. If the Hittites should turn and surprise Amun’s division, how quickly can a runner be sent to Ra, Set, or Ptah? This has never been done—”
“Which is why we must try,” Ramesses said passionately. “Akhenaten lost Kadesh along with the Eleutheros Valley. Since then Pharaohs have tried to regain it and failed. It belongs to Egypt! How long was it in my father’s possession before the Hittites took it back? Without the Valley, we will never regain our land in Syria. If we allow the Hittites to hold Kadesh, they will keep Egypt’s territory along the Arnath River forever! Akhenaten let our empire crumble, but we will rebuild. We will reconquer. And to do that, we must crush the Hittites. We cannot simply use a huge blocking force, as before. It’s not enough to push them back—we must surround them, starve them, and force them to surrender completely!”
Ramesses’s speech roused his generals. They understood that if something different wasn’t tried, there might be battle after battle against Hatti without end. The Hittites had to be engulfed and destroyed once and for all.
THAT EVENING, I looked at Ramesses in the low light of the oil lamps. He sat on our bed, perched tensely like a bird of prey, a nineteen-year-old Pharaoh of the most powerful kingdom in the world. In a month, he would show the Hittite emperor that Egypt should never be mistaken for a gosling.
“Since the reign of Tuthmosis,” he said, “only my father and I have led armies into battle. And