Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,185

eyes and left him to judgment.

Chapter Thirty-two

Mutnodjme

On the night that Ay joined Osiris, I received into my arms a stunned, filthy, blood-stained general, and woke my household to care for him. It took three jars of well-water to scour him clean, and I found five arrow wounds on his chest which had pierced his armour. None of them were deep but they must have been very painful. On his wrist was the mark of a bite and he had ridden for so long that the skin on the insides of his thighs was raw and weeping. I had to cut off his cloth.

Ii ran for the strongest wine and Wab for bread to be soaked in it, and Ipuy talked to the general as we cared for him. The old soldier said that he had seen this before, this unresponsive state.

‘This is battle-shock. You leave it to me, Mistress,’ he said. And so he sat down at the general’s head while I and the others worked on his body.

For a long time he said nothing. Just when I was about to shake him, he spoke in the most casual manner.

‘A nasty business, soldier,’ Ipuy said, and for the first time Horemheb reacted. He began to talk.

‘There were more than a hundred of them, escorting one of the sons of Suppiluliumas,’ he said, not even wincing as I peeled the blood-soaked inner shirt away from the wounds.

‘Only the gods know what they were doing in Egypt! I had them hemmed in and the children poured rocks down on them, and we shot our arrows until there were no more arrows. Then they began to break out. The goatherds were afraid, of course, not battle-hardened, and the Assyrians bold and well armed. All I had were hoes, Ipuy, hoes and reaping hooks. It was a massacre. But they didn’t flee. They died where they stood, and they all died. But so did the Assyrians.’

‘How did that happen, general?’ asked Ipuy.

‘I think I killed them,’ said Horemheb. ‘Yes, Kheperren and I were back to back, I saw how they killed the children, I charged them. Then I fought them all, and they all died. At least, when I could see again, there were no more enemies, not alive.

‘Then I helped my brave scribe to the village where the women said that they would set his arm; but it’s a bad break. I’m sorry, Ptah-hotep, I don’t think he can be a scribe any more unless he can learn to write with his left hand. And he had at least one arrow in him.’

‘General, rest easy,’ said Ptah-hotep. ‘As long as he’s alive, it doesn’t matter.’

I patched the wounds with bandages and it took all of us to carry the general to his bed, administer wine and poppy, and watch until he slept.

‘He killed them all by himself,’ commented Ptah-hotep.

‘That’s the general,’ agreed Ipuy.

Ptah-hotep told me that Ay was with Osiris and Tey was dead; and the manner of their deaths, which I felt that they had deserved. However, they were my parents. I searched for a reaction, but could not find one. They had never loved or wanted me, and lately they had done their best to ruin Egypt.

So though I played Isis for their funerals, I did not weep.

I was to be the Pharaoh Horemheb’s Great Royal Wife, because I was the only remaining royal princess of the whole Amarna dynasty.

Ankhesenamen was in the temple of Isis and proud of her learning, and in any case by marrying me, Horemheb became Ay’s son-in-law and therefore had a double claim, though not a strong one if there had been a living son.

On the day we laid Tey and Ay-Osiris in their tomb—and hoped that they might reform in the otherworld, though I had little hope of it—Ptah-hotep came to me. Kheperren was with him. Horemheb had sent a whole regiment to fetch him and the women of the village had cared for him as best they could.

Horemheb had sent two good masons to make the Shepherd’s Stone, and had exempted their village from taxation for ever after, though he could not bring back their men.

The frontier forts were reinforced. Horemheb did not have to call his soldiers from their farms. At Opet they flooded in, their harvests done, ready to follow the general and to share in his triumph. He had been very moved by that.

Kheperren’s arm had healed cleanly enough, but it would never be serviceable again. He had been honourably discharged