People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze) (36 page)

"Do not call yourself king of Tróya or Kanaqán, Odushéyu," warned a disgruntled soldier from among Ainyáh's men.  "Or the same fate will befall you.  We hold you responsible for today's disaster.  And we will not support your claims to kingship."

In fear of his life, the It'ákan heeded the warrior's threat.  Allowing lesser lawagétas to claim kingship of those distant realms, Odushéyu admitted only to being ruler of the western isles.  He did not protest even when Idómeneyu angrily claimed sovereignty over the miserable island of his birth.  "Ai, sweet lady At'ána," Odushéyu muttered, "why did you leave me now, of all times?  Idómeneyu will no doubt be treated like an honored guest while he sends to Ainyáh for ransom.  But I will become a slave.  Owái, why did I listen to that Mirurí?  Why, At'ána, why did you not stop my ears with bees' wax?"

The Sharudín troops gathered everything of value from the surrounding fields, the captured carts, and the invaders' tents.  All foreigners' weapons were gathered, too, surrendered by prisoners, or stripped from the dead, to be stacked at the feet of their commander.  At the same time, Mízriyan spearmen counted the valuables and called out the numbers to their officers, who wrote it down with brush and papyrus.  They gathered up the booty already counted, tying objects together so that it could be carried on the backs of the prisoners and the donkeys brought from Un by Káushan longbow men.  When nothing of value remained in the camp, the victorious soldiers set fire to the sea people's tents.  Well before dark, a long string of miserable humanity marched south toward Un and Manufrí beyond, beaten like donkeys, whenever they slackened their pace.

Amun-musís left behind only a small party of high-ranked, native archers.  They unhitched their horses and rode bareback, slowly walking among the reeds and lotus blossoms by the river, searching for the Libúwan leader in the marshes.  But Mirurí and a few of his followers eluded the Káushans.  On the western side of the Aigúpto River, these refugees from the desert lands now hurried toward the bulk of their kinsmen's forces.  There Mirurí's father led the nomad warriors, still ensconced in the swamps of the western delta.

Despite the presence of the Great House’s numerous troops in Lower Mízriya, Mirniptáha's own northern subjects concealed the fleeing Libúwans.  Though defeated in battle, Mirurí was welcomed by the native cattlemen, disgruntled after generations of heavy taxation and imperial neglect of their temples.  The desert chieftain's coming was also heralded by impoverished fishermen who, like their fathers for untold generations, had never spoken the Mízriyan tongue or honored the Black Land's sovereign.  As darkness began to gather over the bloody field alongside the sacred river, and vultures passed in circles overhead, the Mízriyan officers gave up their quest, kicking their horses' sides to hurry them on toward Un's gates.

Beneath the sacred citadel's pale walls, soldiers and prisoners stopped their march at dusk.  There at Un, Amun-musís had his troops make their own camp, ordering food for them from the relieved city.  As the Mízriyan governor read the reports of his officers, the captive women and children, unable to keep pace with the rest, continued to straggle in.  Many dragged their feet, wailing constant protests, begging in vain for mercy.  Others were too tired even for that.  They used their last strength to walk toward the citadel of the sun, fearing death at the hands of their captors if they should collapse from exhaustion.  The livestock, too, was still being counted, with immense apologies from the Sharudín commander to governor Amun-musís.

"What news do you have of Mirurí?" the governor of the Lower Kingdom sternly asked Bikurnár.

"None yet," the Sharudín officer admitted apologetically.  "But I have sent messages to the commanders of all the western fortresses to be on the lookout for him.  I just hope my messengers can get through, now."

"My great, imperial father will be dissatisfied," Amunmusís growled and his thin lips turned down at the corners.

Bikurnár was not overly concerned.  "Just assure the Great House that Mirurí is defeated and all will be well.  After all, a victory has been accomplished, just as Divine Ptáha promised, in his dream."

Beads of sweat appeared on the lined forehead of Mízriya's savior general.  "Mirurí lost a battle and an army today," Amun-musís said.  "But he himself escaped.  He may have more troops, elsewhere in the swamps of my delta, or hiding in the western desert.  What is to stop him from regrouping with these others and attacking us again, tomorrow?"

Bikurnár could not answer.

"My brother, Siptáha, will find a way to turn my imperial father against me for this," the governor predicted with a sigh.  "No doubt he and his evil wife are filling the Great King's ears with lies about me, at this very moment.  I will have to think about what is to be done.  But, in the meantime, I have work for you.  Order our men to rest now.  But have the prisoners staked, first.  I do not want a single man, woman, or child to escape in the night."

The mercenaries of Mízriya's army and its human plunder spent the night outside the city's walls.  The soldiers cut the men's reed bonds, only to retie them more tightly, with rope this time, and at the elbows instead of the wrists.  With cords of twisted flax, the mercenaries bound the captives' pinioned arms to heavy, wooden stakes driven deep into the ground so that they were forced to kneel.  Denied food or water, in excruciating pain, and fearing that a worse fate was in store for them, the prisoners spent a long, sleepless night.

aaa

"It is my fault," Odushéyu groaned to his fellow exile beneath the southern stars.  "It is all my fault."

Idómeneyu unhappily agreed, his head drooping, the sweat dripping from his face to the dark soil.  "Yes, you were the one who had to go to Mízriya.  Ai, you had to call yourself the high wánaks of Ak'áiwiya."

The It'ákan moaned, "No, no, we did well here, at first," he protested, as he tried to shift to a less agonizing position.  He found he could not rise, as the ropes pulled his elbows more closely together.  "Everything would have been all right, if only I had not forgotten my helmet this morning."

"Ai gar, that old thing was falling apart," the Kep'túriyan argued angrily.  "The boars' tusks were decaying and slipping off.  Owái, your mind is clouded with pain."  He tried to sit, his feet growing numb, but his elbows were pulled upward and he cried out in agony.

"My luck was in that helmet, I tell you," Odushéyu sighed, his voice thin.  "I am afraid we will all die tomorrow."

Idómeneyu tried to move his aching arms and cried out again, as sharp pain drove through him.  "Owái, death is the best we can hope for."

"No, no, At'ána do not listen to him," Odushéyu called out, gasping with fear.  "Great lady, let me live as a slave if I must, but let me live!"

aaa

In the morning, the survivors of the battle still wondered about their fates.  Before dawn, their bonds were loosed long enough to eat a small portion of bread and drink a little muddy water from the river.  At first light, they were bound again, at the wrists, as on the day before, the plunder loaded once more on their backs, and they marched to the gates of Manufrí, where the tributaries of the Aigúpto River began to fan out to create the rich delta region, the source of the land’s agricultural wealth.  Along the way, Mízriya's farmers, in their short hair and dirty, white kilts, admired the procession made by the Great King, his huge army, and all the booty carried by the captives.  The low-born men and women of the Black Land prostrated themselves as Amun-musís's gilded chariot passed.  The people cheered and threw flowers for the warriors.  At the weary prisoners, they shouted insults, and threw mud and animal dung.

The limestone walls of the citadel of Manufrí appeared toward the end of the day, several massive statues peeking above that stone barrier.  From the surrounding countryside on the west, rose many triangular mountains built by men in ancient times, monuments unlike anything the captive peoples from across the sea had ever known.  Outside the walls, Amun-musís ordered that the prisoners be staked, once more.  "The men, that is," he commanded Bikurnár.  "Round up the women and children and put them in the courtyard of Amún's temple.  Set a guard to watch them, though.  Not a one must escape or it will mean your life."

At dawn, the exhausted, captive warriors were released from their wooden stakes and marched, with their elbows still painfully bound, through the outer gates of Manufrí.  Accompanied by native, Mízriyan soldiers and officers alone, the procession of prisoners made its way into the citadel, to an artificial hill that lay in the center of the city.  They passed roomy houses of unpainted brick, their roofs high, with small, narrow windows opening just beneath.  Reed mats hung in the openings, woven in colorful designs.  The streets were filled with cheering, dancing Mízriyans, all clothed in white.  The victory parade stopped in a wide, paved courtyard, beneath the Great King's high balcony.  Beneath this platform, the prisoners were shoved into rows and forced to their knees, to be taunted and kicked by the assembled nobles and army officers.  Troop leaders from Kaush and Kanaqán had their men display the plunder they had taken, at the same time, and the rotting trophies of flesh.  Severed foreskins and hands were piled high on one side, confiscated weapons on the other.  Between the two heaps, the mercenary soldiers stacked the drinking vessels, furniture, jars of ointment, and other riches gathered from the encampment of the defeated.

"Let the victory celebration begin!" Siptáha cried, from his position on the balcony, at the side of the aged Great House.  With parasol- and fan-bearers close behind, the monarch stepped forward until he could be seen by all the city's high-born inhabitants gathered in the courtyard below.  Soldiers wandered among the kneeling captives, drawing out the leader of each enemy nation.  The Mízriyan officers brought these few alongside the heaped treasures, dragging them by the hair.

"Our Great House, lord of Upper Mízriya, monarch of Lower Mízriya, has trampled all the barbarian nations underfoot!" Siptáha called out to the people, from Mirniptáha's side.  "He has won a great victory.  All of Mízriya's enemies are dust from this day.  Let there be a stone erected on every frontier, to commemorate this glorious feat.  Libúwa is slain.  The north is pacified, on both sides of the sea.  Every foreign people lies prostrate before our golden Harú.  They are utterly without breath, unless and until the Great House should choose to give it to them.  May the gods give you everlasting life and utterly good health and endless prosperity, O good king, Mirniptáha, my beloved father!"

Below the balcony, Amun-musís gestured toward the confessed leaders of the enemy.  He called out, "Here are the miserable, fallen, chiefs who dared to transgress your noble and sacred boundary, O greatest of kings, may millions of years of life, and eternal prosperity, and endless health be yours!  We made their camp a desert wasteland, chasing the last men from our fertile lands as a cat chases mice.  But, even in their filthy, stinking dens, the evil vermin of the Red Land were not safe from our unerring, noble, multitudinous arrows, my great and noble parent.  We burned the grain in their wretched fields and rounded up every last one of their cattle and horses.  We filled all of their drinking wells with stones, so that they will suffer hunger and thirst for endless years.  Those that still live are few, so very few that you could count them on the fingers of one hand.  The roads of the Lower Kingdom are now strewn with their corpses like grasshoppers at the time of harvest.  The dead are so many that they outnumber the stars in the sky, the sands on the shores of the sea.  They shake in all their limbs at the very mention of our noble king's most illustrious name, O Mirniptáha Hutpí-hírma, O divine son of Ra!  The Libúwans now subsist on grass like wild goats.  Their bodies are crushed beneath your golden sandals like fallen locusts.  View the innumerable trophies that we have taken from the dead and have the royal scribes count them, if you doubt the magnitude of your success, O Great House, protector of the two lands!  Have your scribes record the wondrous magnitude of the plunder that you have taken with your own hand, my great and gracious lord!"

The pale-faced king did not move upon the balcony, gazing down on the piles of rotting flesh and the captives with unblinking, black eyes.  Beside him, Siptáha nodded at the words of the governor of the Lower Kingdom, his younger kinsman.  "The trophies should indeed be counted," the tall man said to the monarch, in a low voice.  "I fear it would not be beneath my half-brother's dignity to lie about the number.  As for the despoiling of Libúwa, if Amun-musís has done so much, where is the chieftain Mirurí?  I see only northern kings below the balcony."

"Count the bronze and silver vessels," the aging sovereign commanded in his reedy voice.  "Bring me a written report at once."