On the Oceans of Eternity

Better for the horses, he admitted grudgingly, passing on to the chariots. Those had changed in the last few years as well. Besides a compound bow and quiver on one side, there was a scabbard on the other for two double-barreled shotguns, and the crew was now three, like a Hittite war-cart-one being a loader for the warrior who captained the vehicle.

He reined in and took a swig from the goatskin water bottle at his saddle. It cut gratefully through the dust and thick phlegm in his mouth, and he spat to the side and drank again, since there were good springs nearby and no need to conserve every drop. Years of work, to make the Brigade of Seth the finest in Pharaoh's service, and then to integrate the new weapons.

To be good commanders, his father had told him, we must love our army and our soldiers. But to win victories, we must be ready to kill the thing we love. When you attack, strike like a hammer and hold nothing back.

"Stationed in Damnationville with no supplies," he said, a soldier's saying as old as the wars against the Hyskos.

"But sir, there are plenty of supplies," his son said.

Djehuty nodded. "There are now, boy," he said. "But imagine being stuck here on garrison duty for ten years."

The young man looked around. To their left was the sea, brighter somehow than that off the Delta. The road ran just inland of the coastal sand dunes; off to the right a line of hills made the horizon rise up in heights of blue and purple. Thickets of oak dotted the plain, and stretches of tall grass, still green with summer rain. Grain turned yellow in a few patches of cultivation, here and there a vineyard or olive grove, but the land was thinly peopled-had been since the long wars Pharaoh had waged early in his reign, nearly forty Nile floods ago.

And those did not go well, he remembered uneasily-he'd been a stripling then, but nobody who'd been at Kadesh was going to believe in the great Egyptian victory that the temple walls proclaimed.

A village of dun-colored huts with flat roofs stood in the middle distance, dim through the greater dust plume of the Egyptian host passing north. The dwellers and their stock were long gone; sensible peasants ran when armies passed by.

By the standards of the vile Asiatics, the hairy dwellers in Amurru, this was flat and fertile land. To an Egyptian, it was hard to tell the difference between this and the sterile red desert that lay east of the Nile.

"War and glory are only found in foreign lands," the younger man said stoutly.

"Well spoken, son," the commander said. He looked left; the Ark of Ra was sinking toward the waters. "Time to camp soon. And Pharaoh will summon the commanders to conference in the morning."

"My Kat'ryn…" Kashtiliash of Babylon said.

"Yeah, Kash?" she said, looking up from the washstand. Beads of water ran down the smooth-muscled shoulders, over breasts like lathe-turned wine cups. The pink nipples stiffened to the touch of the chill water, in the predawn cold.

He seated sword and revolver more firmly on his hips and took a deep breath. Holding his spear firm for the charge of a lion or boar was easier than this. Kathryn took up a towel and began to dry herself; uniform and helmet and weapons waited on a stand in the corner of the rammed-earth commanders' quarters.

"Kat'ryn, I have been months gone from the land of Kar-Duniash."

She nodded, suddenly slightly wary. "Yes… has anyone made trouble back home?"

"No," he snorted. "Nor will any, so long as they know I would come down the Euphrates with the New Troops and the ca

"You're worried about rebellion?" she said.

"I have no son of my Great Wife as yet," he said quietly. "My others are children. If I were cut off here…"

"You're going to pull the army out, Kash?" she asked steadily. Lamplight glinted in the alien blue eyes.

"No," he shook his head. "My word is good. But if our line to Babylon is threatened, I must send part of these troops to secure it. I must; the safety of my House and the realm require it."

She threw down the towel and came to him. "I understand," she said. A sudden lynx grin. "So, let's finish Walker first, and then it'll be Pharaoh's turn, eh?"

Ramses stood as erect as a granite monolith, wearing the military kilt and the drum-shaped red crown of war with the golden cobra rearing at his brows, waiting as still as the statue of a God. The officers knelt and bowed their heads to the carpet before him in the shade of the great striped canvas pavilion. There was a silence broken only by the clank of armor scales and creak of leather. Then the eunuch herald's voice rang like silver in the cool air of dawn:

"He is The Horus, Strong Bull, Beloved of Ma'at; He of the Two Goddesses, Protector of Khem who Subdues the Foreign Lands; the Golden Horus, Rich in Years, Great in Victories; He is King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Strong in Right; He is User-Ma'at-Ra, Son of Ra; Ramses, Beloved of Amun."

The officers bowed again to the living God, and Pharaoh made a quick gesture with one hand. The officers bowed once more and rose.

Djehuty came to his feet with the rest. Servants pulled a cover off a long table. It was covered by a shallow-sided box, and within the box was a model made of sand mixed with Nubian gum, smelling like a temple on a festival day. Its maker stood waiting.

The outland dog, Djehuty thought. Mek-Andrus the foreigner, the one who'd risen so high in Pharaoh's service. He wore Egyptian headdress and military kilt but foreign armor-a long tunic of linked iron rings. Foreign dog. Disturber of custom.

"The servants of Pharaoh will listen to this man, now Chief of Chariots," Ramses said. "So let it be written. So let it be done."

Djehuty bowed his head again. If Pharaoh commands that I obey a baboon with a purple arse, I will obey, he thought. Mek-Andrus was obviously part Nubian, too, with skin the color of a barley loaf and a flat nose. The will of Pharaoh is as the decrees of fate.

The foreigner moved to the sand table and picked up a wooden pointer. "This is the ground on which we must fight," he said. His Egyptian was fluent, but it had a sharp nasal accent like nothing any of the Khemites had ever heard before. "As seen from far above."

All the officers had had the concept explained to them. Some were still looking blank-eyed: Djehuty nodded and looked down with keen interest. There was the straight north-south reach of the coast of Canaan, with the coastal plan narrowing to nothing where the inland hills ran almost to water's edge; a bay north of that, where a river into the sea. The river marked a long trough, between the hills and the mountains of Galilee to the north, and it was the easiest way from the sea inland to the big lake and the Jordan valley.

"The Hittites, the men of Kar-Duniash, the mariya