River god

  The silence and the waiting drew out until every muscle and nerve in my body screamed out with the -strain. Then suddenly there was movement again.

  From the front ranks of the Hyksos formations some of these strange vehicles started towards us. A murmur went up from our ranks avwe saw how fast they were moving. After that short period of rest, they seemed to have doubled their speed. The range closed and another cry went up from our host as we realized that these vehicles were each being drawn by a pair of extraordinary beasts.

  They stood as tall as the wild oryx, with the same stiff, upstanding mane along the crest of their arched necks. They were not horned like the oryx, but their heads were more gracefully formed. Their eyes were large and their nostrils flared. Their legs were long and hoofed. Striding out with a peculiar daintiness, they seemed merely to brush the surface of the desert.

  Even now, after all these years, I can recapture the thrill of gazing at a horse for the first time. In my mind the beauty of the hunting cheetah paled beside these marvellous beasts. At the same time we were all filled with fear of them, and I heard one of the officers near me cry out, 'Surely these monsters are killers, and eaters of human flesh! What abomination is this that is visited upon us?'

  A 'stirring of horror ran through our formations, as we expected these beasts to fall upon us and devour us, like ravening lions. But the leading vehicle swung away and sped parallel to our front rank. It moved on spi

  All this I took in at a glance, and then my whole attention focused on the spi

  I stared at the first wheel I had ever seen, and the simplicity and the beauty of it burst in upon me like lightning flaring in my head. I understood it instantly, and scorned myself for not having discovered it of my own accord. It was genius of the highest order, and now I realized that we stood to be destroyed by this wonderful invention in the same way as it must have a

  The golden chariot sped across our front, just out of bowshot. As it drew opposite us, I dragged my gaze from those miraculously spi

  I saw instantly that he was an Asian, with amber skin and a hooked, aquiline nose. His beard was black and thick, cut square across his breastplates, curled and intricately plaited with coloured ribbons. His body armour was a glittering skin of bronze fish-scales, while his crown was tall and square; the gold was embossed with images of some strange god and set with precious stones. His weapons hung on the side-panel of the chariot, close to his hands. His broad-bladed sword in its leather and gold scabbard had a handle of ivory and silver. Beside it, two leather quivers bulged with arrows, and each shaft was fletched with bright feathers. Later I would come to know how the Hyksos loved gaudy colours. The king's bow on its rack beside him was of an unusual shape that I had never seen before. It was not the simple, clean arc of our Egyptian bows; on the Hyksos bow, the upper and lower limbs recurved at the tips.

  As the chariot flew down our line, the king leaned out and planted a lance in the earth. It was tipped with a crimson pe

  I gaped at the fluttering pe

  The Hyksos greeted Pharaoh Mamose, Son of Ra, Divine Ruler of the Two Kingdoms, May He Live For Ever, with contempt. It was a laconic and ironic wave of a mailed hand, and he laughed. The challenge was as clear as if it had been spoken in perfect Egyptian. His mocking laughter floated across to us, and the ranks of our army growled with anger, a sound like far-off thunder in the summer air.

  A small movement below me caught my attention, and I looked down just as Tanus took one step forward and flung up the great bow Lanata. He loosed an arrow and it rose in a high arcing trajectory against the milky-blue sky. The Hyksos was out of range to any other bow, but not to Lanata. The arrow reached its zenith and then dropped like a stooping falcon, full at the centre of the Asian king's chest. The watching multitude gasped with the length and power and aim of that shot. Three hundred paces it flew, and at the very last moment the Hyksos threw up his bronze shield and the arrow buried its head in the centre of the target. It was done with such contemptuous ease that we were all amazed and confounded.

  Then the Hyksos seized his own strangely shaped bow from the rack beside him. With one movement he nocked an arrow, and drew and let it fly. It rose higher than Tanus had reached, and it sailed over his head. Fluting like the wing of a goose, it dropped towards me. I could not move and it might have impaled me without my attempting to avoid it, but it passed my head by an arm's-length and struck the base of Pharaoh's throne behind me. It quivered in the cedar strut like an insult, and the Hyksos king laughed again and wheeled his chariot and sped away, back across the plain, to rejoin his own host.

  I knew then that we were doomed. How could we stand against these speeding chariots, and the recurved bows that so easily outranged the finest archer in our ranks? I was not alone in my dreadful expectations. As the squadrons of chariots began their final fateful evolutions out on the plain and sped towards us hi waves, a moan of despair went up from the army of Egypt. I understood then how the forces of the red pretender had been scattered without a struggle, and the usurper had died with his sword still in its scabbard.

  On the run, the flying chariots merged into columns four abreast and came directly at us. Only then did my mind clear, and I started down the slope at full pelt. Panting, I reached Tanus' side and shouted at him, 'The pe