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CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR

With a sour taste in her mouth, Lowanna stared at the horizon and worried. She and Kareem had ridden two hours east from their encampment and nothing about what they were seeing looked good.

When she and Kareem had left, the host had been marching north a few miles to avoid direct contact with the incoming army. And now that they were staring at the incoming mass of people, she could see that they too had shifted their approach. Instead of heading due west, the newcomers were now heading slightly northwest.

The oncoming army was changing course to intercept the host.

Lowanna’s camel fidgeted. Kareem’s camel snorted and nipped at its companion.

Kareem shielded his eyes from the midmorning sun as he stared east. “I see the troops, praise be to God. I can also see the enemy under the dust. They’re going north and west. It is a much bigger army than our host. Oh my!” He pointed all along the eastern horizon. “I see a long line of blue,” he said. “That must be the Nile.”

Lowanna pressed her lips together and watched for a moment longer. “See anything else?”

“They’re moving fast,” Kareem said. “We have half a day before they reach us.”


Marty felt envy as he watched the eagle jump from the palm tree and flap into the sky.

The host stood massed on a low rise, the only hill within sight. Marty had marched here in hopes that the approaching group would continue straight and pass the host by. But it seemed to his eye that the arriving army was turning to intercept his host.

And Lowanna’s message, sent by eagle, had confirmed the perception.

“They’re heading straight for us?” Surjan asked. The Sikh was wearing a leather bandoleer he had fashioned, and it held several of François’s smaller grenades.

“That’s what Lowanna says. It looks like there’s no avoiding this fight.” There would also be no getting around behind the approaching army to attack it from the rear.

“Good.” Surjan sniffed loudly, his nostrils flaring. “Let’s bring it to these pillocks. Do we fight here, on the hill?”

Marty looked around at the gently sloping sand, a few strands of savannah grass still stubbornly poking out of it as it sloped down toward the east. “I wish there was a canyon or a butte to defend, but there’s only this little mound. Better a little hill for defense than no hill at all.”

“And better still a ditch and bank.” Surjan pointed back at the fortifications Narmer’s people had left behind.

“That’s a lot of area,” Marty said. “I don’t think we can defend the whole thing.”

“We can’t,” Surjan agreed. “But there are only two ways into that area that don’t cross a spiked ditch and climb a steep bank. If these people insist on a confrontation with us, then we need to get into that fort right now, finish the ditch and bank, and hold it.”

“Do we have time to get back there and finish the fortification?” Marty’s spine felt tight.

“Probably,” Surjan said. “Our odds improve if we move right now. And they improve even more if we can slow them down. If we can get settled in before they arrive, maybe we can look tough enough that they won’t even fight.”

Marty nodded. “Where’s François? I’ve got some ideas for his black powder.”


François had cleared one of the supply wagons of everything but the raw ingredients for explosives. He had imagined he would mix just a little more gunpowder as the wagon rolled down to the ditch-and-bank enclosure, but had given up on the idea the first time the wagon bumped over a stone and sent his work flying.

Still, there was less delicate work that could be accomplished.

The host was on the march, heading back into Narmer’s fortification. Marty and Surjan were at the front of the host. Gunther and Lowanna raced ahead on camelback, with a small group of volunteers who were going to seal the fortifications shut by digging the entrances out.

Kareem held an empty jar. François pointed at the sealed wooden boxes and said, “That container is completely dry, right?”

Kareem nodded. “Bone dry. The lid was left off of it.”

“Good. Go ahead and empty one of the boxes of black powder into the container and then”—François pointed at one of the lumpy bags—“open that bag, it’s full of gravel. Scatter a few handfuls of the gravel into the container and then repeat again with the black powder. Try to be even and level. I know it’s hard when we’re being jostled like this. I want four layers of gravel and black powder.”

Kareem cracked open the first wooden case and carefully poured the contents into the large wide-mouthed container. He looked into the container and said, “Four layers won’t fill this.”

“Right.” François pointed at the nearby palm tree. “After the four layers, you go ahead and gather some of the dried fibers from the palm tree and put it loosely into the container. That’ll be our wick.”

Kareem quickly sprinkled rocks on top of the black powder. “This is going to be a real fight, isn’t it? A big battle.”

“I’m afraid so, Kareem.”

“They outnumber us,” Kareem said. “By a lot.”

François grinned. “That is why we must cheat.”

The Egyptian smiled and nodded. “Good. Fight to win.”

“Fight to win.” François took another empty jar and set about following his own instructions to Kareem.

If he was going to die here, he was going to take a lot of his attackers with him.


Marty paced the east-facing bank with Surjan at his side. François and Kareem had finished their work only twenty minutes before the arrival of the other army’s first troops. They had unhitched the oxen, driven them away, abandoned the wagon where it was, and scrambled through the ditch and over the bank to join the host.

The ditch and bank were no great obstacle to a single person, if they were undefended. With defenders armed with spears and missile weapons, Marty hoped they would stop an army.

Or maybe even make it decide to go away.

Lowanna, Gunther, and the diggers had finished the great square. It was over a hundred yards to a side, so there was no way the host could defend the whole thing, if they were completely surrounded and attacked from all sides at once.

The host all waited inside the eastern bank. They were crouched down so as to be invisible to the approaching army, other than Munatas, who stood, holding the Broken Ametsu banner.

Behind the bank were lit several large fires.

Marty wished he had a palisade wall along the top of the bank. He wished he had more warriors. He wished he had secret forces in reserve. But the battle was here, and he had none of those things.

The enemy came on in a loose and growing mob of men with spears, bows, javelins, and swords. Marty looked but made out no chariots, and no Ametsu.

Marty turned to Surjan. “What can you see?”

“There are Sethians among them. They are farther back, and they drive on the horde of men. And the men outnumber us, three to one or more.”

Marty pondered what he was about to order.

“The army’s almost in range of the bowmen,” Surjan said.

“The mines?” Marty asked.

Surjan smiled. “Bob’s your uncle. Ready to detonate, on command.”

Marty gritted his teeth. If his sharpshooters shot too early, and the enemy retreated, he lost his best surprise attack.

Marty signaled to Munatas. The Ahuskay warrior climbed the bank with a grin on his face and a straight back. When he reached the top, he waved the banner.

Marty cupped his hands around his mouth, but then François was at his shoulder. “This part is for me,” the Frenchman said.

“No fair,” Surjan murmured. “You also get the land mines.”

François shrugged. “You’ll get your turn.” He stepped to the top of the bank and called to the enemy army. “Go home! This land belongs to King Marty the Seer!” His voice rang out as if through a megaphone.

The forward section of the advancing army stopped. Men bumped into one another, jockeyed for position, stepped on each other’s toes, and punched each other.

“Marty Cohen is the slayer of the Ametsu!” François continued. “He is the great rescuer of mankind from its enemy! Flee now and live! Attack us and die!”

For a moment, Marty thought it was going to work. The enemy army milled about, hesitated, and looked as if it might dissolve.

Then drumbeats started.

They boomed out from the back of the army somewhere. With each shuddering tom, the enemy warriors stood a little straighter and looked a little more determined. They shuffled into formation, the ragged mob forming up in ranks.

“Nuts,” Marty said.

Trumpets blew, and the enemy advanced.

“Trumpets,” Surjan said. “We could use trumpets.”

“They’re almost to the ditch,” Marty said.

François raised and dropped an arm, signaling to Kareem.

Surjan shouted orders out to his two platoons of spear-fighters, as well as to Lowanna and Idder in command of the sharpshooters. The archers waited, but the slingers began hurling stones over the bank, dropping them onto the front ranks of the enemy.

Marty didn’t see where the fuse ran, but he saw the explosions.

Whoomph . . . whoomph . . . whoomph.

Three buried explosives went off in quick succession, throwing enemy warriors into the air. Hadn’t there been four, though? Maybe there had been a misfire. The sudden craters separated the foremost ranks from the main body of their army. When the warriors in front crouched to shelter from the explosions, and turned to see the pits, they exposed their backs.

Marty’s skirmishers armed with slings rushed to the top of the bank and fired down into the separate front ranks. The archers, meanwhile, loosed their arrows at the larger, unseen mass of the enemy force, so that those who rushed forward were caught under a feathered hail.

The enemy shrieked.

The explosions had to seem like magic to the enemy, and Marty did his best to reinforce that impression. He stood at the top of the bank and waved his arms like a wizard. If the enemy had been within earshot, he’d have shouted the Gettysburg Address.

The enemy front line dissolved.

Kareem scrambled up to the top of the bank and pointed. “They are sending fighters around the south side.”

The enemy knew they outnumbered Marty’s host, and were trying to encircle him.

“Archers?” Marty asked.

“Not yet.” Surjan nodded to Kareem and signaled with an arm.

François, Kareem, and a handful of skirmishers with slings rushed to the southern bank.

“Arrows,” Surjan warned.

Marty crouched. Three of his warriors holding large hide shields rushed up to provide a wall of protection for him, Surjan, and Munatas. Arrows stuck in the thick hide or bounced off. Marty alternated watching the enemy host through the gaps between the shields, and the outflanking advance party. The outflanking party consisted of maybe thirty warriors with mixed weapons and shields, and they were running flat out, stretching into a line.

The enemy knew that Marty’s army was small.

At Idder’s command, the skirmishers let loose a volley of stones at the outflankers. They shouted to one another, then collapsed their line into a more compact formation, shields up.

The sling stones rattled off the enemy shields.

And then François and Kareem threw grenades.

Whoomph.

Whoomph.

Whoomph.

Not all of the grenades exploded. Two hit the ground and simply cracked open. Still, the outflankers scattered, leaving a dozen corpses and two pits in their wake.

Off to the east, Marty saw dark clouds gather.

He saw a flash in the sky and heard the rolling echo of thunder.

Kareem frowned as he peered eastward. “I see more dust on the horizon.”

“Are you sure that’s not rain?”

“I’m sure.” Kareem looked up at the sky. “They won’t get here until tonight or tomorrow morning.”

Marty sighed.


Lowanna patted Surjan on his arm. “It looks like we’re about to get a charge straight down the middle.”

Surjan looked up at a golden eagle circling overhead. He pulled a grenade from his bandoleer and showed it to her. “How smart are the birds, really? I mean, if we wanted a grenade dropped from a height in the middle of our enemy, could they do that?”

She looked up at the golden eagle and grinned.

“And it wouldn’t accidentally drop it on top of us?” he pressed.

Lowanna looked up at the eagle and held out her leather-wrapped arm. “Come here, beautiful boy.”

She took the grenade from Surjan and explained what she needed.

The enemy had regrouped, and moved forward again in columns, swarming over the craters. Marty shouted gibberish and waved his arms, but it didn’t seem to deter them.

The eagle lifted one of its feet. As soon as Lowanna offered the grenade, its clawed foot wrapped completely around the earthenware explosive and took off.

Surjan and Lowanna watched as the eagle flew higher.

The ground shook. Enemies raced forward.

Suddenly, the bird tucked its wings and plummeted to the earth.

Before Lowanna could even register what was happening, the eagle had pulled up and there were a whoomph, a dust cloud, and an eruption of astonished cries in the middle of the enemy ranks.

Arrows flew across the sky, resulting in more screams of pain.

“Ready spears!”

The voice sounded like Surjan, but it was Usaden, imitating the Sikh. Badis then bellowed out the same thing.

The enemy swarmed down into the ditch. They slowed to avoid the spikes. Some weren’t nimble enough and impaled themselves. Others fell to the slings and arrows of Lowanna’s skirmishers. Some made it through the ditch and began to climb, shouting harsh, guttural chants of war.

“Hold the line!” Surjan shouted to his two commanders as the spearmen moved to the top of the bank to defend it.

“Hold the line!” they shouted back.

“Hold the line!” the men roared.

And then there was a clash of the front lines as the two armies met.

The two spear-fighter platoons fought side by side. Surjan prowled behind them, stepping forward to fill the gap when a warrior staggered, or reaching with his long spear to slice one enemy after another.

Not always going for a kill, but more often attacking unarmored spots to incapacitate.

A slice through the back of the knee, a stab between the shoulder and the neck, a smash across the bridge of the nose.

Blood was everywhere.

Whoomph.

Another grenade exploded somewhere in the crowd of clashing bodies. Lowanna wasn’t sure who was throwing them now.

More screams.

And just as quickly as the advance had started, the enemy’s front line retreated. The ditch was full of corpses.

But there were corpses on this side of the bank, too.

Surjan bellowed, “Fire arrows!”

“Fire arrows!” Idder repeated.

As Lowanna saw the enemy retreating, flaming arrows flew overhead. She knelt at the top of the bank to watch. The earth shook with a tremendous explosion that tossed bodies of the retreating enemy in all directions.

An enemy arrow whizzed by Lowanna’s ear and thudded into the earth beside her.

Surjan staggered from the melee, blood trickling down the side of his face from a deep and ugly gash. Lowanna rushed to him and pressed a glowing hand against the wound.

“Did François just have one last surprise?” she asked.

Surjan pressed at the healed flesh where his wound had been. “I guess so. I’ll take it.”

The spear-fighters cheered, shouting taunts at their retreating enemies.

“Do you think that might be it?” Lowanna asked.

Surjan nodded. “I suspect so. At least for today.”


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