The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

weapons that you have in your hands and make them bleed. This is the only way, and therefore I will be with you, fighting at your side with a whip in my hand, and should my whip lash out at you rather than at the Hittites, that will be no fault of mine but yours alone, my valiant dung rats.”

The men listened to him, spellbound, without remembering to change the position of their legs and forgetting even the Hittites. I must confess I was growing uneasy, for the Hittite chariots were already approaching the defences from all directions like distant dust clouds, but I believe that Horemheb lingered designedly, to infect the men with his own composure and to spare them the oppressive time of waiting for the attack. At length, he glanced out across the desert from his high ledge, raised his hand and said:

“Our friends the Hittites are on their way with their chariots, and I give thanks to all the gods of Egypt, for truly Amun has blinded them to trust their strength too much to fight with us. Go then, dung rats of the Nile, each man to his allotted station, and let none depart from his station unless so ordered. And to you, my beloved dung snouts, follow these snails and rabbits and take care of them — and in case needed, castrate them like rams if they try to escape. I might say to you: Fight for the gods of Egypt, fight for the Black Land, fight for your wives and children. But this would mean nothing to you since you’d spray your own waters on your wives’ eyes if you could escape alive. Therefore I say: Mud rats of Egypt, fight for your own sake, fight for your dear lives, and do not yield since you have no escape. Run now, my boys, run swiftly, or the chariots will have reached the barricades before you, and the battle will be over before it ever began.”

He dismissed the men, and the troops started running toward the barricades each to his allowed station, shouting as they ran — whether from ardor or fear, I cannot say, and I don’t believe they could either. Horemheb followed them at a leisurely pace, but I remained sitting on the mountain slope to watch the battle from a safe distance because I was a physician, and my life was dear.

The Hittites had driven their chariots across the plain to the foot of the hills and there stopped them into a battle formation. Their colourful standards and the gleam of the winged suns on the chariots along with the horses’ swinging feathers and the colourful woollen cloths that

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protected the horses from arrows presented a magnificent and formidable sight. It was apparent that they planned to aim their attack, with full force and with everything they had, at the open terrain where the road leading to water stores had been cleared — and at which Horemheb had hastily blocked with meagre barricades — and without turning into the passes that were cramped on both sides of the hills nor spreading too deep into the desert where the voluntary troops and bandits guarded both Horemheb’s flanks. Had they spread too far into the desert, the distance to water stores would have become too long for their horses. They lacked water and forage for their horses and they trusted on their strength and war skills which no nation had yet to withstand. Their chariots fought in groups of six cars, and ten groups of six cars formed a separate regiment, and altogether I think they were sixty regiments against Horemheb’s untrained troops — for the Hittites were orderly people and loved clear numbers. But the heavy chariots which had three horses and three men each, formed the centre of their front, and looking at the heavy chariots, I could not conceive how Horemheb’s troops could withstand their assault, for they moved slowly and heavy like ships in the desert, crushing everything before them.

The Hittites had the horns sounded, the captains raised their standards, and the chariots moved off at gradually increasing speed, but when they had drawn near to the barricades, I saw to my amazement single horses tearing out between them, each with a rider clinging to its mane and drumming with his heels into the sides of his mount to urge it still to greater speed. I could not imagine why they should send their spare horses in advance, unguarded, until I observed these riders leaning over and cutting away the reed ropes that had been stretched between the wooden stakes so that chariot horses would have stumbled and tangled on them. But the other horses galloped straight through the barricades without engaging in combat nor fearing the Egyptian spears and arrows, and their riders rose up and hurled their spears in such a manner that they remained fixed upright in the ground, and from the butt end of each floated a bright pennant. This all occurred with the speed of lightning and faster than I am able to tell about it, and I failed to catch their purpose, for having cut the tumbling ropes and each

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