Nile Builder: The Architect from the East

Chapter 80: Chapter 2: The City Is Won — Rush Repairs Harden the Defenses

On the night of the entry, there was no moon.

Lu Zhu and Kamon brought twelve men, every one of them with cloth wrapped around his shoe soles, and crept along the foot of the wall toward the northeast corner. They moved close to the stone, staying in its shadow, and when they paused they pressed their bodies flat against the wall as if they were part of it. The wall above them was black against the starless sky, and the night air smelled of river water and wet grass.

They had crossed over from the West Bank.

Two small boats had ferried them, rowed by A-Tu’s men. The bottoms were smeared with river mud, the oars wrapped in cloth, and the boats kept to the reeds of the east bank, moving slowly — so slowly that they seemed afraid of startling the fish. The rowers dipped their oars without lifting them clear of the water, so that no drop fell and no blade flashed. The landing place was a stretch of beach a full li long, the grass growing higher than a man’s head. Fourteen men walked through that grass, and the only sounds were the water and the whisper of blades brushing against their clothes. The grass was wet with dew, and the wetness soaked through their clothes to the skin; no one stopped to wring it out.

Beyond the beach rose the wall. The wind came off the river in gusts, setting the torches on the wall-head rocking and swaying; the rebels’ sentries stood behind the crenellations, spears hugged to their chests, and their shadows fell on the wall face, now long, now short, as the flames leaned. The wind carried the smell of the torch smoke down to the men below, and with it the low murmur of the sentries talking among themselves.

”Here.” Kamon stopped suddenly, and squatted down.

He reached out and felt the wall with his hands. Felt it once. Felt it again, his fingers moving over the stone and the mortar between, reading the wall the way he had read walls for forty years — with the tips of his fingers, the way a blind man reads. The wind pressed his voice down to almost nothing: ”This stretch’s footing was eaten out by rain-water. I knew it forty years ago. From the top it looks like wall. From the bottom, there’s a hole.”

Lu Zhu squatted down as well, and looked by the thin light of the distant torches. At the base of the wall, sure enough, there was a gap — chest-high on a half-grown boy, hidden by weeds and loose earth, impossible to see without touching. The weeds over it had grown so thick that they bent outward, forming a kind of thatch over the hole.

”The stretch you repaired when you were young?” Lu Zhu asked.

”No.” Kamon said. ”I repaired the south wall. This stretch — the guild turned the contract down that year. Too little pay, and soft footing under it. So no one ever took care of it.” He paused, and his fingers found a stone in the wall’s base and traced its edge. ”I remember standing here once, when I was an apprentice, and hearing the foreman say: this footing is dead, and dead footing kills a wall. He was right. It just took forty years for the killing to finish.”

”A wall no one took care of,” Lu Zhu said, ”opens the door for us tonight.”

Kamon did not answer. He gestured behind him, and the twelve men came up crouching, slipping through the gap one by one, each man ducking under the thatch of weeds. When his own turn came, Kamon first cinched his stone chisel tight at his belt, then went through sideways. The air inside the gap was heavy with the smell of earth — wet earth, like a well half buried. The stones of the old wall held the cold, and the passage was so narrow that a man’s shoulders touched both sides at once; loose mortar crumbled under their feet, and every step had to be set down with care.

Inside the wall lay the old kiln quarter of the north city. The kilns were all cold, black and lightless, their mouths like the entrances of tombs. The party hugged the kiln walls, doubled around two lanes, and climbed the high ground east of the city. The climb was steep, and the men went up it on hands and knees, keeping their heads below the line of the ridge.

The back wall of the old temple stood on that high ground.

Lau was already waiting outside it. The old man’s ears were frighteningly good — when Lu Zhu’s men were still a dozen paces from the wall, he stepped out of the darkness, said nothing, and only gestured for them to follow him into a disused storage shed at the wall’s foot. The shed smelled of dry straw and old rope, and there was just room for all of them to stand.

”The chief officiant?” Lu Zhu asked.

”In the back courtyard.” Lau said. ”Two soldiers at the courtyard gate, and one more at the back wall. Come over the wall from the date tree — mind you don’t touch the tree. The leaves would rustle.” He paused. ”The chief officiant said you would come tonight. These last few days, he has sat under the date tree until the small hours. He has been waiting for you the way a man waits for rain.”

Lu Zhu nodded. He and Kamon went over the back wall, their hands finding the joints of the old stones, and dropped into the courtyard without a sound.

The courtyard had no lamp lit. Only a faint glow came through the door of the chief officiant’s room. The chief officiant sat under the date tree, wrapped in his white linen priest’s robe; when two figures dropped over the wall, he stood up. He stood very straight, and his hands were steady at his sides.

”Master Builder.” He said, his voice soft and steady. ”I have been waiting for you many days.”

”Inside the city — everything arranged?” Lu Zhu asked.

”Arranged.” The chief officiant said. ”A-Tu at the landing — the boats are all there, checked hull by hull. The water gate at the west is watched at night by his people. On the wall, there is a stonemason called Nubu, conscripted into the guard company; tomorrow night his shift falls on the west gate. In the grain houses, three clerks — all men who can be relied on, the sons of temple worshippers.”

He paused after each item, as if reciting a prayer he had written long ago — and in a way he had: this was the speech he had been composing in his head since the first day of the lockdown, adding to it each evening under the date tree.

”The garrison?” Kamon asked.

”Four thousand, more or less.” The chief officiant said. ”The bulk in the barracks south of the city; a company of a hundred at the granaries; one sentry post each at the north gate, south gate, and west gate. The commander is called Pamun. He sleeps in the barracks; there is a patrol once a watch. He is a competent soldier, but he is not a man who thinks ahead; the city is held for him by habit, not by plan.”

”The sentries on the wall?” Lu Zhu asked.

”One per bowshot, and too few for the wall.” The chief officiant said. ”This wall is too old — they cannot watch every stretch of it. The stretch you came in through — I knew of it long ago. The weeds grow over the gap, and they have never once gone to look. They watch the gates, the way they were ordered to; they do not watch the wall itself.”

The three men sat under the date tree and went over the next night’s work, sentence by sentence — the order of the torch signal, the crossing of the river, the password to be shouted in the streets. When they came to the end, the chief officiant was silent for a while, and then said: ”I sent word to A-Tu by Lau. He said the river will be his.”

”Good.” Lu Zhu said. ”Tomorrow night, at the first cockcrow — three swings of a torch on the wall-head. The men outside see the torch, and they cross the river.”

”What do I do?” The chief officiant asked.

”You wait.” Lu Zhu said. ”When the gate opens and the city starts to stir, you go out and shout one sentence for us.”

”What sentence?”

”Do not be afraid.” Lu Zhu said. ”The royal army is back.”

The chief officiant spoke the six words once, to himself. He spoke them slowly, as if he were loading something into each one — the way he had once loaded his voice into the shape of a temple hall, so that the sound would carry to the farthest corner.

”That sentence,” he said, ”I have been training my voice for twenty years.”

Then the chief officiant gave the fine details of the city: Pamun’s barracks lay south of the city, half a li from the granaries; the granary company of a hundred worked two shifts at night, one shift patrolling the storehouses, one resting in the shed before them; the north and south gate posts changed guards once a watch, and the shift before dawn was the slackest — the guards, cold and weary, thinking of their beds.

”And one thing more.” The chief officiant said. ”There are no fewer than three hundred old craftsmen in this city, forced into the guard companies. They hate these uniforms to the bone — the uniforms and the spears they were handed. The day the city is won back, those men are ready-made hands for repairing the wall. A stonemason with a spear in his hand is still a stonemason; the spear is just what he is waiting to put down.”

”So that sentence of yours must be shouted loud.” Lu Zhu said. ”Wake the people, and the three hundred stonemasons come back.”

Before dawn, Lu Zhu’s party was back in the reed beds outside the wall. The boat was A-Tu’s; the boatman spoke not one word, and rowed with the oars wrapped in cloth, hugging the west bank like a shadow sliding over the water. The oars made no sound at all, and the boat left no wake that the eye could catch.

The next day, both inside the city and out, everyone was waiting for that night.

Young Nubu told the old soldier in charge of his shift that he wanted to change to the west gate watch. The old soldier asked him why. He said: ”The west gate is by the river — cooler. The east stretch bakes a man’s head off in the daylight.” The old soldier swore that young people were soft — a complaint about the sun, in a city under lockdown — but he made the swap. He did not know that this young man who complained of the sun had wrapped two things in oilcloth and hidden them behind a loose brick at the top of the west gate’s wall-head. One was a length of coarse rope soaked in oil; the other was a short chisel, the blade whetted that morning and wrapped so that it would not clink.

A-Tu checked his ferry boats one by one. He was not checking whether they leaked; he was checking how low the gunwales sat — the lower the gunwale, the more men a boat could carry. He had the boatmen pile stones in the bottoms of the two boats, one after another, until the loaded gunwale rode where he wanted it; then the stones came out, and the boats were ready. When he was done, he moored both boats at the outermost posts of the landing, and tied the mooring lines with slip knots — a pull on the end, and the line comes free in the dark.

The three clerks of the grain house worked their ordinary day. One of them, whose surname was Mu, took advantage of the noon lull to oil the axle of the grain house’s back half-gate. He oiled it twice, working the oil well into the iron pin with a scrap of cloth, and when he was done he swung the gate twice, and it moved without a sound.

And on the West Bank outside the city, Horenheb’s cavalry had already moved quietly into position.

No campfires. No hoofbeats. Several hundred riders hid in the willow grove behind the reed beds, every horse’s mouth muffled so that none could whinny, every hoof wrapped so that none could ring on stone. They had come around from the north — by day, a company had deliberately shown itself on the official road north of the city, raising a great dust, marching with banners flying; by night, that company had ridden back the way it had come, quietly. The rebels’ sentries on the wall-head saw it and took it for the royal army showing off its strength — a demonstration, nothing more.

The real blade lay hidden in the willows on the West Bank, and the willows did not stir.

The chief officiant went nowhere that day. He read and wrote as usual; he watched the shadows under the date tree as usual, and the shadow of the courtyard wall crawled its ordinary course from west to east. But his ears stayed pricked — toward the wall, toward the country outside. At dusk he sent Lau to walk once around the city gate. Lau came back and said: all as usual. The same soldiers on guard; no extra patrols on the streets; the water lines at the wells unchanged.

”Good.” The chief officiant said. ”As usual is exactly what we want.”

Lu Zhu’s men spent that day hidden in A-Tu’s boathouse.

The boathouse stood at the far edge of the landing — half a room, stacked with broken planks, old ropes, and sun-dried fishing nets. Fourteen men packed into it, sitting close enough to feel one another’s breath, and not one spoke; when footsteps sounded outside, they all held their breath at once, and the room went so still that the flies could be heard on the nets. Twice that day, the rebels’ soldiers came to check the landing; they looked at the boathouse from outside, and went away.

After dark, A-Tu brought them their meal: barley cakes, salted fish, and a jar of clear water. He squatted at the door of the shed, watching the landing, and said: ”Eat. Eat your fill — the small hours will need the strength.”

”Uncle A-Tu,” a young craftsman asked, low, ”aren’t you afraid?”

”Afraid.” A-Tu said. ”I’ve been afraid for thirty years; I’ve worn it out.” He paused, and the pause had weight in it. ”Fear is like an oar — use it long enough, and it wears smooth. Now that you’re here, this old life of mine is staked on your chisels. And I’ve slept better these three days than in the thirty years before them, because at last there is something to be done.”

Outside the shed, the river slapped the bank, again and again, as if it were counting the hours.

On the third day, at the first cockcrow.

The torches on the wall-head had burned all night; now they had sunk low, the flames small and yellow against the paling sky. The sentry in the west gate tower was dozing over his spear, his head nodding, down, up, down; his spear had slipped sideways, and he had not noticed. Nubu crept up to the crenellation without a sound, his bare feet finding the stones he had already marked in his mind. He wound the oil-soaked rope around a torch, set it alight — the flame caught and ran along the rope’s wet shine — and leaned out over the embrasure — swung it three great circles toward the west.

One circle. Two. Three.

The torch drew three rings of light in the darkness, like three whirlpools forming on the river’s face.

In the willow grove on the far bank, someone moved.

At the same time, the clerk Mu of the grain house came along the foot of the wall with two men. Nubu let the rope down from the wall-head, and the three men climbed up one after another, hand over hand — their job was to watch the sentry posts on either side of the gate, and to tie up the two dozing sentries, neatly, with rope. The sentries woke with rope already around their arms, and one of them opened his mouth to shout, and the gag went in before the sound came out.

That done, Nubu came down the inner ladder into the gate tunnel. Lu Zhu’s men were already crouched in the shadows there, and someone handed Nubu a short chisel. The gate bar was thick, wrapped in iron, and locked besides — an old lock, bronze, its surface green with age. Nubu fitted the chisel into the lock’s hasp, set his teeth, and twisted — crack. The hasp broke.

The sound was sharp in the night — sharp enough to be heard.

The sentry in the gate tunnel woke. His eyes opened on the figures moving on the wall-head, and his mouth opened to shout. Before the shout could come out, an arm closed around his throat from behind — it was Lu Zhu. These twelve men had come in through the gap long since, and had been crouching in the shadows inside the gate for more than half a double-hour, breathing slow, waiting.

”Don’t move.” Lu Zhu’s voice was right against his ear. ”Move, and there’ll be no morning for you.”

The sentry shook all over, his throat making two weak sounds — aaa, aaa — and then he did not move. He could feel the arm against his throat, and the patience in it, and he did not move.

The gate bar was lifted slowly. Four craftsmen, with two wooden levers and ropes, drew the iron-wrapped bar out of its rings inch by inch. The wood grated against the iron rings, a low, drawn-out groan, like something being pulled loose that did not want to come. The four men worked in unison, breathing through their mouths to stay silent, and the groan went on and on, and then the bar was free, and two men were carrying it, laid across their arms, to the side of the tunnel.

The gate opened a crack.

On the West Bank, A-Tu’s boats had already left the shore. The boats carried no oars; the boatmen pushed with poles against the riverbed, the poles going in without a splash and coming up without a sound. The gunwales rode so low that the water nearly lapped over them, and every boat was crowded with crouching men — their blades hidden under the deck planks, only their eyes showing, in rows, gleaming in the dark. The boats moved across the black water without a wake.

Two li downstream, in a narrow side channel, several hundred war horses stood strung together in columns, held by their handlers, being led down into the water — horses can swim, and men can ride in boats. The men came ashore, and the horses came ashore, the water streaming off their flanks, and they stood shaking in the dark, silent.

When the first boat touched the bank, the gap in the gate was already half a panel wide.

”They’re here.” Lu Zhu said.

The hoofbeats began on the river flats.

The cavalry did not take the landing’s main road. They came charging along the beach, hooves sinking into the soft sand, the sound dead and muffled — like a thousand drums struck through cloth. At the foot of the wall, a sorrel horse came first, and the officer on it held a torch aloft; in the torchlight was a face roughened by half a lifetime of river wind, the eyes hard and level.

”General Horen!” Lu Zhu shouted from the gate tunnel.

”Charge!” Horenheb gave back one word.

The cavalry poured into the gate tunnel like released water. The sound of blades leaving scabbards ran together in one long hiss, louder than the hoofbeats, and the tunnel filled with the smell of horses and iron.

In the barracks south of the city, Pamun was shaken awake from a dream.

By the time he jumped up, the shouts of battle outside had already joined into a single roar. He seized his blade and ran out of the barracks, and saw the north sky reddened at one edge — licked by firelight. The firelight moved as he watched, spreading along the line of the wall.

”Enemy attack! Enemy attack!” A messenger stumbled in. ”The west gate is open! The royal army is in the city! And north of the city — there are fires north!”

Pamun’s face, in the firelight, was bloodless. He stood at the barracks gate and listened to the direction of the shouting — near on the west, far on the north. On the west, the blades coming in; on the north, the wall pressing down. He stood there a long moment, his blade hanging at his side, and the shouts came no closer and no farther.

”It’s over.” He said, low.

But he was a man who had commanded soldiers; after one stunned moment he gave the order: ”The front company holds the west gate! The rest — with me, out the south gate!”

Most of the rebels’ soldiers had been swept in at the last moment. When they heard they were pulling out the south gate, they dropped their torches and ran with the crowd — the torches fell into the street and burned where they lay, and no one stopped to pick them up. Some lost their helmets, some their armor, some were weeping and calling for their mothers. In the lanes south of the city, everything churned like porridge in one pot, and the running feet of a routed army sounded like hail on the stones.

But at the west gate, they held for a moment.

A centurion with several dozen men blocked the main street inside the gate, two ranks of spears braced, their butts set against the stones. The cavalry hit the first rank and was stopped — horses screamed, men shouted, the spears held. But the rebels’ spear ranks were only two deep, and they could not hold against a second wave. Horenheb’s cavalry split into two wings, slipped along the wall-bases on either side of the street, and closed in from both flanks — and the two ranks of spears snapped like reeds in a wind. The centurion went down in the press, and his men with him, and the street was open.

As the sky was lightening, the torches in the city went out, one by one.

Before the granaries south of the city, the company of a hundred had not been able to run.

In the growing light, the cavalry had already surrounded the granary. The centurion stood in the gate, raised his blade — and lowered it again. Behind him, several dozen men pressed into a huddle, faces to the wall, not daring to breathe loud. One of them had dropped his spear, and no one picked it up.

”We surrender.” The centurion dropped his blade on the ground. ”We... we were only watching the granary. We never killed anyone.”

The officer on horseback did not answer him. He only sent men up to tear the seal strips off the granary gate, one after another. Under the strips was the old gate of the official granary — and on the old gate, a mark the old granary keeper had cut into the wood years ago, still there, a small notch that had outlived the seal and the sealers.

As for Pamun’s routed soldiers, they scattered three li beyond the city.

When he fled the south gate, he had seven or eight hundred men. Five li out, he had five hundred. When they reached the river and saw no pursuit, a hundred-odd more tore off their white cloth bands and dove into the reeds without a backward glance. These were the pressed laborers — and one of them had lost a shoe somewhere along the way, and another was still clutching the barley cake he had been saving for breakfast.

Pamun led the rest south. South lay Upper Egypt, and more than twenty towns that had raised the banner. He would take shelter there, and then loop around to find the High Priest’s main army. He knew in his heart that the city had been lost disgracefully — but a city is a dead thing, and men are living. As long as the men lived, the city could be taken back one day.

”Wait.” He said from the saddle, looking back once. ”Repair all you like. We’ll come back and tear it down.”

Even as Pamun spoke, the torches in the city were going out, one by one.

They were not blown out — they were pulled down. The people pulling them down were the city’s common folk. They had heard the battle shouts in the streets and dared not come out at first; then they heard someone shouting ”the royal army is back!” and their courage grew, a little at a time, the way a fire grows from a spark. First they watched through door cracks; then from half-open doors; then the whole lane came out into the street, and the pulled-down torches were stamped out under their feet.

It was at that moment that the chief officiant left the old temple.

The soldiers at the courtyard gate had long since run. Lau opened the gate for him. When he walked out of the lane, the first white line of dawn was showing at the sky’s edge; the air was cold and clear, the way it is only at that hour. In the street, the cavalry was riding south; on the stone slabs the horses had crossed, the rebels’ white cloth bands lay scattered — laid out like dead fish, one after another, some of them still wet with dew.

Someone recognized him.

”The chief officiant!” An old woman shouted. ”The chief officiant is out!”

That one shout was like a drop of water in a pan of hot oil. The whole street came alive. Doors opened one after another; people came out one after another, gathering around him — but not daring to come close, standing a few paces off, watching him. Some had been up all night; some were still pulling on their clothes; all of them were looking at him.

The chief officiant stood in the middle of the street and looked at the faces. Old, young, those who knew him, those who did not. He smoothed his robe, and said:

”Do not be afraid. The royal army is back.”

His voice was not loud. But that sentence ran through the lane, through the street, through the city, like water — reaching the space behind every door, the way a voice carries in a hall built to carry it.

When the chief officiant reached the city gate, Lu Zhu was standing there.

The two men stopped, half a street apart. The sky was fully light now; the sun had risen over the east wall, and the whole gate tunnel stood bright with it — the light pouring in through the open panels, laying a long rectangle of gold on the stones. The chief officiant looked at that light filling the tunnel, and stood still for a long time.

”Master Builder,” he said, ”I brought the new temple’s sound to Thebes for you. Today, this gate has opened for you.”

”Opened,” Lu Zhu said. ”Now we must never let it close again.”

That evening, the chief officiant went to the landing.

A-Tu was squatting at his boat’s stern, wiping his oar. When he saw the chief officiant, he stood up — he did not bow, only held the oar across his chest, and said: ”You see. I told you — the boat is here, the oar is here, the man is here.”

”Now the gate is open, too.” The chief officiant said.

”A gate is a gate, and a river is a river.” A-Tu said. ”From now on, whether this city holds or falls — half is on the walls, and half is on the water. The water, rest easy: A-Tu’s boats are the royal army’s bridge. A boat can carry a city’s hope, if it is rowed at the right hour.”

The chief officiant nodded. He stood at the landing, watching the sunset gild the river in dark gold. Along the foot of the wall, the rammers’ chant came over in waves, mingling with the sound of the water — as if the whole city were breathing hard, drawing breath.

”This city,” he said, ”is alive.”

That night, Lu Zhu walked the streets of Thebes alone.

He had been to this city before. Three years ago, passing through with the new capital’s building crews, he had stayed one night. In those days he was still a small man with one thought in his head — save up enough money and grain to find the road home. He had looked at Thebes with the eyes of such a man: whether the walls were high, whether the granaries were full, which lane had the cheapest lodgings. The city had been a waypoint then, a place to pass through on the way back to somewhere else. Now he walked the same streets with different eyes. He looked at the cracks in the walls, the missing crenellations, the lines at the well-heads, and the question behind every door — whether the lamp inside was lit. He read the city the way Kamon read a wall: for its wounds, and for the work those wounds would need.

Most of the lamps were lit. He went from lane to lane, and at the mouth of each lane he stood a moment and counted the lights. Here a lamp burned behind a paper screen; there a fire glowed through a half-open door; in one window a clay lamp had been set so that its light fell into the street. The people of the city were up, behind their doors, and the city was awake.

”Three years ago,” he said, low, ”I was thinking about how to leave. Now I’m thinking about how to make it so the people here can stay — and live.” He had said it to himself, but the words hung in the air with the weight of a decision.

He stopped by the old well inside the west gate and stood there a while. The buckets on the well-head stood in neat rows, waiting for morning, and the well-rope was coiled and dry. Far off, the ramming on the wall had not stopped — one stroke, another, like the pulse of the city, and the pulse was strong and regular.

”It has to keep beating,” he said.

The banner over the gate was changed at noon.

When the ram’s banner came down, the foot of the wall was packed with people — the whole city seemed to have come out to watch the one thing the lockdown had forbidden. The banner fell to the ground and lay in a heap; no one stepped on it, and for a moment no one touched it. After a moment, an old stonemason walked over, picked it up, and said: ”The cloth is still good. Tear it into leg-wrappings — that way it pays for a little of its guilt.” He folded it over his arm, and the people around him laughed — a short, surprised laugh, the first laugh the wall-foot had heard in weeks. When the royal banner went up, the wall-foot was silent for one moment — and then the cheering rolled from the west gate to the east gate, all the way along the wall, and the sound of it carried out over the water.

Horenheb stayed in the city only half a day.

He met Lu Zhu in the main street inside the gate, and his first words were: ”The city, I hand to you first.”

”The wall gets its men tonight.” Lu Zhu said.

”My cavalry doesn’t rest inside the city.” Horenheb said. ”The ground outside the walls has to be staked out first. The rebels’ main army is still north — no telling which day it comes back. The wall inside, you repair; the works outside, I’ll handle.” He paused, his hand on his sword hilt, and looked north. ”From now on, inside the city and out, we’ll talk in smoke. When the smoke rises over the wall-head, I know the city is still standing. One smoke for peace, two for alarm, three for help — the western line’s code, and it will serve here the same.”

”The same principle as the western line.” Lu Zhu said.

”Right.” Horenheb swung onto his horse, rode two paces, and turned back: ”One thing — keep it on your mind for me. The granaries. The rebels ran, but the granaries are still here. Grain is this city’s life — worth more than any wall. A wall can be rebuilt; a granary emptied cannot be refilled before winter.”

Lu Zhu nodded. The mounted column rode out through the gate, and the hoofbeats ran north along the official road, growing fainter and fainter.

That afternoon, Lu Zhu and Kamon went up onto the wall.

They started at the north gate and walked the wall stretch by stretch, looking. Every stretch, Kamon knocked on the wall with his knuckles a few times, listening to the answer the way a man listens to a melon for ripeness; Lu Zhu made a note in his book. The thirty craftsmen followed behind in a loose line; Nubu came too — he had stripped off his guard company uniform, tucked a stone chisel into his belt, and said: ”Master Builder, I’m a stonemason. This wall counts me in.” He said it the way a man says a thing he has been wanting to say for days.

The wall’s account was heavier than expected.

The south wall had three cracks, the widest of them wide enough to push half a fist into; grass grew in it, and the roots had spread the brick joints a little wider, so that the crack wore a green beard. The crenellations were broken in forty-three places, worst along the north stretch, where a gap every ten paces gave the wall the look of an old woman’s teeth — the gaps were uneven, some a crenellation’s width, some a man’s. The footing of the west wall had been hollowed out by the river in two places — visible at low water, like something had taken two bites out of it, the stones above hanging unsupported. And the gap in the northeast corner — the one they had crawled through that first night — let the wind straight through, and the wind coming through it made a low, hollow sound.

”This wall,” Kamon said, squatting before the gap, ”is like me in my old age. It’s not one place or two — the whole thing has grown old together. My knees know the feeling; so does this wall.”

”Old walls have old cures.” Lu Zhu said. ”The walls of the western line and the new capital were built up the same way. A wall is not a thing that stands forever; it is a thing that is repaired forever. The only question is whether the repairs come in time.”

”How do you mean to do it?”

”Where it’s collapsed, stop it up first. Where it’s cracked, fill it after. The crenellations — re-cut them to the western line’s measurements.” Lu Zhu said. ”Thebes is not the new capital; materials have to come from the ground here. River cobbles from the beach, to bed the wall-footings. Chopped straw from the riverbanks, to temper the mud-brick. The scrap brick torn out of the city itself — it can all be used. Nothing goes to waste in a city that must feed a siege.”

He squatted, picked up a piece of wall plaster, and worked it between his fingers, feeling the grain of it — the old plaster crumbled at a touch, and the crumble was dry as dust. ”And one thing more: we’ll need lime. If the cracks aren’t grouted with lime, filling them is wasted work — one rain and it washes out, and the crack is a crack again.”

”Lime there is.” Nubu cut in. ”By the ferry landing west of the city there’s an old lime kiln. The kiln master ran off when the lockdown started; the lime is still there, in the kiln shed, dry. I’ll haul it.”

”Take carts.” Kamon said. ”Make several trips. Lime is heavy, and the cracks are thirsty.”

Grouting the cracks with lime was delicate work.

First, the loose earth and grass roots had to be picked out of each crack — dug out with thin wooden picks, bit by bit, until the solid core of the old wall was reached. The men who did this work sat on their heels before the wall for hours at a time, their picks working in the dark mouths of the cracks, and the only sound was the scrape of wood on old mortar. Then the lime slurry was mixed — thin, thin enough to seep down into the crack, thin enough to follow every bend of it. Pour one layer, wait for it to bite in, then pour the second. A layer at a time; it could not be hurried, and a man who hurried was a man who would do the work twice. When the crack was full, mud was smeared over the face, chopped straw mixed in, and smoothed level with the old wall’s surface, so that a man running his hand over the wall could not find where the crack had been.

”A crack is a wall’s wound.” Lu Zhu squatted before the largest crack in the south wall and said: ”A wound has to heal; it can’t be patched hard. Patch it in a hurry and the face is smooth, but the inside is still hollow — and the hollow is where the next wound starts. The wall teaches this to anyone who will listen.”

The crenellation work followed the western line’s measurements. From his pack, Kamon took out a roll of drawings — the ones Seb had made on the western line: shoulder-high, lower outside and higher within, one arm’s span between two crenellations. He unrolled the drawings on the top of the gate tower, weighting the corners with stones, and nailed one copy to a post of the gate tower, so that whoever came up onto the wall could look at it. He nailed it at eye height, and the paper turned slowly brown in the sun.

”Lower outside — so the man beyond the wall can’t reach your head. Higher inside — so your own men can stand straight.” Kamon said. ”Those measurements were bought with lives on the western line. Whoever changes them is gambling with his brothers’ lives. When a man fires at a crenellation, he aims at the top of it; make the top where no head is, and the arrow spends itself on stone.”

The carpenter gang set up scaffolding on the inner face of the wall — pine poles lashed with hemp rope, the lashings checked twice before a man stepped on the platform, firm under a man’s weight. They also rigged several old door planks above the wall-head, angled before the crenellations — arrow boards. When work went on at night and the torches came up, a man showed only his shoulders above the board; when an arrow came, he ducked behind it, and the arrow spent itself on old door timber.

”This board,” a carpenter said, patting a door plank, ”is a little wall on top of the wall. A wall is just boards and stone, doing what they’re told.”

That night, the work on the wall began.

The first repair was the gap in the northeast corner. It was the most dangerous place in the whole city — it had to be sealed before the rebels came back, and every hour it stood open was an hour the city stood open. The swarthy man led the ramming gang: first the loose earth inside the gap was cleared out, the weeds pulled up by the roots. Then the wall went up in layers — a layer of cobbles, a layer of mud-brick — ramming each layer as it was laid, the rammers striking in time, their feet braced, their breath coming in the old rhythm. By midnight, the chant was rising:

”Heave — ho!”

The sound rolled along the wall, out over the river, and bounced back off the far bank. The city’s people heard the chant; they were startled for a moment at first — the city had heard nothing but soldiers’ boots for weeks — and then the bold ones threw coats over their shoulders and came out to look. They stood in the streets, listening, and the chant went on.

”They’re repairing the wall.” They said to one another. ”The royal army came in, and the first thing it did was repair the wall.”

The first night, the gap was closed to half a man’s height. The second night, it was sealed to the top — the rammers working through the night, the swarthy man’s voice growing hoarse and then coming back again. On the night it was finished, Kamon set the last mud-brick in place with his own hands, pressing it down into its bed of mortar, and when it was seated, knocked on the wall three times with his knuckles. The wall answered with a dull, solid sound — the sound of a thing that is whole.

”This opening,” he said, ”is wall from now on.”

The repair work did not stop, day or night.

Kamon organized everyone into three shifts: one shift on the wall, one preparing materials, one resting. Men rest; hammers do not. At the foot of the wall, there were people at every hour — the shift coming off the wall eating its meal by the light of the shift going on, the material handlers carrying lime and straw in a steady stream. By day, the clink of bricklaying; by night, the chant of ramming. The two sounds took turns, and set the whole city vibrating with a low hum, the way a drum keeps a march.

A-Ka was a young stonemason from the West Bank guild, not yet twenty, one of the thirty Kamon had chosen by hand. By day he laid brick; by night he hauled materials; he worked like a gust of wind, and the other men had to step lively around him. Someone teased him: ”A-Ka, working this hard — are you gunning for foreman?” He did not look up, and his trowel did not stop: ”Who wants to be foreman? The sooner the wall is solid, the sooner we stop hearing arrows whine.”

The rebels’ arrows came on the third night.

That night there was no moon. The wall-head was lit with torches, and the workmen’s shadows moved in the firelight, tall on the scaffolding, flat on the stones. No one heard anything at first — then a hiss, and an arrow struck the scaffolding’s upright pole, its white fletching still trembling, the shaft vibrating with a thin whine.

”Down! Everybody down!” Kamon’s voice rolled down off the wall-head.

The second arrow followed, passing over a crenellation and thudding into the earth wall behind, the point buried to the shaft. The third, the fourth... the arrows came out of the darkness beyond the wall, now left, now right, aiming always at the places where the torchlight was brightest, where a man’s shadow showed against the flames.

It was Pamun’s remnants. They had not gone far — they were crouched in the wild land south of the city, in the dry grass and the ditches, and in the dark they had crept back for revenge.

The craftsmen did not panic. It had been agreed before entering the city: when the arrows come, first crouch behind the crenellations, cover head and hands, and wait for the arrows to stop before working again. The agreement held — the men went down together, the way they had rehearsed it in the boat, and the wall-head went still. But the arrows did not stop. They came in bursts, with pauses between — like a rat gnawing at a wall, wearing down your nerve, little by little, and every pause was shorter than the last.

It was at that moment that A-Ka was hit.

He was carrying a mud-brick up the wall-head when an arrow came through the gap in a crenellation, grazing his left shoulder as it passed. The brick fell and broke in two, the halves ringing on the stones. His shoulder, blood came through at once, darkening a patch of his coarse tunic, spreading along the weave.

”Get down!” Kamon shouted. ”Get that wound bound!”

”Just a graze.” A-Ka gritted his teeth, picked up the two halves of the brick, one in each hand, and the blood ran down his arm and darkened the brick. ”One man short, and the wall is one night slower.”

He started up again, and two of the older masters took him down by the arms — one on each side, not gently, and not roughly, in the way men hold a comrade when there is no time for ceremony. At the foot of the wall, the city’s people had water and cloth strips ready, waiting, as they had waited every night since the work began. A woman tore the cloth into strips, dipped them in water, and cleaned the wound for him, the water running red in the torchlight. Her hands were shaking.

”Sister, it’s nothing.” A-Ka said. ”A man in this trade — who hasn’t got a few scars?”

”You wall-builders aren’t afraid,” the woman said, ”so we water-carriers can shake a little if we want.” She bound the strip tight, knotting it with the quick competence of a woman who has done this before, and her hands were steady by the time she finished.

A-Ka’s wound was bound; then he crouched and went back up the wall. This time he did not carry brick. He squatted behind a crenellation and passed bricks up, one by one. Pass a brick, duck his head — like playing hide-and-seek with the arrows outside the wall, and the game went on until the arrows stopped, and then he stood up and went back to carrying.

Kamon watched, and said nothing. He walked to the edge of the wall, drew his stone chisel from his belt, and wedged it into a joint of the crenellation, the blade seating itself in the old mortar. Then he straightened up and stood in the direction the arrows were coming from, full height, his arms at his sides.

”If you’ve got the guts,” he shouted into the darkness beyond the wall, ”shoot at this!”

The darkness was still for one moment. An arrow hissed in, striking the crenellation at his feet — a hand’s breadth from his foot, the shaft quivering in the stone.

Kamon did not move.

On the wall-head, every craftsman was watching him. The torchlight threw his shadow against the wall behind — tall, straight, and the shadow did not waver.

”What are you all looking at?” Kamon said. ”I’ll count to three. At three, everybody gets back to work! One—”

Two more arrows came; both went wide, one hissing over his head, one short.

”Two—”

On the wall-head, thirty craftsmen’s hands moved to their tools — hammers, trowels, rammers, and the scrape of iron on stone was the only sound.

”Three!”

Thirty men straightened up at the same time. The ramming, the bricklaying, the chanting — all sounded at once, louder than before, denser, as if a wall were growing out of the ground. The noise rose off the wall-head and rolled out into the dark like a wave.

The arrows from beyond the wall came for a while longer, and then thinned out, one by one, until the hissing stopped.

Not because they did not want to shoot. Because they had understood — this wall could not be shot away.

The next day, word went around the city.

The first to come were the old stonemasons of the south. Most of them had been pressed into the guard companies by the rebels — the uniforms had been handed to them at spear-point, and the spears had felt wrong in their hands from the first day. The uniforms were off now, but the stone chisels were still there, hung at their belts the way they had hung for thirty years. The leader of them was an old master named Montu — his hair was entirely white, and he walked stooped, his back bent from a lifetime of leaning over stone; but the moment his hand touched stone, his back straightened, and the stoop fell away like a cloak.

”Master Kamon,” Old Montu said to Kamon, ”they dragged us onto guard duty for half a month. On duty, our hands itched so badly we couldn’t sleep. A stonemason standing with a spear — it’s like tying a river up with string. Now the wall is back — so we’re back.”

Kamon said nothing. He walked down the line and looked at every pair of hands — hands that had held chisels all their lives, the callus on the thumb-webs harder than a blade, the fingers crooked from years of gripping. He looked at the hands the way he had looked at the hands of his own thirty, and he did not hurry.

”Glad to have you.” Kamon said. ”Form up in shifts. The old hands teach the young, and each man takes his stretch. The wall knows your hands — it was built by them once.”

Thebes’s craftsmen came up onto the wall, mixing with the newcomers from the new capital, and no one asked who came from where — the question would have been pointless, because the answer was written in the work. The rammers’ chant picked up the local Theban accent, the syllables drawn out differently; the mortar buckets went from hand to hand along the wall, and were never passed on empty, and the buckets themselves moved in a rhythm that belonged to no one region and to every wall in Egypt. The carpenters of the north came; the pot-menders of the south came too. A pot-mender cannot work stone, so he set up his bellows at the foot of the wall and re-tempered every dulled chisel and hammer, one by one — the blades heating in the coals and going in with a hiss, the edges coming out bright.

The boatmen of the landing came after their day’s work and carried a few baskets of earth. The chief officiant, with a few of his followers, set up a water jar at the foot of the wall and ladled out water, bowl by bowl, his sleeves tied back, his hands steady on the ladle. The water seller A-Bu carried his yoke to the foot of the wall; when the water was gone, he squatted down beside the work and helped stack the mud-bricks straight. His hands moved in the rhythm of a man who has carried water for thirty years and knows how to make himself useful.

”Uncle A-Bu,” a craftsman called to him, ”your water — one yoke-load a day for a few dozen of us, that won’t stretch.”

”Not enough, I’ll haul more.” A-Bu said. ”If the well won’t give, I’ll take from the river. The river water is muddy — I’ll let it settle all night and bring it clean. A man who sells water for thirty years knows where the clean water is, even in a dry year.”

”This city,” an old woman said, pressing a baked flatbread into a young craftsman’s hand, ”belongs to all of us. We lent a hand when it was built, and we’ll lend a hand when it’s held.” The flatbread was still warm, and the young craftsman held it a moment before he ate it.

The work above and below the wall joined into one stretch of labor. By day, the men and women of the city brought things to the foot of the wall — water, flatbread, dates, greens, and the things were passed from hand to hand up onto the wall without a word. By night, the torches went up one after another on the wall-head, lighting the work sites bright as day, and the lights of the wall-head ran along the city like a second ring of stars.

By the second day of repairs, the gap in the northeast was closed, and two of the south wall’s cracks had been picked clean down to the old core.

By the third day, the lime had arrived — Nubu and his carts made three trips from the kiln — and the two cracks were grouted, the lime slurry seeping down into the old openings layer by layer. The work left all ten of a man’s fingers coated in white slurry, and it took three washings to see skin; the men held up their white hands and laughed, and washed again.

By the fourth day, fourteen crenellations had been rebuilt, cut to the drawing on the gate tower, lower outside and higher within. The arrows came again that night; this time no one had to be told — the men ducked on their own, their heads going down behind the new stone, and when the arrows stopped, they went back to work without a word.

By the fifth day, the two hollow places in the west wall’s footing had been bedded with river cobbles. The day they bedded the footing, A-Tu brought a boatload of men — all boatmen, bare-armed, the water running off their backs, carrying baskets of cobbles from the beach up onto the wall. They worked in a chain, basket after basket, and the boatmen’s chant went up the slope with them, a river chant adapted to a wall.

By the sixth day, the wall’s account had thinned by half.

The northeast gap was sealed. The three cracks of the south wall were grouted with lime. Twenty-one of the forty-three broken crenellations were rebuilt. The two hollow places in the west wall’s footing were re-bedded in cobbles and mud-brick. Kamon squatted at the foot of the west wall, had a bucket of water brought, and poured it over the freshly rammed face. He watched the water run, and he watched it soak — slowly, evenly, the way water soaks into a wall that is packed tight, not a wall that is loose inside.

”Good.” Kamon said. ”This stretch can take a beating now.”

Lu Zhu went up onto the wall every night to make the rounds. Wherever he walked, his charcoal went to work in his notebook, and the notebook grew thick with entries. The wall’s account filled up, entry by entry: which stretch was newly rammed, which still waited, which needed its line checked again — the line of a wall being the thing that decides whether the stones above it stand or slide. One night, making his rounds, he reached the west gate — and stopped.

He was looking at the city’s wells.

Not far inside the west gate stood an old well, its well-head worn smooth by generations of hands and ropes. A dozen buckets stood in rows on the well-head, and people were queuing in the dark, feeling their way, the line moving forward one pace at a time. The rope went down — and came up a long time later with a small bucket of water, muddy, the sediment swirling in the lamplight, carrying the smell of earth.

”This well,” he asked the old man who kept it, ”how much water does it give a day?”

”Hard to say.” The old man said. ”Good days, thirty or fifty buckets; bad days, a dozen or so. All the old wells in the city are like this — it’s been a dry spell for years, and the wells have been growing thin with it.” He paused, and looked at the muddy water in the bucket. ”The water you see — it’s the dregs. The clear water is long gone.”

”The city’s water all comes from these wells?”

”How could it.” The old man said. ”Twenty-four wells in the city, all together, couldn’t keep half the city alive. It all comes from the aqueduct south of the city. The aqueduct water is clear, running day and night without stopping — it comes from the high country, they say, and it does not know the dry years.” He paused again, and this time the pause was longer. ”Only—” he looked southeast, past the wall, ”—the aqueduct’s sluice gate is two li outside the city, up against the eastern earthen ridge. The gate decides how much water the city gets, and the gate is out there, beyond the wall.”

Lu Zhu said nothing. He squatted at the well-head and looked at the muddy yellow water for a long time. The sediment settled slowly in the bucket, and the water cleared a little at the top, and the clear part was the size of a hand.

That night, on the city’s defense map, he traced the line of the aqueduct outside the city in heavy charcoal. The line ran from the southeast, along the ridge, to the point where it entered the wall. When he reached the position of the sluice gate, he stopped, and drew a circle around it — one circle, pressed hard, so that the charcoal flaked at the edge.

”One aqueduct, one gate.” He said, low. ”The gate is outside the wall. If the rebels come back, the first cut lands right here. They do not need to break the wall; they only need to turn this one gate, and the city drinks mud.”

Kamon stood beside him, looking at the map. ”Walls — that’s my trade. Water — that’s yours. But we’ve only got two hands between us. Repair the wall first. Water — we’ll find a way later.”

”When the wall is repaired and there’s no water,” Lu Zhu said, ”it still can’t hold. A wall keeps out men; water keeps out thirst, and thirst is the better general.” He tucked the charcoal back into his belt and walked to the door, looking at the sky. ”Tomorrow, finish the crenellations first. Once the wall stands up, the water will have time to be thought about.”

That was what he said. But that night, Lu Zhu sat long by the lamp. The oil burned low and he added more, and the flame steadied. He looked at the defense map again and again, his eyes following the line of the aqueduct, the circle at the gate. At last, beside the line of the aqueduct, he wrote three words:

”The lifeline.”

He wrote them small, in the margin, the way a man notes a thing he must not forget. Then he sat a while longer, and blew out the lamp.

On the seventh night, the work on the wall no longer needed anyone to push it.

The torches went up as usual; the chants rose as usual; the hammers rang in the old rhythm. The wall was becoming a thing the city did the way it drew water — without being told. But that night, in the darkness beyond the wall, there were several pairs of eyes.

They were riders’ shadows, halted on the earthen rise a li south of the city. They did not dismount, and they did not speak. They only watched — the moving shadows on the wall-head, the firelight, the figures climbing the scaffolding. Moonlight leaked through the gaps in the clouds and fell on the bows slung across their backs. The bows were strung; the arrows were already notched; the points held the moonlight, cold and small.

The man at the head watched for a while, and then said, slowly — the words coming out one at a time, the way a man speaks a decision:

”Repair. Let them repair. The faster they build, the newer the wall — when the High Priest comes back, a new wall with new banners. Just right.”

He turned his horse and rode south. The hoofbeats were very light, as if afraid of startling something, and they faded into the dark.

And behind him, in the direction of the north, at the end of the official road, a column of dust was rising — slowly, slowly, spreading across the road’s width, the way dust rises when a great many feet are moving together.

(End of Chapter 2)