Nile Builder: The Architect from the East

Chapter 97: Chapter 5: The Last Assault Is Set — Attack from Inside and Out

Horenheb’s letter came into the city on the night of the thirtieth day after the siege was lifted.

The letter was short — two lines: ”The ring is drawn up to its place. The general assault is fixed for the third night. At noon tomorrow, counsel at the army camp south of the city.” It bore no seal of the court; it was sealed with Horenheb’s own ring, pressed into wax the color of river clay.

Lu Zhu read the letter twice, brightened his lamp, and spread out the city-defense map on the table. The map had been drawn and redrawn through four months; its edges were soft from the folding, and the new ink of the last weeks lay over the old like a second skin. On the map, the East Camp and the North Camp had been hemmed in by two newly drawn lines until only a breath of room remained inside them. The lines were Horenheb’s work, pushed forward trench by trench through the last half month, and they curved like the jaws of a trap that had not yet closed. He studied it a while — the way he studied every map, as if reading the ground beneath the ink — then said to the adjutant of the city guard: ”Tomorrow morning, call together everyone who has to be called. This time, it is the last battle.”

”Who, exactly?” The adjutant asked.

”Kamon. Mery. Imset.” Lu Zhu said. ”And Merchant Meru. Send word across the river — ask him to be at the army camp before noon tomorrow.” He paused, and looked once at the map on the table, at the two camps drawn in their closing lines. ”In the last battle, everyone has a part.”

”I will see to it at once.” The adjutant turned toward the door — and stopped with his hand on the curtain. ”Chief Builder... this time — can we win?” He asked it the way a man asks a thing he has been afraid to ask for weeks.

”We can.” Lu Zhu said. ”They have more men than we do. But their grain cannot outlast this month, and their hearts are thinner than their porridge.” He rolled up the map. ”When a war has come to this point, the winning side is not decided on the blade. It is decided on the accounts.”

At noon the next day, in the command tent of the army camp south of the city, everyone had arrived. The counsel had been called for noon, and noon was the hour; the men of Thebes had learned, in four months, to keep the hour they were given.

The tent was an old one, its roof patched with three pieces of felt, and the patches had been sewn by three different hands at three different times. It had stood through the whole war, and its canvas smelled of smoke and river damp and men. In the middle stood a wooden table, and on it lay the works map Seb had drawn before he went north, its corners pinned with small stones — the wind lifted the edges whenever the tent cloth moved. Horenheb stood before the map in his armor, hand on his sword-hilt — the same armor he had worn through the taking of the South Camp, its dents hammered out twice, its strap leather dark with years of sweat. At his side were the old centurion and two cavalry centurions — the two young men alert and upright, the old man perfectly still, and the difference between them showed in nothing else. At the tent’s mouth, Lu Zhu, Kamon, Mery, and Imset came in one after another — the men who had held the city together through four months of siege. The last was Meru, straight off his boat, the river mud still wet on his sandals; he stood by the door with his pipe already in his hand, as if he had only stopped by on his way down the river.

”We are all here.” Horenheb said, and his eyes went once around the tent — the old centurion, the two cavalrymen, the four men of the city, the merchant by the door, still smelling of the river. These were the men the four months had left him to finish the war with. ”Then let the counsel begin. How this war is to be fought — it is settled today. Once settled, it is not changed.”

He spoke first of the enemy.

”The East Camp still holds eight thousand and more. The North Camp, seven thousand and more. At the river bend are Nekhem’s trusted men and the temple people — three thousand or so.” He pointed at the map. ”On our side: four thousand five hundred in this camp, and two thousand the city can send out. Six thousand five hundred in all, against their fifteen thousand.”

”Six thousand five hundred against fifteen thousand?” The old centurion frowned, and the scar on his forehead folded with the frown. He had fought on the western line for thirty years; he had seen such odds before, and he had seen what such odds cost. What they cost was written on his face, and on the faces of the men he had buried out there; he did not need to say it aloud.

”It can be done.” Horenheb said. ”Because their fifteen thousand are fifteen thousand with empty bellies — and our six thousand five hundred are six thousand five hundred who have eaten three hot meals a day.” He paused. ”On the western line I fought odds longer than these. That time I leaned on walls. This time I lean on food.”

No one in the tent spoke. The wind came in through the gap of the tent door and lifted the corners of the map, flap by flap, the way it had lifted the corners of a hundred maps in four months of war councils. Outside, the camp went about its evening in the low, practiced quiet of men who would fight at dawn.

”How it is fought,” Horenheb said, ”my plan is this: close in on three sides, and leave one side open.”

With his charcoal stick he drew three arrows around the East Camp: one from the south, the main thrust of the army camp; one from the west, the city’s men coming out through the east gate; one from the north, where the cavalry would hold the line. Only the east was left open.

”Close in on three sides,” he said, ”and they have nowhere to run but east. East is the river flats and the open ground. When men run on open ground, their hearts scatter. Once the hearts scatter, we do not need to chase them — they throw down their blades of their own accord.” He drew one more mark to the north of the East Camp, on the road toward the North Camp. ”The cavalry holds this line. The East Camp’s reinforcements and the North Camp’s men — not one of them gets across. When the East Camp falls, the North Camp will understand by itself: to fight is to fight for nothing; to run is to run for nothing.”

”But the east is the gap left open.” The adjutant of the city guard asked. ”What if they truly run east?”

”Let them run.” Horenheb said. ”Running east is scattering. Scattered soldiers running home to Upper Egypt to farm their fields — that suits me perfectly. I, Horenheb, do not chase scattered men; I only fight men who dare to gather again.” He paused. ”In this battle, what I want is Thebes — not heads.”

The tent was still a moment. The old centurion nodded first. ”General, this way of fighting saves lives.”

”Saves lives.” Horenheb said. ”Four months of this war have cost enough lives.”

Next came the breaking of the camp — the part of the plan that would be decided in the first hour of daylight, before the sun had climbed past the wall.

The rebels’ camp had been well built over four months: two trenches, three rows of palisade, horse-stop stakes and wagons piled against the gates. To storm it head-on was to fill the trenches with bodies. Horenheb turned to Kamon. ”Kamon — when you took apart the South Camp last time, how did you do it?”

”Pry bars under the wagon shafts, grappling hooks on the palisade.” Kamon said. ”Half a stick of incense, and one gate was down.” The trick had been shown to him by a decade of walls: every man-made thing has a seam, and the work was in the finding.

”This time,” Horenheb said, ”what has to come down is the whole west face of the East Camp’s palisade. You and your sappers go in with the city’s men. They charge; you take things apart. Tear open a stretch, and the men pour through it. I want the west face of the East Camp to become a wide road within the space of half an hour.”

Kamon said nothing. He crouched and studied the map, his finger tracing the lines of the camp’s west face the way a mason’s finger traces a course of stone. After a while he knocked his knuckles on it: ”The west palisade of the East Camp, on the side facing the city, is a double row with earth packed between. It can be taken down. But to open a gap of thirty paces in half an hour, I need double the men and double the tools.”

”The men I give you.” Horenheb said. ”The surrendered men who know woodwork and masonry go into your sapper company. The tools — the city’s smithy works for you alone these next two days.”

”The smithy,” Kamon said, ”will deliver tomorrow. Grappling hooks, pry bars, axes for splitting the palisade — not one short.” He paused. ”And one thing more: the plank bridges. The East Camp’s west face has two trenches, one wide and one narrow. The wide one has to be bridged. The city’s bridges were stored away after the last battle. This time, all forty are to be hauled out for this.”

”Good.” Horenheb said, and he said the next words slowly, so that every man in the tent would carry them: ”The sapper company is the first blade of this battle.”

”My sappers do not kill men.” Kamon said. ”They only open the road. Once the road is open, the blades have somewhere to go.”

When Imset spoke, the tent went quiet — the way a tent goes quiet when a man who never raises his voice begins to speak. He had been a priest once, and he still carried the priest’s way of weighing every word before he let it out.

”The hospital’s war account was opened anew two days ago.” He said, and his voice carried through the tent without effort, the way it had carried through the wards of the hospital for four months. ”This time it is not like the last. Last time the battle was inside the city, and the wounded were carried half a street. This time the field is east of the city. One dressing point inside the east gate; one behind the slope of the army camp; and two roads for carrying back — one through the east gate, one along the river flats.” He paused. ”Sixty stretchers. Medicine laid in to the numbers of a decisive battle — the critical first, the light bound where they fall. The dressing point outside the city, I watch over myself.”

”Priest Imset,” Horenheb said, ”at the South Camp, the men your people brought back alive were more than the men we spared with our blades.”

”A healer does not count such things.” Imset said. ”A healer only counts the ones who could have been saved, and were not.” He said it without bitterness, in the flat voice of a man who had kept that count for years, and who meant never to add to it again.

”Then this time,” Horenheb said, ”leave no such count behind.”

”None.” Imset said. ”In the war account, every pack of medicine has its destination written.”

What Lu Zhu spoke of was the city.

”The city’s two thousand cannot all go out.” He pointed at the map, at the line of the east gate drawn in the ink of four months of planning. ”When the east gate opens, the city is left with three gates. ”When the east gate opens, the city is left with three gates. The walls keep five hundred; the civilian corps keeps three hundred. The rest — twelve hundred — go out through the east gate. And they do not go out as a loose crowd. The first rank carries shields and spears; behind them comes Kamon’s sapper company; behind them, the fighting men pressing forward. Three layers, each guarding the one in front. When the sappers tear the palisade open, the first rank’s shields push forward, and the road is open.”

He had learned the art of the shield wall in the first months of the siege, when shields were counted like grain and every man behind one lived or died by it.

”This formation,” Horenheb said, ”is like storming a city.”

”It is storming a city.” Lu Zhu said. ”We are storming a camp. A camp is a city whose walls happen to be made of wood.” He paused. ”One thing more: the tunnel of the east gate has to be readied again. Last time, at the south gate, Kamon’s men rebuilt it — new gate pivots, the stone paving leveled, fine sand spread over it. The east gate is to be done the same way. A gate is a throat; if the throat is not clear, twelve hundred men will jam in the tunnel and be cut down where they stand.”

”The gate tunnel — one day.” Kamon said. ”It will be ready.”

”The account of the days after the battle — I have a word on that too.” Lu Zhu went on. ”When the East Camp and the North Camp fall, the rebels’ palisades, wagons, and timber will lie over the whole slope. For the first three days: clear first, gather after. What can be used goes into the timber yard; what cannot is burned where it lies. The burial pits are dug behind the slope, downwind. And the surrenders — ten thousand surrendered men cannot all be crowded into the surrender point south of the city. Points are to be set up outside the east gate and outside the north gate. Porridge, water, and straw bedding — the three things arrive first.”

”These things,” Horenheb said, ”are still your old list — repair, clear, replenish. Three pages.”

”Three pages are not enough this time.” Lu Zhu said. ”This time there is a fourth page: gather. Gather the surrendered men; gather the timber; gather the people’s hearts.” He raised his hand and tapped his fingertip lightly on the two ring-lines of the map. ”This battle is fought against a camp. It is only when the camp has fallen that the word ’gather’ comes into play. Gather well, and this war is truly finished.”

”A fine word — ’gather.’” Horenheb said, and the smile that crossed his face was the first one the tent had seen from him that day. ”In four months we have walked from the word ’hold’ to the word ’gather.’ That fourth page — I will remember it.”

The two cavalry centurions received their orders.

One was an old rider who had followed Horenheb for twenty years on the western line; the other was newly raised from the army camp. Horenheb gave them their places in detail. The left wing — three hundred horse — was to stand fast on the high slope between the East Camp and the North Camp, not one step back: if the North Camp so much as opened its gate, they were to drive it back inside. The slope commanded both camps, and a man who held it held the battle in his hands. The right wing — two hundred horse — was to patrol the river flats: to keep the men of the river bend from creeping down along the water, and to keep the men of the East Camp from jumping into the river.

”Your work,” Horenheb said, ”is not to charge and cut. It is to block, to watch, to herd. Block the men back into their camp; herd the ones who scatter out on the flats. The blade — if it can stay in its sheath, it stays in its sheath.”

”General,” the old rider said, ”this battle is more frustrating than holding the western line.”

”Frustrating.” Horenheb said. ”But frustrating battles are the ones where few die. Your brothers of the western line — have they not died enough?”

The old rider said nothing. He wound his horse-whip around his hand, round and round, and at last he said: ”Understood. If they can be blocked, block them. If they cannot, herd them. One way or another, they do not get to bunch up.”

”That is the principle.” Horenheb said.

”And the river bend?” The adjutant of the city guard asked. ”What if Nekhem comes down himself with his three thousand?”

”He cannot come down.” Meru put in. ”From the river bend to the East Camp, the water has to be crossed by the channels. I have four boats, and A-Tu has two — drawn up in a line on the water. In the dark he cannot tell how many boats we have; the sight of the torches alone will make him weigh the matter half the night.” He knocked out his pipe. ”And besides — if he truly comes down, the river bend behind him is left empty. He cannot afford the wager.”

”He cannot afford it.” Horenheb said. ”Nekhem is a man who has not gambled one risky move in four months. At the very end, he will gamble even less.” He pressed his hand on his sword-hilt. ”This battle is fought as we have settled it.”

Mery reported on the grain.

He had brought his ledger with him, worn at the corners like a tool that is carried every day, and he read the numbers out without looking down at the pages, the way a man reads a thing he has been over a hundred times and knows by heart. ”For the six thousand five hundred of the attack — two thick flatbreads and one waterskin of water for every man.” He said. ”The flatbreads are baked tonight and issued tomorrow. The water — the official granary’s great jars are filled to the brim before tomorrow night; the carrying will take most of the night, and the carriers are already chosen.” He turned the pages of his ledger — the same ledger that had gone through the whole siege, its pages soft as cloth at the corners, the new entries standing in a fresh hand at the bottom of each page. ”And the big item: the surrendered. If the East Camp and the North Camp truly surrender, ten thousand men at the very least will come up. The surrender point’s porridge pots go from three cauldrons to ten. The pots are Old Sun’s charge, and Old Sun knows how to stretch a pot of grain further than any cook in Egypt; the grain itself comes out of the south line’s account. Ten thousand men, one day of porridge — ten shi of grain. I am laying in for three days. The baking order has been worked out on a slate: so many loaves to an oven, so many ovens to the night, so that every loaf comes out warm.”

”Three days.” Lu Zhu said. ”Is that enough?” He asked it quietly, the way he asked all the questions about grain, because grain was the one account he had learned never to guess at.

”Enough.” Mery said. ”Within three days, every man is either enrolled in the work-teams or released to go home. The enrolled eat work-grain; the released are given road grain. I have counted it — the more that surrender, the lighter the grain account grows. Because once the men scatter, they no longer eat from the official granary.”

”That,” Meru put in from the side, ”sounds like a trader’s account.”

”It is a trader’s account.” Mery said. ”At the end of a war like this, the side that wins is the side that keeps the longer book.” He said it without pride, the way a man states a rule of arithmetic, and closed the ledger as he said it — the sound of the cover was the sound of a door shut on a long account.

Shafi had not come to the camp — but her part had been finished the day before.

She had copied out the medicine list for the decisive battle the night before, by the light of the eternal lamp, and she had carried it herself to the beach, to Meru’s boat, walking the whole way into the wind; she had not let anyone carry the scroll for her, and twice the wind had tried to take it, and twice she had caught it. The list was exact — Shafi’s lists were always exact, because she had learned, in four months of sieges, that an inexact list was a lie told to the wounded. Three hundred packs of staunching cloth, to arrive by tomorrow; wound medicine, double the amount of the night of the decisive battle at the South Camp; burn salve, a third more than usual — the fires of the East Camp might well burn. Meru read it through, turning the scroll slowly, his eyes going down the columns of figures — numbers needed no reading to be understood — and said: ”This list is harsher than a military order.”

”A medicine list is a military order.” Shafi said. ”When an order is delayed, a man is punished. When a medicine list is delayed, lives are lost.”

”It will not be delayed.” Meru said. ”The boats are already loading on the West Bank. They come into the beach after midnight; before dawn, you count the goods.” He said it the way he said everything about his boats — as a promise that the river would keep.

”I will count them.” Shafi said. ”Pack by pack.” She said it the way she said everything about the medicines — as a thing that would be done, because it had to be.

The letter from the northern line arrived on the evening of the day of the counsel, when the last of the counsel’s men had gone home and the courtyard had fallen quiet again.

It came up from the landing with the last boat of the day, and it was carried straight to the granary courtyard where the counsel had been held — the courtyard still smelled of the men who had filled it an hour before. Old Camel’s letter said: the snow of the north has come down — the first fall, half a finger deep. The soldiers on the border wall grow more frostbitten every day; the remedies in the thin book are in use, and they work. Seb has taken his craftsmen out and, before the snow sealed the road, raised another stretch of wall. Only the Hittite camp burns more fires than it did days ago — they are counting their days too. The letter ended there, without comfort, the way Old Camel’s letters always ended: the facts, and nothing more, because the road was long and the paper was precious, and a man who wastes paper on the north road wastes the lives of the men who carry it. There had been a time when his letters came every five days; now they came when they could, and every one was read twice.

”The clock of the north,” Mery said, folding the letter along its old creases, ”has struck.” He set it under the ledger, where he kept the letters that had to be answered.

”So the south must move faster.” Lu Zhu said. ”Once the East Camp and the North Camp are settled, the grain and the soldiers go north. The snow urges the Hittites on — and it urges us on as well.”

”The snow urges both sides.” Mery said. ”We will see who reaches the front first.”

Meru knocked out his pipe against his boot sole — the pipe had gone out an hour before, and he had been nursing the dead bowl through the whole counsel — and gave his own report, standing, the way he gave his cargo lists, counting the boats off on his fingers — four and four and two made ten, and he counted them twice, though he knew them by heart. ”Boats — I give ten. Four lie at the beach, unloading whatever comes in. Four lie along the east channels, against the river-bend men coming down. Two run with A-Tu’s boats, carrying the wounded only.” He paused, and his voice changed. ”And if any man of the East Camp or the North Camp jumps into the river, my boatmen will fish out as many as they can. This river must not become a place where men drown.”

”Merchant Meru thinks of everything.” Horenheb said. ”The river is their road to death — let it also be our road of mercy.”

”Merchants do not fight and kill.” Meru said. ”We only fish men out of the water and carry goods.”

The chief officiant had not come to the camp either. His part was the city.

The night before, he had the peace boards changed in the dark hours, when the city slept — by morning the new words were there, painted in the same careful hand as all the words that had gone before, and no one remembered seeing them put up. The words this time were the same ones as before: ”The siege is lifted. Work-grain is established. The medical points are manned day and night.” Not one word of the general assault. He had written the words himself, in the same hand that had written ”The siege is lifted” — the city had learned to trust that hand, and he meant the trust to hold. The night patrol’s lamps burned as always — and east of the city, he had one more row of door-lamps added, running along the lanes in from the east gate all the way to the field hospital, each lamp hung by the householder at his own door, until by the second night the row was complete.

”If the people of the east hear some sound in the night,” he told the men of the patrol, ”they are not to panic. When they see this row of lamps, they will know: the city is still here, and the road is still open.”

”Chief Officiant,” a patrolman asked, ”this time — is incense to be burned as well?”

”Burned.” The chief officiant said. ”Last time the incense was burned for the men going out of the city. This time it is burned for the same reason. And when it is done burning, the same words hold — incense is burned for people.”

The night patrol gained twenty lamps that night — twenty lamps hung on the doorposts of the eastern lanes, where the houses were thinnest and the dark came in earliest. Hung high, so that the light would carry past the roofs, and hung so that no wind could swing them out.

The chief officiant divided the patrolmen into three groups: one walked the east of the city, one the south, and one stayed outside the Haven of Settled Lives. The lamp oil for the extra lamps — the official granary issued another jar. The group that walked the east came at last to the east gate, and found the gate tunnel crowded with black shapes — the men of the attack force, crouched against the wall-foot, arms wrapped around their blades, packed shoulder to shoulder. Some of them had their eyes open, watching the gate; some had them closed, saving the sleep against the hours when sleep would be impossible. The patrolmen did not dare speak loud. They only raised their lanterns and ran the light from one end of the tunnel to the other, slow, so that the light touched every face — young faces and old ones, city faces and shelter faces, all of them looking back at the light the way men look at a thing they will see again at dawn.

”Lamps.” A soldier said, low. ”Patrol lamps — shine them a little farther east.”

”What for?”

”To show the East Camp.” The soldier said. ”Let them know that inside our gate, there is light.”

The patrolman raised his lantern higher. The one point of light reached out of the gate tunnel into the dark, a little way — like a very thin, very long finger, pointing east, gently.

”Shone.” The patrolman said. ”Come daylight tomorrow, this light will reach into their camp.”

”Then that is a fine thing.” The soldier said, and smiled. In the black tunnel, a ripple of low laughter ran through the packed shapes, like wind passing over a dense stand of reeds. The laughter was the sound of men who had stopped being afraid of the morning. It ran on a moment, low and easy, and then the tunnel went quiet again, the way a held breath goes quiet.

The chief officiant finished his rounds at the lane mouth in the east of the city.

He had walked the whole circle of the city that night, from the south gate around to the east gate, and his legs ached with the walking — he had walked the same circle on the night before the South Camp fell, and on a hundred nights before that; the ache was an old friend by now, and he leaned on it the way other men lean on a staff. The old warden’s lantern was still burning at the lane mouth. The two men stood side by side a while, and the chief officiant said: ”Tomorrow, this lantern of yours has to stay lit until deep in the night.”

”It stays lit until the men come back.” The old warden said. ”My two sons — one goes forward, one comes behind. The lantern cannot go out.”

”It cannot.” The chief officiant said. He hung his own lantern beside the old warden’s. The two lamps, one high and one low, swayed together in the night wind, like two men standing shoulder to shoulder. Behind them the city lay dark and waiting; ahead of them, beyond the wall, the last night of the war was wearing on toward its end.

On the rebel side, they were not deaf either. Their scouts lay in the reeds within an arrow-shot of the city’s works, and what they could not see with their eyes they read in the smoke and the silence.

In the tent at the river bend, the man in the white robe reported it all, item by item, in the flat voice of a man who has learned to carry bad news without letting it shake his hands: the city’s craftsmen had been working outside the south wall for two days; the smithy’s furnaces had not gone out by night or day; behind the earthworks south of the city, the number of moving figures was a third more than usual. And — the hailers had suddenly fallen silent yesterday.

”Silent?” Nekhem raised his head from the scroll he had been reading.

”Silent.” The white robe said. ”The whole afternoon — so quiet it makes the skin crawl.”

Nekhem rose and walked to the tent’s mouth. In the darkness, the direction of the city showed a line of torches — brighter than usual, denser than usual. He watched it a long time, then said: ”They are not resting. The mouth that shouted is being exchanged for a blade.” He turned. ”Send word to Panhesy: the East Camp’s palisade is to be strengthened tonight; the horse-stop stakes are all moved up behind the first trench. And —” he paused, ”— the grain is to be gathered under one watch. The men who guard it are to be replaced with trusted men.”

”High Priest,” the white robe said, ”word came yesterday from Panhesy’s side — more than thirty men ran from the camp again.”

”I know.” Nekhem said. ”What cannot be blocked should not be blocked. Guard what is essential; for the rest, let fate take its course.”

When he had said it, he coughed — a fit that doubled him over. He covered his mouth with the back of his hand, and when it passed he said, low: ”This wind grows colder every year.”

”High Priest,” the white robe said, holding out a bowl of hot water, ”you should take your medicine.”

”The medicine is for the wounded.” Nekhem said. ”My life is not yet precious enough for it.”

Panhesy arrived at the river bend after midnight.

He was wet with night dew, still in his armor, and his horse stood blowing at the tent rope outside. Inside the tent he dropped to one knee: ”High Priest — draw half of Panhesy’s soldiers back to the river bend.”

”Why?” Nekhem asked.

”The East Camp cannot be held.” Panhesy said. ”You know it, and I know it. When the three sides close in, eight thousand hungry soldiers cannot hold out one double-hour. Rather than lose them all in the East Camp, let half fall back to the river bend — the bend has walls, and the god, and you. As long as the green hills remain...”

”Panhesy.” Nekhem cut him off. ”How much thicker are the river bend’s walls than the East Camp’s palisade? They tore open the walls of Thebes itself — will three feet of earth at the river bend stop them?” He said it slowly. ”And besides — the moment the soldiers fall back, the heart of the East Camp is gone entirely. When the heart of the front line is gone, no wall behind it, however thick, can hold for the space of one meal.”

”But—”

”Listen to me.” Nekhem walked up to him and raised him to his feet with his own hands. ”At the end of this battle, what is measured is not which wall is thicker. It is whether I, Nekhem, can still find, for the people who followed me, a road that does not end in death.” He paused. ”The East Camp — hold it as best you can. When holding is no longer possible — surrender. Surrender is not disgrace. It is giving the men back their lives, to their fathers and mothers.”

Panhesy raised his head and looked at Nekhem. The lamp in the tent lit both their faces. After a long moment, Panhesy said: ”High Priest — you have changed.”

”Four months,” Nekhem said. ”Who has not?” He turned and walked to the tent’s mouth. ”Go. Dawn is near. Tomorrow night is the reckoning. You fight your fight; behind you, I will burn incense for you.”

”Yes.” Panhesy answered heavily, turned, and went out of the tent, and swung onto his horse.

The hoofbeats faded. Nekhem stood at the tent’s mouth and looked at the eastern sky. There were no stars in it — the sky was the color of a pot scrubbed until all the color was worn out of it. He coughed again, suddenly, bent over at the waist. The white robe hurried to support him; he waved the man off, straightened, and said: ”Bring me the scriptures.”

”High Priest, the night is deep.”

”It is because the night is deep that they must be read.” Nekhem said. ”After tomorrow — who knows if there will still be a night quiet enough to read scriptures in.”

In the city’s smithy, these two days, the furnace burned red through every hour of the day and night. The glow of it showed on the smoke that hung over the eastern quarter, and the people of the city saw it and did not need to be told what it meant.

The Bridgehead blacksmith and the old smith, with their apprentices, worked in shifts by day and night. What they forged was not blades — the city had blades enough. They forged grappling hooks, pry bars, axes for splitting palisades, and long levers for breaking apart horse-stop stakes. Piece after piece came out of the furnace, quenched in water, and stacked at the smithy door. Kamon came to inspect the stacks at the smithy door: he weighed each kind in his hand, tried each kind against the stone of the threshold. When he came to the axes he swung one into a block of wood, drew it out, and looked at the edge in the firelight. ”Good steel. This one.”

”Everything is forged to your numbers.” The old smith said. ”Hooks, one hundred. Pry bars, one hundred. Axes, fifty.”

”Enough.” Kamon said. ”Master smith — the fire of these two days is burning for the last battle.”

”I know.” The old smith said. ”I have forged iron all my life. It is the work of these two days that lifts the spirits most.”

The Bridgehead blacksmith wiped his forehead from the side and said, suddenly: ”Master Kamon — is your sapper company short of hands? I have strength, and I can swing a hammer.”

Kamon looked at him, and at his hands, red from the furnace light. ”Not you. In this smithy you forge the tools for the whole city. Behind the line, you are worth more than in front of it.”

The Bridgehead blacksmith opened his mouth, and said: ”Then... I will forge two more pieces.”

”Two more pieces,” Kamon said, ”are two more lives for the men in front.”

The sapper company was formed on the morning of the second day.

Three hundred men — half of them the city’s craftsmen, half surrendered men who knew woodwork and masonry, men who had built the camp they were now to take apart. They stood in ten rows while Kamon gave out the work, and among them stood the tools they would carry: pry bars, hooks, axes, all of them new from the smithy and gleaming. He wasted no words; he walked the length of the ten rows first, looking at the men, and then he laid the tools out on the ground and said: ”Look well. How the pry bar is used, how the hook is thrown, where the axe comes down — you practice today. Practice until dark, and practice again tomorrow. The day after, before first light, these tools of yours are the blades that open the road for this battle.”

They practiced on palisades. On the open ground beyond the city, a double-row palisade thirty feet long had been raised for the purpose, built to the pattern of the East Camp’s — the pattern measured by men who had helped raise the original, exact to the last joint. The company worked in teams of ten, taking turns. The first attempts were slow; a pry bar went into the wrong place, a grappling hook flew wide. Kamon crouched and watched without scolding. He only said: ”Faster. Your hands move faster than their arrows, and your lives are saved.” The young men who heard it went back to the palisade with their jaws set; the older ones among them simply nodded, because it was true, and truth needs no scolding to be obeyed.

By the afternoon, the fastest team had reduced the thirty feet of palisade to flat ground, working in the rhythm of men who have stopped thinking about their hands. Kamon timed them by the sun and said: ”Still half a breath short. Practice again.”

”Master,” a young craftsman panted, ”why must the taking apart of a palisade be timed?”

”If it is not timed,” Kamon said, ”the men in front of you eat one more stick of incense worth of arrows.”

The young man said nothing more. He gripped his pry bar and went back to the palisade.

A-Ka came after the day’s work was over, when the practice ground had emptied and the last of the light was going out of the sky.

The old wound on his shoulder had healed long since into a smooth scar, the kind of scar a man shows with a little pride and a little shame. He found Kamon, rolled up his sleeve, and said: ”Master Kamon — count me into the sapper company. This arm of mine was given back to me by the hospital. Tearing down palisades and digging trenches is exactly the work for it.”

Kamon looked at the new-grown flesh on his arm. ”This wound of yours was four months healing. Now you push yourself to the very front — does your brother know?”

”My brother,” A-Ka said, ”is one of the new graves under the wall east of the city. He knows.”

Kamon said nothing. He reached out and pressed his hand on A-Ka’s shoulder. ”Enrolled in the third team. Remember — a sapper opens the road; he does not throw his life away. When the palisade is down, step back. Only when your life is kept can there be an afterward.”

”Understood.” A-Ka said. ”This life of mine already owes the city.”

The adjutant of the city guard chose the men of the twelve hundred — the number had been set at the counsel, and it had already been weighed against the city’s walls and its gates and its fear.

On the open ground behind the east gate, those who had volunteered stood in ranks. The adjutant looked at them one by one — at the shoulders, at the legs, at the calluses on the hands. Those he chose were given a strip of white cloth, to tie around the left arm, so that in the dark a man could tell his own side. The strips had been cut the night before from a bolt of cloth the granary had set aside — cut square, cut even, more than twelve hundred of them.

A-Shi came too. He stood in the ranks straighter than anyone. The adjutant saw him and said: ”Your brother’s leg — it has just healed.”

”Healed.” A-Shi said. ”From today he is enrolled in the stretcher teams. He said: you charge forward, and I carry back. The two of us — one head, one tail.”

”Well done.” The adjutant handed him the strip of white cloth. ”Your family’s lantern — it will burn again tomorrow night.”

”It will burn.” A-Shi said. ”My father says: while the lantern burns, the road is not dark.”

There was a small commotion during the choosing. Old Sun came trotting up, saying he wanted to go out too — not for anything else, but to set up a porridge stall outside the East Camp: ”The first men who come charging down — their first mouthful has to be hot.” The adjutant did not know whether to laugh or cry. In the end he did both, and the men in the queue laughed with him. ”Uncle Sun, your pot is waiting at the surrender point. When it is over, you will be worth ten times more there than at the front.”

”Then...” Old Sun, not satisfied, ”I will boil three extra pots and have them hot in advance.”

”Done.” The adjutant said. ”Three pots, all charged to your name.”

A-He came too. He stood at the edge of the crowd, and only when everyone in front of him had received their cloth strips did he squeeze up and say: ”Sir, I am not going to fight. I only want... tomorrow, at the surrender point, to help with the fire. There are men from my village inside the East Camp. When they come out, I want to hand them their first hot mouthful myself.”

The adjutant looked at him a while — at the straight back and the earnest face — and said: ”Granted. You work with Old Sun. His ten cauldrons are short of one pair of hands to feed the fire.”

”Thank you, sir.” A-He bowed, turned, and ran — then stopped and came back, red-faced. ”And... could there be one extra pot of thick porridge? The men of my village have gone hungry too long over there.”

”Thick it will be.” Old Sun had heard from the side, and answered first. ”I will see it thick enough for all of them. Lad — tomorrow you will see: my pot can cook the taste of their own homes.”

A-He smiled. There was still a little pot-black on his face in the smile.

The tunnel of the east gate was worked on the next day.

Kamon’s men rebuilt it by the method of the south gate: new gate pivots, oiled three times; the stone paving of the tunnel leveled and spread with fine sand; and behind the gate, sixty earth bags stacked — ten more than last time, against a battle bigger than last time. A-Ka led the sappers in carrying the plank bridges up out of the storehouse, testing them one by one, and leaning each tested bridge against the inner wall-foot of the east gate.

”This gate,” Kamon said, slapping the gate leaves, ”is opened for twelve hundred men. It opens without a sound, closes without a shake, and lets men pass without crowding.” He paused. ”Four months ago, when we opened the south gate, we were gambling with our lives. This time, we are closing the account.”

”Closing the account.” The old craftsman beside him said. ”Thirty years at my trade, and this is the first time I feel that opening a gate is a craft.”

”It is a craft.” Kamon said. ”How a city gate opens, how fast, how long — like ramming a wall, it all has its rules. Practice the craft until it is perfect, and tomorrow this gate will be the smoothest mouth in the whole city.”

The stretcher teams were running their routes too.

Imset had them run the two carrying roads five times over. One road ran from the trench edge east of the city to the inside of the east gate — over the plank bridges, through the gate tunnel. The other ran from the south of the East Camp to behind the slope of the army camp. On the runs they carried a man — a sack of sand made up to a man’s weight, dressed in a coat and a cloth cap so that the bearers would grow used to the shape of a man, and not merely the weight of one.

”Run it until you could carry steady with your eyes closed.” Imset said. ”The day after tomorrow you must run faster than today. Carrying a man, you must still run.”

One stretcher-bearer stumbled; the sand sack nearly rolled off. Shafi watched from behind and said: ”On that day, there must not be one loose stone on the road. Tomorrow I will take people and sweep both roads clean.”

”Sweep.” Imset said. ”Leave not so much as a blade of grass.”

In the Haven of Settled Lives, that night, a cry came — the cry that the whole city had been waiting to hear through four months of war, the cry of a child being born.

It was the birthing mother — she had given birth at last, after two days of labor that had kept Sister Wei by her bedside without rest. Sister Wei had caught the child, a girl, just over six jin. The cry was loud and clear, carrying from the east end of the shelter grounds to the west. In the middle of the night, the whole city woke — those who were awake pricked up their ears. The cry fell on the four months of heat like a ladle of cold water, and for one moment the whole night of the city ran clear and bright.

”She has given birth!” Someone shouted in the Haven. ”A girl! Mother and child are safe!”

Nefer ran over from the kitchen, her sandals not properly on. She lifted the curtain and looked in, then came out and shouted to the whole grounds: ”Did you all hear that! This city has gained a child! A child born in the middle of the war, with a cry louder than the war horn!”

The people of the grounds laughed. Some wiped their eyes; some headed for the kitchen — ”Boil a bowl of thick porridge for the mother, with dates in it!”

Sister Wei came out to wash her hands, the water still dripping. She said to Nefer: ”This child knows how to choose her time. Born just before the last battle — she is a herald of good news for the whole city.”

”A herald of good news.” Nefer said. ”Tomorrow I will put the news on the peace boards: this city has gained a child.”

The name was settled before dawn.

The mother’s husband came to the chief officiant and said that, being refugees, they did not dare give their daughter a name at random, and asked the officiant to bestow one. The chief officiant thought a while, and said: ”This child was born on the night before the general assault. By the time her cry has spread, the sky should be growing light.” He looked at the eastern sky. ”Call her Dawn — the dawn of daybreak. This city has endured four months. The day should be dawning.”

”Dawn.” The man said the name twice; each time the corners of his mouth rose a little more. ”Thank you, Chief Officiant. This name is bright.”

The news went back to the shelter grounds, and the women crowded around to praise it: ”Dawn is a good name. Wherever she goes from now on, the sky will brighten to meet her.”

Nefer held the child and looked at her for a long time. ”Little Dawn — you do not know it. That one cry of yours made your father and mother, and half the people of this city, cry and laugh at once.”

The child slept deeply. However hard the wind blew outside, it could not stir the small quiet knot at the center of her brow.

In the market, that day, the children had a new game — and the adults, passing through, found themselves stopping to watch it, because the children were playing at the thing the adults were about to do.

Before, they had played ”hold the city” — building walls of earth clods, one side playing the rebels and one the defenders. Now the defenders always won, and the game had worn thin. No one remembered who began it — the new game was called ”break the camp”: earth clods piled into a camp palisade, some of the children playing sappers with grass stalks as pry bars, shouting ”Up!” and knocking the palisade flat with a whoosh. The children playing rebels did not mind; when it was knocked down they clapped their hands and said: ”Come on, let’s go get porridge!” And they all ran to the lane mouth, where each got a piece of date cake.

”This is a good game.” A passing old soldier watched and laughed. ”Storming a city is not as good as breaking a camp, and breaking a camp is not as good as getting porridge. The children understand living better than the adults.”

”Understand what?” The woman beside him said. ”They learned it from the adults.”

”Learned well, then.” The old soldier said. ”They learned the most valuable thing of these four months.”

At dusk, Kamon ran through the sapper company once more.

Three hundred men in ten teams of thirty. Each team had its leader, its pry-bar men, its hook-throwers, its axe-carriers. Kamon walked from team to team, and at the end he said: ”Tomorrow, every team stays close to its soldiers. Wherever the soldiers go, you go. Wherever the palisade must come down, the road opens. Remember this — what you take down is not a palisade. It is the ring of these four months. Break the ring, and men come alive.”

”Alive!” Three hundred voices, kept very low, rose like a force welling up from under the earth.

At nightfall, Meru’s boats and A-Tu’s met at the mouth of the channels.

Six boats in a line, bows pointing north, drawn up so that their hulls touched the current at the same angle. On each boat stood three torches, and the men who held them stood still, the way men stand when they mean to be seen. Their light lay on the river in a sheet, joining from this bank to that, like a wall of fire raised across the water.

”This wall of fire,” Meru said, ”tells the river bend one thing: tonight, the river is ours.”

”And if they force their way through?” A boatman asked.

”If they force it,” A-Tu said, ”let them see how the children raised on the river handle a pole.”

As he spoke he set the bamboo pole against the riverbed. The boat did not move by so much as a hand’s breadth — as if nailed to the water.

”Good.” Meru said. ”Hold here. Until the horn.”

”Until the horn.” A-Tu said.

At daybreak, the wind in the city died, suddenly.

This day was the last day before the general assault. Everyone was doing their last work: Kamon testing bridges, knocking each one; Mery counting flatbreads, one by one; Shafi checking medicines, pack by pack; Meru trying his boats, one after another. No one spoke. But everyone knew that at this hour tomorrow, the world would be another world.

In the evening, Horenheb made his last inspection of the earthworks. He stood on the slope east of the city and looked at the East Camp. The camp’s palisade had two new rows added. Its fires burned bright and high. He said: ”Panhesy has brought out everything he kept in reserve.”

”General,” the old centurion said, ”they know we are coming.”

”Let them know.” Horenheb said. ”This battle is an open battle. An open battle is won by strength, by food, and by the hearts of men. All three of these are on our side.” He swung onto his horse. ”Back to camp. At dawn tomorrow, the horn is the signal.”

”The horn is the signal.” The old centurion repeated.

On the ride back, the old centurion said, suddenly: ”General — before the last battle, you left a letter on the West Bank.”

”Yes.”

”This time,” the old centurion said, ”should another be left?”

Horenheb did not answer at once. The horse walked on through the dark, and the old centurion rode beside him without pressing, the way a man waits for an answer he already knows. At last Horenheb said: ”No need. Last time the letter was left because that night was an even bet. This time the battle closes the account. And besides — the western-line letter was written with ’if I do not return.’ What I would write now is: ’when the fighting is done, I return to the western line and go on building the wall.’ If the letter arrives and the man does not — that would be a bad omen.”

The old centurion laughed. ”Then do not write it. When the fighting is done, go back to the western line yourself, and say it yourself.”

”Right.” Horenheb said. ”Say it myself.”

In the dark, the two riders went one behind the other toward the army camp. The hoofbeats on the slope fell solid and steady, one after another.

That night, inside the city and outside it, few men slept soundly.

Lu Zhu climbed the tower of the east gate and stood behind the crenellations, looking east. The palisade of the East Camp was a black line in the dark. He watched it a while, then said, low: ”At dawn tomorrow, of these four months, only one word will be left.” The wind from the north beat his coat-hem, flap after flap.

In the courtyard behind the official granary, Mery checked the three ledgers against one another one last time. When it was done, he put the counting-rods away one by one, and laid Woser’s keys neatly at the corner of the table. Woser said: ”Mery — I have kept a granary half my life. Tomorrow, for the first time, the grain of the granary will be chasing the soldiers out of the city.”

”Not chasing the soldiers.” Mery said. ”Receiving the people. Those who go out, those who come back, those who surrender — all of them will eat.”

In the hospital, Imset turned through the war account once more. Shafi sat beside him, laying out the things in the medicine chest one by one, and putting each back in its place — the styptics, the dressings, the cleaning tools — arranged in the order of tomorrow. ”Teacher,” she said, ”tomorrow the hospital has no door. Whoever is carried in is received.”

”All are received.” Imset said. ”In four months we have not closed our door for one day. Tomorrow, less than ever.”

In the Haven, Nefer hushed the children to sleep one by one. Dawn’s cry sounded now and then, and each time it sounded, the whole shelter grounds went soft. Nefer stood outside the birthing room a while, and said: ”Sleep. When the sun comes up tomorrow, this city is a city of peace.”

At the door of the old temple, the chief officiant lit a stick of incense. The incense was new, and its smoke rose straight up. He stood beneath the smoke and said: ”Four months ago I waited in the temple to die. Four months later I wait at the temple door for the dawn. God — you have seen it. The people of this city deserve a bright day.”

At the lane mouth in the east of the city, the old warden’s lantern was lit again. He stood at his door holding it. Deep in the lane, the house of A-Shi and his brother stood dark — the men were both outside. The old warden looked up at the sky and said: ”The lantern — I keep it for you. When you come back, you will see the road.”

At nightfall, the lamps of the council house went out, one by one.

From the courtyard behind the official granary, the last men of the counsel filed out. Kamon walked at the front, his stone chisel at his belt; Mery carried his ledgers; Imset settled his medicine chest; Lu Zhu walked last. At the courtyard gate, Lu Zhu looked back once. The lamps of the yard were all out. Only through a gap in the clouds overhead, a few very faint stars leaked down — the same stars that had stood over the first night of the siege. They had seen the city through four months; they would see it through one night more.

”Go home, all of you.” He said. ”Tomorrow, we rise early.”

”Rise early.” Several low voices answered.

The night was too thick to melt. In the direction of the east of the city there was not a sound. But every man knew — that sound was on its way, step by step, walking toward this city.

(End of Chapter 5)