Then came the message that we knew would arrive. We had been in Avaris for only a month, and our days of touring and feasting were soon ended. Paser came to us in our chamber and closed the door. Ramesses took the scroll and unfurled it.
“Ten thousand Hittite soldiers have taken Kadesh,” Paser reported. “The city has already changed its allegiance.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Only the messenger, Your Highness.”
I read the report over Ramesses’s shoulder. Ten thousand men had marched on the city at dawn, and the people of Kadesh were so afraid of war they had surrendered by afternoon. Ramesses crushed the papyrus in his hand. “He thinks I am too young to challenge him! Muwatallis thinks he’s a hawk swooping in on the nest of a chick!” He flung the crumpled scroll across the room. “He greatly mistakes me.”
“Emperor Muwatallis is a veteran of war,” Paser warned. “He’s seen battle in every kingdom in the east.”
“And now he will taste war with Egypt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
BEFORE THE WALLS OF KADESH
Avaris
“YOU’RE GOING ALL the way to Kadesh?” Merit shrieked. She stood over Amunher and Prehir, who looked up at me beneath their fringes of red-gold hair and flapped their arms, wanting to be held. “It’s enough that you went to the north, my lady, a princess of Egypt on a ship with pirates—”
“And you saw how the people reacted,” I argued. “It was worth the risk.”
“Because there were only a hundred men!” Merit cried. “Not ten thousand Hittites prepared for war. Does Pharaoh understand the danger—”
“Of course he does.” I only had one day to prepare, but Merit was standing in the way of my traveling chest. “He’s stayed up nights thinking about it. We both have, mawat. And last night he decided.”
“But think of all the ways there are to die in war,” she begged. “Please.” Her voice rose in desperation. “What will happen when Pharaoh is in battle? You’ll be completely alone.”
I drew a steady breath. “No. I will have Amunher and Prehir.” I saw the look on her face and added quickly, “Ramesses first went on campaign at eleven months old. Iset is going as well. With Ramessu.”
Merit’s hands fell from her hips, her defiance melting into astonishment. “To Kadesh?”
“It’s Henuttawy’s suggestion. She wants to be sure that Ramesses spends as much time with Iset as he does with me. We will be with the camp outside the city,” I explained, “in the hills. We’ll watch the battle from afar.”
Merit threw up her hands in horror. “Well, then, if you can join the camp, I can, too!” She stood with her fat little legs apart, and when she placed her hands back on her hips, I knew that there would be no arguing with her. “What do I prepare?”
“Linens and sandals,” I said swiftly.
“And for the princes?”
I kissed each of my sons on their soft cheeks. They were the brightest babies, always wanting to touch, and grab, and explore. “All they truly need is each other,” I told her. They had recently stopped nursing, and now they drank their milk from clay bottles and ate chicken from my bowl when it was cut small enough. They ate together, played together, and now they would see their first battle together, watching from the hills. I laid my sons back on their linen, and felt the thrill of knowing that by Epiphi the gods would recognize them. It might only be a small thing, and their names might not echo in Amun’s ears just yet, but to share in Egypt’s conquests was certainly a beginning.
In the Audience Chamber that morning, petitioners had been forbidden, and from a dozen polished tables, generals and viziers debated the strategy that Egypt would use to take back Kadesh. I sat listening to Asha and his father as they described the Hittite army.
“They have allies from eighteen kingdoms,” Anhuri warned. “Nearly two thousand chariots and thirty thousand soldiers. They have men from Aleppo, Ugarit, Dardany, Keshkesh, Arzawa, Shasu . . .”
“Aradus, Mese, Pedes, and many more,” Asha finished. “There is no doubt we will need all our twenty thousand soldiers.”
“Then we will break the army into five divisions,” Ramesses decided. We had stayed up for nights looking at maps, translating cuneiform messages that spies had intercepted. “There will be the division of Amun, which I will lead. The division of Ra, with Kofu at its head. General Anhuri will take the division of Ptah and name a general to the division of Set. Each division will march a day apart, so that if Hittite spies should see Amun’s division, they will think we are only five thousand strong. Then Asha will take a final, smaller army by river. If we can surround the Hittites and cut off their supplies, they will face starvation and will surrender within a month.”
The viziers frowned at one another. “You are going to divide the army, Your Highness?” Paser was wary. “No Pharaoh in my memory has done this.”
Around the tables, men shifted in their seats. It was either a brilliant plan or madness.
“I think it can work,” General Kofu spoke up.
“Can work, or will work?” Paser challenged.
“Will work,” Ramesses said fearlessly.
Rahotep remained silent, his bloody eye fixed on Ramesses’s throne. But Paser was braver. “If there is any chance of success in this, there will need to be excellent communication between the divisions.”
“And I have grave reservations,” General Anhuri admitted.
Ramesses hadn’t expected dissent from Asha’s father. “Tell me why.”
“You will lead four divisions up through Canaan, then on through the woods of Labwi. It will be a month’s march. If the Hittites should turn and surprise Amun’s division, how quickly can a runner be sent to Ra, Set, or Ptah? This has never been done—”
“Which is why we must try,” Ramesses said passionately. “Akhenaten lost Kadesh along with the Eleutheros Valley. Since then Pharaohs have tried to regain it and failed. It belongs to Egypt! How long was it in my father’s possession before the Hittites took it back? Without the Valley, we will never regain our land in Syria. If we allow the Hittites to hold Kadesh, they will keep Egypt’s territory along the Arnath River forever! Akhenaten let our empire crumble, but we will rebuild. We will reconquer. And to do that, we must crush the Hittites. We cannot simply use a huge blocking force, as before. It’s not enough to push them back—we must surround them, starve them, and force them to surrender completely!”
Ramesses’s speech roused his generals. They understood that if something different wasn’t tried, there might be battle after battle against Hatti without end. The Hittites had to be engulfed and destroyed once and for all.
THAT EVENING, I looked at Ramesses in the low light of the oil lamps. He sat on our bed, perched tensely like a bird of prey, a nineteen-year-old Pharaoh of the most powerful kingdom in the world. In a month, he would show the Hittite emperor that Egypt should never be mistaken for a gosling.
“Since the reign of Tuthmosis,” he said, “only my father and I have led armies into battle. And only a few pharaohs in history have ever taken their wives.”
“We will be fine,” I promised him.
“It’s not you who concerns me. It’s Iset. The march will be long, and she isn’t meant for such things.” I wanted to ask him what he thought Iset was meant for, but he went on. “I could send her on by ship in Asha’s galley,” he considered, “but they will be far ahead of the army, and that could prove more dangerous.”
“She has chosen to come,” I reminded. “She will do well.”
But I could see that Ramesses wasn’t convinced.
The next morning the court assembled on the small bluff outside Avaris. Viziers, wives, priestesses, and noblemen had come to see the awesome sight of twenty thousand soldiers readied for battle in the fields below. Helmets and axes gleamed in the sun, and from each division flew the standards of Amun, Ra, Set, and Ptah. Among the thousands of soldiers were Nubians, Assyrians, the new Sherden recruits, and the Habiru. They car
ried leather shields to be quick and agile, where the Hittite armor would be cumbersome and heavy.
“You see how fast our chariots are?” Paser pointed a driver out to me who charged across the floodplains, then reined in his horses with the slightest tug of his hand. “The Hittite chariots are much heavier than ours, because they carry three men.”
“A driver, a shield bearer, and an archer,” I guessed.
Paser nodded. A slight wind rustled his kilt, and in the morning sun his eyes looked tired. “Be careful, Nefertari. The Hittites will not hesitate to kill a woman. They aren’t Egyptians, and they may not take you alive . . .” He left his words unfinished, then stepped back so Woserit could embrace me.
“You are braver than I.”
“Or more foolish,” I answered. “But I’ve promised Ramesses that wherever he goes, I’ll be with him. And if he should meet with disaster, all Egypt would fall to the Hittites anyway. How could I stay here? I must have a hand in my own fate.”
We both looked to Henuttawy and Iset. Although they were standing close to each other, a wide river might as well have been flowing between them. Neither spoke, and the women Iset had grown up with since childhood shifted nervously. They had never known anything but life in the harem, and now Iset would be riding a chariot between desert cities while the army marched. They had no advice to give her, and Iset’s face was as white as her diaphanous sheath.
Woserit shook her head. “She will never survive. She’ll want to ride in the litter with the children all the way to Kadesh.”
Ramesses appeared in his golden pectoral, his courtiers chatting excitedly. The early morning sun reflected from his breastplate: His bronze armor was cinched with an azure sash, and from his khepresh crown of war the uraeus bared its fangs at the enemy.
“Like Montu,” I told him, the male god of war.
“And you are my Sekhmet,” he replied.
Iset came up beside him; her broad inlaid belt was so thick that it weighed her down as she walked. Up close I could see her nails had been hennaed. She was perfectly beautiful, like a freshly painted doll from the palace workshops. “We’re marching through the desert,” Ramesses exclaimed. “Not hosting a feast!” He looked at my linen kilt and simple sandals, then hesitated. “You are simply too beautiful for the battlefield, Iset. Perhaps you should—”
But she wouldn’t listen to him. “I am coming with you,” she said. “I want to be by your side. Battle doesn’t frighten me.”
Yet even the courtiers from the palace, who wanted to believe everything of her, could see through this. One of her women, the daughter of a scribe, suggested kindly, “You could remain with Vizier Paser in the Audience Chamber, Iset. Pharaoh needs loyal eyes to look after his kingdom.”
“Pharaoh needs someone to look after him in war!” she snapped, and then she turned her gaze in my direction. “And if it means I have to look like a boy, I’ll do it.”
“Then go and get dressed,” Ramesses said, and I detected a note of impatience in his voice. “When you return, you can take the litter. It will protect you from the dirt and the sun.”
THE MARCH was as long as General Anhuri had predicted in the Audience Chamber, and Iset rode for a month in her covered litter, borne on the shoulders of eight men. She never dared to complain about the oppressive heat or lack of places to bathe. When Ramessu cried, we could hear her shouting at him to be quiet, that if he didn’t behave she would leave him by the side of the road.
The poor thing will learn to hate her, I thought. She should allow him to ride with Amunher and Prehir. I looked across at the second litter, and from the squeals of delight behind the linen I imagined that my sons thought this was a great adventure. Merit rode with them, and I could see her shadow as she moved back and forth, keeping them from trouble. Although there was room for me in the litter too, I steered my own chariot next to Asha and Ramesses. And at night, when the army made camp where it could, Ramesses crept into my pavilion and we listened as Merit told stories of the gods in the pavilion next to ours. Some nights we could hear that Amunher and Prehir had gone to sleep at once. But most of the time, they had slept throughout the day and were no longer interested in settling down. Then Ramesses would call them over to us, and the three of them would crawl among the cushions, delighting in each other, while I stayed up translating messages our spies had captured.
“Emperor Muwatallis knows nothing of this march,” I said with certainty. We had passed through Canaan and traveled down toward the Bekaa Valley. We were steadily approaching Kadesh from the south, and I held up the latest scroll. “He is sending missives home that his wives must be there to greet him, and that a victory feast should be prepared for Epiphi. He has no idea we are coming. Though I don’t know about this.” I pointed to a line of ancient cuneiform. It was written in a Hittite that only priests used. I squinted, trying to recall what I had learned from Paser. “It’s something about the woods of Labwi.” I hesitated. “Something about . . . woodsmen perhaps?”
“Scouts!” Ramesses shouted, frightening Amunher and Prehir. They held their breaths to see if he was shouting at them, and when he failed to look in their direction, they carried on playing. “There will be scouts in the woods of Labwi!” he exclaimed.
I continued to study the scroll. “Yes.” I nodded quickly. “That must be it.” Though I had never seen some of the words before, Labwi and woodsmen were clear enough.
“Tomorrow, we will pass through Labwi,” Ramesses said. “And whatever Hittite scouts they’ve left behind, we will encircle them to cut off any warning.” He smiled at me. “We are going to take back Kadesh before Muwatallis has a chance to sit down at his next feast!”
The four divisions of the army on foot were assembled the next morning. Twenty thousand men listened to their orders as the sun rose beyond the hills, gilding their helmets and reflecting from their swords. Seti had amassed ten thousand leather shields, stretched taut on strong wooden frames that could deflect even the strongest arrow point, and now, after a month’s march, they would finally be used.
“The divisions of Amun and Ra will make camp across the River Arnath on the highest point,” Ramesses instructed his generals. “Set and Ptah will remain at the base of the hill. We’ve intercepted a message that indicates that there will be Hittite spies in Labwi. When we reach the woods this evening, I want them captured!”
There was a nervous excitement as the divisions marched. We were nearing Kadesh, and when the camp passed through the cedar forests of Labwi, this nervousness only heightened. But there were no sightings of Hittites anywhere in the tall, flat-topped groves, and when the divisions of Amun and Ra made camp on the hill above Kadesh, there were murmurs of shock as the men looked below them. The walled city appeared completely silent, and the Hittite army seemed to have disappeared. Ramesses stood on the crest as the cool of evening settled over Kadesh, and Egypt’s generals stared out in amazement.
“Perhaps they have retreated,” Kofu suggested.
“An army of ten thousand men does not capture the most important city in the north only to abandon it a month later. Perhaps they’re hiding within the city,” Anhuri offered.
“Either way, we must send a scout,” Kofu said. “Even if the Hittites have already left the city, word of us will reach them and they’ll return in force. You can be sure of it.”
The four divisions of Egypt’s army waited for news around thousands of campfires that dotted the hillside and filled the air with the scent of burning timber. Some of the men played Senet and rolled knucklebones. But once the sun set there was a tense expectation among the soldiers; the silence of the city below was more disturbing than seeing any Hittite army. Around our fire, Iset was the first to break the uneasy quiet.
“Where can they be?” she demanded shrilly. “We have marched for a month! And now we’ve come and there isn’t any war!”
Anhuri smiled warily. “You will get your war. In one day or ten, the Hittites will return.”
The ho
od of Iset’s cloak fell back around her shoulders, revealing her exasperated look. “With how many men?”
Anhuri glanced behind him. There was a commotion in the camp, but he answered her quickly. “As many as we’ve brought from Egypt. Likely more.” He stood as a young boy came running toward him, dressed in the printed kilt of a messenger. At once, we were all on our feet.
“What is the news?”
The boy paused to catch his breath. “Nothing!” he cried. “The Hittites left two nights ago. They have installed their own governor in charge of the city, but the army is gone!”
Ramesses glanced between his generals, and all of them wore guarded expressions. “It could be a trap.”
But the messenger boy was confident. “It’s not a trap, Your Highness. I’ve been through the city. There’s not a curly beard or striped kilt among them. Only in the governor’s house . . .”
“Two days ago?” Anhuri challenged. Asha’s father was incredulous. “It’s too convenient,” he dismissed, and I wanted to agree with him. But the other generals wondered if perhaps the emperor was so confident of his conquest he felt no need to remain in Kadesh.
“It’s possible they waited a month to see if an army would come from Egypt by river, and when none came, they decamped,” Kofu suggested.
“We’ll wait,” Ramesses decided. “If there is no sign of their army by tomorrow evening, we’ll take back the city.”