Naja tried to remain stern and expressionless but a tiny smile played for an instant over his lean and handsome features. It took him a moment to suppress it then he rose again. His voice was sibilant and soft, but menacing as the sound of a sword blade being swiped across the face of the whetstone. 'You bring the news of the death of a pharaoh and a god. Woe upon you for you are now contaminated and steeped in misery and misfortune.' He made a gesture to his bodyguard who stood around the throne. Take them away and give them over to the priests of the god Marduk that they be sacrificed in the furnace to appease the wrath of the god.'

  When they were bound and led away to the sacrifice, Naja stood again and announced, 'The god and Pharaoh Trok Uruk is dead. We commend his soul to the gods. I declare before you all that there is now only one ruler over both kingdoms, and over all the territories and all the conquered lands and possessions of Egypt. I declare further that ruler to be myself, Pharaoh Naja Kiafan.'

  'Bak-her!' cried all the courtiers and captains, who stood around his throne, and they drew their swords and beat them on their shields. 'Bak-her! Exalted be the king-god Naja Kiafan!'

  'Send word to all my commanders and the generals of all my armies. We will meet in war council at the noon hour this same day.'

  For eleven days that followed, from dawn to dusk, Pharaoh Naja sat at the head of his council in the throne room of the palace of Sargon. With sentries at the doors to bar interlopers or spies they drew up their plans and their order of battle. On the twelfth day Naja commanded the muster of his armies in Mesopotamia, and sent ambassadors to the subservient kings and satraps in all the conquered territories between Babylon and the borders of Egypt. He ordered them to prepare all their forces for war, and place themselves under his command for the campaign against Nefer Seti.

  In the full of the following moon, when the army mustered before the Blue Gate of the city of Babylon they were forty thousand strong, all veteran and blooded troops, well equipped with horse and chariot, bow and sword.

  Heseret stood with her husband, the one and only true Pharaoh of Egypt, on the ramparts of the city to review the array.

  'What a glorious sight,' she told him. 'Surely there was never such a muster as this in all the annals of war.'

  'As we march westwards, back towards the motherland, our numbers will be swollen by the Sumerians and the Hittites, the Hurrians and all the armies of the conquered lands through which we pass. We will return to Egypt with two thousand chariots. The puppy dare not stand against us.' He looked down at her. 'Do you feel no pity for your brother Nefer?'

  'None!' She shook her head so her jewellery glinted and sparkled in the sunlight. 'You are my pharaoh and my husband. Whosoever rises against you is a traitor, and deserves death.'

  'Death he shall have, and the treacherous Warlock will share his funeral pyre and burn beside him,' Naja promised grimly.

  --

  They smelt the river from afar, the perfume of the sweet cool waters on the desert air. The horses lifted their heads and whickered. The infantry quickened their step and gazed ahead, eager for the first glimpse of the waters that, at this season of the year, would be swollen and dark with rich silts, the flesh and blood of the motherland.

  Nefer and Mintaka rode together in his chariot at the head of the long cavalcade that wound down the caravan road from Gallala. Meren and Merykara rode at his right hand in the second chariot of the column. Over the protests of Merykara, who thought him still too weak and sick, Meren had insisted on being in the van. 'I missed the battle at Gallala, but I vow I will never miss another. As long as there is breath in my body I will ride with my king and my dearest friend.' Though he was thin and pale as an egret he stood proud on the footplate, with the reins in his hands.

  The leading chariots topped the escarpment, and below them stretched the green valley of the Nile, with the mighty river itself gleaming like a spill of molten copper from the furnace, glowing red in the early sunlight. Nefer turned and smiled at Meren in the chariot alongside. 'We are coming home!'

  Mintaka began singing, softly at first then more strongly as Nefer added his voice to hers.

  'Temple of the Gods,

  Seat of ten thousand heroes,

  Greenest in all the earth,

  Our dearest love.

  Our sweetest home.

  Our very Egypt!'

  Then Meren and Merykara were singing with them, and the singing spread back down the column. Squadron after squadron picked up the joyous chorus as they wound down the escarpment.

  Another army came to meet them, armed charioteers in the van, generals and captains leading their regiments, and legions of foot-soldiers following them. Behind them followed the elders, the priests and the governors of every nome, all dressed in their robes, chains and decorations of office, some in carriages and others in litters borne by slaves, and still others riding astride or on foot. After them came the dense masses of citizenry, laughing and dancing. Some of the women were carrying their infants and weeping for joy, as they picked out their husbands, lovers, brothers and sons in the ranks of the army of exile coming home.

  The two cavalcades came together and mingled, and elders and generals prostrated themselves before Pharaoh's chariot. Nefer dismounted, raised up those he recognized and embraced the mightiest and most powerful of them, calling down the blessings of the gods on all his people.

  When he mounted again they fell in behind him, and followed him to the banks of the Nile. There Nefer dismounted again and, fully dressed, plunged into the waters. While they lined the bank and cheered and sang, he bathed ritually and drank of the muddy brown waters.

  Mounted once again and dressed in fresh linen robes, with the blue war crown on his head, Nefer led the vast concourse along the river-bank towards the city of Avaris. For a league outside the city the road was lined with the welcoming crowds. They had allayed the dust by sprinkling the road with Nile water, and had spread palm fronds and flowers in his way.

  When they reached the city the gates stood wide open and the populace lined the walls. They had hung banners and bunches of sweet flowers and fruits from the ramparts. They sang anthems of loyalty, praise and welcome as Nefer, with Mintaka beside him, drove under the arch of the gateway.

  Beautiful as a young god and goddess, they drove first to the magnificent temple on the riverbank that Trok Uruk had built to celebrate his own divinity. Nefer had sent instructions ahead of him, and the stonemasons had already been at work for weeks. They had chiselled away every portrait of the false pharaoh and expunged his name from the walls and tall hypostyle columns. They were still busy engraving the portraits and titles of the winged Horus, and of Pharaoh Nefer Seti, together with descriptions of his victory at the battle of Gallala.

  Nefer drove there as his first duty to give thanks to the god and to sacrifice a pair of perfect black bulls before the stone altar. After the religious service he declared a week of holiday, festivity and feasting, with free millet bread, beef, wine and beer for every citizen, and games and theatre to amuse them.

  'You are a sly one, my heart,' Mintaka told him admiringly. 'They loved you before, but now they will adore you.'

  For how long? Nefer wondered. As soon as the news of our ascension to the throne reaches Naja, in far off Babylon, he will be on the march, if he is not already. The common people will love me until he knocks upon the gates.

  --

  Pharaoh Naja Kiafan anointed his trusted general Asmor as King of Babylon, a satrap of his own throne. He left him five hundred chariots, two thousand archers and infantry to hold and secure his conquests. Then, with the bulk of his army, he began the march on Egypt to recover his crown and throne from the man who had seized it. Like a snowball rolling down a mountainside, the army of Pharaoh Naja Kiafan gathered weight and impetus as it advanced westwards over plain and mountain pass towards the frontier of Egypt. As he went, the vassal kings flocked to his standard, and by the time he stood on the heights of the Khatmia Pass his army had almost trebled in size.

  Naja looked westwards, across the wide sand desert towards the city of Ismailiya at the head of the Great Bitter Lake, and to the borders of his homeland. He had known all along that at this point on the march he would be hampered by the size of his host, embarrassed by multitudes.

  Ahead of him lay a great expanse of desert, with neither a single spring nor an oasis to sustain his army until he reached Ismailiya. Once again he was reduced to laying down water points along the route ahead. When he strained his eyes against the glare he could make out the lines of water carts, loaded with clay pots, strung out along the rutted road below the escarpment, like dark worms wriggling through the dun and ochre landscape. For months they had been at work building up water dumps in the desert, burying the filled pots in the sand, then leaving detachments of infantry to guard them while they returned for the next load.

  It would take his army almost ten days and nights to make the crossing. During that time they would be strictly rationed, allowed just enough water to sustain the long night marches, and to eke out the burning days when they lay up to rest, enduring the heat in any scrap of shade afforded by linen tents or shelters made from thorn branches and grass.

  'I will ride with you in the vanguard.' Heseret spoke at his elbow, breaking into his train of thought.

  He glanced at her. 'We have discussed this before.' He frowned. After years of marriage her charms and beauty had begun to pall, overshadowed by her petulance, jealousy and demanding tempers. These days, Naja spent more and more time among his concubines, enduring her jealous tirades when he returned to her bed.

  'You will come up with the other women in the baggage train, under the wing of Prenn, the centurion of the rearguard.'

  Heseret pouted. Once, that had been appealing but now it was merely irritating. 'So that you can put Lassa with child, just as you have her sister,' she complained. She was referring to the two princesses given to Naja as hostages by the satrap of Sumeria as evidence of his loyalty to the crown of Egypt. The princesses were both young, slim and nubile, with large breasts. They painted their nipples and, in the shameless Sumerian fashion, walked abroad with them naked and uncovered.

  'You become tiresome, wife.' Naja lifted his upper lip in a smile that was more a snarl. 'You know that it is political expediency. I needed a son from at least one of the wenches to place upon the throne when the old man dies.'

  'Swear on the breath and heart of Seueth that you are not taking Lassa with you in the vanguard,' Heseret insisted.

  'I swear it readily.' Naja smiled that deadly smile again. 'I am taking Sinnal of Hurria.' She was another hostage, younger even than the Sumerians, barely fourteen years of age but with bright copper-coloured hair and green eyes. Her buttocks were large and rounded. Heseret knew from experience that Naja would enter through the back gate to the citadel, as readily as through the front.

  'I need a son from her as well,' Naja explained, reasonably, 'to place on the throne of Assyria.' He laughed then, a soft, mocking snigger. 'The duties of royalty are onerous indeed.'

  She gave him a furious glare, and called for her litter with its screens and cushions of silk to take her back down the column, to where Prenn was bringing up the rearguard.

  --

  On Taita's advice, Nefer had established a screen of scouts along the shores of the Red Sea to report any invasion by dhows, yet Taita was certain that Naja's main invasion force must come through the Great Sand Desert. Naja and Trok had passed this way on their Mesopotamian adventure. Naja knew the route well, and his army was too large to bring across the Red Sea in boats as Trok had done with his much smaller force.

  Thanks to a marvellous innovation by the Magus, Nefer and his staff knew the exact numbers and composition of Naja's muster. One of the centurions, high in the chain of Naja's command, who was an old associate of Taita and who owed him a debt of gratitude, had sent a message to Taita declaring his loyalty to the Pharaoh Nefer Seti and his intention of defecting and coming to join Nefer's army. Through another of his minions, a trader in fine carpets, who was leading a caravan to Beersheba, Taita had sent the centurion a reply, instructing him to remain at the head of his division. 'You are more valuable to us as a source of intelligence than as a warrior,' he had told him, and through the carpet trader had sent him two unusual gifts: a basket of live pigeons and a papyrus scroll on which was set out a secret code.

  When the pigeons were released by the centurion, they returned immediately to the coop in Avaris in which they had been hatched, and they carried with them, tied to one leg with a silken thread, a coded message written on a tiny roll of the finest and lightest papyrus sheet. Through these messages, Nefer had in his possession the precise numbers and disposition of the troops Naja commanded. He knew the exact day on which Naja had marched from Babylon, and how many troops he had left there under Asmor. Nefer was able to follow his advance westward, through Damascus and Beersheba and all the other towns and garrisons along his line of march.

  Very soon it became apparent that Taita had assessed the situation correctly, and that Naja would not attempt a surprise crossing of the Red Sea. He was indeed intent on a frontal assault through the Great Sand Desert.

  Nefer pulled in his pickets from along the Red Sea coast, and immediately moved his headquarters and most of his army forward to the frontier garrison of Ismailiya on the edge of the desert. Here there were bountiful sweet-water wells, and ample grazing for the horses.

  While they waited in Ismailiya, reports continued to be carried in by the returning pigeons. Not only did Nefer know Naja's strength, he knew also who commanded each of his divisions.

  Mintaka sat on his war council in the fort of Ismailiya. Her contributions were invaluable: she was Hyksos bom, and she knew well those officers on Naja's staff who had once been on her own father's staff. As a child she had listened to her father's assessment of each of them, and she had a formidable memory, trained and sharpened over the bao board. She was able to advise Nefer on the strengths, weaknesses and personal peculiarities of each of these men. She went over the lists they had received.

  'Now this one, Centurion Prenn who commands Naja's rearguard, is related to me, for he was one of my father's cousins. I know him well. He taught me to ride. I used to call him Uncle Tonka, which means "Bear" in my language.' She smiled at the memory. 'My father said of him that he was loyal as a hound, cautious and slow, but once he had sunk his teeth into the throat of an enemy he would hang on to the death.'

  By this time Meren had almost fully recovered his health and strength. He begged Nefer for employment in some useful role, so Nefer sent him forward with a division of chariots to cover Naja's further advance, once he came down from the heights into the desert.

  Meren's scouts watched Naja's water carts carrying their loads of clay jars forward and building up the dumps in the arid land through which Naja must pass to reach the frontier of Egypt. Meren asked to be allowed to attack and disperse the convoys of water carts, but Nefer sent orders to him not to interfere with them, merely to keep them under observation and to note carefully were they placed the water stores.

  Then Nefer ordered the last reserves that he had been holding on the river to be brought up, and when these were encamped around Ismailiya he called a council of all their commanders. 'Even with Trok's vehicles that we captured at Gallala, Naja outnumbers us by almost three to one,' he told them. 'All his men are battle-hardened, and his horses trained and in fine condition. We cannot afford to let him cross the frontier and reach the river. We must meet him and fight him here in the desert.'

  All that night they sat in council, and Nefer laid out his battle plan and issued his orders. They were to let Naja advance unopposed for the first five days. Then, once he was deeply committed, they would raid and destroy his water stores, both in front and to the rear of his advance. This would trap him in the midst of the sands.

  'I know Naja well enough to stake the battle on his arrogance and his overbearing confidence in his own fighting skills. I am certain that even once we cut off his water supply he will not turn back, but will thrust onwards. His forces will reach Ismailiya after a forced dry march of many days through the desert. We will be able to meet them with our horses and troops well rested and watered on a battleground of our own choosing. This will make up some of the deficit in our opposing strengths.'

  During the long council, Taita sat silently in the shadows behind Nefer's campaign stool. It seemed that he was dozing, but once in a while he opened his eyes then, blinking like a sleepy owl, closed them again and let his chin droop back on to his chest.

  'Our greatest lack is in the number and condition of our chariots.' Nefer went on, 'but we can almost match Naja in archers, slingers and spearmen. I am certain that once he realizes his shortage of water, Naja will drive ahead of his foot-soldiers with all his chariots. Taita and I have devised a plan to lead his vehicles into a trap in which we can exploit the small advantage that we have.

  'In front of the town and the wells we will throw up a series of low stone walls behind which our archers and infantry can conceal themselves. These works will be just high enough to block the advance of a chariot.' With a charcoal stick Nefer sketched out a design on the sheet of papyrus spread on the table-top in front of him. Hilto, Shabako, Socco and the rest of his staff craned forward to watch.