The First Heroes Read online

  Idy goes on: “What work these artists do at your word! O you will dwell contentedly in the Field of Offerings, my lord, my father, and none shall ever dishonor your name, nor pollute your house of eternity.” He turns away from Ankhtifi to gesture at the painted plaster on the western wall. “You are forever young, and your beloved wife stands here, and your beloved daughters, and your beloved sons, my brothers, here and here and here—and I! Since the days of our forefather Sobekhotep, no one here has ever seen the like of this tomb or its owner.”

  “Since?” Ankhtifi rasps. Is this doubt in his son’s voice? Could it be? Ankhtifi’s next breath catches in his throat.

  But Idy says, “Not even then—not ever, before or after! Did Sobekhotep call himself Great Overlord? Did the god Horus plan out his tomb? Did the god Hemen dictate a spell to guard it? Did any god ever proclaim anyone other than Ankhtifi to be peerless, whose like has never before been seen nor ever will be seen? Who else has ever called himself the hero, the brave?”

  With his staff Ankhtifi strikes a pillar with such force that a little yellow paint scrapes away. It does not matter. The relief carved upon its face will endure for a million years.

  There are murmurs in the dark. Sasobek comes forward with his broom and sweeps the imperceptible flecks from the floor. Sand has come along on Ankhtifi’s sandals, and Sasobek discreetly attends to that, too.

  The falcon stirs in the shadows, rasping claws along the standard upon which he perches when at rest. None sees him, none hears him, but Ankhtifi, and none but he and the falcon is party to the agreement between them.

  Ankhtifi walks to the edge of the burial shaft cut into the center of the floor, like a black pool that gives no reflection, that refuses the light. His staff prods its darkness. “Do you remember Khuu, the wretch of Edfu?”

  “Yes!” the workmen cry, and Idy says, “I do.”

  “Men killed their neighbors, the fields of Edfu were left untended like marshland. This is the state of affairs that those in Thebes would wish upon the entire countryside. They deny our rightful King Neferkare, a child of the House of Khety, and would place their own line of wretches upon the Horus-throne. Horus himself summoned me, Ankhtifi, to sail upstream and free knives from men’s palms and make men embrace those who had slain their brothers.”

  “We remember that day,” says Idy. The others echo him. “You spoke when all of us were silent, when the other lords had lost their speech and could not raise their arms.”

  “I led you to the river,” Ankhtifi says. “It was a little higher in those days.” A little, he thinks, just a little. “Do you remember?”

  “We remember!” the men cry, and, as the falcon—it is full daylight; why is he still here? will the King in his Residence sleep the day through?—makes a noise like the bending of a copper saw, Ankhtifi remembers.

  People were less hungry in those days. Boats were sailed upstream and rowed downstream, rudders set at sterns or quarters with less concern for sandbars and stones. There had been even better years with abundant harvests and fatted cattle and nets burdened with fish of all kinds, but those were all lost to living memory and known only through tales of the days of kings named Khufu and Unas and Pepy, when men were called northward to labor on great pyramids.

  One day—that day—a boat came downstream. Its spars were laid across its beams, but there was no sail or rigging. Eight men manned its oars, a ninth kept his hand at the tiller, and women and many children huddled in its wet bottom, for most of the deck planking had been taken up.

  “Where is the Great Overlord? We have sworn not to take our hands from looms and tiller until we have come to the city where the Great Overlord lives! Our hands bleed! We have passed by Nekhen because he was not there! Is he here in Hefat?” cried the helmsman as the rowers pulled in their oars. Two of them leapt into the river and drove the boat ashore as the children dumped themselves overboard and splashed in the water until their mothers joined them and herded them to land. They crouched in a place of a little shade of a tree, where they looked like twigs broken from its branches. The helmsman said, “Where is the Great Overlord of this district?”

  “The Great Overlord is where he should be, attending to trouble when it comes to his shore,” said Ankhtifi. These were not fit men: like the women and children, their limbs were thin, their stomachs distended, and they wore cloaks of bruises and welts. “Where are you from? Are you people of mine?”

  “Would that we were,” said the helmsman, “or else we would not have trouble to bring to your shore, my lord. We come from Edfu in this old boat that we took from a boatwright before he could break it up for timber.”

  “If the boatwright should come in search of his craft, you might be punished. I may punish you for theft anyway.”

  “He won’t come after it, my lord. He’s dead, but not by our hands. His brother killed him, because he would not pledge his heart to Khuu’s new lord.”

  “New lord!” Ankhtifi exclaimed. “Our lord, Neferkare, still wears the crowns in the Residence at Neni-Nesut, so the administrator of Edfu has no new lord. I, the King’s Seal-bearer, would have been informed if he had flown to heaven.”

  “Neferkare is king in Neni-Nesut and Lower Egypt, and here in the District of Nekhen if you say so, but he is not the king of Edfu any longer,” said the helmsman. “Khuu has declared it.”

  “What manner of abomination is this? Has some vile Lower Nubian sorcerer laid a spell on Khuu’s heart?”

  The helmsman did not know; he had spoken all that he could of the matters of big men, and he, a little man, was tired and hungry and his wife and children were crying on the shore. Ankhtifi learned the helmsman was in fact a potter and, although Hefat had potters already, Ankhtifi appointed him a place where he might build a little house and workshop beside the rest.

  That evening Ankhtifi laid a banquet for these people on the river-bank and another in his pillared hall, where he summoned his sons and his council. They ate choice cuts of beef, drank good beer, ate white bread, and spoke of what the potter had told them.

  The Overseer of Troops of Hefat, Minnefer, said, “The District of Edfu lies at the southern border of our district, and we are very near the northern. It is a long way.”

  “Khuu is like a wound in the foot of the King,” Ankhtifi said. “We are the hands of the King.”

  “And where is the King’s heart but in the Residence at Neni-Nesut,” murmured Minnefer, “far to the north at the entrance of the Faiyum. He might as well dwell in Syria.”

  “He is near the gods and honors them, to ensure that the river floods in its season. That inundation must pass Edfu before it reaches us. Would you have a rebel between us and the first floodwaters?”

  “The vile Lower Nubians lie between us and the first floodwaters, and what ill is that? Unless they’re drinking up the water of the river, to make it rise so poorly as it does nowadays.” Everyone laughed, even Ankhtifi.

  “If Edfu falls,” Ankhtifi said, as his smile withered word by word and the laughter drained out of his voice, “what of Elephantine, to the south? Will it fall to Khuu? Will Khuu then join with the Nubians upstream? Will they together push north with the current and attempt to crush us?”

  “Ha,” said Minnefer, slouching on his stool, “for once in your life you’re too ready for a fight, Ankhtifi! Usually you’re all speech and council. Life is good in Hefat. I am old enough to know. Don’t go looking for death in Edfu. Death is bad anywhere, but worst away from home. A rebel against our King would have to arise in Elephantine for there to be any real trouble. It will not happen.”

  “And did you think a rebel would arise in Edfu?”

  “Oh, no, but you did, Ankhtifi the Brave!” the workmen say, and for a moment Ankhtifi does not know where he is: why is his hall so dark, why has the smell of the roast evaporated, replaced by the taste of dust in his mouth, and why are workmen here in the place of his councilors? Why are these men so thin? Where are his other three sons?

  �
�Khuu was ever a wretch and a rebel,” Idy says. “You could not fail against him.”

  Could he? No, he could not, because the god said so. And suddenly it is as if he stands not on the perfectly clean floor of a nearly finished tomb but on the dusty pyramid mountain that workmen’s picks and chisels have not yet carved out. It is as if the title Great Overlord of Edfu is not yet his, and as if the falcon does not yet follow him in shadows.

  The falcon came to him that night for the first time, when the councilors had returned to their homes and his wife, Nebi, had gone to bed, as had his sons and his daughters. Ankhtifi went out to the hills to watch over this place where life was good. The lay of the land was perfect here, farmland and hill-country each in good measure, shady stands of trees fringing the riverbank. Minnefer had argued the truth: it was good, very much so.

  And as Ankhtifi was thinking these things, a bird descended from the sky. For a moment he thought it was a bat, or a swallow that had lost the way to its nest in the riverbank, but it was too large, and the markings on its face were those of the most perfect falcon Ankhtifi had ever seen. What could it be but a god? Horus or Hemen? One and the same? And if it were not, if it were merely some exceptional bird with most perfect markings on its face—who would know if the Great Overlord Ankhtifi went to both knees and pressed his face to the ground before it? No one, unless the bird might tell its master, in which case Ankhtifi would still be justified indeed.

  So he did, then brought his hands up before his face in a gesture of praise. There was a scent about the falcon, a remarkable odor of sadness and age, as if it had flown over all the incense-terraces of the God’s-Land.

  Ankhtifi bowed again. Even as a lector-priest, he did not know what to say before a god.

  “So,” said the falcon, “here are my hands!”

  Into the aromatic lull that followed, Ankhtifi offered these words: “The King willing, here is my lord!”

  “Are you so certain?”

  “You are god, or you are as god. Such would be my lord, if it is the King’s will.”

  “My hands, with such wisdom you would do well as my heart! I am your King. Behold me, Ankhtifi, He-Who-Shall-Live.”

  Ankhtifi, who was accustomed to receiving no direct command, did as commanded. Ankhtifi, who feared none, worried that his gaze might be too direct or too deferent. But he looked upon this god and saw that it had perched upon a standard. Indeed, Ankhtifi noticed as he drew his eyes away from the ground and up its length, that this standard was set upon nothing, being merely balanced above the rocky ground, as if the weight of the bird upon it were so perfect that the world would forbid it to fall, and if by some device of the god it did fall, the world itself would move aside, lest the standard come to harm.

  And he saw, too, that every feather was as white as alabaster or blue like lapis lazuli, that its feet and beak shone like the green gold of Amau, that its talons were silver, that its right eye was bright as the noon sun, its left eye as bright as the full moon.

  “Well, what is the matter, Seal-bearer of mine? Answer.”

  “I had thought that my lord, my King, was the son of Re but born of a woman’s womb. No queen could have brought you into the world, my lord. You are a god, fashioned in the time of creation.”

  “I emerged from the womb of Iput and six years later began the first of my ninety-four years upon the throne. No king does that without learning a trick or two. When I was a boy, my Seal-bearer Harkhuf—Warden of Nekhen, Lector-priest, not so unlike you—went down to Nubia to fetch me a pygmy from beyond the land of Yam. I worried mightily for this divine dancer from the Horizon-Dwellers. ‘Don’t let him drown!’ I begged Harkhuf, ‘Keep a guard with him night and day.’ ”

  Until this moment Ankhtifi had thought nothing could amaze him more than what had already happened, but the falcon, god or King or both, outdid himself. Ankhtifi had heard of this Harkhuf, and of the pygmy of the Horizon-Dwellers, and of the King, all generations past. But he knew nothing more of the story, so bit his tongue.

  “That pygmy was a marvel, worth more than every resin-tear from every incense-terrace, more than every green nugget from every gold mine in Amau, more than every black log from every forest of ebony. I was so very young, still suckled at my mother’s breast, and even then I recognized his preciousness. What dances he danced! He pleased the gods mightily, my hands. Perhaps that is why they allowed him to work the magic that he knew, the magic of the Horizon-Dwellers that is not known in the land of Egypt or indeed anywhere else in the world. In secrecy he taught me how to live in three years as other men live in one, and thus I sat upon the Horus-throne for four years and ninety. Not until then did I fly to the West.”

  Well, then, that was it, Ankhtifi thought, strangely mollified that this was not his King, Neferkare of the House of Khety, but rather Neferkare Son-of-Re Pepy, the old king of many years ago when kings were still building pyramids of size. This must be his ba, wandering about the world. In any case, Ankhtifi had done very well to bow and would continue to treat the falcon thus.

  “My lord, if my King should permit, I will be your hands, even as I am the hands of the successor of your successors.”

  “Successors!” The falcon laughed, a sound like the bending of a copper saw. “I have no successors; those who have upon occasion occupied the throne in my stead have been little men and one little woman.”

  “Is my King Neferkare so weak that you, his forefather, do not acknowledge him? Should I disavow my allegiance to him? I would not do so with a willing heart, for he is indeed my King.”

  The falcon’s copper laughter turned to a proper hawkish shriek.

  “I am your King Neferkare.”

  “That pygmy knew death nearly as well as he knew life. Not once but ten times have I sat upon the Horus-throne! I have been one more than the Ennead!” And the falcon proceeded to name his old name and recount those of the Great Nine Gods, interspersed with the names of kings, some of which were known to Ankhtifi, others not: “Neferkare Pepy—Atum! Neferka-the-child—Shu! Neferkare—Tefnut! Neferkare Neby—Geb! Neferkare Khenedy—Nut! Neferkare Terer—Osiris! Neferkare Pepysonby—Set! Neferkaure—Isis! Neferirkare—Neph-thys! Neferkare—wait, there is no more. One more than the Ennead.”

  Then his timbre changed, becoming darker or tired. “It is enough now. The tenth time shall be the last time, the perfected time, and for ten times four-and-ninety years I now will reign. Those Amenemhats and Senwosrets and Amenhoteps and Thutmoses and all those Rameseses! They think they will succeed me. Let them pass their lives away as fishermen, as arrow makers, as boys of the horse-stables.”

  Ankhtifi did not think he knew any of these men, and he did not know what a horse was, but he let the falcon speak; what else could he do?

  “But you, Ankhtifi, you are my loyal hands, ready to bind up the wound in the sole of my foot.”

  “I am ready to do anything that pleases you, my lord, my King.”

  “Of course you are; you’ve proven yourself no fool. How much like Harkhuf you are! Go to Edfu with your troops. Tell your councilors and your soldiers that Horus himself dispatches you there. Defeat Khuu, who is a rebel and a wretch and who has stolen much of what belongs to the shrine of Horus-Behdeti, the god of that place. And every third night, from next one forth, bring to me two khenmet-loaves from the altar of Re and an offering of flesh. Do this, and my hands shall be rewarded.”

  “It will be done,” Ankhtifi pledged, bowing to the ground again, and when he raised himself once more, the standard was gone and the falcon was gone, and just the slightest essence of the incense-terraces hung heavy in the still night air.

  He was eager for morning and, having returned home to his bed, tried not to sleep, but sleep he did, and when he awoke he was not entirely sure if it had all been a dream. It did not matter, dream or otherwise, and Ankhtifi thought otherwise. Horus—the King!—had ordered him to Edfu.

  When his council heard this, they did not know properly what to say. Even as Ankhtifi
had never before spoken to a god, awake or dreaming, nor had any of these men spoken to someone who had spoken to a god, not on such intimate terms. So, although they still believed that Ankhtifi was for once in his life too ready to fight, they declared that they would make themselves ready, too.

  Ankhtifi and his sons and all the troops mustered their boats and their spears and their bows and their shields. They stepped their masts and raised their sails, but the wind died.

  “This is,” said Minnefer, looking northward, “an evil sign.”

  “The wind always dies when you most want it,” Ankhtifi said, looking southward. “Take out the lines and we’ll track.”

  So some of the men took out the ropes and pulled the boats from shore, hour by hour, up the river. Each of Ankhtifi’s four sons, all strong young men, took their turn at the lead of the trackers. Ankhtifi prayed to Horus, Hemen, Neferkare, whatever he should call the falcon, to restore the wind, that they might all the sooner be upon the border of the district of Edfu. Shadows and clouds passed along the sky, as if the god Set were up to a storm. A great flock of geese flew up the river. In their wake the wind rose—from the west and dusty, useless and dangerous like Libyan tribes. The geese followed them in the days that they tracked, and even at night as they camped, Ankhtifi could hear their cackle, negeg-negeg-negeg.

  Then, at last, as one evening they tracked past the city of Nekhen, the flock scattered. Ankhtifi sighted a falcon, the north wind returned. The square sails grew rounded and the trackers joyfully leapt aboard. Ankhtifi drew a deep breath, filling his nose with the fragrance of the God’s-Land.

  “Sail,” he said, “even into the night.” The sailors did as he ordered, without argument that there might be shallows the pilots could not see, obstacles the helmsmen could not avoid. He longed to ask them if they disregarded their sailor’s instincts because their noses were filled with incense from the wind—or perhaps it was now upon his own breath and they obeyed him on that account. But he did not ask, for by the time he thought to, they were on the borders of Khuu’s district and one word might give them away to the rebels. Under the cover of night and silence they passed by crumbling villages and wastelands; dark, stinking things floating in the river; piles of grain rotting on the shore; until they came to the fields and the city of Edfu.