The earliest rays of sunlight shafted up from behind the line of rugged peaks that rose from the eastern horizon. Underneath a sky dotted with pink-bottomed clouds, a plain of yellowed grass stretched between the foothills and the city of Per-Pehu’s mudbrick ramparts. Scattered over this otherwise open expanse were copses of cypress, olive, and date palm trees fenced in by thick scrubby bushes.
It was within one of these miniature forests that Bek, together with a troop of his most trained warriors, lay under the cool and shaded cover of the trees. Spots of green paint on their skin, mixed in with stripes as yellow as the blades of grass, further blended them into their surroundings. As Bek had ordered, no one uttered a single word, not even in whispers. It was only the morning birds that sang.
Bek had spent the better half of the past night dispersing the colony’s garrison among the clusters of trees and shrubs, but he felt not the least bit of grogginess. The battle to save his sister, and possibly the entire colony in which he had spent his own life, would take place today. The excitement alone had sparked more than enough restless energy into him. Even more was inspired by the soft gleam of the copper bulb topping his battle mace.
The morning quiet ended with the hoot of an owl flying overhead. The bird gave him a quick glimpse of gray eyes before it disappeared.
Bek recalled the night his sister had claimed to have seen something strange like that. Was it his turn now, or did the swelling tension prompt his eyes into deceiving him?
Something whooshed and landed with a wet piercing noise. One of Bek’s men nearby screamed and croaked a death rattle. Sticking out of the poor youth’s back was a bronze-pointed javelin.
A barbarous ululating cry rose from the far side of the grove. Leaping out of the vegetation behind the Egyptians were olive-skinned men in brief red skirts, hurling missiles like the one that Bek had seen an instant ago. Despite their lack of body armor, these skirmishers wore the same boar-tusk helmets as the Mycenaean soldiers who had marched beside Scylax the other day.
It couldn’t be. Yet it was. The ambush Bek had calculated all this time had been foiled by one Scylax had set up himself!
To his left and right, Bek’s men fell either from javelins or the slashing knives the skirmishers took out whenever they got close. With the advantage of surprise now in Mycenaean hands, the defenders had no chance to strike back. All they could do was flee their cover.
Blowing his copper bugle as a signal to his surviving comrades, Bek led them bursting out of the trees into the open field beyond. Meeting them there was the rest of the garrison, who too had been flushed out of their hiding positions by skirmishers. Now all the Egyptians had been herded into a jumbled mass in the middle of the plain, with the Mycenaean javelin-men still harrying and eating away at the defenders’ flanks with their remaining ammunition.
“Shields outward!” Bek yelled over the clamor. “Form a shell!”
On his command, the Egyptians covered their sides and heads with a turtle’s shell of cowhide shields that bristled with spears. The javelins kept raining on, but at least Bek heard only piercing thunks instead of death cries. He thanked Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of war, for this protective respite.
The shower stopped at last. Bek breathed with relief until he heard the clanking of bronze, the beating of sandal-shod feet on the grass, and warlike hooting in Greek.
Scylax’s phalanx had arrived, clad in bronze and equipped with spears and double-domed shields. But unlike the illustrations in Bek’s scrolls, they did not advance as a rectangle with square faces. Instead, their foremost ranks had men spread out to the left and right to form a concave line, ready to envelop his own troops like the jaws of a crocodile about to chomp down onto a fish.
If Bek had his men weather this out again, they would be crushed between the two prongs of the Mycenaean phalanx. Yet neither could they run away again. That would be cowardice costing them the lives of the whole colony—not to mention the freedom of Bek’s own sister.
The only way out was towards the enemy, hitting their formation right in the center.
Bek brandished his mace with a bloodthirsty roar. “Men of Per-Pehu, charge!”
Like a gigantic rhinoceros built of men, shields, and weaponry, the defenders sprinted together with explosive speed and crashed into the heart of the Mycenaean phalanx, chanting the battle songs of Egypt. Spears stabbed and punctured, axes slashed and cleaved, and clubs dented bronze armor and crushed the bone within the underlying flesh. Blood and spilled organs sprayed everywhere, paving the ground slick and polluting the air with the stench of death.
It was not the first time in his young life that Bek had taken lives before. He and his father had already cultivated a fondness for hunting in the countryside outside Dedenu, whether they were going after fowl, wild boar, deer, or one of the larger animals that threatened the farmers’ crops. Yet never on those hunts had he brought down a creature with the same furious enthusiasm that flamed in his soul today as he hammered away at the Mycenaeans with his mace. Never had he relished the spilling of blood and the cracking of skulls as he did now.
After all, these men were not mere animals doing what animals could not help but do. They were human beings who had the power of choice. And they had chosen to pledge their loyalty to a savage brute. If any creatures in the world deserved to be killed, it was these barbarians. And not even their ridiculous panoplies could save them from Bek’s vengeful wrath.
A bronze spearhead pierced through the flat cowhide of his shield. It was Scylax, the King of Mycenae himself. With one wrench of his arm, he forced the shield out of Bek’s grasp.
“So you’re the son of Mahu?” Scylax cackled. “He couldn’t be bothered to fight me himself, could he? No matter. The tide of battle shall turn again to my favor when I’m finished with you, boy!”
A sharp pain cut across the side of Bek’s torso from Scylax’s next thrust. Twirling like a desert dust-devil, Bek smashed his mace through the shaft of the Mycenaean’s spear, splintering the latter weapon in half. He drew back for another swing until Scylax rammed him with his shield, knocking Bek back-first onto the gore-swamped grass.
The warrior-king threw his broken spear aside and tore out his sword. Bek rolled over the ground to avoid the Mycenaean’s stabs until his adversary stepped onto his torso and pinned him down. Scylax sneered with demonic glee as he prepared his killing blow.
It did not come. Another Egyptian’s ax had cut an inch over Scylax’s head. When the tyrant of Mycenae withdrew to do away with his new attacker, Bek sprung up and glanced across the back of his helmet. The warrior-king stumbled until he toppled onto his knees.
“Not so tough, are you, O King of Mycenae?” Bek taunted.
He had almost sent the mace straight through his arch-enemy’s skull when the latter raised his shield and bashed it against Bek’s weapon, breaking it asunder much as Scylax’s own spear had been split.
Bek had been disarmed. He had no weapon that could parry Scylax’s sword, not even the puny dagger that hung from his belt. No longer did he have hope of slaying the barbarian warlord. And all around him, Bek saw that what was left of his men had whittled down to a paltry minority sprinkled among the Mycenaean fighters. Even if Scylax himself were to fall, he still had enough of his army to butcher the entire Egyptian garrison into extinction.
Now was the time to escape.
And so, blowing a high-pitched shriek through his bugle, Bek ran westward. Over the course of one morning, he and his survivors had transformed from a leopard waiting in ambush, and then a bold charging rhinoceros, into a decimated flock of gazelles leaping away from the triumphant jeers and roars of the Mycenaeans.
Bek, son of Mahu, and heir to the throne of Great Chief of Per-Pehu, had failed his people. And all because he had underestimated his enemy.
But how had Scylax’s skirmishers found him out? If they had not driven his garrison out of hiding, he might have been able to defeat Scylax’s phalanx with the element of surprise alone. There had to be some explanation, even if only the gods knew it.
If anyone Bek knew could divine the answer, it would be his sister Itaweret, High Priestess of Mut.