The Horus Road Read Free

waiting for them above the watersteps with Hor-Aha and Ankhmahor. Aahmes-nefertari was there also, acutely conscious of her husband’s stiff stance and the expressionless set of his features as he watched the boat nudge the steps and the ramp slide out.
    Ramose was the first to disembark. Climbing the steps, he strode to Ahmose and extending his arms in a gesture of submission and reverence he bowed. Ahmose beckoned him forward and then pulled him close. “My friend,” he said quietly. “Welcome home. I do not know yet how I may repay the debt to you that has accumulated since my father’s day. Nor can I describe the pain your mother’s execution caused me when I recovered enough to hear about it. I am well aware of how much agony a man can suffer when he must choose where to place his loyalty and you have been forced to make that choice too often. I pray that never again will such a bitter cup be offered.” Ramose smiled sadly.
    “It is good to see you restored to full health, Majesty,” he replied. “With your permission I must go at once to the House of the Dead and make sure that my mother is being correctly beautified.” Turning to Aahmes-nefertari, he took the hand she offered. “You are not yet wearing a commander’s armbands,” he said lightly, and she laughed and hugged him impulsively.
    “Dear Ramose!” she exclaimed. “In spite of our common grief it is wonderful to see you smile.”
    The two Princes had been standing silently behind Ramose and as Ahmose’s attention became fixed on them they knelt on the paving. Pressing their foreheads against the stone and sweeping the ever-present grit into a tiny pile before them, they sifted it over their heads in a gesture of repentance and submission. Ahmose watched them for a moment, one eyebrow raised. “They have redeemed themselves, Ahmose,” Ramose said in a low voice. “You spoke of the distress of divided loyalties. They have made their choice. They are here, not in Het-Uart. I beg you …” Ahmose held up a peremptory hand.
    “Do you realize,” he said to their dusty skulls, “that the woman standing beside me has shown more courage and performed more deeds of desperate loyalty than either of you? That if you had managed to find one drop of such bravery in your pale and watery blood my brother would still be alive? If you had warned him, Kamose would still be alive!” he shouted, bending over them. “But no! You closed your mouths! You made no choice! You recoiled from the responsibility and slunk away like a couple of hyenas! Amun’s curse on you for the cowards that you are!” He straightened and for a moment his eyes wandered to the second boat, now moored, where the servants crowded watching the scene avidly. “Well, get up,” he ordered more calmly. “That is, if your feeble spines will hold you. Tell me what I am supposed to do with you.” Slowly they came to their feet and bowed.
    “Majesty, you are correct in all you say.” It was Mesehti who answered him. “We listened to Meketra and the others and did not take our knowledge to the Osiris one. Yet we did make a choice. We chose to withdraw. We could not support our fellow nobles although we owed them the fidelity of our common station, but neither could we betray them. If we erred, it was not through cowardice but from uncertainty.”
    “Uncertainty,” Ahmose repeated. He sighed. “Uncertainty dogged Kamose from the start and his greatest uncertainty was always the true temper of his Princes.” Suddenly he swung to his wife. “Aahmes-nefertari, you have the right to speak on this matter, you know. You were compelled to risk your life on the training ground. You stood and watched the executions. You have been harmed and changed. What do you advise?”
    She looked at him, startled both by his generous public acknowledgement of her importance and his sensitivity to the turmoil that had raged and then subsided in her ka. All at once she knew that the substance of her