"What is it, Mahu? Don't cry, all will be well. Are you wounded?" he asked, seeing the bandage on his head.
"O, sire, never mind me—we must save you!"
"Save me from what?"
Mahu briefly told him what had happened and exclaimed, falling at his feet again:
"Come, come quickly! The chariots are waiting at the garden gates. We shall manage somehow to go through the desert to the river lower down, where there are no ambushes, take boats and in another five days be in the loyal provinces of the North."
"Run away?" the king asked, as calmly as before.
"Yes, sire," Mahu replied. "Tuta's rabble may be here any minute. I can't answer for your life."
"No, my friend, I cannot. If I run away, what will happen here, in the holy province of Aton? Endless war because of me! I have begun with peace and I shall end with war? I say one thing and do another? No, I have had enough of this shame. And from whom should I run away? From Tuta? But what can he do to me? Take away my kingdom? Why, this is just what I wish. From the rebels? And what will they do to me? Kill me? Let them—death is better than shame. Ankh-em-maat, He-who-lives-in-truth, is to die in falsehood? No, in death I shall say what I have said all my life: let there be peace...."
He stopped suddenly and listened; the blast of trumpets and the beat of drums were heard in the distance. There was a panic in the palace and in the gardens.
The centurion of the Hittite amazons, the king's bodyguard, ran up the stairs shouting: