Queen of the Dawn: A Love Tale of Old Egypt

by H. Rider Haggard

“The Scribe Rasa!” exclaimed a woman’s voice, that of Nefra who, seeing the fall of the horses, had come from her tent, accompanied by Ru, to learn its cause. “Where did you leave the Scribe Rasa, Priest?”

“Cease from questions, Niece,” broke in Tau. “Can you not understand that the force we sent some days ago to rescue a certain garrison has been ambushed and that by some accident this brother has escaped to bring us tidings. Or perchance,” he added, as a thought struck him, “Apepi’s army has moved from its defences to attack us from the south presently when the sun rises.”

Then he gave certain orders. Trumpets blew, captains ran up, men by the thousand, still yawning, took their appointed places; all the awakened camp burst into active martial life.

Meanwhile, not so very far away, a desperate battle raged. The five and twenty thousand of the Shepherds, attackers who thought themselves attacked, hurled themselves upon the five thousand Babylonians who had marched into their midst. The Babylonians, being alert and well officered, strove to cut a path through the Shepherds, aye, and did so, slowly, losing many men as they struggled forward. Squadrons rushed on them, dimly seen in the moonlight, and were beaten back. There was charge and countercharge. Horses screamed, men fell and groaned out their lives.

The moon grew dark, but still the battle went on in the twilight that precedes the dawn, when it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. The light of day began to gather and by it the captain of the Babylonians saw that he could advance no more. Nor could he fly, for the cloud of Apepi’s Horse was all about him. Therefore he made a square of those who remained to him, perhaps two thousand or more sound men and many wounded, and gave orders that none must surrender, since this was a fight to the death for the honour of Babylon.

When Apepi’s captains in the gathering light perceived with how small a body they had to do, they were dismayed who thought that all this while they had been attacking the flank of the Babylonian host in the darkness. And now the dawn had come and their opportunity was gone; they had failed in their mission and how could they face Apepi with such a tale? In the fighting they had seized prisoners, some of them wounded. Those men they questioned. Under threat of death by torment, or with beatings, from some of these they drew the truth that this was but a force of Babylonian skirmishers sent to relieve an outpost which they were bringing back with them to the army.

“Who, then, is the man that sits in a chariot among the horsemen?” asked Apepi’s captain.

The prisoners answered that they did not know, whereon he ordered them to be flogged a while, and then repeated his question. Thus he learned that this lord in the chariot was none other than Khian the Prince whom he himself had been ordered to capture when he was escaping from Egypt, for though the prisoners gave only the name of Rasa the Scribe, well he knew that Rasa and Khian were the same man.

Then that captain saw light in the midst of a great darkness. He had failed, it was true; he had not fallen upon the flank of the army of Babylon at this hour of dawn, or thrown it into confusion and panic, as he had hoped to do, but instead had become engaged with a petty force of which the destruction would help Apepi not at all. But now he learned that with that force was one whose capture would mean as much, or more, to Apepi as a great slaughter of the Babylonians. Instantly he made up his mind; he would not try to attack the army of the great King; it was too late. No, he would destroy these horsemen and take the Prince Khian, living or dead, as an offering to Apepi, hoping thus to assuage his wrath.

Instantly he gave orders and the attack began. Being mounted, neither side had bows and now javelins were few. Therefore the fray must be fought out with swords. The Babylonians had picketed their horses in the centre of the square or given them to the wounded there to hold, turning themselves into foot-soldiers. Moreover, by command of their general, with hands and stones and cooking vessels they were heaping the desert sands into a bank which, with two thousand men or more labouring at it for their lives, rose as though by magic, for the sand was soft and easy to handle. At this bank the Shepherds charged from every side. But the Babylonian square, set on the crest of a desert sand wave, was small, for its general had drawn up his men three deep, each line standing behind the other. Therefore only a few of the clouds of Apepi’s horsemen could come at them at once, and at these the Babylonians stabbed with their swords, or cut at the horses’ legs as they scrambled up the sand slopes, laming them, or causing them to scream in agony and rush away.