Muwatallis fumed over his losses--almost two lines fallen to Ramesses's tenacious commander when Hatti should have lost none. He would make the Egyptians pay, and when he found that arrogant commander--

The road widened. He burst out from the woods at full speed onto the muddy plain. Hauling on the reins, he turned the horses hard to the left, the chariot's wheels dragging in the heavy muck, slowing.

He cursed the horses, whipping them, blaming them for the mud, the delay, and his losses to Pre, slamming the metal-studded reins savage against their flesh, tearing their flanks open. Roaring with pain, they leapt forward, desperate to escape.

With a lurch, the chariot pulled free, the horses galloping, frantic, panicking, toward the plateau. Muwatallis gazed at the slope, beckoning to him like one of his filthiest whores, his long-awaited triumph so near he could almost taste it. Soon Hatti's chariots would overrun the pharaoh's camp, and even if Ramesses had been warned, he would have had no time to prepare. No, tonight, Egypt would fall to Hatti like wheat to a sickle.

Cracking the reins against his horses' ravaged flanks, Muwatallis bellowed at them, impatient to begin the butchery. Their blood flew back on the wind, splattering against his face. He roared, bloodthirsty, and whipped them harder, ignoring their shrieks of pain, driving them far ahead of the others, straggling behind, stuck in the mud.

He was a god. Nothing and no one could stop him now. He would begin the onslaught alone.

❃

His gaze fixed on the plateau's edge, Ahmen flexed his fingers against the grip of his bow, waiting. To either side of his chariot, the front lines of the Division of Amun spread away, ten lines of archers, one hundred across. Behind them, three thousand five hundred soldiers stood in their companies, battle-ready. All of them hungry and tired.

Khu, his driver, fidgeted, making the horses restive. Ignoring him, Ahmen scanned the edge of the plateau, his instincts prickling. Soon now. He leaned forward. There. The faint drumming of hooves. Bows lifted, arrows nocked, and bowstrings creaked. He drew an arrow, just as the peacock plumes of the Hittite king's horses crested the plateau. Ahmen lowered his bow, incredulous. The man was beyond arrogant. Ahmen longed to shoot, but to kill a king was forbidden, unless one was a king himself. He hoped Ramesses would fire.

Their eyes bulging, Muwatallis's horses scrambled over the crest, plunging, reckless, straight at the bristling lines of Egyptians. Muwatallis hauled on the reins, roaring. His horses turned hard to the right, rearing, gobbets of foam and blood flying from their mouths. One lost his footing in the mud and fell backward, his neck twisting, caught in the harness. Muwatallis jerked on the reins, savage, yanking the horse's neck back. A sickening snap, and the bloodied horse thudded to the ground, dead.

"King of Hatti," Ramesses's voice rang out cold, and imperious, "you are defeated. The gods have abandoned you for your dishonor."

Muwatallis tore the reins from his arms, the wind carrying his foul invectives against Ramesses's mother across the short distance. Ahmen paled. A creak, as Ramesses pulled his bowstring taut.

"Honor?" Muwatallis sneered as he clambered from his stricken chariot. "All you speak of is treachery. It takes no diviner to see Hatti has been betrayed by Kadesh. As Sharruma lives, Amunira's head will be my footstool, his daughter my lowliest slave--" He stopped and scoffed. "Is this all you have to stand against my might? If you are hoping for aid, it will not come. I left your second division writhing in the mud like maggots." His face darkened, sinister, triumphant. "You are alone. Prepare to face your gods, because tonight you will die."

Ramesses murmured an order. A stone flew from a sling, striking Muwatallis behind his ear. The King of Hatti staggered, his legs buckling. He stumbled a few steps, and fell to his knees, slamming face down into the mud. Two soldiers ran out and collected him, dragging him, his feet trailing in the mud, to the camp.

Ahmen glanced at the pharaoh. Ramesses stood utterly still, his attention fixed onthe crest. A muscle in his jaw twitched, a tell Ahmen recognized. Restrained fury.

The ground began to thrum, quiet at first, then louder, vibrating from the drumming of hooves. Ahmen eyed the crest, tense. Shouts. Whips cracking. The roar of thousands. Five, ten, twenty chariots poured over the crest, mad for the slaughter.

Ahmen fired. A spearman scrabbled at his neck, Ahmen's arrow in his throat. A hundred more arrows fled the Egyptian line, followed by another hundred, then another. The Hittites roiled backward, men and horses falling, screaming, maddened by pain. The survivors fled back to the crest, desperate to escape. The arrows continued to fall, relentless. None survived. Hatti's first line had fallen.

Horns blew. Ahmen nodded at Khu, who brought the horses to a canter, leading the archers to the plateau's edge. At the barrier of the fallen, Ahmen quit the chariot and pushed his way through the abandoned Hittite chariots to the edge of the slope. He dropped to his knees, stunned.

Hundreds of chariots pushed up the slope, struggling to reach the crest. In their rush to begin looting, all order had been lost. The slope seethed, reminding Ahmen of a swarm of scarabs crawling over a new dung heap. The second line broke through the choke point, hurtling toward them. His men fired, littering the slope with the dying.

A warning shout. Ahmen slammed down into the mud, dodging a spear. It thudded into the corpse of a fallen horse behind him. Ahmen eyed the spear's quivering shaft, his heart cold. This was no battle. This was nothing less than genocide. No one would escape judgment for their crimes tonight, Muwatallis's dishonor had forced every man, friend, and foe, to become a cold-blooded murderer.

Another spear flew past him, slamming into the dead horse, missing him by a hair's breadth. He rammed an arrow against his bowstring, shoving his qualms aside. To do nothing would mean the end of Egypt. They had no choice. He looked down into the eyes of the man beneath him, and fired.

❃

Shoving his way through the thick undergrowth, Sethi led Pre's survivors through Labwi Wood. Hampered by the bushes and fallen branches, he cursed for the hundredth time. The pharaoh needed Pre up on the plateau, not down here fumbling through a dark forest. He glanced back at his men, their wounds packed with mud, enduring their private agonies in silence.

A scout approached. Sethi slowed and gestured him over. News, at last.

"Tell me everything."

"When I left," the scout answered, breathing hard, struggling to catch his breath, "the Hittites had not yet breached the crest of the plateau where the pharaoh holds. He is using his archers to exploit a choke point in the slope, which has caused an immense crush of chariots as the full force pushes its way up from the rear. I saw men killing their own in their desperation to clear a way forward."

Relief flooded Sethi. His message had arrived in time. Ramesses might be in control for now, but it would not last. Pre had not taken down enough men to offer any true advantage to Amun. Once Amun ran out of arrows, the Hittites would abandon their chariots and climb over their dead to meet the Egyptians face to face, crushing them with their sheer numbers. Gesturing to the scout to fall in, he pushed on through the woods, his thoughts organizing.

"And what of Muwatallis?" he asked.

"I did not see his chariot," the scout replied, "although it is very difficult to see in this accursed near darkness. He may be there, he may not, I cannot say for certain."

Sethi grunted, resigned.

"The slope is a gorge," the scout continued, his hands moving, describing the terrain. "Attack is only possible from the rear or by joining Amun at the crest. At this pace, you will reach the base of the slope in less than an hour. From there, it is a little more than half an iter up the slope to where the pharaoh stands. Further along the eastern side of the plateau, there is a goat track, but to reach it, your men would have to run out onto the plain."

Sethi climbed over a fallen tree and slipped on something slimy. Pain lanced into the back of his thigh. He yanked it free from the shaft of a broken branch. Blood gushed. He smeared mud into the wound and pressed on, ignoring the pain.

"Are there any advantages we could use to pull the force apart at the rear, separate them?" he asked, his thoughts returning to strategy.

The scout shook his head. "Once you leave the woods, the terrain is open all the way to the plateau."

Sethi considered. To attack a force so much greater in number on an open plain would be madness. If he could not engage the Hittites from the rear, then he needed to get his soldiers into the camp, by the goat path. A thought occurred to him.

"If there is only open plain ahead, how did you manage to gather so much information about the battle?"

The scout glanced at him. "I used the forest's cover to get as close to the slope as I could."

"And how close was that?" Sethi demanded, sensing an opening.

"Close. Where the plain and the forest meet, it is near to the base of the slope. I could have reached out and touched the wheels of the chariots before me. The undergrowth is much thicker there than here."

Slapping aside a thorny bush, Sethi wondered how that could even be possible. He stopped, and stared at the undergrowth. The strategy came to him, its simplicity, stunning. Yes. It would do. He pushed on, a smile darkening his lips. Tonight, Pre would have her revenge.