Desert God

Desert God

A novel of ancient Egypt

By Wilbur Smith

On the following morning I rose before the sun and ate a hurried breakfast before I rode down the mountain to the Admiralty. I spent the entire day there arguing and negotiating with the vice admiral Herakal and his staff, all to very little avail. They offered me eight decrepit biremes which had clearly spent many years as trading ships and had now reached the limit of their useful life. With these they expected me to subdue the Hyksos hordes. I was learning that the Minoans in general were a sullen and difficult people, and extremely hostile toward strangers and foreigners. The only one I had met so far was an exception to this rule was Ambassador Toran. He was so affable and obliging that he could have been born an Egyptian.

That evening I rode back to my new home, spiritually exhausted and discouraged. I hardly tasted the meal of grilled lamb that the cook had prepared for me. However, a flagon of the delicious wine that Toran had laid down in my cellars gave me the strength to persevere and at dawn the next day I rode down the mountain to the Admiralty once more.

Desert God. Photo by Elena

It took all my bargaining skills, and some little assistance from Toran, but by the tenth day I had finally assembled a flotilla of six almost new three-deckers. The vice admiral had reluctantly given me experienced Minoan officers to sail them and hardened mercenaries drawn from among the savage tribes of northern Italia to crew them. These people called themselves Latins or Etruscans. Toran assured me that they were excellent sailors and fearsome warriors. With 120 of these savages aboard each of the triremes I was content that we could match any ship in the Hyksos fleet.

I ordered my new captains to sail around the island to the port of Krimad where Zaras and Hui were anchored with my Sumerian biremes ready for sea. From now onward this would be our main base of operations, from which we could strike at the enemy who were only six hundred leagues to the source: five days’ sailing with favorable winds.