54 BC
The sun burned white hot from its zenith in the sky, yet the cool wind brushing past Cleopatra provided refreshing opposition to its baking wrath, even if the wind did blow dust into her eyes. She flipped the reins that were tied around her waist to keep her two horses galloping at top speed even as they maneuvered between the boulders strewn over the barren plain. The strength of the animals pulling on the reins while she gripped them was all that kept her stable in her chariot despite its constant shaking and bouncing.
Her friend Amanirenas was quickly closing the distance between them from behind. The way the Kushite princess’s horses, both of which she had brought with her from her homeland far up the Nile, were gaining ground, it would only be moments before she wrested the lead from her Kemetian counterpart. Already she had drawn close enough that, even through the billowing clouds of dust, Cleopatra could make out the details of her gold, carnelian, and ivory jewelry, including the twin cobras that reared on her gold skullcap crown. It had to be conceded, what they said about the Kushites’ horses was true. They really were among the fastest in the world.
Ahead of them, the land started to slope down, causing both chariots to pick up speed. The further they rode, the steeper the terrain fell, and the faster their horses ran.
“You still sure it was a good idea not to do this in the hippodrome?” Amanirenas shouted over their horses’ hoofbeats. “You know, like most civilized people?”
“Admit it, Amani, this is more fun!” Cleopatra called back. “Not to mention how the scenery changes more around you!”
Her chariot jolted. The slope had grown precipitous enough that her horses dug their hooves into the crumbly earth, only to slide down even further. Cleopatra had to pull her reins taut to get them to stop before falling to their doom.
They had descended into a deep gulch that cut westward through the desert in a crooked line. Farther down the course of the ravine on its opposite side stood a tall wooden cross with something white dangling from its arms. The way it jangled in the wind, Cleopatra doubted it was a banner.
“We should turn back, Cleo,” Amanirenas said. “We’ve gone out far enough.”
“Hold on, I want to see what’s on that cross over there,” Cleopatra replied.
“All right, but whatever it is, it can’t be good.”
The two princesses unwound their reins and hopped out of their chariots. After tethering their horses to stakes they set in the ground, they walked down the floor of the gulch until they reached the cross. As Cleopatra had suspected, it was a bleached human skeleton that hung from it, the arms pinned to the limbs of the cross in the style of a Roman crucifixion. Some bones had fallen off, and many holes pocked the skull. Cleopatra’s palms and brow chilled beneath her perspiration despite the desert’s midday heat.
“Who could that have been?” Amanirenas asked. “Did someone get put to death out here?”
“I believe it’s a warning against trespassers,” Cleopatra answered. “There might be a tribe here marking their borders.”
“In which case, we should leave.”
“Honestly, Amani, I agree for once.”
Cleopatra had not even turned around when a yipping cackle cracked through the desert’s silence. Behind them swaggered ten men in dusty linen loincloths and goatskin capes, with ostrich feathers waving atop their short, braided black hair. Their skin, tattooed with zig-zagging black lines and triangles, ranged in color from a shade paler than Cleopatra’s honey-brown complexion to almost ebony like Amanirenas. All of them gripped iron stabbing swords that glinted under the sunlight, as did the yellowed teeth between their curling lips.
“You’re right about it marking our border, my lady,” the foremost and most broad-chested of the warriors growled in Kemetian with a guttural foreign accent. “Welcome to the land of the Libu. You two look to be of noble birth from Kemet or Kush.”
“Which means the Roman buyers in Cyrene will bid even more for them,” the warrior to his left said. “They’re such blossoming young beauties, aren’t they?”
Cleopatra grimaced at both his lechery and the prospect of being sold like chattel at a Roman slave auction in Cyrene to the far northwest. “For your information, Libyan, I am Cleopatra Philopator, daughter of Pharaoh Ptolemy the Twelfth of Kemet. And this is my friend Amanirenas. Her father is the Qore of Kush.”
A third Libyan sneered with a nod. “Oh, I’ve heard of you, Princess Cleopatra. They say your father is an inbred Macedonian cur and your mother a native whore!”
Cleopatra did not take kindly to insults against her father, and she took even less kindly to insults against her mother. She unsheathed her curved kopis sword and waved it at the advancing Libyans while baring her teeth like a cornered lioness.
“Also for your information, my mother is no mere ‘whore’,” she said while brandishing her weapon. “Her father was High Priest of Amun over in Waset to the south, and so is her brother now. Regardless of my lineage, you mess with royalty at your own peril!”
“Royalty, you say? Forget about just selling them into slavery, then,” a fourth warrior said. “Imagine the ransom their families will pay for them!”
Amanirenas placed both of her hands on Cleopatra’s shoulders. “Cleo, we should get back to the chariots. There’s ten of them and two of us.”
“I’m afraid we’ve already claimed your chariots,” the foremost Libyan replied. “As you can see for yourselves.”
He gestured toward the chariots far behind them, which already had men like him dragging them up from the ravine walls, with the horses neighing and stamping their hooves in resistance. The blood drained from Cleopatra’s face, leaving it cold.
“Let us make a deal here, princesses of Kemet and Kush,” the lead warrior continued. “You two come with us, and we’ll send you back to your families unharmed…for a handsome price, of course. Otherwise, we’ll have two new skeletons to mount on our cross.”
“No, wait, I see a better use for them if they refuse,” his partner to the left said as he licked his lips. “We’ll keep them alive, but they’ll be ours to do as we please.”
All the Libyans snickered and then guffawed among themselves like ravenous hyenas. Cleopatra’s stomach twisted with nausea. She did not want these unwashed barbarians keeping her and her friend captive to extort their families, but she wanted the Libyans to take advantage of their bodies even less. She would sooner die.
“If you want me and my best friend, you’ll have to fight for it,” Cleopatra snarled. “Come and get us!”
She and Amanirenas stood put with both their swords drawn as the Libyans charged, roaring a battle cry in their native language. One lunged an arm to grab Cleopatra’s throat. She sidestepped and sank her sword to the hilt into his abdominals. A river of dark crimson spurted from the man’s mouth as he bent over and fell, with both his eyes glazed over as they stared back at her. Never had Cleopatra killed a man with her own blade before, and she could not deny the unease clenching her gut.
A second Libyan wrung his muscular arm around her neck and yanked her off the ground. She squirmed and kicked her legs while he squeezed the breath out of her. Cleopatra banged her heel into the barbarian’s shin, and he dropped her, after which Amanirenas finished him off by stabbing his spine.
Two more warriors grabbed the princess of Kush by her arms, with a third tearing the sword out of her hand. Cleopatra bolted toward her friend’s attackers until two of the remaining Libyans blocked her way and slashed at her. One of their blades sliced across her tunic, drawing blood from the skin underneath, and she collapsed on her knees from the sharp pain. One of the Libyans pulled on Cleopatra’s braided hair while the other grabbed her wrist and plucked her sword out from her grip, slipping it under his loincloth’s thong.
She punched the second warrior’s face with her left fist, breaking his nose with a crack of bone. The Libyan reared up with an anguished, nasal holler while his companion tugged harder on her hair. After throwing a hand overhead to pinch her captor’s forearm between her sharp fingernails, Cleopatra pulled herself free of his grasp, snatched her kopis from the other Libyan’s loincloth, and cut through them both while twirling around on her leg. They fell like trees before a woodcutter.
The six Libyans who were left had Amanirenas surrounded and buried beneath their burly bodies. Cleopatra could hear her voice cry out, “Go, Cleo! Don’t worry about me. Run back to your family—tell them to send soldiers after me!”
There were more warriors rushing down the gully, all brandishing swords as they converged on the captured Amanirenas. Even at her most determined, Cleopatra had no hope of fighting all of them.
“I can’t abandon you, Amani!” she screamed.
“Go!” Amanirenas yelled. “Go, go, go!”
And so Cleopatra went. She scrambled up from the gulch and sprinted across the desert, pausing only once to see the barbarians carry away her friend along with their chariots and horses. Tears flooded her eyes, turning the world around her into a watery blur, and streaked down her cheeks. Amanirenas may have told her to leave her behind, but doubtless the brutes would do unspeakable things to her friend while they held her, and then her family would have to pay out of their treasury to free her.
It was all Cleopatra’s fault. They should have stuck to the hippodrome back in Alexandria instead of venturing out into the desert. Her parents would be furious with her, and so would Amanirenas’s. Even worse, Cleopatra had put her best friend, one of the people she cared about most, in harm’s way. All because she thought racing chariots in the desert would be “more fun”.
No, Cleopatra could not let the Libyans ravish or abuse Amanirenas in any way. Not even while she awaited rescue. No, the princess of Kemet had to rescue her Kushite friend as soon as she could, even if she had to do so all alone. Then they could return home that night together, both safe and sound.
As hot as the desert could get during midday, its heat had all but burned out come sundown, leaving chill breezes to sweep across it under a scarlet sky. Cleopatra had spent the whole time following the Libyans’ tracks down the gulch, which eventually opened into a broader fan of earth that sloped down into a lower, sandy plain. Although the evening winds did blow sand and dust over the footprints, none of them had been strong enough to erase them all from sight. Besides, she could make out a black line of silhouetted palm and acacia trees in front of the setting sun, marking an ideal place for even the hardiest desert tribesmen to shelter for the night.
Sneaking toward the oasis, Cleopatra could make out islets of yellow light flickering in front of the palm trees, revealing the domelike forms of hide tents huddled around them. She climbed a low dune near the encampment to get a better view, crouching behind its crest to stay out of sight of any sentries. Even from a distance, she could hear the rude banter of Libyan tribesmen around the campfires and smell the aroma of roasting goat meat. At the far end of the camp, two warriors with spears and cheetah-skin shields guarded a post that had bound to it a woman bedecked with glittering jewelry and a white linen gown. That had to be Amanirenas herself.
Behind the cage slept tethered goats and donkeys as well as the stolen horses with their chariots still attached. Both the princesses still would have had their hunting bows slung on those chariots’ sides, so what Cleopatra needed to do was sneak hers out and shoot an arrow into the darkness to distract the Libyans. Even so, she had to make sure not to wake up and spook the animals. One goat’s startled bleat might blow away her cover.
She glided down the dune, lowered herself to a half-crouch, and skirted the camp on tiptoes. Whenever one of the Libyans looked up from their campfires to gaze in her direction, Cleopatra would take cover behind a rock, bush, or one of the outlying trees until they turned their gaze away. Upon reaching the area where they kept their animals, she headed straight for her chariot from behind. Both her horses lay on their folded legs in deep sleep with the reins still on them.
As Cleopatra unslung her bow and quiver from her chariot, she rocked it by accident, causing a faint creak. One of the horses raised its head with a low nicker, and a goat bleated. She hurried to the spooked horse and stroked its muzzle with her hands, whispering into its ear to calm it down even while her own heart palpitated. In her mind, the princess of Kemet begged Sekhmet, the lion-faced goddess of war, to bless her with success.
Now that she had retrieved her bow, she tiptoed toward the post to which they had bound Amanirenas and drew an arrow along the bow until the string went taut, aiming for the emergent stars in the heavens. She shot, and sure enough, both the men guarding her friend abandoned their positions to get a closer look at where it had hit. Once both tribesmen had moved several paces away, Cleopatra sprang behind the post and sawed the rope off her friend’s hands with her sword.
“I told you to go get help first!” Amanirenas whispered. “You’re going to get us both killed!”
Cleopatra held her finger over her lips. “We can argue later. Follow me.”
One of the two guards had turned his head to face both princesses and pointed his spear at them. “Hey, you! What are you doing without your bonds, princess of Kush?”
Both women sped to their chariots while both Libyan guards pursued them. A sentry’s horn blared from the camp as Cleopatra mounted her chariot and flipped her reins while yelling to wake her horses up. One of the guards’ spears flew at her, and she had to tilt her body back to dodge it. The second thrust his weapon at Amanirenas, but the Kushite princess evaded with a sidestep, tore her bow off her chariot and smacked it into his brow, knocking the Libyan out.
By the time both the princesses of Kemet and Kush were on their chariots and had awakened their horses, all the warriors in the camp surrounded them with murder ablaze in their eyes.
Cleopatra tied her reins around her waist and nocked another arrow to her bow. “This will be like how they hunted antelope in the old days, except more intense.”
Amanirenas followed Cleopatra’s example, grinning as she drew out an arrow of her own. “Now you’re talking, Cleo.”
The two women shouted for their horses to gallop, and so they did, running through the massed Libyan warriors as if they were nothing more than dense papyrus reeds along the Nile. Men screamed as they fell under the animals’ hooves, their bones and weapons crunching beneath, while Cleopatra and Amanirenas both tortured their ranks with arrows. Having trampled a path of carnage through the tribal horde, they rode out into the desert toward the northeast, with the surviving Libyans charging after them.
“I’m sorry I didn’t sound grateful when you cut my bonds,” Amanirenas said. “My family and I owe you everything.”
“You’re too kind,” Cleopatra replied. “It goes to show you, Amani, sometimes risks are worth taking.”
Something whooshed past her, and one of her horses tumbled off its footing with a shrill neigh, bringing the other one down with it and the chariot to a screeching halt. A Libyan javelin had hit the first horse in the shoulder, and the warriors were closing the distance between them and Cleopatra with tireless speed. She flipped her reins frantically to get her animals to move again, but they would not budge.
The Libyans had her entrapped in another ring of men. Like cruel demons from the underworld, they taunted her with bloodthirsty roars while thrashing their swords and spears and stamping their feet on the sand. One of them, whom Cleopatra recognized as the leader of the gang who had attacked her and Amanirenas in the gulch, stepped forth from the horde to approach her with outspread arms. Even his yipping cackle was the same as the one she had heard earlier that day.
“Give up, Princess Cleopatra,” the Libyan leader said. “Your horses have fallen, and we have you surrounded. Only if you surrender yourself will we spare you.”
Cleopatra drew out her sword, used it to cut the reins off her waist, and pointed it at him. “I’d sooner sink to the darkest depths of the underworld!”
“Very well, you’ve chosen to fight to your death. So, fight we shall!”
Cleopatra and the Libyan sprang at one another, their swords shooting sparks as they clashed and scraped against each other. As the rest of the barbarians watched, they hooted out one word which Cleopatra took to be her opponent’s name.
“Masgava! Masgava! Masgava!”
Their blades clanged together many more times in a swirling dance of iron until Cleopatra was able to slash Masgava’s chest, with blood trickling from the cut. The Libyan barbarian growled an unintelligible curse as he swiped back at her. She ducked beneath the blade’s path, but the sword’s pommel came back to crash into her forehead. Specks of bright light flashed in her vision as she fell to the desert floor. Pinning Cleopatra with his foot, Masgava chopped down at her. She parried him, but he had struck with enough force that he brought their blades dangerously close to her face. And he was pushing down on them harder, while her muscles bunched up in resistance.
An arrow pierced the Libyan’s eye, its tip poking out the back of his skull. He toppled over with a death rattle, and Cleopatra rose to her feet to see Amanirenas bursting through the horde on her chariot, mowing down men while shooting more arrows at the rest. Emboldened by her friend’s return, she hacked away at the remaining Libyans with her kopis, their blood spraying all over her.
The princess of Kush extended a hand to her Kemetian friend. “Get on, and we’ll dash out of here.”
Cleopatra jumped onto her friend’s chariot, and together they rode toward the rising moon, escaping a volley of barbarian javelins and leaving the horde far behind. To her surprise, the Libyans did not continue their pursuit, instead retreating in the direction of their camp until they vanished under the horizon. The tribesmen must have found themselves too worn out and battered to keep up the chase.
Besides, what they said about Kushite horses was true. They really were among the fastest in the world. Certainly too fast for the Libyans to catch up.
“Sorry I didn’t come back sooner,” Amanirenas said. “I’d forgotten to look back and see if you were following me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cleopatra said. “Like you said to me earlier, I owe you everything. But why come back to rescue me by yourself so soon? You could have gone back home to call for help.”
“It’s like what you told me a short while ago, Cleo. Sometimes risks are worth taking.”
“Well, that is the last time you and I will ever race into trouble like that, Amani.”
The princesses of Kemet and Kush laughed together as they rode back to Alexandria.
Author’s Note
Although Cleopatra VII’s dynasty, the Ptolemaic dynasty, undeniably descended from one of the Macedonian Alexander the Great’s generals, her mother’s identity remains unknown. My portrayal of her mother as being related to the Kemetian (Egyptian) priesthood of Amun is authorial speculation on my part.