The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  Next to those, Kemni was utterly ordinary. And yet he was the emissary of the Great House, the son of Horus, the lord of Upper Egypt. And he was losing patience.

  One night, after yet another Ariana had come and wrung him dry and gone, with some little commentary on how many of her sisters waited their turn with the man whom their mistress reckoned beautiful, Kemni raised his aching body in his bed, and struck the cushions with his fist. “Enough,” he said. “Enough of this waiting. Tomorrow I speak with the king, or never speak with him at all.”

  There was no one to hear, unless it were the ghosts and the night spirits. But Kemni had sworn an oath to himself. He meant to keep it.

  He slept deeper than he had thought to sleep, and woke later, well past dawn, with the sun slanting bright across the tumble of the bed. His breakfast was waiting as always, his clothes laid out, and no servant to be seen. One would come if he called, but he had made it clear long since that he preferred to endure his mornings alone.

  There was someone waiting for him when he came out, an elegant personage who could hardly be a servant, not with that lofty manner and those golden armlets. He carried a staff of ivory topped with golden horns, cradling it as if he cherished it. As no doubt he did; for it marked him a king’s messenger.

  Perhaps, after all, the night spirits had heard Kemni’s vow and chosen to convey it to those who might fulfill it. He greeted the messenger with courtesy, and with such grace as he had. It fell short of perfection: the man’s lip curled ever so slightly.

  Kemni shrugged, making no effort to hide it. He was a fighting man and a prince’s friend, not a great lord. Such as he was, he was. His king had judged him fit for this errand. It was for the king of Crete to make a like judgment; not for this underling. For that, however haughty his bearing, he was.

  The messenger sniffed audibly. “You are summoned,” he said baldly, without embellishment, “to the king’s presence.”

  Kemni nodded. “Lead me,” he said with equal simplicity.

  ~~~

  Even so early, the king was about his duties, seated in the hall of justice. That hall, for this palace, was almost small, on a throne made of the great curving horns of bulls. Its seat was woven of their hides and spread with their skins, red and white and black, spotted and pied and subtly brindled. Another was set beside it, and the queen sitting in it, that child-small woman with skin like cream and beautiful rich breasts, and hips as broad as her waist was tiny. She was not young, but that mattered little. Her beauty was of a sort which would never fade, merely grow finer as she grew old.

  He could see Ariana in her, in the wide bright eyes and the delicate features. She smiled at him with warmth that he had never looked for in a queen. He blinked, dazzled.

  It came to him, rather slowly, that he had come here to speak with the king, not to gape at the queen. The king did not seem disturbed by the lapse. He was smiling slightly, neither as warm nor as welcoming as his queen, but amiable enough, as kings went.

  He rose, which was a great honor. One of the servants who stood about, the inevitable attendance of kings, hastened to fetch a chair. It was lower than the king’s, Kemni noticed, but not so very much lower. He was being accorded great honor.

  He acknowledged it with an inclination of the head. Here, after all, he was not merely Kemni the commander of a hundred; he was the voice of Egypt in this foreign kingdom.

  When he had sat and been given wine in a golden cup shaped like the head and horns of a bull, he sipped the rich sweet vintage and waited for the king to speak. As he waited, he took in the room in quick glances. It was a high and airy place for all its smallness, the walls painted with images of sea and sky. Except for the two royal seats and his own carved chair, there were no furnishings, only a bank of lamps and a painted image: one of the mother goddesses that he had seen throughout the palace. They all looked like ladies of the court, dressed in the height of fashion, their waists cinched tight with golden girdles, their faces painted with white and rose, carnelian and malachite. And they all wielded the serpents that were sacred here as in Egypt, brandishing them like living swords.

  The goddess in this hall of private audience wore a skirt embroidered with gold and silver, and a vest studded with jewels. Her smile was sweetly serene, her serpents seeming almost to hiss, so lifelike had the sculptor made them. Her face was Ariana’s face, and the face of the queen. But then, they were the living goddess. That much Kemni had come to understand.

  The king spoke as Kemni’s eyes rested on the goddess’ image. He spoke of small things: greeting, welcome, inquiry as to Kemni’s comfort in his palace. Kemni answered as one does in courts, with patience hard learned, and suitable inconsequentiality. It was a dance, each step prescribed, a graceful circle that came round, at last and at the king’s whim, to the purpose for which Kemni had been sent here.

  He tried not to look relieved when the king shifted the conversation to Egypt and its bearded invaders. Often in this dance of courts, it might be days before a king came to the point. This king of Crete was almost precipitous; and well for Kemni’s peace of mind that it was so.

  “My captain and my sister’s daughter tell me,” said Minos, “that the north of Egypt grows restless under the Retenu.”

  “It would seem so,” Kemni said: with a spark of interest that Iphikleia was, it seemed, of higher rank and family than he had thought. “The south—Upper Egypt—feels a turning of the tide. But not enough. We can muster armies, and more if the lords of Lower Egypt will join with us, but the Retenu are strong. And they have chariots.”

  “It might serve you to muster your own force of chariotry,” Minos said.

  Kemni nodded. “Yes. Yes, I had been thinking the same. But if we’re to acquire herds of horses and asses to pull them, or train men to drive them, we need time. More time than any king is minded to spare. I suppose a few of the northern lords may have taken up the art; we can search and find them, and try to win them over to us. But to win this war, my king believes that we need something the enemy doesn’t have.”

  “Ships.” Minos sat back stroking his rich curled beard. “Tell me what you could do with ships. You can’t fight a sea battle with men in chariots. There’s no reasonable way to spirit your armies to the sea, where our ships could take them on and sail up the river into your enemy’s cities.”

  “But,” said Kemni, “if we brought our armies down the river in our own boats, and you sailed up it with your fighting ships, we could crush the enemy between us.”

  “That is supposing that the enemy would sit still to be crushed,” Minos said.

  “He is sure of his supremacy,” Kemni said. “And he has no fleet.”

  Minos frowned. “It would be a great undertaking. We would have to fight our way through the Delta. Memphis would be too far, too hard to win. Avaris . . .”

  “Avaris is the king’s own place, and the heart of his kingdom. If we took that, we would have Lower Egypt.”

  “So easy? So simple?”

  “We did it before, half a score of years ago. But we lost it, because we had to defend our backs. This time we are prepared for that. And, lord king, consider. For all his power, the enemy is few. He rules with his chariots and with the force of his weapons. Cut off his head, the city and its king, and cut open its belly—its bond to Asia—and the rest will wither and fall away. Even those who won’t fight for us against the Retenu would rise up with good will and help to destroy their remnants.”

  “You hope for a great deal,” said Minos. “Much relies on fate, and on the element of surprise. Apophis may not believe when he hears of twin fleets sailing against him—but if that disbelief passes too quickly, we could lose the war.”

  “Victory is never absolutely certain.”

  “Indeed.” Minos regarded Kemni with a level dark stare. Just then, and vividly, Kemni saw Ariana in him. “Tell us what we stand to gain from this. What Egypt gains is obvious. Why should Crete shed its blood for Egypt’s sake?”

 
Kemni did not answer that at once. He needed to find the words, and then to frame them with care, so that this king would hear and understand. He had not been having great difficulty with this language—Naukrates and Iphikleia had taught him well—but he had to be certain that the words he chose were the right and proper ones.

  At length he said, “Egypt gains more. That I cannot argue. But for Crete, there is the friendship of the reunited kingdoms, and the wealth, and the great power that Egypt holds. My king is prepared to offer you portions of his own tribute, shares in his mines of gold and copper and precious silver, and a part of his trade with the nations of the world. Crete has great power on the sea, riches and strength that all the world knows—but Egypt has more, on land and on the water. My king offers you a part of that.”

  “Tempting,” Minos conceded. “Very tempting indeed. Still, gold may be poor payment for the lives of all our young men.”

  “That is a risk you take,” Kemni said. Probably he should not have said it, but he never had been able to prevaricate.

  “So,” said Minos. “Go now, and take your pleasure as you will. I make you free of the palace and the kingdom. Whatever you ask, it shall be given you. I have so commanded it.”

  As dismissals went, it was thorough and strikingly gracious. Even if Kemni could have mustered arguments against it, he was not inclined to try. He bowed as if to a great prince of Egypt—though not quite as to his king—and did as he was bidden.

  IX

  An envoy’s task was to wait, even more than to speak for his king. Kemni waited, he thought, with reasonable patience. He played as he had before, danced the dance of courts, and took the freedom of the island. Everything was as it had been, but the king’s word eased his way remarkably. All doors were open to him, and people gave him anything that he asked. If there was a delicacy he favored, it was given him without his asking. He had his mornings with the chariot, and his nights with what seemed an inexhaustible succession of Arianas. In between, he found ample to amuse himself, if he was minded to be amused.

  The thing that Naukrates had come back for, the great festival of the Bull, came at the time of the new moon. Perhaps preparations had been in train since Kemni arrived, but he had not known to look for them. But there was no escaping the sudden inrush of people into city and palace, the gathering of ships in the harbor, and the burgeoning of the market to fill, it seemed, every square and corner of the city.

  Three days before the festival, they brought in the bulls. Priests and priestesses had gone out days since, found the herds where they wandered amid the tumbled hills and crags of inland Crete, and called on the gods and on the Mother Goddess to choose the best and the most holy. Those, they had separated from the herds, brought together and driven down toward the sea.

  People had been waiting for them since before dawn. The way that they ran was old, and had been hallowed to the bulls since the first king sat his throne in Crete. All along it, people waited, dressed in festival finery, with garlands and banners, music and song and the sound of laughter that seemed, more than any other, the truest music of this kingdom.

  Kemni came down into the city in a great crowd of the younger courtiers. They had insisted that he keep them company—for luck, they said laughing, because he was a foreigner and a king’s messenger, and the gods would bless them for his presence. He had his doubts of the gods’ care for his mere and mortal self, but he was eager to see the bulls. He was glad enough to be led and danced and cajoled out of the palace and toward the city, and thence to the far side, where a steep and winding road made its way down from a rocky height. It seemed rather too narrow and ill trodden to support the coming of the great bulls of Crete, but everyone was waiting along it, and fully expecting the bulls to appear.

  His companions vanquished a flock of rival lordlings to seize a coveted place: where the road began to level, just before it entered the outskirts of the city. The city wall was farther on. Here were little fields and farmsteads, taking advantage of what tillable ground there was. They were set well to either side of the narrow road, with ample room for crowds to gather—and for the bulls to run.

  Kemni had seen on the way there, how wise people kept to the roofs and balconies of the houses. But here there was no high ground. They were all level with the road, and Kemni was in the front, thrust there in the passage through the throng.

  He wondered, briefly and unbecomingly, if this might not be a plot: to dispose of the Egyptian king’s emissary at the horns and hooves of the sacred bulls, and so free King Minos from the need to consider his proposal. But that was not like anything Kemni had heard of Minos. The Cretan king was a wise man, and just, and as honest as a king could afford to be.

  It seemed a long time before Kemni felt a shaking underfoot. He thought little of it at first, until the hum of conversation faded, and silence spread in a long wave through the gathering of people.

  Now he could hear it: a low rumbling, and a sharp cry that must be one of the drovers urging the bulls onward. With breathtaking suddenness after so long a wait, the first great shape breasted the hill. Its horns were vast, nigh as long as a man. Its hump loomed against the sky. It plunged down the slope, a white bull patched with red, like foam shot with blood. Its brothers thundered in its wake.

  Any man of sense would have stayed well back from the herd and let it pass unhindered. But there were fools in every crowd, and sacred idiots. These were young men, and sometimes a slim bare-breasted girl, running alongside the bulls, leaping to touch their sweating sides, to tug at their tufted tails. When one touched a bull, he cried out—or she: “Gods’ blessing! Gods’ blessing on all my kin!”

  Kemni was not a fool. He was not mad. He was not even Cretan. And yet, as the leader of the bulls passed him in a great pounding of hooves, in snorting and in the strong musky reek of his hide, Kemni was running, running like a mad thing, light as air and too utterly terrified to stop.

  The bulls took as little notice of him as they had of anyone else. And yet those horns were as sharp as spears, and those hooves could trample a man to a bloody pulp. All he needed was to slip, or to misjudge his step.

  Still he ran. The first of the bulls had passed him. He was in the middle, and in their midst, running between two great snorting beasts, one spotted with red, one with black. The wind of their passage bore him up. He could run, he thought, forever, sustained by the strength of the bulls.

  He reached out easily, because it seemed to be time. His hand brushed a hot damp hide. The bull did not flinch or shift away. He let his hand rest there, running light, running easy. He said nothing. The gods’ blessing lay on him like the sun’s warmth.

  It came to him, distantly, that he was trapped, surrounded by bulls. While he ran with them, he was safe enough. If he flagged or faltered, they would not stop for him, nor move aside.

  He must run, then, and trust in the gods to protect him. They had brought him here. They could keep him safe.

  He had passed into the city, through the gate with its echoes and its sudden dimness. The throngs were thicker here, hanging from roofs and balustrades, sometimes dropping among the bulls, and always leaping to touch, or to run with them.

  But only Kemni had run so far, or stayed with the bulls so long. The walls of houses closed in, then drew away again: a square of the city, narrowed and thick with people, but the sky was wider overhead.

  His breath sobbed in his throat. His lungs were afire. His knees dared not buckle.

  A new madness struck him, a thought that he almost feared to think. But it pricked at him. It tempted him. His eye slid toward the great ivory sweep of a horn, and toward the swell of a hump. This was not a horse—there was no level place to rest.

  Iphikleia had done it. She had chosen a gentle heifer. This was a wild bull. And yet . . .

  Just as he had entered the herd, he watched his hand reach out, grasp a horn, let the force of the bull’s advance swing him onto the neck behind the heavy head. There was room there, just, between hum
p and horns, a place to rest if one were truly mad.

  And so he rode the whole long way from the city to the palace of Minos on the neck of a black-spotted bull, no more or less unwelcome than a bird perched on that vast swell of back. People stared, he supposed. He did not try to see.

  Then at long last the world went still. The bull stood, sides heaving, in a wide court.

  Kemni slid from his neck, staggering as his legs found their strength again. The bulls were not all motionless. Some fretted, tossing their horns, stamping, uneasy to be confined within walls.

  He walked away from them unscathed. There were people, of course there were. He did not want them to stare so, or to murmur; only to let him pass, find a quiet place and collapse and find his breath where he had long since lost it.

  But that grace was not granted him. He had committed sacrilege, he supposed. Could they put to death a foreign king’s envoy?

  The eyes on him, once he gathered his wits to notice, did not seem appalled. They were more—speculative? Curious? Amazed?

  Some of them he recognized. Iphikleia, of course. Ariana—the Ariana, and an escort of bright-eyed wicked girls whose faces he remembered rather well. Kemni did not forget a face, particularly if it had hovered close to his through the whole of a night.

  Ariana looked him up and down. “Beautiful man,” she said, “you do know how to make an entrance.”

  “I suppose I’ll die for it,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “If the bulls chose to let you live, it’s not for any human creature to question.”

  Kemni felt the breath rush out of him, and most of his strength with it. Firm small hands held him up: Iphikleia, no more gentle than she ever was, but blessedly there. She kept him from shaming himself. She knew; she had done it herself. “Go and rest,” she said. “When you wake up, maybe you’ll be sane again.”

  “I’m sane now,” he said. “Whatever I did—the gods—”