The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  He was riding straight for the line of chariots and people ahorse and afoot. His eyes, Kemni realized somewhat slowly, were fixed on him—on the chariot that he drove, with Iry standing in it, sometimes touching him, sometimes swaying away from him.

  They were ordinary eyes, not falcon-eyes like the lord Khayan’s: dark, rounder than Egyptian eyes, and bare of paint. There was nothing ordinary about their expression. They were burning with resentment.

  Yes, it was that. It was not as strong as hate. Kemni met it blandly, offering no fear, and no anger, either.

  The other’s chariot veered suddenly, hard, and so fast it teetered on a single wheel. Just at the point of falling, it rocked back onto both wheels, and fell in beside Kemni’s own.

  There was a pause. In it, so quiet it seemed like a whisper after a crash of thunder, Iry said, “Good morning, milord Iannek. I trust it finds you well.”

  The young fool opened his mouth, then shut it again, gaping like a fish. Iry had a look Kemni knew well. She meant to provoke this interloper, and she was utterly bereft of mercy.

  The young lord Iannek gathered such wits as he had, and let them loose in bluster. “Who is that with you? Who does he think he is?”

  “This is a man I trust,” Iry said.

  “You are supposed to trust me!” Iannek cried.

  “Trust is earned,” Iry said austerely.

  “What has he done to earn it?”

  “For one thing,” Iry answered, “he doesn’t drive a chariot as if all the black gods were after him.”

  That stopped Iannek for a moment—not long, but Kemni gathered that even that much was extraordinary. “He drives like a blind and toothless old woman.”

  “He drives like a sane man,” Iry said. “And that is why I trust him. Do stop glaring, Iannek. You’ll give yourself a headache.”

  Kemni discovered that he was holding his breath. It was a true measure of Iry’s power here, that the foreigner, even as young and headlong as he was, did not sweep out his sword and strike her for the words she said to him. He did not precisely bow his head to her, but he shrank a little, and he said in slightly more subdued tones, “Iry, lady, you know I only want to keep you safe.”

  “You can’t do it by smothering me. Now be sensible and endure this charioteer of mine, because he is not going away. And,” she added, “if I find that you have so much as looked at him amiss, I will give you cause to regret it. Am I understood?”

  “Too well, lady,” Iannek muttered.

  “Good,” said Iry, taking no notice of his reluctance. “Now be a proper guardsman and keep me company, since you insist on it. You can tell me stories.”

  Kemni swallowed a groan. The kind of stories such a fool would tell would be tedious indeed.

  But Iannek was too sulky to be amusing. He drove beside them in silence, conspicuously slow and cautious, though his horses fretted at the pace. He had lovely hands on the reins, Kemni noticed with a stab of envy. They were strong but light, with a clean, sure touch. Kemni would have given much to be so skilled.

  “He really is a guardsman?” he asked under his breath.

  “Really,” she answered, not particularly quietly. “He’s the lord’s brother, and a scapegrace—but he means well, in his way. The lord appointed him my guardian hound. Not, mind, that he ever asked me. I would have had something to say of it if he had.”

  “I rather think you have said something of it,” Kemni said dryly. “So that’s what I’m actually doing here. I’m being flung in the lord’s face.”

  “Among other things,” she said. She did not ask him if he minded. Nor had he expected her to.

  ~~~

  The Lower Kingdom was a different place from the vantage of a chariot. People kept their distance, and kept their eyes lowered—except those few so bold as to fix a burning glance on the lord who rode so high above them. No, there was no love here for the foreigner. If there was resignation, it veiled a deeper resentment.

  They had been telling a story in the markets of Memphis, one that Kemni knew was pure invention, but people told it as truth. Maybe, in its way, it was—as tales of old gods were truth, because they drove straight to the heart of things.

  In the story, the king in Avaris had taken it into his head to provoke the king in Thebes. He was bored, maybe, or idle; or his young men were spoiling for a fight. Therefore he sent a message to the Great House in Thebes: “The roaring of the riverhorses in your gardens is keeping me awake of nights. Silence them, if you please, or know the force of my displeasure.”

  The king in Thebes, the taletellers said, was not pleased to receive so high-handed and so manifestly false a missive from a king whose authority he had never accepted; who slept, when he slept, many days’ journey away. Therefore, he had sworn perpetual enmity with the king in Avaris, and determined to destroy him.

  That was a tale without an ending. Sometimes it was told of the last king, of Kamose who was gone, and who had fought Apophis but failed to win back the Lower Kingdom. More often now it was told of Ahmose, as a sort of prophecy. People wanted it to be true, perhaps even prayed for it.

  Kemni had much to tell when he came back again to the Bull of Re. If he came back. He had to remember that. This hiding in plain sight was a dangerous thing.

  The young lord Iannek did not take kindly to a rival for Iry’s affections. And that was what it was, Kemni was certain.

  They traveled together that day in barbed amity. Come evening, the lord’s riding paused in one of the lord’s own holdings, one that had been under the sway of the Retenu since the beginning, and had no remnants of its old masters to vex his peace. Most of the servants here were Retenu, whether of the foreign kings’ people or other cities and nations of Asia. Only those who tilled the fields were Egyptian; and they kept their own counsel.

  This was a rich holding, with wide fields of barley and of emmer wheat, and fields of flax, and a village of spinners and weavers. The lord meant to linger a day or two, to inspect the fields and establish his sway over the people, before he went onto Avaris, which was less than a day’s journey distant. He had, on his arrival, sent messengers there, and received messengers with whom he was closeted for a goodly while.

  They were not, Kemni hoped, informing him that the Mare’s priestess had taken a spy for a bodyguard. Certainly no one came to seize him, nor did anyone take much notice of him.

  Except Iannek. Kemni took a late daymeal in the stable with Pepi and the young Egyptian groom. He might have dined with Iry, but he left that pleasant duty to Iannek. Or so he thought. Iannek, it seemed, had other intentions.

  The young lord accosted him as he went out into the stableyard to relieve himself. The beer here was good, and he had drunk a good quantity of it.

  Iannek caught him there, clapping a hand to his shoulder. He whirled, utterly without thought, and had the young fool by the throat before he could defend himself.

  By the light of the torch that illuminated the yard, Kemni recognized his fellow bodyguard. He drew back, but rather slowly. “Don’t do that,” he said in as mild a tone as he could muster.

  Iannek swallowed carefully. His eyes narrowed. “You’re not a servant,” he said.

  Kemni felt his heart shrink, grow cold and still. But he kept a bold face. “What else would I be, in this world we live in?”

  “You would have killed me,” Iannek said, “because I took you by surprise. Where did you learn that? Who are you?”

  “A kinsman of Pepi’s from Memphis,” Kemni said, “who got above himself and was sent away.”

  It was a bare lie, and would weight his soul terribly when he came to the judgment. But Iannek seemed to believe it. “I can imagine you did,” he said, “if that’s how you greet anyone who comes on you. What did you do, strike your lord?”

  “I would never strike my lord,” Kemni said stiffly. “Now tell me. Why are you here? Is she asking for me?”

  “No,” Iannek said.

  “Then who’s looking after her?” />
  That gave Iannek pause, but he recovered swiftly. “She’s with my lord brother and my mother and my sisters. How much safer can she be?”

  Much, Kemni thought but took care not to say. “And you escaped,” he said.

  “Well,” said Iannek, “it was dull. You’ve fought in battles, haven’t you?”

  This was not going to be easy to get out of. Kemni thought of bolting, but he had already relieved himself; that pretext would not do. He answered as best he might, question for question. “Why, haven’t you?”

  It was difficult to tell by torchlight, but perhaps Iannek flushed. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Not at all,” said Kemni. And he was not. “Battles are not such a great thing for us. They’re ugly and bloody and often futile.”

  “Battles are glorious,” said Iannek. “Battles are what a man lives for.”

  “Not our kind of man,” Kemni said.

  “You are strange people.”

  “We are what we are.”

  “So you can fight,” Iannek said, returning to that like a dog to a bone. “That’s what she wanted you for. And because you speak her language. It’s strange for her, being what she is. Egyptian, and the Mare’s priestess.”

  This was a fool, but a strangely perspicacious fool. Kemni saw the road ahead studded with stones, and any one likely to catch and break his chariot wheel.

  But he must go on. “One of us should guard her tonight,” he said. “Shall we divide watches, then?”

  “Yes,” Iannek said with a boy’s eagerness. “Yes, I’ll take the first one. I’ll fetch you at middle night.”

  “Well enough,” Kemni said with the hint of a sigh. Iry would be well guarded—too well, perhaps; but who knew? She might actually be in need of protection.

  VI

  Iry could feel the walls closing in. Her cousin’s presence was a comfort, but he was in danger every moment that he lingered with her. Surely none of these Retenu could fail to see how he carried himself, how he walked like a lord and a warrior. But they seemed blind to him, except as a shadow in her shadow.

  When they came to Avaris, he would slip away. That was already decided. He would find his allies where they waited for him, and return by secret paths to the Upper Kingdom.

  She would have given one of her souls to slip away with him. But the Mare bound her. She had taken no vows, committed to nothing—but there was no need. The Mare’s choice was all the rite and consecration that was required. Through the Mare she was made priestess, and given all the powers that she might hold.

  Foreign powers. Powers of a people she hated.

  She would run away. How could she go on?

  “I am not one of you,” she said, not caring, just then, what danger she put herself in.

  Of all people she might have unburdened herself to, she had not expected it to be Khayan. He should have been preoccupied with duties, with being lord of this holding. But he had seized a moment, late in the second day there, to soothe his spirit among his horses.

  Iry had had the same impulse, had escaped her guards and her jailers and taken refuge in the stable. The Mare suffered herself to be shut in walls for Iry’s sake, though it made her irritable: she was flat-eared and snappish, even went so far as to lunge at Khayan when he drew near.

  He calmed her as he knew how to do, born horseman that he was. That had provoked Iry’s outburst: the ease with which he moved among horses, the foreignness of his presence, robed and adorned as a prince of his people. But the golden eyes were his own, and the smile he bestowed on her, as if he were actually glad to see her.

  “I am not one of you,” she said. “I will never be.”

  “All you need be,” he said in his warm deep voice, “is the Mare’s chosen.”

  “No,” she said. “No. Today I learned to pray in a language my people never spoke or heard spoken, a language that was old when my country was a village on the banks of the river. I prayed to a goddess who is utterly alien to me. My ancestors did not know her. I do not know her. How could she have chosen me? I’m an utter stranger.”

  “And yet she knows you,” Khayan said, “and finds you worthy.”

  “Why? What is she doing, besides being contrary?”

  “You ask me?”

  “Of course I ask you,” she said bitterly. “You know everything.”

  “And you hate me for it?”

  She wanted to spit at him, or strike him. The first was ridiculous. The second had begun before she thought. It was meant to be a hard blow, a man’s blow, or at least a boy’s. But he, warrior-trained, caught her hand before it could strike home. Like a fool she sought to pull free; but he was much, much stronger than her slender and female self.

  She had two hands. The second caught him roundly on the shoulder—aiming for the cheek, but he was too tall. He grunted: she had taken him by surprise. It was like smiting a wall, as big as he was, and solid, and honed with years of riding and hunting and fighting.

  He caught her second hand. Now she was trapped indeed, but never cowed. Never that.

  If he had mocked her or tried to overwhelm her, she would have fought free, with the edge of her tongue if not with the strength of her arms. But he stood still, gripping her wrists as if he had forgotten he was doing it, staring into her face. Had he never seen her before? What had he seen, then?

  “What?” she demanded of him. “What haven’t you seen?”

  “You,” he said, like one in a dream.

  “Then what did you see?”

  “A face,” he answered. “Eyes, nose, a mouth. A body like a fish in the river, quick and sleek. But I never—”

  He trailed off. She wanted to hit him all over again, but he was still holding her arms.

  “Let me go,” she said in a low, still voice.

  He obeyed slowly. She lowered her hands. She should leave, she knew it. But there was something about this man and dim places. Moonlight—moonlight became him. And late sunlight through a stable door.

  “You can ask,” he said.

  “What?”

  He did not answer. Would not. There was an air about him that she almost understood, that she was not sure she wanted to understand.

  “You have to ask,” he said. He did not sound angry or dismayed, or disappointed. He was telling her what she should know.

  She was not ready to know it. “Please go,” she said.

  And he did. As simply, as promptly as if she had every right to ask it.

  When he was gone, she leaned against the Mare’s warm and solid shoulder. The Mare was glad to be rid of him. Males, in her estimation, were worth nothing, except when she was in season. Then she took what she wanted and went away.

  That was a very good way to live one’s life. It was a pity Iry had not the art. All she had was her ignorance and her stubbornness, and the moon-white Mare.

  ~~~

  Sadana had no patience for fools. And that, she reckoned Iry. It was not about Khayan, as it happened. It was about Kemni. She had conceived an intense dislike for Iry’s guardsman.

  Or perhaps not dislike. Sadana was hardly proof against that face—Egyptian though it was. “No man has a right to be so pretty,” she declared.

  “Why not?” Iry wanted to know. “If men are our playthings, why shouldn’t they be pleasing to look at?”

  “He is not pleasing!” Sadana snapped. “He’s a shaven foreigner. If he’d let himself grow his beard like a man, he’d be handsomer to look at.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Iry. “Don’t you like being able to see a man’s face? He can’t hide behind a beard, any more than a woman can. He’s all the easier to read.”

  “Why do you think there’s anything in a man worth reading?”

  Iry shrugged. “Maybe there’s not. I’d rather know for certain.”

  She could not dismiss Sadana as easily as she could dismiss Sadana’s brother. In this strange world the Mare had brought her into, women were like men, and men were like servants. And Sadana was
a great power here.

  She disliked this delay within a day’s ride of Avaris. Iry began to wonder if there was something, or someone, in that city whom she was eager to see. Enemy? Friend? Lover?

  Or perhaps there was something here that troubled her. She was restless always, but more so the longer they stayed. It seemed she was constantly at Iry to practice with the bow, to go over her lessons in the prayers and rituals, even to exercise herself in riding the Mare, though that was supposed to be Khayan’s duty.

  Iry did not mind the bow or the Mare, but the endless hours of speaking words in strange languages, and remembering them, gave her a hammering headache. One rite in particular, the death-rite of the Mare’s servant, had nothing to do with her at all. The former servant had died before Iry ever knew her. Iry’s successor would perform the rite for her.

  But Sadana was insistent. “You must know everything,” she said. Even the words the initiate must say as she laid out the body, then the thing she must do, that to Iry was deep and heartfelt revulsion: to strip the bones of flesh, and cleanse the bones, and lay them in the earth. All but the skull. That was to be cleansed likewise, polished and set with silver, and fashioned into a cup from which the successor would drink.

  “That is sacrilege,” Iry said. “I thank my gods I never had to do this—and by all gods that are, no one will do it to me. I will be laid whole in my tomb as is fitting and proper, so that I may come entire to the land of Osiris.”

  “That is not our way,” Sadana said. “It’s ill enough that you have no cup of your preceptor’s spirit to inspire you and teach you and grant you blessing whenever you drink from it.”

  Iry shuddered and swallowed bile, but her mind was clear. “Where is it, then? What became of my predecessor’s body?”

  That gave Sadana brief pause. Guilt? Or simple surprise that Iry should have wits enough to ask?

  “She died of sickness here in Egypt, where she had come by the Mare’s will. She was buried with all honor.”

  “Buried whole?”

  Sadana nodded shortly.

  “You see,” Iry said. “So tell me, how is it that the Mare is here? Shouldn’t she be in the east?”