by Judith Tarr
“Do you wish me to?”
She glared at him. It was the same glare as before—as if she could not forgive him for being desirable. “You can’t be like this,” she said. “No man can.”
“Not even in the east?”
For an instant he thought she would strike him. But her hands stayed by her sides, clenched into fists. “I was never there.”
Ah, he thought. That explained perhaps more than she knew. And from what he knew of the Retenu, they were not gentle lovers—were not lovers at all, Iphikleia would declare. “Some men rut like bulls,” she had said to him once. “Three thrusts and a grunt and it’s over. I pity the women cursed with such men. The only pleasure they ever know, they find in each other.”
Kemni had been rather appalled. But if that was all Sadana had known . . . “No wonder you’re so angry,” he said.
She was tight, closed in on herself: worse even than before. He regretted that he had said anything. Although he knew that she would clench against him, he brushed her breast lightly, lightly with his finger. The nipple tightened. She shuddered just visibly.
A terrible thought came to him. It must have come from a god, or from a dark spirit creeping about in the shadows behind the light. Iphikleia had told him of that, too: how a woman could learn to hate a man’s loving, to shrink from it even when she longed for it.
It could not be true, surely. Sadana was a strong woman, a warrior, a rider and a hunter. She knew the arts of bow and spear and sword. What man would venture—what man would dare—
A man might, if he were of a certain kind. If strength in a woman offended him, if he could only endure it by breaking and destroying it—he well might.
“Someone forced you,” he said slowly. “Someone tried to break you. You’ve never been loved as a woman should be loved. You’ve only been—”
She fell on him without warning, without sound. Even naked and unarmed, she was a strong adversary, and dangerous. He did nothing to stop her, only guarded himself against her blows. They were hard and they were strong. They rained on his head and his uplifted arms.
Just as he began to fear that she would batter him down, she stopped. Abruptly, breathing hard, breath sobbing in her throat. Her face was stark white. He had never seen such eyes as hers were then, not even in a falcon gone mad in confinement.
“Sadana,” he said: knowing that her name could send her into madness indeed, but trusting—praying—that it would touch the true heart of her.
Names were power. She blinked. She came back, a little, to herself. She stared at him as if he were an utter stranger.
“Sadana,” he said again. Her head shook a fraction. But he had done it. He had touched her. “Sadana,” he said a third time.
She struck him, one hard, backhanded blow. He dropped like a stone.
She stood over him. He lay with ringing ears and throbbing cheek. “How dare you,” she said in a terrible voice. “How dare you know me?”
He had no answer for that.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, someone tried to break me. Someone thought he succeeded. I never told anyone. Not even my mother—not even my sister. And above all, not my brother. How could you know? How could you see? What are you?”
That he could answer, but he did not choose to. She dragged him to his feet. He staggered, but she held him up. She was little smaller than he, and nigh as strong. “It was a man in the court. A man the king loved, a great power in the kingdom. He laid an ambush for me. He fell on me, and did—did what he pleased with me. That would teach me, he said. That would show me what the gods think of a woman who rides and fights like a man.”
She had never told anyone. Of course she had not. Her brothers would have wanted to kill the one who did it, but they would have punished her, too, for the dishonor to their family. She would have gained nothing, and lost all the pride she had left.
“You killed him yourself,” he said.
“They thought one of his enemies had caught him,” she said. “I killed him with his own sword. I hewed his head from his shoulders. I hacked off the organs that had violated me, and fed them to him, dead as he was. They said it must have been someone whose wife or sister or daughter he had dishonored—for he was a great raper of women, that one. They never thought that it might have been one of those women.”
The words had flooded out of her. When she stopped, she was breathing hard, as if she had run a race. Her eyes on him were wild. “What are you? Are you a magician? What spell have you laid on me?”
“No spell,” he said gently. “I’m only a man. I have no arts or powers.”
“You have great arts,” she said. “Tell me who taught you!”
“Women,” he said. “They’re like horses, you know. Gentle them, they come sweetly to hand. Beat them, they fight back. Ride them as they best like to be ridden, and they give joy in return.”
“Your people know nothing of horses,” she said.
“I learned,” said Kemni—daring perhaps too much, but she was intent on him. “Horses are new in this country, but women have been here for many times a thousand years.”
“Our men know horses, but they know nothing of women.”
“The more fools they,” Kemni said.
She reached to touch him: a great thing for her, and a gift. Her hand was cold and a little unsteady. “What if I want to keep you? What will you do?”
His belly clenched. “My lady might object to that,” he said.
“I’ll ask her to give you to me.”
“And if she refuses?”
Her lips went tight. “She has everything, doesn’t she? Every good thing.”
“Don’t hate her for it,” he said.
“I hate her with all my heart,” said Sadana. “But she is the Mare’s servant, the priestess, Horse Goddess’ own. Never think I’d harm her. Never even dream of it.”
“I didn’t think you would,” he said. “You have great honor. And great beauty. I pray you find yourself a lover you can keep.”
“Will you refuse me, then, if I ask again?”
That was the first utterance he had ever heard from her, that was empty of anger. There was only longing in it, and a touch of sadness.
“While I can,” he said to that sadness, “while my lady allows, I’ll never refuse you.”
“Every night?”
“Unless she needs me.”
Sadana did not like that, but neither did she let slip her temper. She could accept what she could not change. And she could recognize a gift when it was given. How great a one it was, that perhaps she could not know. But she had no need to know.
VIII
“What in the gods’ name did you do to her?”
They had left that house at last, ridden out at dawn in their train of carts and chariots and people afoot, making their somewhat leisurely way toward Avaris. Iry had the luxury of private conversation with Kemni, since he was her charioteer.
He seemed much as always, but Sadana had been riding like one in a dream. She kept pausing—and almost smiling. And that was unheard of.
“What did you do?” Iry demanded. “Did you lay a spell on her?”
“She asked me that, too,” Kemni said. He was very busy with the horses, though they were quiet, offering no impudence.
“So did you?”
“I have no magic,” he said. “I told her that.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing at all extraordinary,” he answered with a touch of impatience. “Except to her. She didn’t know a man could be gentle. Could give her pleasure.”
Iry heard what he had not quite said. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “So they’ll even do it to their own.”
“Have they done it to you?”
She smiled faintly at his leap to her defense. “No, of course not. Not, sometimes, for lack of trying. But I was in my own house. I knew the ways better than those invaders did
. And Mother protected me, before—”
“Before the Mare came.”
She let that suffice. She had meant to say, before Khayan came; but they were the same. More or less. Maybe.
“I’m glad you were safe,” he said. “These men, they’re brutal.”
“Not all of them.”
“Enough,” he said.
He was angry. He hid it well, but his shoulders were tight, and his lips. Strange for a man to care what other men did to women. He must have had teaching of a sort that few men ever had. And from where?
“You went to Crete,” she said.
He glanced at her. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Would you understand if I told you?”
“Probably not.”
He probably would, but she was not inclined to go to war with him over anything so small. “That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it? The Retenu say Cretans are strange people, old people, who’ve been there for long and long.”
“They’re kin to the eastern horsemen,” Kemni said. “Long ago and far distant, but they worship the same goddess. Women rule them. They remember, dimly, when they were all one, before some went away and heard the call of the sea. Sea of water, sea of grass—it’s much the same in the end. Even ships and horses, they told me.”
“You went there for the king.” She found that pleasing, somehow. He was her cousin. He had risen in the world—higher, she thought, than he might seem, as he played charioteer in a foreign lord’s following.
“He needed someone quiet, who could do what needed to be done, and keep the secret from those who might betray it.” Kemni glanced about. Iry knew already that there was no one near. The leaders were well ahead, the bulk of the procession well behind. The Mare ran between, white tail streaming. She had been fending them all off, granting Iry this freedom to say whatever she pleased.
The Mare, as Iry had been thinking more often of late, had intentions that the Retenu would not like at all if they knew. In choosing an Egyptian, it seemed she had chosen Egypt. She had encouraged this, and not so that Iry might betray her own kin.
Maybe the gods of Egypt had made common cause with the goddess who lived in the Mare. The conquerors were not horsemen, after all. They were donkey caravaneers, whose chosen beasts of burden were long-eared asses. Horses were rare among them. But Egyptians—some of them at least—found in themselves a potent fascination with horses. Kemni had it, Iry had it. Pepi and the boys he had brought into the stables—they all had it.
What a thought, that Egypt could take horses from the conqueror, and conquer him with them. It made her smile.
“Listen,” she said to Kemni, “when you go . . . back there, tell him there’s one here who may find ways to help.”
“I’ll tell him that,” Kemni said. “If you would do something in return.”
“If I can,” she said.
“Sadana,” he said. “She needs gentleness, and a man she can trust. I can’t stay for her. Once I come to Avaris, I’ll be called to what I should have been doing long since. Can you help? Will you?”
Iry had had no expectations, but this— “You want me to procure a lover for Sadana?”
He flushed faintly under the bronzing of wind and sun. “You don’t have to be that blunt. Just . . . help her find someone to be gentle to her.”
“In Avaris?”
“Maybe the lord knows someone. Or your other guardsman.”
“Kemni,” Iry said with great and careful patience, “can you honestly imagine that I would ask men of the Retenu to find a lover for their own sister?”
“They might surprise you.”
“Khayan might,” Iry admitted. “But I think not. I can try to do this, somehow, if you insist. I can’t promise to succeed.”
“If you try, it will be enough.”
“Well then,” Iry said with a sigh. “I’ll try. Because you ask it, mind. And because she is easier to endure when she’s less tight-drawn upon herself.”
“Good,” Kemni said. “Good. The gods will love you for this.”
“I only hope they won’t hate me,” said Iry.
~~~
They came to Avaris in the morning, having camped for the night not far outside of it. The walls seemed low in the wet shimmer of the Delta’s heat, but as they drew closer, the city loomed larger, till it showed itself both lofty and forbidding.
It was a fortress, a strong holding within a conquered country. And it was vast. It was the greatest city in the world, the Retenu boasted. Larger than Thebes, larger than Byblos or Tyre, larger than Ur or Babylon. Larger than any of them, and vaunting in its strength.
It stood on the eastern edge of a tangled skein of river and land, on that branch of the great river of Egypt which flowed toward Pelusium in the east of the Lower Kingdom. It guarded the eastward gate of the kingdom, and stood athwart the best of the ways on both water and land, both to and from the sea. Its harbor was crowded with ships. Its walls were packed tight with houses, men living on top of one another, spreading out where they could, but clinging to their walls and defenses.
So dense were the throngs living within, Iry had been told, that the dead had no place of their own. Any who died in that city was buried in the court of his house. How his kin and descendants bore it, Iry did not know. At night, when the dead walked, the city must be even more crowded than in the light of day.
Khayan’s caravan of chariots and carts and servants on foot, with or without laden donkeys, was granted the privilege of the processional way, the wide street that directed itself toward the loom of Baal’s temple and the lesser and battlemented loom of the king’s palace. Lesser folk kept that way clear, so that high ones could come and go unhindered. Iry could see the common people down side ways and in sudden squares, a seething throng of them, like an anthill opened suddenly to the sun.
So many people. And so many Retenu. The few Egyptian faces that she saw belonged to ragged and sharp-boned creatures who must be slaves, or even beggars. Though why any child of the Lower Kingdom would wish to beg in Avaris, she could not imagine.
Kemni was motionless beside her, except for such movement as the chariot or the horses forced upon him. She felt the tension thrumming in him. As steaming hot as the air was, and reeking with it, his body’s warmth was not entirely welcome, but she was glad of his presence nonetheless. She needed an Egyptian face amid these alien walls. Already they were closing in upon her, and she had not even come to the great fortress and prison that was the palace.
She came terribly close to ripping the reins from Kemni’s hands, turning the chariot about, and bolting back the way she had come. But even apart from the fact that the bulk of the lord’s following filled the road behind, she was not enough of a coward—not prudent enough, or sensible enough. If she had been, she would have refused to leave the Sun Ascendant at all.
It was done. She was bound to enter those walls within walls. The gates rose before her, warded by what seemed an army of guards. They were all big men, huge men, bearded Retenu and coal-black Nubians, so tall that their eyes were level with hers as she stood in the chariot. Some were even taller.
Kemni held his head a fraction higher as he rode though that deep and echoing gate. So, for pride, did Iry. She wondered if he was as stark with fear as she, or if he saw those walls as cutting him off from all the world he knew. Now he was within them, he might never go out again. If anyone marked him, if anyone betrayed him . . .
She would protect him as she could, while she could. As for herself, she would be safe enough. Her rank protected her, and the office the Mare had laid on her.
So she told herself as the palace of the Retenu closed in upon her. They were to be given chambers within it, and servants to tend them, and a haughty chamberlain to conduct them to their lodgings. He was perhaps half an Egyptian: he was smaller and slighter, his features finer, his lips fuller than if he had been entirely Retenu. He wore a beard as every male among them must, but he clipped it almost indecentl
y short, so that one could see the shape of his face. But the hair in its topknot, the golden collar and armlets, the elaborate and heavily embroidered robe, were all of outland fashion. High and courtly fashion, she could see. Her own simple shift, her hair indifferently plaited, and her utter lack of ornament, earned her a glance eloquent of scorn.
She had no fear of courtiers’ contempt. These courtiers above all, whom she would gladly sweep out of Egypt, she would greet with all the arrogance she could muster. They would only admire her for it. That much she had learned of courts, in what little time she had spent in or near them.
They settled in the chambers with some crowding and no little squabbling. Even as vast as the city was, it was full to bursting, and the palace likewise. People on top of people was the way of the world here.
She at least was granted a room of her own, a tiny and airless cell, but it was hers. It was no worse than the cell she had had as a slave in the Sun Ascendant—and it was close by a stair that led to the palace gardens.
The gardens of this palace were a wonder and a marvel. They stretched along the great outer wall and meandered inward among the courts. Those nearest the wall were gardens of trees, a forest indeed, green and richly scented, with little rivers trained to run among the trees, and fountains, and pools of bright fish. There was a menagerie—little enough, Kemni told her, to what the king had in Thebes, but to her a marvel. There were lions, of course, and jackals, and sly and slinking hyenas; oryx and gazelle, ibex, and strange beasts out of the lands beyond the Upper Kingdom: elephants, long-necked visions called giraffe, and creatures like horses, or like shorter-eared asses, but striped black and white in eye-blinding patterns. There was a pool of riverhorses, and even crocodiles; aviaries and pools of fish and cages full of baboons and monkeys and sad-eyed apes. And, past these, creatures from the northern outlands: wolves panting in the heat, a vast aurochs bull with horns spread as wide as a processional way, even a bear lying limp in a shallow pool.
She had wandered there to escape the crush in the guest-chambers, and perhaps more than a little because, for a brief while, she seemed to have been forgotten. The Mare was nowhere within reach. She had left the riding before it came to Avaris, wandered away unnoticed as Iry had done just now. Iry had made no effort to stop her. The Mare came and went as she pleased. That was her privilege.
