The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  IX

  When the king was a day’s journey from the Bull of Re, all that could be prepared was done. The household was ready, the armies encamped, fed and given a light ration of beer, for they must be as keen as swords before the king’s eyes.

  They all rested in quiet, with little revelry. Kemni even found himself free to rest, and not so long after dark had fallen, either. If he had been wise he would have stayed in his tent among the charioteers, but wisdom had little to do with wanting. He took his stallions and harnessed them to his chariot, and in moonlight nigh as bright as day, rode back to the Bull of Re.

  The holding was quiet, the great circles of camps asleep. They had grown since Kemni saw them last, till the whole plain of the river was full of them, and their fires shone as innumerable as the stars. He rode through them in a soft rattle of wheels and a thudding of hooves, unseen as if he had, like a god, the gift of passing invisible. But he was no god. He was only Kemni of the Lower Kingdom, the king’s charioteer.

  At the gate he found the guard awake, but it was a man he knew, who greeted him and let him pass. The empty stables daunted him a little; still, there was cut fodder, and a clean stall large enough for the stallions to share. They were content to rest there, to eat their fodder and idle and dream their stallion-dreams.

  Kemni hoped for better than a dream. He trod softly through a house asleep, to the room in which he had left Iphikleia weak and ill though likely now to live.

  She was not there. Her belongings were in their places, the bed made ready as if to receive her, but no one lingered there, not even a servant.

  She was with Ariana, perhaps. Or in the bath. She loved a bath in the evening, when the air had cooled a little and the water’s warmth was pleasant.

  A jar of wine was waiting for her, and a basket of cakes. Kemni ate and drank a little, washed away the dust of the road in the basin by the bed, and thought of going in search of her. But she would come back. He set aside kilt and ornaments and the sword that he wore at his belt, and sat on the bed to wait for her. In a little while, in such comfort as he was, he lay flat; and in a little while more, he was asleep.

  ~~~

  He dreamed of battle. There was no great terror in it, no more than there should be among the rains of arrows and the stabbing of spears. It was battle; fear was part of it, and a wild joy, too. It might almost have been one of his battles when he was younger, for he was fighting among men he knew, and Gebu among them, his old friend and battle-brother. They were all on foot, but Kemni rode in a chariot above them, swifter by far than they, and stronger.

  Gebu was not a traitor here. There was a strange and piercing gladness in that. He fought as they all did, bravely. All of them—the living, and yes, the dead. He saw his uncle, that gentle man who was so fierce in battle; his cousins arm in arm and singing as they fought; and yet, nearby them, Rahotep of the charioteers, and a handful of his men, and one or two of the other commanders of ten. And there beyond them, rising above them on the back of a night-black mare, Iphikleia with her bow, taking aim over their heads, felling the bearded ranks of the enemy with her swift hail of arrows.

  She was riding toward him, slowly for the press of men was thick, but there was no mistaking it. Now and then, if she could pause, she caught his eye. Once she smiled. His heart warmed in the light of it.

  “Kemni,” she said.

  She was beside him suddenly, then above him—looking down at him. He was lying in her bed. She was bending over him, dressed not in armor of scaled bronze but in the fashion of a lady of Crete, many-tiered skirt and painted breasts and armlets like the coil of serpents. She was awake and alive and nigh as strong as she had ever been, only a little gauntness left to recall her wound and her long sickness.

  Kemni sat up so quickly that his senses reeled. The dream scattered and fled. The thing that he had been about to understand, the thing that the gods wished him to know, was gone before he could grasp it.

  He made no effort to pursue it. She was here, warm and living and wonderfully supple in his arms, laughing as she devoured him with kisses. “Beautiful man! Don’t tell me they let you go.”

  “I let myself go,” he said when she would let him speak. He clasped her so close that she gasped, then set her a little apart from him, drinking in the sight of her, assuring himself with his hands that what his eyes told him was true. “You’re healed! But how—”

  “Imhotep is blessed of the gods,” she said.

  “And may they bless him for a thousand years.” They tumbled together into the bed, losing her garments somewhere, but not her jewels.

  He rose up over her. Naked, but still with her hair in its elaborate coils and curls, and her body gleaming in necklaces and earrings and armlets, she made him ache with wanting her. And yet he took his time about it. He kissed every fingerbreadth of her, lingering round the sweetness of her breasts, and the cup of her navel, and most of all in the narrow, livid scar that was all her remembrance of the messenger’s knife.

  She seized him with sudden strength, and overset him, and took him by storm. He gasped with the shock of it, then laughed. “There was never a woman like you,” he said.

  “I should hope not,” she said. Then there were no words left in either of them, only the dance of the body.

  ~~~

  Kemni had not slept so well since before he could remember, nor waked so well content. Iphikleia was still in his arms, curled against him with her head on his shoulder. He hated to disturb her, but it was nearly sunrise—long after he should have been up and in his chariot and on his way back to the camp.

  She opened her eyes and smiled drowsily. “Beautiful man,” she said. “Love me again?”

  “We can’t—”

  For a moment he thought she would insist—and he would surrender. But she sighed and yawned and kissed him regretfully. “Go, go,” she said. “Maybe tonight . . .”

  “Maybe,” he said without much hope. Tonight the king would be there. Then who knew when he would see her again? They would march to the war, and she would remain behind, as women had done from the beginning of the world.

  He stooped to kiss her before he went, and nearly forgot all his resolve. But she pushed him away. “Tonight,” she said.

  It was not as late as he had feared. He had time to gather and harness the horses, and to make his way back to the camp before the sun brightened the sky. Then there was no rest for him; for today they were to show themselves before the armies of Egypt.

  The runner came at midmorning as expected, with the word he had been waiting for. The king had come. His fleet had come in, crowding that which waited already along the river’s edge. The armies were gathering, the muster proceeding apace—and that was somewhat unexpected. The queens had prepared a royal welcome, feasting and foregatherings for a day or two or three, before the armies were to move.

  “He wants us to move tomorrow,” the boy said. “The Great Royal Wife said come now. Come in arms, with the baggage, and everything you can gather. You’ll camp by the river tonight. At dawn, you march.”

  Already the camp was astir, the tents falling, men at the run, breaking camp and harnessing horses and rounding up those who would go as reinforcements. Kemni found himself trapped in his tent with a pair of the servants insisting that they must dress and arm him. “All Egypt will see you today,” they said. “Don’t shame us.”

  Of course he must not shame the servants. He let them do as they would, but in and about their fussing and primping, he managed to order both march and departure.

  At last they let him go. And none too soon: the tent was ready to fall. The chariots were mustered, every man in armor, gleaming like an image cast in bronze. They raised a cheer as Kemni came out, a roar of joy and pride, and a welcome, and a promise. They were his. They would serve him to the death.

  ~~~

  They came out of hiding in the strong light of morning, not far from noon, when the heat was rising and the sun beating down on the bronze of helmet a
nd armor. They suffered, but with pride, because they were the first who had ever ridden to war in chariots for the Great House of Egypt.

  The road was clear before them, but the fields on either side of it were thronged with armies. The river was crowded with boats. The center was a flame of gold, the king’s own barge with its golden hull and golden canopy, and its ranks of golden oars. He himself sat on its deck, lifted high on a throne of gold and lapis and blood-red carnelian. His armor was washed with gold. From so far he seemed no living man at all, but the image of a god.

  Kemni allowed his stallions to stretch their stride. A murmur followed him, swelling to a roar as the armies understood what hurtled toward them. That roar bore him up. It made light the feet of his horses, and lifted the chariot as if on wings.

  By the time they came down to the river, all the world was one vast swell of sound. Kemni was dizzy with it and with the heat and with the speed of his coming. Lion and Falcon had the bits in their teeth. He battled for control of them before they ran from land into water—and perhaps, as swift as they were, full onto the king’s barge.

  They came to a rearing, plunging halt just short of the river. Kemni met the king’s eyes across the brief stretch of water. Some dim and distant part of him knew that a mere lord and commander did not do such a thing; that to do it was to profane a god. And yet he could not help but do it.

  The king was smiling. Not with his lips: his face was composed into a proper and royal mask. But the eyes in their warding of paint, beneath the blue crown of war—those were near to laughter.

  He rose from his throne, uncrossed his arms from his breast and laid down the crook and flail of his kingship, and beckoned imperiously. Servants ran to his bidding. They bore him down off the ship, set him in a boat of remarkably plain and ordinary aspect, and delivered him onto the land.

  Then on his own feet, like a mortal man, he walked toward Kemni in his chariot, and sprang lightly in.

  The roar of the armies, that had died almost to a whisper while the king did that utterly unwonted thing, mounted again until it shook the sky.

  As he had on the plain north of Thebes, the king rode with Kemni for his charioteer, circling this far vaster army. The sight of the king in a chariot, far from outraging them, swelled their hearts with pride and a fierce yearning for battle. To take the enemy’s own weapon, to turn it against him—however small or feeble it was in truth, in the heart it was a mighty and powerful thing.

  The king felt it. He stood taller. The light struck him more strongly. He was a god indeed, strong in his people’s belief.

  Belief, thought Kemni as he drove the horses in the king’s shadow. Belief made a god. And if his men believed that he was a god . . .

  He must not. The king and only the king was the living god of this kingdom.

  With the king, the living god, he raised the army’s spirits, and showed them a face of victory. When they had circled the whole of the army that was on the land, they returned to the river and the golden barge, to find the queens waiting: Nefertari at last in her proper and glorious state, and Ariana clad as an Egyptian royal wife. The truth of that, then, would wait for yet a while.

  The queens accompanied the king in his chariot, through the massed ranks toward the Bull of Re. They came likewise in a chariot, with Ariana as charioteer: such a sight as Egypt had never seen, nor perhaps had the Retenu, king and queen side by side in golden chariots, their horses running neck and neck up the road to the holding.

  ~~~

  There was a feast that day, as was expected; but king and queens left it early, just after the wine had begun to go round. They let it be thought that they went to rest. But in truth they gathered for a council of war.

  Kemni did not put himself forward, but when the high ones took their leave, Ariana caught his eye. Come, her glance said.

  He lingered for a little while, to divert attention. Gebu was there, and others of the princes; Kemni had been hard pressed to avoid them. But he let them catch sight of him then, and greet him with every appearance of gladness, and insist that he share a cup of wine.

  “I hope you left a chariot for me,” Gebu said, as warm as ever, pulling Kemni into a half-embrace. Kemni did his best not to shrink from it; to remember what this man had been to him for half a score of years before treason tainted him.

  “You still want a chariot?” Kemni asked him. “What does your father say to that?”

  “He gives me his blessing,” Gebu said.

  “Well then,” said Kemni, “if your highness will submit to my command again, I’ll do what I may.”

  “Excellent!” said Gebu in open delight.

  It was difficult, so difficult, to remember what this man had done. Ten years of love and trust against a season of mistrust and growing hate—the balance lurched and swayed. Kemni was glad to plead a bursting bladder, to escape to the relative safety of the queens’ house.

  They had not been waiting for him. Of course not. But when he came, with lowered head and suitably modest demeanor, Ahmose greeted him as gladly as his son had, and beckoned him to a chair among them.

  There would be no ceremony here, clearly. They had all put off their finery, the queens—and Iphikleia, who sat beside Ariana—for plain linen gowns, the king for a kilt and his own cropped greying hair. Kemni in festival clothes felt out of place, until Ahmose’s words made him forget such frivolities.

  “I still am not assured that the enemy is ignorant of this war,” he said. “He’s had ample opportunity to send and receive spies. There can be no doubt that I’ve mustered my armies, nor any at all as to where I’ve directed them. Nubia is secured behind me—or as well as it can be; I’ll not repeat my brother’s error, there, and lose the Lower Kingdom because I failed to remember the kingdom at my back.”

  “Still,” Nefertari said, “he’ll not be as ready as he might be.”

  “Maybe,” said Ahmose. “But he will close the gates of the Lower Kingdom, and fortify Avaris against a siege. That would be the most sensible course, yes? My brother won by driving straight down the river to the capital.”

  “You have another plan?” Ariana asked.

  “I had been thinking,” said Ahmose, “that we might attack from another direction. The enemy’s strength comes from Canaan. His kin are there, his people, his trade and his wealth. Whatever he needs that Egypt cannot or will not give him, he takes from the land of Retenu. Suppose,” he said, “that we cut him off from his native country. The gate is at Sile. If we take that gate and hold it, he’ll be taken by surprise—or so we can hope—and with all his forces drawn away to the inner parts of his kingdom.”

  “Sile.” Nefertari frowned. “Yes, that’s the gate to Canaan. But it’s well past Avaris. Are there river routes to it that the Retenu aren’t guarding?”

  “There is the sea,” said Ahmose. “Suppose that we keep the fleet in abeyance just south of the border into the Lower Kingdom, and take a strong part of the army—and my chariots—toward Sile. If the Cretans come to us there, and we take that city by both water and land, then hold it with Cretan aid, the enemy will lose his reinforcements. He’ll have only himself to rely on, and such of his people as are in the Lower Kingdom.”

  “And those are few.” Nefertari nodded slowly. “Then, when Sile is fallen, let the fleet sail on down the river and lay siege to Avaris. Will you command the fleet, my lord? Or the attack on Sile?”

  “I go to Sile,” Ahmose said. “As for the fleet . . . my ladies, do you think that the bold river-sailors of the Upper Kingdom will look to a pair of queens for their command?”

  Kemni had been looking for the sudden light in Ariana’s eye, but it was Nefertari who lit like a lamp. “What, my lord,” said the elder queen, “have you no sons or lord commanders to take that office?”

  “Well,” said Ahmose, “I’ll give you an admiral or two, and more than enough princes and lords to keep the men in hand. But I need someone I can trust, to be overlord to them all.”

  Nefertari
inclined her head. “If they will accept me, I will do all you wish.”

  “They will accept you,” he said amiably, but there was the strength of stone beneath.

  Kemni wondered if Ahmose had noticed that Nefertari spoke of I and not of we. If he did, he chose to ignore it. And so, it appeared, did Ariana.

  Ahmose rose with an air of satisfaction. “Good, then. It’s all settled, and will be seen to. Now I advise that we sleep. Tomorrow begins before dawn. We’ll march and sail by sunup.”

  “As you will, my lord,” Nefertari said with no evidence of dismay.

  X

  It was no great matter for Kemni to alter the direction of his chariots’ march. A march was a march, whether direct to Avaris or roundabout to Sile. But he had another concern, which he must settle before he slept.

  Iphikleia did not try to keep him in the house. He would have been sore tempted if she had. But she kissed him and pushed him away. “Go. We all have much to do.”

  Even then he would have lingered—for if the queens were commanding the fleet, then Iphikleia would come to the war in the end; but not till after Sile was taken. He might not hold her in his arms again for a long season; perhaps even longer than that, if the war proved more difficult than the king expected.

  But she had never been one to linger over farewells. She was gone even as she spoke, striding in Ariana’s wake, and leaving Kemni alone and heart-cold.

  He called himself to order. It was not so very late—just barely past sunset—and that was well; he had a long night ahead. He went in search of his charioteers, who were, for this night, housed again inside the Bull of Re, except for those who stood guard beyond the walls, warding the much enlarged herd of horses.

  Seti was, as he had hoped, still awake and still unblurred with either wine or beer. He was passing round a jar in the guardroom and playing at hounds and jackals with what seemed to be a conspiracy of charioteers. There were wagers and laughter, and a girl or two.