The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  Khayan shrugged, though the pain nearly cast him down. “If you’re wise, you’ll not call my brothers back from wherever they may be hiding—where for all I know, after all, they may have had something to do with this. If you will, my lord, of your kindness, let my mother keep them in your name. She’ll rule them as you would best prefer. Whereas my brothers, or Barukha’s father . . .”

  “Barukha’s father is a truculent fool,” Apophis said, “and he is going to deafen me with his bellowings when he makes his way here. Of your brothers, the less said, the better. Yes, I can make your mother regent for your holdings, and protect them against any who would take them from her. But what am I to do with you?”

  “Send me to war,” Khayan said.

  There was a pause. Apophis’ eyes blazed. “Is that why you did it? Is that why?”

  “No,” Khayan said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Khayan sighed. His breath caught on a spike of pain. He waited till it had passed before he spoke. “Sire, if you want to believe that I would commit such a crime in order to be sent to battle, you well may. You are the king.”

  “So I am,” Apophis said. “If I give you that—if I send you to the north—will you be glad?”

  “How will I be sent to the north?”

  “At the head of a company of footsoldiers. You’ll be a commander of a hundred, my once proud young lord. No more than that. There will be commanders over you. The general above them will know that you are in disgrace. What he chooses to do with you is at his discretion. Will you still go? Or will you give me a way to exonerate you from this appalling charge?”

  “I will go,” Khayan said steadily. “And I thank you, my lord. This is most generous, and most merciful.”

  “Merciful? I’ve likely sent you to your death.”

  “I don’t intend to die,” Khayan said. “I intend to defend this kingdom against its invaders. I’ll help drive them back, my lord. Then when they’re defeated . . . maybe there will be a pardon for me. Do you think that’s possible?”

  Apophis shook his head. “Young fool.” His voice was rough, but strangely tender. “Blazing idiot. I should throttle you with my two hands.”

  “Leave that to the Egyptians,” Khayan said.

  Apophis laughed, a bark almost of pain. Khayan tried to echo him, but it was dark suddenly, and he could not find his voice. After a while, neither could he find the light, or Apophis’ face, or anything but oblivion.

  V

  Iry hated Khayan. She hated him with a perfect hate. He had gone away from her, left her aching and bleeding, and never spoken a word. Then he had come back, and that same day, that very day, not only tumbled into bed with a woman of notoriously supple virtue, but managed to be caught at it and condemned for it.

  “You don’t honestly believe he did it,” she said to the king. She had gone to him as soon as the sun came up, and been admitted remarkably promptly, which after all was her privilege; she was the Mare’s servant. The king was haggard and worn, but he still found a smile for her, and offered to share his breakfast. She declined as politely as she could, but her mind was elsewhere. “He didn’t rape that woman.”

  “Child,” said the king wearily, “don’t you think I know that?”

  “Then why—”

  “Consider,” said the king of the Retenu, “that the woman involved is the daughter of one of my greater lords. He can muster a thousand men and half a thousand chariots. If he is told that his daughter, for whatever reason, lured and entrapped a young man and cried rape against him, the dishonor will force him to go to war against me. I need him, child. I can’t afford to lose him. And your young lord knows that, too.”

  “He is not my lord,” Iry said somewhat more firmly than was strictly necessary. “And I doubt he’s thinking of you. If he’s true to himself, he’s shielding the woman. Protecting her. Defending her honor.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Apophis said. “And I would happily throttle him for it.”

  She had to pause, to breathe, before she could speak again. “What will you do to him?”

  “Exile,” he answered, “after a fashion. I’ve taken his rank away from him and sent him to the war in the north. If he does well—and I expect that he will—he’ll win it all back again. In the meantime, I keep it, with his mother as regent.”

  Iry sagged in the chair, briefly, before she remembered to stiffen her spine. “Will the woman’s father know this?”

  “He need only know that Khayan is sent into exile. If he reckons that I’ve returned the boy to his kin in the east—well, and the road there is blocked by Egyptian armies. He can hardly be faulted for joining in the war.”

  “He could die.”

  Apophis bowed his head. “Yes. As could any man.”

  “I think,” Iry said after a pause, “that the king, to salvage the woman’s honor, might do two things. He might marry her to a man of suitable rank and strength of will. And he might send her as far away from the young lord as she can go.”

  “What, should I marry her off to a man in Memphis?”

  “That would do. Or,” said Iry, “would your general Khamudi be pleased to accept a wife whose honor is besmirched but whose beauty is incontestable?”

  “My general is in the midst of a war,” Apophis said.

  “I know that he took a dozen of his women with him. Why not send him another, with your compliments, and with her father’s blessing?”

  Apophis frowned. It seemed he did not like it that she was thinking like an abandoned lover. If this Barukha was married to the general Khamudi, who was aged yet strong, and famously jealous of his wives, she would never set foot outside the women’s quarters again, or lay eyes on another man but her husband.

  It was a fitting punishment, in Iry’s estimation. She opened her mouth to say so, but Apophis overrode her. “I will consider it. The woman meanwhile is in close confinement—for her own protection, as she has been told.”

  “Good,” said Iry.

  He eyed her a little oddly. Whatever he thought, he did not speak of it. And that was well. She took her leave, abrupt perhaps, but she did try to be polite.

  ~~~

  Khayan left the palace without fanfare, hidden in a company of men who were being sent to the war. Iry told herself that she was glad to see him so reduced, limping on foot, with his face battered and swollen and his back as stiff with pain as with pride. It might have been merciful to keep him imprisoned until he was healed, but it likely would not be safe; not if Barukha’s father descended on the citadel in a proper and paternal rage.

  “There’s a chariot waiting for him half a day’s walk northward, and a hundred men for him to command.”

  Iry started and turned in the shade of the colonnade. “Sadana! I thought you were—”

  “I came back this morning,” Khayan’s sister said, “on the heels of this uproar. Mother and Maryam told me everything. Don’t pity him too much. He’s getting what he wants; and he never was one to set great store in niceties of rank and station.”

  “No,” Iry said coldly. “He never was.”

  “What, you can’t forgive him for being a fool?” Sadana sighed. “Nor can I.”

  Iry turned and walked away. Sadana was kind enough not to follow. Or else she simply did not care.

  That was well. Iry had no desire to tell anyone why she was so angry at Khayan. It was no one’s affair but her own—and his, if he ever troubled to remember it.

  ~~~

  He was gone. Barukha was sent away, borne on the wind of her father’s wrath, to be married in haste to the general Khamudi, and given a name and rank and honor apart from the scandal that still exercised the court in idle moments.

  Iry had not been able to resist seeing her go. She went veiled and in a curtained wagon, but before she did that, she had to walk through the women’s quarters. Iry saw her then, how erect she was, and how high she held her head.

  That was rage, Iry would have wagered. Rage and a kind o
f fear. Barukha hated confinement, the women whispered. She had sought Sarai’s service because the lady of the tribes allowed her greater freedom than was granted to women of the Retenu.

  This to her would be prison, and unbearable. And Iry was glad. If Barukha had simply bedded Khayan, that would have been almost bearable. But to bed him and then try to destroy him . . . Iry could not forgive that.

  They were gone. And she was shut in these walls nigh as closely as Barukha’s new husband would confine his wife.

  She was the Mare’s servant; for that she had great rank and respect. But she was also Egyptian. No one spoke of betrayal or mistrust, but the guards on the gates, the eyes on her wherever she went, told her all that she needed to know. She was accused of nothing. But she was to be allowed no freedom to turn against the Retenu.

  She could not retreat into herself as she had before. Khayan had ended that. She had no refuge. None within these walls, where every thought and word was of the war against her people. None in the lessons that she was compelled to learn, that were shaped by and for the women of a tribe beyond the edge of the world.

  She needed the sky. Even more than that, she needed the Mare. She needed that warm sweet breath and that strong back, and that mind which cared nothing for the follies of human people.

  The Mare was far away from this anthill of a city. Iry was trapped within it. Foreigners surrounded her. Every one was her enemy, and her people’s enemy.

  For a hand of days she endured it. She did as she was bidden, performed her duties, attended the king in those brief moments when he could turn his back on the war.

  She was in his roof-garden on the fifth day, alone but for the silent and half-drowsing Iannek. The king had come up to share a moment’s peace with her, but a messenger had called him away—some matter of the war.

  She wandered out of the garden to the roof’s edge. The parapet was high, but the crenellations let her look out on the city below. Far below.

  There was one escape. She knew that as she stood there. One long wingless flight, a moment’s blinding pain—and then, nothing. Or the gods’ country. Would she see that to which her own people went, or would the Mare’s people claim her?

  She climbed into the crenellation and knelt there. It would be simple to lean forward till she overbalanced. And then—

  Hands dragged her back. Iannek’s—and Sadana’s.

  Iry lay on the sun-heated stone of the roof and stared at the warrior woman. “Are you my guardhound now?” she asked.

  “It seems I may have to be,” Sadana said. “What were you thinking of?”

  Iry shrugged. “I wanted to look at the city.”

  “You wanted to fall on the city. Why? Is life so intolerable here?”

  “Yes!” Iry had not meant to shriek the word, but it had burst out of her like a cry of pain.

  They were both staring. Iry had not realized before how much alike they were. Their father had stamped both their faces, though their mothers had shaped the rest.

  She should keep it to herself, all that roiled in her. But she could not make it matter. “I need the sky,” she said. “I need the Mare. I’ve been cut off from her—gods, for months. I must see her.”

  “We can bring her—” Iannek began.

  “We cannot,” Sadana broke in. “The Mare never enters cities, except for the greatest need.”

  “This isn’t great need?” Iannek demanded.

  Sadana sighed. “Maybe it is. But she’ll not be commanded by any of us.”

  “Then Iry has to go to her,” Iannek said with sublime simplicity.

  “The king has ordered that she be kept within the palace,” Sadana said.

  “Isn’t she above the king?”

  Sadana opened her mouth, then shut it again. “She can’t just walk out. The guards obey the king. And the king has ordered them to keep her in.”

  “He can’t do that.”

  “And yet he has.”

  Iry found it fascinating to be discussed as if she had been invisible. She might have let it continue—its direction was most pleasing—but she was too much a fool for that. “You can’t be thinking of disobeying the king.”

  “Why?” Sadana asked her. “Aren’t you?”

  “If death is disobedience,” Iry said, “then yes. But I’m Egyptian. I’ve never sworn myself in service to him. I never will.”

  “You can’t die,” Iannek said. “We won’t let you.”

  “Then let me go.”

  Iry should not have said that. But there was nothing reasonable in anything she was feeling. She wanted the Mare. The Mare wanted her. But that proud bright spirit would not enter so great a city. Not alone. It would break her.

  Iry scrambled up and dived again for the parapet. She had some thought, dim and half-formed, of trying to see past the city, to see if she could find one distant white shape in the fields beyond. But they must have thought she wanted to finish the leap she had begun.

  Again they dragged her back. This time Sadana sat on her, shaking her till she was dizzy. “Stop doing that! There is a way, and you needn’t die for trying it. If you’ll let me—”

  “Where?” Iry asked. “What way?”

  “It’s a postern,” Sadana said. “At night, with care, we might—”

  “How do you know I can trust you? Or,” Iry said, fixing her stare on Iannek, “you?”

  “I am your servant,” Iannek said.

  “And I,” said Sadana a little slowly, as if she had to think through the words before she spoke them, “belong to the Mare, though she would not have me for herself. I swore oath to her when I was a child. I never swore oath to any man, or to any king.”

  “And if I choose to betray the king of this city?” Iry asked. “Will you kill me? Confine me?”

  “You are the Mare’s servant,” Sadana said.

  “You hate me for it.”

  “No,” said Sadana.

  Iry might find her own way out, once she knew there was one. But these two would watch her more carefully even than the king’s guards had done. If she could trust them, if they would help her, she well might succeed. If she tried to do it alone—they might stop her.

  She had not thought about what she was doing, or what she would do once she had won free of that prison.

  The answer was plain enough. Egypt had risen. She was of Egypt. But these two—she could not—

  She would find a way. Somehow. If these were not to be trusted, or if they turned against her and killed her, then so be it. It was better than living trapped in walls, surrounded by enemies.

  ~~~

  It was hardly strange to walk softly and keep secrets, or to conspire against the Retenu. But this time Iry’s conspirators were Retenu themselves. Or Iannek was. Sadana was something different.

  Iry considered that this might be Sadana’s way of destroying the interloper who had taken the Mare from her. But what did that matter? Whether she leaped from the walls or took an arrow in the back while escaping through a postern, it was all the same. The postern might truly offer escape, whereas a leap from the walls offered only death.

  “Give me two days,” Sadana said to her. “Then go into seclusion. Invent a rite if you must, that will keep you cloistered for as many days as you can manage. Three will do. Seven would be better.”

  “But your mother—” Iry began.

  “Leave my mother to me,” Sadana said. “Tell her nothing.”

  Iry would hardly confide in Sarai. Even more than Sadana, she was of the Mare’s people, her blood untainted with the blood of the Retenu. And yet she had cast in her lot with these people. She had brought Iry here and colluded in her confinement. She was no friend, nor anyone Iry trusted.

  The habits of slavery served Iry well now. Silence and lowered eyes and mute obedience. It was nothing different than she had given Sarai before.

  On the second night, as Iry lay in her bed, open-eyed in the nightlamp’s glow, Sadana slipped through the door. “It’s time,” she said.
r />   “But I haven’t told the king—” Iry began.

  “The king will be told,” said Sadana.

  Iry sat up, regarding her narrow-eyed. “I don’t know if I trust you.”

  “Then stay here,” Sadana said.

  Iry shook her head. “No. But if we’re caught, I’ll know you’ve betrayed me.”

  “I haven’t betrayed you,” said Sadana. “Are you coming?”

  Iry rose from the bed, pulled on the dark robe Sadana had brought her, and shouldered the bag of belongings she had gathered for herself. Sadana had more: food, a waterskin, and weapons. A bow for each of them, and arrows, and long knives on baldrics. Iry took her share. Without a word then, Sadana led her out through the servants’ passages.

  Iry knew these ways. They had been her only escape while she was trapped here. But the postern Sadana knew of—that, she had not found before. It was well hidden in a fold of the wall, seeming part of the wall itself, till Sadana set hand to it and opened it into the redolence of the midden.

  Which, indeed, explained why no one knew of it. Iry drew her mantle over her nose and tried to breathe shallowly.

  There was a wan moon, enough to see where they walked, picking their way among the heaps of refuse and the odorous pools. Sadana was a tall cloaked figure ahead of Iry. She spoke no word, nor seemed to care if Iry followed her.

  When Iry stumbled and fell into one of the pools of filth, she never stopped or slowed. Iry scrambled up, gagging and choking, and half-ran to catch her, but with care lest she fall again.

  Past the midden was a stretch of open land, parkland and garden, dark under the moon, and the broad branch of the river that flowed past the whole of the city. They were to go north, Iry knew, along the river for a while, then away from it lest they be seen and captured.

  The Mare waited ahead of them. Iry could feel her like a warmth on the skin, strongest when she faced the north, weaker if she turned away. That warmth gave her strength. She did not even want to pause to wash off the stench from the midden, but she did that for prudence, and for Sadana’s sake. With wet and clinging skirts and dripping hands, she pressed on past Sadana, toward the North Star.