The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  ~~~

  When morning was close and the city well behind, Sadana caught Iry as she strode onward, tripped and felled her. She lay winded but already struggling to rise. Sadana set a foot on her breast. “Stop,” she said. “Be quiet. Come with me.”

  She let Iry up, but kept a grip on her arm, dragging her into the reeds that bordered the river. Iry tried to protest, to remind her of crocodiles and snakes and swarms of biting flies, but Sadana clapped a hand over her mouth. “Quiet,” she breathed.

  Iry stopped struggling. Then she heard what Sadana must have heard long before her: hoofbeats on the road, approaching at speed. Her heart leaped. If it was the Mare—

  But the Mare was ahead of her. This one came from behind, from Avaris. She crouched low in the reeds.

  It was a chariot drawn by a pair of horses, and a single man in it. Iry bit her tongue. It was Iannek.

  “I ordered him to—” she began.

  Sadana’s hand stopped her mouth again. He rattled swiftly past, unaware of them, intent on the road ahead. She strained to hear, but no one followed him.

  When he had been gone for a long count of breaths, Sadana let Iry rise at last, and continue—as it happened, in the direction he had been going. She could walk no faster. She could run, but she would exhaust herself before she ever caught the man in the chariot. If he was riding to capture the Mare, then he would fail. If he went to betray her, he might succeed.

  She was armed. She was making all speed that she might. It must be enough.

  Grey light washed slowly over them. Moon and stars faded. They must leave the road soon, before they were seen on it. Traffic northward had faded to a trickle except for the king’s runners and his armies, but traffic southward was an unending flood.

  Sadana turned aside from the broad and beaten track into the fields beyond. The barley had been harvested and taken away. They made what speed they could through the stubble. There were copses of trees beyond, orchards, a vineyard.

  Daylight found them walking among the pruned and tended trees of an orchard, keeping to cover and out of sight of the road. Iry was aware, dimly, that her feet were blistered and bleeding, and that her body was stumbling. But she had to come to the Mare. She had to find Iannek and stop him—from whatever he was doing.

  She was leading Sadana as she had done since they left the palace gardens. Sadana had voiced no complaint, expressed no exhaustion. She was made of bronze, maybe, or honed to a keener edge than most women knew was possible.

  Iry could not go much farther. Her body knew that. Her spirit was beginning to acknowledge it.

  Just as she knew she must stop, crawl into hiding, and sleep like the dead till night came again, the orchard ended. Wild land lay beyond, marshes and tangled thickets, rich ground for hunting and for hiding in.

  A pale shape glimmered amid the green. Iry forgot weariness, forgot pain, forgot even fear. She began to run.

  The Mare called out to her, a clear and piercing call, and burst out of the thicket. They met on the field’s edge, the Mare pounding to a halt, Iry all but falling against her neck. The Mare was sweating, but lightly. Her mane was brushed and smooth, not in the knots Iry had expected. She looked, in fact, as if she had been freshly groomed, her feet trimmed, her body pampered as it well deserved to be.

  A patchy-bearded face grinned at her from amid the tangle of shrubbery. “Good morning, my lady,” Iannek said.

  Iry would have leaped on him, but the Mare was in the way. She settled for a murderous glare. “I told you to stay in the city. What made you think—”

  “I had older orders,” he said, “to stay with you no matter what happened. I was never released from those.”

  “Convenient,” Iry muttered. “Now get you home. And pray the gods no one asks what you were doing riding north alone in a stolen chariot.”

  “It’s not stolen!” he protested. “A friend borrowed it from another friend. I promised to return it. Which I did. The man who owns it has a house not far from here.”

  “And the horses?”

  “Well,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather we could all ride, and not just you?”

  “Gods,” Iry said. She glanced about. She could hardly stand on the edge of a field, instructing this perfect fool in simple prudence. She turned her face toward the thicket. As she had expected, the others followed, Iannek and the Mare, and Sadana at a little distance, as if she had at last succumbed to exhaustion.

  He had made camp deep in the thicket, where a clearing offered space; from the look of the edges, he had widened it till it was large enough for three horses and three people. The pair of dun stallions stood together in hobbles, one grazing, one drowsing, though the Mare’s arrival roused them both.

  Iry knew those stallions. They were Khayan’s own, his darlings, whom he had bred in the east, and raised from foals. Their dam, he had told Iry, was one of the Mare’s people, their sire the king stallion of a great queen’s herd. He doted on them as if they had been his children.

  The elder, who had a star on his brow, whickered at the Mare. The younger, whose brow bore a crescent moon, kept his head low. He must have offered insolence and been corrected for it.

  The Mare ignored them both. She set to grazing where the grass was not too badly trampled, and left Iry to confront Iannek unhindered.

  Iannek seemed unaware of his danger. Even when Iry advanced on him, he stood his ground. He smiled. He said, “There’s bread. And beer. Yakub, the man with the chariot—he says it’s the best beer in the Delta.”

  “A Retenu would know?” Iry stood face to face with him, or rather face to breast. When had he grown so large? He was as large as Khayan.

  He was still a flaming fool. She jabbed a fist in the hollow of his belly. With a faint wheezing sound, he crumpled to his knees.

  She kept him there with her hands on his shoulders. “You rampant idiot. Look what you’ve done. You’ve stolen these horses, you’ve advertised your presence by returning the chariot, and now you think you can travel with us? They’ll be hunting for the horses, you can lay wagers on it.”

  “They won’t, either,” he said, aggrieved, and still wheezing slightly. She hoped he was glad she had not struck lower. Then he would have been in genuine pain. “I was supposed to have sent them back to the Sun Ascendant. The rest of the horses can go to the war, but Mother wanted these kept apart.”

  “Were you to be sent there as well?” Iry demanded.

  “Well,” he said, “no. But I let everyone think that’s where I was going. If they look for me at all, they’ll look to the south.”

  “Or to the north, where your brother went—since you were known to have returned the chariot by this road. Your brother to whom you are famously loyal, to whose exile you’ve been heard to object in no uncertain terms.”

  “Maybe,” said Iannek, “but if they look where the army is, they won’t find me, will they? They’re busy with the war, lady. They won’t take the trouble to hunt me down, if I’m known to be on a simple errand for my mother.”

  Iry could argue with that, and began to, at length; but Sadana broke in on them both. “Give it up, lady. If we send him away, he’ll simply follow. Best we keep him with us. We might even be able to keep him out of trouble.”

  Iannek glowered at her. But when he turned back to Iry, he was his insouciant self again. “Well? Where are we going? To the army?”

  “To the army, yes,” Iry said. “The Egyptian army.”

  Neither of them flinched or seemed surprised.

  “Will you still follow me?” she asked them. “And be loyal to me?”

  They nodded.

  “You understand,” she said, “that if you do this, you’re traitors to the king in Avaris. If he captures you, you’ll die.”

  “I know that,” Iannek said. His voice was steady. “My brother ordered me, lady. Protect her, he said. Stay with her. I have to do that.”

  “But you,” said Iry, “swore oath to the king.”

  He shook
his head. “I didn’t. I swore oath to my brother, as my lord and commander. I swore to obey him in everything, to do whatever he bade me do. That’s how we do it, you know that. Then the higher lord swears to the king. Khayan has to serve the king. I serve Khayan. And because Khayan ordered me, I serve you.”

  Iannek’s logic always made Iry’s head ache. “It doesn’t—trouble you—?”

  He winced a little. Did his head ache, too, then? “Honor is simple. It isn’t always easy.”

  Iry sighed and shook her head. “Then it seems I’m bound to you. I hope you don’t live to regret it.”

  VI

  The armies of the Upper Kingdom descended on Sile utterly by surprise. The long march had gone through empty places, but through towns and villages too, and never a one had betrayed them to the conquerors. Indeed they had shared their harvest, and sent the Great House on his way with prayers and blessings and the worship proper to one who was both king and god.

  The gods were with them. Kemni needed no greater proof of it.

  But the war was far from won. They had still to come to Sile and engage the enemy. And Crete had to be there, waiting at sea, till the proper time. If there was a storm, if the waves of the sea ran against them and they could not come to shore . . .

  The enemy, after all, had gods of their own. They had claimed Set the destroyer, the enemy of Horus and Osiris, and made him their lord and patron.

  His temple loomed on the horizon of Sile as it did over every city that these Retenu built. Great ugly blocky thing that it was, within walls built high and broad, it had neither beauty nor power. It was merely massive.

  They descended upon it out of the empty lands, eaten alive by the biting things that dwelt in the marshes, seared by sun and wind, and worn down with long marching. They found the great gate open, caravans streaming in and out, the markets humming with commerce, the walls but lightly guarded. The governor of the city, the king’s spies said, had gone to take the waters in an oasis in Asia, taking with him half a dozen of his favorite women, and his newest and most delightful wife.

  Such arrogance was entirely to be expected, and yet it amazed Kemni. For a people who built walls as strong as these, who lived for the arts of war, they were remarkably disinclined to believe in war when it came upon them.

  “Not from us,” Ahmose said. He had bidden Kemni drive his chariot from the middle ranks, where all the army could rejoice that it protected him, to the head of the march. He was in his golden armor, crowned with the blue crown of war, and all his weapons were gleaming with gold. Still they were weapons and not ornaments, keen-edged and well balanced, and he knew how to wield them.

  As they sped past the van to the open field, Ahmose said calmly, “They think of us as servile, even after all my brother’s victories. We are a nation of slaves, a conquered people. And how could we attack here? All our strength is in the south. This is the northern gate of their conquest.”

  Kemni nodded. And yet, he thought, they had grown careless. Had there been no raiders out of the desert, no reivers from Canaan?

  It seemed not. Their coming cast the city into disarray. Men—and women and children, too—swarmed on the walls. The gates swung ponderously shut. Travelers and caravans caught without ran about in panic. The caravans at least remembered good sense, gathered together and posted guards and cast about for an avenue of retreat. There was none: Ahmose’s army came on in a wide arc. Those who broke and ran either met the points of spears, or cowered on the shore of the lake that opened on the sea.

  And from the sea came a vast fleet of wine-dark sails, ships with long bright eyes, and crews of warriors who laughed as they rode the waves on wind and oar. The great ship that led them, the flagship, bore on its sail a golden bull and a great double axe; and its prow was horned like a bull. The admiral on the deck raised his weapon as he came on: a double axe, bright-gilded and flaming in the sun.

  Ahmose’s army raised a roar of delight, which met its echo from the ships. They closed the vise on land and sea, surrounded the city of Sile, and mounted siege outside those towering walls.

  Not too long a siege. That was the king’s order. They must break the gates down quickly and take the city, and secure the road to the north, close it off against reinforcements from Asia.

  Ahmose on the march had begun to show his age. He was not a young man, and though he was strong of will, his body was beginning to yield to the years. But in front of Sile, in the camp that they had made behind the line of the siege-engines, he won back his youth.

  The Cretan admiral had come down from his ship to speak with the king. He was a great prince, a lord of the sea-warriors, high and proud—and yet, for all of that, he was still the captain whom Kemni had known on the voyage to Crete. Naukrates in his proper rank and station dressed more richly—much—but put on no greater airs, nor scorned to acknowledge a mere commander of a hundred, a king’s charioteer.

  In fact he was most particular in his greetings to address Kemni with warmth and welcome, as a friend and kinsman. Kemni did not need to feign gladness in his response. “My lord! You came in excellent good time.”

  “Of course I did,” said Naukrates, draining the cup of wine that he had been given with his welcome, and holding it out to be filled again. They were feasting in the camp, Egyptians and Cretans sharing what they had; for the king’s following, that meant dining on fish of the sea and on the flesh of a fat ox that the supply-parties had taken as tribute from one of the caravans.

  Naukrates drank from his refilled cup but did not drain it. “Now tell me,” he said. “How fares my niece? Is she well?”

  Kemni’s throat closed. The king still did not know who traveled hidden among the baggage and camped at night amid Kemni’s men, hidden and protected. He could hardly tell Naukrates that Iphikleia was not only in the camp, she was shut in a tent that her uncle could, if he but lifted his eyes, catch sight of amid a thousand others.

  Nor was Kemni inclined to tell Naukrates that she had been wounded, or how or why. Gebu was too close, laughing uproariously in a crowd of princes. Kemni settled for a few empty words: “She’s well, as far as I know.”

  “Indeed,” said Naukrates. “She’s not here?”

  Kemni bit his lip.

  Naukrates’ eyes narrowed. “Ah,” he said. “The king forbade?”

  “The king bade his queens command his own fleet in the south. They will have begun to move northward when we move south.”

  That seemed to satisfy Naukrates. “That’s wise. Yes, wise indeed. And you—you look splendid. Is it true what I hear? You’re charioteer for the king?”

  Kemni nodded, with a faint sigh of relief that he had escaped the difficult ground of Iphikleia’s whereabouts. “The king is most pleased with his chariots.” “

  “Good!” said Naukrates. “Here, aren’t you thirsty? Drink up! There’s war ahead of us.”

  “And war all about us,” Kemni said as he lifted his cup.

  “May the gods favor our victory,” said Naukrates.

  ~~~

  Maybe the women had been listening, or maybe they had simply decided that it was time. As the servants brought in the great savory hulk of the ox, pungent with onions and herbs, there was a flurry beyond the tent: voices murmuring, muffled cheers.

  Ariana had come as the Ariana of Crete, the living goddess, priestess and queen. Her skirts were the height of fashion in Knossos, a full dozen tiers of finely woven fabric embroidered with gold and silver. Her vest was studded with jewels, gold and jewels about her throat and her waist and her ankles, golden bells chiming in her ears, and golden serpents coiling about her arms. Her hair was piled high and held in a crown of gold.

  Every eye fixed on her. Every man in that place gaped like a rustic at the blaze of her beauty.

  Kemni tore his eyes from it to watch Ahmose. The king seemed not at all surprised. Nor, gods be thanked, was he angry. He rose as she approached, as splendid in his trappings of war as was she in her trappings of the court.
/>   He held out his hands. “My lady,” he said in the enormous silence. “Welcome.”

  So, Kemni thought. He had known. Had he been angry when he discovered his queen’s disobedience? He showed no sign of it.

  She came to him, smiling her wonderful smile, with such warmth that Kemni heard more than a few long sighs. Ahmose took her hands and set her in his own chair, standing beside her, smiling at his lords and generals, his princes, his commanders, and his servants. “My lords,” he said, “I give you my lady and my queen.”

  There was a moment of further silence—astonishment, surely, though there must have been rumors. Then, all at once, a shout went up, a great roar of greeting and gladness.

  So, thought Kemni. She had aimed for this moment. Of course she had. There was none better—and none more perfectly calculated to deflect the king’s wrath that she had disobeyed his order. If indeed he was angry. For all Kemni knew, he had expected it.

  Iphikleia, lost in her lady’s shadow, sat calmly beside Kemni and reached for his cup of wine. Her uncle, on her other side, embraced her so tightly that she gasped; but she did not rebuke him except for spilling the wine.

  He laughed and filled the cup again. “Well met, sister-daughter. Well met! Are you well?”

  “Very well,” she said, and truthfully too. She had thrived on the march, grown strong, even gained flesh. If Kemni had had anything to do with that, then he was glad. Gladder perhaps than she would ever know.

  Servants brought her a cup of her own, but she was content to share Kemni’s plate, and no shame if everyone knew what it meant that they sat so close. As why should there be? In Crete it was perfectly acceptable.

  ~~~

  “That was a bold thing you did,” Kemni said.

  She nestled in his arms, stroking him lazily. He was all limp, even the part of him that wanted most to rise and worship her. “Bold? I? What did I do?”

  “You and Ariana,” he said. “Coming to the king as you did.”

  “How else should we have done it?”