The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  He was not even supposed to be present at the council within the hastily erected walls. But it was not under guard, and he was not prevented from hanging about beyond the circle.

  Others of the lower ranks seemed to have succumbed to the same curiosity. Was it as morbid as his own? Lords, he had learned, were regarded by the lesser commanders as a necessary evil, a pack of fools whose orders, in the main, had nothing to do with reason or sense. For that, one needed a commander of ten or a hundred, a man who knew what the men were thinking, and could see to it that they lived to fight in the next battle their lords’ foolishness flung them into.

  Khayan, once a high lord and now, for his sins, a commander of a hundred foot, had yet to earn the trust of his fellows. But they were free enough in their speech when he was in earshot.

  Some of them were listening as he was, rolling their eyes at one another where the lords could not see, and muttering, “Lords. All hot for a fight one instant, all cold and shivering the next. And it’s never the thing we should be doing.”

  “What should we be doing?”

  Maybe Khayan should have kept his tongue between his teeth. But he had heard too much, and was too far out of temper.

  “Well, young cub,” said the scarred veteran who was nearest—who was hardly older than Khayan, perhaps, but ancient in battles—“if you think about it, maybe your belly will tie itself in knots, or maybe it will tell you.”

  “We should stand, not run,” Khayan said.

  They all saluted him, the half-dozen who loitered about. “By Set’s black balls!” rumbled the largest of them, a giant indeed, like a vast and shaggy bear. “The puppy can think.”

  “That’s probably why the puppy got knocked down to trooper,” said the scarred man. “Not just for plucking some lord’s pretty flower.”

  That in its way was true. Khayan shrugged. “Does it matter? The kingdom’s being lost in front of us. Shouldn’t we do something about it?”

  “Certainly we will,” the great bear said. “We’ll keep our boys together, we’ll make sure they’re fed and have places to sleep, and if we can, we’ll make sure they stay alive.”

  “We could enter the council,” Khayan said with swelling surety. “If we all go, as many of us as we can muster, surely they’ll have to listen to us.”

  The big man regarded him in what could only be pity. “Where did you learn to think like that? No, don’t try to answer. I remember. You used to be one of the warrior women’s pets, before they gave you to the king. They rule one another like that, yes? Anybody can speak in council and be heard, no matter what the rank. All that plain good sense—the gods must hate them.”

  “Horse Goddess loves them,” Khayan said. “Come, why can’t we do it here? We’re not so far from the tribes ourselves. If we all go and present our arguments, surely they’ll listen?”

  “They’ll throw us out on our arses,” the scarred man said, “and flog the ringleaders. No, puppy. This isn’t a tribe here. This is an army. The lords give orders. We carry them out. The men obey.”

  “But if the orders are—”

  “Orders are orders,” the scarred man said.

  Khayan bit his tongue till it bled. “And if I try it? You won’t back me up?”

  “Puppy,” the big man said, “you’ll have to find someone else to patch your back for you after they’re done whipping you. We’ll be gone. Obeying orders—and keeping our backs clean.”

  They left him there, returning to duties, no doubt, and following orders. Khayan stood alone beyond the circle’s edge. Inside it, the lords were coming to an agreement.

  Imet it would be, the town on the road to Avaris. The rest of the north they would abandon.

  “After all,” they told one another, “when we win the war, all this will be ours again. But to win it, we need Avaris and the cities in the south. We can do nothing here.”

  Folly. Rank folly. Khayan actually moved to step into the circle, but something—whether prudence or cowardice—held him back. He would not mind a flogging for a cause, but to stripe his back for nothing—no. He could not do it. He was a coward, then. He would do as he was told.

  ~~~

  They prepared to abandon the fort, but none too hastily. There was time, the lords said. The enemy was enjoying the fruits of his victory, taking his ease in Sile. Long before he came south, they would be gone, safe within the walls of Imet.

  Khayan could not oppose their orders, but he could take what precautions he could—as could all the commanders of his low rank. He saw to it that he was posted with his men, on guard outside the fort, watching the road to the north. Surely the lords’ spies and messengers told them the truth, but his belly, around all the knots, was not easy with it. Would not the enemy wish the lords to think such a thing? He had already surprised the kingdom with the taking of Sile. Why should he not surprise it again with the speed of his advance?

  It was not unpleasant duty. The hunting was nearly gone, but there were fish in the river. The air was clean, untainted by the stinks of too many men shut too close together for too long. They elected to camp in the field that night, while the fort continued its leisurely preparations to depart.

  Night was always the worst. Khayan tried not to dream, and tried not to remember, but his heart was a stubborn thing. Again and again he saw Barukha’s face as she cried rape against him, and heard her hiss in his ear when he was captured: “If I can’t have you, no one will.”

  Sometimes, if he was fortunate, memory turned to dream. He was lying with Iry, nearly always in a field of flowers—such a field as Egypt had never known, but the steppe knew well. Horses grazed about them. White horses, grey horses, dark foals that would be grey as they grew. The Mare’s herd, and the Mare among them.

  Iry was smiling. He had seldom seen her smile in the waking world. She was not a somber person, but she was a serious one. Her smiles were never given lightly.

  She gave it as a gift to him now. He reached to touch it, to cherish it. It was as elusive, as insubstantial as a flame. And like flame, when he came too close, it went out.

  ~~~

  Khayan woke with a start. It was morning—later than he had wanted to sleep, grey dawn and one of his men bending over him, Shimon the swift runner, who ranged farthest of all the scouts. He looked as if he had been running all night.

  “Lord,” he said, for he insisted on calling Khayan that, “Captain, I’ve seen—they’re coming. The enemy are coming.”

  “How close?”

  “They stopped when it got dark, though I waited to see if they’d go on. I could run the distance in an hour.”

  “As close as that?” Khayan sat up, raking his hair out of his face. “And it took you this long to find me?”

  “I found them much farther from here,” Shimon said a little sullenly. “I needed to see how close they’d come. I sent Lamech to tell you. Didn’t he do it?”

  “Lamech never—” Khayan’s mouth shut with a snap. “They caught him.”

  “But how could—”

  “Boats,” Khayan said. “There are always boats on the river, fishing and trading. I’ll wager half of them are spies outright and the other half are in Egyptian pay. They caught Lamech. But not you. Maybe because they knew you’d get here too late to be of any use?”

  “There’s still time to fight, my lord,” Shimon said.

  “So there is,” said Khayan. He said it with a kind of satisfaction. “So. We stand our ground here after all. The lords are not going to be pleased.”

  “You are pleased,” said Shimon, whose rebellion had always been less than subtle.

  “But I can’t be a lord, can I? I can think.”

  ~~~

  The Egyptians fell on the fort at sunrise, from the land and from the river. There were a great many of them—more than any of the scouts had counted. Their own kind had rallied to them, it seemed, from all over the north.

  And of course there were the armies from Thebes and the ships from Crete. A rather insu
lting number of those sailed on past as the battle raged in and about the stronghold. As strong as the Retenu might be on the land, they never had mastered the river. That, Khayan knew as he stood in the line, watching the enemy surge toward them like a river in flood, would be their downfall.

  He had brought his men back to the walls, but the gates were shut. There were others outside of them, camped in a great circle, brought in so that they might march in a day or two or three, when the lords decided it was time.

  He had sent a runner ahead to raise the alarm. This was the response: barred gates, men shut out. The lords, of course, were safe within, and most of their picked troops, too. All those without were ordered to do what they could to keep the enemy at bay—so that, Khayan supposed, the lords could escape through the southward gate and run toward Imet.

  He had no particular desire to turn tail and run. His mood was strange. It had been strange since he walked out of Avaris. He cared if he lived or died, but not enough to save himself. He had men to look after, and a battle to fight.

  Without lords to interfere, the commanders had set up as best they could a plan of battle. The fort was at their backs. Archers with fire-arrows lined the river’s banks to hold off the ships.

  The chariotry, such of it as the lords would give them—the rest were occupied with running south—ranged in front. The mass of the foot stood behind: swordsmen, spearmen, archers. The archers too were few, and the rest of them running after the chariots. Mostly there were spearmen and swordsmen, a wall of bodies between the enemy and the fort.

  Khayan, as one such body, took as much ease as he could while the morning brightened about them. He could hear the drums beating on the ships, striking time for the oars. The deep rhythmic roll of it echoed far up the river. Their hearts seemed after a while to echo it, beating strong and slow, as the horizon spread and darkened and began to move. The sun, in its rising, caught the heads of spears and set them aflame.

  Most of war was waiting. And the worst waiting of all was that of the soldier commanded to stand while the enemy advanced.

  The sun beat on Khayan’s helmet. Sweat ran down his back and sides. His mouth was dry, but he dared not drink too heavily from his skin of water. It had to last, perhaps, for all of that day. If he drank at all, he drank a sip at a time, rolling the warm leather-tasting liquid on his tongue, savoring every drop.

  The enemy came on. There were chariots in front and to the sides. So: that was true. They had horses and chariots. Some of the horses were of the Asian strain, but many were not. They were Libyans, deceptively delicate, more like deer than the sturdy beasts Khayan had known from his childhood.

  The charioteers did not drive too badly, for men who must never have stood in a chariot before this year began. They had no art, but they had skill enough.

  The army marching behind them was large. Very large. The fleet came up beside it, wind in the sails, oars stroking the water, carrying the black-hulled ships against the current of the river. The drums had become the world, beat and beat and beat.

  Hold, Khayan’s orders bade him. Let the enemy come to you. Easy enough for a lord to command—a lord who could not himself have endured to stand unmoving while an army marched toward him. But soldiers lived to do as their lords bade them.

  When the first rain of arrows fell, Khayan had been expecting it. It still took him by surprise. It looked so harmless; and yet a man within his arm’s reach, staring skyward at the deadly rain, fell without a sound. An arrow had pierced his eye.

  “Shields!” Khayan bellowed to his own men and to whoever else would listen. “Up shields!”

  Shields swung up, too late for some and too little for others, but they did what they could. And the enemy kept coming. The chariots had drawn aside, leaving the archers and the spearmen a clear field.

  The battle had begun when the first arrow flew. But when the spears left their wielders’ hands, blood paid for blood. The defenders began to fight back.

  Khayan saw his spear bite deep in the body of a slender brown man with painted eyes. He wore no armor. The shield he carried was light, and hardly large enough to protect him. His expression when he fell was one of profound surprise.

  Khayan’s shield deflected a spear. It was bristling with arrows. Some of the arrows broke. The weight of them dragged at Khayan’s arm. But he did not drop the shield. He was not fool enough for that.

  It would have been useful to press forward against the enemy, to try to drive him away from the wall. But the orders were clear. They were to hold their ground, neither to advance nor to retreat.

  Therefore they stood. When their spears were spent, they drew swords.

  In most battles there were lulls, moments of quiet in which a man could stop, breathe, rest his sword-arm. But whether because the enemy was irresistibly fierce or because this part of the wall took the brunt of the enemy’s assault, there was no pause, no rest. And no reinforcements. The enemy had rank on rank to fling against the wall. The defenders had only themselves.

  Now that was irony: the invader from far away had men to spare, but the defender in his own country had only those who stood about him. It made Khayan laugh as he drew his sword.

  There was no distance between the armies now. The world was full of little brown men. They were as numerous as rats in a granary, and as pernicious. And they kept coming for Khayan, or for the wall behind him.

  The wall was his refuge. He kept watch as he could over the men in his command, kept them together, kept them fighting in ranks, those in front shifting to the back when their arms grew tired. The enemy never seemed to tire; and he had many more ranks than Khayan did.

  Men were falling. Of his own, not so many; he had done his best to train them well, and it seemed they had remembered. The cries of the wounded were piercing, but after a while the ear stopped recording them. Worse were the screams of the horses.

  Khayan flinched at those. He had not struck any himself. All those who came at him were on foot.

  He was glad. He hated killing horses. Even in sacrifice, even for the gods, he hated it.

  His arm ached terribly. He shifted to the left hand for a while, but his aim was less certain, his strength less great. People kept trying to tell him to move to the rear, to take what shelter there was, and let the ranks behind do his fighting for him. But he was in command. He had to be in front. That was what a commander did.

  It was his own stupidity that ended it. He knew it even as it happened. A fresh wave of Egyptians came at the line. Khayan, in front of it, tripped over his own feet and fell to his knees. An Egyptian, running past, reached down almost casually, and thrust with his sword.

  The pain did not come at once. Khayan finished falling. Feet trampled all about him. Some jostled him. Then there was pain, but remote, as if it belonged to someone else.

  Night was coming. How strange. He could have sworn that it was still morning. But time in battles could run otherwise than by the sun’s time. Maybe after all the sun was setting. It was lovely, the darkness, soft and warm and quiet, and empty of stars.

  IX

  The battle was going well. Most of the defenders outside the walls were felled or taken captive. Those within had nearly all fled. Ahmose himself had secured the southern gate through which the last of the enemy were escaping.

  It was all won by late morning, all but the last brief flares of fighting, like flames from embers. Ahmose had had the fleet come close in to shore, bringing the servants and the baggage, and the physicians for the wounded. They made camp somewhat apart from the fort and away from the battle, but close enough for those whose duty was to bring in the wounded and the dying.

  Kemni, as the king’s charioteer, drove hither and yon at the king’s command. The king did not fight unless he was forced to it; it was not the way of kings in Egypt. Nor, it seemed, of lords among the Retenu.

  Kemni’s men had fighting enough to occupy them, chasing down escapes and pursuing the lords in their own chariots. One such escape had, out
of blindness or malice, fallen on the camp with a sizable force. Maybe their commander had in mind to strike a blow against the Great House before he fled into the south.

  Ahmose was far away from the camp but in full view of it when the attack came. He did not need to command Kemni. The chariot wheeled. The horses were tiring, but they had speed enough at the crack of the whip over their backs.

  Others in the king’s following pounded behind, chariots and foot, but the chariots soon and far outpaced the footsoldiers. The camp was guarded, but the attack was strong. Ahmose’s forces were occupied elsewhere, those closest outnumbered.

  Kemni had no thought in him but to reach the camp before the enemy took it. There would be little enough in it to content him; no wealth and no booty. That was all on the ships, which rode well out in the river. But there were the wounded, and the servants. And the physicians, among them Imhotep the king’s favorite, who was worth a kingdom’s weight of gold.

  Ahmose’s chariot was somewhat ahead of the rest, flying behind its strong and eager horses. They were his Libyans, who would race the wind for the plain joy of it. Even after a long morning’s battle, they were glad to stretch their legs and gallop.

  The camp’s defenders cheered as the king’s chariots roared down on them. The attackers stood their ground briefly, but they were on foot, and the chariots rolled headlong over them. Those who could, broke and fled, scattering past and about and even through the camp. Those wrought such havoc as they could: hacking at tent-ropes as they ran, and stabbing at bodies that stumbled in their way.

  A small company had managed to stay together, had rallied behind a giant of a man and struck for the tent where the wounded were lying. They were trapped behind and trapped ahead. They would do what harm they could before they were captured or killed.

  Kemni in the king’s chariot saw them go, traveling close together while all about them scattered at will. He saw them burst into the tent with its open flaps, and fell the healers and servants who ran to stop them.