The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  Iry gave way then, and briefly, to the slackness of exhaustion. Almost as quickly as she had succumbed, she mastered herself. She straightened her shoulders, took a breath. Her eyes narrowed as they came to rest on Khayan. “You! You’ve been hurt. You should rest.”

  “Not before you do,” he said.

  “I can’t do that. There’s too much to do.”

  “Just for an hour.”

  Her head shook. “I can’t—” She seemed to come to a decision of sorts. “I can’t now. This is all mine to look after. The one whose charge it was—he’s . . . indisposed.”

  “Wounded?”

  “To the soul,” she said.

  “He has no second-in-command?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So send for him,” Khayan said. “You need to rest.”

  “You are not my master!” she flashed at him.

  He flinched. She saw. Her eyes did not soften, but her body’s tautness eased a fraction. “I’ll send for Seti. Though he may not—”

  “He’ll come if you command that he come.”

  She nodded. She was not accustomed to giving orders, even now; it was a habit, he supposed, that took time to set in the bone.

  Whereas he could not get out of it. Even shamed and cast down, he had still been commander of a hundred. It was a long, hard fall from even that lowly rank to the lot of a slave.

  She commanded, and the man came: yet another wiry Egyptian, this one more insouciant than most, with the usual raking glance at Khayan, and a gratifyingly abject one at Iry. Khayan doubted that she was aware of it, but this man adored her.

  “Seti,” she said. “How is he? Is he—?”

  Seti’s eyes went dark; the mockery vanished from genuine and soul-deep grief. “He’s the same, lady. He hasn’t changed.”

  She sighed. “I suppose it will take time. Did you leave him under guard? Did they find any more knives?”

  “The men are watching him—and there’s nothing with an edge that he can get his hands on. Or rope or cord, either.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m leaving you in command of the horses and the chariots. Just for a little while. Until I’ve rested a bit.”

  “Lady,” Seti said, “we’re all yours, always. But there’s no need for you to wear yourself out with taking your cousin’s place. I’ll do it in your name. You go rest.”

  She might have shaped a protest, but Seti waved her away. “Go,” he said. “It’s done, and will be well done. My word on it.”

  ~~~

  She let herself be led away then, with a docility that spoke to Khayan of a night, and perhaps several nights, without sleep, and the weight of weariness crushing her down.

  Khayan’s curiosity was keen enough to cut, but he was not inclined to weary her further with questions. Her cousin? It seemed the man was in great distress, though as to why, Khayan could not imagine. Who knew what drove an Egyptian to extremity? Perhaps it was only the shock of having, late in life, been flung into the heat and blood of battle.

  He settled her in the tent in which he had awakened, found someone who could bring wine and bread, though the jar when it came was full of the inevitable beer, and saw that she ate and drank at least enough to keep a bird alive. She who had never been richly fleshed was almost gaunt. “They’re working you to death,” he muttered.

  “And you care?”

  Ah, he thought. Anger. “You may quarrel with me all you like,” he said, “but not until you’ve rested.”

  “I’ll do it now,” she said.

  He sat on the floor at her feet and made himself comfortable. She stared at him. Maybe, after all, she had never seen him sitting except in chairs in palaces. She had not known him when he lived among the Mare’s people.

  “You left me,” she said, a little distracted, as if she was not quite done with scrambling her wits together. “You went away. You never said a word.”

  “I sent messages,” he said. “Several of them. The door was shut. You were not to be disturbed.”

  “I never—”

  “No,” he said. “But my mother would. And, I’ll wager, did.”

  Her teeth clicked together. “Did she—does she know—”

  “She might,” he said, “though I doubt it. She was keeping you safe, that was all.”

  “I’ve been hating you,” she said. “I’m not going to stop. What you did to get cast out—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t do that. But you let her trap you. I thought better of you than that.”

  “Everyone did,” he said. The pain was dull with age and use. He was more wry now than shamed. “I’ve paid for it, don’t you think? I’d say I’ve paid rather high.”

  “You chose it for yourself,” she said.

  That startled him into laughter. “You really don’t intend to forgive me, do you?”

  “Is it forgivable?”

  “I—” He stopped. It struck him, terribly late, that as thin as she was, as worn, and as determined in her anger, she was still surprisingly pleasing to the eye. Not beautiful as her mother was, but something perhaps better than beauty. She was . . .

  Beloved. That was not a thought he had expected. And yet, it was the truth.

  That was what he had run away from. And yes, he had run. First because the king commanded, then because he could think of nothing else to do. Straight away from her—and straight into her arms.

  Which were not at all welcoming. And yet she had taken him away from the grim labor to which he should have been condemned. She must feel something besides anger.

  “I think,” he said out of all of that, “that you might give me leave to make amends.”

  “What amends can you make?”

  “I can serve you,” he said, “since the gods have seen fit to lay me at your feet. We all serve the Mare’s servant, after all.”

  “Your sister said the same,” Iry said. “Is it as easy as that for you?”

  “It’s the hardest thing in the world,” he said from the heart.

  “Then I’ll accept it.”

  Such an odd person she was. What he offered her, he would have given no one else—no, not ever.

  “I think I understand,” he said, “why the Mare chose you.”

  “Why? Because I’m too stubborn for words?”

  “That,” he said, “and because you don’t think as other women do. The goddess sings in you.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “Could it be anything else?”

  “I could simply be very, very obstinate.”

  He laughed. “That, too. But didn’t the goddess make you? And shape you? And choose you?”

  “It seems she did.”

  “So,” he said. “I forget—you never knew your predecessor. She died untimely; she hadn’t yet chosen her acolyte. The Young Mare was already born and growing into her power, which should have been a warning, but no one elected to heed it.”

  “No one wanted to,” said Iry. “They told me: when the Mare goes her own way, the world is changing. That’s never something people want to see.”

  “I brought her back, you know,” he said. “Or she brought me. I would have stayed in the east if I could. But she left it, she and her kin. The priestesses appointed me her guardsman until she came where she wanted to go.”

  “Here,” Iry said. “The Lower Kingdom.”

  “She was looking for you.”

  “Yes.” Iry grew tired at last of standing. She sat on her heels beside him, calm and contained as she almost always was. She reached and touched him—brushing his cheek with her hand.

  The touch was strange, nor did it grow less so with use. He kept looking for the beard that had shielded him so well against the world.

  “It will grow back,” she said, reading him as easily as she always had. “Will you let it?” She tilted her head. “I think you look very well, if rather odd, without it. Surely it’s cooler. You must grant it that.”

  “It is very mu
ch cooler,” he admitted. “But I don’t—”

  “You’ll accustom yourself to it.” She sighed, and yawned. But her attention was on him. “And here you are wounded. You must be out on your feet.”

  “I don’t feel anything,” he said. It was mostly true. His side twinged if he moved too quickly, and his head ached with dull persistence. But he had had worse after a hard night in the banquet-hall.

  She was still watching him, regarding him narrowly. Horse Goddess alone knew what thoughts ran behind those long painted eyes.

  She touched him again, this time more lightly, letting her fingers trail down his cheek to his neck and shoulder. She looked as if she were trying to remember something she had all but forgotten. “I was hating you,” she said. “It was very satisfying. Until I saw you again.”

  He did not know what to say to that. Except: “I never hated you.”

  “Why would you? You never even thought of me.”

  “I thought of you every day. I could hardly help but think of you.”

  “Prove it.”

  His wits were slow. He did not, for a long moment, understand what she was asking. Just as she began to remember her anger, he knew. “You don’t—”

  “I’m not going to force you,” she said. “Nor will I command you. This you must choose. If you don’t, I’ll not punish you. I swear that by my name.”

  “Iry,” he said. “Iry. Iry.”

  “And thrice Khayan,” she said. “Your power for mine, and mine for yours.”

  “Yes,” he said. He took her in his arms. She stiffened. Foolish woman: had she expected that he would choose to spurn her? He could never do such a thing.

  She eased slowly, till they lay together on the heaped carpets that shielded the tent against the raw earth. He was weaker than he should have been, but she was weary. It freed them, in its way. It let them explore one another with lips and hands, and learn one another’s bodies. She found the spot under his ribs that made him collapse, helpless with laughter. He found one down her spine that reduced her to a limp puddle of pleasure.

  She rose over him, sitting astride him as if he had been a stallion she had a mind to tame. She seemed enraptured with his face. She framed it in her hands and kissed it, slowly, thoroughly, from brow to chin.

  His hands cradled her hips and the sweet curve of her buttocks. She shifted, coiled, took him inside her with a motion so smooth that surely—oh, surely—

  Yet she seemed as startled as he, as if her body had acted without her willing it. She held very still, till he began gently to rock: like a boat on a slow swell, or a horse at an easy canter, long rolling strides over an undulating field. She rode it as she would have ridden the Mare, all of her given up to it, letting herself become the long slow easy motion.

  He, who was not so gifted, filled his eyes with her body above him, the slender frame, the firm young breasts. Her head had fallen back. Her eyes, he was sure, were shut.

  She drank the whole of it, every drop of pleasure. His pleasure was all mingled with hers. He had never known such a thing before: to take as he gave, exactly, moment for moment. To set her pleasure entirely before his. To be—to become—a part of her.

  It was strange. As strange as being stripped of his lands and lordship, shorn of his beard, and robbed of his freedom. And yet this strangeness was wonderful. In becoming the mirror of her pleasure, he became pure pleasure.

  The gods laughed, surely, as he found his way to the summit, and found her there. Her eyes were open wide. She was astonished. “I never knew,” she said, “that this could be.”

  He kissed her into silence. Time enough after to tell her that he had not known it, either. It was a rarity, a gift of the gods. Of the goddess—Horse Goddess, who had chosen this woman to be her servant.

  Did that mean that he was chosen, too? No; that was too overweening of him. If he was anything to the gods, he was their plaything. Not their beloved, whom they had taken for their own.

  II

  The enemy’s fortress was broken down, its rubble ground into the earth. The king, well satisfied, gave the order then. By the river road, and by the river itself, they marched upon Avaris.

  They met with little resistance. The people who had lived in this land since the beginning either fled at their coming or welcomed them as kin. The foreigners who had conquered them made no stand against them. For warriors who had brought the terrible swiftness of the chariot into Egypt, they were remarkably enamored of their high stone walls and their guarded cities.

  “It’s Egypt,” Iannek said. “Egypt changed us.”

  He had kept his bright spirit remarkably well, but even he had gone dark as they came in sight of Avaris. The choices that he had made must trouble even that light and foolish heart.

  He was still Iry’s guardian hound, but he had appointed himself Kemni’s watchdog as well. Kemni’s heart was ripped from his breast and his souls all scattered, but he still had enough wits to know how he was being watched. Iannek did not even try to pretend that he hung about simply for the pleasure of Kemni’s company.

  Probably he was wiser than he wanted anyone to know. Kemni’s fingers kept twitching toward knives and swords. Sometimes as he stood on Dancer’s deck, riding the Cretan ship openly as once he had ridden in hiding, he knew that if he let go, simply let go, he would fall. Then the river would take him, and the crocodiles. And there would be no more pain. But Iannek always seemed to be there, or Naukrates, or one of the crew.

  He tried to explain to them that he did not want to die yet. Not only because he had promised Ariana, but because he had to learn the way to Iphikleia’s own goddess’ country first, then learn how best to go there. That would take time. Ariana, who could best teach him, had other and innumerable duties. And she grieved as he grieved, when she could. It was not time to ask her to guide him where he must go.

  The others were convinced that he would go whenever they let him out of their sight. Maybe they saw a truth he was too blind to see. He would not have been astonished. He was good for very little except to go where he was told, and to leave all the rest to the making of their war.

  Seti was commanding the king’s chariots now. Someone else drove the king’s own chariot. Kemni saw them on the riverbank, keeping pace with the fleet. Sometimes he found in himself a yearning to be there and not here, but it was dim and far away.

  He was being indulged like a child, or like a prince whose whims were law. The anger at that was dim, too. Everything was dim and remote. Waking, sleeping—sometimes he could hardly tell which was which. It was all a black and empty dream.

  From the midst of that dream he stood at Dancer's prow, as a strong wind bore them against the current over the river, up toward the loom of walls that was Avaris. From the river it was like a rise of sea-cliffs in one of the isles of the Great Green, and yet all of it wrought by hands. That too must have been Egypt changing the invaders from Asia, so that they built larger, wider, higher, than they ever had in their own country.

  There had been battles before this. Imet was strongly defended, till it fell to the same cowardice that had lost the Retenu that unnamed fortress. They all seemed devout in their faith that if they retreated to Avaris, they could somehow win back all the land that Ahmose had taken from them.

  Kemni did not think they reckoned on the power of an Egyptian king reconquering Egypt. For every one of the Retenu there were a hundred, a thousand people whose grandfathers’ grandfathers had tilled this land, or ruled it, for time out of mind. As easily as they had fallen, as mute as they had lain beneath the conqueror’s foot for most of a hundred years, when they had a king to follow, they rejoiced to rise up against their foreign overlords.

  Kamose had known that, and accomplished it, until the threat from Nubia and—if Kemni allowed himself to think it—his own failure of will turned him back from the edge of victory. Ahmose hoped to succeed where his brother had failed.

  Certainly this was a greater force than Kamose had mustered, and a greater
alliance than he had dreamed of, Crete’s double axe raised in Egypt’s name, and its ships set at the king’s disposal. Naukrates the admiral had bidden all his captains make a wall of ships, a barrier across and along the braided skeins of the river. Ahmose’s own fleet had done a great thing, had taken Memphis with scarce a blow struck, when the Egyptians in the city turned against those few of the Retenu who remained. They sailed down the river in the morning, as Ahmose’s army made camp to the north of the city and began to mount the siege from the land as the Cretan ships mounted it from the water.

  Kemni saw the coming of the fleet, saw the blaze that was the flagship of gold, like a sun come to earth. High on its deck sat a figure in royal state, crowned with a marvelous crown of gold, like the downcurved wings of a vulture, Nekhbet who was queen and goddess. Queen Nefertari had come with the might of the Upper Kingdom.

  They met on the river, the flagship of gold and Dancer sleek with new paint and wine-dark sails, golden ship and black ship gliding side by side. Ahmose wore the crown of the Upper Kingdom, but not, yet, that of the Lower.

  He sat on a golden throne, with Naukrates the admiral at his left hand and Ariana the queen at his right, each in the full high finery of Crete.

  They well knew that the city’s walls were thick with people, wide eyes and staring faces. And men with bows, but the ships were well out of bowshot. Their captains had seen to that.

  Still they were close enough for all to see how they gleamed in the sun; how they met and exchanged royal greetings, though only those who were on the ships might have heard what words they spoke to one another.

  “Well met,” said the king, “and welcome.”

  “Well indeed,” said the queen. “Is the north secured?”

  “The north is secured,” the king answered. “And the south?”

  “Well enough,” she said.

  ~~~

  They held the feast of welcome on the golden flagship, with Dancer moored alongside. The intrepid traveled back and forth, seeking Dancer’s quieter deck, or swinging across on ropes to taste the queen’s good wine.

  Kemni kept to the same corner of Dancer’s deck in which he had traveled to Crete. Someone had brought him food from the feast, and wine. He left them where they were. He had no strength to eat, though he knew he should. He had to live, for a while.