The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  The lights there seemed softer, the revelry muted. There was music, the deep pure strain of the aulos of Crete and the piercing sweetness of a voice trained in Egypt. It was a song of love and loss, beauty and grief. It came nigh to breaking all of Kemni’s hard-won calm.

  But he had a thing that he must do. That was always so, and perhaps always would be. As the boat slid smoothly in toward Dancer's side, he caught at one of the lines flung over it for just such a purpose, and moored the boat.

  Si-Ebana, no longer feigning drunken unsteadiness, slung Gebu over his shoulder and hauled himself up over the side. Kemni followed more lightly but less gracefully, a little restored by such rest as he had had in the boat, but exhausted beyond words.

  ~~~

  The king was there, and his queens on either side of him, sharing the last of the wine. They were warm with it, but not lost in it.

  Si-Ebana dropped Gebu, bound, at their feet. They all gazed down at him, and up at the two who had brought him.

  The warmth of the wine left Ahmose’s face. “It is done?” he asked Kemni.

  Kemni nodded.

  “Ah,” said the king with sadness that seemed almost as deep as Kemni’s own. “He wasted no time.”

  “In what?” Gebu asked from the king’s feet. “Drinking to excess, sire?”

  “Wanting to excess.” Ahmose gestured to the guard who stood nearby. “Raise him.”

  The man obeyed, raising Gebu to his knees. His wig was gone, lost somewhere between the camp and the ship. His ornaments were in disarray. But he maintained his air of innocence, the lie that he had lived—for how long? Since Kemni had known him?

  “What could I want for, sire?” he asked. “You’ve always been most generous.”

  “Except with my throne,” Ahmose said. He leaned forward in it. “Give it up, child. I’ve known from the first what you were doing. Did you never wonder what truly became of your messenger to the lords of the Retenu?”

  “Sire, I don’t—”

  “No more lies,” Ahmose said.

  And yet Gebu persisted. Almost Kemni would have believed him, except that he had seen and heard the other side of him, the face he showed to the enemy whom he would make his ally. “Have I ever lied to you, Father? Surely—”

  Ahmose lashed out like a cobra, swift and utterly without warning. Gebu fell sprawling. “Enough! Your crimes are known, the judgment passed. You have been among the walking dead since first you conspired to dispose of me and take my throne. If you will not confess to it, others have witnessed, and will testify.”

  “I have enemies,” Gebu said. “Do you believe—”

  Ahmose struck him again. It was a hard blow, with pain in it, and sorrow even more than anger. So a father struck his son who had sinned against him. “The truth is lost to you. When your soul comes before the judgment and is weighed against the feather of Truth, the feather will plummet, and your soul will wither and fall into Soul-Eater’s maw. Is that what you wish, child? You would have destroyed me in this life. Would you destroy yourself in the next?”

  Gebu shook his head. He had, at last, fallen silent. Maybe he was afraid.

  Ahmose said, “Unbind him.”

  People stared. There were many about by now, caught by the sight of a prince in bonds. But Ahmose took no notice. “Untie his hands.”

  One of the guards obeyed when no one else would. Gebu knelt, rubbing his wrists, frowning at the air midway between himself and his father. “Are you letting me go?”

  “No,” Ahmose said. “I am letting you confess.”

  “Will I live any longer for it?”

  “You’ll die more quickly.”

  Gebu shrugged. “I have nothing to confess.”

  “Then you die slow,” Ahmose said.

  Not even the guards saw how Gebu moved then. Kemni barely did; but he was closest, and his eye happened—by chance or the gods’ blessing—to be resting on Gebu when he launched himself at the king. There was a blade in his hand, gleaming bronze—and a guard’s sheath empty, the man standing helpless, as if bound by a spell.

  The spell did not bind Kemni. Perhaps he was too close to the land of the dead already, to be trapped so simply. He flung himself between Gebu and the king. He felt the bite of the sharpened bronze, but far away and of little account, a mere burning along his side. Kemni’s hands had leaped of their own accord, to catch the hand that held the blade, to turn it sharply aside.

  They fell together. Gebu twisted, struggling, fighting with blind ferocity.

  All at once he stiffened. Kemni saw his face, as close as a lover’s. Its lips were twisted still in a snarl, but the eyes had gone empty. The spirit was gone from them.

  He fell lifeless to the deck, sprawling across Kemni, with a dagger plunged deep in his back. Si-Ebana stood over him with empty hands and an expression of profound shock.

  The silence broke into headlong clamor. Kemni took no notice of it. He struggled out from beneath that dead weight and stood beside si-Ebana, staring at it as the boy stared.

  This had been his battle-brother. This had been the king’s son. This had tried, in the extremity of desperation, to slay the king.

  People thrust the two of them aside, flocking around the body and gathering, much too late, as if to defend the king. Kemni saw that si-Ebana was shivering. He was giving way to shock, and to a storm of tears. Kemni held him while he wept, wishing vaguely that he had any tears of his own. But he had had none for Iphikleia. He could hardly find them for Gebu the prince.

  It seemed most sensible to stay where they were, out of the way of the crowd, huddled together against the curve of the hull. Either they would be remembered in time, or forgotten; and if they were forgotten, they could escape. But not yet. Kemni needed to know what the king would say, and what he would do.

  ~~~

  It seemed a long while before Ahmose’s voice rose above the clamor. “Enough! Leave me, all of you. Go!”

  They were slow to obey, but his guards advanced on them, driving them back by plain force. They were all driven away, taken on boats to other ships of the fleet, or to the camp on land. Only the queens remained, and such of the guards as had not been sent to capture and kill the rest of the conspirators, and a few servants; and Kemni and si-Ebana in their sheltered corner. And Gebu, lying as he had fallen, sprawled without grace or dignity.

  Ahmose rose from his throne and laid aside his crown and knelt beside his son’s body. His face in the light of the lamps and torches was very still, and more grim than sad. “The gods may forgive you,” he said. “I doubt that I ever can. And no—not for trying to slay a king. For thinking that you could do it at all. I had never taken you for a fool, my child. What possessed you to do such a thing?”

  “The gods make men their playthings,” Ariana said behind him. Nefertari had not moved, but Ariana had come down from her own throne. “Who knows what amusement it gave them, to lead him astray and then destroy him?”

  Ahmose shook his head. “No. The gods have great power, but men also have power to choose. My son chose this.”

  Ariana set her lips together as if she would argue, but had thought better of it.

  Nefertari said, “Ambition can do terrible things to a man. This one wanted more than he was ever entitled to.”

  “Now he has lost it all,” Ahmose said. He gestured to the guards. “Take him, and do as I will bid you.”

  The guards bowed and obeyed.

  Then at last Ahmose remembered Kemni and si-Ebana, if indeed he had ever forgotten. “Come here,” he said to them.

  They came without resistance, and without fear, either. Kemni did not care what became of him. Si-Ebana, he suspected, was as yet too deep in shock.

  They stood in front of the king. He examined each of them with close attention, as if he would commit them to memory. “I owe you much,” he said at length. “Only ask, and it shall be given you.”

  “Anything?” si-Ebana asked.

  “Anything in my power to give,” said Ahm
ose.

  Then give me back my beloved. But Kemni did not say it. He bit his tongue against it.

  Si-Ebana answered first. “If I may have whatever I desire, then may I be allowed to fight in the fleet?”

  “Not in the chariots?” Ahmose asked.

  “My lord,” said Ahmose si-Ebana, “I was not a bad charioteer, and I didn’t dislike it. But my second—my warrior is dead. I killed him. I had to, but—my lord, that’s a memory I’d sooner forget. I was born on the river, and grew to a man on it. I would like, if it can be granted to me, to go back to the ships.”

  “Then that shall be given you,” Ahmose said, “with my blessing. And all my gratitude.”

  Si-Ebana bowed low, to the gold-washed deck.

  Ahmose turned his eyes on Kemni then. “And you, my son? Is there a reward that I can give you?”

  There was none that Kemni could think of. Unless . . .

  “My lord,” he said. “Let me be your charioteer again. Let me fight in the battle that is to come.”

  “I can’t give you that,” the king said.

  Kemni sighed.

  “Because,” the king said, “I must be here in the flagship. But I can give you back your chariots, and a charioteer, if you would fight in my place at their head.”

  He spoke with regret that seemed real—as if he would have preferred to fight in his chariot and not rule the battle from the flagship of gold. But a king did what a king must.

  Kemni would fight in the war. Maybe die in it. Maybe not. He cared little. He had lain in the dark long enough. It was time he faced the sun again, and the bitter light of day.

  IV

  Khayan heard what everyone had heard, of the king’s son who had undertaken to kill the king. It was great anger in the army, which had turned somehow against the Retenu—because, people seemed to think, the Retenu had had something to do with the prince’s corruption.

  Khayan rather doubted that, but he did not speak of it. He was one of the hated enemy, safe while he was known to belong to the priestess Iry, but well aware that wherever he walked in that camp, he was watched. If a prince of the blood could turn traitor, surely a Retenu slave could be expected to do the same.

  The one who had killed the prince, the young charioteer, had asked to go to the ships as his reward. He served on the one called He Who Appears in Memphis: strange name for a ship, but then Egyptians were strange. He kept his head down and his manner modest, but everyone knew who he was and what he had done.

  He did not rejoice in it, Khayan had heard. He had been set on watch over the prince while they were in the chariots, knowing even then what the prince was. And yet it seemed that he had come to know the man, perhaps to be fond of him—and to kill him then was grief.

  It was never for Khayan to judge. Khayan was a captive. Whatever he did, he could not betray his people. That privilege was taken from him with his freedom.

  He forgot all of it in Iry’s tent, in the nights, when there were only the two of them. There were no tribes or races or nations then, and never a thought of war.

  How strange to have found such joy at the end of all that he was, when he should have been praying to die and be set free. He did not want to die. Not while the world had Iry in it.

  He was greatly diminished, everything taken from him, and yet he could not grieve. By day he was her shadow, sometimes with his brother Iannek, often alone, afoot or riding on one of his dun stallions. At night she lay with him in her tent, and professed to be as glad of it as he was. It was hard to tell, sometimes, with Iry, as composed as she was inclined to be, but he had learned to see behind that composure.

  He would have given much to be so blessed. Whatever he thought was written large on his face, now he had no beard to hide it, nor would she let him grow it out again.

  That was the only tyranny she visited on him. She loved his face, she said. She would embarrass him terribly by lighting all the lamps and setting them around the bed, and insisting that he lie there while she drank in the sight of him.

  If he blushed or fidgeted, she only smiled. When he demanded the same pleasure, she lay placidly in his wonted place and let him look his fill. She had no modesty to vex her, nor humility, nor anything that would allow him to take revenge.

  In the world beyond the tent’s walls, the war advanced to its conclusion. The day after the prince Gebu was killed for the ugliest of intentions, to kill a king who was also his father, Ahmose had his body set up like a grisly trophy in front of the chief gate of Avaris. Vultures circled above it. Men guarded it, to keep them at bay.

  The walls of the city were always lined with people staring or standing guard or, intermittently, shooting arrows or hurling missiles at the besiegers. On this day, the crowds were thicker, their voices louder. They knew what the trophy was, and why it had been raised.

  Khayan thought he heard anger in their voices, but most seemed not to care. It had only been an Egyptian. Who could fault their king for taking what he offered? If it had failed—well, that was a pity, but so the gods had willed.

  Iry stood for a long while so near the city that Khayan held his breath lest some luck-sped arrow, at the far stretch of its range, should strike and pierce her. A few fell about her, but none found its target. Horse Goddess protected her, she would say. It was hardly Khayan’s place to contradict her.

  Just as he was about to carry her off bodily, she turned the Mare and rode back through the army. The king’s men parted before her. Some cheered. To them she was a banner for the war, priestess of the enemy’s own goddess, brought here as an omen of their victory.

  Iannek met them when they had passed the line of siege-engines. He had been dividing himself between Iry and her cousin who had sunk into such grief after his Cretan lover was killed. That one had helped to unmask the traitor, Khayan had heard, and had come back to life again in the doing of it.

  Iry asked after him, in fact; and Iannek answered, “He’ll live now, I think, if he doesn’t throw himself on somebody’s sword when we finally have ourselves a battle.”

  “Will you fight for us, then?” Iry asked him.

  His face darkened briefly, but Iannek could never be grim for long. “I’ll fight for you.”

  Iry nodded. When she rode on, Iannek followed, walking at the shoulder of Khayan’s dun Star. “You could go back in there,” Khayan said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Iannek.

  “Mother is there,” said Khayan. “I rather doubt she’s suffered for her children’s defection. She could win you the king’s pardon.”

  “No,” said Iannek. “I belong to the Mare.” He paused. “You could escape. You aren’t tainted with treason. You were captured. You’d be welcomed back with open arms.”

  “After the crime I never committed, but was sent out for?” Khayan laughed shortly. “I think not.”

  “You’ve paid for it,” Iannek said. “You’ll be welcomed back as a great hero. Especially,” he said, leaning in close, “if you bring her back with you.”

  “As a captive?” It rather alarmed Khayan not only that his brother could think of such a thing, but that his own first thought should be of doing it. The Mare belonged to the people. And Iry—

  The Mare belonged to herself. What Iry did, she did because the Mare had chosen her. If Khayan went back to his people, he went without her.

  That, he could not do. Any more, it seemed, than Iannek could, or Sadana, or the women who had come to serve the Mare’s servant. It was a terrible thing the goddess had done, in dividing them from all their kin. And yet Khayan could not wish it otherwise. Not even to be a lord among lords of the people again.

  “I can’t, either,” Iannek said in Khayan’s silence. “Horrible, isn’t it? The gods aren’t kind.”

  “Kindness is a human vice.” Khayan shrugged with much more carelessness than he felt. “We are what the gods make us.”

  “And we love whom the gods give us.”

  Khayan flushed. Iannek laughed at him. Iannek knew, of
course. Everybody did. It only amazed Khayan that no one twitted him with it.

  ~~~

  While they dallied so, Iry had gone on ahead. Her face was turned toward the center of the camp, where the king had come off his flagship to confer with his commanders. They were all seated in the pavilion that was raised whenever the king held council, shaded from the sun but open to the air, and shielded from the stinging hordes of flies by a drift of gauzy draperies.

  Iry left the Mare on the edge of that circle of the camp. The Mare snorted and tossed her mane and went her own way, with Khayan’s stallion obedient in her wake. Khayan, with Iannek trailing, followed Iry into the council.

  He did not usually do that. When Iry was with the king, she was as safe as she could ever be; and he was best advised to stay out of sight. But today, for what reason he could not have said, he stayed with her. Something in the way she moved was a warning.

  They were speaking, when she came, of mounting an attack down several of the river-branches into Avaris—wielding the river that was their great weapon, as chariots were the enemy’s. But her presence silenced them. She acknowledged them with a glance and a slight inclination of the head. Her eyes, and her attention, were on the king.

  He greeted her as he always did, with warmth that he reserved for few. “My lady,” he said. “You have a message for me?”

  It was always wise to be direct with the Mare’s servant. This king was a wise man. Khayan granted him that.

  Iry did not bow to him. The Mare’s servant was above kings. She spoke to him with respect however, and warmth that echoed his. “Sire, you are going to force battle, yes?”

  “Yes,” Ahmose answered her. “A siege is of no use if it goes on too long. It saps the besiegers as well as the besieged.”

  “And it gives his people in Canaan time to take back Sile, and his people elsewhere in the Upper Kingdom time to rally and fall on you from behind— while your army weakens with time and inactivity and the sickness that always comes with a long siege.” She nodded. “Yes, you would want to end it quickly. What if it could be ended without bloodshed?”