The Shepherd Kings (54 page)

His mother, he knew, expected that Iry would become one of
the Mare’s children, with time and teaching and sufficient stern discipline.
But Khayan, looking at her now, knew that this spirit would not yield. It would
learn all it might, and do whatever it must. But it remained itself.

That was a dangerous thing. And yet he was not afraid. He
said, “You’ll be asked to show yourself to the court, and likely soon. Are you
prepared for that?”

She tensed, perhaps. But she said calmly, “I suppose I am as
ready as I may ever be.”

“I won’t be far from you,” he said, moved to it by he knew
not what. “If it becomes too much to bear, come to me. Will you remember that?”

She looked at him strangely, as well she might. But she only
said, “I’ll remember.”

He nodded. “That’s well. Yes, very well.”

There was another silence. There were often silences between
them, but this, to Khayan at least, felt different. He was thinking, quite
apart from any volition or sense, that there was a bed yonder, and she was
remarkably close to it. Her body in the rumpled robe seemed as scant as a
boy’s, but he knew what sweetness was hidden beneath the embroidered linen.

She must not know. That was his first thought, and perhaps
his only one. It was not fitting that he should presume to look on the Mare’s
servant in this manner.

Belatedly he recalled that he stood in the door; that he
must move before she could leave. He stepped aside.

She did not escape as he had thought she might. She looked
from him to the door, shrugged almost too slightly to see, and turned again to
gaze out of the window. “I have no window,” she said. “Are you hungry? Would you
like to send for something?”

In fact Khayan would, but he paused to marvel at her. She
had gall, he had known it. Still, she could surprise him.

He sent for food for both of them. She never left the window
while they waited. “Look,” she said. “More warhounds. I never saw them before I
came here—and now I’ve seen whole packs of them.”

She beckoned. He came more obediently than perhaps he should
have. The embrasure was close quarters for two of them, as broad as his
shoulders were. Her arm was warm against his. He knew exactly where each part
of her was, and how close it was to him, even through his robe and hers.

It was an effort to look out, to see what she wanted him to
see. A handful of men passed through the court, each with a brace of the great
fierce dogs that were, to some of the lords, a fashion and an affectation.

“You don’t have warhounds,” Iry said, “nor did your father.
Why is that?”

“My father used to say that every animal should be of use in
peace as well as war. A dog once taught to hunt men is good for nothing else.
He gets the taste of manflesh, you see, and craves it over after.”

“That’s what they say of lions,” she said, “and crocodiles,
and riverhorses. Manflesh is sweet. Too sweet.”

“Mind you,” said Khayan, “for some lords, that might not be
an impediment. The greatest hunt of all, they say, is the hunting of men.”

She shivered. Before he had thought, he circled her with his
arm and drew her even closer. She did not stiffen or resist. For an instant,
too quick almost to catch, she melted against him.

Then she was separate again, standing on her own. He let his
arm fall. She said, “The men they hunt would be my kin. My people. Do I have
that power? Can I forbid it?”

She had surprised him. He forgot, or never entirely
remembered, all that she was. He had to think about what she had said. “I
suppose you could disapprove of it,” he said, “and let it be known. But the
Mare’s servant has always taken care not to interfere overmuch in men’s
fashions and follies.”

“The hunting of innocents for their blood is a fashion?”

“Iry,” said Khayan, “you don’t know that they would ever do
that, or that they would do more than think of it. You can’t forbid what no one
has been proved to do.”

“But you said—” She stopped. “Khayan,” she said.

Her tone had changed. He could not have said exactly how it
was different, and yet it was. “Yes?” he said.

“Khayan,” she said again. “Khayan. I name you. Three times I
name you.”

It was a magic. He shivered as she had not long before, but
she did not move to comfort him.

Her eyes on him were dark and a little cold. Eyes like the
night sky behind the stars. “You spoke my name,” she said.

“I . . . meant no harm by it,” he said. The
words did not come easily. They came out of his pride, and his fear, too.

“Say it twice again,” she said.

“But—”

“Say it.”

“Iry,” he said. “Iry.” Such a little bit of a name, but so
strong. So very much a part of her.

She nodded at each repetition, as if he had, in some way,
satisfied some need of hers. “Three times you said it,” she said. “And now we are
equal. Your power over me is the same as my power over you.”

“Is that a good thing?” he asked.

“Do you want it to be?”

“I want. . .” he said. He shook his head. “I don’t know what
I want. Is this an Egyptian rite? Should I be wary of it?”

“Would I tell you if you should?”

“It’s a little late, now it’s done.”

“That is so,” she said. “But because I am generous, I tell
you that you may have something to fear—if you fear me. If you trust me, then
you can trust that I would never hurt you.”

“May I trust you?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Of course she could not. His people had conquered hers. She
would never forget or forgive.

“I am going to do it,” he said. “I will trust you. Because
you have my name, and I have yours. That is what it means, yes?”

“Yes,” she said, and not too willingly, either. “That is
what it means.”

“Good,” he said. And it was. How, even why, he did not know;
but it was.

The plain was wide and barren, beaten down by the sun of
Egypt. Horus’ falcon wheeled against that bitter light. Beneath them both, a
line of chariots waited. They were as still as men and horses could be. A hot
dry wind plucked at the horses’ plumes and tugged at the kilts of the
charioteers.

Kemni stood in the center of the line. The reins were quiet
in his hands, but he could feel the horses’ eagerness thrumming through them.
On either side of him the line stretched away. It had seemed little enough in
the muster, half a hundred chariots, a hundred men, and himself to lead them,
but from the center it seemed a goodly number.

Away across the plain, a gleam of gold marked the king’s
pavilion. Servants had pitched it there before dawn, and the king established
himself in it by full morning, borne up from the river in his golden chair.
Kemni, who had camped out of sight of the king and his train, knew from
messengers that it was an illustrious if small and secret gathering which had
come to this place not far from Thebes. The king was there, and the chiefs of
his ministers, and the priests of Amon and of Osiris.

Kemni met the glance of the charioteer on his right hand.
Ariana favored him with a wide bright smile. She knew, too, and she did not
care. She had announced that she would ride, and ride she had, with Iphikleia
in the warrior’s place. They were a striking sight among all the Egyptians,
kilted like them, helmeted, and armed as if they had been fighting men. But
there could be no doubt at all that these were women. Not in the slightest.

The falcon wheeled at the zenith, lazily, like the god’s own
blessing. Kemni drew a breath. Yes. Yes, it was time.

He slipped a fraction of rein. His stallions were ready,
waiting for the signal. They leaped ahead. The rest of the line surged behind
him, a long sweep backward on either side, like the track of geese in the sky,
or a wake on the river. It was not the best way to fall on the enemy, but for
vaunting before a king it was splendid.

In a pounding of hooves and a rattling of wheels and a
chorus of shouts and whoops and war-cries, the first chariotry of Egypt swept
upon the royal camp. Kemni drove not for the pavilion but for a point past it,
bending in a swift arc, while the two wings of chariots behind him drew
together. A doubled line of them circled the camp, till the outer ring bent
again and swerved and reversed its direction. There were two rings still, but
one galloped sunwise, the other against it, round and round in a dizzying
spiral.

They halted as they had rehearsed, close in about the royal
pavilion, with Kemni himself roaring to a stop full before it. He vaulted from
the chariot and ran to kneel at his king’s feet, breathless, stifling laughter.

Ahmose the king spoke above him in a voice warm with mirth
of its own. “Marvelous,” he said.

Kemni lifted his head. The king was smiling.

“Show me how to drive your chariot,” Ahmose said.

There were gasps among the courtiers, some not as quickly
suppressed as others. The king, the god, the son of Horus, was never to act on
a whim, or to depart from the carefully ordered round of his days.

But Ahmose had commanded. Kemni could only obey. He rose and
bowed and followed the king to where his chariot waited. His stallions, whom
Ariana herself had trained, were standing obedient, though their sides were
heaving. It would be well to walk them out, and well indeed if the king was
minded to learn how that was done.

The rest of his chariotry left its circle to follow. The
king had a great escort; and beside him, calmly and without expectation of
rebuke, the newest of his queens.

Kemni had not seen any women about the king. But there had
been a curtain behind him, and Kemni was sure that Nefertari and her ladies sat
behind that. Perhaps some of the gasps he had heard had been theirs.

There would be a price to pay for this. But for the moment
Kemni allowed himself to indulge in the pleasure of it: the open plain, the
company of his men and his queen and—yes—his lady Iphikleia, and his king
beside him showing not too ill a hand with the reins.

Ahmose seemed as lighthearted as a boy, even when he
surrendered the lines and laughed and said, “I have no art in this. Show me how
a master does it!”

“For that, my lord,” Kemni said, “you should look yonder.”
He pointed with his chin toward Ariana, who had drawn somewhat ahead.

Ahmose sighed. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. Oh, yes indeed.”

“If you wish to learn this art, my lord,” Kemni said, “you
could have no better teacher than that.”

“I do not doubt it,” said Ahmose. “But if it were known that
I was learning the way of the chariot under the tutelage of a Cretan woman,
what would the rumormongers say?”

“Since all that we do here is a secret, sire, and since the
woman is your lawful wedded queen, they’re not likely to say anything at all.”

“That is true,” said Ahmose. “And after the war, when all is
won, there need be no secrets.”

Kemni should have held his tongue. But he said, “My lord, if
you have a desire to ride to battle in a chariot, then you well may. Only find
yourself a charioteer, and learn to fight from behind him. Later is soon enough
to learn to ride and fight, both.”

“It would be more kingly to do that,” Ahmose mused. “Still,
since that may not be done in the time we have, I have found myself a
charioteer. Will you teach me to fight from behind you?”

Kemni had not meant to put himself forward at all. If
anything, he had been thinking of Seti, who had a gift for both horses and
chariots. But if the king chose him for this thing, he would not refuse it. It
was a great honor.

Great danger, too. The king would be the focus of any
attack, its greatest prize and its most natural center. But Kemni was not
afraid of danger. Not enough to turn away from it.

He nodded, bowing as low as he could with the reins in his
hands and the horses fretting against the tensing of his fingers. “I would be
glad to teach you, sire,” he said.

~~~

The king, who had left Thebes under pretext of hunting
lions in the wilderness, chose to linger a day or two on that plain above the
river. Some of his escort did indeed go hunting lions, and gazelle and whatever
other quarry presented itself to them. They ate well in camp that night, and
the night after that, of gazelle, ducks and geese from along the river, and a
fine catch of fish.

In those two days, while Kemni and his men gratified the
curiosity of the king and his lords as to the way and manner of driving and
fighting in chariots, the king’s ladies never once showed themselves. They must
have had to go out if only to relieve themselves, but if they did it, they
managed to do it in secret. Kemni began to doubt that they were there at all.
In the night, it was Ariana who kept the king company in his bed, and gladly,
too, as far as Kemni could see.

But on the third morning, when the king showed still no
inclination to return to his city, Kemni was on his way to fetch his stallions
and his chariot when a servant stopped him. It was a man, a scribe, small and
nondescript, with an unassuming manner; but Kemni had not seen him before. “My
lord,” the man said, “my lady would see you.”

“Your lady Nefertari?”

“Yes, my lord,” the scribe said.

Kemni let himself be led, with hammering heart and sweating
palms, behind the curtain that divided the pavilion.

It was much the same on the other side, no darker or more
confined. But as all the people without were men, all those within, except for
a scribe or two and one who must be a priest, were women. Kemni had no
difficulty recognizing the queen, even veiled and seated among several likewise
veiled. Her carriage, the way she sat, the way the others sat about her, marked
her as clearly as if she had been clothed all in gold.

He bowed to her, low and suitably reverent. With a gesture
that in another woman he might have called reckless, she cast off her veil. Her
face was exactly as he remembered it, beautiful beyond the measure of simple
mortal women—though the Lady Nefertem, he could not help thinking, was more
beautiful still. But she had not the air that this one did. She was a lady of
good family. This was queen and goddess.