The Shepherd Kings (66 page)

“When I come to Sile,” he said to Kemni that first morning,
as he mounted the chariot, “I will know how to fight from this thing. Will you
teach me?”

“Gladly, sire,” Kemni said, he hoped not too dubiously.

The king grinned like a boy. It was his grand pleasure to
take the head of the march as no Pharaoh had done before him.

The queen, in a chair as was much more proper, rode with her
husband to the edge of the holding’s lands. Ariana was not to be seen, nor
Iphikleia.

Nor did they appear in the ceremony of farewell. It was all
Egyptian: the priests, the princes, the words and prayers that would set the
king on his way. When that was done, when the king and his Great Royal Wife
exchanged embraces, as formal as the ritual in a temple, no Cretan faces
appeared among the throng that had gathered to watch.

Kemni’s heart sank. He barely heard the words that the queen
spoke to the king, soft words and strangely tender. “Go with the gods, my lord
and my brother,” she said, “and return to me in triumph.”

“I will bring you greater victory than our brother brought,
ten years agone,” Ahmose said. “That I swear to you.”

“Yes,” she said. “What you have taken, be sure that you
hold.”

“Farewell, my lady,” said Ahmose.

“And you, my lord,” said Nefertari.

Then they parted, and the army marched, the whole long
column of it, soldiers and servants, baggage, weapons, trains of oxen bearing
what men would not carry; and even here, in this land that belonged to Ahmose,
companies of guards afoot or in chariots. They might not be needed till they
had passed into the Lower Kingdom, but best, as Ahmose said, to begin as they
meant to go on.

Kemni drove his chariot blindly, even while he upbraided
himself for a fool. It had been wise of Ariana to keep herself hidden, and not
to intrude on the king’s farewell to the first of his queens. And of course
Iphikleia had remained with her. There was more than enough to occupy them at
home in the Bull of Re.

And yet, neither had given Kemni any farewell. Not even a
word. That Ariana had taken leave of the king in private, he did not doubt.
From Iphikleia he had had nothing. If he died in this war—and war being war,
that was likely—he would never see or speak with her again.

Foolish. Worse than foolish. What they had, had no need of
words or of rituals. He would live to see her in the conquest of Avaris, or he
would see her in the gods’ country. Even if his gods were not hers, and her
death would not be as his was—surely, by the gods of both Egypt and Crete, they
would find a way to be together again.

With that thought in his mind, he turned himself resolutely
to the task of commanding his chariots and ordering their march and being the
king’s charioteer.

Ahmose si-Ebana, by Kemni’s orders, followed not far behind
Kemni’s own chariot, in the first wing of charioteers. Gebu the prince was
safely settled in the chariot at his back. For a man who must know by now that
his attempt to halt the war had failed, he seemed remarkably cheerful. Or did
he expect that the Retenu would be waiting for them on the road to Sile?

Maybe he did not know which road they took. The men would
have been told that the army was divided—they could see it for themselves. But
Ahmose had not stood up before them to tell them what he would do. He had
simply ordered them to march.

Kemni gathered his courage. It took a goodly while, but they
had the whole of the day. At length he spoke. “Sire.”

“Yes?” said Ahmose behind him, a soft calm voice like the
voice of a god.

“Sire,” Kemni said. “Your son—does he know where we go?”

“He will know it,” Ahmose said. “There’s no help for that.
But now . . . no. He knows only what the rest know, that we
march into the Lower Kingdom.”

“Do you think,” Kemni asked, “that he’ll try anything? Once
we’ve passed the border?”

“I hope not,” said Ahmose, as calm as ever, but with
perceptible chill.

And that, Kemni understood, was for Kemni to accomplish.
Come evening he would speak to Seti, and to si-Ebana.

Then the king said, “He has been under guard since he
returned to Thebes. He remains under guard. If he speaks to anyone, approaches
anyone, I know.”

“You could have put him to death,” Kemni said.

“I could,” the king agreed.

“Yet you didn’t.”

“It was of greater advantage to let them all be, to let them
think I knew nothing. It is even more so now, when we go where no one expects.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“He’s not meant to.”

“Will he ever?”

“That’s in the gods’ hands.” Ahmose sighed faintly, scarce
to be heard above the wind and the rattle of chariot-wheels.

Kemni did not press him further. How it must be, to so
contrive that a prince of Gebu’s rank and intelligence should know nothing of
the web woven about him—Kemni would not have been a king for all the gold in
the world.

And now it was Kemni’s task to see that Gebu continued in
ignorance. The first wing, Seti’s wing, was well placed to shield the prince
from aught that he should not know.

But in the end he would know. What then?

Kemni could ask, but he chose not to. He had no desire, just
then, to know the answer.

~~~

Seti, and through him the first wing, already knew what
the king wished done with his son. Kemni should not have been surprised. He had
been caught up in fretting over women, or he would have been much quicker to
understand.

They marched through the Red Land, camped at night far from
cities, and so advanced into the far east of the Lower Kingdom. These were desert
places, bare of greenery and empty of habitation. But as they advanced, the
land changed. It grew marshy, buzzing with flies and biting things; and bare
sand and barren rock gave way to strings of lakes thick beset with reeds.

By then even the dullest of wit must understand that they
had not marched toward Avaris, not at all. In the way of armies, who managed to
know everything in short order, it was widely understood that they had marched
east and then north; that they advanced upon the eastward gates of the Lower
Kingdom.

“Sile,” Kemni heard men say round the campfires at night.
“It has to be Sile. That’s where the road into Canaan begins.”

Wise men, to see so clearly. They could, if Kemni lingered,
map out the whole campaign, and conceive it as clearly as the king ever had.

Even Gebu. Kemni came upon him one night under the stars of
this wetter land, in a mist that had risen off the marshes. He was sitting by
the fire, shivering with damp, while certain men of the wing took their ease
nearby. He was a prince; he must not find it strange that there were always
people where he was, and always eyes upon him.

He greeted Kemni with a wan smile and a doleful sneeze.
“Good evening, brother,” he said.

Kemni squatted on his heels by the fire. “Are you well?” he
asked.

“Well enough,” Gebu said, though he belied himself with
another sneeze. “We’re not going to Avaris, are we?”

“We are,” Kemni said. “Just not—”

“Just not the shortest way.” Gebu warmed his hands over the
flames. “So it’s true? We’re taking Sile?”

Kemni nodded. It was a direct question, after all; and Gebu
was under guard. If he succeeded in betraying them after this, then he was a
greater master of intrigue than Kemni had ever taken him for.

“That’s clever,” Gebu said, “cutting off the lifeline before
taking the heart. Have you thought of what it would have been like if my uncle
Kamose had thought to do that? And if he’d secured Nubia in back of him?”

“He did neither of those things,” Kemni said.

“He was young,” said Gebu. “Older than we are now, but . . .
young. He should have listened to his mother when she told him how to fight his
war. But he shut his ears to her. ‘War is for men,’ he said. ‘Stay at home,
lady, and rule as you are best fit to rule.’”

Kemni remembered the Queen Ahhotep, who had been mother to
Kamose the king, and to Ahmose the king after him, and to Queen Nefertari, too.
If any woman could be greater or more terrible than Nefertari, that one had been.

And yet she had yielded to her son’s will—reluctantly, as
Gebu professed, but in the end obedient.

“Maybe she should have defied him,” Gebu mused. “She would
have won the war.”

“Would you have wanted her to?”

Gebu slanted a glance at Kemni. “If she had,” he said, “we
wouldn’t be camped in this marsh, and I would not be vexed with a rheum in the
head.”

“Would you stop the war if you could?”

That was a dreadful question, and pure folly. But Kemni’s
tongue had a will of its own.

Gebu turned to face him. “Why would I want to do such a
thing?”

Kemni shrugged. “Because you could?”

“That’s mad.”

“Not if it gained something. Power. Wealth. A throne.”

For an instant Kemni knew that he had done it: he had
pierced that mask. There was darkness beneath, black as the space between
stars.

Then the mask was whole again. Gebu said with practiced
ease, “I have wealth and power. I was born to them. A throne is for the gods to
give.”

“Would you take one, if it were given you?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No,” Kemni said. “Not if Amon himself offered it. I’ve no
desire to be a king.”

“Fortunate man,” said Gebu.

~~~

“Madman,” Seti said. He had been listening, of course.
Most of the wing had been.

“What can he do?” Kemni demanded. “He’s under full guard.”

“He can think,” said Seti.

Gebu was out of earshot, safe in the tent he shared with
si-Ebana and two others of the wing. Kemni had in mind to seek his own bed in
his own and solitary tent, but he lingered by the dying fire. “A man may think
as he pleases,” Kemni said. “I catch myself thinking—maybe it’s all a
deception. Maybe he never did any of it. Even when I saw and heard . . .
it might have been a dream or a false seeming.”

“It was true,” Seti said.

“Then why is he so calm? Why does he seem so pleased to be a
charioteer?”

“Maybe,” said Seti, “because while he wants to be king, he
also wants to drive a chariot. And maybe, when he finds opportunity, he’ll try
to take the chariot he’s been riding in, and bolt for the enemy.”

“He won’t get far,” Kemni said a little grimly. “He’s a poor
horseman at best, and si-Ebana’s team is inclined to be headstrong.”

“I had noticed,” Seti said. He sighed, yawned, stretched.
“I’m for bed, my lord. Will you stay here yet a while?”

“Not long,” said Kemni.

“Sleep well, then, my lord,” Seti said.

Kemni watched him go, idly, thinking of little but his own
bed. The burden of worry, even that which was closest, the man who had been and
was no longer his brother, had faded somewhat. He was all but asleep where he
sat.

And yet he saw how Seti walked on past the tent that was
his, and slipped away into shadows. Without thought, Kemni was up and in
pursuit. When he did pause to think, it was that he had seen his
second-in-command in odd places before, walking apart from the wing.

It was not treachery, surely. It might be a woman. There
should have been none among the army, but Kemni knew there were a few smuggled
among the tents and the baggage. There always were, in armies.

Kemni wanted to sleep, not follow Seti to an assignation.
And yet he did not turn away from the pursuit. He trusted Seti. He had trusted
Gebu; he still wanted desperately to do that. And Gebu was a traitor.

Seti did not go far. In the interlocking rings and squares
of the camp, tent was sometimes pitched almost on top of tent, and one wing
blurred into the next. This tent might have belonged to either the first or the
fourth wing, or to neither. It was pitched out of the light, near a bed of
reeds, so that anyone who came or went might not easily be seen.

There was a woman inside, or women. Seti scratched at the
flap; a soft voice answered, too high and sweet for a man’s.

Kemni knew he should turn and walk away. It was no concern
of his if there were women among the charioteers, unless they bred contention.
And he had heard not one word of such.

But he had not laid eyes on a woman since he left the Bull
of Re. And maybe he had a small and not entirely laudable desire to tax Seti
with his deception.

Seti had slipped inside the shadowed tent. There was light
within: it gleamed forth briefly as the flap lifted, then vanished again. Kemni
guided himself by his memory of that, advanced soft-footed in the dark, and
found the flap where he had thought it would be. He paused there, ears
sharpened.

There were voices within, but not what one would expect of
an assignation in the night: low, intent, no lightness to be heard.

This was a night for the body to do as it pleased in despite
of the mind’s prudence. Kemni lifted the flap as Seti had, and slipped into a
blaze of lamplight.

It was dim in fact, but brilliant after the dark without.
Kemni’s eyes cleared quickly enough, while he stood dazzled, peering at three
shapes that sat decorously in front of him. One was Seti. The others . . .

He was not astonished. He should have expected precisely
this. Their absence from the king’s farewell; his own abandonment, and never a
word or a sight of them. And no wonder, if they had smuggled themselves into
the army.

“How?” he asked: the simplest question he could think of.

“Baggage,” Ariana answered with equal succinctness. “Who
notices servants among the oxen? Or an extra bag or two among the rest?”

“The king will have your hide,” Kemni said.

“He may,” she agreed, unperturbed. “But he’s going to find
he needs me when we come to Sile. I can speak to the Cretan captains for him,
and win from them respect that he, for all his godhood, would never gain.
They’ll follow his orders if I’m there to strengthen them.”