The Shepherd Kings (81 page)

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.

Some of the younger princelings were making a game of
swinging on ropes from ship to ship. The king and the queen indulged it; it was
harmless, if noisy. Every now and then one would lose his grip, or simply let
go, and fall into the water. His fellows would fish him out with much hilarity.

One figure swung across with economy and dispatch, and no
headlong whoop of delight in the game. It landed on the deck, rolled, came up
beside Kemni.

Gebu, who had once been his brother, sat beside him and
investigated the plate and cup and bowl. “Someone loves you,” he said. “Even
the princes didn’t get any of this honey-sweet. There was just enough for the
king and his queens.”

Kemni did not answer. Gebu shrugged, ate the sweet and drank
half the wine, and set the rest of the jar near Kemni’s limp hand. He got up
then and slipped quietly over the side, away from the golden flagship into
another of the boats.

That game too the young men had been playing: leaping from
boat to boat across the river. Kemni did not know why he followed. Maybe
because he was tired of sitting. Maybe because Gebu went toward Avaris, and
Kemni’s belly did not care for the feel of it. His belly had felt nothing so
distinct in so long that he could only follow where it led.

It was useful for once that he did not care if he lived or
died, leaped into a boat or fell into the water. He waited till Gebu had
advanced two boats, or three, before he began his own pursuit, moving as
quietly as he could. His body was slack with days of lying about, but it
remembered somewhat of its strength, and its hunter’s cunning.

As he had thought, Gebu made his way toward the eastern
bank, somewhat apart from the camp that spread along it, and made his way
toward the city. Once or twice he slipped into deep shadow: driven there by the
passing of a sentry, or the arrival of a mob of beer-reeking soldiers. They
delayed but did not stop him.

Gebu might have been going into the camp. There was that.
But the knot in Kemni’s belly would not go away. A prince royal had no need at
all to creep and hide and slink, unless he did something that even a prince
might be ill advised to do.

Gebu slipped past the camp with no pause except for
passersby. There was an open space beyond it, at the foot of the walls. He
ghosted round the edge of it, away from the loom of the northward gate. Kemni
was the ghost of a ghost in his wake.

But there was another behind, a whisper in the wind, a
ripple on the sand. Kemni stopped and made himself invisible, unmoving,
unbreathing, utterly still. A shadow passed, wary, but never wary enough. Kemni
tripped it and sat on it, blocking its mouth with his hand.

In what starlight there was, he could see the shadow of a
face. His hand told him more, and the sense of the body beneath him. It was an
Egyptian—a little startling, for he had been expecting Iannek of the Retenu;
but this was not that great bearded man. This was Gebu’s charioteer, the young
man named for the king, Ahmose si-Ebana.

Kemni staggered up, dragging si-Ebana with him. Gebu was
almost out of reach, almost invisible. Kemni made what speed he could in
pursuit, with si-Ebana hard on his heels.

He did not try to stop the young fool from following. A
loyal man, a man who knew how to fight, might be useful—if he had the sense not
to move until Kemni allowed him.

Gebu advanced less stealthily as he neared the walls. The Egyptian
army was behind them. The walls were dark and silent. At wide intervals Kemni
heard the heavy tread of a sentry; but the city was asleep, or feigning it.

Round the curve of the wall, not far from the river, was a
postern gate. It was hidden between two courses of stone, angled into shadow
and well concealed by the stink of a midden, but Gebu knew where to go. It
opened to his hand. He slipped within.

Kemni never even paused. Where Gebu had gone, he went also,
and si-Ebana, because si-Ebana knew no better.

~~~

There was light within, torches beginning to burn low but
illuminating a passage through the walls into what must be a portion of the
citadel. All that way was clearly prepared, laid open and deserted, which could
not have been easy in so crowded a city, and a city under siege.

Gebu was not looking for pursuit, nor, it appeared, had
those who opened this way for him. It led up by many flights of stairs, through
dim passages, out at last onto a broad expanse of roof under the stars. There
was a garden on that roof, small but cunningly made, lit now by a ring of
torches. Men waited there, big bearded men in robes of rich embroideries.

Gebu in his kilt of fine white linen, his collar of blue and
red and gold, his princely wig, seemed odd, misplaced. But he held himself
erect as a prince should.

Kemni made himself a shadow amid the shadows of that garden.
Si-Ebana slipped into his shadow, leaning toward him, breathing in his ear.
“There. I’ll wager good beer on it: that’s Apophis.”

There amid the rest, seated no higher or richer, nor dressed
as splendidly as some; but they all sat so that, no matter where he was or what
he did, he was their center. Kings did that. It was one of the gifts that made
them kings.

He made Kemni think, unwillingly, of Ahmose. He was much the
same kind of man, the same age, the same comfort in his office. He wore
kingship as easily, with as little need for ostentation—unless, of course,
there should be need for it.

He regarded Gebu with a flat dark stare, and no expression
on what could be seen of his face beneath the thicket of beard. Gebu did not
flinch. He was a brave man, whatever else he was. Kemni had always known that.

Apophis spoke in Egyptian as many of these Retenu could, without
either beauty or elegance of phrase, but his words were easy enough to
understand. “So, man of Egypt. You have a bargain for me?”

“I might,” Gebu said. “Tell me what you need of me.”

“No, no,” Apophis said. “First you tell me what brings you
here. What would lead a prince to betray the king his father?”

“It’s said he’s not my father,” said Gebu. “My mother was a
concubine. She died bearing me. Who knows who might have bedded her while the
king was occupied elsewhere?”

“Convenient,” said Apophis. “They say you resemble him.”

“He has brothers,” Gebu said. “And he had more, once. I
offer you the bargain that Kamose made. The siege breaks, the army withdraws to
Thebes.”

“How will you bring that about? Is your king about to
waver?”

“There will be a new king,” Gebu said.

Apophis blinked once, as a crocodile will, lying in the
reeds. “How do I know that I may trust a king who killed a king to reach his
throne?”

“A king with such a burden on his spirit would feel obliged
to be loyal in all else. Yes?”

“More likely no,” Apophis said. “I would ask that such a
king give me more than his word. That he swear a solemn oath that he will do as
he undertook to do—and that, once he has done it, he will rule in Thebes
according to my advice and counsel.”

“As a tributary king?” Gebu asked with great calm.

Apophis spread his hands. “No. Oh, no. Nothing so dreadful
as that. Say rather that we become allies—for you will be the new king, yes?
Will you have your father killed, or will you do it yourself?”

For the first time Gebu seemed disconcerted. “It will be
done,” he said somewhat brusquely. “How it is done is my affair.”

“So it is,” Apophis agreed with every appearance of
amiability. “I simply wish to secure my half of the bargain.”

“I trusted you,” Gebu said, “by coming here alone as you
asked—and that was not well thought of among my allies. Will you trust me in
return, that I will give you what I agreed to give?”

“I suppose I must,” said Apophis. “Or I may simply have you
killed here and now, and trust that my armies will overcome your father’s, and
win a clear victory over both kingdoms.”

“Do you honestly think you can win this war? Egypt rules the
river. The land belongs to it—the people have risen to welcome the Great House
wherever he goes.”