The Shepherd Kings (90 page)

“I give you the Bull of Re and the lands about it,” Ahmose
said, “as I’ve given your kinswoman the Sun Ascendant. You in the Upper
Kingdom, she in the Lower, will begin a thing that will make us stronger than
ever. Give me horses, my son. Give me chariots. Make me as strong in them as I
am in men afoot.”

That was a great charge. Too great for his throbbing head
and his many aches and bruises. But he would not stay abed. He saw the king
ride out with the strength of his army that remained—much more than Kemni had
looked for, with those who had remained in reserve on the ships and those who
had come in from round about the Lower Kingdom.

The storm had wrought terrible destruction, therefore there
were fewer fighting men than had hoped to come, but their numbers were still
very great. And though storehouses had fallen and provisions been destroyed by
war and storm, there was still enough to bear his army into the land of the
Retenu.

Some of the Cretan fleet went with him as far as the river
would go, and would then go out to sea, following the coast and bearing
provisions as they could. The rest remained in the service of the queen from
Crete, and among them the admiral himself, her kinsman Naukrates.

~~~

They dined together the night the king departed, no formal
gathering, but when Kemni was carried off bodily to the rooms that everyone
insisted were his, Naukrates came at the head of a procession of servants with
the makings of a feast, and ordered it spread in one of the outer rooms. Kemni
was spread with it, as it were: laid on a couch like a lady with the vapors,
and served like one, too, by a pair of maids whom he thought he recognized.
When under his stare they began to giggle, he knew them in truth. They were
Arianas—maids of the Ariana of Crete.

As if that recognition had been a signal, she appeared
herself, dressed as he so loved to see her, in the tiered skirts and the vest
that flaunted her beauty. The pain of that, of remembering another who had
dressed so and smiled so when they were alone, was oddly remote—perhaps because
of Sadana’s potion, which she had been feeding him in fiery doses.

They dined together in the style to which, Ariana told him
laughing, he should become accustomed, “For you are a prince now.”

“I’ve lived with princes since I was little more than a
boy.” That was sadness too, to remember Gebu and what he had been and what he
had become. Kemni would never, please the gods, fall to the temptation that had
destroyed Gebu. He did not want to be a king.

“But you are more than a prince’s hanger-on,” Ariana said.
“You hold the rank yourself.”

That was true. Kemni had not realized; his head was still
too addled. Master of the king’s horse was a high rank: noble, royal perhaps.
Why not? He would need as much wealth as the king or the queens would bestow on
him, to do as they bade him. And power, too, to command and be obeyed.

It was too much to think of all at once. He ate what he was
given, instead; or tried. This feast was like the thoughts that crowded in his
mind: delicious, exhilarating, but too rich for his weakened spirit.

He would be strong again. Both Imhotep and Sadana, in a rare
moment of agreement, had assured him of that. Tonight he was allowed to indulge
his weakness.

Naukrates had been drinking deep of the wine. He was one of
those men who grew warmer with it and more expansive, but never more
quarrelsome. He laid an arm about Kemni’s shoulders and embraced him. “Poor
boy! You look overwhelmed. Why not escape from it all? Come with me, take ship
on
Dancer
, run away to sea. We’ll
sail beyond the world’s edge. We’ll cross wakes with the barque of the sun.”

After a few sips of wine, Kemni was even more fuddled than
Naukrates. “That,” he said with great care not to trip over his tongue, “would
be splendid. Shplendish—splendid.”

“You can do that,” Ariana said, crisp and sharp, “when
you’ve given the king his horses. And not before.”

“Not give king horses,” Kemni said. “Make king horses. Many
many many many many—”

“Many horses,” Naukrates said helpfully. “
Then
ship.”

“Then ship,” Ariana said.

~~~

Kemni remembered that after he had recovered from both
wine and addlement—a remarkably short time, all things considered. The king had
left at the moon’s full. By the time of the new moon, Kemni was well enough,
and matters well enough in hand, that he could travel with a company of the
queens’ soldiers and with others who were going to rebuild their holdings, or to
take holdings that had been given them out of the booty of war. All over the
Lower Kingdom, lordly houses that had been subject to the Retenu were in
Egyptian hands again, and were, many of them, in sore need of tending.

This would be the work of years. If Kemni ever ran away to
sea, the beard he did not grow would no doubt be as grey as Naukrates’.

But that, as Naukrates reminded him, was not so terribly
old. Meanwhile, in his youth, he had a great work to share in.

So too did Iry. She rode with them, and her following at her
back: warrior women, lone bearded Retenu lordling, and the shorn one who,
everyone knew, was her lover. They would take the Sun Ascendant as Kemni was to
take the Bull of Re. He had in mind to pause there, if he might, for a little while.

~~~

The return to the Sun Ascendant was a homecoming—for Kemni
as much as for Iry. It was not his own holding, nor had it been, but he had
known it from his childhood.

The storm had battered it, but not as terribly as some. The
roof was off one of the houses within the wall, the Retenu women’s house, no
less. The rest had fared well enough. There were even houses still standing in
the villages, and people rebuilding those that were fallen, a vision of
industrious labor that would warm any lord’s heart.

The horses were well, the herds intact. There were foals
already, some born in or about the storm, and most of those ran at the sides of
moon-pale mothers. The Mare’s people had increased by a blessed number.

Iry would simply have ridden in as if she did so every day,
but her foreigners, of all people, would not hear of such a thing. They
insisted that she put on her robes and her golden headdress and mount the
freshly bathed and shining Mare, and ride home like a queen in procession.

They were all in their best finery, the brothers in the
chariot that they had appropriated for themselves, with Khayan’s duns to draw
it; and as had become their custom, Iannek wore the kilt and served as
charioteer, and Khayan rode in armor as a warrior should. Kemni had overheard
them casting the bones to decide their places; and Iannek had cursed
thunderously when he lost the throw. “By Set’s black balls! I always lose!”

Khayan had laughed and said, “So swear by Mother Isis’ tits
next time, and maybe she’ll let you wear the armor for once.”

Khayan was not laughing now. Kemni, riding nearby, tried to
read that face, to see what he thought of riding back to the holding a slave,
who had ridden out of it a lord and prince. But for once his thoughts were not
written as clear as on papyrus. He looked like an image carved in ivory, with
his arched nose and his firm jaw, and his long mouth, usually so mobile, set
and still.

Iannek seemed to regard it as a lark, as he did most things.
He sang to himself and crooned to the stallions, filling his brother’s silence
with cheerful noise.

That was a kind of wisdom, Kemni supposed. It lightened
hearts remarkably, and made people smile.

The holding was waiting for them. Its gate was open, and
people in it: guards with polished helmets, dignified people in good linen with
their best ornaments, and young girls and slender boychildren with garlands of
flowers.

Kemni saw familiar faces, many he could name and a few he
could not. There was Nefer-Ptah the Nubian, black and towering amid the little
brown people; Teti the steward with his wide shoulders and his air of
authority; Tawit his wife and his daughters the five Beauties, chattering like
a flock of geese; even Huy the scribe, leaning on the shoulder of Pepi the
master of the stables, waiting on the greatest gladness, maybe, that they had
ever known: the return of a lady of the old blood, bearing the blessing and the
authority of an Egyptian king.

But there was one face he did not see, a face of unmatched
beauty. The Lady Nefertem lived; they had been assured of that. They had been
assured that she remained in the Sun Ascendant, where she had taken back the
women’s house and ruled it as she always had—even while the Retenu were still
lords in the Lower Kingdom.

They were taken in with songs and dancing, in a rain of
flowers. Kemni had never seen such joy here, even when he was a child. It
struck him strangely—as if he wanted to laugh, but if he did, he would burst
into tears.

The courts were full of people, all the servants, the
scribes and clerks, the guards, the women. Every one of them must have come out
to see the holding in Egyptian hands again, and to celebrate the victory.

The Lady Nefertem was sitting in the second court, the court
of the lotus pillars, shaded by a canopy, with her women about her. Kemni
smiled to see her. Yes, she would let them come to her. Even her daughter, who
was become her ruling lady.

Her beauty was as marvelous as ever. She would not mar it
with a smile, but her eyes were brilliant with joy. As they approached, she rose,
and did a thing she had never done in her queenly life: she stepped down from
the dais on which her chair was set, and held out her arms to her daughter.

Iry eyed her rather dubiously, but stepped into her mother’s
embrace. It must have crushed the breath from her: she gasped. But she did not
struggle to escape.

“My child,” Nefertem said. “Oh, my child.”

Iry won free at length and left the field to Kemni. Nefertem
did not speak to him, simply held him hard and long. The comfort in that, the
embrace of kin, astonished him. It nearly broke him.

He would come in the end to the Bull of Re, and be a prince
of the Two Kingdoms. But here in the Sun Ascendant, he had come home.

The Lady Nefertem regaled them all with a feast of
welcome. She had not been pleased to find herself host to remnants of the
Retenu, as she thought of them; or to be informed by her daughter that those
remnants would join in the feast. “They are slaves,” she had said. But Iry had
stared her down.

Iry was still shaking with the memory of that. No one, even
lords of the Retenu, defied the Lady Nefertem. Only one man had ever come
close. And that one was seated beside her, not willingly, but she would have
him nowhere else.

Khayan was quiet and rather pale in this hall that had been
his once, before his people’s kingdom fell. She regretted, a little, that she
had made him come with her; it was costing him pain. But she needed him here:
his solidity beside her, the warmth of his presence, his strength that seldom
wavered.

Everyone else was dizzy with joy. Even Kemni, who had become
a somber man since his Cretan priestess died, was drinking deep and joining in
the singing.

He was a pleasure to watch: grief had fined his beauty and
given it a poignance that caught the heart. Women sighed wherever he went, and
mourned when he was oblivious to them.

Silly creatures. It was only a face, he would say so
himself. He was the least vain of men, with the most cause to be.

Tomorrow the world would be real again. There were houses to
rebuild, people to feed and clothe, horses to breed. The king must come back to
a strong kingdom. This part of it was given to Iry to make whole.

Her hand crept out beneath the table and found Khayan’s. His
was cold, but its grip was strong. She leaned toward him. “Soon. We’ll be done
soon.”

He sighed: a faint lifting of his breast. She wanted to
touch it, to stroke the curly fleece, and when he had begun to laugh that
wonderful deep laughter, to let her hands wander down and down. And then . . .

Another hand touched her arm, much lighter, but very firm.
Her mother spoke in her ear. It mattered little what she said. It drew her away
from Khayan, which perhaps was the intention.

Well enough—for this hour. Tonight they would all be shut in
their chambers, and Iry would lie with Khayan, and the world would vanish. It
would be only the two of them, and the lamps’ light, and the dance that was the
sweetest in the world.

She was thinking, perhaps—the gods knew she might be hoping
too much, but her courses, which had never failed to come exactly on the day of
the new moon, were still not begun, and the moon was waxing night by night.
Sometimes when no one could see, she would lay her hand on her middle, and
wonder if there was something there—someone, some living creature, a child. Then
her heart would be so full that surely it would burst.

It would have begun, if it had begun, the night after Avaris
fell, when they lay together in the citadel. He had wept, startling himself;
then grown angry and called himself a fool. She had had to comfort him, comfort
that went the way it could not but go.

Tonight she gave him such comfort again. The room they lay
in had been his once, and his father’s before that, and before that, her own
father’s.

None of them had changed it, as it happened. The Retenu had
covered the walls with heavy hangings and buried the tiles in carpets. Stripped
of those veils and concealments, it was a beautiful room, a little worn with
time, its vivid colors softened till they were almost gentle. There were
dancers on the walls, long skeins of them, young girls with plaited hair, and
young men leaping like acrobats, and even, in a corner, a wicked-faced monkey
mimicking the dancer above him.

They had danced their own dance to its completion, and lay
tangled in one another, breathing hard. When Iry could move again, she raised
herself over him, looking down at his face. He smiled as if he could not help
it.