The Shepherd Kings (19 page)

“Is it rebellion to serve the true king?” the Lady Nefertem
asked, so soft and yet so clear that Iry doubted she had heard it. But they
were all staring, Tawit and the five Beauties, and even the maids.

The lady seemed as impervious as ever. She smoothed one of
the many pleats in her gown, then pleated it again, meticulously, till it was
folded to her satisfaction. Then she said, “There are too many Retenu in this
house. We should be rid of them.”

“That . . . won’t be easy,” Tawit said with
what, for her, was considerable caution.

“What, are you a coward?” the lady asked her.

“No, lady,” said Tawit. “But prudent, and fond of this skin,
however unlovely—that, I am.”

The Lady Nefertem sniffed delicately. That was all the
commentary she offered, and all she needed to offer.

Tawit did not linger long after that. Iry felt a small
shiver down her spine as the steward’s wife swept her daughters ahead of her,
out of the room and away. If Tawit’s conception of prudence extended to
informing the foreign lord that the Lady Nefertem entertained thoughts of
rebellion, then none of them was safe. Not the lady, not any who waited on her.
And not Iry, who was, after all, her daughter.

Iry was not afraid, not precisely. The time for fear had
passed when she knew that the man to whom she had been so rude was the new lord
of the house. He had done nothing to her then—less than nothing. He was a soft
man, complacent. He did not think that any Egyptian, still less an Egyptian
woman, could be a match for him in wit or will.

She would like to see him fall, struck down by an Egyptian
sword. That would be sweet, and more than sweet. And if every Retenu in Egypt
was driven out, and Egypt was made whole again under its true and proper
king—that would be sweetest of all.

~~~

Tawit did not betray her lady, or if she did, nothing came
of it. Perhaps the Retenu were contemptuous; or perhaps they were simply
distracted. They were awaiting yet another arrival, one of much more moment
than the arrival of the lord’s sisters and his women.

As greatly perturbed as they were, Iry would have expected
an overlord at least, or the king himself. But it was no mere male who advanced
upon them, and no mere king. The one who came in a wagon as a woman of respect
and standing, a wagon drawn by milk-white oxen and escorted by a company of
women on the backs of horses, was no lesser eminence than the lord’s own
mother.

The Lord Khayan himself awaited her in the outer court,
standing with his young men as he would have done for the coming of the king.
His sisters waited, too, with their veiled women: a royal welcome.

The wagon creaked and grumbled to a halt. One of the oxen
shook its broad white head, scattering flies. The mounted women sprang from
their horses’ backs and stood as guards stand, fanning out from the wagon to
the lord and his men. It only needed a clamor of trumpets; but there was no
music but the lowing of an ox.

There was a pause. Iry, watching from the shade of a pillar,
admired the way in which this foreign woman drew every eye to the curtain
behind which she sat. Only when she had complete silence, when even the oxen
had stilled, did the curtain draw aside.

She was in shadow still, a dark figure, black-robed,
black-veiled. She rose slowly, with grace that the Lady Nefertem would have
admired, and took the guard’s hand that reached to her, and stepped down on the
broad back of a second.

Oh, she was regal, that one. She was not particularly tall,
for a Retenu; Iry was little smaller. Yet she held herself perfectly erect. She
accepted her son’s deep bow and his kissing of her hands as no more than her due,
and let her daughters perform their own obeisance.

Iry held her breath, waiting for the woman to demand that
she be taken to the women’s house. But when she was led away to the lesser
house, she said no word. She had not spoken at all, that Iry had heard.

That was great power and presence, to stand silent and reap
such respect. Iry’s mother could do it, too; but she simply did not care. This
was a keener mind, Iry suspected, and a sharper awareness of the world.

~~~

With his mother in residence, the Lord Khayan was all too
obviously determined to stay in these lands of the Sun Ascendant and be lord of
them. As to why . . .

“The horses,” Pepi said. Pepi had been a master of arms in
Iry’s father’s day. He had taken a great wound in battle when his lord died,
and been sent home; and so remained in the Lower Kingdom when the rest of the
army had marched away from its victories to a slow defeat.

Pepi was an oddity. He was not afraid of horses. More: he
liked them. He had kept the stables for the old lord. The new lord had his own
master of horse, but Pepi knew the ways of the house and of the stables that
the old lord had built. He knew how to make himself invaluable; and he listened
wherever he could, and remembered what he heard.

Not that Iry would venture to that realm of snorting
monsters. Pepi and old Huy the scribe were friends—unlikely enough as a
pairing, the frail old scribe and the stocky old warrior, but firm enough for
all that. They liked to sit together in the mornings, sharing their bread and
beer.

That morning Iry had a little time to herself before she had
to set to work scouring soiled linens. She had not visited Huy in an
unconscionable while, and she had a craving for one of his stories.

She found him not greatly inclined to tell a story, but Pepi
was full of gossip from the men’s side. “The lord is a master of horses,” he
said, “one of the great ones of the conquerors. He’ll be the king’s own
horsemaster, it’s said, when the old one dies. Did you see the horses that he
brought with him?”

“I did,” said Iry. She did not mean to speak, but it seemed
she could not help it. Just the mention of them brought back memory: clouds
about the moon, and white manes streaming. “They weren’t . . .
like other horses.”

“Ah,” said Pepi with a lift of the brows. “You saw those,
did you? Those are something beyond the ordinary run of horses. But of ordinary
horses too he has a great number. He’s to breed horses for the king’s chariots.
Those he’s brought with him are among the best to be had.”

“But what does that have to do with his insistence on living
here?” Iry demanded.

“Much,” Pepi answered. “These lands, he says, are admirable
for the raising and keeping of horses. The grass is rich, the fodder ample. The
fields are broad and well watered. And the road is near, but not too near; it’s
easy to run the herds of young stallions up to the king’s city when it comes
time to break them to the chariot.”

“There are other places that would serve as well,” Iry said.

“But none as well situated, or with as large and suitable a
house.” Pepi drained his cup and belched comfortably. He reached for the jar to
fill his cup again. “No, he’s not leaving at any time soon, except when he’s
called to wait on his king. He likes it here.”

“How can he? We detest him.”

“Do you think he cares for that?”

Iry set her lips together and glowered in silence. Pepi
patted her hand with beery familiarity. “There, there, child. It’s a nuisance,
but it’s the gods’ will. And maybe, after all, it won’t last so long.”

“Are you a rebel, too?” Iry asked him.

He stared at her as if she had begun to babble nonsense. She
thought he might say something, but he drained his cup of beer instead. When he
was done with that, the current of conversation shifted—deliberately, she might
have thought, if Pepi had been a clever man. But Pepi was not clever. He was
blunt, he was honest, but clever—no.

Iry did not press him. No Egyptian bore well the lot of the
conquered. Everyone dreamed of driving out the Retenu and paying tribute to a
true king again. And those who acted on it died or were sent into exile. That
lesson she had learned from her father and her brothers and her kin.

She left the two old men to their beer and their memories.
She should be tackling the day’s heaps of linen, but she found herself
wandering down through the courtyards to the gate. It stood open at this time
of day and with the lord in residence and the country at peace—if there was
war, it was far away to the south, where Egypt was still Egypt. The guards
stood at ease, lazy yet alert. They took no particular notice of Iry, though
she walked past them into the open air.

She had not stood outside of these walls in longer than she
could remember. It was the same air, the same sun, but strange, because there
was no end to it. No walls to close it in. Only the thick moist air of the
Delta, and the River retreating, leaving the black earth behind that was the
wealth of Egypt. Egypt was Two Lands, Upper and Lower, south and north, yet it
was also Red Land and Black Land, raw dusty desert and rich growing land.

She stood in the Black Land, and the Red Land was far away.
The fields stretched before her, bright already with new green. The River
flowed high still, but in a little while it would return to its lesser banks,
and leave the Black Land for men to till.

The road underfoot was much worn and rutted with hooves and
chariot wheels. Human feet never trampled it so badly, nor the feet of oxen
either, bearing their burdens to and from the lord’s house. Horses and their
longeared cousins were marking the land as nothing else had done before.

When she had her bearings, and the dizziness of open space
had gone away, she turned her face toward the hill to the north and east. Even
before she had reached the summit, she knew where the horses were. She could
hear them: snorting, stamping, shaking the earth as a herd of them sprang into
a gallop.

Horses did not run like gazelles. They were heavier, more
solidly bound to earth. But those who were running, the horses of the moon as
she had come to think of them, had a power and a grace that she had seen in no
animal before. They skimmed the ground. They danced on it. They seemed to laugh
as they ran, tossing their heads, kicking up their heels.

She could almost imagine that they ran for her. She stood
atop the hill, and they ran below her like a streamer of cloud in a strong
wind.

The others, the darker ones, the reds and browns and blacks
and duns, grazed or ran in their own herds. But she had eyes for none but the
moon-horses.

One of them curved away from the sweep of the herd, running
lightly up the hill. It was darker than some, dappled like the moon, with a
broad forehead and a great dark eye. Its mane was blue-silver, its tail
blue-white. Its little ears were pricked, intent on her.

Iry reflected, distantly, that she might do well to be
afraid. There was no human creature within sight. The herdsmen were gods knew
where. She was all alone between earth and sky, no wall and no defense against
the creature that approached her.

And yet there was no fear in her. The dark eye was mild. The
ears were up, alert. With such an expression, Iry might greet a friend.

She was no friend to this creature of the outlands. She
willed herself to turn away, but her body chose not to obey her.

The horse slowed as it drew nearer, till it was standing
still, just out of reach. Its nostrils flared. It was breathing lightly, and
sweating lightly, too, a warm odor, pungent but not unpleasant.

She had never stood so close to a horse before. She had
never wanted to. It was larger than she had expected, but smaller than she had
feared: chin-high in the back. Its head rose above her own, longer and wider by
far than any gazelle’s.

Her hand reached out. She did not will it; it did it of
itself. The horse did not shy away. Its neck was smooth, flat and warm, and
very strong.

The great head turned. Iry froze. The horse brushed her arm
with its nose. Soft nose, not at all harsh as she might have expected, and
warm, with a tickle of breath.

She was not afraid. She was
not
afraid. This huge creature, this enemy of her people, was
gentle, soft in its touch, and strangely amiable. It meant her no harm.

She still hated horses. But not this one. She stroked its
neck and its big flat shoulder, and then, daring greatly, leaned against the
curve of the barrel, pressing her face to the warm pungent back. It smelled of
grass and dust and horse—a good smell. It comforted her.

As she rested there, a great knot unraveled in the center of
her. She had not even known it was there until it was gone. An ache that had
been part of her for longer than she could remember was all smoothed away. It
came to her, but slowly, that her eyes had brimmed and overflowed.

Tears? But whatever for?

For everything. Her father and her kinsmen dead. Her mother
gone all remote and strange. Her world broken and left where it lay: her
freedom taken from her, her body relegated to the lot of a slave.

She had not wept since her father marched out to his death.
Now she wept for it all: every moment of the years between, and every grief,
and every humiliation. All on the warm and steady shoulder of an animal that
belonged to the enemy.

When she was wept dry, she lifted her head from the horse’s
shoulder. The horse blew gently, ruffling her hair. She laughed painfully.
“Why,” she said, “you’re like a cat.”

The horse did not dignify that with a response.

A horse like a cat. Such a thought. Iry entertained it
nonetheless. Cats were divine, everyone knew that. Horses were anything
but—except for these with their coats like the moon. Iry stared at her thin brown
hand on the pale neck, and looked from that into the soft dark eye. “I don’t
understand,” she said.

The horse did not mew or purr like a cat, and yet she could
see well enough what it thought. What was there to understand? The world was as
it was. Iry should simply accept it.

“No,” she said. “I don’t accept. I don’t endure very well,
either.”