The Shepherd Kings (31 page)

~~~

How Ariana fared on her first night as a king’s wife,
Kemni did not want to know. But the god or spirit who vexed him with dreams was
not minded to leave him in ignorance. He dreamed that he hovered as a winged
spirit above the king’s great bed. And there below him was Ariana, more
beautiful than ever in her nakedness, dancing the old dance with that man who
was as old as her father.

He did not want to be angry, or to feel the sting of
jealousy. But over that too he had no power. He had bedded an Ariana nigh every
night in Crete, but never this one; never the one who had sent them all.

Even in his dream, watching her coax that tired aging man to
rise and love her as a man should do, he wondered if Nefertari dreamed also, or
if she lay awake, brooding over this stranger who had come to trouble her
world.

~~~

Kemni’s world had been troubled since somewhat before he
met Ariana, who was now a queen of the Upper Kingdom. She did not keep the
state that one would expect, nor retreat into the world of women’s secrets. A
bare three days after she had become one of Ahmose’s queens, she left to take
possession of the estate she had asked for. It was some considerable distance
down the river, and much closer therefore to Lower Egypt, north of the holy
city of Abydos.

There was nothing to mark it out from among the many such
noble estates along the river; and indeed, any who rowed or sailed past would
see fields of barley and emmer wheat, villages of farmers, and up past the
river’s edge, the low rise of wall that was the house itself. But behind it,
where one would expect the tilled land to give way to barren desert, the earth
had obliged Ariana’s purpose by curving and folding and shaping itself into a
broad low plain that, by a happy accident, received a finger of the river’s
flood in season, and out of season was sustained with greenery through the
offices of a watercourse such as farmers were used to maintain for the
nourishing of their fields.

There Ariana brought the horses that the king had given to
Kemni, on none other than the
Dancer
of Crete. They traveled uneasily, but scarcely more so than the sailors, who
lived in imminent terror of a hoof bursting through the hull. But Ariana went
with them, whispered and sang to them, and calmed them enough that they could
endure this great indignity.

There were servants waiting for her, chosen by the king,
and, as he had promised, a greater herd of horses and long-eared asses, all
that his kingdom could muster. There also had gone a number of his apprentices
in the art of chariotmaking. They seemed little enough to begin a great war,
but she professed herself content.

There was no change in her since she was made a wife.
Sometimes a woman bloomed; sometimes she gained a bruised look, like a flower battered
by the wind. Ariana remained herself. She did not weep or pine to take leave of
her husband. He seemed more moved by the parting than she: lingering a fraction
longer than he might have done, and following her with his eyes as she embarked
on her uncle’s ship.

As far as the world had need to know, he was bidding
farewell to that odd embassy, honoring it with his royal presence. People would
remark on that; would wonder at it and spread rumors of it, but they would not,
if the gods were kind, stumble upon the truth.

When the ship cast off from the harbor of Thebes, Kemni left
again the city that he had come to consider his own. This time he was not alone
among the mariners of Crete. Prince Gebu came with him, and a company of the
prince’s guards and servants. They were going on a lark, they professed, for
life in Thebes had grown unbearably dull. Since that was in fact the truth,
they did not need to stain their spirits with a lie—even a lie in the king’s
service.

“We’ll pass the judgment all the sooner once we die,” Gebu
said as they sailed past the outer edges of Thebes. He had not lingered or
yearned backward as Kemni would have liked to do. His face was turned
unfailingly toward the northward stretch of the river. Kemni had not seen him
so bright or so eager since—by the gods, since the last battle they had fought
in. And that was years past.

“You should have gone to Crete,” Kemni said.

Gebu lifted a brow. “What, I?”

“You,” said Kemni. “You’re the king’s son. You know the
words to say, the things to do. I did nothing but stumble. It’s the gods’ own
miracle I never fell.”

“It seems to me,” said Gebu, “that you did better than
stumble. That you flew.” He tilted his head toward Ariana where she stood by
the prow. She was a marvelous sight, dressed again as a Cretan lady, with her
lovely breasts bare to the sun of Egypt. A maid—new gift from her husband—did
her best to shade her with a canopy, but she was in no mood to be protected.

“The gods called you for her sake,” Gebu said. “She has a
great fondness for you. She’d not have taken so to me, I don’t think.”

“Do you know that?” Kemni demanded.

Gebu shrugged. “My belly knows it. So does yours, or you’d
not be blushing like a girl. That embassy needed you. This one . . .
well, and this one, too, but for once I can trail behind and share a little of
your glory.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Kemni said. “It’s not fitting.”

“Ah, poor child,” Gebu said without sympathy. “I’ve made you
wriggle. And well I should, when you’re being such a fool. Chin up, little brother,
and strut a little. You’re a power in the kingdom now, whether you like it or
no.”

“I don’t think I like it,” Kemni muttered.

“You’ll learn,” said Gebu.

~~~

The estate was called Bull of Re, which Ariana reckoned
fitting, and Kemni found a little disturbing. It was too much like the dream
that had begun it all for him, and the bulldancing. But it was a pleasant
place, a house of an older style, now out of fashion but Ariana declared
herself charmed by it. The odd twofold nature of it, estate like any other
before, hidden valley behind, pleased her immensely; and more so when she saw
the valley populated with herds of horses and asses.

She was less pleased with her apprentices’ attempts at
chariotmaking. “Men’s lives ride in them,” she said. “They must be perfect.”

But she was not ready, yet, to steal the enemy’s masters of
the art. There was much to do with the estate first, and its inhabitants both
animal and human. There were a handful of chariots in various states of repair
and disrepair, that would suffice for training the horses and asses. There was
harness to be made, men to be trained; and of them all, only the Cretan
women—both—able to guide and teach.

“You learn quickly,” Ariana said to Kemni. “Now learn as
you’ve never learned before. Learn swift, learn well. Live, eat, breathe this
that we teach you. Then teach it to whoever else will learn.”

Kemni did not trouble to protest. Ariana would not have
heard him. She seldom commanded anyone, but she asked in ways that no mere
mortal could refuse. When she bade him learn, learn he must. He was given no
other choice.

The king had sent a company of men to the Bull of Re, picked
young men of the royal armies. Some Kemni knew; of those, a handful had been in
his own company of a hundred, when there were battles to fight. They were his,
they all said. The king had sent them to serve the Cretan women, but they would
look to Kemni for their orders.

It was a rebellion, quiet and rather touching. But Kemni
could not let it go on. He faced them in the courtyard of the wing that would
be their barracks, the whole lot of them dressed and armed for inspection, and
said flatly, “I’ll be your commander. But your obedience belongs to the queen.”

“The queen? Queen Nefertari?”

Kemni met the eyes of the man who had spoken. He was an
insouciant young thing, a lord’s younger son from the look and bearing of him,
with a glint of gold in the ornaments that graced his person. His name, Kemni
recalled, was Seti. It was a name somewhat out of favor in this part of Egypt:
the foreign kings had taken the god Set for their own, and imbued him with the
powers of their own king of gods.

This Seti had an air of one who relished a fight. Which
could be a good thing, or could be a terrible nuisance. Kemni met him with a
bland stare and the suggestion of a smile. “Here, in this place, there is only
one queen. That queen is the Ariana of Crete. That is a great lady, my friend,
and a priestess, and a living goddess. She may not be our goddess, but she is
our queen.”

“She holds herself high,” drawled Seti. Others near him
nodded. Some grinned lazily at Kemni.

Kemni knew the look of a manpack when he saw one. He let his
smile widen a fraction, just enough to show a gleam of teeth. With no more
warning than that, he kicked Seti’s legs from under him and knocked him flat.
As Seti lay winded, stiff with shock, Kemni said, “You will speak of her with
respect.”

Seti, unlike Kemni, did not appear to learn quickly. He drew
himself up painfully, licking blood from a cut lip. “Respect?” he said. “But why?”

“Because,” said Kemni, sweeping a blow that knocked him flat
again, “I said so.”

Seti bowed to that. He did not appear to resent Kemni’s
rough handling; if anything, like a dog that learns to welcome its master’s
kick, he was glad of it. It proved to him that where he offered obedience, he
offered it to strength.

Kemni suppressed a sigh. The manpack would go where its
leader led. The rest, if he was fortunate, would follow Ariana for herself, and
not simply because her commander of a hundred was heavy with his fist.

He faced them all as he would have done on a battlefield.
“You are sworn to serve the king. Your service to him resides now in your
service to this lady from Crete. Any who fails in that, answers to me.”

That satisfied them well enough. Kemni swept them with a
last, raking glance, turned on his heel and stalked away as a commander of a
hundred could not but do.

~~~

“Hail the hero! Hail the conqueror.”

Kemni jumped nigh out of his skin. In the sudden blind dark
of his passage from blazing sun of the courtyard to shade of the colonnade,
Iphikleia’s voice sounded eerily clear. Her mockery lashed him like cold
sea-spray.

It took all the strut out of him, and most of the
self-satisfaction, too. “Sometimes,” he said, “you might leave a man one or two
of his delusions.”

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked.

He should be raging at her. And yet there was something so
bracing about her, and so unlike anything else he knew, even Ariana, that he
could only laugh a little painfully, shrug and sigh and say, “Yes. Of course.
Why should you trouble yourself?”

“It’s not good for a man to indulge his fancies,” she said.
One or both of them turned at the same time, and they walked together down the
colonnade to the gate. “Men are so strong, you see, in the body, but so weak in
the spirit. They’re like bulls: everything they are has to do with rutting.”

“Oh, come,” he said. “There’s a little more to us than
that.”

“Why, surely,” she said: “when there are women to teach you
discipline.”

“Sometimes I think you do that just to see if I’ll take the
bait,” he said.

They paused in the gate, blinking at the light of the larger
courtyard, but not quite too dazzled to see each other’s faces. Was she
smiling? No, he was dazzled. Or was it her smile that was doing it?

Gods. She did not know what he dreamed of—still, so often
that it had become an old familiar thing. She in her royal rank, her sanctity,
and her unshakable conviction that the world was hers to command, could not
possibly be dreaming as he was dreaming. That would be far beneath her.

He did not even like her.

She did not ask to be liked. Neither did she particularly
want to be.

And perhaps, he thought, that was a mask she wore. When he
dreamed her, she was a warm and laughing armful, warmer and merrier even than
Ariana. It was always a shock to see the waking woman, and to come face to face
with her coldness.

She did not seem so cold now. The pause stretched. It was
cooler in the gate than in the sun, and there was a faint waft of sweetness
from the tattered but indomitable garden. Kemni was wanted in the stable, where
the first of the horses had come in to be trained. But it was oddly pleasant to
stand here, saying nothing, doing nothing, simply and comfortably at rest.

She touched his arm, light as the brush of a feather. He
started a little. Almost he might have doubted that she had done it, but his
arm burned as if she had brushed it with fire.

She stepped past him, out into the sunlight. He thought of
holding back, or of speaking. But he did neither. They walked across the court
to the stables.

~~~

There was a terribly great deal to learn, and terribly
little time to learn it. Many of the horses, Ariana said, showed signs of
having been trained to the chariot before; as they would have expected, since
most had come as prizes of war. That made matters somewhat simpler. So did
Ariana’s ruthless assessment of Kemni’s recruits on their first day in front of
her, and her dividing them into companies, each with its duties as well as its
daily lessons. Seti the insolent, Kemni happened to notice, was chosen among
the first. She did not appear to care if a man was ill-mannered, if only he
learned what she had to teach.

Seti did have a gift: with horses. With them he put aside
his air of eternal ennui. They responded in kind, and even granted him respect:
not an easy thing to earn, with those self-willed beasts.

Kemni had to learn all that his men did, and command them,
and look after them, and still wait on Ariana and assist both her and her
cousin in their study of the language of Egypt. He rose before dawn and fell
abed long after sunset, his head buzzing with all that it was being forced to
hold. So much to learn. So much.