The Shepherd Kings (47 page)

Kemni’s eyes widened. “Why in the gods’ name did he do
that?”

“Because,” she said, “I happened to mention that Pepi had a
young kinsman here, who knows horses, and who has done a little fighting. He
thought that you would do handsomely.”

“You’re mad,” he said. “Or he’s playing a game that will end
with my body on a hook.”

“I don’t think so,” said Iry. “I think you’re better hidden
in plain sight. You don’t keep your head down well.”

“I do, too!”

“Do not,” she said. “Now stop that and listen to me. We’re
going where every word is counted, and every face is examined minutely. You’ve
been lucky that Khayan is a bit of an innocent, and his people are preoccupied
with establishing his place and with finding my place objectionable. If anyone
stops to notice you while you belong to me, you’ll simply be another part of
what I am. I’m the safest haven you’ll have. Believe that.”

“I believe it,” he said. “But what if that safety is an
illusion? They may decide that we’re both worth killing, even with all that you
are to them.”

“They won’t kill me. It would be sacrilege.”

“Iry,” Kemni said, “when we come to Avaris, I have no
intention of staying. Do you understand? I’ll do what I meant to do there, and
then I’ll go, back to where I belong.”

“I know that,” she said. “I’ll keep you safe till you
disappear. Do consider the advantage I can give you: while you’re with me, you’ll
be where you can hear everything, and see everything. Your king would command
you to do it, if he knew.”

He would. Kemni could not deny it. But he said, “I don’t
want to put you in danger.”

“I have the goddess for protection,” she said, “and the Mare.”
She poured a cup of beer and set it in his hand. “Now drink. In the morning
I’ll be given a chariot of my own. You’ll keep me company in it.”

“I would rather walk behind it,” he said.

“No,” said Iry. “In plain sight, I said. The plainer the
better. You can drive a chariot, yes?”

“But Egyptians don’t—”

“I’m no master, either. We’ll be inept together. The horses
are well trained, Khayan assures me, and quite docile. They’ll not make utter
fools of us.”

Kemni threw up his hands. There never had been any resisting
Iry when she was in this mood. And he could not help it—he was glad that he was
to play charioteer, even if it put him in danger.

~~~

There was a grand and terrible pleasure in driving a
chariot on Retenu land, and living to marvel at it. Surely, if Kemni had been
lord here, he would have forbidden any Egyptian to learn of horses or chariots.
They were too deadly a weapon.

Arrogance. There was no other name for it.

And yet Kemni did not make the mistake of underestimating
these people who had ruled the Lower Kingdom for a hundred years. They had not
done it by being fools. They were strong and their weapons were great. They
were a warrior nation, which Egypt was not. All their young men were taught
from infancy to fight. It was not as it was in Egypt, where most of the men
tilled the earth or served in the temples. All of them were warriors. Every
one.

They loved war. They gloried in it. For Kemni as for most of
his people, it was a thing he did because he must. It was not a pleasure, or a
game. It was grim necessity.

These people fought for the plain joy of it. If they could
not fight an enemy, they fought one another. They fought over everything.

Kemni had known this. It was brought home to him rather
forcibly that very morning, as he played charioteer to Iry who was,
incalculably, a priestess of these outlandish people.

There was always a great deal of running about in this
riding, people coming and going, messengers, forerunners, greetings from this
holding or that. The wild women could not ride quietly in a column; they were
perpetually in motion. And they had their match in the young men who were,
Kemni gathered, the lord’s kinsmen—or some of them were.

One had been hovering about a great deal the day before. In
camp he had been nearby, now Kemni stopped to think—it was almost as if the
warrior women had kept him at bay by taking stations about Iry’s tent. He had
wandered off in the morning, or been headed off by some of the women.

But as Kemni kept to a sedate pace in the middle of the
line, tight-backed with the effort of seeming casual, a chariot hurtled toward
him across a new field of barley. Insolent foreigner; and idiot, too. That was
the winter’s provender he was trampling. Not that he would ever think to be
sorry for it, he who was set too high ever to know the bite of hunger.

He was riding straight for the line of chariots and people
ahorse and afoot. His eyes, Kemni realized somewhat slowly, were fixed on
him—on the chariot that he drove, with Iry standing in it, sometimes touching
him, sometimes swaying away from him.

They were ordinary eyes, not falcon-eyes like the lord
Khayan’s: dark, rounder than Egyptian eyes, and bare of paint. There was
nothing ordinary about their expression. They were burning with resentment.

Yes, it was that. It was not as strong as hate. Kemni met it
blandly, offering no fear, and no anger, either.

The other’s chariot veered suddenly, hard, and so fast it
teetered on a single wheel. Just at the point of falling, it rocked back onto
both wheels, and fell in beside Kemni’s own.

There was a pause. In it, so quiet it seemed like a whisper
after a crash of thunder, Iry said, “Good morning, milord Iannek. I trust it
finds you well.”

The young fool opened his mouth, then shut it again, gaping
like a fish. Iry had a look Kemni knew well. She meant to provoke this
interloper, and she was utterly bereft of mercy.

The young lord Iannek gathered such wits as he had, and let
them loose in bluster. “Who is that with you? Who does he think he is?”

“This is a man I trust,” Iry said.

“You are supposed to trust
me
!” Iannek cried.

“Trust is earned,” Iry said austerely.

“What has
he
done
to earn it?”

“For one thing,” Iry answered, “he doesn’t drive a chariot
as if all the black gods were after him.”

That stopped Iannek for a moment—not long, but Kemni
gathered that even that much was extraordinary. “He drives like a blind and
toothless old woman.”

“He drives like a sane man,” Iry said. “And that is why I
trust him. Do stop glaring, Iannek. You’ll give yourself a headache.”

Kemni discovered that he was holding his breath. It was a
true measure of Iry’s power here, that the foreigner, even as young and
headlong as he was, did not sweep out his sword and strike her for the words
she said to him. He did not precisely bow his head to her, but he shrank a
little, and he said in slightly more subdued tones, “Iry, lady, you know I only
want to keep you safe.”

“You can’t do it by smothering me. Now be sensible and
endure this charioteer of mine, because he is not going away. And,” she added,
“if I find that you have so much as looked at him amiss, I will give you cause
to regret it. Am I understood?”

“Too well, lady,” Iannek muttered.

“Good,” said Iry, taking no notice of his reluctance. “Now
be a proper guardsman and keep me company, since you insist on it. You can tell
me stories.”

Kemni swallowed a groan. The kind of stories such a fool
would tell would be tedious indeed.

But Iannek was too sulky to be amusing. He drove beside them
in silence, conspicuously slow and cautious, though his horses fretted at the
pace. He had lovely hands on the reins, Kemni noticed with a stab of envy. They
were strong but light, with a clean, sure touch. Kemni would have given much to
be so skilled.

“He really is a guardsman?” he asked under his breath.

“Really,” she answered, not particularly quietly. “He’s the
lord’s brother, and a scapegrace—but he means well, in his way. The lord
appointed him my guardian hound. Not, mind, that he ever asked me. I would have
had something to say of it if he had.”

“I rather think you have said something of it,” Kemni said
dryly. “So that’s what I’m actually doing here. I’m being flung in the lord’s
face.”

“Among other things,” she said. She did not ask him if he
minded. Nor had he expected her to.

~~~

The Lower Kingdom was a different place from the vantage
of a chariot. People kept their distance, and kept their eyes lowered—except
those few so bold as to fix a burning glance on the lord who rode so high above
them. No, there was no love here for the foreigner. If there was resignation,
it veiled a deeper resentment.

They had been telling a story in the markets of Memphis, one
that Kemni knew was pure invention, but people told it as truth. Maybe, in its
way, it was—as tales of old gods were truth, because they drove straight to the
heart of things.

In the story, the king in Avaris had taken it into his head
to provoke the king in Thebes. He was bored, maybe, or idle; or his young men
were spoiling for a fight. Therefore he sent a message to the Great House in
Thebes: “The roaring of the riverhorses in your gardens is keeping me awake of
nights. Silence them, if you please, or know the force of my displeasure.”

The king in Thebes, the taletellers said, was not pleased to
receive so high-handed and so manifestly false a missive from a king whose
authority he had never accepted; who slept, when he slept, many days’ journey
away. Therefore, he had sworn perpetual enmity with the king in Avaris, and
determined to destroy him.

That was a tale without an ending. Sometimes it was told of
the last king, of Kamose who was gone, and who had fought Apophis but failed to
win back the Lower Kingdom. More often now it was told of Ahmose, as a sort of
prophecy. People wanted it to be true, perhaps even prayed for it.

Kemni had much to tell when he came back again to the Bull
of Re. If he came back. He had to remember that. This hiding in plain sight was
a dangerous thing.

The young lord Iannek did not take kindly to a rival for
Iry’s affections. And that was what it was, Kemni was certain.

They traveled together that day in barbed amity. Come
evening, the lord’s riding paused in one of the lord’s own holdings, one that
had been under the sway of the Retenu since the beginning, and had no remnants
of its old masters to vex his peace. Most of the servants here were Retenu,
whether of the foreign kings’ people or other cities and nations of Asia. Only
those who tilled the fields were Egyptian; and they kept their own counsel.

This was a rich holding, with wide fields of barley and of
emmer wheat, and fields of flax, and a village of spinners and weavers. The
lord meant to linger a day or two, to inspect the fields and establish his sway
over the people, before he went onto Avaris, which was less than a day’s
journey distant. He had, on his arrival, sent messengers there, and received
messengers with whom he was closeted for a goodly while.

They were not, Kemni hoped, informing him that the Mare’s
priestess had taken a spy for a bodyguard. Certainly no one came to seize him,
nor did anyone take much notice of him.

Except Iannek. Kemni took a late daymeal in the stable with
Pepi and the young Egyptian groom. He might have dined with Iry, but he left
that pleasant duty to Iannek. Or so he thought. Iannek, it seemed, had other
intentions.

The young lord accosted him as he went out into the
stableyard to relieve himself. The beer here was good, and he had drunk a good
quantity of it.

Iannek caught him there, clapping a hand to his shoulder. He
whirled, utterly without thought, and had the young fool by the throat before
he could defend himself.

By the light of the torch that illuminated the yard, Kemni
recognized his fellow bodyguard. He drew back, but rather slowly. “Don’t do
that,” he said in as mild a tone as he could muster.

Iannek swallowed carefully. His eyes narrowed. “You’re not a
servant,” he said.

Kemni felt his heart shrink, grow cold and still. But he
kept a bold face. “What else would I be, in this world we live in?”

“You would have killed me,” Iannek said, “because I took you
by surprise. Where did you learn that? Who are you?”

“A kinsman of Pepi’s from Memphis,” Kemni said, “who got
above himself and was sent away.”

It was a bare lie, and would weight his soul terribly when
he came to the judgment. But Iannek seemed to believe it. “I can imagine you did,”
he said, “if that’s how you greet anyone who comes on you. What did you do,
strike your lord?”

“I would never strike my lord,” Kemni said stiffly. “Now
tell me. Why are you here? Is she asking for me?”

“No,” Iannek said.

“Then who’s looking after her?”

That gave Iannek pause, but he recovered swiftly. “She’s
with my lord brother and my mother and my sisters. How much safer can she be?”

Much, Kemni thought but took care not to say. “And you
escaped,” he said.

“Well,” said Iannek, “it was dull. You’ve fought in battles,
haven’t you?”

This was not going to be easy to get out of. Kemni thought
of bolting, but he had already relieved himself; that pretext would not do. He
answered as best he might, question for question. “Why, haven’t you?”

It was difficult to tell by torchlight, but perhaps Iannek
flushed. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Not at all,” said Kemni. And he was not. “Battles are not
such a great thing for us. They’re ugly and bloody and often futile.”

“Battles are glorious,” said Iannek. “Battles are what a man
lives for.”

“Not our kind of man,” Kemni said.

“You are strange people.”

“We are what we are.”

“So you can fight,” Iannek said, returning to that like a
dog to a bone. “That’s what she wanted you for. And because you speak her
language. It’s strange for her, being what she is. Egyptian, and the Mare’s
priestess.”