The Shepherd Kings (56 page)

Seti had not gone far. He was slumped against a pillar in
the court, glaring balefully at a cat who made her insouciant way across the
sunlit space. Seti in his wonted self was very like the cat. It was strange to
see him scowling.

“Very well,” Kemni said from behind him. “Who is she, and
why did she bid you begone?”

Seti spun. “I would die for the queen, but what does that
matter to anyone? She doesn’t know. And even if she did, would she care?”

“She would care,” Kemni said. “She does. I’m sure of it.”

Seti shrugged, sullen and glowering. “That’s not my
trouble.”

“Then why are you glooming about so mightily?”

“It’s nothing,” Seti said. “I was a fool to trouble you.
I’ll go; I should be getting ready for the first of the new recruits. There’s a
boatful coming in a day or two.”

Kemni knew that, and Seti knew he knew it. It was chatter,
no more. “Tell me what’s troublesome enough that you’ll come looking for me. If
it’s not a woman, then what is it? Some worry over the recruits? They’re picked
men, the king assured me.”

“I’m sure they are,” Seti said. He looked as if he would
like to bolt, but had thought better of it. He glanced about. “Not here. Let’s
go where there are no ears to hear.”

That, in Seti’s estimation, was as far away from the Bull of
Re as possible. Kemni had been intending to ride among the herds in any case,
to count them and to ponder whether there were enough horses, with sufficient
training, to do what the king had asked of him. He took Seti with him as
charioteer. As simply as that, and rather quickly, they escaped the confines of
house and courts, and turned toward the hidden valley with its growing herds.

Kemni’s bays were fresh and a little headstrong. They were
not the gentle creatures he had first driven under Ariana’s tutelage. These
were younger beasts, stronger and more fiery, more inclined toward a good
gallop than a sedate trot through and about the valley. He gave them rein at
first, let them run down the straight and well-leveled road, until, near the
valley’s entrance, it narrowed and grew winding and steep. They were not so
unwilling to be prudent then, though they tossed their heads and snorted with
suitable ferocity.

In among the herds at last, with the team settled to its
work, after a fashion, Kemni could not help remembering the great herds at the
Sun Ascendant, and the Mare and her servant, and the Retenu lord and his kin
who had found themselves afflicted with an Egyptian priestess-queen. Iry did
well, Kemni hoped; and Sadana, that wild creature with her bold face and her
shy heart.

He had almost forgotten what had brought him here, between
memory and reckoning the count of the horses that Ariana and the king had
gathered. He would have given gold to have the herds that belonged to the lord
Khayan, the mares and foals as well as the teams of war-stallions. But those
were far away and in another kingdom. What he had for his use was here.

It was not an ill gathering of horses, for a beginning. He
said as much to Seti.

“It will do,” Seti said. He was not pressing to be heard.
Maybe he hoped that Kemni would not ask him why he had asked that Kemni come
here.

But Kemni was not one to let go a thought for long, once it
had taken hold. “Tell me,” he said.

Seti sighed. “It may be nothing. Really, my lord.”

“And yet it eats at you,” Kemni said. And again: “Tell me.”

At last and with an air of casting it all at Kemni’s feet,
Seti said, “When we went to show the king what we had done, while you were
occupied with the king and the queens, I had occasion to go wandering about.
I’m a great idler, you know. Everyone says so.” He said that with a flicker of
his usual wit.

“I happened, as I idled here and sauntered there, to come
across several of the king’s men. They were keeping close by one another,
sharing a jar of beer and waiting for the king to have need of them. They
weren’t happy about that: they were very lofty personages, to be kept waiting
about like servants.

“They were unhappy about a great deal more than that. There
are factions in the court, it seems, who don’t approve of the king’s war. They
think that he should stay at home, tend to the Upper Kingdom, and do nothing to
provoke the foreign kings’ anger. We’ll be destroyed, they said. We’ve survived
so long by the blessing of the gods, but if the Retenu are reminded too
forcibly of our existence, they’ll sweep up the river and conquer the whole of
Egypt.”

“Cowards’ counsel,” Kemni said.

“Craven,” Seti agreed. “But in certain things they’re
terribly bold. They were talking, when I happened by, of finding ways to stop
the war. Those who have his ear were to bend it, of course, but others said
that that wouldn’t be enough; that something more should be done. They were
talking of sending messengers to the Lower Kingdom, and warning the Retenu of
the war that’s been prepared against them.”

“But won’t that force the very thing they’re most afraid of,
and bring the enemy down on us?”

“They thought not. They said that an early warning would let
the Retenu stop the invasion at the start, and keep them from pressing it
backward into its own country.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kemni said. “And Crete—did they talk
about Crete?”

“Oh, yes. The horses, too. Everything.”

Kemni drove for a while in silence, circling the outer limit
of the valley. The bays had quieted considerably; were content to trot smoothly
out. There was a pleasure, even with such thoughts as clamored at him, in the
lightness of their mouths through the reins, and the roll of wheels beneath
him, and the wind in his face.

But the things that roiled in his belly would not long be
ignored. He said to Seti, “They’re going to betray the king? How can they do
that?”

“For his own good, they said. To save his life and the
freedom of the Upper Kingdom. To prevent us all from being enslaved.”

Kemni shook his head hard enough to dizzy him briefly. “They
can’t believe that. One of them or more must be a traitor—must be taking Retenu
pay.”

“That’s possible,” Seti said. “One or two seemed to say the
most, but they might simply have been the most inclined to talk. Except that
one . . .” He trailed off. Kemni waited, but he did not go on.

“Except that one . . . ?” Kemni asked.

Seti shivered behind him. “It may have been nothing. I
wasn’t there to hear the beginning, and I certainly wasn’t privy to the whole
of their conspiracy. If that is what it was.”

“You know it was.”

“I don’t want it to be.” Seti’s voice snapped out. “There
was one who seemed to be leading them. He argued most strongly against the war.
Then someone—someone said, ‘What if the king can’t be dissuaded? What do we do
then?’ And he said, ‘Then maybe the Upper Kingdom has need of a new king.’”

“He can’t have said that,” Kemni said before he thought.
“The king is a god. No one can kill him. It would be sacrilege.”

“Suppose that someone had a dream,” Seti said. “That he
dreamed a god spoke to him, and told him that he, and not the living Horus, was
meant to be king.”

“I would say that his dream lied,” Kemni said. In spite of
himself he remembered what Nefertari had said to Ariana, how she dreamed of
gods, and a god, maybe, had been her father. That was not a lie. He had been
there. He had heard her. She had spoken from the heart.

What if this man had done the same? No; it was unthinkable.
“Who was it? Was it one of the lords of the nomes? The chancellor? A priest?”

“A prince.” Seti said it as if from a core of pain.

There had been several of the princes in the king’s camp.
Gebu, of course; he was a charioteer still, and not a bad one, either. One or
two of his brothers of the same mother, and a number of sons of concubines, and
the royal princes, the sons of Nefertari, and Amonhotep the heir foremost. A
dozen, perhaps. Maybe more. And one of them, or more, contemplated betraying
his own father.

Small wonder that Seti was so troubled. Kemni reined in the
horses, wound reins around the post, and turned to face his second. This was a
man whom he had thought he knew; not from childhood, not even from the wars,
but since he began this venture with horses. They were comrades in arms, not
yet battle-brothers, but that time would come—if this conspiracy of princes did
not stop it.

“We should go to Gebu,” Kemni said. “These are his brothers.
He should know what they’ve been plotting.”

Seti’s face went still. “No. You don’t want to go to Gebu.”

“Who better? I have no power to stop them, but Gebu—”

“Gebu led them!”

Kemni stopped with words half-formed on his tongue. “What? I
don’t understand—”

“Of course you understand!” Seti snapped. “You don’t want
to, but you do. Gebu was playing ringleader.”

“No,” said Kemni. “You misheard him. Or heard someone else.
Some of his brothers sound remarkably like him.”

“It was Gebu,” Seti said stubbornly.

But Kemni was equally stubborn. “Gebu could not do such a
thing. He’s one of us—he’s a charioteer. He’s my battle-brother. I have no
better friend in the world. Of all the princes, he is the most honorable, and
the least inclined toward intrigue. How can you accuse him of such a thing?”

Seti’s lips set tight. “I heard what I heard. Maybe he’s all
of that. But if he’s afraid, and if he wants to be king—he might bend to
others’ persuasion.”

Kemni did not want that to make sense. And yet, in a
terrible way, it did.

He turned from Seti, closed himself away, though they were
close together in the chariot, and set the horses in motion once more. They
walked sedately forward, but the pause had restored them. In a moment they were
trotting, and then cantering; and then, with a toss of the head, they had
surged into a gallop.

Kemni let them. He made no effort to slow them, only to keep
to the smoother ground and veer somewhat away from the herds. Some of those
caught the stallions’ urgency and swirled into motion, running with them round
the broad sun-parched valley.

The wind was burning hot, the wind of Upper Egypt that blew
like the blast from a furnace. It could scour flesh from bones, if it chose.
But it could not scour thoughts from a man’s mind, not such thoughts as these.

Gebu. No, not Gebu. If truly there was a conspiracy of
princes, Gebu was the last man to indulge in it. He was a simple man, as
princes went. He was known for his loyalty to his friends and his refusal to
play the game of courts. Most of the fiercer players discounted him because of
that, reckoned that he had little desire to be anything but what he was: royal
and princely but, as the son of a minor wife, unlikely to come close to the
throne.

He was content with that. Kemni would have sworn it before
the gods. What he had done in coming to the Bull of Re, in joining the ranks of
charioteers, was a gift to his battle-brother. He had said so, more than once.
He was not a great horseman, but he had a gift for fighting from a chariot.
With one of the more skilled men for charioteer, he was formidable in the
practice battles.

He could not be plotting to stop this war, and worse, to
overthrow the king and set himself on the throne. Not Gebu of all the princes.
Gebu wanted the war. He wanted his father to be lord of the Two Lands, king of
Upper and Lower Egypt, Great House of a reunited people. That was as much honor
as he needed, and as much ambition as he had.

Kemni convinced himself, in that long wild gallop, that Seti
had somehow misheard, or misunderstood. There was no other way to explain it.

Unless Seti himself conspired against them all, to weaken
them with lies—but that too was inconceivable. Seti had proved to be a strong
second-in-command. He had offered his place to Gebu, in fact, but Gebu had
refused it. A prince could be a charioteer, but he could be second to no one
but the king himself.

Seti did not say anything at all even when the horses tired
at last and slowed to a canter and then to a jarring trot, and finally to a
hard-blowing walk. Kemni had nothing to say to him. They returned slowly to the
Bull of Re, rubbed down and stabled the horses together, but before Kemni was
done, Seti had vanished.

~~~

Kemni had further duties, exercises mounted and afoot, and
at day’s end, as the light grew long and heat bore down like great and heavy
hand, a mock battle between two of the chariot-wings. He commanded one. Gebu
commanded the other.

There was nothing furtive in the prince’s command of his
men, nothing cowardly. He kept to the fore, and fought splendidly with his
blunted sword, holding off the foil force of Kemni’s charge. Such a man would
never shrink from war, nor would he creep and skulk and slink along the
traitor’s way.

Gebu’s wing won that battle, with great and whooping glee.
Kemni’s own promised a terrible revenge, but later. This evening, in the swift
fall of dark and sudden cool of desert night, they gathered in the charioteers’
hall for an uproarious feast.

Gebu sat beside Kemni, and Kemni, as the defeated captain,
had to serve as his cupbearer. Gebu was warm with wine and victory, and
expansive, giving gifts of gold and gems to those of his wing who had fought
most well. If he labored under a burden of guilt, he showed no sign of it.

No; Gebu was not a traitor. Kemni willed himself to ease, to
forget what he had heard. Seti had not been lying, not as he understood it, but
he had not seen the truth, either. He could not have.

“Tell me what troubles you,” Iphikleia said.

Kemni had not thought that he was troubled at all. He was
tired. It was a great work, to receive the king’s recruits, to bring them into the
ranks of the charioteers, to see that they had proper training and swift, but
not so swift that they broke and fled. He rose before dawn and fell into his
bed long after dusk. He had no time to brood over anything.