The Shepherd Kings (77 page)

Shields swung up, too late for some and too little for
others, but they did what they could. And the enemy kept coming. The chariots
had drawn aside, leaving the archers and the spearmen a clear field.

The battle had begun when the first arrow flew. But when the
spears left their wielders’ hands, blood paid for blood. The defenders began to
fight back.

Khayan saw his spear bite deep in the body of a slender
brown man with painted eyes. He wore no armor. The shield he carried was light,
and hardly large enough to protect him. His expression when he fell was one of
profound surprise.

Khayan’s shield deflected a spear. It was bristling with
arrows. Some of the arrows broke. The weight of them dragged at Khayan’s arm.
But he did not drop the shield. He was not fool enough for that.

It would have been useful to press forward against the
enemy, to try to drive him away from the wall. But the orders were clear. They
were to hold their ground, neither to advance nor to retreat.

Therefore they stood. When their spears were spent, they
drew swords.

In most battles there were lulls, moments of quiet in which
a man could stop, breathe, rest his sword-arm. But whether because the enemy
was irresistibly fierce or because this part of the wall took the brunt of the
enemy’s assault, there was no pause, no rest. And no reinforcements. The enemy
had rank on rank to fling against the wall. The defenders had only themselves.

Now that was irony: the invader from far away had men to
spare, but the defender in his own country had only those who stood about him.
It made Khayan laugh as he drew his sword.

There was no distance between the armies now. The world was
full of little brown men. They were as numerous as rats in a granary, and as
pernicious. And they kept coming for Khayan, or for the wall behind him.

The wall was his refuge. He kept watch as he could over the
men in his command, kept them together, kept them fighting in ranks, those in
front shifting to the back when their arms grew tired. The enemy never seemed
to tire; and he had many more ranks than Khayan did.

Men were falling. Of his own, not so many; he had done his
best to train them well, and it seemed they had remembered. The cries of the
wounded were piercing, but after a while the ear stopped recording them. Worse
were the screams of the horses.

Khayan flinched at those. He had not struck any himself. All
those who came at him were on foot.

He was glad. He hated killing horses. Even in sacrifice,
even for the gods, he hated it.

His arm ached terribly. He shifted to the left hand for a
while, but his aim was less certain, his strength less great. People kept
trying to tell him to move to the rear, to take what shelter there was, and let
the ranks behind do his fighting for him. But he was in command. He had to be
in front. That was what a commander did.

It was his own stupidity that ended it. He knew it even as
it happened. A fresh wave of Egyptians came at the line. Khayan, in front of
it, tripped over his own feet and fell to his knees. An Egyptian, running past,
reached down almost casually, and thrust with his sword.

The pain did not come at once. Khayan finished falling. Feet
trampled all about him. Some jostled him. Then there was pain, but remote, as
if it belonged to someone else.

Night was coming. How strange. He could have sworn that it
was still morning. But time in battles could run otherwise than by the sun’s
time. Maybe after all the sun was setting. It was lovely, the darkness, soft
and warm and quiet, and empty of stars.

The battle was going well. Most of the defenders outside
the walls were felled or taken captive. Those within had nearly all fled.
Ahmose himself had secured the southern gate through which the last of the
enemy were escaping.

It was all won by late morning, all but the last brief
flares of fighting, like flames from embers. Ahmose had had the fleet come
close in to shore, bringing the servants and the baggage, and the physicians
for the wounded. They made camp somewhat apart from the fort and away from the
battle, but close enough for those whose duty was to bring in the wounded and
the dying.

Kemni, as the king’s charioteer, drove hither and yon at the
king’s command. The king did not fight unless he was forced to it; it was not
the way of kings in Egypt. Nor, it seemed, of lords among the Retenu.

Kemni’s men had fighting enough to occupy them, chasing down
escapes and pursuing the lords in their own chariots. One such escape had, out
of blindness or malice, fallen on the camp with a sizable force. Maybe their
commander had in mind to strike a blow against the Great House before he fled
into the south.

Ahmose was far away from the camp but in full view of it
when the attack came. He did not need to command Kemni. The chariot wheeled.
The horses were tiring, but they had speed enough at the crack of the whip over
their backs.

Others in the king’s following pounded behind, chariots and
foot, but the chariots soon and far outpaced the footsoldiers. The camp was
guarded, but the attack was strong. Ahmose’s forces were occupied elsewhere,
those closest outnumbered.

Kemni had no thought in him but to reach the camp before the
enemy took it. There would be little enough in it to content him; no wealth and
no booty. That was all on the ships, which rode well out in the river. But
there were the wounded, and the servants. And the physicians, among them
Imhotep the king’s favorite, who was worth a kingdom’s weight of gold.

Ahmose’s chariot was somewhat ahead of the rest, flying
behind its strong and eager horses. They were his Libyans, who would race the
wind for the plain joy of it. Even after a long morning’s battle, they were
glad to stretch their legs and gallop.

The camp’s defenders cheered as the king’s chariots roared
down on them. The attackers stood their ground briefly, but they were on foot,
and the chariots rolled headlong over them. Those who could, broke and fled,
scattering past and about and even through the camp. Those wrought such havoc
as they could: hacking at tent-ropes as they ran, and stabbing at bodies that
stumbled in their way.

A small company had managed to stay together, had rallied
behind a giant of a man and struck for the tent where the wounded were lying.
They were trapped behind and trapped ahead. They would do what harm they could
before they were captured or killed.

Kemni in the king’s chariot saw them go, traveling close
together while all about them scattered at will. He saw them burst into the
tent with its open flaps, and fell the healers and servants who ran to stop
them.

He was too far, too far. Even if he leaped from the chariot
and ran, he could not—

“Go,” the king said at his shoulder.

He did not ask what Ahmose meant. One last time he cracked
whip above the horses’ heads, while Ahmose called his men to him, afoot and in
chariots.

The horses’ leap was not as strong as it had been before,
but their great hearts bore them onward through the wreckage of the camp.

Kemni could fight in the chariot—but not with the king
behind him. He could only drive the horses and leave the rest to Ahmose, and
pray that it would be enough.

The horses pounded to a rearing halt in front of the tent.
It was a melee within, even the wounded rising—those who could—and wielding
whatever came to hand.

Ahmose sprang down, tossing something into Khayan’s hand as
he went. It was the king’s own sword. Ahmose had a throwing spear, shortened in
his fist.

Kemni left the horses as they were and ran in pursuit. The
king’s sword was beautifully balanced in his hand, like a live thing, lovely
and deadly. It whirled almost of its own accord and cut down a bearded
barbarian who had stooped over one of the most sorely hurt. He dropped. Kemni kicked
him aside from the unconscious Egyptian, thrust the sword into his throat and
wrenched. The Retenu gurgled and convulsed and died.

Kemni waded onward. There were women among the healers, he
saw, and not cowering in corners, either. They had set hands to the prostrate
wounded and dragged them out of harm’s way, as much as they could in such
confusion.

One or two were even armed. Sadana was fighting her own
people over the body of a man he doubted she had ever seen before. Iry had a
spear. And past them, Ariana wielded a sword, and Iphikleia in her charioteer’s
tunic, though she had been sailing on her uncle’s ship.

Or had she been? He had not seen her on the field, nor
recognized her chariot or her horses.

He fought his way toward her. It was not anything he needed
to ponder before he did it. The king was moving in much the same direction.

Most of the attackers were down. A few, their giant of a
captain among them, fought on with trapped ferocity. They pressed toward the
women, as if they had some hope even yet of taking hostages against their
escape.

It all came together in that small and crowded space. Battle
hand to hand, hand to throat. Kemni grappled with a man almost as large as the
captain. But the captain was beyond him, stronger than any Egyptian, bellowing
as he flung them aside. They were like children about him: armed and deadly
children, but children nonetheless.

Kemni saw the giant break through. Heard him grunt as
Ariana’s blade bit his arm; grunt and raise the great sword that in his hands
seemed little more than a long knife, and hack at her in return. But there was
another between them, a body flinging itself against his blade, driving it back
with all of its weight and speed. Driving it full into Kemni’s sword.

The king’s beautiful blade bit deep, clove up beneath that
coat of boiled leather, through flesh, veering off bone. The giant roared in
agony and writhed, twisting against the keen-edged bronze.

Kemni’s arm alone could not have driven that blade as deep
as the giant’s struggles. The huge body toppled, nearly taking Kemni down with
it.

He staggered aside. The giant fell full on the sword; hung
briefly as it caught in his flesh and bone and against his breastplate; then
sank down with a kind of sigh. A broad handspan of notched bronze protruded
from his breast, bright with heart’s blood.

Kemni barely saw. Someone else had fallen too, someone far
smaller and far lighter, but no less terribly wounded.

He caught her before she struck the ground. Her eyes were
open. They saw him. She frowned as if to ask him what he did here when he
should be out on the field, finishing the battle. But when she opened her mouth
to speak, the words were lost in blood and foam.

He sank down slowly with Iphikleia in his arms. She was all
over blood. His mind was empty. As empty as her eyes.

She was dead. He knew that. He did not try to deny it. But
there was nothing real about it.

People kept trying to take her from him. Some of them seemed
to think she lived; could be saved. But she had died even as she recognized
him.

The battle was over. The giant had been the last to die—and
much too late for Iphikleia.

Kemni felt nothing. Not grief, not rage. Not the terrible
irony of it, that she should have been wounded again so soon after she had
nearly died, as if the gods truly were determined to take her to themselves.
Not anything at all. And he would not let her go.

Even the king tried. Kemni recognized Ahmose. He bowed as
much as he might. But he held fast. Imhotep came and told him, with little
patience, that he was in the way. He took no notice. Ariana stood over him and
wept. He would have comforted her if he could, but he had no comfort for
himself.

Even Iry came, but not her guardian hound—not Iannek, who
would have been killed if he had walked in that place in that hour. Kemni might
have yielded for her, if he had had any yielding in him. She had the right of
it; they did need the space he was sitting in, and Iphikleia should be taken,
tended, made seemly for her journey to the gods’ country. The embalmers were there
already among the dead, wrapping them and carrying them away.

They would not have his beloved, the half of his soul. Not
until he had mourned her.

A clear voice spoke through the clouds of grief. It was not
Iphikleia’s, no, never again. And yet it was the same kind of voice, sharp,
keen-witted, and unforgiving of nonsense. It scattered the people about Kemni.
It sent them all away, even the king—who after all, as the voice said, had a
victory to oversee.

Sadana sat on her heels in front of him. She had been
fighting: she was filthy, and there was a bruise on her cheekbone; and from the
way she moved, he thought she might have a wound somewhere, perhaps more than
one.

She did not say anything. She set to cleaning her sword
instead, carefully, lovingly, with a cloth she must keep for the purpose. Then
she brought out a stone and began to sharpen it.

Her concentration was remarkable. Healers plied their trade
about her, but did not trouble her—not as they had hounded Kemni. She was like
a stone in a flood, and the flood parting before her.

“You fought for us,” he said.

“I fought for the Mare’s servant,” she answered, never
lifting her eyes from her task. She was meticulous in it, and painstaking.

“Against your own people?”

“My people are in the east, beyond your horizon,” she said.

“My lady is dead,” Kemni said.

“Yes,” she said.

That struck him with a thought. “You knew?”

“Everyone knows.” She sharpened her fine bronze blade,
sharpened and sharpened it. When she was done, it would draw blood from the
wind.

“But I never told—”

“We knew.”

“So you know—why—”

“I know what she was to you.” Sadana tested the edge against
her arm, shook her head slightly, went back to sharpening the blade. “You
should let her go. Her spirit is gone. That is her shell you cling to.”