Looking at the other General, Khai said, “The Lady Irisi informs me the wounded are set to travel. Will you arrange it?”
Baraka looked mutinous – without the King’s approval, Khai had no real authority to command him, not yet – but the request was reasonable and the wounded needed to be transported, as well as the dead. Baraka’s surviving chariots, men and horses were the only transport available. The spare space on the supply wagons would be taken by the dead.
The man fought a battle within himself, his expression eloquent, but then he lowered his head in acquiescence. “My men will be ready to leave as soon as the wounded are loaded.”
Khai nodded in return.
Turning abruptly on his heel, Baraka left.
Quickly Khai caught Irisi as she went to follow, drawing her back into his arms if only for a moment.
Irisi looked at him, torn between her desire and her fear for him.
“Khai,” she said, softly, half in protest, half in need, knowing Baraka might be outside, watching and waiting for her to leave.
Whatever Baraka saw, Irisi knew, he might report to Kamenwati.
Still, she couldn’t resist touching Khai’s mouth, her fingers tracing his full lower lip once more.
Just a taste, that was all Khai wanted, all he could dare ask for in this moment, to taste her, to feel her body turn lithe and liquid against his. There would be a time when he might take more, somehow, and soon, but this was no more the time than there had been the night before.
He lowered his lips to hers as he drew her tightly against him, nearly crushing her against his body to feel every inch of her sweet body pressed close, the swell of her breasts, her hips pressed against his.
Only a moment, long enough for her hands to close around his face in a wonder he could sense as he kissed her, her eyes slightly dazed and unfocused when he released her.
She let out a breath as she looked up at him.
Khai touched her cheek, and she turned it into his palm wistfully, smiling slightly.
He felt her gather herself and let her step back.
Irisi looked at him a moment, then let herself out.
Baraka watched as she stepped out of the tent. Irisi gave him a cool nod as she went past, her face composed but her heart had been eased, if only for the moment…
It would be a long journey to Thebes.
The King stood on the veranda outside his rooms, looking out over the sun-lit city and country that he ruled. The buildings of his palace spread around him while those of the city reached beyond the high walls of his compound. Smoke from dozens of cooking fires rose into the midday air. It looked peaceful, serene. He was too far away to hear the sounds of life and living, but he knew it went on out there.
Nearby his beloved Paniwi reclined, her dark eyes enigmatic as he and she listened to the reports of General Khai and the various priests and priestesses.
Not least of them, the new High Priestess.
The numbers were daunting. More than half the force they’d sent south had been wiped out. Their losses had been heavy, in more than one way. General Akhom, High Priestess Banafrit… With them a number of officers.
He looked back at those who awaited his command. All looked weary, some more so than others.
General Khai stood patiently among the priests and priestesses at one side, while General Baraka paced somewhat apart.
Narmer didn’t miss the implications of what he saw.
He had yet to name either man to lead the army in Akhom’s stead.
It seemed, though, that Banafrit had had her wish in the end. The Goddess had chosen the foreigner to follow her. Even could he have argued that choice – although not even a King could gainsay the will of the Gods in that matter except at his peril – he wasn’t certain he would have.
For all her apparent youth, there was an agelessness to the new High Priestess’s face and eyes that had been there from the first moment he’d met her, a stillness and wisdom he found remarkable.
Mercenary and slave, warrior and priestess, she had those experiences on her side as well.
He looked to Khai, feeling Kamenwati’s heavy presence at one side of the room, knowing his cousin’s preference in the matter. Once, Narmer might have given more weight to that opinion, for his love of his cousin.
Those blinders were off, now.
That preference didn’t serve Egypt well. Only Kamenwati.
For all that Khai’s people were not of Egypt, the man himself had been born within its borders. His skill, experience and knowledge had earned him the right to lead. He’d also faced more real combat where Baraka had not.
“So,” Narmer said, “it’s over then?”
Khai took a breath. “For now. They appear to have withdrawn.”
It was all he or the priests and priestesses could be sure of.
“Your pardon, my lord King,” Baraka interrupted, tensely. “Lord Akhom led us bravely and we routed the enemy.”
Narmer looked over the others waiting.
“My Lady Irisi?” Narmer asked, of one who’d fought with mercenaries. “What does the High Priestess say?”
Eyes the unearthly color of Nut’s sky met his evenly.
Irisi felt Baraka and Kamenwati’s gazes settle hotly on her, as did the King’s. And Khai’s.
She glanced at Kamenwati briefly, her gaze on his level, even, unchallenging and undaunted. The Grand Vizier narrowed his dark eyes in answer to her look. His jaw tightened.
His anger didn’t matter. It was she, Irisi, who was High Priestess to Isis now, and as such, High Priestess over all the Gods save for Isis’s husband Osiris and her father Ra. Whatever his threats, Kamenwati dared not touch her directly, and his wishes or threats couldn’t and wouldn’t have any effect on the decisions she made. Lives depended on her. She wouldn’t allow it.
“With all due respect to Lord Akhom,” Irisi said, looking once again at the King, “he led well but died before the battle was over. General Khai did his best to organize and rouse the troops and very nearly might have won if the enemy hadn’t quit the field rather than be beaten.”
Khai had been in the thick of the battle while Baraka had stood back.
Narmer’s glance at Kahotep and Djeserit confirmed they agreed with her assessment.
Khai looked at his King, the man he willingly served. He couldn’t escape the feeling this war wasn’t yet over. In fact, it had hardly begun.
“That’s the source of my concern. Djinn have never fought together,” he said. “In all history there’s no record of anything like it. Now they have and we were very nearly defeated.”
If Banafrit’s dying spell hadn’t done as much damage to the enemy as it had they might well have been and he knew it.
“We don’t even know why they chose this time to move against us,” Khai said. “Djinn have always been solitary. How could we move against them? And so we didn’t. There’s been no threat to them. Why did they attack?”
That worried him. What had been their purpose? He could see none.
Egypt sent her armies out for a reason – because she’d been attacked, to conquer and claim valuable land or resources – but never on a whim. What had triggered this? For what had the Djinn come? What had they to gain? They seemed to have gained nothing and lost much. It made no sense.
“However, now they’ve learned how to fight together, and learned that they can. They’ve discovered that as a unit they can conquer whole villages. Even a Kingdom. The question isn’t whether they will try again, but rather when and in what numbers.”
Narmer understood Khai’s his concern. In fact, he shared it.
He had another fear, as well. The Kingdom of Kush, to their south. A neighbor, but not always a friendly one. They were weak there now. Should Kush learn of it…?
And there were other enemies as well.
“General Khai, the southern fort leaves us vulnerable. It must be remanned. In this you act in my name.”
It was tacit acceptance of Khai as his new chief General.
Khai caught the dark look on Kamenwati’s face, the quick flash of fury in the other man’s eyes.
Stiffening a little, he saw Baraka’s mouth tighten, too, but it was the King’s will.
In time, Khai knew, Baraka would come to accept it. He wasn’t a bad man, just an ambitious one. Khai could understand that although ambition wasn’t what drove him.
The weight of command settled over him, the pressure of the responsibility for all the armies of Egypt at those times when the King himself didn’t lead them into battle.
Nor was the staffing of the southern fort something that could wait. As Narmer had stated and he well knew. If their enemies learned of its fall, they might have another threat on their hands.
And there were still the Djinn.
Irisi’s eyes met his as the King dismissed them. What little hope they’d had of time together was gone. Once more they were forced apart.
Resigned to it, Khai nodded as well.
He caught up to her in a corridor, drew her into an alcove and his arms.
“Khai,” she said, half in longing, half in fear, glancing back over his shoulder even as she touched his cheek.
“I must go south,” he said, his hand in her silken hair.
He had to leave, and immediately, as he knew she knew. They were too vulnerable in the south, and he didn’t know what to expect there. The King would expect him to, given their defenselessness there. Neither he nor the King knew how long the fort could remain unstaffed before their enemies – and not just the Djinn – discovered it. He had to gather the necessary men and go, swiftly.
Irisi’s breath caught, even though she’d guessed as much. “And I must yet take Banafrit home to Awan and then prepare her for her journey to the Afterlife…”
They’d come first to the palace, their first duty to speak to the King, to inform him of what had passed in the desert. Each had their responsibilities.
She couldn’t leave Thebes. Khai couldn’t stay
Khai’s mouth closed over hers hungrily, his need for her drawing her against him even as he held her close.
“When I return…,” he said.
It was all he could promise.
Irisi nodded.
One last kiss.
Khai devoured her, needing the taste of her, the feel of her body against his, one more time to hold him over the days to come.
“Be careful,” she said, and then he was gone.
Fury burned deep in Kamenwati’s gut. The army was not his. Narmer had named the foreign General Khai as the commander of his armies in place of Baraka. It wasn’t uncommon. However, that Kamenwati hadn’t foreseen. Rage moved through him.
Desperately he fought for control of himself.
It wouldn’t do for Isis’s priest Saini or any others to see him in such a state.
Kamenwati waited until the little priest had left before turning below stairs, tossing his kalasaris aside as he went, leaving himself clad only in a brief loincloth, to go down to the places in his compound Saini never saw.
The priest brought him little information Kamenwati didn’t already know. Banafrit – interfering woman – was dead and Kamenwati’s former slave was now High Priestess. All of which suited him very well. She was inexperienced, a lesser opponent than Banafrit, and an ex-slave…
What the priest Saini didn’t know was that the death of his precious Banafrit been no simple accident of wartime. Nor had Akhom’s. Yet no blood stained Kamenwati’s hands. He was free to stand before Ma’at in judgment. Instead he’d left that to the Djinn, instructing them only to remove any in command. That they’d included Banafrit had brought him immense satisfaction.
What didn’t was that Paniwi had born her babe, his cousin’s precious heir. Whatever faint hope Kamenwati had held that he might someday be King by fair means was now gone.
Narmer had taken the precaution of assigning members of his own guard to protect the child day and night. He took no chances with his only heir.
The priestesses and priests had safeguarded the child, too, warding and protecting the baby with multiple layers of magical aid. All of them. Including she who’d once been his slave. Layering magic over magic, setting charms over and around it to secure it, the bitch. Even he couldn’t penetrate that warding.