The Shepherd Kings (40 page)

She drew away, which won from him a groan of protest. “We’re
wanted in the hall,” she said.

She helped him dress and prepare, not without further
torment—but he was ready very quickly even so, in a kilt of fine linen, and
belt and pectoral, and a wig in the style called Nubian, short close curls
bound with a bit of golden wire. He looked well enough, and fit to face a king.

~~~

It was not a king he faced, though it was a lord of Crete.
Naukrates rose from his seat in a long pillared hall, hands outstretched—greeting
not only Iphikleia but Kemni with the embrace and the kiss of kinsmen.

There were others in the hall, men and a woman or two, with
a look and an air about them of the high ones of the Labyrinth. Kemni did not
know any of them, but perhaps he knew their kin.

They were in Memphis, Naukrates said as he settled Kemni
beside him, as traders and wanderers. There was an ambassador in the king’s
court in Avaris, but he did not know of this other gathering. “And that serves
him well,” Naukrates said as servants brought wine and dainties, “for if we do
anything that the king would disapprove of, he can truthfully swear that he
knew nothing of it.”

“So,” said Kemni, “you know why we’re here.”

“We had word from upriver,” said Naukrates. “Your brother
came safe home, and all his cargo with him.”

Kemni allowed himself a long sigh. He had trusted in it, but
to know—that was a great relief. “If you can send word,” he said, “if it
pleases you—”

“It’s done,” Naukrates said smiling. “They’ll be glad to
know that you’ve found us.”

“It wasn’t as mad a venture as they thought,” Kemni said.
“We were safe enough.”

“It would seem so,” said one of the others—a woman,
weathered and wind-seared like the men, and kilted as they were. Her name was
Dione. She was captain of a ship, Kemni had gathered when she was presented and
named to him: a rarity, but not wholly unheard of. She had the manners of a
man, brusque and practical; she affected none of the graces of the Cretan
ladies he had known. She looked him up and down in frank appraisal, and said,
“The Ariana is not greatly pleased with you.”

“I didn’t think she would be,” Kemni said a little wryly.
“Now tell me I was a fool to have done it.”

“No, not a fool,” she said. “Reckless, but it had to be
done. For the rest . . . we have our spies here, but we are
foreigners. A man of this country may be better suited to this task you’ve set
yourself.”

“And yet you don’t approve.”

She shrugged. “It’s not for me to approve or disapprove. The
Ariana would prefer to keep you safe.”

“I’ll not stay away long,” Kemni said. “I only wanted—”

“Yes,” Dione said. “You saw your own country, and you hated
to leave it.”

“That wasn’t—”

“Of course it was,” Iphikleia said. “I’d have done the
same.” She sipped from her cup, and nibbled something both green and pungent: a
grape leaf wrapped about a bit of meat and onion and cooked in the lees of
wine. Kemni found that taste too strange for his stomach. He had settled for
the bread and cheese, and the sweet cakes, and the fruit stewed with honey.

It was a feast, of which he was wise enough to eat
sparingly, for he had been on short commons for some considerable while. Having
vexed him sufficiently with their perception of why he had taken on this
journey, they settled to other matters: trade, ships, gossip of the courts,
both in Crete and in the Lower Kingdom.

“Apophis is complacent,” said one of the men, whose name
Kemni had not caught in time to remember. “His kingdom is secure, his sons are
no more murderous than they ought to be, and he’s certain that the king in
Thebes is properly cowed. They say he’s thinking of demanding tribute in some
fashion, or even taking the kingdom; though he wonders if it’s worth the
trouble.”

“He’d be a fool to do that,” Naukrates said. “Even if he’s
had no word of rebellion in the south, he can’t but know that he’d have to
fight to keep whatever he took.”

“He knows that,” said Dione. “His sons are at him
constantly, or he’d not trouble himself at all. They want a war.”

“We can give them one,” Kemni said, “if they’re only a
little patient.”

“Patience is not a virtue these people cultivate,” Dione
said. “Tell me, kinsmen: did you hear what happened to old Iannek?”

“What, the lord who married a woman from the horse-people?”
She nodded; Naukrates frowned slightly. “I heard he’d died. What was it,
poison?”

“Hand of the gods,” Dione said. “No, that’s clear enough;
there’s no scandal in how he died. But did you hear who took the lordship?”

“I know his eldest son was carrying on as if he were the
lord, well before his father died,” Naukrates said. “What was the man’s name?
He wasn’t another Iannek, was he?”

“No, that’s one of the younger sons.” Dione drained her cup,
reached for the jar, filled the cup to the brim and drank deep again. She was
not even slightly soft about the edges, though Kemni had counted three cups,
and this was the fourth. “It’s been the talk of the court. All the sons came to
their father’s deathbed—even the one who went away.”

“What, the wild horsewoman’s son?” Naukrates sounded mildly
astonished. “I’d thought he was exiled.”

“Not at all,” said Dione. “He went because his mother sent
him—to be taught properly, she said, and that ruffled a few feathers, as you
can imagine. He came back, it’s said, not long before his father died. It’s not
clear exactly what happened, but after the old man died, his eldest brother
challenged him—maybe not even for the lordship; maybe for a woman, or simply
for that he’d been away so long, and it was thought he’d be weak. But weak, he
was not. He killed his brother in the fight. Then some of the others challenged
him. When the dust had settled, all his brothers were dead or cowed, and he was
lord in his father’s place.”

“Imagine that,” Naukrates said. “A son of that people taking
a lordship in this country. I suppose he brought horses with him?”

“Horses,” Dione answered, “and more than horses. He’s let it
be known that he’s taking one of the estates his father left him, and settling
his herds on it. Rumor has it that he’ll settle in the Sun Ascendant.”

Kemni had been listening rather idly. The lord Iannek he
knew—too well. That had been the Retenu who called himself overlord in Kemni’s
native country. He had been glad to hear that the old monster was dead. But
this new and younger one—if rumor was true, he had chosen the holding that
Kemni knew best next to his own Golden Ibis, the holding that his uncle and his
cousins had held before they died fighting for the Great House in Thebes.

He had been calm. He was proud of it. Even if this
she-captain saw truly, and he had come back into the Lower Kingdom as much out
of love and longing for it as out of desire to aid his king, he had not let
himself think too long or too deeply on what he saw about him. This was his
country, his homeland, surely. And he would fight to the death to restore it to
Egyptian hands.

Yet when these Cretans spoke of the Sun Ascendant, that
small and yet lovely holding, with its fields both many and rich, he knew the
piercing pain of yearning to be home again. In his own country, among his own
people, speaking the dialect that had won him mockery in Thebes.

They must be dead, all his kin. No word had come to him of
his father or his mother, except a rumor that his father was dead. His uncle,
his cousins were dead in battle. Their holdings—his holdings—would be in Retenu
hands. Those hands: the hands of this stranger who had lived among the tamers
of horses.

“His name is Khayan,” Dione was saying. “He’s terribly
young, though he’s no child. He has his mother’s spirit, they say. If that’s
so, he’ll be the very plague to cross.”

“And he’s a horseman.” Naukrates seemed to find that
fascinating. “I wonder . . .”

But he did not say what it was that he wondered. No one
asked. Kemni thought to, but held his tongue. The conversation wandered
elsewhere, leaving Kemni to his silence and his thoughts.

“Tell me what a horseman is,” Kemni said.

Iphikleia turned from taking her hair out of its many
elaborate curls and plaits. She had left the hall when he did, and come to the room
he had been given, nor did anyone remark on it or seem to find it
objectionable. Women’s belongings had appeared among those that had been given
to Kemni, and the bed was spread and scented with herbs, as if for a wedding.

She was much too casual for a bride, but quite as beautiful
as a bride could be. She paused with her hair tumbling down over her shoulders,
her paint softened with the hours’ passing, and all her skirts in a tousle, now
she need not take care to keep them in order. Kemni had had a little to do with
that. More than a little.

She answered his question in her own time, a little
thoughtfully, as if she needed to consider, herself, what it was that had drawn
Naukrates’ attention. “Among these people, a horseman is more than simply a man
who has horses. Asses are sacred, and are the root of their power: strong legs,
strong backs, greater speed than a man can muster. Horses are something more
than sacred.

“These people of the Retenu are not, in themselves,
horsemen. They were lurkers in barren places, savages with a gift for trade,
fierce fighters who dreamed of ruling kingdoms. They tamed the wild ass and
made him their servant. They learned to conquer, and then to rule. In time they
built cities, and made them great. But they knew little of horses.

“There are, far to the east of their old cities, cities older
yet, now sunk into dust; and people who ruled once in those cities, but left
them long ago, and settled in tribes far away from other men. Women rule these
tribes. They have little use for men, it’s said, except to use them as the mare
uses the stallion: to breed her in her season, and thereafter to let her be.
Their men and their sons live in remnants of the ancient cities, while the
women wander with the herds.

“Sometimes—not often, but not seldom, either—men or women of
these tribes wander westward. Your Retenu have always welcomed them, and been a
little in awe of them, because they’ve mastered horses. They brought the
chariot into the west of the world long ago, and taught the Retenu to drive
their own beasts, and made them great conquerors.

“If this Khayan is a horseman,” she said, “or the son of a
horseman—or a woman rather, since it’s his mother who comes from the
tribes—then it’s most interesting that he was allowed to inherit his father’s
lands. Horsemen are objects of awe and veneration, but they are not given rank
or power. It’s said they refuse it. I think not. I think the Retenu keep it
from them, in fear of them. They have great powers, it’s said; great magic.
They command the winds, and the grass will grow for them. And of course, the
horses are their servants—though it’s said that’s not so; it’s they who serve
the horses.”

Kemni pondered all the sides of that, as much as he could between
the wine and her beauty. “So,” he said, “if this horseman has been allowed to
take his father’s place, he must have some power that no one’s speaking of. Or
his power is so negligible that no one fears him, even knowing what he is.”

“He is young,” said Iphikleia. “But young needn’t be
harmless. He did battle for his place—”

“He was challenged,” Kemni said. “He’d have had to fight or
suffer loss of honor. Honor is a terribly important thing to his people.”

“But why was he challenged? What purpose would that serve?
He was a younger son. He needn’t have been a threat at all.”

“I’m sure there was a reason,” Kemni said. “But that’s not
what intrigues me. Why is your uncle so enthralled with this? It can’t have a
great deal to do with the war. This Khayan is only one lord of many, and not among
the highest. Most likely he’s weak—he’d have to be, as young as he is, and as
recently come to his seat. Why does it matter to a lord of Crete, that the lord
of a smallish holding comes from that particular tribe?”

Iphikleia frowned. “It’s an oddity. My uncle has always been
interested in oddities. You never know, he’ll say, when a small thing will grow
into force enough to topple a kingdom.”

“He doesn’t think this is a small thing,” Kemni said.

“What, have you spoken with him?” she asked with a twist of
mockery. “Maybe it’s only because we’re kin to the horsemen, very long ago and
far away—to the women who ruled the ancient cities before men came with horses
and changed the world. Our ancestors grew restless, wandered westward, and in
time found the sea. His ancestors lingered in the sea of grass. We take an
interest, still, in our remotest cousins.”

Kemni shook his head. He could not find words for the niggle
in his belly. Maybe it was only that this horseman had taken his own kin’s
house and lands, and become, if he wished to see it so, his own overlord. It
struck too close. It mattered too much.

Everything here mattered too much. When he sailed through
the Lower Kingdom to Crete, the river had borne him up. He had kept at bay his
yearning for the land, for the country that was his own. But once he set foot
in it, when he had left the fishing boat to capture a maker of chariots, its
spell had fallen on him. This was his own land. This was his mother, his
beloved. He belonged in it, though if he were known, he could die.

He was not doing this for his king, though it might serve
his king’s purpose. He was doing it because he had come home, and because he
yearned, to the very heart and soul, to make this land his again, free of any
foreign invader.

Iphikleia turned back to her toilet, taking her time about
it, transforming the ornate beauty of the day into a simpler and, to his taste,
even more potent nighttime splendor. She cleansed the paint from face and
breasts, and combed out her long curling hair, and put aside her ornaments and
her garments and came to him as she had in his dreams, naked and gleaming. Her
skin was soft, scented with sweet oils. Her hair smelled of flowers.