The Shepherd Kings (63 page)

“It can,” Nefertari said slowly, “but it would have to be
done now, and from here, and in great haste. My lord king is in Thebes,
mustering the last of his armies. He might not—”

“You know,” said Ariana, “that the king will bow to anything
you bid him do.”

Nefertari raised her chin a fraction. “He may. But there are
matters of policy, and of appearance. People must think only what we wish them
to think.”

“That the king rules, and not the Great Royal Wife?” Ariana
shrugged. “Well, don’t do it, then. It’s likely the traitors will have sent
messengers of this new and swifter war, and that we’ll not have caught them. It
was the gods’ will and fortune that we caught the one who came near the Bull of
Re. When we come to the Lower Kingdom, we’ll find the enemy waiting—maybe not
in all his armies, but he’ll be expecting us.”

“I never said we should not do it,” Nefertari said. “It can
be done. But carefully. And quickly. Who is the best of your runners?”

“That would be Nakhtmin,” Kemni said when Ariana’s glance
bade him speak.

“Bid him come to me within the hour,” Nefertari said, “and
be quiet about it. I will give him the words to say—I and my sister queen.”

Kemni bowed. Nefertari’s eyes rested on him for a
disconcerting while, as if she took simple pleasure in the sight of him. Then,
as abruptly as the shutting of a door, she let him go.

~~~

“She would like you in her bed,” Iphikleia said. She was
up and sitting in a chair, white and gaunt but determined, when Kemni found a
moment to look in on her. He had not meant to tell her of his audience with the
Great Royal Wife, but what with one thing and another, with pausing to talk and
being plied with the breakfast he had altogether forgotten, he found himself
chattering more perhaps than he should. She was hungry for news—the servants,
she complained, told her nothing, and Imhotep was oblivious to all but his
work.

“She wants you,” Iphikleia said. “There, stop shying like
that! She’ll never take you—no more than Ariana will. But I’m sure she loves to
look at you.”

“Every woman in the world can’t be wanting to take me to
bed,” Kemni said crossly. “I’m not that good to look at.”

“You don’t think so?” she asked. “No, maybe not all women,
after all. Only women of taste and discernment.”

“And you aren’t raging with jealousy?”

“Should I be?”

“Women,” Kemni said, in much the same tone Ariana had used
of men. “Stop tormenting me now, and be sensible. For by the gods, one of you
women has to be. Ariana is going to try to smuggle herself to the war, I can
see it as clear as the sun at noon. Gods know what the Great Royal Wife intends
to do, but I’ll wager she won’t be sitting here like a proper and submissive
royal subject, doing her king’s bidding and not a fraction more.”

“Do you think she’d betray the king?” Iphikleia asked.

“No!” said Kemni. “She terrifies me. She makes me want to
turn and bolt. But she’s loyal. I’d wager my souls on it.”

“So would I,” Iphikleia said, “if I had the whole rank of
Egyptian souls, and not the simple one we Cretans are given. But you think she
has more on her mind than her king’s wishes.”

“I think,” he said, “that when the gods look down from the
horizon on this kingdom and ask one another whose will rules most strongly in
it, some of them would declare by their very divinity that while Ahmose is
king, Queen Ahmose Nefertari is the one whose word matters most in the counsels
of the kingdom.”

Iphikleia did not recoil from that thought, or seem to find
it at all shocking. “What of it? The kingdom is well ruled, everyone agrees on
that. Does it matter who actually does the ruling?”

“But Ahmose is the king!”

“Ahmose is a wise man, who knows what he has in the chief of
his wives. I admire him. Every man should be so sensible.”

“You women are all appalling,” Kemni said. “And you are all
here. Maybe I shall invent a messenger of my own, and run away to hide behind
my king.”

“You won’t do that,” said Iphikleia. “Come here, kiss me.
Then go. You’ve dallied here long enough, and I want to sleep.”

Kemni was glad to kiss her, even in his fit of temper—and a
long, deep, splendid kiss it was, too, with a promise in it of more. But not
now, and not tonight. She was weak still, and more than ready to rest.

Soon. If the war allowed. If his king and his queens and all
the rest of Kemni’s tormentors permitted it to be so.

The king’s armies had begun to come down the river. Those
that had gathered in and about Thebes were behind. These were the lords and
nomes of the north, coming to Queen Nefertari in the Bull of Re, and mustering
along the river to the south and north of the holding.

There was no Cretan ship on the river now.
Dancer
had left the day after it brought
Nefertari, sailing as quickly as it might toward the enemy’s country and past
it, the gods willing, to the sea. All the boats were Egyptian boats, a great
jostling fleet of them. Yet more had come bearing provisions, supplies,
weapons. Those came and came again, emptying the granaries and storehouses of
the Upper Kingdom, pouring all they had into the king’s war.

It was a mighty undertaking to gather them all, not so soon
that they grew restless, nor so late that they missed the muster. The stream of
runners and messengers never stopped or slowed. They all came to the Bull of
Re, to the two queens in the heart of it, who held together all those thousands
with an ease that surely must come from the gods.

Kemni, with twice a hundred men and chariots, with all their
grooms, healers for both men and horses, servants, armorers, and men under
orders to maintain and repair the precious chariots, reckoned himself much
beset. Nefertari and Ariana between them did all of that for many a thousand.
He tried to compose himself as he saw them do, always calm, never visibly
frazzled, and not raising their voices even to chastise great error. And
chastise they did, even to death, if such was the penalty they reckoned
fitting.

His charioteers, gods knew, were no better or worse than
young men ought to be, but their infractions were minor. They kept apart by the
queens’ order, indeed had removed the horses and chariots from the holding and
retreated to the valley of horses, as the army began to gather. How much of a
secret they were, Kemni was not certain, but if they could remain but a rumor,
it would serve the king’s purpose.

They camped in the valley therefore, kept watch as if they
were already at war, and kept up their spirits in wondrous fashion. Kemni had
no need to hunt for ways to keep them occupied. Horses took a great deal of
looking after, and horses with chariots were almost excessively engrossing. In
moments of despair, Kemni knew that they would never come to the Lower Kingdom;
they would be trapped here forever, grooming and tending horses, repairing
chariots, and discovering how very much of the art they still were ignorant of.

He had tried at first to come back to the house at night,
but the third time he found himself still in the field long after the sun had
set, the messenger he sent to Iphikleia returned with a message of her own:
“Never mind that. Stay with your people. They need you.”

He had got out of the habit of sleeping alone, but as
exhausted as he was when at last he could snatch a few hours’ sleep, he had
little enough time to fret over the absence beside him. There were women if he
had wanted them: girls from the villages, maids from the holding, who seemed
untrammeled by duties and unconcerned by secrecy.

Kemni took one to his bed one night, a bright-eyed young
thing with a supple body and a quick tongue. She was far from the first to let
him know that she would not be averse to a night in his company; he was the
commander, after all, and there was that damnable face of his.

“Oh, not only your face,” she said as she slipped his kilt
from about his middle and stood back to admire. “Beautiful man! All the others
will be oh so jealous.”

His body had warmed to her of its own accord, as well it
might: it had had no taste of a woman since Iphikleia was struck down. But as
she set about stroking and fondling him, he went cold. Her hands were not the
hands he wanted. Her voice, though pleasing, chattered on endlessly. Her face
was pretty, but pretty was not enough.

She did her best with lips and hands, with unwavering
patience and goodwill. At last he set her hands aside and slipped away from her
lips. “Enough,” he said as gently as he could. “You are lovely, and I regret . . .
but not tonight.”

She did not laugh. That much grace she gave him. She sighed
and patted his limp organ, which quivered faintly but could not bring itself to
rise, and said, “Never mind. I understand. You can’t help it. She’s put her
spell on you—and wisely, too. If I had such a lovely man, I’d want him all to
myself, too, and I’d make sure I kept him.”

She left him then, he hoped not to tell the tale to all her
fellows, nor would she take the necklace of lapis stones that he offered her.
“It wasn’t for pretties I did it,” she said.

“Still,” he said, “don’t you want something for your
trouble?”

“You were no trouble at all,” she said. “But this, I will take.”
She took a kiss, a long and luxurious one, before she slipped out into the
night.

He slept alone that night, and the nights after. Sometimes
he thought the women about the camp stared and giggled as he went by, but he
told himself he was fancying things.

Until Seti said to him one morning as they shared bread and
beer and the rolls of accounts, “Tell me what you did with Meritamon the other
night.”

Kemni looked up from a blur of numbers. “Merit— Who?”

“The pretty one. Breasts like little green melons. Never
stops talking.”

Kemni remembered her perfectly well, once he had been
reminded. “What’s she saying I did?”

“She’s not,” Seti said. “She walks about with a smile on her
face and a dreamy look in her eye. When she deigns to lie with one of us, she’s
only half there. She’s got all the other women dreaming and mooning about, too,
but they’re all singing laments of the ‘beautiful unattainable.’”

Kemni came nigh to choking on a swallow of beer. “They’re
doing
what
? They’re mad.”

“I’d say so,” Seti said. “They’re not refusing the rest of
us, at least—though we’re made to feel like very poor seconds indeed.”

“I did nothing with her,” Kemni said through gritted teeth.

Seti stared at him. “You must have done something.”

“Not one thing.” Kemni glared in the face of Seti’s
disbelief. “I swear on my name. She said my lady put a spell on me. Maybe so. I
only know I wanted no other woman.”

“Astonishing,” said Seti. “They really are making love to a
dream.”

“Or mocking us all.”

“No,” Seti said, toying with a pen, scribbling on a scrap of
papyrus as if he had known how to write. “That’s like women, you know.
Nothing’s as good to them as the man they imagine. They can’t have you, and so
the rest of us are nothing beside you. Some of the men would kill them, and
want to kill you, for that.”

“So don’t tell them,” Kemni said with a growl beneath the
words.

“Why not? You’re already half a myth.”

“Nonsense.”

“Really,” Seti said, spreading his hands as if to swear an
oath. “Look at yourself. You dreamed a dream, and the king sent you away across
the Great Green. You came back with a queen for him and a priestess for you and
an alliance that might, by the gods’ will, win us this war. You dreamed another
dream, and it gave us chariots, and made us lords of horses—us who were
conquered by chariots, and frightened to death of horses. The Great Royal Wife
speaks to you as to a great prince—and she speaks to no one except the king and
her fellow queens. The gods know your face, people are saying. And the gods
only know kings and priests. Since you’re neither, you must be something
else—either one of them, or one of their chosen.”

“That is nonsense,” Kemni said. “And worse than nonsense, if
people start thinking I really am a god. That’s treason.”

“People think what they want to think,” Seti said. “They
don’t make a habit of telling kings what’s tumbling around in their bellies.”

“I’m supposed to be comforted by that? If they start
invoking me when they swear at one another, someone is going make sure the king
hears.”

“The king loves you. What’s more, he knows you. He won’t be
alarmed, and I doubt he’ll be angry.”

“His own son,” Kemni said, “turned against him and thought
to make himself king. I’m that son’s battle-brother. Do you think he’ll forget
that?”

“I think the king knows the difference between a handsome
liar and a man who’d cut off his own rod before he’d lie to his king.”

“So much you know of kings,” Kemni muttered. “Set’s black
balls! This is unbearable.”

Seti goggled at him. Kemni as a god or a god’s child barely
perturbed him. Kemni swearing like a lowborn soldier took him utterly aback. “
Sir
! Where did you learn to talk like
that?”

“You know perfectly well where I—” Kemni bit off the words.
“Are you trying to drive me mad?”

“I’m trying to make you laugh.” Seti looked doleful. “I’m
not doing very well. Aren’t you even half tempted to find this all a grand
joke?”

“It’s all a grand mess.”

“Oh, now, it’s not as bad as that. A commander ought to be a
bit of a myth—it keeps the men sharp.”

“It also keeps greater lords on edge, and makes them want to
dispose of him,” Kemni said grimly.

“You should have thought of that before you started
entertaining gods in dreams,” Seti said. “Here, my lord, drink your beer and
finish your numbers. We’ve got exercises in the field; the men will be
waiting.”

“Of course I must not keep the men waiting.” Kemni downed
his cup of beer and glared at the columns of figures. “This says that unless we
march soon, we’ll be needing more provisions than we’ve gathered. How long
before everyone’s mustered?”