The Shepherd Kings (76 page)

“You may have oxen,” the king said, “and such of the asses
as we can spare.”

“That will be enough,” the commander said, “sire. And I
thank you for it.”

Ahmose inclined his head. He could afford to be gracious.
His victory was complete. He had won far more than a city full of booty. He had
won the northward way, and the road into Asia.

Sile had fallen. Khayan could not imagine that anyone had
not expected it, and yet the howls of dismay as word flew through the army were
both lengthy and loud. Surely at least a few of these bellowing bullcalves had
understood that Sile was a sacrifice, a gobbet of fresh meat cast in front of
the crocodile, to give the king time to fortify the center of his kingdom.

And yet it did not seem so. Khayan had been reckoning
himself, if far from happy, at least not unhappy. The misfortune that had cast
him here had a habit of haunting him in the nights, but in the daylight he was
as content as he could be. He had rank, to a degree. He had men who seemed
willing to fight for him. He was not too terribly humiliated, all things
considered.

So he had been telling himself. But all the folly that he
heard in the army made him yearn to be a lord of high degree again, a royal
favorite—because a commander of a hundred foot was not entitled to speak before
the council of the generals, still less to upbraid them for fools.

They had built this hasty fortress athwart the road from
Sile, with no apparent concern for the fact that the enemy had simply to sail
past in his Cretan ships. Or, for that matter, if his army was too numerous for
the ships, they could ferry him across to the far bank, and he could march lightly
on his way, grinning and baring his brown behind at the idiot barbarians.

And now they wanted to abandon their stronghold and fall
back to Imet, not far from Avaris. It was a city, they said to one another, or
at least a town of respectable size, and its walls were higher and stronger
than anything they could erect here. They said no word of fighting, only of
retreating. And had not the king told them to stand their ground?

He was not even supposed to be present at the council within
the hastily erected walls. But it was not under guard, and he was not prevented
from hanging about beyond the circle.

Others of the lower ranks seemed to have succumbed to the
same curiosity. Was it as morbid as his own? Lords, he had learned, were
regarded by the lesser commanders as a necessary evil, a pack of fools whose
orders, in the main, had nothing to do with reason or sense. For that, one
needed a commander of ten or a hundred, a man who knew what the men were
thinking, and could see to it that they lived to fight in the next battle their
lords’ foolishness flung them into.

Khayan, once a high lord and now, for his sins, a commander
of a hundred foot, had yet to earn the trust of his fellows. But they were free
enough in their speech when he was in earshot.

Some of them were listening as he was, rolling their eyes at
one another where the lords could not see, and muttering, “Lords. All hot for a
fight one instant, all cold and shivering the next. And it’s never the thing we
should be doing.”

“What should we be doing?”

Maybe Khayan should have kept his tongue between his teeth.
But he had heard too much, and was too far out of temper.

“Well, young cub,” said the scarred veteran who was
nearest—who was hardly older than Khayan, perhaps, but ancient in battles—“if
you think about it, maybe your belly will tie itself in knots, or maybe it will
tell you.”

“We should stand, not run,” Khayan said.

They all saluted him, the half-dozen who loitered about. “By
Set’s black balls!” rumbled the largest of them, a giant indeed, like a vast
and shaggy bear. “The puppy can think.”

“That’s probably why the puppy got knocked down to trooper,”
said the scarred man. “Not just for plucking some lord’s pretty flower.”

That in its way was true. Khayan shrugged. “Does it matter?
The kingdom’s being lost in front of us. Shouldn’t we do something about it?”

“Certainly we will,” the great bear said. “We’ll keep our
boys together, we’ll make sure they’re fed and have places to sleep, and if we
can, we’ll make sure they stay alive.”

“We could enter the council,” Khayan said with swelling
surety. “If we all go, as many of us as we can muster, surely they’ll have to
listen to us.”

The big man regarded him in what could only be pity. “Where
did you learn to think like that? No, don’t try to answer. I remember. You used
to be one of the warrior women’s pets, before they gave you to the king. They
rule one another like that, yes? Anybody can speak in council and be heard, no
matter what the rank. All that plain good sense—the gods must hate them.”

“Horse Goddess loves them,” Khayan said. “Come, why can’t we
do it here? We’re not so far from the tribes ourselves. If we all go and
present our arguments, surely they’ll listen?”

“They’ll throw us out on our arses,” the scarred man said,
“and flog the ringleaders. No, puppy. This isn’t a tribe here. This is an army.
The lords give orders. We carry them out. The men obey.”

“But if the orders are—”

“Orders are orders,” the scarred man said.

Khayan bit his tongue till it bled. “And if I try it? You
won’t back me up?”

“Puppy,” the big man said, “you’ll have to find someone else
to patch your back for you after they’re done whipping you. We’ll be gone.
Obeying orders—and keeping our backs clean.”

They left him there, returning to duties, no doubt, and
following orders. Khayan stood alone beyond the circle’s edge. Inside it, the
lords were coming to an agreement.

Imet it would be, the town on the road to Avaris. The rest
of the north they would abandon.

“After all,” they told one another, “when we win the war,
all this will be ours again. But to win it, we need Avaris and the cities in
the south. We can do nothing here.”

Folly. Rank folly. Khayan actually moved to step into the
circle, but something—whether prudence or cowardice—held him back. He would not
mind a flogging for a cause, but to stripe his back for nothing—no. He could
not do it. He was a coward, then. He would do as he was told.

~~~

They prepared to abandon the fort, but none too hastily.
There was time, the lords said. The enemy was enjoying the fruits of his
victory, taking his ease in Sile. Long before he came south, they would be
gone, safe within the walls of Imet.

Khayan could not oppose their orders, but he could take what
precautions he could—as could all the commanders of his low rank. He saw to it
that he was posted with his men, on guard outside the fort, watching the road
to the north. Surely the lords’ spies and messengers told them the truth, but
his belly, around all the knots, was not easy with it. Would not the enemy wish
the lords to think such a thing? He had already surprised the kingdom with the
taking of Sile. Why should he not surprise it again with the speed of his
advance?

It was not unpleasant duty. The hunting was nearly gone, but
there were fish in the river. The air was clean, untainted by the stinks of too
many men shut too close together for too long. They elected to camp in the
field that night, while the fort continued its leisurely preparations to
depart.

Night was always the worst. Khayan tried not to dream, and
tried not to remember, but his heart was a stubborn thing. Again and again he
saw Barukha’s face as she cried rape against him, and heard her hiss in his ear
when he was captured: “If I can’t have you, no one will.”

Sometimes, if he was fortunate, memory turned to dream. He
was lying with Iry, nearly always in a field of flowers—such a field as Egypt
had never known, but the steppe knew well. Horses grazed about them. White
horses, grey horses, dark foals that would be grey as they grew. The Mare’s
herd, and the Mare among them.

Iry was smiling. He had seldom seen her smile in the waking
world. She was not a somber person, but she was a serious one. Her smiles were
never given lightly.

She gave it as a gift to him now. He reached to touch it, to
cherish it. It was as elusive, as insubstantial as a flame. And like flame,
when he came too close, it went out.

~~~

Khayan woke with a start. It was morning—later than he had
wanted to sleep, grey dawn and one of his men bending over him, Shimon the
swift runner, who ranged farthest of all the scouts. He looked as if he had
been running all night.

“Lord,” he said, for he insisted on calling Khayan that,
“Captain, I’ve seen—they’re coming. The enemy are coming.”

“How close?”

“They stopped when it got dark, though I waited to see if
they’d go on. I could run the distance in an hour.”

“As close as that?” Khayan sat up, raking his hair out of
his face. “And it took you this long to find me?”

“I found them much farther from here,” Shimon said a little
sullenly. “I needed to see how close they’d come. I sent Lamech to tell you.
Didn’t he do it?”

“Lamech never—” Khayan’s mouth shut with a snap. “They
caught him.”

“But how could—”

“Boats,” Khayan said. “There are always boats on the river,
fishing and trading. I’ll wager half of them are spies outright and the other
half are in Egyptian pay. They caught Lamech. But not you. Maybe because they
knew you’d get here too late to be of any use?”

“There’s still time to fight, my lord,” Shimon said.

“So there is,” said Khayan. He said it with a kind of
satisfaction. “So. We stand our ground here after all. The lords are not going
to be pleased.”

“You are pleased,” said Shimon, whose rebellion had always
been less than subtle.

“But I can’t be a lord, can I? I can think.”

~~~

The Egyptians fell on the fort at sunrise, from the land
and from the river. There were a great many of them—more than any of the scouts
had counted. Their own kind had rallied to them, it seemed, from all over the
north.

And of course there were the armies from Thebes and the
ships from Crete. A rather insulting number of those sailed on past as the
battle raged in and about the stronghold. As strong as the Retenu might be on
the land, they never had mastered the river. That, Khayan knew as he stood in
the line, watching the enemy surge toward them like a river in flood, would be
their downfall.

He had brought his men back to the walls, but the gates were
shut. There were others outside of them, camped in a great circle, brought in
so that they might march in a day or two or three, when the lords decided it
was time.

He had sent a runner ahead to raise the alarm. This was the
response: barred gates, men shut out. The lords, of course, were safe within,
and most of their picked troops, too. All those without were ordered to do what
they could to keep the enemy at bay—so that, Khayan supposed, the lords could
escape through the southward gate and run toward Imet.

He had no particular desire to turn tail and run. His mood
was strange. It had been strange since he walked out of Avaris. He cared if he
lived or died, but not enough to save himself. He had men to look after, and a
battle to fight.

Without lords to interfere, the commanders had set up as
best they could a plan of battle. The fort was at their backs. Archers with
fire-arrows lined the river’s banks to hold off the ships.

The chariotry, such of it as the lords would give them—the
rest were occupied with running south—ranged in front. The mass of the foot
stood behind: swordsmen, spearmen, archers. The archers too were few, and the
rest of them running after the chariots. Mostly there were spearmen and
swordsmen, a wall of bodies between the enemy and the fort.

Khayan, as one such body, took as much ease as he could
while the morning brightened about them. He could hear the drums beating on the
ships, striking time for the oars. The deep rhythmic roll of it echoed far up
the river. Their hearts seemed after a while to echo it, beating strong and
slow, as the horizon spread and darkened and began to move. The sun, in its
rising, caught the heads of spears and set them aflame.

Most of war was waiting. And the worst waiting of all was
that of the soldier commanded to stand while the enemy advanced.

The sun beat on Khayan’s helmet. Sweat ran down his back and
sides. His mouth was dry, but he dared not drink too heavily from his skin of water.
It had to last, perhaps, for all of that day. If he drank at all, he drank a
sip at a time, rolling the warm leather-tasting liquid on his tongue, savoring
every drop.

The enemy came on. There were chariots in front and to the
sides. So: that was true. They had horses and chariots. Some of the horses were
of the Asian strain, but many were not. They were Libyans, deceptively
delicate, more like deer than the sturdy beasts Khayan had known from his
childhood.

The charioteers did not drive too badly, for men who must
never have stood in a chariot before this year began. They had no art, but they
had skill enough.

The army marching behind them was large. Very large. The
fleet came up beside it, wind in the sails, oars stroking the water, carrying
the black-hulled ships against the current of the river. The drums had become
the world, beat and beat and beat.

Hold
, Khayan’s
orders bade him.
Let the enemy come to
you.
Easy enough for a lord to command—a lord who could not himself have
endured to stand unmoving while an army marched toward him. But soldiers lived
to do as their lords bade them.

When the first rain of arrows fell, Khayan had been
expecting it. It still took him by surprise. It looked so harmless; and yet a
man within his arm’s reach, staring skyward at the deadly rain, fell without a
sound. An arrow had pierced his eye.

“Shields!” Khayan bellowed to his own men and to whoever
else would listen. “Up shields!”