The Shepherd Kings (6 page)

The living form amid them seemed less lively than they. It
was a single figure, seated on a low couch, hands resting quietly on knees. It
did not move, seemed not even to breathe. Only its eyes were alive. Dark eyes,
large in the narrow face, fixed on him with a fierce intensity.

He knew that face; knew those eyes, and those high impudent
breasts, and that body in its tiered skirt and its embroidered vest. As if she
had only waited to be recognized, Iphikleia rose to face him. She held out her
arms.

He moved toward her; but stopped, breathing light and fast.
What he had taken for armlets of ornate and subtle artistry had stirred and
roused and lifted narrow serpent-heads. Forked tongues flicked. Jeweled eyes
gleamed.

Serpents in Egypt were sacred, but they were deadly—as gods
could all too often be. No priest or priestess would dare to wear them like jewels,
or stroke them as they coiled about her arms, and smile over their heads at
Kemni.

That smile was sweet and terrible. Whatever fear had roused
in him, suddenly was gone. In its place was a white and singing exultation. It
came from nowhere and everywhere. It took sustenance from her eyes.

The snakes coiled and slid up her arms, over her shoulders,
down about her breasts. They circled them, lifting them briefly even higher, as
if to say,
See! See how beautiful!
And
they were beautiful, as beautiful as the moon.

Twin moons. Twin goblets carved of alabaster, tipped with
carnelian. The serpents left them, perhaps with regret, down the sweet curve of
her belly, girdling her tiny waist and the sudden flare of her hips. She had,
somehow, forsaken her garments. She stood all naked, like an image in ivory.
Her only covering was jeweled serpents.

They joined about her middle, circled it and settled and
were still; save one that, wicked, dipped its head down and for an instant, too
swift almost to see, kissed the dark-curled thatch that shielded her sex.

Kemni’s breath caught. He would have given—oh, worlds—to be
so blessed. But he could not move. He dared not. He had known when he saw her
in the waking world that she was more than simple woman. That would have been
difficult to mistake, once he had seen her appear out of the shadows of Memphis
and take the ship with the sure hand of one who owned it.

But this was more. This was a thing of gods and mysteries.
Whatever his manly parts cried out to him to do, and they cried out most
piteously, his wiser spirit knew that whatever he did, he did only by her
sufferance.

She beckoned. Her smile had warmed to burning.
Now
, she said, he thought, the air
itself murmured.

He did not take her. She was not one to be taken. He approached
her as one approaches the shrine of a goddess, bowed down before her,
worshipped as she should justly be worshipped. He drank her like wine. He
folded his arms about her and sank down to a floor that had, in the way of
dreams, become as soft as water.

They floated there, drifting on a warm and surging tide. She
opened to him. He plunged deep. She sighed like a wave drawing back from the
shore. A wave as warm as blood. He sank into it, deeper and deeper, stronger
and stronger, hotter, more urgent, till all the world had shrunk to that single
awareness.

It narrowed to a point, a pinprick of blinding light; and
burst, and blazed, and consumed him.

Kemni woke in the dark, rocked still on the wave that had
borne him in the dream. It faded inescapably into waking: the dimness of his
own space under the deck, his bunk under him and the planking of the deck just
above. From the quality of the dark, it was still night without, but
Dancer
had come alive—softly, quietly,
but unmistakably. Men ran hither and thither, voices called not far above a
whisper.

He crept out blinking into starlight and wan moonlight and
the bustle of the ship getting under way. The moon rode low, casting deep
shadows over the westward bank of the river. The old tombs of kings rose there
like mountains sheathed in silver.

No one ever sailed at night, unless he had strong reason.
Kemni made his careful way toward the captain’s place on the deck.

Naukrates was not there. His niece Iphikleia stood where he
was accustomed to stand, ordering the sailors with the perfect presumption of
authority. They obeyed her without a murmur.

“Where is he?” Kemni demanded of her. He was still more than
half asleep, or he would have been more circumspect. But he was rather fond of
Naukrates. “You can’t be leaving him behind!”

She ignored him. Even in his half-dream he could sense the
urgency, see how the sailors labored to ready the ship and cast it off.

“What is this? Why are we going at this hour?”

Still she paid him no heed. He was not fool enough to strike
her, or to shake her till she looked at him. He squatted at her feet, where she
must step over him if she moved, or fall.

The anchor slid up, hand over hand. Softly, almost silently,
the oars slid out. Iphikleia raised her hand. The oars poised. Her hand
dropped. The oars bit water.
Dancer
trembled like a live thing, shook herself, and leaped suddenly ahead.

Kemni clung to the deck at Iphikleia’s feet. He was waking
now, roused by the movement of the ship and the wind in his face, damp and
almost cool in this hour before the sun’s coming. He was aware, rather sharply,
of her presence; of her body in the tiered skirt and the scrap of vest; and
above all, that she must not know where his dreams had taken him.

He drew up his knees and clasped them, and hoped that that
would be enough. One thing the woolen robes of the Retenu were good for:
concealing a man’s more rampant moments. The Egyptian kilt had no such
capacity.

Dancer
was moving
quickly now, riding the strong slow current of the Nile. The oarsmen had not
slackened once they reached the middle of the stream. This was urgency, as if
they fled something.

“What?” Kemni asked suddenly. “What are we running away
from?”

He had more than half expected to be ignored again, but
Iphikleia answered him without taking her eyes from the oarsmen. “Questions,”
she said.

Kemni considered that. When he had considered it adequately,
he said, “It may get interesting, if we have to traverse the whole of the Delta
with . . . questions on our heels.”

“That is what my uncle is doing,” she said. “Assuring that
questions are answered, or never asked.”

“And dying for it?”

“One hopes not,” she said.

And he heard that austere tone, looked up at that still
face, and remembered her warmth in his dream, and the sound of her laughter.
This waking woman never laughed. He was sure of it.

~~~

Sunrise found them a respectable distance downriver from
Memphis. They relaxed a little then, shipped oars and raised the faded sail and
traveled in more leisurely fashion. If foreign eyes looked on them, there was
nothing to remark on, no urgency to be seen. But the men were never far from
weapons, and the woman who had taken the place of captain did not step down, or
even sit.

She was waiting for something. Battle? Somehow Kemni did not
think so.

The river’s traffic thickened as the day brightened, till
the rising heat and the sun’s glare drove all but the most determined to
shelter on the bank. A wind had caught the sail. There was little for anyone to
do but keep the sail trimmed, and snatch what rest he could.

At the height of noon, when the air was like hammered
bronze, and even the stinging flies had gone in search of refuge, a small boat
pushed off from the bank. One man stood in it, a slender brown man in a scrap
of loincloth, with another scrap wound around his head.

Kemni would have recognized a Cretan even in ignorance of
this one’s name and face. The wide shoulders, the narrow waist, the round-eyed
face and the utter ease in that whippy little craft, were unmistakable. But no
one pursued him. No one cried treachery from river or shore.

Naukrates had begun somewhat downstream of the ship. He was
able, almost, to wait for it to catch him; to fling himself at its side as it
slid past, and clamber aboard.

He was welcomed without ceremony, but something on the ship
had changed. It was, Kemni thought, whole again. Iphikleia could command and be
obeyed, but Naukrates was the captain. Without him,
Dancer
had lost her head.

He did not linger on deck, nor waste time in idle chatter.
He spared a moment for a long, sweeping glance that took in the whole of the
ship. It seemed he found it good, or at least not terrible. With the slight
flicker of a nod, he turned on his bare and filthy heel and went below.

~~~

Kemni gave him time to bathe, dress, even rest. But when
the sun had visibly descended toward the western horizon, he left the deck
himself. No one stopped him. He was a little surprised at that.

Naukrates had been asleep: his face had that rumpled look,
and his bunk matched it. But he was up, dressed in his accustomed kilt and
gnawing the end of a barley loaf. He had had a cup or two of wine, from the
look of it. He poured one for Kemni even as he slipped into the cabin, and
thrust it across the table.

Kemni sipped for courtesy’s sake, but he was not thirsty for
wine. “You traveled fast,” he said, “to catch a ship sailing on wind and
current, that left you behind when it set off.”

“Chariot,” Naukrates said, “and the gods’ blessing.” He
stretched a little painfully, and rubbed a shin that must be aching. “The
Retenu learn to ride in chariots before they walk, but for those of us who find
more comfort on land or on a ship’s deck—
ah
!”

“And what were you doing in a chariot?” Kemni wanted to
know.

Naukrates laughed. “I do like that about you, Egyptian: you
speak as quickly as you think. What do you think I would be doing in a chariot?
Working treachery against you and your king?”

“That is possible,” Kemni said, “but I find it difficult to
credit. That’s not your way. You’d have killed me long since and fed me to the
crocodiles, if you wanted to be rid of me.”

“I might surprise you,” Naukrates said with an edged glance.
But then he said, “Not every chariot in the Lower Kingdom belongs to a
conqueror. And not every team of asses bears a foreign brand. You should know
that, lord’s son of the Lower Kingdom, if anyone should.”

“I know it,” Kemni said. “I wanted to hear it. So you were
talking with Egyptians who have no cause to love the king set over them. Was
that also why your ship fled so suddenly?”

“We had word that certain officers of the king might have a
mind to visit in the morning. We weren’t in a hospitable mood.”

“Or in a mood to let them see an Egyptian among the Cretan
crew.” Kemni tasted the wine in his cup, realized he was thirsty after all,
drank deep. When he emerged from the cup, there was bread in front of him; and
after all, he was hungry. Between bites of the rock-hard crust, he said, “You
might have done better to linger. When a man runs, he may be thought to have
reason.”

“We had reason,” Naukrates said. “A summons from Crete,
bidding us return before the dancing of the bulls.”

Kemni opened his mouth to point out that that summons had
come before
Dancer
left Thebes, but
he let the words go unspoken. One never argued with convenience. “Who was
coming to nose about? Would it be a certain Ptahmose?”

Naukrates inclined his head.

“So,” Kemni said. “How did you know he knew me?”

“One can converse of many things,” Naukrates answered,
“while suffering a lordly visitation.”

That was all the answer Kemni would get. He was not
altogether content with it, but it would have to do. That there was more in
train here than he had been told or shown, he had known since he took ship. He
was serving his king as his king wished to be served. He was not asked or
expected to offer an opinion.

~~~

They might not be pursued, but neither were they of a mind
to draw more notice than they could help. When the river divided in the wet
green expanse of the Delta, divided and divided again, Naukrates chose branches
that took them past the lesser cities. Avaris, the foreign kings’ own capital,
they never saw at all. That would be tempting fate.

Kemni could feel the conqueror’s hand over this land:
oppressive beyond mere humid heat. Fields that had been rich with barley and
emmer wheat were all stripped now, grazed to the ground by herds of asses and,
less commonly, the larger and more elegant horses. Sometimes he saw them coming
down to the river to drink, or moving swift or slow on some errand best known
to themselves.

He should hate them. They were the conqueror’s wealth, his
weapon and his strength. But they were beautiful, strong and swift, and they,
in themselves, meant men no harm.

A weapon, he thought as he leaned on the rail watching one such
herd—horses, those were, startled into a gallop by some stirring in the
reeds—cared little whose hand wielded it. Egypt could master the chariot, and
the beasts that drew it.

He was not the first to think such a thought, but no one had
acted on it, not as Kemni meant to. And he would, he swore to himself. When he
had done his duty in Crete. When he had come back to Egypt. He would tame the
enemy’s horses and capture his chariot. Then Egypt would be as strong as the
Retenu, and as invincible in battle.

The Delta was both deep and broad, a great land and a rich
one. But it came at last to an end, and emptied its many waters into the sea.

Kemni had never seen the sea. He had never traveled so far
north, nor followed the river to its end. He had not expected to smell it
first, long before he saw it. It was a strange smell, pungent, heavy with salt.
Almost he hated it. Almost he loved it.