The Shepherd Kings Read online

  “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.

  V

  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.

  The gods had brought him so far unchallenged, and except for the night departure from Memphis, unthreatened by any who might know his face. Now he dreamed of flinging himself from Dancer’s prow into the river of Egypt, his river, the only river in all the world that was as great or as blessed.

  He could not leav
e Egypt. Egypt was in his blood, set deep in his bones. Away from it, he would wither and die.

  But his king had commanded him. He must do as he was bidden.

  As to the ease with which they had come so far, they were not thanking the gods yet—not till they had passed the last point of land and sailed out upon the open sea. They went with care, with weapons near to hand, and watchers at prow and mast, scanning the green thickets of the banks. The only sound was the buzzing of flies and the slip of water against the hull, and far off the lazy roar of a riverhorse.

  Kemni kept the place he had been keeping as often as not, near the captain’s post. He was knotted tight. If he let himself go, he would spring for the side and leap into the water, and never mind the crocodiles. Almost he caught himself praying that the enemy would appear, a whole army with chariots.

  And if the enemy did come, what could they do? They might shoot at Dancer, but the ship would not stop for them, nor slow. They had no fleet of their own.

  Kemni could look for no such rescue. The land of Egypt slipped away behind them, swifter it seemed, the nearer they drew to the sea. Then, as if between one breath and the next, it was gone. The great slow swell had taken them. The sky had opened, and all the horizon was water. There was no land. No Egypt. Only the vastness of the Great Green.

  It was not green. It was blue; deep pure blue like lapis, studded with the white of foam. Directly beneath the ship was a memory of the land: a broad fan of mud-brown, the gift and tribute that the river brought into the sea. But all too swiftly they sailed out of it into waters both deeper and purer.

  Kemni clung to the deck and fought the urge to howl like a dog. All about him, the Cretan sailors had eased their vigilance. A certain grimness that had lain on them was gone, melted away in the sun. They were home, and free at last.

  He had been home, and was no longer. There was an emptiness in his spirit. He thought, rather distantly, that he could die of it.

  A hand fell on his shoulder. He tensed against it, not caring whose it was, until he heard the voice over his head. It was clear and a little cold, and unmistakably Iphikleia’s. “Drink the wind,” she said. “Fill your soul. Remember where you come from. That will never leave you, not as long as memory endures.”

  She was not being kind, or gentle. She was telling him that he must be strong.

  He looked up into her face. She seemed to be taking no notice of him at all. Her eyes were on the horizon. The sun was in them, and the wind, and the cold kiss of spray.

  “The gods live beyond the horizon,” Kemni said. Where that came from, he could not precisely have said, but it happened to be true. “The horizon never changes, no matter where one stands.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She offered him nothing more, but nothing less. It was convenient for her, he supposed, to keep the Egyptian king’s messenger from running mad and trying to swim back to his own country. And yet he owed her a debt. She had, with so few brief words, taught him to see clearly, and given him courage to face the vastness of the world.

  It was very great, this world, and very empty, a waste of water and sky. There was nowhere to anchor, no shore to rest on when the sun sank and the stars came out over the breast of the sea. These Cretans sailed by sun and stars, with a fair wind blowing. The sea-gods were pleased, they said, glad to have them back again after so long on the river of Egypt.

  ~~~

  Naukrates had long since come to himself again after that wild chariot-ride of his to catch his ship before she left him far behind. The first night at sea, he played host on the deck to Kemni and Iphikleia and one or two of the more lordly sailors. Kemni need no longer keep his head low, nor hide that he was not of these people. He found the habit rather dismayingly hard to break; but once he had broken it, he felt as if a weight had fallen from his shoulders. He put on his third-best wig and his second-best kilt and his collar of gold, and was a lord again, for a while.

  Iphikleia had put on finery, too, as they all had, and painted her breasts as she had her lips, as if to taunt him with what he could dream of but never hope to have. She maintained her air of cool distance, her haughty stillness, even with her uncle—though he twitted her for it, and teased her with stories of her hoyden youth.

  “Wild as a gull you were,” he said in the warmth of the wine, “running where you pleased—even into the king’s high council and among the priestesses when they sang their rites. But mostly,” he said to Kemni with a flicker of laughter, “she was out in the hills, chasing the cattle and the sheep and driving the shepherds to distraction. She heard how people ride horses, away in the east of the world, and decided that a cow would make a fine mount for a Cretan child. She fashioned a saddle for it of an old fleece and bits of leather and strappery, and made a bridle out of knotted cords, and chose herself not any cow, but the Lady’s own heifer. White as milk she was, and her horns were like the young moon, and the priestesses fed her the finest barley and garlanded her with flowers.

  “And this child undertook to make a horse of her. The heifer was as tame as a new lamb, with all the worship she was given—and that was fortunate, because if young insolence had taken it into her head to tame one of the bulls . . .”

  “I was rash,” Iphikleia said, “but I was never stupid. I chose the one most likely to be amenable. And she was. She was hardly easy to sit on, not like a horse whose back is made to hold a rider, but she was willing enough to suffer me. She would even go where I bade her, and stop, mostly, when I asked. She was a quite reasonable mount, when it came to it.”

  “Until the priestesses caught you,” Naukrates said. “Gods and goddess, how they carried on! It’s a wonder they didn’t demand your living heart torn from your breast.”

  “No; only my living body to dance the bull.” Iphikleia shut her mouth with a snap. This, her manner said, touched on things not fit for strangers to hear.

  But Naukrates was not minded to spare her. “Yes, they laid on you a hard sentence. But you danced the bull with the Lady’s blessing. Then there was nothing for it but to make you one of her own, to keep the rest of her cattle safe from your ambition.”

  Iphikleia set her lips together. She had no lightness of spirit, Kemni could see, and least of all when it came to herself. And yet in childhood she must have been all lightness, all air and wickedness. It was rather a pity that she had grown out of it, and so completely.

  In the night again he dreamed of her, a slender minnow of a girl with her breasts scarce budded, riding a milk-white heifer. It was a chaste dream, as his others had not been, and yet when he woke he was aching with desire. He gave himself such relief as he could, and swore an oath in the dim closeness of his cabin: when he came to land, he would—oh, yes, by the gods he would—find himself a willing woman, and love her till she cried for mercy.

  ~~~

  They were five days at sea, and four nights of dreams that Kemni would sooner not remember. As the fifth day rose toward noon, with a brisk wind blowing and the sailors stepping lively, singing and dancing amid the ordered clutter of the ship, the cry rang out: “Land! Land ho!”

  It was only a shadow, a cloud on the horizon. But it grew as the day unfolded and the sun climbed; then as the sun began to sink, even a stranger’s eye could see the shape of the great island. Rocky promontories crowned with green, and scattered among them the gleam of white: cities of men, and palaces, and white temples set high on sheer cliffs. The first one of those that Kemni saw, he thought it must be the place they were seeking, the sacred palace, the house of the Double Axe, the Labyrinth of the king of Crete.

  But it was a temple—to a god of the sky, Iphikleia said. The house of the Double Axe lay inland, round the far side of the island. They were days from landfall after all, must sail full round that mountain in the sea, before they came to the harbor of Knossos and began their ascent to the Labyrinth.

  “Take pleasure in it,” she said at Kemni’s visible dismay. “We’ll sail by day, rest by night in villages. Crete w
ill give us its warmest welcome, with no haste to lessen it.”

  Kemni bit his lip and kept silent. Iphikleia knew what he was thinking: her painted brow arched. But she too held her peace.

  ~~~

  Kemni did his best to do as she had advised him. The days were brisk with breezes and pungent with salt. The green ascents and rocky summits of the island drifted past, wafting toward them a rich scent of earth, so very different from that of the sea. At night, as she had said, they drew up on shore—blessed land, however stony underfoot. Slender brown people came, brought food, drink, music and song. Kemni went to sleep to the sound of waves and the voices of these strangers singing.

  They came to Knossos at last on a fair day, with a fair wind blowing them toward the harbor, and the sun just coming to its zenith over the steep crags of the island. In sight of her own city, even cold Iphikleia had warmed a little: eyes wide and bright, red lips parted, yearning slightly forward where she stood on the deck.

  This to her, to them all, was home as Egypt was home to Kemni. He found it very strange, so stony and yet so green, and cool—almost cold to his Egyptian blood, like Iphikleia herself. The Cretans were well content in their kilts and their tall boots. He in his kilt and bare feet was all one great shiver. The wind whipped the warmth out of him, and the spray kept it away.

  But when Dancer had come to land, when it slid up on the shore, he cared for nothing but that he should stand on solid earth again, and no need in the morning to clamber aboard ship, no need to sail further, not till he went back to Egypt.

  All of his shipmates had leaped down, every one, swarming over the sides, whooping, singing, dancing on the breast of the earth their mother. There were people waiting for them, dancing, too, and singing: women, men, children, what must be half the people of this island, all come together to welcome them home.

  They even welcomed Kemni, caught his hands and whirled him about and dropped him dizzy to the sand. Kemni minded not at all. He embraced the earth; he kissed it. He would have made love to it, if he had been a little wilder.