by Judith Tarr
Khayan had carefully refrained from thinking of anything while he had her in his arms but that she might be hurt. But under such excessive provocation, his manly parts leaped to attention. And never mind that he had seen every part of her that there was to see.
She did not even notice the altered quality of his silence. She said, “You’ve been there, too.”
He needed a moment to recall what she meant. That flash of thigh had driven everything else out of his mind. But it came back, if reluctantly. “I’ve been in the king’s favor, yes. Only those he trusts implicitly are allowed into those chambers.”
“He shouldn’t trust me,” she said in a low voice.
He bit his tongue before he asked why she would say that. He thought he knew. For all the lessons she had been given, the words she had learned, the rites and prayers, the arts of war and peace, she was still Egyptian. She could not even wear her robe as a woman of the people might. Either it was rucked up or slipped down at an immodest angle, or she was carrying it as if it had been a burden.
His mother, he knew, expected that Iry would become one of the Mare’s children, with time and teaching and sufficient stern discipline. But Khayan, looking at her now, knew that this spirit would not yield. It would learn all it might, and do whatever it must. But it remained itself.
That was a dangerous thing. And yet he was not afraid. He said, “You’ll be asked to show yourself to the court, and likely soon. Are you prepared for that?”
She tensed, perhaps. But she said calmly, “I suppose I am as ready as I may ever be.”
“I won’t be far from you,” he said, moved to it by he knew not what. “If it becomes too much to bear, come to me. Will you remember that?”
She looked at him strangely, as well she might. But she only said, “I’ll remember.”
He nodded. “That’s well. Yes, very well.”
There was another silence. There were often silences between them, but this, to Khayan at least, felt different. He was thinking, quite apart from any volition or sense, that there was a bed yonder, and she was remarkably close to it. Her body in the rumpled robe seemed as scant as a boy’s, but he knew what sweetness was hidden beneath the embroidered linen.
She must not know. That was his first thought, and perhaps his only one. It was not fitting that he should presume to look on the Mare’s servant in this manner.
Belatedly he recalled that he stood in the door; that he must move before she could leave. He stepped aside.
She did not escape as he had thought she might. She looked from him to the door, shrugged almost too slightly to see, and turned again to gaze out of the window. “I have no window,” she said. “Are you hungry? Would you like to send for something?”
In fact Khayan would, but he paused to marvel at her. She had gall, he had known it. Still, she could surprise him.
He sent for food for both of them. She never left the window while they waited. “Look,” she said. “More warhounds. I never saw them before I came here—and now I’ve seen whole packs of them.”
She beckoned. He came more obediently than perhaps he should have. The embrasure was close quarters for two of them, as broad as his shoulders were. Her arm was warm against his. He knew exactly where each part of her was, and how close it was to him, even through his robe and hers.
It was an effort to look out, to see what she wanted him to see. A handful of men passed through the court, each with a brace of the great fierce dogs that were, to some of the lords, a fashion and an affectation.
“You don’t have warhounds,” Iry said, “nor did your father. Why is that?”
“My father used to say that every animal should be of use in peace as well as war. A dog once taught to hunt men is good for nothing else. He gets the taste of manflesh, you see, and craves it over after.”
“That’s what they say of lions,” she said, “and crocodiles, and riverhorses. Manflesh is sweet. Too sweet.”
“Mind you,” said Khayan, “for some lords, that might not be an impediment. The greatest hunt of all, they say, is the hunting of men.”
She shivered. Before he had thought, he circled her with his arm and drew her even closer. She did not stiffen or resist. For an instant, too quick almost to catch, she melted against him.
Then she was separate again, standing on her own. He let his arm fall. She said, “The men they hunt would be my kin. My people. Do I have that power? Can I forbid it?”
She had surprised him. He forgot, or never entirely remembered, all that she was. He had to think about what she had said. “I suppose you could disapprove of it,” he said, “and let it be known. But the Mare’s servant has always taken care not to interfere overmuch in men’s fashions and follies.”
“The hunting of innocents for their blood is a fashion?”
“Iry,” said Khayan, “you don’t know that they would ever do that, or that they would do more than think of it. You can’t forbid what no one has been proved to do.”
“But you said—” She stopped. “Khayan,” she said.
Her tone had changed. He could not have said exactly how it was different, and yet it was. “Yes?” he said.
“Khayan,” she said again. “Khayan. I name you. Three times I name you.”
It was a magic. He shivered as she had not long before, but she did not move to comfort him.
Her eyes on him were dark and a little cold. Eyes like the night sky behind the stars. “You spoke my name,” she said.
“I . . . meant no harm by it,” he said. The words did not come easily. They came out of his pride, and his fear, too.
“Say it twice again,” she said.
“But—”
“Say it.”
“Iry,” he said. “Iry.” Such a little bit of a name, but so strong. So very much a part of her.
She nodded at each repetition, as if he had, in some way, satisfied some need of hers. “Three times you said it,” she said. “And now we are equal. Your power over me is the same as my power over you.”
“Is that a good thing?” he asked.
“Do you want it to be?”
“I want. . .” he said. He shook his head. “I don’t know what I want. Is this an Egyptian rite? Should I be wary of it?”
“Would I tell you if you should?”
“It’s a little late, now it’s done.”
“That is so,” she said. “But because I am generous, I tell you that you may have something to fear—if you fear me. If you trust me, then you can trust that I would never hurt you.”
“May I trust you?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Of course she could not. His people had conquered hers. She would never forget or forgive.
“I am going to do it,” he said. “I will trust you. Because you have my name, and I have yours. That is what it means, yes?”
“Yes,” she said, and not too willingly, either. “That is what it means.”
“Good,” he said. And it was. How, even why, he did not know; but it was.
HORUS OF GOLD
I
The plain was wide and barren, beaten down by the sun of Egypt. Horus’ falcon wheeled against that bitter light. Beneath them both, a line of chariots waited. They were as still as men and horses could be. A hot dry wind plucked at the horses’ plumes and tugged at the kilts of the charioteers.
Kemni stood in the center of the line. The reins were quiet in his hands, but he could feel the horses’ eagerness thrumming through them. On either side of him the line stretched away. It had seemed little enough in the muster, half a hundred chariots, a hundred men, and himself to lead them, but from the center it seemed a goodly number.
Away across the plain, a gleam of gold marked the king’s pavilion. Servants had pitched it there before dawn, and the king established himself in it by full morning, borne up from the river in his golden chair. Kemni, who had camped out of sight of the king and his train, knew from messengers that it was an illustrious if small and secret
gathering which had come to this place not far from Thebes. The king was there, and the chiefs of his ministers, and the priests of Amon and of Osiris.
Kemni met the glance of the charioteer on his right hand. Ariana favored him with a wide bright smile. She knew, too, and she did not care. She had announced that she would ride, and ride she had, with Iphikleia in the warrior’s place. They were a striking sight among all the Egyptians, kilted like them, helmeted, and armed as if they had been fighting men. But there could be no doubt at all that these were women. Not in the slightest.
The falcon wheeled at the zenith, lazily, like the god’s own blessing. Kemni drew a breath. Yes. Yes, it was time.
He slipped a fraction of rein. His stallions were ready, waiting for the signal. They leaped ahead. The rest of the line surged behind him, a long sweep backward on either side, like the track of geese in the sky, or a wake on the river. It was not the best way to fall on the enemy, but for vaunting before a king it was splendid.
In a pounding of hooves and a rattling of wheels and a chorus of shouts and whoops and war-cries, the first chariotry of Egypt swept upon the royal camp. Kemni drove not for the pavilion but for a point past it, bending in a swift arc, while the two wings of chariots behind him drew together. A doubled line of them circled the camp, till the outer ring bent again and swerved and reversed its direction. There were two rings still, but one galloped sunwise, the other against it, round and round in a dizzying spiral.
They halted as they had rehearsed, close in about the royal pavilion, with Kemni himself roaring to a stop full before it. He vaulted from the chariot and ran to kneel at his king’s feet, breathless, stifling laughter.
Ahmose the king spoke above him in a voice warm with mirth of its own. “Marvelous,” he said.
Kemni lifted his head. The king was smiling.
“Show me how to drive your chariot,” Ahmose said.
There were gasps among the courtiers, some not as quickly suppressed as others. The king, the god, the son of Horus, was never to act on a whim, or to depart from the carefully ordered round of his days.
But Ahmose had commanded. Kemni could only obey. He rose and bowed and followed the king to where his chariot waited. His stallions, whom Ariana herself had trained, were standing obedient, though their sides were heaving. It would be well to walk them out, and well indeed if the king was minded to learn how that was done.
The rest of his chariotry left its circle to follow. The king had a great escort; and beside him, calmly and without expectation of rebuke, the newest of his queens.
Kemni had not seen any women about the king. But there had been a curtain behind him, and Kemni was sure that Nefertari and her ladies sat behind that. Perhaps some of the gasps he had heard had been theirs.
There would be a price to pay for this. But for the moment Kemni allowed himself to indulge in the pleasure of it: the open plain, the company of his men and his queen and—yes—his lady Iphikleia, and his king beside him showing not too ill a hand with the reins.
Ahmose seemed as lighthearted as a boy, even when he surrendered the lines and laughed and said, “I have no art in this. Show me how a master does it!”
“For that, my lord,” Kemni said, “you should look yonder.” He pointed with his chin toward Ariana, who had drawn somewhat ahead.
Ahmose sighed. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. Oh, yes indeed.”
“If you wish to learn this art, my lord,” Kemni said, “you could have no better teacher than that.”
“I do not doubt it,” said Ahmose. “But if it were known that I was learning the way of the chariot under the tutelage of a Cretan woman, what would the rumormongers say?”
“Since all that we do here is a secret, sire, and since the woman is your lawful wedded queen, they’re not likely to say anything at all.”
“That is true,” said Ahmose. “And after the war, when all is won, there need be no secrets.”
Kemni should have held his tongue. But he said, “My lord, if you have a desire to ride to battle in a chariot, then you well may. Only find yourself a charioteer, and learn to fight from behind him. Later is soon enough to learn to ride and fight, both.”
“It would be more kingly to do that,” Ahmose mused. “Still, since that may not be done in the time we have, I have found myself a charioteer. Will you teach me to fight from behind you?”
Kemni had not meant to put himself forward at all. If anything, he had been thinking of Seti, who had a gift for both horses and chariots. But if the king chose him for this thing, he would not refuse it. It was a great honor.
Great danger, too. The king would be the focus of any attack, its greatest prize and its most natural center. But Kemni was not afraid of danger. Not enough to turn away from it.
He nodded, bowing as low as he could with the reins in his hands and the horses fretting against the tensing of his fingers. “I would be glad to teach you, sire,” he said.
~~~
The king, who had left Thebes under pretext of hunting lions in the wilderness, chose to linger a day or two on that plain above the river. Some of his escort did indeed go hunting lions, and gazelle and whatever other quarry presented itself to them. They ate well in camp that night, and the night after that, of gazelle, ducks and geese from along the river, and a fine catch of fish.
In those two days, while Kemni and his men gratified the curiosity of the king and his lords as to the way and manner of driving and fighting in chariots, the king’s ladies never once showed themselves. They must have had to go out if only to relieve themselves, but if they did it, they managed to do it in secret. Kemni began to doubt that they were there at all. In the night, it was Ariana who kept the king company in his bed, and gladly, too, as far as Kemni could see.
But on the third morning, when the king showed still no inclination to return to his city, Kemni was on his way to fetch his stallions and his chariot when a servant stopped him. It was a man, a scribe, small and nondescript, with an unassuming manner; but Kemni had not seen him before. “My lord,” the man said, “my lady would see you.”
“Your lady Nefertari?”
“Yes, my lord,” the scribe said.
Kemni let himself be led, with hammering heart and sweating palms, behind the curtain that divided the pavilion.
It was much the same on the other side, no darker or more confined. But as all the people without were men, all those within, except for a scribe or two and one who must be a priest, were women. Kemni had no difficulty recognizing the queen, even veiled and seated among several likewise veiled. Her carriage, the way she sat, the way the others sat about her, marked her as clearly as if she had been clothed all in gold.
He bowed to her, low and suitably reverent. With a gesture that in another woman he might have called reckless, she cast off her veil. Her face was exactly as he remembered it, beautiful beyond the measure of simple mortal women—though the Lady Nefertem, he could not help thinking, was more beautiful still. But she had not the air that this one did. She was a lady of good family. This was queen and goddess.
She looked down at him, at the awe he made no effort to hide, and perhaps she was pleased. Or perhaps she merely found his face pleasant to look at. Iphikleia had told him, much more than once, that he should learn to accept that, if he could not understand it.
It still made him blush to be stared at, and women always seemed to stare. He could not speak, either, without sinning greatly against propriety. He must wait for her, and she was in no haste to end his discomfort.
At last she said, “Good morning, man of the Lower Kingdom.”
“Good morning, majesty,” he said after a pause to gather his wits.
“It will be better when we leave this place,” she said, “and return to the city. But that is not a thing that I have power over.”
“No, majesty?” Kemni asked—biting his tongue too late. It was not that he meant to be impertinent. But whatever his gift of tongues, he had no gift for the language of courtiers.
She knew that. Did she smile? If so, it was a faint and shadowy thing, but it colored her voice as she said, “I suppose I might, if I set myself to it. But some battles are not worth winning.”
“He’ll not linger much longer, lady,” Kemni said. “He knows that. He is a dutiful king, though at the moment he may not seem so.”
“I do know that,” she said a little coldly, and he knew that he had been presumptuous. Again. But she did not seem angry. “He has made you his charioteer. Are you content with that?”
“I am the king’s charioteer. Could I be less than content?”
“Some might be,” she said. “It is an office without precedent. Our world is rich in precedent—rife with it. How are we to live when so much is new?”
“That is the fault of the Retenu,” Kemni said. “We had never been invaded before, and never conquered. We have never had to win back a kingdom. But we will do it—with their own weapons, and ours, and our allies’. However we may.”
“Surely,” she said. There was a silence, which Kemni was not bold enough to break. Then she said, “Keep him safe.”
That was not at all what he had expected. It left him speechless.
She smiled. Yes, she smiled. “Poor child. Are we ever what you expect?”
“I suppose not,” he said after a pause. “Lady.”
“Good,” she said. “Now you begin to be wise.”
Wisdom was desirable, but he thought perhaps he was too young to cultivate it. He began to say so, but she spoke before him. “I would like to speak with the Cretan woman. Will you fetch her for me?”
Kemni could well have pointed out that he was no slave, to be sent on errands, or that she had ample servants of her own who might have been given the duty. There was a reason, surely, why he had been set this task. He bowed and did as she bade.
~~~
Ariana had a tent just outside the king’s encampment, within the circle of the charioteers. It was a warrior’s tent and not a queen’s, for she had come here as an advisor in war, not as a lady of the palace. Her only concession to rank was the pair of maids who kept the tent and saw to her person. They smiled brilliantly at Kemni when he came to the tent. It was their fondest hope that, just once, he would forsake his Cretan priestess for their welcoming arms.