“Your brothers are criminals?”
“No—” she began, then continued: “yes, I suppose they must be. At any rate, they were accused of getting a town official’s daughter with child.”
“Both of them ?” Khai’s raised eyebrows showed his own innocence and lack of knowledge regards the ways of the world.
Mhyna shrugged. “The stupid girl didn’t know which one was the father,” she answered. “And so, since neither one would marry her, both were sent to prison. Then they were transferred to Asorbes. And there they’ll stay—for another three months at least. Or perhaps they’ll get time off for good behavior’” She laughed. “Hah’ little chance of that. No, for the children of Eddis Jhirra are a lusty lot and wicked.”
“Eddis Jhirra?” Khai queried.
“My father,” she told him with a grin. “We all take after him—if you know what I mean.”
“No,” said Khai truthfully, “I don’t.”
“Oh?” she cocked her head on one side. “Well, I have four brothers and two sisters—that I know of. All of them are older than me. My sisters are married with lots of kids of their own. As for my brothers—” Again, she shrugged. “Two m Asorbes building the Pharaoh’s tomb; the other two seeking out his enemies west of the river. But if I know those soldier boys, they’ll be more interested m the village girls than fighting off Kushite marauders’”
“So two of your brothers are Khasathut’s men ?”
“Pressed by his recruiters, aye—stolen out of their apprenticeship four years ago and soldiers ever since. Why do you think my father puts his barge in my care, eh?”
Khai stirred a little, and once more Mhyna cautioned him: “Lie still, little man. Don’t forget the soldiers on the banks. My, but they’re out in force!”
“If I can just turn on my side a bit,” Khai grunted. “There’s a spelk or something sticking in my back. Uh!—there, that’s better,” and he collapsed back again with a sigh.
“I can’t understand why you’re so uncomfortable,” she said. “Is it too cool for you in the shade of that hide? Are you still wet?” And she reached out a toe, hooked it under the soft leather and flipped it to one side. “There, let the sun warm you for a bit.”
She looked at Khai’s body and pouted, arching her back against the mast and pretending to locate an itch between her shoulder blades. “Such a pale little boy,” she commented huskily, “but I like your eyes. They’re so strange and blue!”
Suddenly, Khai felt annoyed. The girl was getting under his skin with her references to his youth. “Little man” and “little friend,” and now he was a “pale little boy!” Why, she couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old herself! And certainly he was an inch or two taller than she was.
“Oh? And are you angry with me?” she asked, seeing the narrowing of his eyes and the stubborn set of his jaw. “Did I say something, my young friend?” That was the last straw. “I’m not so young!” Khai burst out. “And I’m certainly not your friend. As for being a little boy: I escaped from the pyramid, didn’t I? And I’ve vowed to go back to Asorbes one day and kill the Pharaoh himself. Let me tell you something, Mhyna: there’s no one in Khem shoots a straighter arrow than I do and no one ever slid down the side of a pyramid before—and lived to talk about it, at any rate!”
“My!” she said. “Such a lot of credits! And won’t your girlfriends miss you, Khai the Archer? And won’t they cry for you while you’re away, Khai-Who-Slid-Down-the-Pyramid ?”
He immediately reddened. “My girlfriends?”
“Surely you have girlfriends?” she said. “Why, you must be all of, oh, fifteen years old—maybe even sixteen?”
“I’m seventeen!” Khai lied. “And of course I’ve had girlfriends.” “Well,” she answered, squirming again and using her toe to toy with the hem of his simple kirtle. “I suppose you could be seventeen. You’re quite tall.” She lay her head on one side and squinted at him. “Hmm—your legs are very sturdy—and I can see that you think mine are, too.” She laughed at his expression, knowing that he couldn’t keep his eyes from the spot where that thin linen strip had finally worked itself into her body, so that the center now barely showed through a glistening bush of tightly curled hair. The muscles in her legs and buttocks tightened as she deliberately flexed them, and all the anger ebbed out of Khai as he began to react to her sexuality, her taunts. With her toe stroking his thigh, suddenly she froze. “Don’t move,” she said, “not an inch! There’s a great boat coming down the river—with soldiers on board. They seem to be steering toward us… .” She crouched down, laid a hand on his thigh, threw the soft hide back over him, this time covering his face as well as his body. “Don’t move now,” she whispered. “Stay perfectly still.”
Khai froze—not only his body, but his mind, too—his senses so alert for exterior occurrences that he was almost oblivious to matters closer to home. Almost—but not quite. For Mhyna’s hand was furtively moving on his thigh, cunningly seeking him out! As she took hold of him, he started violently, cracking his head on a jar of oil.
“Stay still, Khai,” she giggled. “The soldiers—”
For a moment longer, he suffered the exquisite torment of her languidly moving, gently squeezing hand—but then could stand it no longer. He reached down spastically to trap her hand in his own, and in so doing uncovered his face. He stared up in half-amazed astonishment at the girl where she crouched beside him, her large brown eyes half-shuttered with silken lashes. “The soldiers,” she whispered again—but by now he knew that there were no soldiers.
Trembling in every limb, he began to raise himself up onto one elbow, his free hand tracing the curve of Mhyna’s inner thigh. Every nerve of his body seemed tinglingly afire, about to burst into flames; and sure enough, before his hand could reach its silky objective, suddenly a tide of sweet agony washed over him. He gave a low cry and fell back, spending himself in long bursts.
“Oh!” Mhyna said, a surprised expression growing on her face. She stood up and wiped her hand on her skirt. “So you are a virgin after all, are you?” And she laughed delightedly.
Still trembling, Khai pulled the hide back over his exposed body and turned his face to one side. “Oh, no, no, Khai!” she cried, kneeling beside him and taking his face in her hands. “I’m not scolding you. I’ve always wanted to know what it would be like with a virgin—yes, and now I shall! You’ll see, for you’ll be ready again in a little while.”
She steered the barge toward several large clumps of papyrus reeds where they grew beneath overhanging willows on small islands which lay twenty or so yards out in the water from the east bank. There, where fringing branches leaned down and the nodding reeds grew tall, she moored her craft so that it could not be seen and drew up the sail.
Cool in the shade of the trees, Khai watched her movements as she finished with her camouflaging of the boat. He was unashamed now that the sun was out of his eyes and all the tension gone from his body. Mhyna came and stood over him once more. She looked down at him and smiled, her face and body dappled by beams of sunlight glancing through the overhanging branches. Then, as he started to sit up, she tut-tutted.
“My, but you’re the one for fidgeting,” she told him. “Lie still and be good.”
Instead of obeying her, he kneeled, pulled half a dozen soft hides from where they were piled at one side of the boat and formed them into a comfortable nest where he had been lying. Then he took off his clothes and lay down again, his hands behind his head.