Mhyna’s eyes had narrowed until they were slits—the eyes of a cat—and lithe as a cat she was as she threw off her own clothes. Then she took a jar of oil and liberally splashed herself, rubbing the sweet liquid into her body until her skin gleamed. When she was done she looked down at the boy again, laughing low and huskily at what she saw. “There,” she said. “I told you you’d soon be ready again.”
As his arms came up to reach for her she stepped over him, crouched down with a sigh until she sat astride him with her knees gripping his middle. In another moment, his hands had found her breasts and she leaned forward so that he could kiss them. He was aware that she had removed her headband and that her hair now formed a tent of tresses about his face, but beyond that he could not think. All else was lost in the sweet heat of her body and the languid rocking of the boat....
VI
The Parting of the Ways
It was noon before Mhyna once more let down the sail and steered her barge out from its hiding place. During the intervening hours, Khai had learned many things (chiefly that he was not inexhaustible!), for his teacher was extremely well-versed in the amorous arts.
Looking down on him where he slept, Mhyna thought: “What an odd boy. And his eyes: so blue, so strange! And his body: so sweet. And strong, too, for all that he now sleeps.”
Thinking back on their coupling, she stretched with pleasure. Khai had been more relaxed, less eager to please, more restrained the second time. She had shown him how to mount her from behind; bracing his feet against the boat’s ribs, his arms encircling her, his hands fondling her oiled breasts where they hung soft and ripe. Finally, though by then he had been ready for sleep, she had taken him with her mouth. And when at the last moment he had tried to draw away from her, then she had fought off his hands and gripped him tight, plying him with her tongue until there was nothing left of him but a whimper of pleasure.
Now he was asleep and the river stretched ahead, and Mhyna wondered what would become of him when she put him ashore on the Nile’s bank in just a few hours’ time. That would be before she reached Phemor, a small town on the east bank. Phemor was rapidly growing into a garrison and Mhyna’s wares were bound for the town’s shops and markets, but Khai must be off the barge twenty miles earlier than that She would put him ashore where marshland merged quickly into forest She dared not approach Phemor closer than that, not with Khai aboard The town was certain to be crawling with recruiters and other troops, and the youth’s unusual appearance would be bound to attract attention. Recently, there had been a number of swift, savage attacks by Kushite raiders, and all the river’s towns now contained heavy contingents of the Pharaoh’s massive army Those numbers of troops which Khai had seen at the parades m Asorbes had only comprised about one-third of the army’s total strength, and if Pharaoh desired he could very quickly and effectively conscript every man, woman and child throughout all of Khem It was not thought that this would ever come about, however, for none of the surrounding lands could possibly raise armies strong enough to cause him more than a perfunctory concern Kush, of course, was the odd man out, the only thorn in Khasathut’s side. Kush with its hill-bred warriors and pony-riding rebels, who struck from their near-impregnable strongholds in the high passes and the looming plateaus of the Gilf Kebir. Rumor had it that even now Melembrin, the great war-chief of the Kushites, led a large force of raiders somewhere to the west of the river; and certainly there had been a spate of guerilla attacks on the forts of the western territories.
Many of Pharaoh’s border patrols had been visited in the night and liquidated as the men slept or sat around their campfires; and this in areas where they had thought themselves perfectly secure The outpost at Peh-il had been raided; the fort at Kurag on the verge of the western swamp had been besieged, starved, stormed and destroyed; and there had been constantly increasing harassment on the western routes out of Khem to Daraaf and Siwad—all of which must surely be the work of the Kushites.
That was why the ferries were even now working overtime at Phemor and Peh-il, conveying troops to the west bank—why reinforcements were on their way to the great forts at Tanos, Ghirra, Pethos and Afallah—why all of the river towns were choking with soldiers. And it was just as bad in the north, where entire regiments of men had been garrisoned at Mylah-Ton and Ohath; so that it was generally believed that this time the Pharaoh was poising his forces to deal Kush a crippling retaliatory blow—possibly one from which she would never recover.
Khai did not intend to head west, however (he feared the Kushites as any boy fears his country’s enemies), but south-east He would leave Mhyna’s barge and strike out across country until he again met the river above the fourth cataract, where it flowed from east to west. Khai knew his local geography well, knew also that his plan would mean a journey of about two hundred miles through wild forests and jungles, but at the end of that trek, he should be able to cross the Nile into Nubia.
Although Nubia was still thought of as a satellite of Khem, the black king N’jakka was proving to be a stumbling block in the path of Pharaoh’s dreams of total conquest and empire N’jakka was young, strong and stubborn; he would not turn a blind eye to Khem’s slave-taking in the manner of his now aged and ailing father. Nor would he allow too many of Khem’s soldiers a foothold on his side of the river Diplomatic intercourse seemed cordial enough—on the surface, at least—and all of the trading routes were open, but it was an uneasy situation at best and N’jakka knew that Khem’s forces could overrun Nubia should Khasathut ever desire it. Even so, the God-king would not be given an easy time of it, the Nubian nation would resist him to a man.
Since Khem’s influence was no longer completely overriding in Nubia, Adonda Gomba had given Khai a sign to take with him which would ensure his safe passage through Nubia and refuge in Abu-han, a jungle city where Gomba had many relatives. Abu-han was therefore Khai’s destination. As to what he would do when he got there . only time would tell.
“Khai,” Mhyna softly called, shaking his shoulder He was already half awake, having felt the tremor through the boat’s keel when she was run ashore on a sandbar of rough silt and soil Opening his eyes from memories of strange, recurrent dreams which he had known as long as he could remember dreaming—dreams of flying, of soaring aloft like a bird on great silken wings over wild and craggy hills—Khai lifted his head to look over the barge’s tilted gunwale.
Only a few yards upriver, the sandbar rose out of the water and formed a small island which was decked with willows and fringed with tall reeds. Just visible in a tangle of rotting foliage were the shapes of two badly waterlogged boats, fishermen’s craft by their looks, deserted and left to drift down the river until the current had lodged their dead reed hulks in living papyrus. A smaller island—little more than a leaning tree whose roots stuck up grotesquely from the mud, surrounded by a densely-grown clump of reeds and bull-rushes—lay between the sandbar and the bank proper. The scene was so reminiscent of the place where Khai and Mhyna had earlier sated themselves that the youth’s mind immediately flew back to their lovemakmg.
He brushed sleep from the corners of his eyes and smiled at Mhyna, who seemed less superior now, more like a girl than the sophisticated woman of the world she had been earlier in the day. Sure of himself, he reached for her, his hand sliding easily along her inner thigh where she crouched beside him. Frowning, she slapped his hand aside.