“Damned if I know,” answered the fretful voice of one of Khai’s bearers. “He could have been…. I suppose we could tell ’em he was delirious and ran off. Then that he fell in the river and a croc got him—perhaps?”
“Yes, well, that won’t work for us,” said someone else. “No, we’d best leave a couple of men here overnight with a dog. In the morning, we’ll come downriver in a boat and give the islands a going over. Right then, all that remains now is to decide who’ll stay….”
As a fresh burst of arguing broke out, Khai noticed that the sun was almost completely sunken down behind a glowing western horizon. Then he sensed a stealthy movement in the reeds and in another moment, gliding across the thin ribbon of light cast on the water by the sun’s rim, he saw a shape which at first he took to be that of a crocodile. No, not a croc, but the other boat! And flat along its near-submerged deck lay two dark figures whose hands silently paddled the water. The boat moved into darkness, cutting into and drifting with the current, and was lost to sight. The unknown ex-mercenaries had made good their escape while their trackers argued on the riverbank.
Well, if the other boat was still buoyant enough to support two full-grown men, surely Khai’s craft would carry him. Keeping the islands between himself and the voices of the soldiers, he guided his soggy craft out of the reeds and into open water, then used his hands to paddle for the other side.
The river was fairly wide here with a weak current, and the night wind from the north was quite strong. With a bit of luck, Khai should only drift a few miles downriver before reaching the far bank. After that….
He would see what he would see.
IV
The Mercenaries
Two men drank water at the river’s edge. Their reed boat, almost completely submerged now, lay hidden nearby in tall reeds. Exhausted by their flight and the river crossing, they had slept the night through in a tiny grove of palms, emerging in the early morning light to return to the river for food and water. Away upriver and on the far bank there had been some movement: doubtless soldiers come down by boat from Phemor to search the tiny islands where they had hidden. Well, they would find nothing there, for the fugitives had been careful to leave no evidence of their brief sojourn.
Originally, they were of a tribe of tomb-digging Theraens, expert fishermen with both net and spear and not averse to eating raw meat. This was just as well, for a fire would almost certainly attract unwanted attention—and not only from any Khemites who might still be searching for them in the forests of the east bank. During the night, coming to them on the wind from downriver, they had smelled cooking. Upon making cautious investigations they had spotted several Kushite sentries, and so knew that they were close to an encampment of those hill-bred warriors, possibly a fairly large guerilla raiding party. Since they had recently been mercenaries for Khem, the Theraens knew that the Kushites would make very short work of them if they were to fall into their hands.
The remains of a large fish, half-stripped of its flesh, lay on the grass of the riverbank where the men had thrown it when they had eaten their fill. Now they were ready to move off again, intending jo head southwest across Daraaf territory to the half-mythical Mountains of Plenty beyond, where they knew they could outdistance their notoriety. Doubtless the raw flesh of the fish where it lay in the sun would soon attract one of the many small crocodiles which infested the river, and just as surely would any signs of their having passed this way be obliterated. …
It was the thought of crocodiles lurking in the reeds that caused Launie the handmaiden to run after the young Princess Ashtarta along the riverbank. Already the king’s encampment was a mile to the rear, its tents low hummocks on a horizon of reeds and bullrushes, and only a moment or two ago, a sentry had sprung up out of nowhere to catch Launie’s arm and pat her bottom, pointing the way the princess had gone and warning of brigands, swampy ground and crocodiles.
Crocodiles! Launie shuddered as she skipped nervously from grass tuft to grass tuft, her eyes on the lapping river’s edge and among the close-grown reed stems that formed thick clusters where the ground was most swampy. Now and then, upstream, she would catch sight of a white flash, Ashtarta’s short, shiftlike dress as the child played hide and seek with her among river foliage.
The trouble with Ashtarta was her wildness. She should have been born a boy, which would have suited her father well. Since she was a girl, however, and since there was no other heir to the throne of Kush and not likely to be one, Melembrin took her everywhere with him. The king was determined that she should learn all there was to know about war so that she might capably control her armies when he was gone. There were those among the king’s advisers who wished he would take a second wife; Miriam had died giving birth to Ashtarta, and the king had looked at no other woman since that time. Miriam had been the love of his youth and in his eyes quite matchless. He was fifty now and the child only fourteen, but she was wild and wiry as any boy her age. Aye, and the tricks she played were often worthy of the most mischievous imps and demons.
Launie guessed that the princess was looking for a place to swim, for Ashtarta scorned the rivers crocodiles as much as she loved the water. In Launie’s eyes, this was neither the time nor the place for swimming. She was glad that they were striking camp today in preparation for the long trek back to the hills. Melembrin (or “The Fox,” as Khem’s soldiers knew him) had brought his army down out of Kush three months ago to strike Khem along a wide front. Using guerrilla tactics, he had harassed the Pharaoh’s outposts and forts all along the western flank of Khem, until Khasathut had been obliged to deploy not only his existing forces but also several bands of mercenaries.
Now small encampments of the Pharaoh’s soldiers were springing up like mushrooms all along the east bank, and soon they would cross the river in force to find … nothing. By then, Melembrin would have drawn all of his forces back to the hills and plateaus, leaving a massive and frustrated army far behind him. And if the Khemites dared to follow him back into the hills, then they would need all their many gods to protect them. There were fortified passes in the hills which could hold off entire armies, and others where those same armies might vanish in a moment beneath man-made avalanches.
Oh, Melembrin knew well enough that one day a Pharaoh would conquer all of the lands around Khem, and that then the Khemish army would inundate Kush like a vast river in flood, but until that time he would harass Khem as best he might and cause her rulers endless troubles and miseries. For this was no holy war Melembrin fought, but a war of the blood. In Asorbes, the Pharaoh Khasathut had enslaved and bred generations of Melembrin’s people, children of Kush, to help build the mighty pyramid where the old Pharaoh was buried and where Khasathut would one day join him in a hidden tomb. There was only a handful of Kushites now in Asorbes, but nevertheless the warrior-king of Kush had vowed that he would ever fight to free them, even though they had been born to slavery and no longer knew any other life. For word was constantly reaching the king that the flame of life burned still among Pharaoh’s slaves, and he was unwilling to see such a bright flame extinguished. For the time being, he would pull his armies back to the hills, yes, but there would be other days and other battles.
It was just as well, thought Launie, that Melembrin’s command-post camp was to move back from the river today. At least there were no crocodiles in the hills, and Ashtarta would have to do her swimming in one of the pebbly pools formed of the mountain streams. She knew that Ashtarta was intent upon swimming because she had not bothered to don her underwear, merely the short dress she wore which was two sizes too small for her. Well, all the better to bring a hand across her bottom once she caught up with her.