Брайан Ламли - Khai of Khem

“So he is,” the general grinned. “Damn me, I don’t hold it against him that he’s born of the Nile—just that he thinks himself equal to a Kushite, that’s all! But enough—now I must go to meet them…. A pony,” he shouted as he ran back down the hillside. “Get me a horse. The rest of you, stay here. Those of you with wives and sweethearts, don’t worry. You’ll be seeing them soon enough. But if I were you, I’d save my strength. It won’t be long before you’ll be needing it. Five or six days at most….”

Manek and Ashtarta, both of them riding alone, came together on the rolling plain that leaned westward from Nam-Khum. They jumped from their mounts and clasped each other, their eyes full of questions, unwilling to speak or break the magic. For there was a magic in this, the reuniting of the tribes of Kush. Finally, the Candace stood back from Manek and fed her eyes on him. He was bearded, burly, a hawk. Every inch a general. Clad in leather trousers and jacket, whip at his side as usual, sword in his belt—he had gone away into Siwad a young man, and he had returned a giant.

“I’ve heard news of you,” she said. “How you drowned the Khemites in Siwad and burned them at Tanos. My father was right when he said you’d make a mighty general. It’s been hard to keep my own warriors back from joining you. They would have come to you in Siwad if I’d let them. To you, and to the General Khai.”

Manek said nothing, but stood and grinned his pleasure through his beard.

“And did you bring back leathers as Khai bade you?” she asked more seriously. “The Hyrksos leather is not good stuff.”

Now he frowned a little. “Leather? Oh, yes, piles of it, Candace. Saddles and reins and all, though I thought it was a great waste of time. Still, I could be wrong. Those of my lads who’ve tried these horse-seats say they’re very impressed with them.”

“I suspect that you are wrong, Manek,” she told him, and her eyes were bright and twinkling like diamonds. “My own experience is that Khai knows what he’s doing, and indeed I have marvelous things to show you.” Forgetting herself for a moment, she clapped her hands in glee.… Then she calmed herself, tucked her shirt into her breeches and tossed her hair back out of her eyes.

“And where is the General Khai?” she asked. “A Nubian runner came to me last night where I was camped and said Khai would be here.”

“He’s coming,” Manek answered. “I saw him from the hill. But he’s coming more slowly. No horseman, the Khemite, Majesty.”

“Yes, I remember,” she answered. “Well, if he still can’t ride bareback, we’ll have to see how he sits a saddle, eh?” And again she laughed.

Now, while she scanned the low ridges to the south, shading her eyes from the sun’s glare, Manek looked at this Queen of a Nation. He admired her legs clad in short, soft rabbit-skin breeches; her narrow waist; her firm body and pure, unblemished skin. She looked much more a woman than ever he remembered her, more a true queen than the tomboy princess he had known among Melembrin’s guerrillas.

“There,” she suddenly cried. “Look!”

Manek looked and saw something which caused him first to gape in astonishment, then to grin. Coming up over a low crest less than a mile away, eight massive Nubians bore an open litter. They chanted as they trotted, their limbs moving in perfect unison and providing a smooth ride for the man who sat the chair. It was Khai; and in four or five minutes the blacks reached the place where Ashtarta and Manek waited, put down the litter and fell on their faces. As Khai stepped out of his chair, Ashtarta embraced him as she had done with Manek, and once again there was a silence as they looked at each other. Khai had grown massive of chest and broad of shoulder, and his eyes seemed bluer and his blond hair blonder than ever the Candace remembered them. Feeling a flush rising to her cheeks, she breathlessly asked:

“But who are these? And why do they not stand up?” She looked doubtfully at the prostrated Nubians.

“They are yours, Candace,” he laughed, “and if they must stay there all day, they will not rise till you order it!” “Then tell them to get up,” she said.

“You must tell them,” he answered, “for I no longer command them and they won’t obey me. These eight are yours, Queen—but they know the rudiments of our tongue.”

Uncertain, she turned to the eight. “Get up,” she said, “at once.” And as a single man, they sprang to their feet.

Ashtarta stepped back a pace from these giants who towered over her, all bright with dyes and fierce as lions, their bushy heads sprouting feathers. “Look, Manek,” she turned to him. “See what Khai has brought home for me!”

“Aye,” Manek admired the blacks and stepped forward to take Khai’s hand, “a fine bodyguard indeed—but an inefficient way of getting about. I fancy you’d prefer your horse, Majesty.” The two men laughed and hugged each other, then Manek added:

“And Khai isn’t alone in his gift-bringing. Look—” From a pocket, he took out a fistful of massive gems. Of flashing colors, they were like fires in the general’s fist. “The Siwadis have sent you a chestful!” he told the Candace. “These are but a few.”

“Also,” Manek continued after a moment, “I’ve brought your warriors home again—though four thousand of them shall never return.” He nodded toward the great encampment higher on the slope.

“We’ve had our losses, too,” Khai nodded, “but it hasn’t all been a loss. Majesty, if you’d care to tell your guard to bring up their colleagues—”

“My guard?” She stared about with a puzzled look. “Their colleagues?”

With a nod of his head, Khai indicated the blacks.

“Oh!” she said, then did as he suggested.

The massive Nubians immediately put fingers to mouths and set up a shrill, beating whistling that echoed up and down the slopes and startled birds and deer to flight. As the echoes of that dinning note died away, there came other sounds: the pounding of feet, the rattle of assagais on shields of woven leather.

Rapidly the sounds grew to a roar that was deafening, and over the rise there suddenly poured such an impi that Ashtarta and Manek could only stand and stare. In two huge black squares of fifty men to a side, that regiment of Nubians came, halting less than a hundred yards away in a stamping of feet that shook the earth. Behind the squares, in military precision, twenty deep and stretching all along the fold of the hill, the warriors of Kush appeared, the whole forming a spectacle never before seen on the steppes of Kush.

When she could find her breath, finally Ashtarta turned to the west and waved a yellow handkerchief high over her head. In the distance, the tiny figure of a lookout raised an arm in answer. Then the Candace turned to her generals and said, “Oh? And did you think to shame your Queen, who alone seems to have come home empty-handed? Well, you are mistaken!”

For now there came the cry of horsemen and the sharp crack of whips; and Khai, at first dumbfounded but in another moment beside himself with savage joy, roared and laughed and shook his fists in the air as a thousand, two thousand chariots came speeding up out of the west, their spoked wheels a blur in the sunlight as they thundered in a tight, trained formation across the steppes. But it was enough, too much for one day. Khai would not upstage Ashtarta but would wait until later before showing her his ten thousand swords of iron. Yes, later.... First, he would show them to the Candace, and then—then by all the devils of hell— then he would show them to Khasathut!

Long into that night Ashtarta, her generals and chiefs, talked and planned around the old table in the great hall of her house. The seven mages were there too, having come out of the southwest together a little after the reuniting of the tribes. Shortly after midnight, when all plans were laid— at least in broad outline—when the meats were eaten and the wine jars half-emptied, then there came a wind from outside that found its way into and whined through the great hall. It set all the lamps sputtering, that wind, as well it might; for its breath was nearly as warm as that of the man-made fires. This was the Khamsin, the scorpion wind from the western deserts legended to lie beyond Hyrksos, which stirred the blood of men as other great winds stir oceans to their bidding.