Kemni woke in the dark, rocked still on the wave that had borne him in the dream. It faded inescapably into waking: the dimness of his own space under the deck, his bunk under him and the planking of the deck just above. From the quality of the dark, it was still night without, but Dancer had come alive—softly, quietly, but unmistakably. Men ran hither and thither, voices called not far above a whisper.
He crept out blinking into starlight and wan moonlight and the bustle of the ship getting under way. The moon rode low, casting deep shadows over the westward bank of the river. The old tombs of kings rose there like mountains sheathed in silver.
No one ever sailed at night, unless he had strong reason. Kemni made his careful way toward the captain’s place on the deck.
Naukrates was not there. His niece Iphikleia stood where he was accustomed to stand, ordering the sailors with the perfect presumption of authority. They obeyed her without a murmur.
“Where is he?” Kemni demanded of her. He was still more than half asleep, or he would have been more circumspect. But he was rather fond of Naukrates. “You can’t be leaving him behind!”
She ignored him. Even in his half-dream he could sense the urgency, see how the sailors labored to ready the ship and cast it off.
“What is this? Why are we going at this hour?”
Still she paid him no heed. He was not fool enough to strike her, or to shake her till she looked at him. He squatted at her feet, where she must step over him if she moved, or fall.
The anchor slid up, hand over hand. Softly, almost silently, the oars slid out. Iphikleia raised her hand. The oars poised. Her hand dropped. The oars bit water. Dancer trembled like a live thing, shook herself, and leaped suddenly ahead.
Kemni clung to the deck at Iphikleia’s feet. He was waking now, roused by the movement of the ship and the wind in his face, damp and almost cool in this hour before the sun’s coming. He was aware, rather sharply, of her presence; of her body in the tiered skirt and the scrap of vest; and above all, that she must not know where his dreams had taken him.
He drew up his knees and clasped them, and hoped that that would be enough. One thing the woolen robes of the Retenu were good for: concealing a man’s more rampant moments. The Egyptian kilt had no such capacity.
Dancer was moving quickly now, riding the strong slow current of the Nile. The oarsmen had not slackened once they reached the middle of the stream. This was urgency, as if they fled something.
“What?” Kemni asked suddenly. “What are we running away from?”
He had more than half expected to be ignored again, but Iphikleia answered him without taking her eyes from the oarsmen. “Questions,” she said.
Kemni considered that. When he had considered it adequately, he said, “It may get interesting, if we have to traverse the whole of the Delta with . . . questions on our heels.”
“That is what my uncle is doing,” she said. “Assuring that questions are answered, or never asked.”
“And dying for it?”
“One hopes not,” she said.
And he heard that austere tone, looked up at that still face, and remembered her warmth in his dream, and the sound of her laughter. This waking woman never laughed. He was sure of it.
~~~
Sunrise found them a respectable distance downriver from Memphis. They relaxed a little then, shipped oars and raised the faded sail and traveled in more leisurely fashion. If foreign eyes looked on them, there was nothing to remark on, no urgency to be seen. But the men were never far from weapons, and the woman who had taken the place of captain did not step down, or even sit.
She was waiting for something. Battle? Somehow Kemni did not think so.
The river’s traffic thickened as the day brightened, till the rising heat and the sun’s glare drove all but the most determined to shelter on the bank. A wind had caught the sail. There was little for anyone to do but keep the sail trimmed, and snatch what rest he could.
At the height of noon, when the air was like hammered bronze, and even the stinging flies had gone in search of refuge, a small boat pushed off from the bank. One man stood in it, a slender brown man in a scrap of loincloth, with another scrap wound around his head.
Kemni would have recognized a Cretan even in ignorance of this one’s name and face. The wide shoulders, the narrow waist, the round-eyed face and the utter ease in that whippy little craft, were unmistakable. But no one pursued him. No one cried treachery from river or shore.
Naukrates had begun somewhat downstream of the ship. He was able, almost, to wait for it to catch him; to fling himself at its side as it slid past, and clamber aboard.
He was welcomed without ceremony, but something on the ship had changed. It was, Kemni thought, whole again. Iphikleia could command and be obeyed, but Naukrates was the captain. Without him, Dancer had lost her head.
He did not linger on deck, nor waste time in idle chatter. He spared a moment for a long, sweeping glance that took in the whole of the ship. It seemed he found it good, or at least not terrible. With the slight flicker of a nod, he turned on his bare and filthy heel and went below.
~~~
Kemni gave him time to bathe, dress, even rest. But when the sun had visibly descended toward the western horizon, he left the deck himself. No one stopped him. He was a little surprised at that.
Naukrates had been asleep: his face had that rumpled look, and his bunk matched it. But he was up, dressed in his accustomed kilt and gnawing the end of a barley loaf. He had had a cup or two of wine, from the look of it. He poured one for Kemni even as he slipped into the cabin, and thrust it across the table.
Kemni sipped for courtesy’s sake, but he was not thirsty for wine. “You traveled fast,” he said, “to catch a ship sailing on wind and current, that left you behind when it set off.”
“Chariot,” Naukrates said, “and the gods’ blessing.” He stretched a little painfully, and rubbed a shin that must be aching. “The Retenu learn to ride in chariots before they walk, but for those of us who find more comfort on land or on a ship’s deck—ah!”
“And what were you doing in a chariot?” Kemni wanted to know.
Naukrates laughed. “I do like that about you, Egyptian: you speak as quickly as you think. What do you think I would be doing in a chariot? Working treachery against you and your king?”
“That is possible,” Kemni said, “but I find it difficult to credit. That’s not your way. You’d have killed me long since and fed me to the crocodiles, if you wanted to be rid of me.”
“I might surprise you,” Naukrates said with an edged glance. But then he said, “Not every chariot in the Lower Kingdom belongs to a conqueror. And not every team of asses bears a foreign brand. You should know that, lord’s son of the Lower Kingdom, if anyone should.”
“I know it,” Kemni said. “I wanted to hear it. So you were talking with Egyptians who have no cause to love the king set over them. Was that also why your ship fled so suddenly?”
“We had word that certain officers of the king might have a mind to visit in the morning. We weren’t in a hospitable mood.”
“Or in a mood to let them see an Egyptian among the Cretan crew.” Kemni tasted the wine in his cup, realized he was thirsty after all, drank deep. When he emerged from the cup, there was bread in front of him; and after all, he was hungry. Between bites of the rock-hard crust, he said, “You might have done better to linger. When a man runs, he may be thought to have reason.”
“We had reason,” Naukrates said. “A summons from Crete, bidding us return before the dancing of the bulls.”
Kemni opened his mouth to point out that that summons had come before Dancer left Thebes, but he let the words go unspoken. One never argued with convenience. “Who was coming to nose about? Would it be a certain Ptahmose?”
Naukrates inclined his head.
“So,” Kemni said. “How did you know he knew me?”
“One can converse of many things,” Naukrates answered, “while suffering a lordly visitation.”
That was all the answer Kemni would get. He was not altogether content with it, but it would have to do. That there was more in train here than he had been told or shown, he had known since he took ship. He was serving his king as his king wished to be served. He was not asked or expected to offer an opinion.
~~~
They might not be pursued, but neither were they of a mind to draw more notice than they could help. When the river divided in the wet green expanse of the Delta, divided and divided again, Naukrates chose branches that took them past the lesser cities. Avaris, the foreign kings’ own capital, they never saw at all. That would be tempting fate.
Kemni could feel the conqueror’s hand over this land: oppressive beyond mere humid heat. Fields that had been rich with barley and emmer wheat were all stripped now, grazed to the ground by herds of asses and, less commonly, the larger and more elegant horses. Sometimes he saw them coming down to the river to drink, or moving swift or slow on some errand best known to themselves.
He should hate them. They were the conqueror’s wealth, his weapon and his strength. But they were beautiful, strong and swift, and they, in themselves, meant men no harm.
A weapon, he thought as he leaned on the rail watching one such herd—horses, those were, startled into a gallop by some stirring in the reeds—cared little whose hand wielded it. Egypt could master the chariot, and the beasts that drew it.
He was not the first to think such a thought, but no one had acted on it, not as Kemni meant to. And he would, he swore to himself. When he had done his duty in Crete. When he had come back to Egypt. He would tame the enemy’s horses and capture his chariot. Then Egypt would be as strong as the Retenu, and as invincible in battle.