Khai of Khem

I Adhan’s Revenge

Now the night was far behind and already the sun climbed half-way toward its zenith. Adonda Gomba, weary but well pleased with himself, hurried through the streets of the slave quarters back toward his poor house. He had made all of the necessary arrangements to get Khai out of the city in one piece, and now only one task remained: to give the boy the latest information about his brother and tell him how Adhan had taken his revenge. It was not a task that Gomba relished, but at least it would be repayment for those things Khai had told him.

The huge black was more than satisfied with the information he had gleaned from Khai. The boy had been able to supply him with details of the pyramid’s internal structure hitherto unknown; moreover, he had updated other information which had been false or inaccurate. Gomba had plans of all the pyramid’s many rooms and passageways, but his drawings of the lower levels— which had been designed and built all of three generations ago—were very sketchy indeed and subject to errors.

Not that Khai had physically been inside those mysterious levels long enough to study them or gain more than merely fleeting impressions, but over the years for as long as he could remember he had been allowed to pore over his father’s drawings; and a great deal of what he had seen had committed itself to his memory. The black “king” of the slaves had kept the boy at it all through the dark hours, tapping that memory, until Khai was quite literally exhausted.

He had questioned him not only with regard to the pyramid but also about Pharaoh himself; about his Vizier or so-called “high priest,” Anulep; also about those dreadful occurrences which Khai had witnessed in the monstrous bridal chamber. Khai had found it strange indeed that Gomba accepted his version of that hideous ritual of blood without reservation—without even registering more than a flicker of surprise at the more grisly details—until the black explained that his story merely confirmed the slave community’s worst suspicions, perhaps the suspicions of all Asorbes. Certainly a large majority of the city’s more privileged citizens suspected that the Pharaoh was a monster (in mind if not in form) and they feared him desperately; but he was their king and a god omnipotent; and as all men know, the gods work in exceedingly strange ways.

What had surprised Gomba was Khai’s account of Khasathut’s physical abnormalities, for these had been a secret kept very closely guarded indeed. It explained, though, why the people had never been permitted to see Pharaoh’s true form, why he had always hidden behind the great, larger-than-life, godlike exteriors constructed for him by his artists and carpenters. And of course those craftsmen were all members of Pharaoh’s personal retinue, dwellers in the pyramid. If, indeed, they still lived!

These many thoughts passed through Gomba’s mind as he neared the rude dwelling he called home. Now, in return for Khai’s invaluable information, he must tell the boy what he had discovered of Adhan: how his brother had crawled home on all fours from the foot of the great ramp, making his way— bloody, delirious with horror and in hideous agony—to this father’s now-empty house near the east wall.

And indeed the house had been empty. Only one of Harsin Ben Ibizin’s paid retainers had remained there after the news had made it swiftly back to the house; the rest had looted the place of everything worth taking and had fled. Possibly they would soon flee the city itself. Better to be well out of it than to have been a member of the Ibizin household! At the last, soldiers had come for the slaves and they had been taken off to the city’s slave quarters, where from now on they would serve only the Pharaoh.

Mellina the old cook had been the only one to stay, for she had nowhere else to go. And Mellina it was who cleaned Adhan’s terrible wound and put him to bed. There he had remained, semi-conscious all through the late afternoon and evening, tossing in his fever and babbling of treachery and red revenge. Imthod Haphenid he named as the traitor, and swore that the junior architect would soon suffer the consequences of his devil’s work—that he, Adhan, would be the author of an awful vengeance.

Sitting by his bedside, Old Mellina had awakened from an uneasy sleep some time after the midnight hour. She found the house empty and the door standing open. Leaving only a spattering of scarlet droplets to mark his trail, Adhan had gone out into the night. Mellina went into the dark streets after him, but she could not find him.

Indeed, Adhan’s whereabouts were not discovered until mid-morning, when a messenger from the pyramid went to the house of Imthod Haphenid to bring the architect to Anulep. Haphenid was to be promoted to Harsin Ben Ibizin’s former position, and Anulep was to present him with Khasathut’s royal seal, proclaiming him Grand Architect of the Pyramid. Ah, but this was not to be! The messenger found Haphenid, most certainly, but he also found Adhan Ibizin.

By then Adhan was dead, seated stiffly in a chair in Haphenid’s study, but the grim smile on his chalky face told of a revenge which had been grisly as it was sweet. Then, in a state of shock, Anulep’s messenger stumbled about the house, and wherever he went he was met with pieces of the man he had come to find.

The traitor’s hands were in the kitchen; nevermore would he use them to sabotage the plans of a better man. His tongue lay on the tiled floor of the hall; it would not lie again to gain Pharaoh’s favor. His eyes were blindly staring nubs of jelly set neatly upon a small table in his bedroom; and they never again would glint green with envy at the marvelous works of a true master. As for his bloodless corpse: only the white feet of that stuck up from the seat in the tiny privy; and his blood filled the stone bowl in which Adhan’s corpse bathed its feet!

Wondering how best to tell Khai all of this (a story which by now was the talk and terror of all Asorbes), Gomba slowed his pace as he drew closer to his house. Had there been observers to see him, they might well have wondered at the way his steps grew shorter with the lengthening of his face.

They might also have noted a slight bulge beneath his tatters which told of something concealed there: Khai’s bow and quiver of arrows, cannily “lifted” from the now-deserted home of the once proud and flourishing Ibizins. When Khai fled the city, he would not go unarmed; Gomba had ensured that his favorite weapon would go with him. The huge black had a knife for him, too, but that was already hidden away. The penalty was death for any slave caught handling weapons, even a “king” of slaves, and Gomba risked his life in doing what he did for Khai.

There were no observers, however, only a handful of skinny, ragged urchins too young to be put to work. Except for these, the filthy streets were deserted, and Gomba’s movements attracted no eyes other than those of a pair of furtive rats that chewed on some nameless morsel in the shadow of a crumbling wall. Kicking a pebble in the direction of the vermin, Gomba cursed himself for a fool that he was risking his neck this way—but then again, perhaps not. The boy’s father had been good to him … and who could say? Perhaps the lad really would come back one day to send Pharaoh to hell.

The Nubian shuddered as he recalled the words of Aysha the witch-woman. He had left her hovel only a few short minutes ago and remembered her words most clearly:

“You have taken into your care a great redeemer,” she had told him. “A righter of wrongs, a general, a killer! Ah, he is a rare one. Blond of hair and blue of eyes—a queer fish’ And in caring for him you do well, Adonda Gomba, for he will free you in the end. He will free all of us, who have lived our lives as slaves! Mark well my words.…” And Gomba had marked them, for there was no way at all that Aysha could possibly have learned of his charge, except by that strange sixth sense of hers which told her far more than any pair of keen eyes ever could!

Old Aysha, yes. Blind and yet all-seeing. Black as old leather and yet bright as a new day. In Nubia she would be a N’ganga of great power. Here in Asorbes … she was lucky to be still alive. Ancient, withered, of no earthly use—but the slaves fed and protected her. Hers was the magic of the olden days, and her blind eyes invariably foresaw Pharaoh’s downfall—which in itself was reason enough to keep her alive and well.

But now the picture of the witch-woman faded in Gomba’s mind’s eye as quickly as it had come. Despite his hesitancy, he now found himself at the door of his house. For a moment, he frowned, sighing deeply. Then a sterner look replaced the uncertainty on his face and his shoulders straightened. Life was hard enough without the addition of useless daydreams. He drew the hide that guarded the doorway to one side, stooped and stepped through into the cool gloom beyond.

“Khai,” he barked, his voice rough and sharp-edged. “Hey, boy, wake up! There are things I have to tell you.”

II Ramanon’s Visit

With Adonda Gomba’s return, Khai began yet another day and night of terror. It started with the Nubian’s story of Adhan’s revenge which, while initially it left Khai pale, shaken and sick at heart, at the last filled him with a passionate pride and strengthened his already iron resolve: to follow in his brother’s footsteps and seek vengeance, even on Pharaoh himself, no matter how long that might take. The terror only began with Gomba’s story, however, for no sooner was the tale of Adhan’s grisly revenge told than the Nubian received warning from one of his slave subjects—a crippled, one-armed Syran he used as a runner—that a certain captain of Khasathut’s Corps of Intelligence, his secret police, was on his way to see him with a squad of bully-boys who were specialists in the twin arts of interrogation and torture.

Even the big black paled on receipt of this news, and he inwardly cursed himself for ever befriending Khai in the first place; but his plans were already too far gone for alterations, regrets or recriminations. To turn Khai in at this late hour would plainly be to disclose his own part in the boy’s disappearance, which in turn would mean the end of Adonda Gomba. Before letting the crippled runner go, Gomba took Khai’s knife from where he had hidden it and bundled it up with his bow, then tied the bundle to the man’s side under his clothes. Finally, he gave the frightened Syran rapid instructions and ordered him on his way. When the man had gone, Gomba turned to Khai and explained:

“He will see to it that your weapons are smuggled out of the city and given to Mhyna.”

“Mhyna?”

“You’ll meet Mhyna soon enough, Khai, but right now we must get you hidden away.”

He gave the boy a piece of dried meat, a large wedge of bread and a cup of water, then pried up a massive slab of stone from those surrounding it in the floor of his kitchen. In doing so, he revealed a shallow trench beneath which had once been part of the city’s sewage system. Passing directly beneath Gomba’s house, the hiding place was at once ideally and very dangerously situated. Ideal in that Khai could be hidden away without his leaving Gomba’s dwelling in broad daylight, and dangerous in that if he should be discovered there, then the game would be well and truly up, not only for Khai but most certainly and conclusively for Adonda Gomba.

While no sewage had passed through this dried up bowel of a channel for many years, still the stench which instantly billowed out on removal of the slab was that of a charnel house. Gomba saw the way Khai was almost bowled over by the smell and remarked: “You’ll get used to it soon enough, boy. The stink of a few dead rats can’t harm you. It’s the live ones who’ll soon be visiting me that we have to worry about!” Then he had helped Khai to get down into the hole, somehow replaced the slab and covered the floor with the layer of dirt and dust which had previously been there. But if Khai had fancied that his hiding place would be as dark, lifeless, airless and silent as the tomb itself, then he had been wrong on all counts.

At first it was indeed dark, and so warm as to be stifling, but soon Khai became aware of a rotten luminescence that seemed to have its source in the baked brick walls themselves, almost as if the vile glow of putrescence remained after all these years of disuse. And of course it was by this intermittent and unearthly light that he first became aware of the rats….

The rodents bothered him from the start, coming so close and in such numbers that he was sure they intended to attack him; but on each occasion, as soon as he made any threatening movement, they would disappear back to wherever they came from and leave him on his own. The mere fact that they were there, however, somewhere in the snaking sinus of the old sewer, was enough to fill him with a shuddering nausea.

Mercifully, the trench was not airless (though the warm drafts that passed along it were so redolent of rats both living and dead, not to mention the stenches of less easily recognizable refuse, that Khai almost wished it was), and it was far from silent. Instead it seemed to the boy that he had become trapped in the coils of some vast sounding shell—like those of the great snails which were often washed up on the Nile’s banks—where every tiniest sound was magnified tenfold. The creaking of Adonda Gomba’s ancient chair in the room adjacent to the kitchen sounded to him like the groanings of some mighty oak in a great wind, and the thunderous footfalls of the Nubian as he went from room to shabby room in the crumbling ruin overhead were almost deafening. One other sound—a monotonous, dull and apparently distant pounding, which try as he might he could not shut out—bothered him continuously and even had him grinding his teeth; until suddenly he realized that it was only the magnified pounding of his own blood in his ears!

But if Khai’s predicament was unpleasant, Adonda Gomba’s was surely worse. It would not be the first time Captain Ramanon had called on him and probably would not be the last, but each visit was invariably more nerve-wracking than the one before. And so, having put the boy out of sight, the Nubian covered his table with work details and lists of tools for replacement, with quarrying schedules and food quotas and many other matters concerning the administration of the slaves, then sat back and awaited Ramanon’s arrival. And sure enough, less than twenty minutes later, the captain and his escort of soldiers came to visit. Ramanon was Khemish by birth, though plainly it was the Arabban in him that came out in his swarthy features and bent beak of a nose. Adonda Gomba knew the captain’s face well and he hated it, but he respected (as well he might in his position) the sharp mind behind it. On several past occasions he had pitted his wits against those of the chief of Pharaoh’s “security” officers, and so far he had always managed to come out on the winning side. This time, however, he was less certain of himself.

For one thing, the boy was right here—within spitting distance if one could spit through a slab of stone—and for another, he was important. Aysha the witch-wife had first brought this fact to light with her predictions about Khai, and now Ramanon’s visit only served to confirm the old woman’s cryptic words. After all, why else should this powerful agent of Pharaoh find it necessary to come here in person? Why, as on those previous occasions, had he not been satisfied merely to send for Gomba? The answer was simple: this was not just a matter of a few missing sheep or the mysterious fall of a particularly hated overseer from the pyramid’s face. No, the boy was very important to Pharaoh, and as such his immediate presence increased the danger to Gomba tenfold!

The captain’s arrival was heralded by the sudden sound of soldiers halting in the dust of the alley outside. They had approached very quietly and Gomba would have had no warning other than the military thump of sandaled feet if his own intelligence system were not so finely tuned. As it was, he had time enough to compose himself, then to look up and assume an expression of surprise as the covering of his door was torn aside and the hawkish, red-robed figure of Ramanon appeared framed in the opening.

The captain grinned (a bad sign in itself) and entered the room in front of three of his lieutenants. Two of the latter looked like nothing so much as common thugs, while the third was a slimly effeminate creature wearing makeup applied as carefully as any woman’s. Gomba recognized this last human anomaly as Nathebol Abizoth, the son of one of Pharaoh’s most trusted overlords, and he inwardly shuddered.

Rumor had it that one of Abizoth’s favorite methods of extracting information from an unwilling victim was to first extract his more readily removable parts, such as nails, testicles, eyeballs and skin, leaving the tongue, of course, to the last. And it was not on record that anyone had ever survived one of Abizoth’s “examinations!”

“Master!” cried Adonda Gomba, springing up from his rickety table and flinging himself down on the dirt floor. “Illustrious Lord, I am honored!”

“Up, black dog,” Ramanon quietly answered, but with no trace of malice in his voice. Hands on hips, he faced Gomba squarely as the black came to his feet. “There are one or two things you might like to tell me, my friend. At least I hope so, if you desire to remain my friend....”

“Only say what I should tell you, Lord, and if I can—” Gomba began.

“If you can?” Abizoth cut in, his voice the hiss of a viper. “We come to you, black dog, because we know you can!” He snapped his woman’s fingers and the two stony-faced thugs grabbed Gomba’s arms and dragged him protesting out into the alley. As they came out into the open air, a squad of twelve spearsmen snapped to attention. Ignoring the soldiers, the thugs turned Gomba’s face toward the pyramid whose peak rose massively over distant rooftops.

Ramanon and Abizoth came out of Gomba’s house at a more leisurely pace and the captain stepped up close to the pinioned black. He stared into the Nubian’s face. “Do you see Pharaoh’s tomb, Adonda Gomba?”

“Yes, Lord,” the Nubian stammered. “I see it, as I have seen it all my life, but—”

“Quiet!” Ramanon snarled. He picked at his fingernails for a moment, then once more peered close into the black man’s fearful face. “Late last night a boy climbed out of a hole near the top of the pyramid. He slid down the south face—that face you see there—and we believe he came into the slave quarters. He is probably injured, badly burned from his slide, broken from the fall at slide’s end. He could not get far without assistance. We want him, Gomba. We want him badly!”

“Lord, I know of no such—”

“Bring him back inside,” Ramanon ordered, turning his back and re-entering the slave-king’s house.

Gomba was bundled in through the doorway once more and Abizoth was quick to follow and pounce upon him. “Black dog,” the pervert hissed, “where’s your woman?”

“My woman, master? I have not had a woman for many months now,” Gomba lied. He thanked all the Gods of Khem that he had sent his woman away that very morning. He had intuitively known that trouble was in the air, and so had sent Nyooni out of harm’s way.

“Isn’t it your duty to have a woman?” Abizoth insisted. “To produce a new generation of slaves for Pharaoh?”

“The woman I had was barren, master, for which reason she was sent to cook for the quarriers. I have not yet found another woman. My work is—”

“To hell with your work!” Ramanon’s voice was low and dangerous. “Can you guess,” he continued, “why my good friend Abizoth here wanted to see your woman, black dog?”

Gomba shook his head, his lower lip trembling in unfeigned terror.

“Then I’ll tell you,” Abizoth hissed. “In my experience, you’d soon speak up if your woman was yelping. But if you haven’t got a woman—well, if I can’t skin a black tit we’ll have to see what I can do with a pair of black balls!”

Quickly, the heavily made-up eyes of the effeminate monster flickered about the room. “On the table,” he snapped. “Strip him!”

The two thugs again grabbed Gomba, and one of them used his free arm to scatter the documents that littered his table. The crude papyrus sheets flew across the room and fluttered to the floor in crumpled disorder. Somehow the huge black broke free and hurled himself down on the dirt floor, scrabbling after his papers.

“Do what you will with me!” he cried. “But take care, masters, if you value your own skins. I control the slaves, and these documents are my schedules. Already Pharaoh grows impatient that his tomb should be finished—and where would he look for an answer if the work stopped altogether? Would you disrupt the God-king’s plans for the sake of a mere boy? I do not know this boy; I have not seen him. Would I suffer for some runaway pup when I could gain favor by delivering him into my master’s hands?”

“Hold!” Ramanon snarled. His men had already hauled the Nubian from the floor and half-stripped him. They were now holding him down on the table and Abizoth’s long-nailed hands were reaching for him, twitching fitfully. Ramanon knew that his perverted junior was a near-madman, and that he would doubtless cripple the black slave-king if given the chance.

But what Gomba had said—about his own skin being more precious to him than that of any unknown boy—had rung absolutely true. And certainly Gomba’s work as the internal administrator and co-ordinator of the vast slave workforce was all-important to Pharaoh. In actual fact, Khasathut probably did not even know of Gomba’s existence—but he would soon track down the source of the trouble if the work on his pyramid were suddenly to show a dramatic decrease.

“Put your sharp woman’s claws away, Abizoth,” the captain commanded.

“Can’t you see how you’re troubling the slave-king? Why, I couldn’t let any harm come to the good and honest Adonda Gomba! No, for he has been my friend for too many years and would not lie to me.”

He turned to the thugs who still held Gomba. “Let him up. He knows nothing.”

Released, the Nubian threw himself at Ramanon’s feet, but the captain only kicked him away. “None of that, slave-king. Better gather your documents together and get back to work. For your threat cuts two ways, Adonda Gomba, and if work on the pyramid suffers from this time forward ... well, I shan’t have to look far for someone to blame.”

“Meanwhile,” Abizoth whispered, “you’d better keep your eyes and ears open, black dog, if you want to keep them at all. We’re looking for a boy__a blue-eyed, fair-haired youth of fourteen or fifteen years—and when we find him–—If you’ve had anything to do with him since he fled the pyramid, then I’ll be back. And next time the captain will let me come on my own!”

III Out of the City

With nightfall Adonda Gomba let Khai out of his hideaway. By that time, as the big black had expected, the boy was almost at his wits end. Twice he had fallen asleep, only to be shocked awake by rats scampering over him and nibbling at his crust of bread. In the end he had broken the bread into two pieces, throwing them as far as he could along the bend of the disused sewer before and behind him.

This action, while it doubled and redoubled the squeaking and scampering of the gray horde, had seemed nevertheless to satisfy them for a little while and had the desired effect of causing them to keep their distance—at least until the bread was gone. After that, they had grown more inquisitive than ever.

Once, galvanized into a sort of panic, Khai had actually thrown himself headlong at the rats, crawling frantically along the winding sinus after them until he came to a place where the ceiling had collapsed. While the rats could scamper on ahead without pause, disappearing into the tumbled debris, Khai himself could go no further; and so at last sanity returned. It was then that he had realized how quickly the already nebulous light was failing, and he had been lucky in the end to find his way back to his starting point. He had traveled a surprising distance along the track of the old sewer and there had been a number of junctions along the way, the entrances of which all looked alike in the near darkness; but at last he was back beneath Adonda Gomba’s house.

There, under his breath, panting and trembling, he called himself several sorts of fool and coward, reflecting that the black slave above was risking his very life for him—and here he was afraid of a few rats! But for all that he was able to berate himself, still he longed to be out of the place. To stand in the cool, clean air of the world above, separated from him by only the thickness of a slab of stone that formed part of the floor in the Nubian’s kitchen—which nevertheless seemed a million miles away. So that when at last he heard the thunderous approach of Gomba’s feet, and then a hideous grating as the slab over his head began to move, causing a shower of sand and gritty debris to fall upon him, he almost cried out in joy.

It was plainly just as great a relief to the huge black man to be able to drag Khai out of the hole, and he hugged the trembling boy to him for long moments before pushing him away and holding him at arm’s length. “Brave lad, Khai—you were quiet as a mouse down there!”

Khai shuddered. “Don’t talk to me of mice—” he answered, “or of rats!” “I know, I know,” Gomba nodded, patting his shoulder. “But it’s over now. I’m sorry I left you down there so long, lad, but it had to be. There have been squads of soldiers in the streets all day, poking about here and there, but they’ve more or less given up now. Now we can make you a bit more comfortable—but you’ll still have to stay out of sight for the rest of the night. Tomorrow we’ll move you.” “I’m to be moved?”

“Aye, out of Asorbes and upriver. Eventually out of Khem itself—but that’ll be up to you. Don’t worry, it’s all been worked out for you. But Khai—” “Yes?”

“There’s one thing. If you are caught, I want you to remember something. My life will be in your hands….”

“You’ve no need to worry on that score, Adonda Gomba,” Khai answered at once. “I would never mention your name to any man of the Pharaoh. I might well be questioned, but I would not be harmed. They could threaten but never punish. Pharaoh has plans for me, yes, but they don’t include torture just yet. No, first he would train me for … for other things.” He shuddered and looked closely into the black man’s eyes. “But I won’t be caught, will I?”

“Not if I’ve anything to do with it,” the Nubian gruffly answered. “But quickly now, let’s get you hidden away again.” He saw Khai’s eyes go fearfully to the floor and added: “No, not in the sewer, lad, don’t fret. You’re going upward this time—” and he jerked a thumb at the low ceiling overhead. Khai’s eyes widened. “On the roof?”

“Under it,” the Nubian grinned. “There’s a small gap between the ceiling there and the roof above. It may get chilly before morning, but at least there are no rats. Once you’re up there and comfortable on the rafters, then we can talk—provided we keep it quiet. I’ve a lot to tell you before you can sleep. And when you’ve heard me out, then you’ll need to repeat my instructions over and over to yourself. There’ll be no margin for error tomorrow. Now then, before we do anything else, tell me: can you swim?”

“Like a fish,” Khai answered at once.

“Good! That’s very important. You’ll see why when you know the plan. But right now I’ll show you how to climb up onto the rafters and hide under the roof….”

Still memorizing Gomba’s instructions, Khai eventually fell into a fitful sleep on a platform of rough boards placed across rafters above the sagging and cobwebby ceiling. Twice during the night he was disturbed when soldiers came to shake the Nubian awake and search the house; but on both of these occasions the black man grumbled so much about lack of sleep, unnecessary harassment and Pharaoh’s displeasure if ever he should discover what was going on, that the soldiers quickly grew uncomfortable and left. Half-way toward morning, when it was much cooler, the youth did manage to fall into a deep sleep, which claimed him utterly until some hours later when he sensed furtive movements in the ruined apartments below.

“Are you awake, Khai?” came Gomba’s urgent voice from the darkness beneath him. “Yes? Then come on down. Quickly, now. Our visitor has arrived.” Easing the cramps in his muscles, Khai stiffly obeyed and lowered himself down between dusty rafters. As his feet swung in empty air, the big black caught him and lifted him down.

Gomba’s visitor, a Kushite of about Khai’s own age and size, was in the process of disrobing and wrapping himself about with a blanket. In the kitchen, a small oil lamp showed that the slab had been prized up again from the floor, exposing the old sewer beneath. As Khai dusted himself off and shook cobwebs from his hair, Gomba helped the other youth down into the claustrophobic hole under the floor. Before he could replace the slab Khai went over and kneeled at the edge of the hole. “Thank you,” he said to the huddled figure in the sewer. Then the slab was moved back into place and dirt was scuffed over it, hiding the cracks in the floor.

Finally, as Gomba lit a second lamp, Khai began hurriedly to don the Kushite’s rags. “Over the top of your own clothes, lad,” the big black told him. “Quickly! You needn’t have bothered to tidy yourself up, for now I’ve got to darken your face down a bit and sprinkle a little dirt over you. And here—” he produced a sliver of charcoal and expertly drew an ankh on Khai’s forehead. “We mustn’t forget your slave mark. There—and you can wrap this rag around your yellow hair. So—” He paused to cast a critical eye over his handiwork. “There we are, a slave if ever I saw one—if a little too well-fed! Right, let’s be on our way.”

“Did the soldiers stop the Kushite on his way here?” Khai asked as Gomba steered him out into the dark, dirty streets.

“They did, as I suspected they would. A couple of them have been watching the house all night, I think—probably the same ones who kept waking me up! They might even be watching us right now, but they’re hardly likely to check us again. After all, they know now that you’re just a Kushite youth come to waken me up so that I can get the rest of the lads moving!”

The “lads” Gomba talked about were one hundred male slaves detailed to work for a week in the quarries downriver. They would be transported by barge to a point above the second cataract, marched around the falls to a second barge below the white water, and so on down the river for another seventy miles or so to the quarries of the east bank. There would be ninety-nine of them in all, with Khai making the figure up to one hundred; but long before the slave-barge reached its mooring above the cataract Khai would have made his escape. That is, if all went according to plan.

It would not be the first time a slave had escaped, many had tried it at one time or another. Usually they only made their run when they were well away from the slave-city, when they could quickly head for open country or lose themselves in the forests and swamps. Sometimes they made it, but more often than not they were caught. When that happened the soldiers made examples of them, putting their heads on poles in the slave quarters to be picked into skulls by vultures. And of course there were other deterrents: the swamps were full of hungry crocodiles and there were many poisonous snakes in the grasslands. …

Now Khai and Adonda Gomba hurried through the deserted, garbage-littered streets, and as the first hint of daylight tinged the sky to the east, so the slave-king urgently banged on doors and shutters and called out the names of those slaves detailed for work in the quarries. In no time at all his ragged party was a hundred strong, and soon they crossed the perimeter of the slave quarters into the city proper where a small squad of six Khemish soldiers was waiting for them. Then, with the soldiers flanking them three to a side, they formed four ranks and tramped quietly through the still sleeping streets, marching through areas of Asorbes which grew ever more opulent, until at last they approached the looming city wall and the massive arch which contained and guarded the east gate.

This was one part of the plan which Khai had dreaded, when the guard commander himself would count heads against Gomba’s list before ordering the gate opened. But to his surprise and relief the whole procedure went off without a hitch. Indeed, the sleepy-looking sergeant-of-the-guard hardly gave the slaves a second glance as he checked them off in bunches of ten. With the job quickly done, he ordered the gate opened and the slaves passed under the towering arch of the wall and out of the city.

“He can be forgiven his inefficiency,” Gomba quietly explained to Khai out of the corner of his mouth. “He’s been up all night, kept awake by reports of revellers, brawlers and other troublemakers in the streets between here and the slave quarters.” He chuckled grimly. “Now I wonder who arranged that little lot for him, eh? Anyway, all he’s interested in now is standing himself down from duty and getting home to his hot, fat little wife—who he probably suspects of having it off with his superior officer. Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t, but that hardly matters to us. What does matter is that we’re out of the city, right?”

IV Slave Ship

Outside and below the beetling walls of Asorbes, the party of slaves waited until their escorts were relieved by two dozen guardsmen from the gate, then began their march along the stone road toward the river. The soldiers, all weary from their night’s duty, marched with a little less than their usual military precision, and their polyglot charges were not hard put to keep pace with them.

The slaves were not chained nor even roped, for there was little likelihood that anyone would be foolish enough to make a run for it so close to Asorbes. The land was all Khemish for hundreds of miles around, and of course each and every slave bore the telltale brand of the ankh on his forehead. Moreover, four of the guards were of Pharaoh’s Corps of Archers and bore their weapons with them. A runaway slave would provide excellent target practice.

Now the air was a little brighter and the shadowy faces of the slaves were starting to take on a certain individuality, so that Khai was glad when at last they reached the palm-grown banks of the river. They moved out along a stone quay to where the wide-beamed slave barge lay low in milky mist that lapped almost to its gunwales. Without preamble, the slaves were herded aboard and made to sit on plank benches fixed in rows across the width of the reed decks. Then the vessel’s captain came aboard.

Menon Phadal was a fat Khemite with a scowling face and small, piggish eyes. Quickly, those eyes now scanned his human cargo and he scowled all the more. Waddling to the door of his tiny cabin between the barge’s twin masts, he turned and sat down heavily on his captain’s bench. To Adonda Gomba he called out, “No girls, Gomba? No fun for Menon Phadal during his trip downriver ?”

“Not this time, Lord Phadal,” Gomba called back from the quay-side. “Next week, however—on that you have my word!” And under his breath he added: “Aye, indeed you do, fat dog!”

The slave-king was thinking of a Syran slave girl who had been forced by three Theraen embalmers one night more than a year ago. They had been drunk, entering the slave quarters in the dead of night and abducting the girl for their own vile purposes. When she had crawled back to her hovel the next morning, she was out of her mind and near dead.

Better, perhaps, that she had died, for upon recovering from her ordeal she was seen to have contracted the “Theraen Scab,” and now she was riddled with it. It no longer showed so much outwardly, but inside she was crawling. Gomba was sure that Menon Phadal would notice nothing in the gloom of his little cabin, and a touch of syphilis would soon put a stop to his loathsome leching—especially when he gave it to his equally offensive wife! As for the girl herself: she only tittered and giggled and no longer cared much what happened to her.

“I’ll hold you to that, Gomba!” the fat captain called out through the mist which was now beginning to shroud the boat.

Gomba grinned and nodded, “Aye, captain, I’m sure you will. You just leave it to me….”

By now the soldiers had drawn lots for escort duty. Three of them were groaning and pulling faces as they clambered aboard and went to sit in the prow. Their swords were made dull by moisture where they laid them on their laps. Three guards for a hundred slaves, but that was enough; for each one of the hundred was now made to pick up and snap onto his wrist a manacle attached by a short bronze chain to a large stone. The stones sat between the feet of the slaves and weighed anything up to nine and ten pounds each. They were all big enough to drag any but the most powerful swimmer down, and no one but a madman would attempt to escape from the boat with one of these stones fastened to his wrist.

Now a bald, burly steersman passed among the slaves, looking to see that their manacles were fastened. In his belt, he carried a simple key designed to spring the mechanisms on all of the manacles, but he would not be using it until journey’s end. Satisfied, he drew the captain’s attention to the horizon of mist-wreathed trees on the east bank. A dull red rim showed its edge above a fringe of palms. The sun was up and it was time to get the barge underway.

“Cast us off, Gomba,” cried the captain, and the Nubian obligingly loosened ropes and tossed them into the stern. The slaves seated by the port side reed gunwales were chivvied to their feet by the steersman who briefly, expertly cracked a long whip over the heads of those closest to him.

“Up lads,” he bellowed, “you know the game. And watch you don’t trip overboard, eh?” He laughed boomingly and cracked his whip again. The standing slaves took up long poles from where they lay along the gunwale and poled the barge slowly away from the quay. The steersman stood on a small platform in the stern and used his great steering-oar to guide the craft out into the river’s current. All of the motive power would be supplied by the river itself and the vessel’s sail would not be used until the return journey.

Khai, when he had found his seat by the starboard gunwale, (or rather, when he was jostled into that position by the slaves,) had been handed his stone, chain and manacle by a scar-faced young Nubian who closed one eye in a knowing wink. Most of these slaves had been to the quarries many times and knew every detail of the journey’s routine—especially those details which one day might work in their favor. The manacle on Khai’s stone was faulty— or it had better be if he was to have a chance.

When the steersman had moved back to his platform and while the barge was being poled out into the river, Khai unobtrusively tested his manacle and in a few moments discovered the secret of forcing it. It was simply a matter of flexing one’s wrist and giving the manacle a sharp twist. He relaxed a little and began to breathe more easily. His stone was a large one and would take him straight to the bottom if he should fail to free himself in time. Nor could he simply jump overboard without it, for it must appear that he was drowned. Then, having freed himself, still he would have to make good his boast to Adonda Gomba that he could swim like a fish.

For the hundredth time, he went over the plan again in his mind. There would be three small bundles of broken reeds floating on the water. They would not move with the river, would in fact be tethered to the bottom by thin lines—except for the third bundle which would be in the form of a rough circle and anchored to the bottom with a rope. Khai would have to wait until the barge was level with this last marker before he leaped overboard. He would let the stone take him down into the water a little way, free himself and swim underwater to the ring of reeds. There, he could surface slowly until his head broke the surface within the ring where he would be hidden from the view of those on the boat.

And there he must stay, treading water until the arrival of Mhyna’s barge. By then the slave ship would have drifted on down the river, leaving him for dead and gone to the bottom, freshly drowned and food for the crocs and fishes. He shuddered as a rapid swirling in the water just a few feet from the ship’s side told of the passing of a large croc. The plan was not without its dangers. …

The mist had settled now to a milky layer that lay inches deep on the water and lapped in curling tendrils about the sides of the big barge. Caught in the midstream current, the craft moved a little less sluggishly and answered to the steersman’s huge oar. Well astern, the quays of Asorbes slowly disappeared in thinly misted distance and the trees on the banks became grey ghosts that reared silently upward, as if they reached for the light of the new day.

And indeed that light was stronger now as the climbing orange ball of the sun probed the cool morning air with its heat. The prevalent wind from the north, little more than a breeze at the moment but strengthening with the sun’s rising, would assist in dispersing the mist; but by then, Khai must be gone and fled into green deeps. So he sat there and watched the river, his eyes constantly scanning its surface between the east bank and the barge; and time and time again, he tensed the muscles of his legs, testing them for that lightning spring which would carry him over the gunwale and down into the water.

Dimly he was aware of the slaves talking in low voices, and the soldiers in the prow as they engaged in a noisy argument. He knew that Menon Phadal sat nodding in the doorway of his cabin, with his head sunk down onto his chest, and he could feel the slow surge of the river beneath the barge like the movement of a huge and ponderous living creature. It was only when his eyes began to water and twitch with the strain of staring into the floating, thinning mist that he took them off the river for a moment to glance once more at the steersman, and again at the boat’s drowsing captain. He had little need to worry about the three soldiers for they were almost hidden by the mass of the central cabin. In fact, if he moved fast enough when the time came, he could be gone before anyone even—

And there his thoughts froze, for as he gazed again at the river suddenly he saw it: the first marker! A tangled bundle of broken reeds lying there in the water, rolling a little and bobbing gently but not drifting with the current.

Almost before he could recover from the shock of the sighting, the second reed mass drifted into view through milky swirlings of mist. This one was further away from the barge, perhaps forty or fifty feet, and Khai sat up straighter, almost got to his feet as he strained his eyes and craned his neck to search the river’s surface for the third and final marker.

“You!” came the bass rumble of the steersman. “Sit down, man. What do you think you’re doing?”

Khai half-turned, saw the steersman’s puzzled eyes upon him. He turned back to the river and in the corner of his eye was aware that Menon Phadal was now awake, on his feet, pointing, shouting.

“He’s going to jump! Grab him—you slaves, there—grab him!”

But then he spotted the third mass of floating reeds, seventy or eighty feet away, bobbing in breeze-eddied mist. The hands of the slaves flanking him reached clumsily for him and the voice of the scar-faced young Nubian whispered: “Jump, man—now!”

He snatched up his stone and leaped up onto the gunwale. Hands snatched at his legs, deliberately avoided clasping him. He jumped—

The water closed over his head and he sank; but already he cradled the stone between his thighs and sought to break the hold of the faulty manacle. The water was green and deep and the slow current tended to set him turning. He balanced himself, tried to maintain his sense of direction as he fought with the manacle, flexing his wrist again and again and jerking the wide metal band left and right until his wrist bled.

Then, as his feet struck bottom and sank in slime, at last the manacle snapped open. He kicked himself off in what he prayed was the right direction and struck out strongly with his legs. Already his lungs craved air, but for the moment he fought the urge to swim for the surface and headed across the bottom. By now, the slave ship would have drifted on downriver. How far, Khai wondered?

Now, with his lungs near-bursting, he angled his body for the surface and almost immediately saw stretched before him the rope which anchored the third marker to the bottom. He caught at it, followed its sinuous length hand over hand up out of the depths, until his head at last broke surface inside a bobbing tangle of papyrus leaves and stems. At its upper end the rope was tied to a leather bladder to give it buoyancy, and now Khai clung to this life-saving bubble as he trod water and scanned the surface of the river through a screen of reeds.

The slave ship was a mere shadow drifting away into a thin wall of rapidly dispersing mist. Figures moved on its deck and voices were blown back to Khai by the rising wind from downriver.

“Who was he? Why did he jump?” That was Menon Phadal. A lesser voice, almost inaudible and broken by the sound of wavelets lapping in the reeds, answered:

“He was just a lad … no family ... acting strange lately … out of his head … drowned himself.” But then the slave ship was gone and Khai heard no more.

V On Mhyna’s Barge

Mhyna’s barge was a curious affair, much like the slave ship in shape and construction, but very much smaller. Having the lines of a wide-beamed felucca with a shallow draught, the boat looked for all the world like a huge leaf which had started to curl up at the edges. And like a leaf, it was far more seaworthy than it looked. The port and starboard reed platforms were bound to a ribbed central keel formed of a single up-curving plank of great thickness, which supported a central mast with a scarlet lateen sail. From a large bronze ring at the top of the mast, a dozen taut ropes came down to the outer circumference of the barge’s deck, where they were fastened to the tightly-bound reed gunwales. The barge was constructed in such a way that lading it with a cargo only served to compress its decks and make them more watertight.

Looking up through the network of ropes from where he lay on his back between bundles of crocodile skins and jars of oil and wild honey, Khai felt that he stared up at the center of some monstrous spider’s web—except that the craft’s mistress, Mhyna, could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as a monster! She was dusky, krinkly haired, with laughing slanted eyes and long, handsomely proportioned legs. Plainly, Mhyna was a child of several races; basically Khemish, there was also that of the East in her. Yes, and something of the jungle, too.

An expert sailor, Mhyna handled the vessel’s long-bladed, oarlike rudder with practiced ease as the prevalent wind from the north filled the barge’s sail and drove it south against the river’s flow. “Experts” of a later age would doubtless deny the existence of Mhyna’s vessel—certainly of its sail—for their records would seem to show that sails were unknown on the Nile until shortly before the unification of Egypt under Menes. However that might be, Mhyna’s ancestors had been plying the river under sail for more than four hundred years....

“Are we clear of Asorbes yet?” Khai asked the girl, uttering the first words he had dared to speak to her since she had pulled him from the river something less than an hour ago. Lying as he was, with only his face uncovered and the rest of him under the freshly-tanned hide of a beast, he was unable to see that the massive-walled city now lay well in the wake of the craft.

Instead of answering him, Mhyna lashed her steering-oar in a neutral position and came amidships. Walking the central plank with the grace and agility of a cat, a few paces brought her to where she stood directly over her “stowaway.” She loosened one of the ropes that controlled the angle of her small sail, then stood there with the rope wrapped round her arm, her legs braced and spread, her back to the mast, gazing down at Khai through brown eyes which were far from innocent.

He averted his own eyes a little, keeping his gaze from her legs where they were parted, from the narrow strip of linen that passed between them and only just concealed the darkly bulging triangle of hair beneath. It was not that the girl was indecently or even immodestly dressed (indeed, the ladies of Asorbes seemed almost to vie with one another to see who could leave the most flesh uncovered’), but it was the angle at which she leaned against the mast and the way her short skirt rose up when she braced her sun-browned legs against the barge’s slow sway.

In contrast to many of Khem’s women, Mhyna kept both breasts covered. A wide scarf looped over her shoulders from the back of her neck, crossed over her breasts and passed behind her back where its ends were tied. Upon her brow she wore a scarlet headband which looked to be of the same coarse material as the sail, and in her ears were rings of gold that caught the morning sun. Her feet were bare, with toenails painted a bright red.

She looked, Khai thought, like some female pirate from the Great Sea. Certainly the glint in her eyes was piratical—or at least mischievous—as she shielded them with a hand to scan the banks of the river. And at last, as Khai began to move his cramped body and relieve the ache of lying so still, she spoke.

“Best stay quiet for now, little friend, for while we’ve left Asorbes behind, still there are plenty of soldiers on the banks. They seem to be searching the reeds for something—perhaps for you’”

Again she scanned the riverbanks, then stood up straight to wave gaily at someone unseen. “If you keep them amused,” she explained, “they don’t bother you ” But a moment later, when Khai began carefully to raise himself up on one elbow to have a look for himself, she put a foot on his chest and pushed him back. “No,” she said, “you must keep your head down! We’d both be in for it if you were seen “

Khai could not know it, but Mhyna was playing a game with him. The banks were almost deserted, with no single soldier in sight. In a field of cropped grass on the west bank, a shepherd boy paused for a moment to wonder who the girl was that waved to him from her barge, then went back to tending his sheep.

“Why are you helping me?” Khai asked after a little while.

Again she stared down at him, spreading her legs wider yet and squirming her hips, ostensibly to scratch her backside on the mast. Finally, she shrugged. “I have two brothers doing time on Khasathut’s pyramid. When I come up the river from Wad-Gahar, the slaves of Asorbes bring me word of them— just as they brought me your bow and your knife last night. The slaves help me, and so I help them.”

“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.

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.

“No, Khai, none of that. There have been boats down the river—several. There’s a bend just up ahead. At any moment, there could be another boat. One with soldiers, perhaps—real soldiers! So get up now, quick as you can, and on your way.”

He could hardly credit his ears. Was this the girl he had loved, who had given him her body so completely, this cold creature who now hastened him to be on his way? He propped himself up on one elbow.

“I may never see you again,” he said, half-stumbling over the words.

Mhyna’s face softened. She leaned over him and kissed him tenderly—but stopped his hands when they began to wander. “Khai, Khai!” she said shaking her head. “We know each other now—all there is to know, as much as any man and woman may know of each other in so short a time—so let it go at that. Don’t you understand? You have to be on your way.”

He turned his face away from her. Lines half-remembered and hidden in previously unexplored recesses of his mind suddenly floated to the surface. They were meant to be tender lines, but now Khai used them bitterly:

” ‘My beloved spake, and said unto me: rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.’”

“Oh?” said Mhyna, twisting the hairs at the back of his neck and inhaling the smell of his skin with delicate little sniffs. “And are you a poet, too, sweet-smelling boy?”

Khai answered: ” ‘A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.’ “

“Would that I could have you, my fine young man,” she answered, “but I can’t!” In one lithe movement, she stood up and stretched. “Where did you learn such poetry?”

“They are the words of a wise man, I think,” he answered, “not a poem but a song.”

“The Song of Khai,” said Mhyna, smiling.

“No, of … of a king!” he answered.

“A king?”

Khai frowned, forcing himself to remember—but the memory was fading, clouding over in his mind. In another second it was gone, and with it went Khai’s bitterness.

Suddenly, seeing the girl standing there against the mast, her young body proud and free, he felt that his heart was being strangled.

She was the last thread connecting him with Khem, the sole remaining symbol of an otherwise disordered universe. He got to his knees, threw himself at her and pinned her to the mast with his arms. Burying his face in her skirt, he kissed her belly through the coarse material.

“Will you not come with me, Mhyna? Flee Khem now and be mine in Nubia?”

She stroked his hair and looked down at his upturned face. The look in her eyes was one of surprise. “Do you love me, Khai?”

He made no answer.

She shook her head. “And what of my husband, and his child which I carry ? Should I forsake the one and ask you to be father to the other ? I think not.”

“Husband?” he slowly stood up. “Child?” his eyes went to her belly.

“Oh, he’s not showing yet, Khai—but he’s there all the same.” She patted her slightly rounded belly.

“Husband,” he said again, shaking his head.

“He’s an old man of—oh, thirty,” she explained, “and he’s good to me. Better than I am to him. He’s my father’s partner....”

Khai said nothing but simply stared at her, his mouth half open.

She framed his face with cool hands. “Khai, I didn’t intend you to love me, only my body. I only wanted to seduce you—not to break your heart.”

He pulled sharply away from her. “My heart’s not so easily broken, Mhyna.” But there was a catch in his voice. He stooped and snatched up his bow and quiver of arrows, took two short paces along one of the boat’s wooden ribs and leaped over the outer bulwark of reeds into water that was waist deep.

“Khai—” she began, then checked herself.

He waded ashore and climbed up onto a bank shaded with leafy branches. Only then did he pause to look back. Mhyna looked at him where he stood on the bank. “Will you remember me, Khai?”

His eyes were hot and angry, but he nevertheless nodded his answer.

Mhyna turned her sail into the wind and the barge began slowly to slide off the silt into deeper water. Khai wanted to wave, to call out to her, to wish her well. Instead he concentrated on the lump in his throat, which refused to be swallowed.

Then she was gone around the river’s bend, and only the ripples on the river remained to say that she had ever been there at all.