Khai of Khem

I The Slavers

By mid-afternoon, Khai was unable to remember exactly what Mhyna had looked like. His nostrils could detect her perfume, the scent of her body, the pungency of the oil she had rubbed into her skin; but try as he might, he could not focus his mind’s eye upon her face. Sensibly, he took this as a sign that he had not been and was not in love with her, and he put her to the back of his mind.

He must concentrate now on making good progress through the forest, and indeed he had made progress. He must have covered a good nine or ten miles since leaving Mhyna’s barge. The forest was mainly still, shady, dappled with patches of sunlight and furtive with hidden animal eyes. Tiny creatures moved in the leaves and grasses; the occasional bird would rise up in a clatter of wings at his approach; more than one group of wild pigs had rushed off through the undergrowth as he came trotting through the trees.

Twice when he had paused to get his wind and check his direction of travel (he used the sun, which he kept at his back and on his right), he had noted an odd effect. It must surely be his eyes which were playing tricks with him in the gold-dappled gloom, but it sometimes seemed to him that he stood on a vast carpet of yellow sand, with huge dunes stretching away on every hand and lizards that moved underfoot instead of small rodents and leaf-mold beetles. Indeed, if he half-closed his eyes he could conjure the vision out of thin air, could draw the sand down from the sky and drown the entire forest in its mighty drifts. It frightened him a little, and he wondered if it could possibly be the harbinger of some fever contracted in Asorbes’ slave quarter. Best to put it out of his mind, along with Mhyna and her forgotten face, and stop worrying about it. Still … he wondered if the forest’s floor had ever actually been a desert, or if it ever would be—and then he wondered why he wondered.

When next he paused Khai heard a sound from somewhere not far ahead. At first, he thought it was the cry of a bird, but its paced regularity and rising, sobbing note was not the call of any creature he knew of. Moving carefully forward toward the source of the sound, he soon became aware that it was only one of a series, which as the distance between closed came more clearly to his ears. First there was a hissing, then a sharp crack followed immediately by the cry, and then the whole thing would repeat. And now Khai could make out that cry to be nothing less than a scream of agony. Someone was suffering a whipping!

Since the awful sounds were very close now, Khai proceeded with even greater caution. Presently, he came upon a natural clearing where, through a screen of ferns, he saw a scene of great cruelty. Inured as he had almost become to horrific sights, still the youth cringed at what he saw. From a slender tree near the center of the clearing hung the naked, lifeless body of a black man. A noose of rope was round his neck; his body was covered with blood from a dozen deep wounds; his sightless eyes hung out on his cheeks and the empty sockets were already full of flies. Khai shuddered unashamedly, knowing that the black had suffered hideously before he died.

There were six other blacks in the clearing, four males and two females, all naked. Five of them were bound and tied together with ropes, tethered to the same tree from which their former colleague now hung. They were slaves— or would be soon, when they had been sold in the slave-market in Asorbes— and their captors were Arabbans from across the NarrowSea.

There were three hawk-faced, swarthy, turbaned Arabbans, one of whom wielded a vicious whip. At the moment, the three were gathered around a second tree to which was tied a bloodied, frizzle-headed thing which had been a man. Now he was a scarlet ruin whose upper torso was so badly flayed that Khai knew he must soon die. Blood flew as the slaver with the whip again used it on the black, but this time the hiss and crack of its delivery were not followed by a bubbling cry of agony. Instead, the Nubian’s bowels suddenly opened and excrement spattered down his legs and onto the bole of the tree.

One of the Arabbans stepped forward with an exclamation of disgust, jerked up the black’s limp head and stared into his face for a moment. Bulging, blood-flecked eyes were frozen in a blind stare. The slaver let the corpse’s head fall forward and turned to his companions.

“Dead!” he pronounced. “And that only leaves us with five. Well, what do you think? Have they learned their lesson—or will they try to run off again?”

The smallest of the three—whose growth had obviously been arrested or had deviated before he matured, making him stocky, short-legged, long-armed and generally apish—laughed as he took the whip from the speaker. “Why don’t we ask them?” he said, turning to the five remaining Nubians where they were bound to the other tree.

“Right, you lot,” the freakish slaver cried. “You’ve seen what happened to the leaders of your little revolution, and now you know what’ll happen to you if you make another run for it. We lost three days tracking you through the forest, but we caught you again in the end. We always will. By now our brothers have doubtless caught the rest of you, and we’ll be meeting up with them in Phemor. Ah!—but there’ll be faces you’ll never see again, I guarantee it. After Phemor, we go by boat downriver to Asorbes, where you’ll make all the work we’ve put in on you worthwhile.”

He pointed the stock of his whip at the men. “You three bucks will go into the slave quarters to work on Pharaoh’s pyramid. There’s plenty of your sort there already, so you’ll not feel out of it.” He laughed coarsely and reached out callused hands to pull at the breasts of the two girls, black jewels of great beauty. “As for you two: you’ll go to the highest bidder, whether it’s a madame from the whore house or a fatbellied merchant who likes a bit of black!”

The Arabban stepped back and surveyed the captives through eyes which had narrowed now to mere slits. “So you see, you won’t have such a hard time of it—if you’re good. But if you’re not—” He cracked his whip before the expressionless faces of the males, “then you’ll be getting this, like he got it,” and he pointed to the black and red thing tied to the other tree. “Or perhaps you’ll end up swinging,” and he used his shoulder to push against the dangling corpse, setting it slowly turning in mid-air.

“And you two—” he turned to the girls and parted his baggy breeches to produce a great log of a penis that flopped lazily into view. “Well, there’ll be a lot more of this for you two—and you’ll take it wherever it’s offered!”

At last, Khai saw emotion on the faces of the bound Nubian males. Until now they had seemed impassive, completely unaware or uncaring of their predicament, but when the girls were threatened their attitudes changed dramatically. Their dark eyes glinted dangerously and their black muscles flexed. Their bodies, bound though they were, seemed to tense like an animal’s before it springs on the back of its prey.

“Hah! You don’t like that, do you my buckos?” the dwarvish Arabban slapped his thigh in glee. “Well, you’d better get used to the idea, for that’s what these beauties are in for in Asorbes.” By now, his two companions had joined him and stood grinning, arms akimbo, watching him at his play.

“Come to think of it,” the freak continued, “it’s been a long time since I had a bit myself, what with you lot running off and all.” He moved close to one of the girls, stepping up to her until his face was between her naked breasts. His penis stirred sluggishly against her knee. And again the blacks tensed, their muscles straining against tough, tight ropes.

Khai had seen enough of rape and torture, and he had never liked the swarthy Arabbans with their questionable habits and appetites and naturally cruel natures. As he had peeped out upon the savage tableau in the clearing, it had seemed to him that he was back in his hiding-place in the pyramid, gazing in on Khasathut’s “bridal chamber” and the horrors he had witnessed there. In the black figure dangling and turning in the air, he had seen the body of his father as it plummeted down the east face of the pyramid, flung like a rag doll by the God-king’s Black Guard, and in the threat posed to the bound girls he had relived the terror of his own sister’s ravishment atop the high, man-made plateau.

Now, as these red visions cleared from his head and he unconsciously found himself nocking an arrow, he saw that the three Arabbans were slowly and deliberately disrobing, and that already the two Nubian girls were wailing piteously and writhing in their bonds. He wasted no more time. The prisoners were Nubians, weren’t they? And wasn’t he hoping to start a new life in Nubia? Why not go there in triumph, as a hero?

The Arabbans, having stripped off their clothes and put aside their swords and belts, were now naked as the Nubians. Laughing, they converged on one of the quivering girls—

Khai’s first arrow took the stunted man in the spine, knocking him down like a swatted fly. The second of the slavers, in the act of loosening the girl’s ropes, saw the arrow strike home and instantly dropped into a defensive crouch, turning to face the wall of ferns. The third, hearing his colleague’s cry of warning, also turned—in time to take Khai’s second arrow in the breast. Coughing his amazement in a spray of scarlet, he fell to his knees and toppled forward onto his face, uncertain of what had happened even as he died.

The surviving slaver had had enough. Snatching up a sword and an armful of clothing, he went crashing through the ferns at the far side of the clearing and vanished into the forest, the sounds of his panic-flight rapidly growing fainter. Khai waited a moment longer, his third arrow nocked and ready, then slowly stood up and stepped out of the ferns into the glade.

He approached the astounded Nubians and looked at them for a second or two, then quickly took out his knife and set to work slicing at their bonds. As he worked, they began to fire a battery of questions at him in their own tongue, of which he understood only a few words. Then the eldest of the three, a barrel-chested man in his middle thirties, barked a word of command and the rest fell silent.

“Boy,” the Nubian now addressed Khai in broken Khemish, “were they truly your arrows brought down these dogs?”

Khai nodded and finished off his work by severing the bonds of one of the girls where her hands were tied behind her. “I killed them, yes,” he said, but he nevertheless kept his eyes averted from the bodies of the Arabbans where they lay.

“Huh!” The black nodded his appreciation. “Then you’re a fine bowman, lad, and we owe you our thanks. But why?” He took Khai’s shoulders in huge black hands and stared into his eyes. Then he frowned, saying: “Where are you from? You’re not… Khemish?”

“I was,” Khai answered truthfully, “but now I flee Khem. I flee the Pharaoh himself! I was befriended in Asorbes by Adonda Gomba, a Nubian slave—a king of slaves—and he gave me this.” He produced a small piece of leather with Gomba’s family sign branded into its center.

“Aye,” said the black, tenderly feeling his raw wrists, “the Gombas are strong in Abu-han. Is that where you’ll go, boy?”

“I would,” Khai answered with fervor. “I’d go anywhere rather than return to the great pyramid in Asorbes. And I’d do anything rather than face Anulep again, the Pharaoh’s Vizier—or worse still Khasathut himself!”

“And do you know the way to Nubia through the forests?”

“Of course! Don’t you?”

The black shook his head. “No. We were blindfolded when we were taken and they kept us that way for three days and nights. Only today the slavers told us where we were headed, though we had already guessed it; but even knowing our destination, still we are lost. We know nothing of these lands south of the great river.”

“Then let me lead you home!” cried Khai. “A Nubian befriended me in Asorbes, and should I not at least return the favour?”

The two younger blacks had taken up the curved bronze swords of the fallen Arabbans. Now they brandished them in the air and joined with the girls in a wild, whirling primitive dance about Khai, their blades glittering in the shafts of sunlight that lanced down through the surrounding trees. The dance finished as quickly as it had started and with a wild cry all of the Nubians, including the spokesman, flung themselves down at Khai’s feet.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“We honor you, young man!” cried their leader. “As all Nubia will honor you, if ever we can carry your story back there. What is your name?”

“I’m called Khai,” he answered in bewilderment.

“Well, then, Khai, we honor you.” The Nubian got to his feet and hugged the boy to him. “And you shall be called Khai of Khem—and they shall call you Khai the Killer!”

II The Trap

As soon as the initial exuberance occasioned by their release wore off, the Nubians quickly quietened and turned to gaze at the horrific scene of torture and sudden death in the quiet forest glade.

Then they set about to bury their dead in a grief-stricken silence broken only by the quiet sobbing of the girls. One of these, the younger of the two—a beautiful girl who could not have been more than a year older than Khai at most—became so distraught that eventually she had to be lifted bodily from the grave of the man who had been hanged. Khai could only suppose that he had been her brother.

As for the bodies of the Arabbans: they were left to rot, or to be devoured by whichever scavengers might want them. And so, within an hour of Khai’s timely intervention, the party struck out in that southwesterly direction which the Khemite youth knew must sooner or later bring them back to the river where it formed the border between Khem and Nubia.

Perhaps it was because they were all fugitives together, but a strong bond of comradeship—one which seemed actually to transcend the debt owed to Khai—quickly formed between the blacks and the white boy. Trotting through the forest, the three male Nubians spaced themselves into a protective arrowhead formation about him, with the girls bringing up the rear. Thus the six of them loped on through the steadily lengthening shadows, and the forest grew more silent and shady yet as the miles flew beneath their feet.

Every now and then, they would pause for a few minutes or at least slow their pace to a walk, but never for very long. They could not forget that one of the Arabbans had escaped Khai’s arrows, and no one could say how long it would be before more slavers came after them. During one of these comparatively short periods of walking, the Khemish-speaking black, Kindu, told Khai how the Arabbans had come across the river in force to attack the riverside villages of northern Nubia. The old people of the villages had been put to the sword, the babies, too, but the young men and women had been rounded up like so many head of cattle and made to build huge rafts.

Khai vividly remembered how, long ago, his father had drawn maps to show him the routes used by slavers bringing blacks out of Nubia; and even though he knew the rest of Kindu’s story before he heard it, still he listened to the tale in polite silence. As the black talked, Khai could see in his mind’s eye the massive rafts packed with prisoners, and he could follow the winding route they had taken down the river toward the third cataract in Khem itself.

Since the Nubians were a simple people and knew little of the geography of lands exterior to their own—and because the Arabbans had taken the additional precaution of blindfolding them—they would have been lost and confused long before the rafts were beached on the eastern bank upriver from the cataract. Still blindfolded, they would then have been force-marched through the forests in a northerly direction, skirting the cataract until they again met the river on the approach route to Phemor. In Phemor, there would be great Khemish barges waiting to float the slaves downriver to Asorbes, where finally they would come to journey’s end more than two hundred miles from the land of their birth.

And of course all of this was in complete defiance of the black king, N’jakka, and naturally Pharaoh would deny all knowledge of it. If ever N’jakka dared to accuse Khem directly, then the blame would be laid squarely upon the Arabbans, who must have crossed Khem from the east in secrecy to strike at Nubia unbeknown to Pharaoh and certainly without his consent. N’jakka could protest as much as he liked, but that would neither change matters nor return his people to their burned and ravaged villages.

On this occasion, however, the slavers had overestimated their own strength. They had taken so many prisoners that they soon found themselves short-handed, and during the final leg of the march along the forest trails to Phemor more than a hundred blacks had managed to free themselves and make their escape. Since then, in groups large and small, they had been pursued by enraged slavers and many had been taken a second time. Kindu and his friends had been recaptured only an hour or so before Khai had stumbled across them… .

After a while, breaking out of the forest and starting across a wide band of savannah, the blacks indicated their desire to call a halt for the night and Khai was only too glad to concur. The muscles of his calves already felt like water and he dreaded the thought of how they would feel the next day. Now the three male blacks went off in different directions and left Khai with the girls. In a little while, there sounded a series of whistles and birdcalls, and some moments later, the blacks returned. One of the young men had found a camp for the night—a patch of thorn bushes hidden in tall grasses less than a hundred yards away.

The Nubians used the swords of the Arabbans to cut a way into the otherwise impenetrable barrier of thorns. They cleared a boma big enough to use as a sleeping area. Then, as night set in and distant sounds of nocturnal predators began to fill the shadowy air, Khai’s new-found friends beat the grass about until a small deer was startled into flight. Despite the poor light, Khai managed to bring the animal down with a single arrow.

By the time they had a fire going outside their thorn bush refuge, its smoke could not be seen against the darkening sky. Khai had not eaten since Myhna gave him a crust of bread aboard her barge, and as choice cuts of meat began to sizzle on the ends of pointed sticks his mouth watered with anticipatory relish. The only thing they were short of was water, but they decided against seeking a stream in the night. They must simply go thirsty until morning; then they would be able to drink their fill of dew from the broad, dish-shaped leaves of certain large plants, many of which grew in large patches on the savannah.

Beneath a sky full of stars and the soft glow of a rising moon, Khai drew straws for night-watch with the black males. He drew the shortest straw and so took first shift. Worn out, nevertheless he sat alone outside the clump of thorn bushes with a curved sword in his hand, and all he could think of in the star-bright night was sleep and how wonderful it would be when it was his turn to crawl under one of the large Arabban blankets scavenged along with the other possessions of the slavers. Soon, despite a firm resolution to stay awake, he nodded off to sleep where he sat; and slow but sure the pitted face of the moon slid across the sky.

An hour went by, and another, and intermittently Khai would start awake at the cry of some creature of the night; so that when Kindu gently shook his shoulder, he jerked upright with a small cry of alarm.

“Shh!” whispered the black. “All is well, Khai, and it is my turn to keep the watch. You can crawl under the first blanket beside Nundi, where I have left a warm space, or beneath the second blanket and warm a place for yourself. Sleep well.”

A mist had drifted over the long grasses, wreathing them in slowly swirling tendrils that glowed silvery-gray in the moonlight. Moisture dripped from Khai’s nose and his flesh felt cold and numb. Without a word, he handed Kindu his sword and crept through the gap in the thorns. He stepped around the first blanket, a dark lumpy mass on the bare ground, and got down on his knees beside the second. Whoever slept beneath it, more than sufficient blanket had been left over to accommodate Khai. With a sigh of relief he slipped under the rough weave, curled up and almost immediately began to fall asleep.

A moment later, in his final seconds of awareness, he felt a warm hand touch his cold arm, then the warmth of soft breasts against his back and rounded thighs against the back of his own thighs. And when his body was as warm as her own and his breath had slowed into sleep, then the girl carefully wrapped her arms round his neck and hugged him close in the cradle of the night. Sobbing quietly, she rocked him in her arms as if he were the young husband whose body the slavers had tortured and hung from a tree in the clearing where Khai first found them… .

Morning came with a golden glow low on the eastern horizon. With that, and with a warning of the terror to come.

Nundi, hearing an excited babble of human voices, the whining of dogs and breaking of branches in the forest close by, quickly woke up the others and breathlessly chivvied them into activity. With the sounds of pursuit moving closer, they left the patch of thorn bushes and headed out across the mile-wide strip of grassland toward the wall of forest on the other side.

Long before they could gain the cover of the trees, a cry went up behind them and they heard the high, nervous barking of saluki trackers. Looking back, Khai could make out not only the brightly colored garb of slavers as they burst from the forest wall in a long line, but also the dull yellow of Khemish soldiery. It fully appeared that the slavers had asked for military aid in rounding up the runaways, and that Arabban numbers had been heavily supplemented with troops out of Phemor.

Moreover, when he had looked back, Khai had been astonished to glimpse, at a distance of some three hundred yards along the grass-belt, a second party of Nubian slaves. There were at least a dozen of them and in all probability they, too, had spent the night in thorn-bush bomas. They had been sufficiently far away from Khai’s party, however, that their presence had been unsuspected. Now, flushed into flight, they too raced for the green and protective wall of the forest.

As Khai bounded through the last of the long grass and plunged headlong into the shade of the trees, hot on the trail of his more fleet, completely panic-stricken companions, suddenly he found his mind working overtime. There had been something about the shape of that curved line of pursuers glimpsed at the far side of the grass-belt: a crescent-shaped formation closing like a net. He had seen it before: it was the formation used by beaters when they were beating up game for the hunting nobles of Khem. And Khai knew at once that he, his friends and the larger party of Nubians on their right flank were all being driven into a trap!

Actually, the trap had been set for the larger group of escapees, so that the smaller party was a bonus for the jubilant slavers, but Khai could not know that. He only knew that there was danger up ahead, and a cry of warning was already growing on his lips when disaster struck. He tripped on a root and flew forward, the side of his head glancing against the bole of a tree, his body thrown down on springy ground in a crumpled tangle. For a moment, his senses continued to function—if in a sort of slow-motion—and he stared dazedly into the heart of the forest, where the forms of his black friends were already disappearing into shrubs and undergrowth.

Kindu had seen him take his tumble, was heading back for him when two Arabbans sprang out from the bushes. The black gave a cry of fury and gutted one of the slavers with a single stroke of his sword, then smashed the hilt of his steaming weapon into the face of the other. But his efforts were useless and he could do nothing for Khai. As the bushes seemed suddenly to teem with slavers and soldiers coming on the scene from the flanks, so Kindu threw a last despairing look at the white boy where he lay, then turned and hurled himself after his black companions. That was the last Khai was to see of Kindu for almost four years….

III Back to the River

Khai regained consciousness to the sound of feet trampling leaves and grasses. He remembered enough of what had gone before to know that he must keep his eyes closed. There was a rocking motion and his body swayed in a sort of hammock, so that he soon came to realize he was being carried on a makeshift stretcher. When he finally did open his eyes a fraction, it was to squint up through high treetops to an evening sky. A breeze moved those high branches—a familiar wind from the north— and it brought to Khai a smell he had not expected to know again for some days: the smell of the Nile, which he recognized as surely as the lines in his own palm.

As he closed his eyes again the soldiers who carried him began to talk to each other, confirming the fact that indeed he had been transported many miles back toward his starting point. “Fifteen, sixteen miles at least,” the man at the head of the stretcher complained. “Sixteen miles through the forest and the heat of the day—and for what?”

“Don’t ask me,” the one at the back grunted. “Those damned Arabbans get all the fun. We round up their runaways for them ... they carry ’em off to Asorbes and sell ’em! What justice is there in that?”

“Not a lot, I’ll agree,” the first voice replied. “They get the black wenches and we get a white boy! And he gets, uh!—heavier with every mile, damn his hide!”

The one at the back stumbled a little and cursed, then answered: “Aye, and I rather fancied a firm black tit to chew on. Huh! Some hope…. Who do you reckon the lad is?”

“Well, it’s obvious he’s no Nubian. A hostage, that’s what he was—like Captain Pan-em said—or a prisoner, at any rate. Maybe there’ll be something in this for us after all. I mean, we saved his life, didn’t we? Took him off that bunch of blacks before they made off into the forest. The slavers got the main pack, but not that lot. There’s no telling what sort of tortures those blacks would have worked on this poor lad but for us.”

“This poor lad? You were complaining about how heavy he is a minute ago! And anyway, what was he doing with that bow of his—and the knife?”

“Look, he was running, wasn’t he?” the man in front answered with a patient sigh, as if he were explaining to a small child. “We must have come on them just as he’d made his escape. My guess is that he was probably out hunting yesterday with his father or friends, and the runaways picked him up as a hostage on their way home. Pity we didn’t get the black dogs!”

“Your guess—huh!” the other snorted. “You’re just repeating what Captain Pan-em said before he sent us backtracking. ‘Follow their trail backward,’ he said, ‘and you’ll probably find the lad’s father—or some friends of his at least—butchered!’ he said.”

“Well, and he was right, wasn’t he?” the leading soldier snapped. “We did find something, didn’t we? Those Arabban carcasses chewed up by lions, and the remains of those two slaves. A funny thing, that. What d’you suppose happened there ?”

“Damned if I know. But since then there’s been nothing and we’re getting mighty close to the river. I can smell it.”

They came to a halt and Khai heard a saluki bark in the near-distance. “Here comes Khon-arl and Taphan,” said the man at the front.

“About time, too,” remarked the other. “It’s their turn to carry the boy. Here, let’s put him down for a minute. My hands are a mass of blisters.”

A moment later Khai felt his stretcher lowered to the forest’s floor. The ground took shape beneath his body and gave it weight. Then he heard the soldiers move off a few paces through the undergrowth. “Here!” one of them yelled. “We’re this way! Did you find anything?”

“Found the damn river, that’s all!” came an answering cry from not too far away. “The dog must be crazy—took us right to the water’s edge, he did. Seems to have his nose full of scents—birds, snakes, buffalo—anything but men! Crocodiles, too, I reckon. Why, if we’d let him, I’m sure he’d have gone for a swim!”

Now there came the sound of twigs and branches snapping and the swish of foliage shoved aside. Khai’s stretcher-bearers moved toward these new sounds and one of them called: “What are you doing there?”

“The dog’s in a bush now!” came the answer. “I reckon he’s just playing around. He’s putting us on, that’s what. Needs a good kick in the arse!”

Khai rolled off his stretcher and got to his feet. His knife was still in his belt and his bow and quiver lay where one of the soldiers had thrown them. Bending low, he snatched up his weapons and crept into the shadowy undergrowth. Keeping as quiet as he could and taking care not to step on any twigs, he stole away between bushes and shrubs and put distance between himself and the soldiers.

His head ached horribly and he felt stiff and hungry, but clear in his mind’s eyes he could see his new escape route. It lay across the river, through the forest belt to the savannah, then south down the edge of the grasslands into Nubia. The distance was half as far again as his first choice but the going should be easier and the land very sparsely populated. Better still, there’d be no chance of any dog following his scent across the river! As to how he would make the crossing: that would not be easy, but it would not be impossible. For one thing, the night was on his side and already the shadows were lengthening.

He was running now and the voices of the soldiers were rapidly receding. For a hundred, two hundred yards he ran through twilit underbrush, then turned through a sharp right angle and headed for the river. It all depended upon how accurately the saluki had retraced his steps. His scent could in no way have been fresh, and the way the soldiers had talked their tracker-dog was hardly dependable.

A few minutes later, coming out of the trees onto the grass of the riverbank, Khai’s heart gave a great leap. The soldiers had been wrong about the dog! Less than one hundred yards upriver, he could see a nest of tiny islands which he recognized immediately. This was where Mhyna had put him ashore from her barge. Without pause, he moved through the willows and shrubs of the riverbank toward the nest of islands, and as he ran so there came to his ears a sudden uproar from the forest on his left flank.

His absence had been discovered. Now he heard the high-pitched barking of the frenzied saluki, and the steady cursing of the soldiers as they plunged after the dog along Khai’s new trail.

The sun was low on the western horizon as Khai drew level with the tiny islands and made a clean dive into the water. In another moment, he was swimming for the southern point of the nearest island, and a few seconds later he had let the slow current drift him down behind the island and out of sight. Beyond this first small clump of reeds and water-lapped bushes, only a dozen or so yards away, lay the papyrus- and willow-grown sandbar of silt and boggy soil where Mhyna had grounded her barge to set him ashore. There, in the reeds, Khai remembered seeing a pair of waterlogged fishermen’s boats. Using one of these, he would attempt to cross the river … tonight, if that were at all possible.

As the whining of the tracker-dog and the shouts of his handlers came closer along the riverbank, which was now separated from the fugitive by some twenty-five yards of fairly shallow water, so Khai swam through thickly-clumped reed stems until he found one of the two derelict boats lying low in the water. Making as little noise as possible, he pulled himself up onto the boat and stretched out in the damp hollow formed of its reed hull.

There, totally invisible from the riverbank, he lay low and watched through a curtain of foliage as the sun touched the treetops of the western bank. The crocodiles would be in the river now, but they would be sluggish with the cool of evening. He shuddered as he pictured the scaly brutes in his mind: their gaping jaws and voracious appetites. And still dwelling on visions of silently gliding monsters in the dark water, he started violently as close by a human voice said:

“What was that, Gon? That splashing, like a swimmer.…” “Shh!” a second voice cautioned. “It was a swimmer, Athom, you fool! A croc, I should think, what else? You want to tell him we’re here, invite him up onto the island? Or maybe I should stick my head out and take a peep at what he’s doing, eh?”

“Oh, very fun—” the first voice started to say, only to be cut off by: “Shh!” Quiet, you idiot! Listen—they’ve come back with that damn tracker of theirs!”

By this time Khai had traced the source of the voices to a clump of reeds on the island itself. They were Theraens by their accents, and they were obviously on the run—but from what? Khai was soon to find out.

There were two dogs whining on the riverbank now and a regular babble of voices that came drifting across to Khai where he lay barely afloat on the tiny derelict boat. He listened to the conversation and gradually began to understand what was going on. His own soldiers—those who had borne him through the forest all the way back to the river—had now joined up with a second party out of Phemor. The newcomers were tracking a pair of Theraen mercenaries who last night, after a long drinking session, had entered the house of a Phemor noblewoman and raped her. Typical of Theraens, when they were done with the woman, they had slit her throat; but her husband, coming home in the early hours, had seen them as they ran off. His description had been enough to start a manhunt which eventually led the soldiers to the river. Finally, their dog had tracked the Theraens to this spot on the riverbank.

Now there seemed to be something of an argument going on: “I tell you we’ve seen no Theraens,” one of Khai’s soldiers was saying. “That dog of yours must be as crazy as ours! I mean, what man in his right mind—even a damned Theraen—would swim out to those islands, with the river alive with crocs and all? And even if they are out there, who’s going to follow them? Not me—not tonight—that’s for sure.”

“Oh? And what do you suggest we do then?” asked an unknown voice. “There’ll be the devil to pay if we all troop back into town empty-handed. And how will you explain this boy you’ve lost? Do you suppose he could be the boy from Asorbes—” (Khai’s ears pricked up) “the one Pharaoh is looking for? You’ll be in for it if he is!”

“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.

Just as this pleasant thought occurred to her, Launie caught another glimpse of the girl darting out of a clump of tall reeds up ahead. The princess stopped, glanced back, and Launie saw her mischievous grin. Then—

With a thrill of pure horror the handmaiden saw a brown figure step out of the reeds behind Ashtarta and clamp a hand over her mouth. The child struggled wildly for a moment, was dragged viciously backward into the reeds and out of sight. Launie opened her mouth to scream and a sinewy, hairy forearm came over her shoulder and clamped across her face. She kicked backward, feeling her sandaled feet connecting with shins, then felt something else ... the razor edge of metal at her throat!

V Red Rape!

In that same instant, the handmaiden knew she was done for, but even then she would have screamed a warning if she could. She could not, for her throat was full of blood and all of her strength was fast flowing out of her. Her last thoughts as she was released to flop to the soft earth of the riverbank were of the princess, and of Melembrin’s grief when he found his daughter dead. If he found her.

Gon watched Launie’s eyes glaze over and stood astride her until her body had stopped quivering. Then, wiping his blade clean on her skirt, he stared long and hard at her bare breasts and cursed the fates that had forced him to kill her. The woman had been big and strong and would have made a lively ride. Still, she had been about to voice a scream, and being as close as they were to the Kushite camp, that was out of the question. He bent from the waist to slap her breasts with caloused hands and grinned as they wobbled back into immobility. Then, hearing Athom’s low curses from the clump of reeds where he had dragged the girl, Gon’s eyes narrowed and the corners of his large mouth turned down.

The girl had been a young ’un, little more than a child. She would be much more easily handled than a full-blown hill woman. And anyway, young or old, large or small, they’d have to kill her afterwards.

Afterwards….

Gon grunted and stepped over Launie’s body.

Crouching low and using the cover of the river’s greenery, he made for the clump of reeds where they shivered and rustled from the unequal struggle within. Perhaps he wouldn’t go short of a ride after all.

Athom was having a hard time of it. He could have cut the girl’s throat as Gon had done with the handmaiden. Or he could simply break her neck with a twist of his wrists. But no, he had decided that he needed a woman, and it just wasn’t the same with dead ones. He had worked as a lad for old Tuthtor the embalmer in Therae, where even with his lusts the freshly dead had soon become unappetizing. No, a man might just as well stick it in a dead pig as a human corpse, no matter how lovely and vibrant the woman had been in life. Also, according to his old master, diseases proliferated in the dead like scum on a stagnant pool; and certainly the embalmer had spoken from experience. Old Tuthtor, with his syphilitic scabs and eyes full of pus. Worms had lived in the old ghoul for years before he himself was dead.

Yet again the girl bit his hand where it was clamped over her mouth, and again Athom cursed under his breath as he tried to pinion her hands with his free arm. Then Gon had crept into the clump and trapped the girl’s legs. The grinning, big-mouthed lout forced himself between her knees and grabbed her thighs, pushing them outwards. The hem of her dress rode up as her legs parted, showing the Theraens her nakedness.

Now Athom used his free hand to grab the girl’s throat, squeezing until she could no longer draw breath. Exhausted and suffocating, she began to black out. Releasing his grip, Athom tore a strip from the neck of her dress and quickly gagged her, then used a second strip to bind her hands behind her back. Finally, he slapped her face once or twice until she recovered her senses. With wide, darting black eyes, she stared fearfully at her captors.

The newcomer was the younger of the two, but even he was all of thirty years of age. Staring at him, Ashtarta thought: “He’s so hairy!” And indeed, Gon was hairy. His bearded face, his chest, back, arms and legs, all were a mass of black hair. With his red eyes peering at her from beneath bushy eyebrows, he might well have been a demon called up by some black magician. The other man, who leaned over her and breathed his bad breath directly into her face, was some five years older than the other, much less hairy and burned brown by the sun. When he grinned, his rotten teeth showed full of raw fish. “By all the gods!” whispered Gon hoarsely, staring between the girl’s spread legs at her small tuft of pubic hair. “You’d think she’d known we were here and came out specially to entertain us. Naked as a whore under this rag!” “A child,” grunted the other, tearing Ashtarta’s dress down the front and parting it to bare her small breasts. “Look, I’ve seen boys with bigger tits!”

“Oh?” Gon licked his lips and stroked the inside of the girl’s thighs with both hands, then gripped the flesh there and forced his hands apart until an opening showed. “And did those boys have a sweet little hole like that?” “Depends where you looked!”

Athom chuckled. The grin quickly slid off his face and he went on: “Well, are we to stay here all day then? Get on with it, man, since you’re already on her.” He grabbed Ashtarta’s shoulders and pinned them to the ground so that her breasts stood up a little rounder.

Positioning himself so that his knees held Ashtarta’s legs down and open, Gon quickly tugged his loincloth to one side until his penis sprang into view. Staring at the thing the girl was galvanized into one last desperate fight for freedom, which only resulted in a heavy cuff on the side of her head from Athom. Trembling in every limb, Ashtarta found herself hypnotized by Gon’s penis. It reminded her of the small hill ponies of home when they were about to mount the mares. Except that this time, she was the mare!

She wriggled frantically one last time and heaved her bottom up off the ground—at which Athom immediately stuck his leg under her, forming an arch of her back. Now Gon started to lower himself onto her, grinning in her face as she felt him throbbing against her quivering leg. Tears began to wash her face and she squeezed her eyes shut.

Seeing her tears, Athom said: “Now, now, madam, don’t cry. Why, if you think Gon’s a big lad, just wait till it’s my turn! All he’ll do with that little thing of his is open you up a bit for—” abruptly he stopped his throaty whispering, gave a little cry, withdrew twitching hands from her shoulders.

Something warm splashed Ashtarta’s face and she looked up to see Athom struggling to his feet and tugging at an arrow that transfixed his eye. Gon saw this too, and he was off Ashtarta in a flash, his knife seeming to grow in his hand as he turned in a crouch, snarling his shock and fear.

A figure stood not six feet away, just outside and partly obscured by the fringing reeds. As Athom fell at last on his back, his hands still gripping the shaft of the arrow in his eye, so Gon sprang straight at the intruder—and took a second arrow full in the chest. He fell to his knees, jumped up, staggered to and fro for a moment in complete silence, then toppled and crashed down among the reeds.

Unable to believe her good fortune, Ashtarta simply lay still and stared as her rescuer slowly pushed aside the fringe of greenery and stooped to enter her cave of reeds. He stared at her for a long moment, mainly at her nakedness, until she began to struggle and kick, flashing her eyes at him in anger. Why, he was only a youth, albeit a very strange youth; a youth with a bow and a quiver of arrows. His skin was so fair, his hair too, and his eyes… they were blue! And now that she knew she was safe, those blue eyes of his irritated her inordinately—especially where they were looking.

She made an angry noise through her gag and finally the boy’s eyes went to her face. Again she flashed her eyes at him, urgently, and tried to turn them down to look at her own mouth. At last he understood, creeping up beside her to loosen her gag. As soon as her mouth was free she turned her face to one side and spat on the ground. Then she looked at the boy again and said: “Who are you?”

“My name is Khai,” he answered.

VI The Coming of Khai

“Well, Khai, my hands are tied behind my back,” said Ashtarta. “You will untie them.”

Now he frowned—then started violently as Athom’s body twitched in a final spasm. Quickly, he checked the two corpses to ensure that they were well and truly dead.

“My hands,” Ashtarta repeated, watching his movements. “Untie them—now!”

Khai turned on her with a snarl. “Don’t you ever say please?”

“What?” her mouth fell open.

“I saved your life. They would have killed you—later.”

“Listen, Khai—” her voice barely contained her rage. “Untie me right now or I’ll have the skin whipped from your back! Who do you think you are anyway?” She frowned. “I’ve never seen you in the camp before, and you speak with a strange accent. Who—”

“I’m Khai,” he told her again, kneeling beside her. “Khai of Khem,” and after a moment he added: “Whom the Nubians call Khai the Killer.”

Staring at him, slowly her eyes grew wide. “Khem? But then why did you—?”

“Save you? You’re just a girl and they were ... animals! And killing’s a trade I have to learn, so that I might one day go back and kill the Pharaoh Khasathut. With such as these,” he glanced at the two bodies, his nostrils wrinkling in disgust, “—it was easy.”

He stood up, parted the reeds, narrowed his eyes and peered downriver. “Now I have to be going. I shouldn’t think your guerrilla friends will bother to look too hard for just one man.”

“Man?” she snorted. “You’re only a boy. And you still haven’t untied my hands!”

“Well, little harlot,” he looked back at her. “And why should I?” “Harlot?” she cried. “Harlot? I’m Ashtarta, Melembrin’s daughter!” Khai sneered scornfully. “Of course,” he said, “yes! Certainly you’re The Fox’s daughter. Huh!” He glanced yet again at the lower, naked half of her body. “And he lets you run bareassed up and down the riverbank!”

“Why, you—”

“Good-bye.”

“No, wait! Khai, listen. Untie my hands and—and I’ll give you anything.” It was not that she could not make her way back to camp alone, simply that she would not be disobeyed by a mere boy. Not even a boy with cheeky blue eyes who killed men as a killer born, then talked of “learning” the skill.

He came back and crouched over her. “And if I untie you, you’ll run back to your camp and tell them I’m here, eh?”

“No, no, I promise I’ll not tell,” she gasped. “I’ll give you—”

“Anything?”

“Yes.”

“Roll over.”

She complied and he took out a knife, slicing her bonds in a moment. She sat up, rubbed at her wrists and then, seeing that his eyes were back where they least belonged, pulled down the hem of her dress. As he grinned nervously yet again, she reached up and slapped him as hard as she could across the face. He jumped back in surprise, tripped and sat down with a thump on broken reeds. She laughed gleefully and wagged a finger at him.

“Oh, and is this how you Kushites pay your debts?” His eyes were scornful. “And you a king’s daughter and all. Shame on you!”

“I am the Princess Ashtarta!” she cried. “And indeed I pay my debts.”

“You promised me anything.”

“Yes,” she spat, gritting her perfect white teeth.

“Then give me that,” he growled, “which these dead men would have stolen from you.…”

Her mouth formed an O and her hand went to her suddenly flushed cheek. “How dare—”

“Huh!” Khai grunted. “Just as I thought.” But deep inside he was pleased. Plainly the girl was not just a little whore, though certainly there were prostitutes of her tender years in Asorbes. Also, he was not so sure that it would have been any good if she had agreed. A mere girl, she would not have Mhyna’s expertise. Expertise? Why, she would know nothing at all!

“Virgin,” he said, “I free you of your obligation.” Then, turning his back on her, he pushed aside the reeds and stepped out into bright sunlight.

A massive hand caught him by the shoulder as he emerged from the reed-clump, spun him about until he stared at the sun. Off-guard and blind, Khai instinctively reached for his knife. In that same instant, he heard Ashtarta’s voice shouting from behind him: “No, Ephrais, don’t kill him. He helped me!”

Hearing her pleas, Ephrais the sentry turned his notched bronze scimitar and checked its weight, so that only the flat of the blade near the hilt struck Khai’s temple, stunning him instantly. The boy’s knife spun from his hand and fell with a splash into the river; but Khai was no longer aware of that, was aware of nothing. Before he could fall, Ephrais threw him across a broad shoulder. Then the big Kushite took Ashtarta’s hand, saying:

“Come on, little princess. You’ll have to explain to your father what happened here. I’ve seen those two brigands in there—Theraens by their looks. Are there any more of them about?”

“I don’t think so,” Ashtarta panted, running to keep up with the striding giant. She saw an ugly lump on Khai’s temple. “Is he hurt bad? Have you killed him?”

“No, but I would have killed him if you hadn’t stopped me.”

“Even though he killed those two creatures who attacked me?”

“Yes, well, I didn’t know that, did I? And anyway, when our enemies fight among themselves, does it make them any less our enemies?” Ephrais paused in his striding, then led Ashtarta away from the river. The girl looked back to see why the sentry was avoiding a certain spot on the riverbank, gasping when she saw the leg of the handmaiden sticking out of a clump of grass. She recognized Launie’s leg by a red bangle round the ankle.

“Launie, she—”

“She’s dead,” Ephrais told her gruffly. “She followed you up the riverbank and I followed her. If you had not chosen to go running off, and if I had thought to follow more swiftly, perhaps the handmaiden would not be dead.”

Ashtarta shuddered. “And if this Khemish boy had not helped me, I would surely be with her.” She began to cry. “Oh, Launie.”

“Too late for that now, girl,” growled Ephrais. “If you must cry, do it for yourself. You’ll have good reason after we report to your father. He’ll have to decide what’s to be done with the boy. Meanwhile, you can tell me what you know about him—what he told you—if he told you anything at all.” He looked at her closely. “You seem very taken with him.”

“He helped me and … I made him a promise.”

“Oh? And what was that?”

“I promised him that—that he’d come to no harm,” she lied. But to herself she said: “One day, Khai of Khem—you strange, blue-eyed boy—I might just pay that debt of mine. But not until I’m Queen of all Kush and you’re a general in my army….”

And looking at her out of the corner of his eye, Ephrais wondered why the princess was blushing so furiously.