Khai of Khem

  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 curlin
g 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.