Khai of Khem
“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 in 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 in 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.
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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 in 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 lovemaking.
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.