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 to 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 river’s 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 be
fore, 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—”