Andre Norton - Shadow Hawk Read Free Page B

Scouts and do not instead take your ease and hold a measure of power in Semna with your equals? And when your brother, the Lord Unis, comes to be Viceroy in his turn, it shall fare even worse with you. On that day, my brother, it would be well to depart from this land, lest you be made to eat dust, and the eating of dust is not for the Hawk—"
    "I am not the Hawk!" Rahotep countered, but his control was better as he put down the cub and ran his fingers soothingly along the curve of the small feline head. "There is no such nome, there is no longer an Egypt as there was. Have not the Hyksos, those sons of Set—those eaters of offal, followers of the Eternal Darkness—overrun the land? They have broken asunder the dwellings of the Great Ones, defiled the sacred places, slain those who would stand against them for the honor of the Two Lands—"
    Kheti shrugged. "To every king his day. These defilers of the north have sat overlong in the high seat, and they do not sit there by the graces of your Amon-Re. Suppose someone arose strong enough to tumble them from that seat; would not those who marched at his back rise with him? And if the Hyksos are driven forth from the lands they have stolen, would not such lands come again into the hands of those with a rightful claim upon them? Do not throw aside your heritage, my brother—but neither can you claim it by standing afar from its boundaries."
    "You have been talking with Methen," Rahotep half accused.
    "Brother, you have friends as well as enemies in this land. The Commander Methen served your grandfather, the Hawk.
    He was loyal to your mother, the Lady Tuya, when she came into exile. Is it not reasonable that he wishes to see her son in his rightful place? And there is no future for you in Nubia. Should your father depart to his horizon—may Dedun of the Many Goats forbid that disaster"—Kheti made a warding-off- evil sign with crossed fingers—"then shall the Lord Unis rule this land and you shall be nothing. For his mother, the Lady Meri-Mut, has mighty kinsmen to favor her son. Also they are allied with Prince Teti—"
    "Teti is close to a traitor! He sees Nubia as a separate kingdom with the crown on his head!"
    "That is as it may be, brother. But neither he nor the Lady Meri-Mut forgets that one of their ancestors sat on the throne of Egypt itself for a space and held the Crook and the Flail of Pharaoh over north and south together. In troubled times such as these, that might happen again. To be king in Nubia is to be more than halfway to Pharaoh in Egypt, if a man is strong and daring enough! We do not want to see Unis viceroy here—would Egypt profit if Teti sat in her high seat?" "But my father has set his face against my going north—" "Aye, the Viceroy has no wish to lose an officer upon whom he can depend."
    Rahotep shivered, though as yet the chill wind of nightfall had not found them out. It was true. In the eyes of his father, Ptahhotep, Viceroy of Nubia, he was merely a responsible officer of Scouts. Since his mother's death, he had been cut off from the life of his father's court, a fact that weighed heavily on his spirit. He had been sent from one border fort to another and had grimly centered his existence upon his profession, learning from the archers with whom he coursed the desert all they had to teach.
    There was no love between him and his half brother, Unis. Unis was his father's heir, for he was the son of the Great Wife, the Lady Meri-Mut, heiress of an important family of mixed Nubian-Egyptian blood. Rahotep's mother, the Lady
    Tuya, had been only a secondary wife, though she was indeed heiress of the Striking Hawk Nome in the Egypt her son had never seen. She had been sent south to safety after the invading Hyksos had overrun her father's holding and had killed him in a last battle.
    While Rahotep's mother lived, he had been given all she had to grant him, the ancient learning, the training of a nobleman, everything that could be taught by