The Twice Born by Pauline Gedge Read Free Book Online Page A

slept.

2
      HUY HAD IMAGINED that the journey to Iunu would take many weeks. It had seemed to him that the walk to Khenti-kheti’s shrine from his home had gone on forever, and having been no farther afield than that, he could not envisage a greater distance. But Ker had told him that Iunu was a mere forty miles upstream, reachable in one day if necessary, although he would not tire his rowers by forcing them to fight the northward current when speed was not essential. “We will make a leisurely trip, Huy,” Ker had said as his barge pulled away from the dock at Hut-herib and the steersman fought to avoid the other craft jockeying for position in the crowded tributary. “Very soon we will strike the river itself. Later, towards evening, we will pull into some little bay and build a fire, fry some fish, and you can sleep in my cabin. That will be fun, won’t it?”
    Huy, clinging tightly to the guardrail while the steersman shouted curses at his compatriots on all sides, could only nod. The noise was alarming. So was the rocking of the deck under his feet. His mind filled with the last sight of his parents, standing forlornly at the gate, his father holding a sack of seeds ready to go out to the fields, his mother swathed in her woollen cloak, for the pre-dawn air was cold. Their goodbyes had been quietly perfunctory. Ker had brought a litter so that Huy might ride to the water, but Huy, crawling up into it, was oblivious to his uncle’s kindly gesture. Craning his neck for a last look at all that was dearly familiar as the bearers began to move off, he spotted Ishat hovering by the orchard wall, arms folded, grinding one bare foot on top of the other. He did not wave. Neither did she. Waving was a cheerful gesture and, besides, it meant a parting, and he stubbornly refused to consider what was to come. Ishat continued to stand there awkwardly until he was out of sight.
    Ker’s barge smelled of dressed wood mingled with the rather sour odour of the water lapping against its sides. At any other time Huy would have excitedly filled his nostrils with the novelty of it as his uncle took his hand and led him up the ramp and onto the cool planking of the deck, but today he was insensible to anything new. He followed Ker to the cabin, where his uncle’s belongings were already stowed neatly in one corner. Ker set Huy’s two leather bags beside his own. “When you are tired, you can come and sleep in here,” he told the boy. “It will be cool and quiet for you. But now, let’s stand by the rail and watch the town slide away behind us. Then we will eat. Yes?”
    Huy could hardly breathe for the lump in his throat. Ker shouted a command to the rowers and the boat began to move. He talked gently to Huy, pointing out the various sorts of craft around them, what cargo they might be carrying, where they had come from, the meaning of the flags most of them were flying. “You see that one there?” He pointed to a sleek, gilded skiff with pennants of blue and white fixed fore and aft. “Blue and white are the imperial colours. Whoever is on that boat is here on the business of our King. Probably a herald. The craft is too small for goods.” He smiled down at Huy. “When I deliver perfumes to Weset I am allowed to display the blue and white.” He chatted on, trying to put Huy at ease, but Huy was not comforted. Full of that childish desperation which is always mingled with helplessness, he felt the dawn breeze lift his hair and the first rays of the rising sun strike his skin, and he began to cry.
    Nevertheless a sort of security quickly grew up around him as hour by hour the rowers beat their way upstream. For the time being he was safe with a man who loved him, and isolated on a river whose banks still showed him the familiar lush vegetation he might find on his father’s acres. Between the palm trees to either side he could see sowers strewing seed onto the rich black soil as his father was doubtless doing, sacks slung