'You are beautiful.' His voice caught. Now a hint of a smile lifted the corners of her lips, and she wet them with the tip of a tongue that was as pink as that of a kitten. 'I am glad that my lord regent finds me so.'

  He rose from the bed and went to her. He took her hand, which was warm and soft in his. He led her to the bed, and she followed him without hesitation. She knelt upon the white sheepskin and hung her head so that her hair veiled her face. He stood over her and leaned forward until his lips touched it. She exuded the elusive fragrance of a healthy young woman in the first flush of physical arousal. He stroked her hair and she looked up at him through the dark curtain. Then he parted the tresses and cupped her chin with one hand. Slowly, teasing himself, he lifted her face.

  'You have eyes like Ikona,' she whispered. Ikona was his tame leopard: the beast had always frightened and fascinated her. She felt those same emotions now for he was as sleek and feline as the great cat, his eyes yellow and implacable. With a woman's instinct she sensed the cruelty and ruthlessness in them, which evoked in her emotions that she had never before experienced. 'You also are beautiful,' she whispered, and it was true. In this moment she realized that he was the most beautiful creature she had ever known.

  He kissed her and his mouth startled her. It tasted of some ripe fruit she had never eaten before, and quite naturally she opened her own mouth to savour it. His tongue was as flickeringly quick as a snake's, but it did not revolt her. She closed her eyes and touched it with her own. Then he placed one of his hands behind her head and pressed his mouth harder against hers. She was so lost in his kiss that when his hand closed over her breast she was unprepared. Her eyes flew open and she gasped. She tried to pull away but he held her, and now he caressed her with a gentle but skilful touch that stilled her fears. He teased out her nipple, and the sensation flowed through her body, rippling down her arms to her fingertips. She felt a sharp disappointment when he took away his hand. He lifted her to her feet so she stood on the sheepskin above him with her breasts at the level of his face.

  With a single movement he swept off her silken robe and let it fall to the floor. Then, as he sucked her engorged nipple deep into his mouth, she cried aloud. At the same time one of his hands came up between her thighs and cupped the soft nest of dark fluff.

  She had not the slightest inclination to resist what he was doing to her. Instead she surrendered herself to it. From what her slave girls had told her she had been terrified that he might hurt her, but his hands, though swift and strong, were gentle. He seemed to know her body better than she did herself, and he played upon it with such skill that she found herself drawn deeper and deeper, faster and faster beneath the surface, sinking away and drowning in this sea of new sensations.

  She surfaced only once more when suddenly she opened her eyes and found that his own robe was gone, and that he stood over her naked. She remembered the dream in which he had had the same thing down there as Stargazer, the stallion. She looked down in trepidation, but it was nothing like the dream: it was smooth and rosy, yet hard as bone, perfect and clean in form as a temple column. Her fears evaporated and once again she surrendered herself to his hands and his mouth. There was only one sharp moment of stinging pain, but that was much later, and it was fleeting, replaced almost as swiftly by an unaccustomed but wonderful feeling of fullness. Then later still she heard him cry out above her. The sound triggered something in her own body, turning almost unbearable pleasure into its own kind of pain, and she held him with all the strength of her encircling arms and legs and cried out with him.

  Twice more during that too-short enchanted night he forced her to cry out in that same frenzy of pleasure, and when the dawn suffused the chamber with its rose and silver light she lay still in his arms. She felt as though the life force had been drawn out of her, as though her bones had turned soft and malleable as river clay, and there was a soft ache deep in her belly that she savoured.

  He slipped out of her arms and she just had the strength left to protest, 'Don't go. Oh! Please don't go, my lord. My beautiful lord.'

  'Not for long,' he whispered and gently drew out the sheepskin from under her. She saw the stains upon the snowy fleece, the blood bright as the petals of a rose. She had experienced only that brief pain at the piercing of her womanhood.

  He carried the fleece to the terrace and she watched him through the doorway as he hung it over the parapet wall. From far below there came the faint sound of cheering as the citizens waiting below saw this proof of her virginity displayed. She cared nothing for the approbation of the peasant hordes, but watched the naked back of her new husband and felt her chest and her aching womb swell with love for him. As he came back to her she held out both arms to him.

  'You are magnificent,' she whispered, and fell asleep in his arms. Much later she came gradually awake and found that her whole being was filled with a lightness and a feeling of joy that she had never known before. At first she was not certain of the source of her well-being. Then she felt his hard muscular warmth stir in her arms.

  When she opened her eyes he was watching her with his strange yellow ones, and he smiled gently. 'What a splendid queen you would make,' he said softly. This he meant sincerely. During the night he had discovered in her qualities that he had not before suspected. He sensed that he had found in her someone whose desires and instincts were in perfect harmony with his own.

  'And what a splendid pharaoh you would make for this very Egypt.' She smiled back at him and stretched voluptuously. Then she laughed softly, reached up and touched his cheek, 'But that could never happen.' She stopped smiling abruptly and asked softly, seriously, 'Could it?'

  'There is only one thing that stands in our way,' he answered. He did not have to say anything more, for he saw a sly acquisitive expression bloom in her eyes. She was entirely in step with him.

  'You are the dagger, and I shall be the scabbard. No matter what you ask of me, I shall never fail you, my beautiful lord.'

  He laid one finger on her lips, which were inflamed and swollen with his kisses. 'I see clearly that there is little need of words between us, for our hearts beat in unison.'

  --

  King Apepi's entourage remained in Thebes for almost a month after the wedding. They were the guests of Pharaoh Nefer Seti and of his regent, and were entertained in royal fashion. Taita encouraged this delay. He felt certain that Naja would take no action against Nefer while Apepi and his daughter were in Thebes.

  The royal visitors spent their days hunting or hawking, visiting the numerous temples on both banks of the river dedicated to all the gods of Egypt, or in tournaments between the regiments of the northern and southern kingdom. There were chariot races, archery contests, and foot races. There were even swimming races, in which the chosen champions swam the full width of the Nile for a prize of a golden statue of Horus.

  Out in the desert they hunted gazelle and oryx from speeding chariots, or hawked for the great bustards with the swift Sakers. No royal falcons remained in the palace mews, for they had been released into the wild during the funeral rites of Nefer's father. Along the riverbank the guests hawked for herons and duck, and speared the huge whiskered catfish in the shallows. They hunted the river horse, the mighty hippopotamus, from the fleet war galleys, with Nefer at the tiller of his own galley named the Eye of Horus. Princess Mintaka stood beside him and shrieked with excitement as the great beasts broke the surface, their backs studded with spears, and the waters turned pink with their blood.

  During these days Mintaka was often at Nefer's side. She rode in his chariot when they hunted and handed him the lance when they drove up alongside a galloping oryx. She carried her own falcon on her arm as they quartered the reed beds for heron. At the hunting picnics in the desert, she sat beside him and prepared little treats for him. She selected the sweetest grapes for him and peeled them with her long, tapered fingers and then popped them into his mouth.

  Every evening there were banquets in the palace and there also she sat at his left side, the traditional place for a woman so that she never blocked her man's sword arm. She made him laugh with her wry wit and she was a marvellous mimic: she imitated Heseret to perfection, simpering and rolling her eyes, and speaking of 'my husband, the Regent of Egypt' in the portentous tones as Heseret now employed.

  Though they tried, they could never be completely alone. Naja and Apepi saw to that. When Nefer appealed to Taita for assistance, not even he could manoeuvre a secret meeting for them. It never occurred to Nefer that Taita did not exert himself to do so, or that he was as set on keeping them innocent as the others were. Long ago Taita had engineered a tryst for Tanus and his beloved Lostris, and the consequences still echoed like thunder down the years. When Nefer and Mintaka played bao there was always an audience of slave girls, while courtiers and the ubiquitous Lord Asmor hovered nearby. Nefer had learned his lesson well, and no longer underrated Mintaka's skill on the board. He played against her as if he were matched against Taita. He came to learn her strengths, and to recognize her few weaknesses: she was always overprotective of her home castle, and if he pressed her hard in that quadrant she might sometimes offer an opening in her flanks. Twice he exploited this and broke up her defence, but the third time he discovered too late that had anticipated his tactic and had laid a trap. When he had exposed his west castle she rammed a phalanx through the gap, and laughed so deliciously when he was forced to capitulate that he almost, but not quite, forgave her. Their bouts became ever more keenly contested and in the end were of epic proportions, so that even Taita spent hours watching them and occasionally nodding in approval or smiling his thin, ancient smile.

  Their love was so apparent that it cast a glow upon all those around them, and wherever they went together there were smiles and laughter. As Nefer's chariot sped through the streets of Thebes with Mintaka on the footplate as his lance-bearer, her dark hair flowing in the wind like a banner, the goodwives ran out of their houses and the men paused from their labours to shout greetings and good wishes. Even Naja smiled benignly upon them, and none would have believed that he fiercely resented the attention of the populace having been diverted from his own nuptials and brides.

  Lord Trok was the only sombre presence at the hunting parties, the picnics in the countryside and the banquets in the palace.

  Their time together sped by too fast.

  There are always so many people around us,' Nefer whispered over the bao board. 'I long to be alone with you even for just a few minutes. There are only three more days before you have to return to Avaris with your father. It might be months, even years, before we meet again, and there is so much I want to tell you, but not with all these eyes and ears pointed at us like nocked arrows.'

  She nodded, then reached across and moved a stone that in his preoccupation he had overlooked. He glanced down and almost discounted it, until he realized that his west castle was now under a forked attack. Three moves later she had broken his front. He kept up the losing battle for a while longer, but his forces were in disarray and the outcome was inevitable. 'You caught me when I was distracted by other things,' he groused. 'So much like a woman.'

  'Your Majesty, I make no claims to being anything else than a woman.' She used his title with an irony that bit like the jewelled dagger she wore on her belt. Then she leaned close and whispered, 'If I were alone with you, would you promise to respect my chastity?'

  'I swear by the wounded eye of the great god Horus that I will never, as long as I live, cause you shame,' he told her earnestly.

  She smiled at him. 'My brothers will not be overpleased to hear that. They would welcome an excuse to slit your throat.' She slanted those magnificent dark eyes at him. 'Or, failing your throat, some other part of you might satisfy them.'

  Their chance came the next day. One of the royal huntsmen came in from the hills above the village of Dabba to report that a lion had come out of the eastern wilderness and raided the cattle pens during the night. It had jumped the stockade and killed eight of the terrified beasts. In the dawn a horde of villagers, brandishing burning torches, blowing horns, beating drums and screaming wildly, had driven it off.

  'When did this happen?' asked Naja.

  'Three nights ago, Your Grace.' The man was prostrate before the throne. 'I came upriver as soon as I could, but the current runs strongly and the winds were flukey.'

  'What has happened to the beast?' King Apepi interrupted eagerly.

  'It has gone back into the hills, but I have sent two of my best Nubian trackers to follow it.'

  'Did any man see it? What size is it? Lion or lioness?'

  'The villagers say that it is a large male, with a full mane, thick and black.'

  Up until the last sixty years lions had been almost unheard-of in the lands along the river. They were royal game, and had been hunted ruthlessly by successive pharaohs, not only because of the damage they inflicted on the livestock of the peasant farmers but also because they were the most sought-after trophy of the royal hunt.

  During the long, bitter struggle of the Hyksos wars the pharaohs of both kingdoms had been preoccupied and the lions had been hunted seldom. In addition the human corpses left on the battlefields had provided an easy source of food for the lion prides. In the last few decades they had flourished, their numbers had increased many-fold and so had their boldness.

  'I will have the chariots loaded on to the boats at once,' Apepi decided. 'With the state of the river we can be at Dabba early tomorrow morning.' He grinned and punched his fist into the horny palm of his sword hand. 'By Seueth, I would like a chance at this old black-mane. Since I have had to give up killing Egyptians, I am starved for real sport.'

  Naja frowned at the sally. 'Majesty, you are expected to sail back to

  Avaris the day after tomorrow morning.'

  'You are right, Regent. However, most of our baggage is already loaded and the fleet lies ready to depart. Moreover, Dabba lies on my way homewards. I can afford a day or two to join in the hunt.'

  Naja hesitated. He was not so addicted to the hunt that he wished to neglect the numerous affairs of state that awaited his attention. He had looked forward to the departure of Apepi, whose boisterous, uncouth presence in Thebes had long since palled. Also he had other plans afoot, which could only be furthered once Apepi had left Thebes. Yet he could not allow the Hyksosian Pharaoh to hunt alone in the Upper Kingdom. Not only would it be churlish to do so, but it would be impolitic to let Apepi behave in the southern kingdom as though he had sole right to it.

  'Your Majesty,' Nefer intervened, before Naja could compose a suitable refusal, 'we will join in the hunt with the greatest of pleasure.' He saw an opportunity for magnificent sport, for he had never had the chance to run down a lion in his chariot and test his own courage by standing down the charge. But, a hundred times more important, the hunt might also delay Mintaka's dreaded departure. This happy circumstance might even provide the opportunity that had so far eluded them of spending a short time alone. Before Naja could prevent him Nefer had turned to the huntsman, who still lay with his forehead pressed to the tiled floor. 'Well done, my good fellow. The chamberlain will give you a gold ring for your trouble. Return to Dabba at once in the fastest felucca in our fleet. Make ready for our arrival. We will go after this beast in full array.'

  Nefer's only cause for regret was that Taita would not be with him during his first lion hunt to offer counsel and advice. The old man had disappeared into the wilderness on another of his periodic and mysterious forays, and no one knew when he would return.

  --

  In the early morning of the next day the hunting party disembarked on the bank of the river below the village of Dabba. Then all the horses and twenty chariots were off-loaded from the small convoy of lighters and galleys. While this was being done, the lance-bearers sharpened the spear blades, restrung the hunting bows and checked the arrows for balance and straightness. While the horses were watered, fed and groomed, the hunters ate a hearty breakfast that the villagers had provided.

  The mood was ebullient, and Apepi sent for the tracker who had returned from the hills to report. 'It is a very big lion. The biggest I have ever seen east of the river,' the man told them, increasing their excitement.

  'You actually saw him?' Nefer demanded. 'Or did you only read his sign?'

  'I saw him clearly but only at a distance. He stands as tall as a horse and he walks with the dignified tread of a monarch. His mane waves like a sheaf of dhurra millet stalks in the wind.'

  'By Seth, the fellow is a poet,' Naja sneered. 'Stick to the facts and eschew the fine words, knave.'

  The huntsman touched his heart with his fist to show his contrition, and went on with his report in a subdued tone. 'He lay up yesterday in a wooded wadi two leagues from here, but he left at the fall of night to prowl. It is four days since he last fed and he is hungry and hunting again. During the night he tried to drag down an oryx, but it kicked him off and ran free.'

  'Where do you hope to find him today?' Nefer asked, in a kinder voice than Naja had used. 'If he hunted he will be thirsty as well as hungry. Where will he drink?'