by Lauren Haney
"He destroyed my sister."
Without warning, Inyotef swung his oar. Bak parried the blow, rocking 'the skiff, skewing its path. The vessel swerved sideways to the current and drifted to the right, choosing the channel that could carry them to the island fortress. A likely source of help, Bak thought, trying not to hear the roar of the rapids blocking the first side channel, a siren song to a boat without a rudder.
"You'd cause a war merely to satisfy a misguided sense of family honor?"
"Misguided?" Inyotef's laugh grated. "He made her love him. While she dreamed of a lifetime in his arms, he walked away as if she didn't exist. He took her life as surely as I'll take his."
There was no stopping him. He had lived too long with his hate, spent too much time dwelling on revenge.
The fortress appeared beyond the long-island. The traveling ship was moored against the landing, the priests passing through the gate and the gods making their precarious way up the path. Sailors and soldiers were unloading offerings and priestly accoutrements. Most of the flotilla had landed across the channel on the long island, where the passengers would have a good view of the king and his followers. The wait would be long and tedious; the vessel carrying the royal party had not yet set sail.
"Amon-Psaro will soon be safe in the island fortress," Bak said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the rapids in the side channel. "You'll never lay hands on him then."
"I'll die trying," Inyotef said doggedly.
The skiff swept past the two small islands at the mouth of the channel, sailing faster than before, drawn downstream by the maelstrom at the far end of the island fortress. Bak could no longer wait in the illusory hope the pilot would let down his guard. He stood up, setting the vessel to rocking, and waved to the men on the shore, yelling, hoping they could hear him over the thundering waters.
Inyotef scrambled to his feet, caught his oar in both hands, and swung. Bak, expecting the attack, practically inviting it, ducked away. The edge of the oar slid across his belly, taking a layer of skin, leaving splinters in its place. Bak caught his own oar in both hands, swung it. Inyotef blocked the blow. The skiff bucked like an untrained horse. They stood facing each other, legs spread wide for balance, weapons locked together, waiting for the craft to settle down.
Bak jerked his oar back, tried to step away to give himself room, stumbled over the inflated goatskin. As he fell, he swung the oar. It glanced off Inyotef's oar and smashed into the pilot's good leg, dropping him to his knees. With Bak on one knee, his other knee bent and the foot flat on the hull, with Inyotef on both knees, they lunged and parried time after time, swinging with all their strength, wearing themselves down. The skiff danced and bobbed and bucked, swerving to left and right as the weight inside shifted, but never leaving for long its course down the channel. A palm trunk, maybe the one they had seen earlier, floated ahead of them, its passage straight and true like a pilot fish leading them along the path of destruction.
Bak's arms grew heavy from swinging the ungainly weapon, his legs grew weary from holding himself upright, his belly burned, his teeth and skin felt loosened by the jolts of oar against oar. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed men on the traveling ship, leaning over the rail,
gaping at the passing skiff, and soldiers running down the path. Yelling, he thought. The silent voices alerted him to the heightened roar ahead, the cold sweat on his face, like mist blowing off the roiling waters, warned of the vicious torrent.
His body went cold, chilled by fear. He had to stop this insane voyage toward certain death.
Inyotef swung his oar. Instead of parrying the blow, Bak followed its arc with his own oar, letting momentum carry both paddles beyond the hull of the skiff. He mustered his strength and pressed Inyotef's oar downward, holding it against the hull. The skiff tilted beneath their combined weight, threatening to slide out from under them. Inyotef's face grew red with strain, the tendons corded on his neck. Bak felt his own face flush and his muscles scream for relief. He saw a wall of white ahead, water boiling and tumbling over and around the rocky barrier, black granite boulders glistening in the wet, the palm trunk smashing against a boulder, bits of wood flying through the foam.
Inyotef saw the look on his face and took a quick glance over his shoulder. "Give me your oar," he yelled, "I can save us."
Seeing no alternative, Bak warily released the pressure. Inyotef jerked his oar free and at the same time drew the long dagger from its sheath and lunged. Bak raised his oar, deflecting the blade, and swung hard and fast, slamming the pilot on the side of the head. Inyotef gave him a surprised look, the dagger fell from his fingers, and he crumpled over the side of the skiff. Bak reached out to grab him, saw froth on the water, felt the skiff strike something solid. Horrified, he saw the vessel's seams tear apart and frothing water rush inside. He grabbed the inflated goatskin, more from instinct than conscious thought, and felt himself slide into a river gone mad.
He was seized by the angry white waters, swirling, leaping, falling. His body was thrown and twisted with such, force he was powerless to control himself, unable to tell upstream from downstream or even up from down. He was swept along like a pebble, tossed from torrent to eddy to cascade, scraping rocks and the jagged riverbottom and things he could feel but not see. What little air he held in his lungs was quickly knocked out of him. He was certain he was going to die.
The swirling waters buffeted him, lifted him and slammed him down, and lifted him again. Realizing he still held the goatskin, he clutched it tight against his breast and prayed with the fierceness of desperation to the lord Amon. His head broke the surface. He gulped in air.
Holding the goatskin close, he tried to swim, but he was flung against a boulder and dragged into a vortex that whirled him around and around, giving him a taste of what death must feel like. The eddy spat him out and flung him along the riverbottom, flipping him over and over. He hit another rock, smashed his left arm against a boulder so hard he tried to scream, but he sucked in water instead.
Gasping for air, coughing, he let the current sweep him along a fast but blessedly quiet stretch. When he surfaced, when he could breathe again and think rationally, he looked to right and left, searching for the river's edge. He saw nothing to either side but rocky islets, great craggy boulders, and now and then a pocket of sand supporting a few clumps of grass, or a stunted tree.
A growing rumble downstream and a fine mist rising from the channel alerted him to more rough water. His throat tightened and his mouth turned dry. Too exhausted to fight anotherapid, his left arm afire with pain and close to useless, he set out diagonally across the current, swimming toward the closest bit of land, a tiny pockmarked boulder. The flow strengthened, sweeping him past the safe haven. Ahead the river vanished.
He sucked in a breath, clung to the swollen goatskin, and let the current sweep him over a foaming cascade. The plummeting water drove him down, swirled him around, and flung him out at the head of a stretch of fast but uncluttered water. Gathering all that remained of his strength and willpower, he swam toward what he assumed was an island but prayed was the western shore of the river.
Then he saw Inyotef, limp and pale, beached on a rocky crag, lying across a shallow pool. Wishing he could leave him there to live or die at the whim of the gods, yet knowing he could not, he swam closer. He approached slowly, cautiously, aware of his own weakness, his exhaustion. If he had to fight, he knew he would lose.
He neared the boulder and, from a safe distance, studied the still, pale form. Inyotef was bruised and battered, his breathing labored. His pallor, Bak recognized, was the color of death.
He stumbled onto the rock and dropped down next to the injured man. How could the proud warship captain he once knew bring upon himself so awful a death? "Inyotef?"
The pilot's eyes fluttered open. He formed a weak smile. "I guess I didn't. . ." He paused, took the shallow breath of a man with broken ribs. ". . . didn't know the rapids as well . . ." Another pause. ". . . as we
ll as I thought."
"Don't talk," Bak said, his voice rough and uneven. "You'll hurt yourself more."
Inyotef took a slow careful breath. "Better this way." Another breath. "I couldn't face. . ." A pause, a careful swallow. ". . . a judgment of death." His eyes closed, his head fell sideways.
Bak dropped his forehead onto his knees, saddened by the death of a man he had thought his friend yet glad the awful journey down the river had ended as it had. Inyotef had offended.the lady Maat, upsetting the balance of order and justice. He had to die one way or another. To lose his life in the river on which he had thrived seemed fitting.
Chapter Nineteen
A soft light penetrated the white linen that covered the wood-framed pavilion in which Bak and Kenamon sat. The fabric rippled in the breeze, making fluttery, whispery sounds, and sent vague shadows darting across the scrolls, utensils, and bags and bundles of medicaments laid out on a reed mat beside the priest. The odors of frankincense and juniper wafted through the open portal of a connecting pavilion. Murmurs outside, men's voices softened by the presence of royal guards, announced the passage of soldiers and nobility. Distant laughter, the smack of spear against spear, an occasional bellow, told of soldiers practicing the arts of war. A low never-ending rumble spoke of the rapids outside the fortress walls.
"The swelling will remain for a few days, as will the discoloration." Kenamon rewound the linen bandage holding Bak's lower arm and hand firm against the wooden splint. An oily green salve oozed out along the edges of the fabric. "It's as I told you yesterday: The break should heal without problems, but you must treat the arm as you would a newborn babe: gently, kindly, making no demands on it."
"Rest assured, my uncle, I'll not try to use it again. It hurts too much."
The elderly priest, seated on a low stool in front of his patient, gave Bak the same severe look he had used when he was a child. "The pain is there to remind you that you must take care. You ignore it at your peril."
Bak, scooting back on the thick pillow he sat on, gave the old man a lopsided smile. "How can I stand in a guard of honor with my arm tied to my waist?"
Kenamon shook his head in mock disgust. "Guard of honor! Hah! You should see yourself."
Bak knew what he looked like: bruised, battered, and bandaged. A wounded sparrow. A man praised by all within the garrison and city of Iken, soldiers and civilians alike, for laying hands on Puemre's murderer and for surviving the rapids. A man who had knocked a king to his knees, a divine being who had not yet deigned to summon him.
"Perhaps it's just as well," Kasaya had said. "He was very angry when last I saw him on the ship. Better to bear nothing than to have your hands lopped off because you trod on his royal pride."
Kenamon, on the other hand, had counseled patience, saying the king had been busy, praying long and often for the health of his son, receiving people who had traveled great distances in the hope of an audience, and renewing past friendships with men such as Huy and Senu. Bak preferred to believe the priest rather than Kasaya. After all, Amon-Psaro had lived many years in Waset, learning the civilized ways of Kemet.
"Now let me look at your shoulder," Kenamon said, drawing close a bowl containing a brownish paste that smelled bitter like wormwood but carried other, more subtle, odors, too.
Bak turned around obediently and let the priest cut away the bandage he had applied the previous day, revealing an area of scabby, bruised flesh as large as the palm of a hand, one of several places scraped raw in the rapids. Kenamon cleaned the wound and spread the ointment over it, murmuring prayers while he worked, magical incantations that would drive away the demons of sickness. .
Whether eased by the poultice or the prayers, the fire in Bak's broken arm soon waned to a smolder, and he let himself relax under the priest's capable hands. Kenamon rebandaged the shoulder and went on to a deep, ragged cut on the arm, drawn together beneath a thin slice of fresh meat bandaged tightly over the injury. Removing the meat, he probed the wound in search of infection. Bak let his thoughts drift, his eyelids droop. A soft moan, as delicate as the mewing of a tiny kitten, roused him from his torpor and stilled the priest's hands.
"He's awakened?" Bak asked, glancing toward the connecting pavilion, trying not to show concern. He had heard rumors all morning that the prince seemed almost healed, but he feared the tales more wish than reality.
Kenamon quickly scraped the salve from his fingers to the edge of the bowl and wiped the residue on a clean square of linen. Hurrying to the portal, he looked inside. His face relaxed into a smile. "Amon-Karka is dreaming," he whispered. "Something happy. Come see the way he smiles."
Bak scrambled to his feet and hastened to the priest's side. The small bony child lay sprawled across his sleeping pallet, holding close against his cheek a wooden lion with movable tail and lower jaw. The toy was a gift from Aset. The boy's breathing was slow and easy, with no coughing or desperate panting or noisy and fearsome wheezing.
The room reeked. of frankincense, juniper, wormwood, and beer. The pungent odor wafted from a bowl on the floor beside the prince. A reed straw protruded from an identical bowl turned upside down to serve as a lid. Kenamon, Bak knew, had dropped a hot stone inside, heating the liquid remedy, and the prince had breathed in the fumes through the straw.
Amon-Karka nuzzled the toy, smiling, and repeated the sound, more a contented sigh than a moan.
Bak laughed softly, half-ashamed of how worried he had been. "I know you're more capable than most, my uncle, but I didn't expect so quick and miraculous a cure."
"The lord Amon has guided my heart and my hands, young man. I'm his tool, nothing more." The reminder was gentle but firm, an adult telling a child a fact he should take for granted.
"Without sufficient knowledge and skill, you'd not have been able to obey the god's wishes."
"I blame your father for your impertinence." Kenamon's voice was gruff, but his eyes twinkled with merriment. "He should've remarried, taking into his household a woman who'd teach you the respect you lack."
Bak had thanked the lord Amon many times that he had been spared a stepmother. "Your apprentice said you had clues to the malady, yet how could you? Until yesterday, you never laid eyes on the boy."
Kenamon looked in at the prince, his expression a mix of self-satisfaction and compassion. "I asked many questions of the couriers who came from Amon-Psaro, and I talked with men who've lived in his capital. Through the months, I learned much of Amon-Karka's sickness and the way he lives and even the weather. I came to know as much about him as his servants do, and more, I think, than his father knows."
"And from among the details of his life, you plucked out the clues to his illness." Like a policeman searching out a murderer, Bak thought, though so illustrious a physician as Kenamon might not appreciate the comparison.
Kenamon walked back to his stool and sat down. "By the time we sailed into Buhen, I knew he suffers most during the months before the river rises, when the winds blow hard from the western desert. I knew he grows ill when he travels or when he drives a chariot or plays with his dogs." He took a daub of ointment on his fingers and waited for Bak to settle down on the pillow. "I thought I knew the cause-it's common enough in children-but I couldn't be sure."
Kenamon spread the ointment over the cut. "The reports I heard during his journey from Semna seemed to verify my diagnosis. When they brought him to me here and he responded so quickly to medication and prayer, I knew I was right. He has a breathing sickness that befalls many children. Most outgrow it; some never do."
Bak thought of the lord Amon and the long journey he had made from the land of Kemet. He thought of the great tribal king who had traveled from far-off Kush in the firm belief . that the greatest of the gods would answer his prayers. "Have you told Amon-Psaro his son may never recover?"
"He knows I can do nothing but ease the boy's symptoms." Kenamon wrapped a bandage tight around Bak's arm to hold the cut together and tied the ends in a small, neat knot. "I've told him
how best to protect the boy from further attacks. Other than that, all we can do is pray and make suitable offerings."
"Then I'll get well, won't IT' The childish voice drew both men's eyes to the doorway and Amon-Karka leaning against an upright, rubbing one leg with the other foot. Before the priest could answer, the prince's large dark eyes darted toward his patient. "You must be Lieutenant Bak, the policeman who saved my father's life. The one who went through the rapids."
Without thinking, Bak spoke as he would to an ordinary child. "How'd you guess?"
The boy laughed, delighted by the quick rejoinder. "Because you're bandaged all over, halfway to being a mummy."
Bak grinned. "Are all princes so impertinent?" Amon-Karlgn wrinkled his nose at the smelly room behind him, sauntered over to the two men, and plopped down beside Kenamon. "Can I watch?" His eyes leaped from the priest to Bak. "Will you tell me about the rapids? And the man you chased? And how you knew he wanted to slay my father?"
Bak hoped, if ever he got to meet Amon-Psaro, that he would be as bright and open-hearted as his son.
"Lieutenant Bak." The herald's voice resonated with authority. "Son of the physician Kames of the southern capital of Waset in the land of Kemet. Lieutenant of chariotry in the regiment of Amon. Lieutenant of the Medjay police at the fortress of Buhen. Right hand to Commandant Thuty of Buhen."
The man stepped back so Bak, on his knees, his forehead on the floor mat, could no longer see his feet. All he could glimpse was the edge of the dais on which Amon-Psaro sat. The rough surface of the mat dug into his scabbed knees; his broken arm throbbed. A heavy perfume smelling of lilies and myrrh tickled his nose. He prayed he would not sneeze.
"You may stand, Lieutenant," Amon-Psaro commanded.
Bak rose as gracefully as his battered muscles allowed and stood at rigid attention. The king studied him in silence, taking in the bandages and bruises, the splint. Bak, clinging to Kenamon's prediction that the interview would go well, examined Amon-Psaro as closely as the king studied him, but not as openly.