The Right Hand of Amon lb-1

by Lauren Haney

  "Only at a distance, and not until we won our final battle. He was a prisoner, his arms shackled, his head bowed with grief at the loss of his army, hundreds upon hundreds of good and valiant men."

  "What of Amon-Psaro? Was he there, too?"

  Huy shook his head. "He was a child, too young to stand with his father on the field of battle. I didn't get to know him until later."

  "You actually knew Amon-Psaro?" Bak was so surprised he almost forgot to adjust the sail so they could pass. the southern tip of the long island.

  Huy eyed him with curiosity. "We took him hostage. Did you not know? He grew to manhood in the royal house in Waset."

  "Is that where you met him?"

  "I was among the party who took him north." Huy's voice grew distant, following his thoughts into the past. "We spent many days together, sailing downriver to our capital. First, I served as a guard, ordered not to let him escape and flee back to his father. Later, when we were far away and he could no longer think of returning to Kush, we played games together and wrestled and fished and hunted. I like to believe I made him forget the loneliness he felt and the sadness of leaving his home and family."

  Bak felt as if he had found a lump of gold in a long-dry desert watercourse. Huy had not simply known Amon-Psaro; he had known him well. Well enough to become his enemy? "You were good friends, then."

  "He was my brother." Huy's smile turned wry. "I was very young, at heart only a child. When we bade good-bye at the door of the royal house, I left with tears on my cheeks. I knew I'd never see him again, and I didn't."

  He was telling the truth, Bak felt sure, but was it the whole truth? "You must be looking forward to meeting him again."

  "He'll not remember me. Too many years have passed." Huy spoke in an offhand manner, but Bak heard something else in his voice: a hope that Amon-Psaro would recognize him. As the friend he had lost so many years ago? Or as a long-standing foe?

  "Lieutenant Bak!" A boy of seven or eight stood on the end of the northern quay, shouting. "Lieutenant Bak!" "What is it?" Bak lowered the yard and let the vessel's momentum carry it into the still waters of the harbor. "I've a message for you, sir. From the Medjay Kasaya."

  "Tell me."

  "He found the one he's been looking for. You must go to the market right away. To the animal paddocks."

  Bak paused at the edge of the market to look across the sandy waste toward the paddocks. Somewhere behind, he had lost Huy. The officer had insisted on coming along, saying he wanted Bak with him when he spoke to Sergeant Minnakht and the men of Puemre's company.

  Bak spotted Kasaya instantly. The big Medjay stood beside a paddock in which a lanky Kushite in a skimpy loincloth was trying to rope a huge; long-horned bullock. The enraged creature was wheeling around, bellowing, raising a cloud of dust that half hid Kasaya, three of the spearmen who had helped with the search, and a small dusky boy. Kasaya towered over the child, his huge hands gripping the boy's skinny shoulders. Bak loped toward them.

  The boy watched him draw near, his eyes wide, terrified. Kasaya must surely have made it clear that we pose no threat, Bak thought, that we are in fact trying to keep him alive. Why then is he so afraid?

  Without warning, the boy jerked free of the Medjay's grasp, ducked beneath a spearman's outflung hand, and raced away from the paddock through the dust, aiming for a row of stalls at the edge of the market.

  "Catch him!" Bak yelled, frantic to keep him isolated from the crowd, where he would be almost impossible to find.

  He sprinted across the sand, determined to head the boy off. Kasaya and the spearmen spread out, forming an arc to drive him" lnto Bak's arms. Bak ran to within ten paces of the child and slowed, poised to lunge. Kasaya and the spearmen closed in. The child, looking as desperate as a gazelle held at bay by a pack of wild dogs, veered straight toward Bak, startling him. Bak reached out to grab. The boy ducked low and sideways. Bak's fingers touched hot, sweaty flesh and the child slipped from his grasp. Moments later, he plunged into the throng of shoppers.

  Bak swung on his men, furious at the loss. "Imbeciles! How could you let him get away like that?"

  "I couldn't hold him, sir." Kasaya looked devastated. "I swear I couldn't. He's as slippery as an eel."

  Bak took a long, deep breath, controlling his anger and frustration. He, too, had had a hand in losing the child. "Where's the other man I sent to you?"

  "We left him in the storage magazine where we found the boy." Kasaya pointed toward the center of five interconnected warehouses fifty or so paces away. "I told him to guard the child's belongings."

  "The boy'll not go back there." Bak glared at the market and the near-hopeless search they faced. "Let's spread out and find him."

  With Bak in the center, they plunged into the throng. The aisles were jammed with men, women, and children from all walks of life, people who lived along the Belly of Stones and those who had come from afar to see the lord Amon. Some haggled over prices. Others wandered from stall to stall, squeezing fruits and vegetables, shaking jars, lifting the uppermost layer of a basket in search of hidden perfection-or rot-below the surface. A few gazed at the merchandise in quest of a special bargain or looked wistfully at objects too dear for their meager means.

  Heat and a multitude of odors enveloped food stalls, metalsmiths' braziers, and crowded humanity. Shouts and laughter rose above a buzz of voices. Bak shouldered a man aside and was shoved in turn by another man. Bumped from behind, he stubbed his toe on a brick holding down a corner of linen and stumbled into a donkey that swung its head around to snap at him. Sweat poured down his back and chest. Anger and frustration clouded his face, discouraging ~; sharp comments from men whose feet he trod on.

  Someone screamed. A woman's high-pitched wail of horror and loss. Silence fell all across the market, as if the people awaited another scream. A curious murmur swelled to a cacophony of speculation and fear.

  Bak raced in the direction from which he thought the scream had come, shoving people out of his way. He seldom carried his baton of office, but now he was sorry he had left it behind in Buhen. Sobbing broke out ahead, pulling him toward his goal, a ring of people already collecting around someone else's misfortune.

  He burst through the ring and stopped dead still. "No!" he cried, the words torn from him as he took in the scene. "No!"

  The armorer's daughter Mutnefer was on her knees, bending over the small dusky child. Her body shook with sobs drawn from the depths of her being. The boy lay on his side in the dust among a dozen fallen jars and a puddle of blood. His bony arms and legs were flung askew, his eyes and mouth open wide, as if he were as afraid in death as he had been in life. A last drop of blood clung to the lower end of a long, deep slit across his throat.

  "Troop Captain Huy remained with the body as you asked him to, sir. It was he who ordered the crowd away." Kasaya stared straight ahead, unable to meet Bak's eyes. Nor could he look at the straw nest hidden behind a store of pottery ewers, braziers, and bowls in a rear corner of the warehouse, illuminated by a flaming torch mounted on the wall. The sheet was dirty and stained; an unwashed bowl had drawn ants. A larger bowl was filled with childish treasures; a wooden crocodile and dog, a ball, a boat, a sheathed knifathat must once have been carried by Puemre, and a small ivory scribal pallet with shallow wells containing red and black cakes of ink and a narrow slot holding two reed pens.

  Bak, kneeling beside the makeshift bed, could barely look at them himself. He felt as guilty as Kasaya and the spearmen did. If they had not searched out the child, he might never have run into the arms of the one who slew him. "What of the others?"

  "They were all in the market, sir." "All of them?" Bak asked, incredulous.

  "Yes, sir." Kasaya swallowed hard. "Commander Woser came soon after you left to see what the trouble was, and his daughter, mistress Aset, was with him. It was she who realized the shock was bringing forth the baby and led Mutnefer away. Lieutenant Nebseny came running, as did Lieutenants Senu and Inyotef, each from a d
ifferent direction."

  Bak rubbed his hand across his eyes as if to wipe away the images stored there. No one had witnessed the murder, nor had anyone noticed the boy, not even Mutnefer, until he grabbed the back of her dress as his legs gave way beneath him.

  Bak stood up, clasped Kasaya's shoulder, and gave the Medjay a wan smile. "Go find me a basket, and tell Nebwa's men to report to Pashenuro at the island fortress. We'll take the boy's possessions to Mutnefer's house. Her brothers and sisters will like the toys; the rest she can keep as memories."

  After Kasaya hurried away, Bak cleaned the bowl with a handful of straw, shook out the sheet and folded it neatly, and laid them with the other objects in the basket. Each item tore at his heart, deepening his determination to lay hands on Puemre's slayer, a man so low he had slain a helpless child. Seething inside, he glanced around, making sure he had everything and searching for… What? A broken chunk of pottery with a sketch on its surface? He poked around in the straw, found nothing.

  Rocking back on his heels, he studied the spot where the bed had been and the pottery stacked around it. He noticed, within arm's reach of the boy's nest, a wide-necked ewer lying beside a pile of bowls when it should have been stacked with the other jars. He picked it up. Something rattled inside.

  Muttering a quick prayer to the lord Amon, he turned the ewer upside down. Four shards fell out, each covered with rough sketches in red and black ink, sometimes three or four images one on top of another, the red figures mixed with the black, making it hard to tell them apart. One picture, a bolder black than the rest, showed two men of Kemet, one thrusting a weapon down the other's throat, above a wavy line, water. The figures were so much like those in the sketch he had seen in Puemre's house that he was sure they had both been drawn by the same hand.

  The boy must have drawn the pictures, not Puemre. What better way to communicate when you can neither speak nor hear? Had he drawn the sketches solely for his master? Or had he intended to give them to someone, Mutnefer maybe, to pass along a warning? The truth would never be known, but Bak liked the latter idea.

  Chapter Twelve

  "So that's my tale." Bak wiped the last tender morsels of stewed duck from the inside of his bowl and popped the chunk of bread into his mouth. "All I've seen and done from the time I walked into Iken three days ago until I found these sketches in the boy's hiding place." He nodded toward the four pottery shards lying beside him on the hardpacked earthen floor.

  Kenamon, seated cross-legged amid a clutter of cloth and papyrus packets, small jars, and bowls, looked up from the grayish quartz bowl he held on his lap. "Commander Woser has much to account for."

  "He does. But is he guilty of murder with plans to slay a king? Or merely hiding some personal secret?"

  They sat in the courtyard of the spacious house the elderly priest and his staff had borrowed for their stay in Iken. Next to the mansion of Hathor where the lord Amon was living, it offered comfortable and convenient quarters for Amon-Psaro's son and the priest-physicians who would tend him. A pavilion had been erected over half the court to shelter its occupants from the sun. Seven large water jars leaned against a shaded wall, but all other signs of the family who normally occupied the building had been removed.

  Kenamon untied the corners of a cloth packet and shook out a handful of small, pointed leaves, pale green and crispy dry. He dropped them into the bowl, retied the knot, and laid the packet aside. "I'll speak with him, if you wish, and remind him of his duty to the company of gods and our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut."

  "I won't trouble you yet." At any other time, Bak would have smiled at the powerful figures, both human and divine, Kenamon could summon to his lips at any given moment, but he was too upset about the slain child Ramose. "I think it too soon to reveal what I've guessed about a possible attempt on Amon-Psaro's life. If I know no more by midmorning tomorrow, I'll come for you then, after you've performed the morning ablutions for the lord Amon."

  Imsiba came hurrying through the door. "My friend! You wish to see me, I've been told."

  Bak knew of no way to soften the news. "We found the mute child, Imsiba, and now he's dead."

  The tall Medjay muttered something in his own tongue. The grim look on his face left no doubt as to the meaning. "How did it happen?"

  Bak told him. While he spoke, the frail old priest crushed the brittle leaves with a wooden pestle, bringing out a tangy odor that cleansed the air of other smells. He added several black seeds, from a poppy Bak thought, and sprinkled a few grains of malachite into the bowl. He crushed the substances further, wrinkled his nose, sneezed.

  Bak finished his tale, then had to calm Imsiba with assurances that Kasaya had been no more at fault than anyone else. "If you're eager to lay blame, look to me. I thought it more important to find the boy than to keep our search a secret. Now all we have to show for my haste is a dead child and a few tangled sketches."

  Imsiba knelt in front of the shards. "These?" he asked, picking them up, studying them one by one.

  Bak nodded. "I thought to leave them in Kenamon's hands. My quarters are like a woman in a house of pleasure: open to all who wish to enter."

  Imsiba held out the shard showing one man slaying an other near water. "You were right, my friend. The child witnessed Lieutenant Puemre's death."

  And the knowledge killed him, Bak thought bitterly. "The others are harder to understand." He picked up a fragment and studied the multiple pictures, trying to distinguish the red figures from the black. "I thought, among the three of us, we might sort out at least a few of the sketches, separating each one from all the rest."

  "First let me finish this poultice." Kenamon unplugged a small jar and poured honey onto the mixture, added three reddish drops from a glass vial, and enough beer to form a thin paste. Stirring the concoction, he added, "The scribe who loaned us this house has an abscess on his neck. After I open it, this should help him heal."

  "I see an empty boat." Imsiba scowled at the shard in his hand. "And here's a soldier fighting the enemy on the _ field of battle. No. A man marching, more likely."

  "This one also has a boat, but with a crew." Bak eyed a thick black arc holding stick-like men with paddles. "It has no sail, so it's traveling downstream."

  Kenamon covered the quartz bowl with a square of linen and tied it in place. Setting the medication aside, he picked up the other two pieces of pottery, glanced at the one showing Puemre's death, and laid it back down to examine the remaining shard.

  "This may be an army." Bak held his shard for Imsiba to look and pointed at a red stick figure. "You see the multiple profiles of this man?"

  The Medjay tilted his head, studied the sketch. "Men marching side by side. Yes, an army. But whose? Did you notice the headdress?"

  Bak eyed what looked like an untidy clump of red grass atop the egg-shaped head. "That's not a headdress; that's hair."

  "Why could not the child have been a better artist?" Imsiba grumbled.

  The elderly priest twisted his fragment of pottery a quar- ter turn, studied it closely, and chuckled. "His figures are neither neat nor attractive, but he had a talent. I've no doubt of the message he wanted to convey here." He held out the sketch, a confused mass of red and black lines and curves, and traced with his finger the outer edge of the figures, inked in black, that he had identified: a crudely drawn man wearing a crown entangled with a woman in a lewd embrace.

  "The male figure looks like the one in the drawing I found in Puemre's house," Bak said with satisfaction. "That sketch also showed a man wearing a crown. I thought then, and I still do that he was meant to be Amon-Psaro."

  "The female figure wears the broad collar of a woman of Kemet," Kenamon said.

  Bak hated to disillusion the old man, but… "Those collars are no longer unique to Kemet, my uncle. I met a trader only last month who was traveling south to Kush, taking with him a chest full of beaded jewelry, collars included."

  "How old was the boy who drew this?" Kenamon persisted. "Only six
or seven years, you told me. Too young, I'd think, to create this image without seeing for himself a man and a woman entwined together."

  "He did not see Amon-Psaro," Bak said doggedly. "The king hasn't set foot in either Kemet or Wawat for…" He hesitated, then admitted, "I don't know exactly how long, but for many years."

  "Mutnefer is even now giving birth to Puemre's child," Imsiba reminded them. "Where was the boy when they lay together? Not far, I'd guess."

  Kenamon raised his hands, palms forward, and smiled a surrender. "I admit I didn't think out the problem before I provided an answer. But I believe the boy too young and innocent to create a lie. He saw a crowned man with a woman, either with his own eyes or secondhand through those of someone else."

  "Puemre knew how to speak with him," Imsiba said.

  "According to Nebwa…" Bak stood up and took a turn across the courtyard, giving his thoughts free rein. "… when the Kushite king learned of the death of Akheperkare Tuthmose, he fomented rebellion among the people of southern Wawat. Maybe a woman of Kemet who lived in this area, a mother or sister or daughter, a lover perhaps, of one of the officers now assigned to Iken, was carried off by the rebels and taken south to Kush as a gift to the kingor a youthful prince close to manhood."

  Imsiba nodded. "Did not the girl Mutnefer say the lieutenant talked of revenge?"

  "Not long before he died." Bak paced again across the courtyard, swung around, strode a third time to and fro. "We know why Puemre was slain: to silence his tongue. And if that sketch is a valid clue, we know-or think we know-why someone wishes to slay Amon-Psaro: to avenge the death or rape or some unknown violation of a female relative or lover."

  "Twenty-seven years is a long time to hold a grudge," Imsiba pointed out, "especially over a wartime incident, no matter how indecent."

  "Far-fetched, to be sure." Bak scowled, as dissatisfied with the theory as Imsiba was. "But no more so than Woser and his staff blinding me with ignorance. Revenge is personal, one man against another, not a communal effort."