by Lauren Haney
“If only I’d been quicker with the bow! The threat of leav ing him untended where he lay would’ve set him talking soon enough. We’d have no further doubt as to why he’s been watching us.”
“He probably believes we’ll lead him to the gold Min nakht is rumored to have discovered.”
“We’ve found no gold, and User swears we never will.”
Bak scowled at the landscape around them. “Who knows what we’d find if we’d stay in one place and explore the land all around.”
“The watching man must know we’ve done no searching.”
“The merest thought of great wealth can besot a man far more than the strongest date wine-and a besotted individual is often a man of irrational determination.”
“What of Dedu and the other slain man? Did he fear he’d have to share with them?” Nebre asked.
“What of the man who went missing almost a year ago?
The one Amonmose heard of in Kaine. And don’t forget that
Nefertem swore his father was slain.”
“The foul deed of Senna, you think? To guide Minnakht would’ve been a desirable task, I’d wager.”
“If he slew Nefertem’s father so he might toil for Min nakht, why would he then slay Minnakht?”
While they puzzled over the problem, they turned into a wadi paved with loose stones ranging in size from a man’s fist to his head. They were forced to walk single file along a narrow path the nomads had painstakingly cleared by shift ing the rocks off the sandy bed of the watercourse. Low cairns rose at irregular intervals, marking the course of the track. Out in the open as they were, with no way to go other than the path they were following, they felt exposed, easy game for a man thinking to ambush them.
They hurried along, studying the landscape to either side, tense with anticipation. They must have been a quarter of an hour’s walk from the main wadi when they rounded a bend and saw a man on a hillside ahead, two hundred or so paces away. He was looking toward them across the mouth of an intersecting wadi as if he had anticipated their arrival. He was tall and slender. His kilt and tunic looked white in the uncertain light, making him appear more a man of Kemet than a nomad. Instead of spear and shield, he carried a bow and quiver. His features were indistinct from so far away, and it was impossible to discern the color of his skin in the late evening glow.
Nebre tore an arrow from his quiver, but was too confused to seat it. “Is he the man we saw before, or isn’t he? Can there be two of them, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Bak admitted, equally at a loss.
The man stood where he was, watching them, as if waiting for them to draw near. What is the range of his weapon? Bak wondered. Is he carrying an ordinary bow? Or a composite bow such as those carried by Nebre and me? Far superior weapons to the older type, and with a range markedly longer.
Weapons not easy to lay hands on in a barren wilderness.
To leave the path and risk a broken ankle would have been foolhardy, and neither Bak nor Nebre was in any mood to turn around and run. Assuming the man’s bow to be ordinary, praying it was, they quickened their pace and forged ahead.
Scraps of white caught Bak’s eye. Several men striding into the wadi from an intersecting watercourse fifty or so paces beyond the hill on which the man stood. Kaha, Min mose, and Amonmose. Spotting Bak and Nebre, the portly trader placed his hands in front of his mouth to form a horn and shouted. Bak could not make out the words, but assumed a greeting. He raised a hand and waved.
“They must’ve thought us lost,” Nebre said, breaking into a smile.
Bak pointed toward the man on the hillside. “Shall we snare him?”
“Yes, sir!”
As they ran forward, the man hurried across the slope, moving to a spot from which he could see the Medjays and the trader. He stopped beside an upended slab of rock and peered around it. He must have realized he would be caught between Bak and Nebre and the other men, for he swung around, wove an upward path through the broken rocks clut tering the slope, and vanished over the hill’s crest.
“I couldn’t be certain,” Bak said. “He was too far away.
But he might well have been a man of Kemet.”
“Nomads sometimes move to Kemet, seeking a better way of life, and adopt the clothing and ways of our people.”
Amonmose, fully recovered from his experience in the flood waters, strode beside Bak with the vigor of a youth. “Perhaps the man you saw has come home to visit his kin.”
The evening had cooled, and a steady breeze blew along the eastern slope of the desert heights. In the clear air, the moon and stars glowed bright and clean, illuminating the hoofprints and droppings left by the donkeys in the caravan.
Their small party had followed the tracks down the main wadi and were crossing a low divide of gravel banks covered with sand, making their way to the next watercourse and the well.
“After following one man and losing him, you can imag ine how surprised we were to see another. If he was a differ ent man.”
“Are you sure the one who led you into the mountains is the same man who sent the boulder crashing down?”
“I’d wager my best kilt that he is. I know for a fact that he entered the gorge the night Dedu was slain.”
Thinking back over the chase through the foothills, Bak felt exceedingly frustrated. He had told Commandant Thuty that he knew nothing of the Eastern Desert and had thus far proven it over and over again. Their quarry had led him and
Nebre through the rugged landscape as if he held them on a leash, then had evaded them with the ease of a lizard in a thicket of thorny brush.
“I must admit I prayed you’d snare him,” Amonmose said.
“I’d not like to lead him to my fishing camp. If he’s treading the sands of this desert, slaying men for the fun of it, he might think my men fair game.”
Bak thought of the men who had been slain or had gone missing and might well be dead. Five men, at least four of them involved with exploring this vile land in search of riches. He doubted the fishermen were in danger, but still…
“Would it not be wise to send them across the Eastern Sea to the port that serves the turquoise and copper mines? They could sail out daily and would have a ready market for their catch. I think it safe to assume they’d be in no danger there.”
“Hmmm.” Amonmose’s brow wrinkled in thought. “The fishing is better around the islands on this side of the sea, but the men’s lives are worth more than a small profit.” He stubbed a toe on a rock, muttered an oath. “I suppose I’d have to cross the sea, too. They’ll need passes and other doc uments. Would you object if Nebenkemet and I travel on with you?”
Pleased that he would not have to cajole the merchant into accompanying him, Bak smiled. “You must vow that we’ll have no more swims in a flooded wadi.”
The trader laughed. “Not so much as a bath, Lieutenant.”
His good humor fading, Bak asked, “Now that User no longer has a guide, do you think he’ll alter his plan to remain in the Eastern Desert?”
“Ani’s been talking of turquoise since leaving Kaine. If he has his way, he’ll convince User to go on. If he can’t, I’m cer tain he’ll wish to tag along with us. Would User not be fool hardy to remain here, with no one to travel with but Wensu?”
Bak made a silent promise to himself to have a word with the explorer. Whether or not someone in his party had slain the man found dead north of Kaine, he wanted them all to stay together and to accompany him across the sea, if for no other reason than to keep them alive and well.
Chapter 12
Bak awoke to the stirring of donkeys. Long ribbons of red colored the sky to the east, heralding the rising sun. A stiff northerly breeze blew across the eastern reaches of the gran ite peaks, swirling fine dust across the wadi floor. Shivering, he rose from his sleeping mat and stretched muscles that ached more after his night of rest than they had the day be fore, immediately after his strenuous swim in the flood.
He and his companions had f
ound the caravan camped in a wadi lying between high gravel banks. Several acacia trees stood at the edge of the latest channel cut into the ancient riverbed. The men were sleeping and he did not disturb them.
Psuro had told him User had decided to remain until evening, opting to travel on to the sea in the cool of a single night.
Bak looked toward the trees where, before falling asleep, he had seen Rona relieving Minmose. The Medjay was no longer there, nor could he be seen anywhere else. Thinking he had either grown thirsty or was more conscientious than most men assigned to guard duty, Bak walked up the wadi.
There the pools were located, so Psuro had said.
He followed the channel to a massive tumble of fallen boulders that rose to the top of a sheer wall of granite. Be yond the cliff, the reddish slopes of the mountain glittered in the early morning light. The dry watercourse took him around an angle formed by gigantic rounded boulders to the spring-fed pools. The songs of birds greeted the dawn and a large greenish lizard clung to the side of a boulder, awaiting a careless insect. Their indifference told him Rona was not here.
Several pools were located near the foot of a dry waterfall, reminding him of the place where the men had slain the grouse. The similarity ended there. Where the earlier gorge had preceded the pools, here the water was found inside the gorge, and its rocky floor discouraged the growth of the lush vegetation found at the other site. According to Psuro, the men had grown excited when they saw the pools, hoping for another feast. They had been sorely disappointed when User told them no grouse drank here; the birds preferred more open water.
Bak strode toward the pools. Three squawking ravens launched themselves into the air from behind a mound of rocks. Curious, he walked closer. A dark, bare foot caught his eye. Muttering a curse and a hasty prayer to the lord Amon that he would not find what he feared, he hurried forward.
Rona lay on his side behind the rocks, his form inert, lifeless.
Blood had drained from a slit in his back, and flies had gath ered in vast numbers on the dry, caked blood around the wound. Bak felt as if he had been struck hard in the stomach.
He forced himself to take several deep breaths, to collect his wits. Jerking a branch off a half-dead bush, he brushed away the flies and knelt beside the dusty body. Gently, as if the Medjay could still feel pain, he turned him onto his stom ach, revealing a pool of dried blood where he had lain. A long thin streak on his cheek betrayed the fact that he had also bled from the mouth. His body had barely begun to stiffen.
Tears flooded Bak’s eyes. In the years since he had stood at the head of his company of Medjays, he had lost only one man. He had vowed at the time never to lose another. Now he had. Out here in this godforsaken desert where he could not be buried as a man should be. Where he could not be sent off to the netherworld with the proper spells and incantations.
Gathering himself together, he stood up and looked around. The gorge was deep, flanked on either side by the huge rounded boulders piled to the tops of the cliffs. He could imagine many thousands of nomads coming for water through the ages, a daily parade of humanity and their live stock. A place dark and forbidding at night. A place of myth and superstition, he felt certain. Why had Rona come here?
“Sir!” Psuro called, hurrying to Bak’s side. He spotted the
Medjay, let out a deep, heart-wrending cry, and dropped to his knees. “How did this happen, sir?”
“He must’ve seen something…” The words caught in
Bak’s throat. “Something that made his life forfeit.”
The sergeant rose slowly, like an old stiff man, aged by the death of a longtime friend. “I must tell the other men.”
“Send Nebre and Kaha to me.” Bak’s voice grew hard, res olute. “We must not let his slayer slip through our hands.”
With Bak looking on, Nebre and Kaha, both grim-faced and determined, painstakingly examined the stony ground around the body. The few patches of sand had been thor oughly churned up by donkeys and goats and men. Nonethe less, they persisted. They finally found, partly hidden by a scrubby bush, one small pocket smoother than the rest where some telltale sign had been rubbed out. This hint of stealth spurred them on and they gradually expanded their search.
They had been toiling at their grim task for about a half hour when Psuro ran into the gorge.
“Sir! Senna is gone!” The sergeant stopped well back on a slab of rock where he would disturb no sign of the slayer.
“We’ve looked everywhere. I’d wager a jar of the best brew in the land of Kemet that he slew Rona and fled.”
Bak snapped out an oath. “He must’ve sneaked away from our camp to meet the man who slew Dedu. Rona probably followed.”
“Into this gorge?” The sergeant eyed the towering walls and the boulders heaped to their summits and shuddered. “At night this place must be as black as a sealed tomb.”
Bak followed his glance. The ravens had circled around to drop onto the rocks about a quarter of the way up the mound.
Their loud, raucous cawing merged with that of two others, perched on boulders slightly apart. “Why he allowed himself to be drawn into a place with no way out, I can’t imagine.”
“We’ll track Senna down like the snake he is,” Psuro growled. “I know you believe the cudgel a faulted means of questioning a prisoner, sir, but surely in this case it’s fitting.
We can strike him and strike him again until he reveals the name of his partner in crime.”
In his heart, Bak applauded the sergeant’s enthusiasm for the hunt-and hunt down their prey they would-but he wanted Senna alive, not beaten to death. The nomad must face the law of the land of Kemet, his guilt weighed on the scales of justice, not meted out in this wretched desert. The punishment would be no less severe.
“Should we go on with our search, sir?” Nebre asked.
“We’re seeking two men, not Senna alone,” Bak reminded him. To the sergeant, he said, “Go find men to carry Rona to our camp. We must see that he’s buried at once.”
“But, sir, the sooner we go after Senna, the better.”
The harsh scolding of the ravens jarred Bak’s senses, wak ing him to another possibility. He studied the birds perched on the piled boulders, cocking their heads one way and an other, peering expectantly at… At Rona’s body and the hu man intruders into their domain or at something else? He glanced higher. In the brightening morning sky above, three vultures circled the gorge.
“Look at the birds, Psuro. What do they tell you?”
The sergeant barked out a curse. An instant later, he and Bak had thrown off their sandals and were climbing the steep, irregular boulder pile. Four or five paces above the floor of the gorge, they came upon a brownish smear, blood drained from a man being dragged upward. They followed other smears until, about ten paces higher, they found a sec ond body stuffed in among the boulders. A man jammed headfirst into a narrow cleft. They had to pull him out to know for a fact that he was the one they sought.
Like Rona, Senna had been stabbed. Unlike the Medjay, the dagger had been plunged into his breast. He must have known and trusted his slayer.
Using spears with sleeping mats fastened between, the
Medjays made two makeshift litters on which to carry Rona and Senna down the wadi to their camp. Bak hated to leave
Rona in this wretched desert, but he had no choice. The cara van was too far from Kaine to send him back and the land of turquoise lay far to the north and beyond the Eastern Sea.
He and Psuro located a suitable burial spot on the south bank that was high enough to escape flooding. After the bod ies were moved to their final resting place, he sent Nebre and
Kaha back into the gorge to continue their search for signs of the slayer. While Psuro and Minmose set about digging the graves, he examined both bodies more thoroughly.
Finding nothing of note on either man, he hurried back to his campsite. While he searched through Senna’s posses sions, seeking he knew not what, he heard raised voices com ing fr
om User’s camp. By the time he finished his task, having found nothing but the personal items one would ex pect, the volume of the voices and the intensity of the argu ment had escalated dramatically. He hastened to the explorer’s camp to look into the problem.
User stood with Amonmose, Nebenkemet, Ani, and
Wensu, facing the drovers. His face was ruddy from anger and the effort of getting across a message in a tongue of which he had limited knowledge. He spotted Bak, snarled,
“Where’s that wretched Medjay of yours? Kaha? Maybe he can talk some sense into these men.”
“What’s wrong?” Bak asked.
“As soon as they learned of Rona’s death they started whispering to each other. Then Psuro told us Senna had been slain. That did it.” User glared at the two men. “They’ve packed up their belongings, preparing to leave.”
Bak noted the way the nomads’ eyes strayed toward the south and the men digging the graves. “They’re afraid.”
“Aren’t we all?” User snapped.
“Dedu was kin to them,” Bak reminded him. “I’m sur prised they’ve remained as long as they have.”
“I know. I know.” User looked contrite, but only for an instant. “They stayed when he was slain. Why must they leave now?”
Bak could see that the explorer had worked himself into a state that would allow him no retreat. He flung a resigned look at the portly merchant. “Go to Kaha, Amonmose. Ex plain what’s happening and tell him we need him.” He doubted the Medjay’s far-from-expert knowledge of the tongue of the nomads would help, but he must try. Watching
Amonmose hurry away, he asked User, “If the drovers go, will they take the donkeys with them, leaving you with no means of carrying supplies and water?”
“They’re my donkeys. I bought them in Kaine and hired these swine to care for them.”
Bak thanked the gods that such was the case. Without the animals, User’s party would be in dire trouble. “Can we not go on without these men?”
“They’re the nearest thing to a guide that we have.”
“You said yourself that you should be able to lead us to the