by Lauren Haney
Justice. He prayed that soon he would be able to offer to the gods the name of the man who had taken Rona’s life and the lives of so many others. At times he felt a glimmer of hope that he would do so; at other times he felt no closer to the truth than he had the day he and his men had set out from
Kaine.
The caravan reached the camp at the base of the mountain of turquoise the following morning. Bak pitied the soldiers posted to this hot and sun-bleached valley, and he was certain the miners and prisoners who toiled atop the mountain suf fered a harsher existence.
The camp was basic-primitive almost. Several groups of rough stone huts had been erected near the scree-covered base of a reddish sandstone mountain. A small flock of goats and four donkeys, tended by a nomad family, were perma nent residents, satisfying the scant needs of the army. Be cause the caravan animals had to bring their own food from the port and water had to be carried from a distant well, they never remained more than two or three days. Like the houses, the paddocks were walled with stone. Acacias fanned out across the valley floor, providing some relief from the sun.
A half-dozen soldiers stood guard, while others performed the small, tedious duties necessary in a desert outpost. Their primary duty, Bak suspected, was to care for the caravan ani mals during their brief but regular sojourns. A few men branded as prisoners suffered the harshest duty, repairing tools, cleaning manure from the paddocks, and so on. No mads came and went, men who had left families and live stock in distant wadis while they came to trade.
Like the soldiers who had brought in the caravan, Bak and his party slept through the day. Not until after the evening meal did he have the opportunity to speak with Lieutenant
Huy, a slim, ruddy-faced man who, according to Nebamon, treasured his senet board and playing pieces and pressed all who came near into playing the game with him.
“I’m eternally grateful, Lieutenant.” Huy sat on a low stool beneath an acacia and set up the board, which had fold ing legs and contained a drawer in which to store the pieces.
“I seldom get to challenge anyone new.”
Bak, seated on a similar stool, watched him place the pieces in their appropriate squares. “Nebamon said you’d want to play.”
What the caravan officer had actually said was, “If you want him to answer your questions, you must play at least one game with him. But let me warn you: he fancies himself an expert, and he doesn’t like to lose. His goodwill is impor tant to the smooth running of this mine, and I can’t tell you how difficult it is to think of new ways to let him win.”
“He must’ve told you, then, that each time he comes, we compete.” Huy, who had given Bak the white cones and had taken the blue spools as his own, made the opening move without throwing the knucklebones, as he should have, to de cide who would begin. “I enjoy our games, but I can predict his every move. He plays with no imagination whatsoever.”
Bak took a sip of beer, smothering a laugh, and began to play. After allowing Huy to take his third playing piece, he said, “I understand Minnakht asked many questions about mining the turquoise while he was here.”
“He did.” Huy pounced on another piece. “I helped him as best I could, but finally sent him to Teti, the overseer.” He no ticed Bak’s curious look and smiled. “I’m responsible for the mines, yes, but my primary task is the smooth running of this camp and seeing that the men are supplied with all their needs, modest as they are. Teti knows the mines and mining better than any living man, so I entrust him to oversee the ac tivities atop the mountain of turquoise.”
Bak saw an opening on the game board so obvious a blind man could have spotted it. He could not resist taking one of
Huy’s pieces. “I understand he also asked about copper mining.”
The officer eyed the board and his mouth tightened, but as the number of spools exceeded the cones, he had no grounds for complaint. “He inquired about the workings west of here and those much farther away to the south. I told him all I knew, which isn’t much. I’ve been to the former, of course, but I’ve never seen the more southerly mines.”
“He visited the closer location, I understand.” Bak noted a careless move on Huy’s part and was sorely tempted to take advantage. He resisted the urge.
“He did, and he asked for a guide to take him south. I re fused. We were closing these mines for the season and none of the men who remained had sufficient experience to lead him through the mountains. I also warned him that those mines might already be shut down.”
“After I climb the mountain of turquoise, I wish to see the copper mines he visited. Would that be possible?”
“When Nebamon returns to the port, his caravan must make a detour to those mines. They’ve a load of copper ready to transport to the sea, the first of this season.”
Nebamon and his men had set up camp near the donkey paddocks, as had User and his party. Bak and his Medjays had elected to sleep twenty or so paces away and an equal distance from the nearest cluster of huts. At dusk, while Min mose prepared an evening meal of fish cooked with onions,
Bak strode across the sand to the caravan officer’s camp.
Nebamon saw him coming and motioned him to sit on the sand beside him. Handing his guest a jar of beer, he grinned,
“How did your game progress, Lieutenant?”
“Unfortunately I failed to win,” Bak said, forming an un happy look that would have convinced no one-except per haps Lieutenant Huy.
“I trust you made up for the loss in another way.”
Bak took a sip of beer and grimaced. It was one of the bit terest brews he had tasted since leaving the southern frontier.
“Tomorrow I’ll climb the mountain of turquoise and speak with the overseer.”
Nebamon smiled at Bak’s reaction to the beer. “Teti.”
“You know him?”
“I’ve seen him here at the camp a couple of times.” Neba mon sipped from his beer jar, then set it on the sand between his bare feet. “The miners say he’s a hard man, but one who can smell turquoise where none believe the stones exist.
They say he enters a shaft and strolls around with his hands locked behind his back. He tilts his head one way and an other, peering at the walls, and finally points a finger. Eight times out of ten, the miners find turquoise in that very spot.”
“If he’s so competent, why would Minnakht have spent so much time with the miner from Retenu?”
“Teti probably didn’t want to be bothered with him.”
If the overseer had no time for one man, Bak wondered how he would feel about ten, strangers one and all, demand ing a personal tour of his domain. “Huy said I could climb the mountain and descend in one day.”
The caravan officer raised his beer jar and twisted it in his fingers, making a show of studying it. Bak was reminded of the old woman Nofery, his spy in Buhen, and the way she doled out information, hoping to make a better bargain.
Nebamon, however, responded freely enough. “My sergeant,
Suemnut, and his men must escort the prisoners up the mountain tomorrow and must deliver the supplies we brought. They’ll leave at first light. You can walk up with them. The trail isn’t difficult, but can be confusing to one who’s never climbed it.”
“How long will they remain atop the mountain? I’ll need time to speak with Teti and I’d like to see the mines.”
“They won’t tarry.” Nebamon glanced toward the pad docks and said in a too-offhand voice, “If the donkeys are rested by the time they return-and they should be-I thought to leave in the early afternoon.”
Bak gave the officer a speculative look. He was convinced he wanted something, but what it might be, he could not imagine. “I’ve come too far to make such a hasty journey.”
Nebamon drank from his beer jar. Screwing up his face in distaste, he nodded. “I agree.”
Bak hated to ask the question. The answer might be costly.
“Could I convince you to stay an extra day?”
Nebamon’s
lips twitched. “On one condition.”
“That is?”
“When at last you reach the land of Kemet, I’d be obliged if you’d send back to me twenty jars of the finest brew you can find, and a single jar of a good northern wine.”
Bak burst out laughing. “Done.”
“I’d like to go with you, sir.” Psuro untied his rolled sleep ing mat, clutched the edge, and flung it out on the sand.
“We’re surrounded by soldiers, true, but if the man who’s been trying to slay you is close by, you’re no safer here than you were in the Eastern Desert.”
“I insist you accompany me, Sergeant, and Nebre and
Kaha as well.” Bak glanced toward User’s campsite. “I feel certain User and Ani will wish to go and probably all the other men who came across the Eastern Sea with us. Any one of them may be as much at risk as I am.”
“I doubt that, sir.”
Refusing to argue with him, Bak picked up his sleeping mat, untied it, and shook it open. A long, thick brownish snake writhed free and dropped to the ground. A viper. Snap ping out a curse, Bak leaped backward. The deadly reptile sped across the sand toward Psuro, who stood paralyzed with shock. Too far away from their weapons cache to grab a spear, Bak tore his dagger from its sheath. Uttering a hasty prayer to the lord Amon, he flung the weapon. The slender blade impaled the snake just below its head. While it whipped its tail, trying to shake itself free, Bak leaped toward the spears, grabbed one, and slashed the head from the crea ture. Moments later, the snake writhed its last.
Psuro stared, appalled, at the reptile. “How could a viper get into your sleeping mat?”
“Not by itself, I’d wager.”
The sergeant tore his eyes from the creature. “As I said be fore, sir, you’re no safer here among all these soldiers than you were in the solitude of the desert.”
Chapter 15
“Someone tried to slay me last night.” Bak looked at each of the men scattered around User’s camp, registering their reac tions. “When I unrolled my sleeping mat, a viper fell out. An angry viper bent on avenging its captivity.”
User, honing the edges of his spear point, showed no sur prise at this new attack on a member of the caravan, but his usual grim expression turned grimmer still. Nebenkemet looked up from the cooking bowl he was cleaning with sand and muttered a curse. Ani, who was tucking a dirty square of linen into his belt with the expectation of collecting a few samples of turquoise, looked appalled. Wensu, seated on the ground, the last to finish his morning meal, glanced quickly at the sand around him and scrambled to his feet.
Amonmose slipped his arms into the sleeves of his filthy tunic and pulled it over his head. “I thought we’d left that vile criminal behind when we crossed the sea.”
“Could not the snake have crawled inside to escape the heat?” Wensu asked.
As far as Bak could tell, each of the men had reacted in a predictable manner. “The mat was rolled too tight. Only be cause the lord Amon chose to smile upon Psuro did he avoid being struck by its deadly fangs.”
“And because you were quick with the dagger, sir.” The sergeant stood with the other Medjays at the edge of the camp, watching the men in User’s party as closely as Bak studied them.
About thirty paces away, Lieutenant Nebamon stood with
Sergeant Suemnut, a hard-muscled man of medium height, in front of the hut in which the supplies had been kept safe until they could be transported to the mines atop the moun tain of turquoise. They watched the soldiers who had come from the port with the caravan scurrying around, placing yokes on the prisoner’s shoulders and checking for balance the baskets and bundles of supplies and the water jars sus pended from either side. When they finished that task, more than half the soldiers, grumbling among themselves, as sumed identical burdens. The remaining men stood off to the side, fully armed and awaiting Suemnut’s signal to depart.
“I know several attempts have been made to slay you, but were they true attempts on your life?” User asked. “All who’ve vanished or have died were men familiar with the
Eastern Desert. As I am. You’d think I’d be the next target, not you.” He raised his hands to stave off comment and bared his teeth in a sham grin. “Don’t get me wrong, Lieutenant.
I’m grateful. But I’m also puzzled.”
Bak gave him a sharp look. “You knew the man we found dead at the well north of Kaine?”
“If I knew him, I’d have said so.” User scowled, irritated.
“You’re not the sole man in this caravan who’s capable of reaching the vast sum of two after adding one and one to gether. No sane man would travel the desert alone if he didn’t know it well.”
Bak ignored the sarcasm. “You’re right. To keep to his pat tern, he’d wish you dead instead of me. Unless he’s more afraid of me than you.”
“If it’s wealth he’s after, he has no reason to fear me. I’m no closer to finding gold today than I was twenty years ago.”
User’s laugh was humorless, directed at himself. “As for you,
Lieutenant: If I planned some vile deed abhorrent to the gods, I’d want you out of the way. You may not know this land, but you’re tenacious. And you’re a soldier free of the burdens of official duty, the nearest thing in this godforsaken land to a policeman.”
“I am a policeman.”
Bak glanced at Amonmose, the sole man among them who had known who he was. The trader smiled, relieved at the disclosure. Ani looked startled, while Wensu appeared an noyed. Nebenkemet’s expression shut down, a man refusing to reveal himself.
User burst out laughing. “I should’ve guessed. The ques tions you’ve asked, the way you examined the men we found dead, and most of all, the Medjays. Not many ordinary offi cers command a troop of Medjays.”
“How could you not tell us?” Wensu demanded. “We had a right to know. Men have been slain beneath our very noses, yet you sat back and did nothing. Said nothing. We needed protection, reassur…”
“Silence!” User snarled. “If the lieutenant and his men hadn’t joined our caravan, we might all be dead by now. His
Medjays have walked ten times the number of steps the rest of us have taken, scouting ahead, searching for him when he was abducted, following suspicious footprints. I’ve not seen you put forth one-tenth the effort.”
Thoroughly chastised, Wensu swallowed whatever else he thought to say.
“I came not as a policeman,” Bak said, “but as a soldier given a task by his commandant. If we’d not found the man dead at the well, I’d have revealed myself sooner. But men an swer questions more readily when asked by a friend or ac quaintance, so I decided to keep secret the fact that we’re policemen.”
“You thought one of us slew the stranger,” Ani said, clearly surprised.
“My men found no sign of an intruder.”
User eyed him thoughtfully. “You’ve been watching us ever since, saying nothing, hoping to pounce on the rat among us.”
“The night Dedu walked away to be slain, we found the footprint of an unknown party in your camp, a man whose print Kaha first spotted between Kaine and our initial camp site, the man who’s been watching us ever since. That print cleared no one of suspicion, but it suggested that someone other than any of you might’ve slain the first man.”
“What of Senna and Rona?” Amonmose asked.
“The floor of the gorge was too rocky, the patches of sand too disturbed to reveal footprints.”
“Do you continue to believe one of us is the guilty man?”
Ani asked. “Is that why you’ve come to us this morning?”
“I don’t know the name of the slayer,” Bak admitted, “nor am I convinced he’s among you. Whether or not he is, wher ever he is, I intend to snare him. If one of you has been help ing him, you’ll suffer a like fate. Make no mistake about that.” He scanned the faces of the men before him. “I keep no secrets. I share with my men all I know and suspect. I’ve re ported to the captain of the ship on which we cr
ossed the
Eastern Sea and to Lieutenant Puemre at the port. Any at tempt to silence me or to stop my investigation will be in vain.”
“I can’t believe any of them is a slayer.” Psuro, walking behind Bak up the narrow trail that led to the mines atop the mountain of turquoise, hoisted his quiver higher onto his shoulder. “Wensu’s all talk, too weak to face a man with a dagger. Ani wouldn’t know what to do with a weapon. As for the others…”
“You don’t think User could slay a man?”
“I do-for a good reason or in the heat of battle. I doubt he’d slay several men, one after the other, or creep up behind a man and stab him in the back.” Psuro glanced down the long, steep slope to their right, which was covered with bro ken chunks of reddish sandstone. “I believe the same to be true of Amonmose.”
Bak nodded, in full agreement. “What of Nebenkemet?”
“I’ve no doubt that he could slay a man, but would he?”
They walked on, following Sergeant Suemnut and four armed soldiers who led the supply train. Not a sound could be heard in the still air except the crunch of sandals on rock, a muttered curse now and then, and the faint call of a falcon soaring overhead. At the end of a long traverse around the curve of the mountain, they scrambled up a vertical section of reddish sandstone, split by erosion into thick, flat plates lying one on top of another.
Bak turned to watch the row of men ascending the path behind them. Nebre and Kaha were first in line. A dozen paces back, User led the men in his party, checking often to be sure Ani and Wensu were keeping pace. Next plodded the soldiers and prisoners laden with water jars and supplies.
Armed soldiers were spread along the line, maintaining the pace, preventing gaps, and watching for raiders. Attempts to steal supplies were rare, Lieutenant Huy had said, but not un known.