by Lauren Haney
Bak and Nebre scrambled out of the water. Nufer dipped an oil-soaked torch into the fire. While a flame burst into life, the two policemen slipped on their sandals and scooped up spears and shields. A quick glance verified that Minnakht had bolted.
Bak had expected no less.
The sailor plucked the torch from the fire and sped with
Bak and Nebre into the night, showering sparks behind them.
They ran along the base of the stony ridge, dodging rocks that rose out of the sand, splashing through pools of water, crunching across stretches of broken shell as sharp as the best bronze knife. Bak thanked the gods that he had had the foresight to inspect the landscape earlier.
Another whistle told them they were on the right course and bearing down on their quarry. A dozen paces farther, he spotted four men ahead. Psuro and the two fishermen stood around Minnakht, holding him in place with harpoons casu ally held but aimed at his breast.
“I should’ve known my flight was too easy.” Minnakht’s smile was thin, his good humor as shallow as the trickle of water beneath his feet. “You’d see me dead rather than let me make my own way back to Waset.”
Bak, refusing to answer smile with smile, motioned him to walk back toward camp. “Have I not kept you alive and well thus far?”
“You’ve kept me apart from all who might wish me ill, yes, but can you continue to do so?” Minnakht shook his head. “Not on a route as well traveled as the southern trail.
We’ll meet one man and another and another, and word that I live will spread like oil on swiftly moving water. An army couldn’t save me from my enemies.”
“We’ll guard you well, never fear.”
“I’ll wager that the men who wish me ill are the same as those who slew Senna and the others.”
“One man took their lives, not a multitude. If it’s you he seeks rather than me, we’ll snare him when he comes close.”
Minnakht stopped walking and gave a cynical laugh. “So
I’m the goat you’re staking out to attract a hyena.”
Bak took his arm and pressed him forward. “You’ll remain with us. We’ll see that you arrive in Kemet alive and well. Af ter that…” He let the thought hang, leaving the future open.
“Is Minnakht still sulking?” Bak asked. A night and a day had passed since the explorer’s attempt to slip away into the desert.
Psuro shook his head. “He can’t maintain the pose. He’s too genial by far.”
So they could talk without Minnakht hearing, they had walked south along the water’s edge, setting out as the sun dropped toward the western horizon. They were wading through the swells rushing onto the shore, splashing the sand and receding with a whisper. Garish red tentacles reached across the sky to be mirrored on the sea below.
They had camped on a barren shore, where the coastal plain was broad and the escarpment too far away to offer cover to a man attempting to run away. If a wadi drained the higher land, its mouth had widened out and had become lost in the flat expanse of sand and gravel.
“Never let him seduce you with his charm, Sergeant. He’ll flee if he can.”
Psuro frowned, perplexed. “Why he won’t resign himself to our protection, I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t entirely trust us,” Bak said with a wry smile.
The sergeant chuckled, but quickly sobered. “Nufer be lieves we’ll reach the southern trail late tomorrow or early the following morning. What are we to do with him then?”
Bak knelt to pick up the shell of a sea creature new to him.
Smelling the stench of the occupant decaying inside, he flung it into the sea. “I think it best that you hold him on the boat while I go ashore. I must report to the soldiers, and I must see if User and his party await us, as I suggested. I must also look for the nomad child Imset-or Nefertem, but I think his com ing unlikely.”
“Could Kaha have found him so quickly?”
“If Nefertem wanted to be found, I’m certain Kaha reached him. If he believed in my message, he’ll have sent the boy on his way within the hour.”
“The desert is vast, sir.”
“Yes, but one man alone can travel much faster than a caravan.”
They stood together, looking out upon the sea and a flock of squawking gulls swooping down for a late evening meal, flapping their wings and splashing the water while they squabbled for fish.
“What if Imset hasn’t come?” Psuro asked.
“We’ll wait.”
Bak prayed fervently that the child had arrived and even now stood on the shore awaiting them. The amount of food and water they had was limited. They could refill their water jars at the village well, but he doubted they could replenish their food supply unless they met a caravan carrying supplies destined for the mines across the sea.
“Lieutenant Bak!” The voice was childish but bordering on manhood.
Bak stepped away from the stone hut used as an office and storeroom by the soldiers who manned the outpost called
Tjau at the eastern end of the southern trail. A well encircled by a waist-high wall was nearby, and a stone-walled paddock enclosed a small herd of donkeys.
He looked in the direction from which the call had come, toward a dozen rough mud-and-reed huts occupied by no mads. Imset, who had been gathering dead branches from a clump of tamarisks a hundred or so paces away, dropped the bundle of fuel at the door of a hut and loped toward him across the hot sand.
Smiling, Bak strode out to meet the boy, scattering a flock of goats along the way, and clasped his shoulders in greeting.
The woman to whom the animals belonged stood in the doorway of the hut, keeping a close eye on man and boy. A small dark-haired girl clung to her ankle-length tunic and a baby crawled around her feet. A shaggy white dog lay with its head on its paws, watching the goats. Bak wondered if the woman was Imset’s mother or if he had joined her household to make himself less conspicuous while he waited.
Imset tugged from a leather pouch hanging from his belt the quartz pendant and a cloth-wrapped package. With a shy smile, he handed them to Bak. Bak unwrapped a limestone shard covered with writing. The message, written in the carefully formed script of a man who had long ago learned to write but seldom had occasion to do so, was brief and to the point: “I long to meet with my brother Minnakht. And with you, Lieutenant. You must travel west along the caravan trail. Your Medjay Kaha and I will await you at the well mid way between the sea and Waset. From there, we’ll travel on together.”
Bak smiled. The response could not have been more to his liking. Sobering, he stared off to the west, taking a few mo ments to decide what best to do.
“Do you know User?” he asked, pointing toward a camp site shaded by a large acacia some distance away. The ser geant in charge of the outpost had told him the explorer and his party had arrived four days earlier. He had urged them to continue west with the caravan, but they had refused, saying they wished to return to Kemet with Bak.
Imset led him to the crude hut. The woman and children shrank away, fearful of the stranger. Inside, lying on a bed of goatskins, he saw a length of bright fabric, several bronze spear and harpoon points, and a jar that contained honey or some other desirable substance difficult to get in the desert.
“You traded with him?”
“Trade. Yes.”
“Is User your friend?”
The boy nodded.
“Enemy?”
Imset shook his head vehemently. User had apparently won him over.
Signaling the boy to wait, he hurried to the building the soldiers occupied and asked for papyrus and writing imple ments. None of the men could read or write, so they were slow to take the request seriously. He snapped out an order, convincing them his need was real. The sergeant hastened to cut a small piece of papyrus from an inventory of supplies delivered some months earlier and a soldier located a scribal pallet so long unused that a thick layer of dust had to be scraped off before the ink could be moistened. Bak wrote a
quick message to Nefertem, rolled it tight, and tied it with a bit of string. Getting into the spirit of the task, the sergeant secured it with a daub of mud and impressed it with a seal he had never before had occasion to use.
Bak tucked the cylinder beneath his belt and went in search of Imset, who had returned to the tamarisks to gather more wood. After helping the boy carry his gleanings to the hut, he looked toward the campsite he had yet to visit. “User,” he pointed, “and you…” He touched Imset’s chest. “Walk west.” He pointed toward the place where the trail began.
The boy gave him an uncertain look. Either he did not recall the meaning of the word walk or he did not wish to remember.
“Walk.” Bak moved two fingers like a man walking.
Imset gave a reluctant nod.
“You walk with User to the well. To water.” Bak pointed again to the boy and toward the camp, placed the first two fingers of both hands side by side and made the walking mo tion, and pointed west. He cupped a hand and pretended to drink, reminding Imset of the meaning of the word water.
Imset shook his head. “I walk with you to water.”
“You walk with User. I follow.” Bak made the walking motion with his right hand followed closely by two fingers of his left hand.
A stubborn look settled on Imset’s face and he turned to walk away.
Bak caught his arm to halt his flight, withdrew the papyrus from beneath his belt, and held it out. “For Nefertem.”
Imset took the scroll and inspected the seal. He looked at
User’s camp, thought over what Bak wished him to do, and nodded that he understood: the message must reach Nefer tem ahead of Bak. “I walk with User.”
“You want us to travel on to the well without you.” User gave Bak a suspicious look. “What’re you up to, Lieutenant?”
Bak laughed. “I’ll be no more than a day behind you.”
“What are we to do when we get there?”
“Make camp and wait for me. The water is good, so the soldiers here say, and the man who dwells there is friendly.
I’m certain he’ll enjoy talking to someone new for a change, and his wife will appreciate the goods you have to trade.”
Bak had left Imset to gather his few belongings and had walked to User’s camp. Minmose had greeted him with a huge smile and Amonmose with the hug of a bear. The other men, though more restrained in their actions, were openly delighted to see him, but were concerned that his Medjays had not come with him. Upon learning that his men were alive and well, their smiles returned and they urged him to sit with them, share their beer, and tell them of his travels. He obliged, giving them a brief account of his journey. True to his word, he made no mention of Minnakht.
User, whom he had drawn away from the camp as soon as he decently could, looked across a stretch of sand toward the men packing up to leave in the cool of evening. “The trail is easy to follow and I know it well from my youth. Why is the boy coming with us? Not as a guide, I’d wager.”
“He wishes to go west with me. I prefer that he travel with you.”
User eyed him thoughtfully. “You’ve a reason, I suppose.”
“One that should become clear when you reach the well.”
The explorer scowled, not happy with the evasion. “Why did you not tell us to go on with the caravan? Now we’ll be alone and at the mercy of the man who slew Dedu and Senna,
Rona and the stranger. The one who’s tried more than once to slay you.”
“His attention will be focused on me. You’ll be safer with out me.”
Looking unconvinced and not at all happy, User growled,
“I pray to all the gods in the ennead that you’re right.” He re alized the import of Bak’s words, added, “And that you’ll stay safe as well as us.”
“The trek will be well worth your while, I assure you.”
From the soldiers, Bak obtained three donkeys to carry water and supplies westward. Twenty-four hours after User’s party moved on, he, Nebre, Psuro, and two armed sailors
Nufer had loaned them escorted Minnakht along the trail.
The explorer made no real attempt to slip away, but he con stantly tested the men who were guarding him. Bak guessed he did not know this part of the desert well, and was waiting to make his move when he came to a place he knew better.
Before sunrise on the fourth morning after striking out from the sea, they strode into a large valley whose flat ex panse was blanketed in golden sand. It was enclosed by brownish hills that appeared low at a distance but proved, as they walked forward, to be high and rugged, singularly un inviting. The sun, a sliver of gold, peeked above the horizon to the west, bathing the sky in red and orange, revealing near the center of the sandy plain a stand of trees. What appeared in the dim light of dawn to be squarish mounds of stone grad ually revealed themselves as three drystone buildings and a walled structure that Bak assumed was the well.
Minnakht walked slower, reluctant to approach the tiny, isolated oasis. When the growing light and a fresh perspec tive revealed twenty or more donkeys in a walled paddock, he stopped. “You vowed to keep me safe.”
“I’ve heard that the man who dwells here exchanges healthy donkeys for caravan animals that show a weakness or an ill ness.” Psuro, walking beside the explorer, had never ceased to remind him in some oblique way of the manner in which he had neglected his animals. “He cures them and sees that they get good food and water until another exchange is needed.”
Bak doubted such was the case, but the barbed comment seemed to ease Minnakht’s doubts-at least for a while.
They strode on across the valley floor, walking on the hard sand alongside multiple paths softened by the hooves of many donkeys. The sun burst above the horizon to glare into their faces. The oasis slowly came to life. A donkey brayed and a goose cackled. Dogs barked, setting to flight a flock of birds, black silhouettes against the brilliant sky. Bak expected the dogs to come running and soon they did, a dozen scruffy mutts barking bravely from afar but too shy to come near.
The closer the men came to the cluster of buildings, the more tightly strung Minnakht became. He was not the only man to feel the strain. Bak adjusted his hand on his spear, balancing it better for use. He had to force himself to keep his pace regular and unhurried. Psuro, Nebre, and the sailors continually scanned the land to either side. Nebre retrieved his bow and quiver from the back of a donkey.
Two boys left the largest building and took a donkey from the paddock. The dogs streaked back to the oasis and fol lowed them north up a broad subsidiary wadi. They had to have noticed the party of approaching men, but gave no sign of greeting. A short time later, a woman left the building to draw water. A small child followed and pestered her until she finished her task. As she turned away from the well, she looked their way, waved, and in a leisurely fashion, carried the heavy jar inside. A donkey brayed as if forgotten. Two others took up the plea.
Minnakht stopped twenty paces from the closest building.
“You go ahead, Lieutenant. Make sure this place is safe.”
Bak barked out a humorless laugh. “You’d sacrifice your mother if you thought it to your advantage. Would you not,
Ahmose?”
The man who called himself Minnakht stiffened. “What?”
“Ahmose. Is that not your name?”
“You’ve lost your wits.”
Bak stepped away from the explorer, as did Psuro. Out of arm’s reach. The grim expression on their faces told truer than words how serious they were-and how unlikely they were to believe any denial.
Minnakht-or Ahmose-swung toward the sailors, the least wary and poorest trained of his guards. He flailed out at one man, shouldered the other aside, and began to run.
Bak, who had expected no less, raced after him, with
Psuro, Nebre, and the sailors fanning out behind. Suddenly twenty or more men burst from behind the nearest building.
Ahmose veered sharply away. Bak closed in on him, leaped at him, and with a f
lying tackle, pulled him to the ground. His prisoner tried to kick himself free and scramble away, but
Psuro grabbed an arm, jerked him to his knees, and placed his spear point to his breast.
The men who had appeared from behind the building swept forward, led by Nefertem and User. The group in cluded Imset, the members of User’s party, and more than a dozen nomads. They encircled Bak, his men, and his prisoner.
“You vowed to bring Minnakht,” Nefertem said, glower ing. “This is not my friend.”
“He’s not the man I knew,” User seconded the opinion.
“Who is he?”
“I couldn’t bring Minnakht, Nefertem. I fear he’s dead. I brought instead the man who took his life.” Bak grabbed a handful of hair and forced the captive to raise his chin so all could see his face. “His name is Ahmose. Like Minnakht, he explored the Eastern Desert-but farther north in the area where Senna grew to manhood. Senna was his guide and a longtime friend, but he slew him anyway, fearing I’d force the truth from him. I believe he also claimed to be Min nakht’s friend. When the pretense failed, he took his life while trying to force him to reveal the location of the gold he believed he’d found.”
The nomad chieftain, his mouth tight with anger, glared at the prisoner, then drew his hand back and slapped him so hard the crack of the blow echoed across the valley.
Chapter 19
“You’re a dead man, Ahmose. You know that, don’t you?”
Bak, seated on a large rock in front of the well, had long ago lost patience with his prisoner, who refused to say a word.
Nefertem’s slap had not only raised four elongated red welts on Ahmose’s cheek, but had sealed his lips. “Whether you re main here with the nomads or whether we take you back to the land of Kemet, your fate rests in the hands of the lady
Maat. She’s not a forgiving goddess.”
“Nor am I a merciful man.” Nefertem, who had been sit ting on a low stool, looking on in silence, rose to his feet to tower over the man seated on the sand, his hands tied behind his back. “You risked death for what, you swine? For a faint hope of wealth? For gold you couldn’t find but thought to steal?” The nomad hissed between his teeth, the sound of a snake preparing to strike.