Path of Shadows lb-8

by Lauren Haney

  Ahmose shrank back but remained mute.

  User, perched on three mudbricks stacked to form a seat, pulled a stick from the smoldering hearth over which a gazelle cooked, and prodded the fire to make it burn hotter.

  The Medjays, the men of User’s party, and the nomads sat on the ground, forming a half circle around them. The dogs, which had returned in ones and twos, lay in a loose group behind the men, looking on like additional witnesses. The family who dwelt in the oasis sat in front of their house, watching. The men of Kemet were offering various ways of breaking the prisoner’s silence, each more disagreeable than the one before. A young nomad who could speak the tongue of Kemet continually translated for his brethren, who built on the suggestions with ideas of their own.

  User rotated the stick, examining its fiery tip. “Dedu was my friend. A good friend. You didn’t just take his life. You left him for carrion.” A calculated look settled on the ex plorer’s face and he shifted his gaze to the prisoner. “I say we blind this snake and turn him loose in this barren land with no water or food.”

  A murmur of agreement swept through the onlookers. A donkey brayed, as if offering its consent.

  “No!” Ahmose scrambled back, his horrified eyes locked on the stick. “You must take me to Kemet, Lieutenant. My offenses must be weighed on the scales of justice, not left in the hands of these desert swine.”

  “Ah,” Nefertem said, dropping onto his stool. “He can talk.”

  Flinging User a hasty look of thanks, Bak shoved himself back against the wall that enclosed the well, startling a lizard that darted across the hot sand to the shelter of a broad-leafed vine. “Are we correct in believing Minnakht died rather than tell you of the gold you sought?”

  Ahmose tore his eyes from the stick User continued to toy with. “I’ve searched the Eastern Desert for a lifetime, think ing to become a wealthy man. I know this land holds vast riches, and I knew that someday…”

  User cleared his throat, urging him to omit the prologue.

  The prisoner’s quick response was gratifying. “I bumped into Minnakht in Waset-a year ago, that must’ve been-and he let slip hints of his good fortune. I thought to learn his se cret. Later he would say nothing, and in my anger I slew him.”

  “Have you not failed to fill in the details of your black deed?” Bak asked in a hard voice. “When first we met, you told me you were brought across the sea, dropped on the shore, and were accosted by men who beat you and left you to die. Was that tale Minnakht’s rather than yours?”

  Ahmose hesitated, but finally nodded. “Yes.”

  User’s mouth twisted in contempt. “You met him as a friend, then set upon him, bound him so he was helpless, and beat him to death. What kind of man are you?”

  Ahmose’s mouth clamped tight, which in itself was an ad mission of guilt.

  Nefertem made a sound deep within his throat, part angry growl, part heartfelt pain. The nomads seated around them, who had thought of Minnakht as one of themselves, glared at the prisoner and murmured angry words. Wensu and Ani,

  Amonmose and Nebenkemet looked shocked and saddened.

  The old man who cooked for Nefertem scurried forward.

  For a moment Bak thought he meant to slay the prisoner. In stead he spat on his face, turned his back to him in a gesture of contempt, and rotated the gazelle over the hearth.

  As the old man retreated, Bak pressed on, not bothering to hide his disgust for so cowardly a murder. “Why did you send Senna to Minnakht’s father? Why did he not simply dis appear in the desert?”

  “I thought to convince Inebny that his son was truly dead,”

  Ahmose said, wiping the spittle onto his shoulder, “and

  Senna wished to collect the livestock and supplies he was due. It never occurred to us that the commander would find a man to take up the search-you, a seasoned police officer and that he’d insist Senna serve as your guide. Or that you’d join User’s caravan.”

  “I doubt we would have if a dead man hadn’t been found when first we came upon them.” Bak’s voice grew hard, grim. “You slew that man, did you not?”

  Ahmose hesitated. User shook the stick at him like the long finger of a teacher reprimanding a pupil. The tip had turned black as the heat dissipated, a fact the prisoner had to have noticed. Still, he answered with a nod.

  “Who was he?”

  “He was a soldier, Paser by name, a friend of Minnakht.

  He’d seen us together in Waset, heard us talk of the Eastern

  Desert and gold. I thought never to see him another time, but when he appeared at that well, I knew he must die.”

  User jabbed the stick in among the burning embers. “How did you slay him without leaving footprints?”

  Ahmose curled a lip, betraying a superiority he was in no po sition to feel. “I’m far more a man of the desert than Minnakht ever was. He regularly returned to the land of Kemet, shrugging off his life as a desert wanderer, while I often dwelt throughout the year with Senna’s clan.” His eyes slid toward Bak. “I know more of tracking than you or your Medjays will ever know,

  Lieutenant, and I know how to hide any sign of my presence.”

  Bak glanced at his men, who looked as if they themselves were ready to commit murder. “From then on, you thought to watch us night and day.”

  Ahmose smirked. “The watching man, you called me.”

  Noting the pride he took in the appellation, Bak said, “You carried off well the look of a nomad.”

  “I dared not risk being seen by the people who came to the wells to water their flocks-they’d have known I wasn’t one of them-and most of the transitory pools had dried up. I’d not bathed for some time. When Senna told me you believed me a nomad, I thought your error would serve me well.”

  He was so smug Bak had to resist the urge to strike him.

  “Why slay Dedu?”

  “By then I was wearying of your pursuit. No matter what

  I did to discourage you, you refused to give up. So I thought to pass myself off to you as Minnakht. I couldn’t risk Dedu seeing me. I knew him from long ago, and he wouldn’t have forgotten.”

  “You were the man who destroyed his daughter’s future,”

  Bak guessed. “You’re the father of her child.”

  Ahmose let out a barklike laugh. “When Dedu realized I meant to slay him, he tried to play on my sympathies by telling me I had a child, a girl. I didn’t believe him, and I don’t believe you.”

  “You slew your daughter’s grandfather, Ahmose.”

  A look of self-doubt-or possibly pain-flitted across Ah mose’s face. He erased it with a thin smile. “Dedu would never have told you, a stranger, a secret so painful to him.”

  “Believe what you wish,” Bak said with a shrug. “You’ll never have the chance to see the child.”

  The two boys who had traveled north earlier in the day walked into the oasis. Bak could see nothing but the don key’s head, feet, and tail, so heavily laden was it with dry twigs gleaned from the bushes that grew in the nearby wadis.

  Looking curiously at the gathering of men, the youths left the laden animal in the shade of a tree and hurried to the house to learn what they had missed.

  “Why slay Senna?” Bak asked, “a man you claim was your longtime friend?”

  “You know why. He pushed you into the face of the flood, trying to slay you. Sooner or later you’d have gotten the truth from him.” Ahmose’s mouth twisted into a cynical smile. “I once saved his life-you saw the scar on his shoulder-so I suppose I could say it was mine to take.”

  “What of Rona?” Bak demanded.

  The prisoner glanced toward Psuro, sitting with Nebre,

  Kaha, and Minmose, their expressions dark, threatening. He lowered his voice, as if he hoped to prevent their hearing. “I held no ill will toward him. He saw me slay Senna.”

  Bak wanted to smash Ahmose in the face. Nebre, burning with rage, leaped forward, trying to reach the bound man.

  Psuro, no less f
urious, grabbed the Medjay’s arm, halting him, and snapped an order to Kaha and Minmose, forbidding them to move.

  “You met me and we talked,” Bak said, suppressing his anger with an effort. “If I hadn’t insisted you join our cara van, which was made up of far too many men who’d know you weren’t Minnakht, would you have followed us across the Eastern Sea?”

  “I knew, when I failed to join you as I promised, that you’d guess the truth.” Ahmose wiped his face on his shoulder a second time, as if he could still feel the spittle. “Senna had told me you’d talked with Nefertem. I suspected you’d joined forces, and I dared not slay you in this wretched desert. I thought to follow you into that alien land, where I could slay you and slip away, with no fierce tribe of nomads prepared to avenge your death.”

  Leaning forward, elbows on knees, Nefertem spoke in a voice as soft and rumbling as the purr of a lion. “Tell me of my father, Ahmose. You took his life, did you not?”

  Not a man present could mistake the threat, and Ahmose was no exception. “I know nothing of his death.”

  User jerked the stick from the hearth and held its flame-red end within a hand’s breadth of the prisoner’s eyes. “We want no lies, Ahmose.”

  The bound man cringed. Whether he feared most the tribal chieftain or the explorer, Bak could not begin to guess. “In the beginning I believed that if I was to learn where Min nakht had found gold, Senna had to get close to him. He had to serve as his guide. But as long as your father lived, he would accept no one else.” Ahmose saw the fury on Nefer tem’s face and quickly looked away. “I placed poison in his waterbag. I meant him to die right away, but he drank too small an amount. He lingered long enough to go home, and there I heard he died.”

  Nefertem bounded forward, gripped him by the neck, and began to squeeze. Ahmose pounded the earth with his feet, his face turned fiery. Bak shouted an order to Psuro, who leaped forward. Together with User, the three of them pulled the nomad from the man he meant to slay.

  The tribal chief was still struggling, still trying to reach the man who had slain his father, when Bak shouted, “Nefertem!

  Stop! He must see the truth.”

  Bak’s words seeped into the nomad’s heart and he grew more calm. Staring at Ahmose, he shrugged off User’s grip and Psuro’s and wiped the sweat from his face. A harsh laugh escaped from his lips and he nodded. “Yes, let him see what a fool he’s been.”

  Early in the evening, User’s party, the nomads, and Bak and his Medjays left the oasis with their prisoner to travel north up the subsidiary wadi. Bak had thought Nefertem would object when he said he wished the explorer and his party to come along, but his fears proved unfounded. The tribal chief agreed they had every right to participate to the end.

  They rested through the darkest of the night and set out long before daybreak to follow a series of smaller wadis deeper into the desert. An hour after sunrise, they arrived at a camp, simple in construction and inhabited by nomads. Several tents that looked suspiciously like those issued to the soldiers of

  Kemet had been erected near the base of a tall brownish hill. A rough wall of stone supported a lean-to of spindly poles and brush. A dozen or so donkeys stood in its shade, munching hay that might well have been stolen from a caravan crossing the desert between Kemet and the Eastern Sea.

  A tall, thin nomad stood beside a tent, removing baskets of grain from the back of a mule. Bak smiled. This had to be the animal on which he had been transported during his abduc tion.

  The man returned his smile. “Lieutenant Bak. I’m happy to see you again.”

  Bak stared, aware that somewhere in the past he had seen this man, but where? “Waset!” he said. “You were with your wife, preparing to leave the city.”

  “You came to our aid.” The man glanced at Nefertem. “I told my brother of the service you did us.”

  “Your brother?” Bak looked at the tribal chieftain, surprised.

  Nefertem gave him what might have passed for a sheepish smile in a man less regal. “When I took you captive, you were unknown to me. Some days later, Hor came to our camp. When I told him of you, he told me of the way you’d saved his life. His and that of his wife and unborn child. Not until then was I certain I could trust you.”

  Eyeing Hor in a new light, Bak guessed, “You’d gone into

  Waset to trade?”

  “My wife was carrying our first child.” Hor smiled at the thought, but quickly sobered. “I wished her to talk to a woman of Kemet who helps others give birth. I paid the woman dearly to reveal her secrets, thinking to improve their chance of survival during the ordeal.”

  “While in the city,” Nefertem added, “they picked up a few items impossible to get in this empty land. We’ve a friend who helps us trade for what we need. What we can’t carry on a single donkey, he brings later on a string of animals.”

  Bak thought of the besotted fools who had attacked Hor out of simple malice. If they had only known that he had ar rived in the capital carrying the wealth of the desert. “Your wife is well, I hope?”

  “I have a son,” Hor beamed. “We call him Minnakht.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.” User stared in awe at the gigantic slash in the earth.

  “Nor have I,” Bak said, as amazed as the explorer.

  Nebenkemet shook his head, whether in wonder or nega tion was impossible to tell. “Not the best way of taking gold from the earth. Too much effort by far.”

  “I’d prefer toiling in the open air to burrowing in the dark ness of a tunnel,” Ani said, “but those high walls don’t look safe.”

  Ahmose stood with them, hands bound behind his back, staring at the long ditch cut deep into the side of the high brown hill. A half-dozen nomads were breaking up the stone at the far end and a like number carried heavy baskets back along the cut, taking the broken stone to be processed. The prisoner’s face looked gray. He had come so close to finding what he sought. Now here he was, looking upon his failure.

  “You know mining?” Nefertem eyed Nebenkemet with in terest. “Minnakht said there had to be a better way, but this is all we knew to do.”

  “I not long ago toiled in the gold mines east of Abu.”

  Nebenkemet wiped the sweat from his brow, added, “I could make a few suggestions if you wish.”

  Bak turned away from the excavation to walk a half-dozen paces along a well-trodden track to where the bearers were emptying their baskets beside a second group of nomads.

  These men were seated on the ground, pounding the exca vated rock, painstakingly reducing the stone to the consis tency of coarse sand. Another man sprinkled the granules into a sloping metal basin partially filled with water. He sloshed them around, allowing the gold to fall to the bottom while the lighter stone remained on top.

  “I guessed Minnakht had found gold when I was told of the questions he asked at the turquoise and copper mines,”

  Bak said. “Or did you find the vein, Nefertem, and ask for his help?”

  “We’ve been taking gold from this place for many years, but we believed the vein had run out. I knew we could trust

  Minnakht, so I brought him here. He urged us to dig farther.

  He was right. The vein went on and our ditch went ever deeper, its walls higher and less stable. One man was felled by falling rocks, losing his life, and several have been hurt when walls collapsed. Minnakht thought to cross the sea to learn a safer way of mining.”

  A pottery bowl sat on the ground beside the man washing out the gold. A mound of the precious metal sparkled within.

  Bak glimpsed Ahmose’s face, his look of unadulterated greed.

  “I suppose he found other veins in this wadi.”

  “He did.” Nefertem beckoned a nomad who stood nearby.

  The man poured the glittering grains of gold from the bowl into a leather bag already bulging with earlier deposits and handed it to the tribal chief. “My people have no need for great wealth. We dig only what we require to keep us alive and well in ti
mes of hardship. When we come to the end of this vein, we’ll go on to another.”

  “I’ve a need to relieve myself,” Ahmose said.

  “Can you not wait?” Psuro snapped.

  “You must free my hands so I can lower my loincloth.”

  Psuro looked to Bak for a decision, but Ahmose groaned and bent over, making his need clear. Not a man among them failed to think of how awkward and unpleasant it would be to clean a man in this place where every drop of water was in valuable. The sergeant nodded to Nebre, who jerked his dag ger out of its sheath and slashed through the leather cord binding the prisoner’s hands.

  Ahmose straightened, flung away the cord, and shoul dered Nebre aside. He tore the bag of gold from Nefertem’s hand and raced down the trail toward the camp. He had run no more than twenty paces when Hor and four other nomads came around the shoulder of the mountain, blocking his path.

  He swung around, saw Bak, Psuro, and Nebre speeding after him, and veered aside to race up the slope toward the mine.

  The rocks on the hillside were jagged and sharp-edged, forcing Ahmose either to enter the huge ditch, which was a dead end, or climb up the hill to right or left. All along both sides of the excavation, the surface had been smoothed by the miners to form a path from which they could suspend a few men to cut away more of the wall. Ahmose chose the path on the downhill side of the ditch.

  Bak and his Medjays raced after him. Close behind came

  Nefertem and two nomads armed with bows. The other men were spreading themselves across the hillside, cutting Ah mose off should he try to return to the wadi. Bak sped up the slope, angry at the ease with which the prisoner had tricked them and determined to recapture him. Psuro, who was furi ous at having been made to look the fool, and Nebre, adding a new grudge to the old, ran so close behind that Bak feared they would step on his heels.

  The hill rose toward the sky; the man-made chasm grew deeper. Bak slowly closed the gap between himself and Ah mose. Fifteen paces. Twelve. Ten. The fresher dirt near the top was softer, looser, slowing the pace. He began to fret.