Face Turned Backward lb-2

by Lauren Haney

  “I love my husband, Lieutenant.”

  His laugh held little humor. “A man who would sell the land you’ve nurtured so he might lie in the arms of another.”

  She glanced toward Penhet and saw for the first time that he was awake. She saw the way he was looking at her, the fear in his eyes, the horror. Her defiance melted; her expression became a warped version of his, reflecting an equal horror and a dawning fear. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

  Bak suddenly realized, just as Penhet must have, that she had never intended him to awaken from his drug-induced sleep. Surprised by the knowledge yet not surprised, he backed off, giving her her moment of realization. Imsiba, always distressed by tears, dropped off the stairway and bus-20 / Lauren Haney ied himself brushing the dust from his spear and shield.

  Netermose looked shaken by guilt, as if he shared the responsibility for all that had occurred-and in a way he did.

  Bak walked to the doorway. He kicked the mudbricks off the mat and swept it aside. A cool and gentle breeze greeted him, a soothing gift after so harsh a storm. Dust still hung in the air, but soon it would settle, leaving the evening as soft and delightful as a winter’s day back home in Kemet.

  He stared across the fields toward the river, looking forward to a cooling, cleansing swim.

  “Lieutenant Bak!” A tall, wiry sentry trotted up the quay, his bronze spearpoint reflecting the last red-gold rays of the setting sun. “Commandant Thuty wants to see you, Lieutenant. Right away.”

  Bak scrambled onto the quay, pulled the skiff in close, and snugged the vessel to the mooring post. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know, sir. A courier came from the north, and not long after we were told to intercept you.” The sentry tried not to stare at Rennefer, seated in the skiff, her hands in her lap, wrists tied together. “Troop Captain Nebwa is with him now.”

  A courier from the north, Bak thought. Probably a message from the viceroy. And Nebwa summoned as well. Another storm was brewing, he sensed, this one created by man rather than the gods.

  Chapter Two

  “If Penhet had told her about Meret, in time she might’ve come to accept her,” Bak said. “But she learned by chance.

  From one of Netermose’s field hands.”

  “I dislike making judgments against women. Especially in cases like this where the only right and true punishment is death.” Commandant Thuty leaned back against the waist-high breastwork overlooking the buildings within the citadel.

  He grimaced at the task the gods had dropped into his lap.

  “Why couldn’t Rennefer accept the girl like the sensible woman all who knew her thought she was?”

  Thuty was a short, broad man, with powerful muscles accented by the strong evening light. The officer’s hair and brows were thick and heavy, the set of his mouth firm. Like Bak, who had taken a quick but cleansing dip in the river and a detour to his quarters to change clothes, he wore a thigh-length white kilt, a broad multicolored bead collar with matching bracelets, and woven reed sandals. He wielded his baton of office like an extension of his arm, pointing, patting his leg, prodding an odd-looking lump in a corner.

  Bak could offer no consolation. “I suspect her wits were so addled by sudden anger that she stabbed him without thought.”

  “Time and time again?” Troop Captain Nebwa snorted.

  “He was lucky the neighbor came along when he did. And she was lucky Netermose didn’t stumble on her, dagger in hand, slashing away like the garrison butcher.”

  The coarse-featured officer, Thuty’s second-in-command, was half a hand taller than Bak, and heavier. His unruly hair needed cutting, the hem of his kilt was hiked up on one side.

  A blue faience amulet of the eye of Horus hung from a bronze chain around his thick neck. As usual, he had neglected to carry his baton of office, preferring to keep both hands free to use as he liked.

  Bak was familiar enough with his friend’s colorful manner of speech to ignore it. “The stabbing was spontaneous, I feel sure, but the root of mandrake was another tale altogether.

  She meant to slay him. Either to punish him, to silence him, or to hold the farm for herself. Or for all those reasons and more. But she measured out a smaller quantity than needed, one too meager to slay a man.”

  “Penhet is beholden to the gods.” Nebwa grinned. “She has no aptitude for murder.”

  “He’s flat on his belly and helpless-and will be for a week or more. She’d have succeeded sooner or later.” Bak had had enough of Rennefer. Thanks to the lord Amon, he had not fallen into her web of deceit, but he had come uncomfortably close. Whether or not this poor adventure would gain him respect among the local people remained an open question.

  He leaned against the parapet and stared down at the city, a series of rectangles, gray-white in the fading light, outlined by streets and lanes buried in shadow. Thuty had ushered him and Nebwa to the top of the fortress wall, the most private place in Buhen, for a reason. Would he never get to it?

  In the corner below lay the commandant’s residence, from which a long open stairway rose up the wall to the massive corner tower beside which they stood. Granaries and warehouses were easily recognized by their vast size. The walled temple, mansion of the lord Horus of Buhen, towered above the more commonplace buildings on a high manmade mound. Beside it stood the old guardhouse Bak and his Medjays used as a prison and operations center. Barracks blocks and a sector of interconnected villas housing officers and scribes and their families occupied the far side of the nearly square citadel.

  Pinpoints of light scattered across the rooftops reflected the brightening stars in a sky turning dark. Each dot represented a baked clay brazier and a family sharing their evening meal. Smoke mingled with the odors of cooking oil, onions, braised fish and fowl, and the ever-present smell of manure wafting into the citadel from the animal paddocks in the outer city. A pack of dogs raced down a street, snarling at a creature too small to see, a rat most likely. Donkeys brayed, a courting tomcat yowled. Bak thought of his first days in Buhen, when he had disliked the fortress and resented the task he had been given. Now Buhen was home, a place of comfort and friendship, and he was proud to stand at the head of the Medjay police.

  Dismissing Rennefer with a shake of his head, Thuty broke the long silence. “I guess you know a courier arrived from the viceroy before the storm broke?” He paused, waiting for their nods, then went on, “The vizier, so the message said, believes trade items from far upriver are reaching the hands of northern kings-rulers of Mitanni, Amurru, Keftiu, even far-off Hatti-without first passing through the treasury in Waset.”

  Bak raised an eyebrow. Surely this was not why he and Nebwa had been summoned. “We’ve heard that rumor before, and it’s never proven true. At least not in a quantity large enough to cause worry.”

  “We’re speaking of more this time than a few small items that crossed the frontier on the back of a donkey, hidden among bundles of skins and baskets of ostrich eggs. We’re speaking of ivory. Whole, uncut tusks. Only the lord Amon knows what else has slipped past us.”

  “A tusk can stand as tall or taller than I do, and it can weigh almost as much.” Bak tried not to sound as skeptical as he felt. “That’s not an easy thing to smuggle.”

  Nebwa snorted. “Impossible, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t want to believe it any more than you do,” Thuty said, scowling at the pair before him, “but it’s a fact. Our 24 / Lauren Haney envoy to the king of Tyre saw a tusk in the palace there. It held pride of place, a new and treasured possession. He took offense, thinking our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut, had delegated another man to present the gift without his knowledge. That very day he sent a courier to Waset, to the vizier.

  The tusk was not a gift from the royal house. Nor had it passed through the treasury, as it should have.” Thuty looked first at Bak and then Nebwa, his mouth set, his eyes flinty.

  “We’ve been ordered to search all vessels sailing this sector
of the river and all caravans coming across the desert. The garrisons farther south along the Belly of Stones will have a like responsibility.”

  “We’ll not find an uncut tusk on a caravan,” Nebwa said.

  “We might discover a few good-sized chunks. We sometimes do. But nothing that size.”

  “What of the lands east of Tyre?” Bak asked, as slow to be convinced as Nebwa was. “They say elephants are found beyond the two mighty rivers that flow south instead of north. Could the tusk have come from there?”

  Thuty raised his baton to acknowledge an approaching sentry, a lanky young man wearing a short kilt, carrying a white cowhide shield and a long spear. “The chancellor of Tyre, the king’s right hand, assured our envoy it came from far to the south of Kemet. And it was no gift from one royal house to another. It was bought from a merchant in exchange for gold.”

  Before Bak or Nebwa could utter a word, he cut them short. “Further discussion is futile. The vizier has issued a command, and we must obey.” He waited for the sentry to pass by, walk into the tower, and climb the ladder to the roof. “We’ve been ordered to keep the smuggled tusk our secret, saying nothing to anyone. The vizier wants no rumors spreading across the frontier that the land of Kemet no longer wields the power it did when our sovereign’s father, Akheperkare Tuthmose, sat on the throne.”

  “Every captain we delay will squawk like a snared goose,” grumbled Nebwa, who had little interest in politics.

  “Every trader, caravan master, fisherman. Every man bringing a load of vegetables across the river.”

  “Send them to me. I’ll silence them soon enough.”

  Bak saw the task was unavoidable, but felt he must point out a truth. “As soon as word spreads that we’re looking for contraband-and the news will fly faster than dust in a gale-not so much as a sandstone chip will cross the frontier without proper clearance and a careful accounting, with the toll already laid out for collection. We’d have more success with random inspections.”

  “You know rumor will make the smugglers cautious,” Thuty said, “and I know it, and the viceroy knows it. But try sending word to the capital. To the vizier. Do you think he’ll listen to the men in the garrisons, those who know from experience?”

  Bak had no answer, nor did Thuty expect one. The complaint was chronic, one common to all frontier commanders who longed to be heard by the men who walked the corridors of power, but whose messages were more often than not lost in bureaucratic indifference.

  Thuty crossed the walkway to the battlements that looked down on the outer city, a huge rectangular area surrounding the three desert-facing sides of the citadel, and enclosed by walls as high and as strong. Bak and Nebwa followed, sneaking a glance at each other, a shared thought: How long would this exercise in futility continue?

  Below, the lanes were crooked, the blocks irregular in shape, the buildings thrown together in random fashion.

  Within these cramped structures were workshops and homes of craftsmen and traders. Farther out lay the animal enclosures, encampments for transient soldiers, and an ancient cemetery.

  “I thought at first to make this solely a military operation, but now I believe the police, not the army, should be responsible for the task here in Buhen.” Thuty saw the surprise on Bak’s face and raised his baton, staving off objections. “I know. The Medjay force is too small to shoulder this effort and perform its normal duties as well. So we’ll use a 26 / Lauren Haney mixed team-police and military-with you, Lieutenant, in command.”

  Nebwa heaved an unmistakable sigh of relief. “I can’t think of anyone more suited to the job,” he said magnanimously.

  “Let me know how many men you’ll need and I’ll be glad to oblige.”

  Bak resisted the urge to elbow his friend hard in the ribcage. He knew Nebwa preferred rough-and-tumble soldiering over the more mundane duties of manning a frontier garrison, and he sympathized much of the time. But now, with so onerous a task ahead, it was difficult to feel compassion.

  “Lest you fear I’m neglecting you, Troop Captain,” Thuty said with a wry smile, “Kor will be your responsibility. Your men will search every bag and basket on every donkey traveling north through the desert, just as Bak’s men will investigate the vessels sailing these waters.”

  Bak stifled a laugh. The old fortress of Kor, subsidiary to Buhen, stood at the lower end of the Belly of Stones, a long stretch of rapids not navigable through most of the year. The fort served as a place where northbound trade goods were shifted from donkey caravans to trading vessels, or the reverse. It was a dry, dusty post, far less appealing than the harbor of Buhen.

  “How was I to know he needed a pass?” Ramose, the florid-faced captain of the trading ship moored alongside the quay on which he stood, planted his legs wide apart, his fists on his hips, and glared at the officer standing before him.

  “He told me he came from the north, not the south. You can’t hold me responsible for another man’s lies!”

  Bak let the seaman’s belligerence pass over him with an indifference born of practice. Most of a day had passed since the commandant had ordered the all-out search for contraband, and every boatman on the quay had vented his anger and resentment in one way or another-the smaller the boat, the louder and more vociferous the complainant. He turned to the lean, sinewy man whose arm was caught in the firm grip of a hulking young Medjay policeman. “Explain yourself, Tjanuny!”

  The dusky offender drew his shoulders back and raised his chin high, refusing to be intimidated. “My brother lives in Kemet, sir, tilling the fields of an illustrious nobleman whose estate is a day’s walk north of Abu. I thought to go there, to make a new and better life for myself.”

  Bak waved off a fly buzzing around his face. “How do you know you’ll be welcome?”

  Tjanuny hesitated, his dark eyes betraying the agony of decision. With obvious reluctance, he untied the neck of a leather pouch suspended from a thong around his waist, withdrew a broken chunk of grayish pottery, and handed it over. The writing on the surface was cramped but clear. The scribe of the nobleman Amonhotep guaranteed Tjanuny’s passage north from Wawat. The shard had only to be presented and payment would be made.

  Bak glanced at Ramose’s ship, riding low in the water, heavy with merchandise brought from far upriver to the south. A mixed unit of soldiers and Medjay policemen swarmed over the craft, probing the contents of baskets and bundles and chests filled with exotic and precious items. An elderly scribe borrowed from the garrison records office followed their progress, comparing the cargo with the manifest he held, making sure the captain had omitted no items for which he had to pay a toll. The colors of the deckhouse-red, yellow, and black-were faded and blurred, while the forecastle was bright with fresh paint. On the prow, the faded symbols forming the name had been outlined in black, pre-paratory to repainting. The vessel creaked, a black dog tied to the deckhouse whimpered to be free. A bulging linen bag gave off an intriguing but alien scent that mingled with the smell of paint.

  Fifteen or so men wearing the skimpiest of loincloths, their skin burned to leather by the sun, clustered on the quay near the stern. Tjanuny’s fellow oarsmen. Realizing they had drawn Bak’s attention, they hurriedly looked away, making 28 / Lauren Haney their interest conspicuous by their effort to appear disinterested.

  The ship looked reasonably well tended, its crew a congenial lot, the captain no doubt good-natured when all went well. Not a bad berth, Bak concluded. A vessel on which Tjanuny could work his passage north so that later another man, a trusted friend, could pretend to be a ship’s captain and present the chit to Amonhotep’s scribe for payment.

  Suppressing a smile, he asked Captain Ramose, “If he had a pass, would you keep him on board as far as Abu?”

  “Good sailors are hard to find.” Ramose eyed Tjanuny thoughtfully. “He’s proved his worth, I guess.” A pause, a nod. “I don’t suppose he meant any harm. Yes, I’d keep him on.”

  “Take him to the scribal office building, Kasaya,�
� Bak told the Medjay. “Get him a pass to travel north.”

  Tjanuny’s face registered surprise, pleasure, and then dismay as Bak walked to the edge of the quay and dropped the shard into the river.

  Another day of this wretched task, Bak thought, and I’ll be the most infamous man along the frontier, shunned by all. He had another thought and laughed aloud, surprising a fisherman stowing his nets in the prow of his boat, preparing to cast off and sail home to his village. No, not the most unpopular. From what he had heard from men newly arrived from Kor, Nebwa in his usual tactless way had already out-stripped him for first place.

  Thanking the lord Amon that the day was nearly over, Bak stopped at a gangplank bridging the gap between the quay and a long, slim traveling vessel. Imsiba stood on deck, watching his inspection team probe the cargo. They were closing on the rudder, nearly finished with their task. Hori sat on the deckhouse roof, legs dangling, writing pallet, water jar, and extra pens beside him. The manifest was spread across his lap so he could check off objects as the men called them out. The captain, a short, wiry individual with a mottled complexion, lounged in the forecastle, while the crew looked on from the upper terrace, where they had gone to play throwsticks in the shade of the fortress wall.

  The ship was bright and new, its wooden hull not yet darkened by time, its bronze fittings unblemished and shiny.

  A lightweight wooden lean-to hung with white linen was attached to the chevron-patterned deckhouse, sheltering from the sun and the breeze a tiny, wizened woman and her three female servants. A white coffin in human form was lashed up against the deckhouse. The old woman’s husband, the captain had told Bak, on his way north to Kemet to be buried in the family tomb.

  The contents of the last basket were called out. Hori checked off the final item, collected his writing implements, and dropped off the cabin roof, hitting the deck with a hollow thud. The search team filed down the gangplank, Bak relieved them of duty, and they trotted up the quay toward the fortress. The ship’s crew cut their game short to hurry aboard, arguing heatedly about the final cast of the sticks. With Imsiba watching, Hori tied and sealed the manifest and turned it over to the captain. They spoke a few words, the seaman clapped the big Medjay on the back, and shouted an order for the oarsmen to take their positions.