Face Turned Backward lb-2

by Lauren Haney

  Smiling to himself, wondering what they would find next to wager on, Bak slipped back into his office. He sat down on the white coffin to think over his interview with Ramose.

  The burly captain had never sailed upstream beyond Kor, but he had spent many years in Wawat and could have a trusted ally in the south. He could easily have approached Mahu to

  carry contraband, and his ship had been moored in Buhen at the time of the murder.

  As for Intef, it was impossible to know exactly when the hunter’s ka fled his body. He had died sometime in the early morning, over an hour’s walk south of Buhen, and Ramose had sailed north that same morning from the harbor of Buhen. For him to commit the murder and return to his ship to sail away was close to impossible, a feat of the gods, not ordinary man. If Mahu’s death could be linked to Intef’s, Ramose was surely free of guilt on both counts. The hole in his ship, the fear in his eyes, seemed to bear out his innocence.

  “We don’t often play here,” Mery said. “This cemetery is too new.”

  “We run errands for the men,” his sturdy friend volun-teered. “Their wives send food and drink, or they need new tools, or someone gets hurt and we go find help.”

  Bak eyed the gaping mouth of a nearby tomb, which was contained within a natural sandstone mound, weathered to the shape of a cone. The formation rose in isolated splendor some distance behind Buhen. Farther away lay the low ridge they had followed when traveling south to Intef’s body.

  Beyond the tomb entrance, a fluttering light diminished the black inside and voices relieved the silence. Men toiled within, excavating the stone so a local dignitary could be buried in the fashion of Kemet. Mudbricks stacked nearby awaited the day when the digging would be finished and the dead man interred, when the door could be sealed, a vault built over the entryway, and a walled forecourt constructed.

  Other newly made tombs dotted the hillside, their roofs and courts whole and undamaged, their offering stones bright and clear, unmarred by sun or wind or hard-driven sand.

  He glanced at Imsiba, whose barely perceptible shudder told him what the Medjay thought of toiling in the depths of the earth.

  “Four or five of the tombs were built long ago when Buhen was new. You can tell by the bricks they used then; 144 / Lauren Haney they’re bigger than ours.” Mery’s expression was serious, his voice a trifle pompous, much like Commandant Thuty when he showed the viceroy around Buhen. “But they’ve all been reused and sealed. No one could possibly break into them without all the world knowing.”

  “Do you know of any other old cemeteries or tombs farther out in the desert?”

  “We’ve heard tales, and we’ve searched the sands all around Buhen. But the one time we went so far we lost sight of the fortress, my father was so angry I couldn’t sit down for a week.”

  “Neither could I,” the smallest boy said.

  The other four boys echoed the plaint.

  Smothering a smile, Bak turned away from the tomb. Imsiba, he saw, had already backed off, impatient to be gone.

  And in truth they had seen more than enough burial places for the day.

  Walking through heavy, loose sand, they descended broad shelves of rock containing scattered tombs, which they had explored on their outbound trek. The boys trailed behind, playing tag with their shadows cast by the midafternoon sun.

  Like the mound, this cemetery and another farther to the east was of recent origin. No other burial places lay near the fortress. Bak was satisfied Intef had found the ancient jewelry farther afield.

  The thought jarred his memory and he snapped his fingers.

  “Nehi. We must go back to her farm.” He glanced up at the sky, nodded. “We’ve time yet before nightfall. With luck, she’ll have heard from Penhet.”

  “Maybe we can get from her now what before she wouldn’t tell us,” Imsiba added.

  Bak prayed she would speak. He had no desire to force his way into her home and tear it apart in search of the objects he was sure her husband had hidden there.

  They left the untrammeled sand to walk along the desert trail leading to the massive, towerlike west gate that pierced the outer wall. A causeway carried them over the dry ditch that protected the base of the fortification. Swallows swooped down from their nests in the battlements, laying waste to a swarm of flies buzzing around a greenish pile of manure deposited not far from the gate, while sparrows twittered, awaiting their turn.

  Bak eyed the birds, the unmanned gate, and the empty walkway between the ditch and the base of the fortified tower. “Where’s the sentry, I wonder?”

  Imsiba followed his glance, frowned. “He dare not go far.

  The watch officer would have his head.”

  They swerved around the manure, setting the birds to flight, and strode to the passageway through the tower.

  Beyond the shaft of light cast inside by the sun, the corridor was black-dark. Bak hesitated, thinking of Mahu and the way his slayer had used the much smaller, eastern gate to his advantage, the light and shadow, the temporary blindness.

  He glanced at Imsiba, read a like thought on the big Medjay’s face.

  “I wish I thought more often to carry my spear and shield.”

  Imsiba’s voice was light, conversational, playing down his foreboding.

  “The sentry’s gone off to relieve himself, that’s all.” Bak glanced at the boys, giggling, scuffling, shouldering each other along the walkway toward the corner of the tower.

  “Shall we go on? While they’re distracted with their game?”

  The two men strode forward, following the stream of light into the passage, each close to his own wall. Stepping into the dark, they stopped, their eyes on the rectangle of light at the far end. There lay the first of two baffles, courtyards designed to entrap the enemy and protect the defenders of the fortress.

  Bak had served as a soldier for more than eight years, most of that time as a chariotry officer, protected from close con-tact with the enemy by the speed of his horses and the height of his chariot. For the first time, he had an idea of how it might feel to assault a fortress, to walk into a baffled gate where men could be waiting overhead, armed with bows and arrows and slings and boiling oil. The worm of fear crawled up his spine.

  They strode on, cloaked by the gloom. Four paces, five, six. At the end of the passage and still hidden in shadow, they stopped to examine the baffle ahead. It was open to the sky, with a projecting tower on either side and walls rising to the battlements high above. A low moan drew their eyes to the right, to the sentry crumpled on the brick paving just outside the passage. Bak and Imsiba stood dead still, looking, listening. Seeing nothing, hearing no sound, Bak stepped out of the passage, ducked aside, and at the same time dropped onto a knee beside the senseless man. Something thudded into the brick close to the spot where Bak had just been, an arrow buried to the shaft, its feathers quivering from the force of impact. Across the court, he glimpsed a vague movement in the shadowed passage leading to the second baffle. A hand reached into the sunlight, a bow clutched hard, an arrow seated for flight.

  He grabbed the sentry’s tawny shield, swung it upright, and fumbled for the downed man’s spear. The arrow sped through the air, the shield jerked out of his hand. Imsiba made an odd, surprised little sound. Bak pivoted, saw the Medjay clutching his upper arm and blood flowing through his fingers from a long ugly slice through his flesh.

  Suddenly the passage was filled with merry laughter and the boys burst into the courtyard.

  “Go back!” Bak yelled.

  The boys milled around, not understanding.

  “Get back in the passage!” Bak snarled.

  Mery spotted Imsiba’s bloody arm and the downed sentry.

  His eyes opened wide, he gaped. “What happened, sir?”

  The shadowy image vanished from the passage ahead.

  The archer had opted to flee. Too many boys looking on, too many mouths to silence should he be seen. Bak, his expression stormy, tugged the spear from beneath the s
entry and scooped up the shield, its tawny hide scarred by the arrow that had glanced off the edge to strike Imsiba. He looked at the Medjay, at a wound ugly and no doubt hurtful but not life-threatening.

  Imsiba urged him on with a forced smile. “Go, my friend, bring him to his knees.”

  Bak squeezed the Medjay’s uninjured shoulder and turned to the boys. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll summon help as soon as I can.”

  Mery, he saw, was not among them. Quick footsteps drew his eyes to the far end of the baffle, where the youth, running along the pathway as fleet as the wind, vanished in the next dark passage. Snapping out an oath, Bak raced after him.

  He doubted the archer remained inside, awaiting his chance to take another shot, but the risk remained. The boy could be taken captive, killed even.

  He raced into the next passage. Though half-blinded by the dark, he spotted Mery’s silhouette in the rectangle of light at the far end. He saw no sign of a man armed with a bow.

  He sped on through, grabbed the boy by the upper arm, and gave him a hurried, whispered reprimand. They went on then, Mery close on his heels, working their way up the second, larger baffle, darting from one projecting tower to another. They slipped into the shadow of the third and final passageway and crept through the darkness to the last door.

  In the sunlight beyond, the usually well-traveled thorough-fare from the gate to the citadel lay empty and deserted. A flock of pigeons perched on the broken walls and ruined vaults of the ancient cemetery, preening themselves in the sun. Thin coils of smoke rose from the outer city. Behind the blank walls facing the cemetery, children laughed, a man cursed, women chattered. A sweet childish voice sang an old love song accompanied by a lute played with surprising ability. They saw no man carrying a bow and arrows.

  “He’s gone,” Mery groaned.

  Bak muttered another oath. The outer city was not large, but he could think of no easier place for a man to disappear than in its rabbit warren of lanes. “We must report to the sentry at the citadel gate and have him summon help for Imsiba and the injured man. Then, my young friend, we’ll go from house to house, asking questions of one and all.”

  With the day so close to completion, the streets teemed with life. Men set aside the tools of their trade to walk home, filling the lanes with laughter and camaraderie. Women and children moved from inside to outside, from dark, still rooms to bright and breezy rooftops. That, Bak told Mery, would ease their quest if not make it more successful.

  Moving quickly but systematically from one roof to another, probing stairways, airshafts, and courtyards, querying everyone they saw, they explored one block of buildings after another. By the time they had searched half the outer city, Bak was sure their quarry had long ago eluded them. He persisted nonetheless, thinking someone might have seen a man in a hurry armed with bow and quiver.

  Spotting yet another open trapdoor, he plunged down the stairway, the boy close behind, to a shabbily furnished room.

  The hippopotamus-headed, pregnant goddess Taurt looked out from a dusty prayer niche.

  A scraggly headed woman of indeterminate years burst through a rear door. She gave him a long, hard stare, her mouth tight, angry. “Get out of my house you…You…”

  Words failed her.

  “I’m Lieutenant Bak, head of the Medjay police. I’m looking for a man…”

  “You then!” she snarled. “Lieutenant…Whatever your name. You’re the one I want to talk to!”

  Mery opened his mouth to object. Bak, controlling his own tongue with an effort, silenced the boy with a cautionary look. He was worried about Imsiba and discouraged by a quest he was certain was futile, but he knew also that help sometimes came when least expected.

  As he took a step toward the woman, she ducked backward through the door. Not sure why, whether she feared him or wanted to show him something, he followed her into her kitchen, which reeked of burned onions and fish.

  She grabbed an object he couldn’t see from beside the oven. Swinging around to stand before him, flat chest thrust forward, eyes blazing, she held out a long bow. “Here!” she snarled, shaking it in his face. “Take this thing before I wrap it around somebody’s neck.” In her other hand, she held a quiver containing a dozen or so arrows.

  Bak caught the bow, fearing she would blind him in her rage, and took it from her. She gave up the quiver reluctantly, as if afraid she would have no further grounds to complain.

  The objects were standard army issue, he saw, no different than those he had found after Mahu’s death and Intef’s.

  “Where did you get these?”

  Her mouth tightened to a thin, angry line. She pointed to a roof of smoke-darkened palm fronds loosely spread across a framework of spindly poles. “There! Somebody dropped them into my kitchen while I prepared our evening meal.”

  Her voice grew shrill. “It fell on the brazier, breaking my bowl and spilling our stew. We’ve nothing left to eat but bread and beer!”

  Chapter Ten

  “It burns like fire,” Imsiba admitted, “but I can use it if I must.”

  Bak, standing in the doorway of his office, noted the drawn look on the Medjay’s face and eyed the bulky bandage wrapped around his upper arm, tied with a large untidy knot.

  An oily green salve with the sharp smell of fleabane oozed from beneath the edges of the linen. Experience had given the garrison physician an unsurpassed skill with wounds, but his bandaging technique left much to be desired. “Stay quiet today, as the physician ordered. With Hori moved and the bench now usable, I can think of no better place than here.”

  “Ten!” yelled one of the men on duty, and the knucklebones clattered across the entry hall floor. The man leaned over to look, banged his fist on the hard-packed earth, and snarled a curse. His companion chortled.

  Imsiba grinned. “Quiet, you say?”

  “While you stay here, out of harm’s way, I’ll cross the river to see Nehi.” Bak flashed a smile matching that of the sergeant. “Yesterday, if you recall, you tore me from my purpose, taking an arrow in the arm.”

  “Sir!” Hori called, bursting through the door.

  Bak tensed, expecting he knew not what. For close on a week, each time the youth had hailed him like that he had brought word of death or destruction.

  “I’ve been out on the quay.” Hori shoved a fishing pole against the wall and dropped a musty-smelling basket on the floor. Water trickled from the loosely woven container, half full of small silvery fish. “A man just came from across the river, one of the farmer Penhet’s servants. He brought a message for you, sir, from mistress Nehi. She wishes to see you at her farm, to talk with you.”

  Imsiba threw Bak a congratulatory smile. “Your suggestion to Penhet, it seems, has borne fruit.”

  “Are you sure this man’s who he says he is, Hori?” After the previous day’s ambush, Bak thought it prudent to be cautious.

  Imsiba stood up, concern erasing the smile. “I’ll go with you to the quay, my friend. I spent time with Penhet’s servants the day Rennefer tried to slay him. I know them all.”

  “When Penhet summoned me, I knew not what to think.”

  Nehi gave Bak a shy smile. “I knew who he was. I’d walked the path through his fields many times-each time I went to the village.” She smiled again, this at herself. “I’d envied him his lush crops and healthy animals, his abundance. Never did I dream he’d invite me to live there.”

  Bak tried not to stare. With much of the worry lifted from her shoulders, Nehi looked a different woman. She would never be thought beautiful, but in her own thin way she was attractive, seductive even. “Do you like him?”

  “He’s a kind man. Gentle and warm. And so cheerful!

  How he can laugh with his life turned upside down, I don’t know.”

  After housing Rennefer in the guardhouse for close on a week, Bak could well imagine the freedom Penhet must feel.

  A more dour woman he had never met. “Does he often summon your children?”

/>   “They’re with him always.” Her smile broadened. “He’s given them toys and taught them games. If his wounds weren’t troubling him, he’d get down on the floor and play with them.”

  Bak eyed her swelling breasts and stomach. “When he’s healed, he’ll want a woman in his bed, and then a child who’s truly his own.”

  She looked at the unpainted house, the fields so hard-won from the desert, the neat rows of small brave melon plants.

  “Compared to this poor patch of land, his farm is like the Field of Reeds.” She was referring to the ideal land inhabited by the justified dead, those whose deeds had proven worthy.

  “I’ll gladly give him whatever he wants.”

  They stood under the lean-to in the shade of the ancient vine. The structure was empty, the fowl and animals moved to Penhet’s farm. Two men, Netermose’s field hands, toiled at the far end of the melon field. The house, Bak assumed, would soon be occupied by one of the hands. Nehi had inherited the property from her husband. Rather than sell it or abandon it to the encroaching desert, she had made an agreement with Netermose similar to the one he had with Penhet: he would tend the land and she would share its meager profits.

  “You summoned me here for a purpose,” Bak reminded her.

  The pleasure vanished from her face; she twisted the ring with the greenish stone. “I…I’m not sure…” Words failed her, and she stared at the ground by his feet.

  He muttered an oath. What more must he do to earn her trust? “If you’ve something to tell me, anything that will help find your husband’s slayer, I beg you to speak up.”

  “No, I…” She spread a hand over her stomach as if to shield her unborn child. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”

  “Mistress Nehi!” He forced himself to be patient, to coax rather than demand. “If I thought to punish you for your husband’s faults, would I have suggested Penhet take you into his household?”