The world was dark, hurtful. A throbbing place where low voices came and went. A place where the air smelled of dirt and sweat and stale beer. Where the surface on which he lay was sometimes hard and dusty, sometimes not there at all.
Or was it he who was not there?
He lay in the black space, sensing the world around him come and go, offering snatches of itself. A man gulping from a jar, a belch, the stench of foul breath. Something small and whiskered-a mouse, he imagined-sniffing his cheek. The crisp sound of a man chewing a radish with his mouth open. A harsh “Shhh.” The mouse again, or some thing bigger, exploring his leg. A man cursing and a short scuffle.
He opened his eyes, but could see nothing. The throbbing in his head was intense and he felt disoriented. He tried to move, but the pain sharpened, forcing him to be still. He lay motionless, barely daring to breathe, praying the agony would lessen.
“How much longer?” a man whispered.
“An hour, maybe more,” a gravelly voice murmured. “Af ter the revelers have gone to their sleeping pallets and the streets and lanes are empty.”
A third man groaned. “I’d hoped to have some fun tonight. There’s a game of knucklebones in a house of plea sure north of the royal house, the one the lame Hurrian runs.
It started the day the festival began.” He kept his voice low, as if he feared someone nearby would hear. “I’d like to sit in just once. They say it’s the best game in Waset.”
The first man laughed softly. “The way your luck’s been going lately, you’d do better to find yourself a woman, one with udders as big as a cow and…”
The description went on, a buzz of words running to gether, sometimes audible, sometimes fading away.
Feeling ill, he clamped his eyes shut, swallowed, and let his head roll to the right. The place above his ear, the spot where he had been hit, struck the hard-packed earthen floor.
Pain exploded and he felt no more.
He knew he was going to die, prayed it would happen sooner rather than later. His wrists were tied together and so were his ankles. His body, limp and helpless, was slung from a stout pole like the carcass of a dead deer. His head hung close to the ground, swinging free, a mass of agony too intense to endure.
Each time the pole jiggled, each time one or the other of the two men carrying him made an abrupt movement, the torture worsened. The searing pain inside his head took his breath away, clouded his vision. He prayed for relief, for the darkness of oblivion, yet he never lost sight of the man near his head, the sturdy legs pumping, large callused bare feet.
“Shhh. We’re close,” gravel voice said.
The two men lowered the pole, letting him drop roughly to the ground. His head seemed to split apart, and blessed darkness set in.
He came back to life slowly, in bits and pieces. Once he heard a man’s shout, a reassurance that all was well. Another time he glimpsed two men carrying him, walking rapidly along a narrow lane, his body swinging from the pole be 224
Lauren Haney tween them. He saw a dog nipping at the heels of a stranger, who threw a rock to frighten it away. He saw the swarthy man standing on the deck of a ship, ordering its mooring ropes released. He felt himself lying on the ground, the pole on top of him, hearing the loud laughter of a dozen or more revelers passing by. He saw his father, standing with Hori and Commandant Thuty on a ship bound for Mennufer. He saw a woman’s back, knew she was the one he had vowed to love forever, but when she turned around to smile, her face was that of mistress Meret.
The visions ended and for a while he must have slept. Or perhaps he fell into a deeper unconsciousness.
When Bak came to, or awakened-he knew not which he felt better. He lay motionless in the dark, letting his thoughts pull themselves together. His head throbbed, but no longer felt as if it would burst. His side ached as if he had been kicked, but a cautious intake of breath did not bring about the sharp pain of a broken rib. He was groggy and confused. His tongue felt thick and was so dry he could not moisten his lips.
He sensed he was alone. Knew it for a fact when he heard the tiny noises vermin make when they seek out sustenance undisturbed. He was lying on a sloping wooden bed of some kind. He tried to move his arms from behind his back, but was unable to do so. Burning wrists awakened a hazy mem ory of being bound hand and foot.
He wondered where his captors had left him. The dark ness was total. The world around him felt unstable, as if it might be moving, swaying. Or were his thoughts playing tricks on him? He could smell stagnant water and rotting wood, the leavings of small creatures. He tasted grit between his teeth and something else. Blood. His own, he felt sure.
He heard the soft whisper of… Of what? Running water.
He was very close to the river. Or on a ship.
Yes, a ship. His feet were in a shallow pool, his body on a slightly curving incline. Not a breath of air stirred around him. As muddled as his thoughts were, he knew exactly what those facts signified. He had been dropped down the hatch of a ship and lay in the hull beneath the deck in the space normally filled with ballast. The water bathing his feet was sloshing back and forth, probably along the center board, while he must be reclining between two ribs. Thanks to the lord Amon, he had fallen with his head well out of the water.
He could hear no voices, no sound of rowing, no flapping sails, nothing but the tired, sporadic groan of the wooden hull. The vessel had to be moored against the riverbank.
Most likely in Waset or not far from the city. Had his captors meant to leave him alive, thinking he would be found and rescued? Or were they planning to come back and slay him?
Was there something about his situation that he had not yet begun to understand?
Water inside a hull was normal, common to all ships.
Only time would tell how much was seeping inside. The musty smell of rotting wood was strong, indicating that the vessel was old, its condition questionable. As far as he could tell, the rats had left him alone, but that did not mean they were not skulking somewhere in the dark, waiting for him to die. Or waiting to abandon ship, should it begin to sink.
He sat up abruptly, awakening the demon in his head. He had to get off the vessel. Fast.
The pain, the dizziness, a hint of nausea forced him to wait, to sit quietly until the throbbing eased and the world around him stopped spinning. When at last he could think clearly, he realized he had a decision to make. Should he try to find a hatch and attempt to climb out, bound as he was?
Or should he first rid himself of the ropes?
To release his hands would be time-consuming, but with luck and the help of the gods he could untie his ankles, which would allow him greater freedom of movement. He lay down on his side, drew his legs back as far as possible, and tried to reach the rope around his ankles. He managed to touch the wet cord with his fingertips, but could get no closer. Cursing his body for being so inflexible, he sat up and scooted down the incline into the puddle. Better to look for a hatch than waste further time.
The water tempted him, but it smelled of rot and fish and the lord Amon only knew what else. Promising himself a drink from the river the instant he got out of this wretched ship, he cautiously rose to his feet. He could not believe how frail he felt, how wobbly his knees were.
The hull was so shallow, he could not stand erect. The vessel was not large. Shoulders hunched, head down, he tried to raise his hands high enough behind him to search for the way out. He could reach the beams that supported the deck, but was not limber enough to raise them all the way to the underside of the deck planks. Unable to think of a better solution, he decided to run his battered head along the boards. With luck, he would find the hatch through which he had been thrown almost directly above him.
He shuffled forward, moving less than a hand’s breadth with each step. As expected, he promptly found the hatch. It was a rudimentary affair, a square hole cut into the deck with a flat wooden cover on top. Hunching his shoulders beneath it, he pushed upward as hard as he could. Whether he was not quite tall enough to gather the force necessary to raise it or whether he was too weak or whether it had been fastened down, he had no idea.
Cursing his failure, more determined than ever to escape his vile prison, he shuffled along the centerboard, water sloshing around his ankles, in search of another hatch. Mov ing at so slow a pace had an advantage: he did not have to worry that he might stumble over a ballast stone or trip over a loose board or step on some disgusting creature alive or dead. Nor did he have to worry about bumping his injured head too hard.
Within a half-dozen paces-or what would have been paces if he had been able to walk normally-the centerboard began to rise and the space between it and the deck gradu ally narrowed, forcing him to squat. He could not be sure, but he thought he was in the stern. Turning around, he shuf fled back the way he had come. Was the water getting deeper? he wondered. Had he been on his feet long enough to tell?
He passed the underpinnings of the mast and, not long af ter, found a second hatch. He stood directly beneath the cover and shoved upward with his shoulders. He managed to push it up a distance of two fingers’ width, allowing the fresh, cool night air to seep inside, but he could raise it no farther. He had to get rid of the ropes around his wrists and ankles. Freed from his bounds, he should be able to raise one or the other of the hatches high enough to climb through. He refused to think that both might be impossible to open.
On the incline near the hatch, he sat down, placed his back to a rib and, feeling a moderate amount of roughness on the wood, began to rub the rope up and down. Time dragged. His hands, already swelling, grew thick and clumsy. His wrists bled where the rope chafed them. He sel dom stopped, but when he did he heard the skittering of rats, felt them coming closer, drawn by the smell of blood. Anger filled his heart, as much at himself for walking into the trap as at the men who had snared him.
After he knew not how long, something struck the boat. It shuddered and water splashed onto his kilt. He glanced up, saw pinpoints of light showing through the hull across from him. Night had turned to day.
Realizing how stiff he was, he stretched his arms and legs, flexed his tired muscles. His feet splashed into water notice ably higher than before. He stopped breathing, focused on the world around him. The vessel was rocking more, as if the river outside had grown rougher. He looked again at the spots of light showing through the hull. They were well above the waterline, but for how long? How long ago had the boat last been caulked. How many similar holes, lower in the hull, were allowing water inside.
He had to get out.
He twisted his hands around as best he could and reached with numb fingers toward the rope, praying he would feel some sign of fraying. He felt a few loose fibers, nothing more. With sagging spirits he ran his fingers along the wooden rib. He should have sought out a board far rougher, with more jagged edges that would tear the fibers apart.
Scooting on his rear toward the bow, he ran his swollen hands up one rib and down another, finding most of them worn from years of use and the wood in a few crumbling from age and rot. He wondered how the boat stayed afloat.
Once again something struck the vessel, this time with a crash so strong it jarred his teeth. It slewed around. What he thought was the bow took the place of the stern. How could that be? Again the vessel was struck, a solid blow that tipped it half onto its side, covering him with roiling, filthy water.
His heart leaped into his throat and he prayed frantically to the lord Amon.
Moments seemed like hours. Fear held him captive, para lyzing all thought and action. He clung to the nearest wooden rib as if it alone could save his life. Then the vessel slowly righted itself and even more sluggishly turned the rest of the way around. When his fear abated, when he no longer lay witless, he realized the boat was not moored and secure against the riverbank. It was running free on the floodwaters, with no one on board to guide it.
Memory rushed in, words he had heard and forgotten, words he could suddenly recall as if he could hear them yet:
“This should do it,” gravel voice said.
“I say we slay him here and now.” A second voice.
“He’s supposed to vanish somewhere far away, and we don’t have time to take him.”
A third man: “He got out of that burning storehouse.
Who’s to say he won’t get out of this?”
“We didn’t tie him then.”
“Weren’t we supposed to make his death look like an ac cident?” the second man asked.
Gravel voice snorted. “Who cares how he dies? When his body’s found, if it ever is, he’ll be at least a day’s walk north of Waset. Maybe farther. There’ll be nothing on him to iden tify him, no way of guessing who he is. He’ll be just another man set upon by robbers, tied up and thrown into this old hulk to die.”
Remembering that promise of death, Bak was consumed with anger. He would get himself out of this foul vessel, and he would hunt down the men who had put him here. He would see the lesser men sent to the desert mines and the one who had ordered his death executed in the vilest manner possible.
Bak found a wooden rib that was not simply rough and splintery, but had a prominent knot with a sharp edge. It was high up in the bow, well above the growing pool of water.
Here, the boat was narrow and the deck close to the hull, which gave him no room to stretch out or make himself comfortable. He had to smile at the thought. Comfort was far from being his greatest priority.
He lay curled up in the confined space, located the sharp knot behind him, and began to saw away at the rope. His hands were so swollen, his fingers so numb, that he could barely feel them. He hoped he would be able to untie the rope around his ankles. He chided himself for thinking so far ahead. First get the hands free and go on from there.
The prow of the boat hit something solid. Unlike before, the jolt was easy, gentle almost, and he heard a grating noise somewhere beneath him. The familiar sound of wood being dragged across sand, as if he were helping his father draw his skiff onto a sandy shore. The vessel in which he was trapped must have gone aground. Praying such was the case, he doggedly went on with his task.
After a while, how long he had no idea, he stopped to see if the rope was beginning to fray. The effort failed. He could not bend his wrists, could barely feel his hands, and his swollen fingers were stiff and helpless. More disappointed than he thought possible, he located the sharp edge of the knot and began again to rub the rope over it.
Sweat poured from him as the day grew hotter. The water sloshing around in the hull made the air damp and sticky.
The moist heat, the intense effort, the confined space sapped his energy. His head ached, his muscles cramped from ex haustion, and thirst besieged him. His stomach was empty, but the sour taste in his mouth drove away all thoughts of food.
Several times he felt the boat swing as if the bow was on a pivot. Each time he started, his heart leaping upward, and he offered a prayer to the lord Amon that the craft would not lose its precarious hold on the land.
He had no idea how long he had been trapped or how far the lord Re had traveled across the sky. Time was impossible to measure inside the dark hull, and his life had become an endless sequence of small movements. How deep was the water inside the boat? he wondered. How deep would it be if the bow broke loose from the land that held it and the vessel sank lower?
He became obsessed with the knot on the wooden rib.
When he could no longer feel it, how could he be sure he was rubbing the rope across it? How could he…? He squashed all thought, gritted his teeth, and kept on dragging his weary arms up and down, up and down.
Bak licked his dry and cracked lips, but no moisture reached them. What could possibly happen if he took a tiny sip of water? He squelched the moment of weakness, reminded himself of the vermin, the sailors who urinated wherever they happened to be, the insects, reptiles, and ro dents that had died among the ballast stones.
No. He would wait. The rope had to break apart soon. It had to.
The boat swung. The bow grated on sand and Bak felt its sudden buoyancy, the freedom he wished for himself. The vessel had pulled away from the shore. Then it bumped the land, wood grated over sand, and it came to rest.
Bak toiled on, rubbing the rope over the knot, or what he hoped was the knot. How much longer would he have the strength to continue? How long before the boat sank? So much water had seeped in that each time he straightened his legs, it touched his feet. From the angle of the centerboard, from the number of rats he heard scampering about in the bow, trying to find a way out, he suspected the stern was by now filled with water.
The rope snapped. Bak lay quite still, unable to believe.
Afraid he might be imagining that it had parted. He pulled an arm forward, shook off the frayed rope, and touched his face.
The fingers were numb, but he felt pressure on his cheek.
He was free! Or almost free.
He felt like sobbing.
Wasting no time, he backed out of the cramped space, slipped into the water, and shuffled down the centerboard.
He had lost all sense of distance, but the hatch could not be far. Raising an arm, hoping he had enough feeling left to lo cate the cover, he ran his hand along the underside of the deck and crept forward. The water level rose rapidly from knees to thighs to waist.
Relieved of his weight, the bow broke free of the shore.
The current carried the boat a short distance, it bumped against land and was caught once again.
He waded on, praying with all his heart that he would reach the hatch before water covered his head, praying he could get the cover off. Again the bow lifted, grated across sand, came to an abrupt halt. He was thrown forward and at the same time a wave that formed inside the vessel struck him hard. He lost his balance. Frantic to save himself, he pushed his numb hands hard against the boards above him.
He felt them raise up. Not much, but enough to know he had found the hatch.
When the frantic sloshing of water subsided, he shoved the cover upward. As before, he could raise it no more than the width of two fingers. Something was holding it in place.
Summoning every bit of strength that remained in his body, he pushed as hard as he could. Something began to slide across the cover. It flew open and whatever had been holding it down fell with a thud onto the deck.
With a vast sense of relief, he hauled himself through the hatch. Rats erupted with him, some so brazen as to use him as a ladder. He did not care. He was too happy to be out of that obscene prison.
Hoisting himself to his feet, he glanced at the lord Re, dropping toward a western horizon totally different than the familiar skyline above western Waset. About two hours of daylight remained. He shuffled to the bow, thinking to see an island or a rise of land on which the boat had gone aground.
He saw nothing but a solid sheet of water, its surface ruffled by a stiff wind. The land holding the vessel was submerged beneath the floodwaters.
What through most of the year was a broad, placid river had grown into a gigantic lake. Its silvery waters appeared to cover the land as far as he could see from the desert on the eastern side of the valley to the foot of the cliffs to the west.
He knew better. The flood was ebbing, the water no longer at its greatest depth. Fields on higher patches of land were draining, almost ready for the farmers to turn the soil over in preparation for planting.
Still, he would have to swim and wade across long stretches of water. He could swim with bound ankles, al though the effort would be considerable. But creeping across the flooded landscape in increments of less than a palm’s width was another story. One he could not imagine.
His hands were too numb to untie a knot, so he scanned the deck, searching for a sharp object to cut through the rope binding his ankles. The stern half of the vessel was under water and swells were threatening to overturn the small shabby deckhouse. Soon the vessel would be submerged.
Ropes darkened by time snaked across the bow, and parts of wooden fittings were strewn about. Somewhere in all that trash he should be able to find what he sought.
He shuffled to the deckhouse, a flimsy construction of poles and worn reed mats. Inside, a thin, filthy sleeping pal let lay spread out on the floor. A brazier had been tipped over and its spilled charcoal was melting into the water washing beneath the walls. Several empty beer jars rolled back and forth in the narrow space between wall and pallet. A man of no means had evidently used the boat as a sleeping place.
Bak wondered what had happened to him. Had he been chased away by gravel voice and his helpers or had he been thrown overboard?
One of the jars bumped against something hard at the edge of the pallet. Bak knelt, pulled the soaked fabric farther from the wall, spotted a harpoon. With his hands nearly use less, he did not know how he could hold it, but somehow he would.