Bak and Imsiba sailed south to Kor at first light. The Medjay was in good spirits, his self-esteem restored by his evening with Sitamon. He spoke little of her, but when Bak commented upon the fresh, neat bandage on his arm, he admitted in a voice vibrant with both pride and pleasure that she had medicated and rewrapped the wound.
The river was placid and the breeze fair, driving them upstream at a brisk pace. In less than half the time it would have taken to walk the distance, they lowered their sail and beached their skiff not far below the crowded harbor on a stretch of riverbank still soggy from the retreating floodwaters. Imsiba headed downstream toward a row of fishing boats lining the water’s edge, where the men were gathering in nets they had spread out to dry overnight.
Bak walked to the harbor, where vessels of all sizes were tied up two- and sometimes three-deep along a quay overlooked by decaying mudbrick battlements. The announcement of Thuty’s release of caravan and river traffic, made too late to sail the previous day, had added lightness to the footsteps of the men who toiled there and music to their voices. Their joy was infectious, creating an optimism he prayed would be rewarded.
The larger ships rode the swells much as they had for nearly a week, their decks piled high with trade goods, their crews idling away the hours. Their captains stood in clusters on the shore, chatting animatedly. From talk Bak overheard, they were speaking mostly of Commandant Thuty’s party and, as he had hoped, making no effort to depart.
On the smaller vessels, nearly naked sailors scurried around the decks, preparing to set sail. Their masters, men of meager means impatient to go on about their business, practically danced with joy as they shouted out orders. These boats, nautical beasts of burden, hauled local products up and down the river, stopping at villages to take on board or deliver the necessities of life. No party for their captains, no rubbing shoulders with men of high station who knew only luxury, not endless toil.
Bak spotted a bald, spindly-legged man he recognized, one whose sturdy ship plied the waters between Buhen and Ma’am. “I’m looking for Wensu, the Kushite. Master of a small trading ship he brings down the Belly of Stones. Do you know him?”
“I know of him.” The man scratched his head, frowned.
“I’m afraid you’re out of luck, Lieutenant. He set sail close on a week ago. Haven’t seen him since.”
Bak’s good humor seeped away and he bit back a curse.
He should have learned long ago never to look blindly to the gods for favors. “Do you know where he went?”
“He was here one sunset and gone the next daybreak.
That’s all I can tell you.”
“Wensu.” Nebwa spat over a broken section of battlemented wall, accenting the contempt in his voice. “The wild man from Kush.”
Bak stood with the coarse-featured officer atop the fortress wall, looking out at the waterfront. Beyond flowed a river of burnished gold, a rippled mirror of the eastern sky made brilliant by the rising sun Khepre.
“We hoped we’d find him here in Kor, his ship held like all the others, but now I find he’s been gone for close on a week.” Bak had no wish to alienate his friend, but try as he might he could not keep the accusation from his voice, the blame.
Nebwa gave him a long, irritated look. “If you think back, Lieutenant, you’ll remember that we began searching every ship and caravan several days before Mahu’s death and Thuty’s decision to stop all traffic. I spotted Wensu talking with Mahu the first day I came to Kor and I haven’t seen him since. And I’m not surprised. Wensu, like any intelligent smuggler, slipped away the moment he realized how thorough our inspections were. I’d bet a jar of the finest wine of northern Kemet that he’s even now sailing the waters south of Semna, free and clear.”
Nebwa’s sarcasm rankled, as did the truth of his words.
Bak gave him the best smile he could manage. “I spoke from disappointment, my brother, not from malice.”
The term of affection brought a crooked smile to Nebwa’s face. “And I from frustration,” he admitted. “I long to return to Buhen, to my wife and child. To smiling faces, not men who turn away, fearing I’ll find further reason to hold them in this wretched place.”
“I suggest you get down on your knees before all the shrines in Kor and seek the deities’ favor.” Bak’s smile was tenuous, unable to hide how serious he was. “If Imsiba and I can locate the tomb Intef found, with luck it’ll not only be filled with smuggled items, but will offer a place to lay in wait for the headless man. Not until we’ve snared him will we see an end to this unforgiving task.”
“I’ll do more than pray,” Nebwa said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’ll send patrols up the trail along the Belly of Stones with orders to look for Wensu. If he’s as smart as I think he is, he’s out of our reach in the land of Kush, but we can’t afford to take the chance. We might hide a small problem from the vizier, but not one so large all the world knows.”
Bak preferred not to dwell on the consequence of failure.
“What’s this man Wensu like?”
“He’s a sailor without peer, they say. A man reared on the desert, but more at home on the water than on land.” Nebwa noted Bak’s weary look, smiled. “I know. That much you’ve heard before.” He rubbed his chin, raspy with the previous day’s growth of beard, and looked deeper within 198 / Lauren Haney himself. “He’s a small, dark version of Captain Roy, if the truth be told, befriending none but the men in his crew and confiding in no one.”
“The headless man, I assume, is one of my suspects and Wensu, I feel sure, is his tool. Yet twice you’ve called him smart.”
“Sly would be a more apt description. He’s not a man of subtle or complicated thought.”
“Could he have slain Mahu and Intef, do you think?
Kushite men are reputed to be greatly talented with the bow.”
Nebwa bristled. “No more so than men of Kemet.” He smiled, realizing how he had sounded, but quickly sobered.
“Wensu least of all. His left arm is a pale shadow of the right.
It’s thin and weak, the hand drawn and cramped. Memento of a childhood accident, so I’ve heard.”
“That arm should make him easy enough to recognize.”
Imsiba ducked out of the way of a man carrying two large water jars suspended from a yoke across his shoulders. “And his ship, so the fishermen say, should be equally easy to spot.”
Bak stepped aside, allowing a man to pass who carried a wriggling, bleating lamb in his arms. “They’re certain Wensu’s not traveled south?”
Imsiba shook his head, not because he had no answer but because conversation was impossible. They strode on, saying nothing, following the path along the edge of the harbor, jostled by men walking with a purpose, whistling, singing, shouting, excited by the prospect of showing their backs to Kor. Soon they cleared the waterfront, leaving behind the hustle and bustle, exchanging the odors of sweat and animals and exotic spices for the musty smell of the river and the tangy odor of rich black earth saturated by floodwaters.
“With Commandant Thuty stopping all traffic on the river,”
Imsiba said, “the men who pull the ships upstream through the rapids have laid down their ropes and set their backs again to farming. They fear the wrath of mighty Kemet, it seems.”
Bak snorted. “You know as well as I that they’d close their hearts to the lord Amon himself, given a generous enough reward and a better than even chance that they could get away with it.”
Imsiba laughed. “The fishermen swear he’s not gone south, and I could find no reason for a lie.”
“We’d better let Nebwa know.” Spotting two small boys with fishing poles walking side-by-side along the path, bumping shoulders, giggling, Bak beckoned them. He stated his message, asked them to repeat it until he was sure they had it right, and sent them on their way.
“Do any of the fishermen know of the landing place where Captain Roy met the headless man?”
“If so, they’re not speaking.” Imsiba’s expression turned grim. “Two brothers forced by circumstance to stay out one night long after dark came close to being run down by a ship carrying a silent and furtive crew and no lighted torch on deck. The next morning, they found a hole in the bow of their skiff, one that took close on a week to repair, leaving their wives and children hungry.”
“That sounds like Wensu’s work, not Roy’s.” Bak’s mouth tightened. The Kushite must be stopped at once, before his vicious use of the axe caused a ship to sink and all on board to drown. “If they’re as afraid as Ramose, I’m surprised they spoke at all.”
“Another man whispered in my ear, hoping to send me on my way, fearing my continued presence would draw further wrath, this time on all the fishermen of Kor.”
“They were quick to connect Wensu with the threat.”
“They probably recognized his ship, even in the dark of night. There’s not a man among them who wouldn’t exchange his wife and children, given the chance to lay hands on that vessel.”
Bak looked downstream, his eyes on the dozen or so fishing boats drawing away from the shore, their red and yellow and multicolored sails rising up the masts, catching the 200 / Lauren Haney breeze, ballooning. “They’re sailing, I see. I guess your questions scared them away.”
Imsiba scowled. “If the gods don’t soon smile upon us, my friend, we’ll have made this journey for no good reason.”
Bak pictured the landscape above Kor, rocky and desolate, stingy with life, but a place inhabited nonetheless. A place where there was no such thing as a secret spot. If one looked close enough, one could find a hovel, a garden plot, a bit of grass for grazing. Like the fishermen, the people might play deaf and dumb and blind, but someone would have eyes to see and a tongue to tell the tale.
“Wensu’s ship, I’ve heard described many times. So often my thoughts were dulled by repetition, driving away a question I should long ago have asked.” Bak stood forward in the skiff, poling the vessel through a patch of reeds growing in a shallow backwater. “Has he made it his own in any way?”
“Like many men of Kush, he worships the long-horned cattle.” Imsiba used an oar to push away a rotting palm trunk.
“The head of the divine cow is painted on the bow. The drawing is a single color, red, and the horns have been lengthened and twisted in keeping with his beliefs.”
The skiff slid through the last of the reeds. The swifter water beyond grabbed the vessel, flinging it toward a jagged outcrop of rocks. Close to losing his balance, Bak dropped to a crouch, swung the pole around, and held the vessel off, avoiding certain collision. Imsiba nudged the rudder with an elbow and at the same time adjusted the sail to carry them into deeper water. At least, they hoped the water was deeper.
They had been on the river for hours, working their way south far into the mouth of the Belly of Stones. The water was swift, its path funneled through a channel narrower than that at Buhen and obstructed by islands, a few large, most small, many no bigger than boulders. Stretches of boiling rapids now and again interrupted the flow and a rippled surface sometimes hinted at rocks hidden by the flood.
Bak wished with all his heart that they had brought along a fisherman from Kor. Even a reluctant guide would have been better than none. With the water running so high, covering the natural banks of the river as often as not, and neither he nor Imsiba familiar with the area, they had no idea which of the many rocky outcrops reached far enough into the river to provide a mooring place for a ship the size of Captain Roy’s, nor did they know which channel offered safe passage.
Nor had they met with any success in the few tiny hamlets and farms they had found nestled among the rocks. The people-isolated, impoverished, mistrustful-had shrunk back, looking to the headman or the eldest male of the household to speak for them. To a man, they denied knowledge of a ship loading or unloading cargo in the night. None would look Bak in the eye, but whether they lied from fear of the smugglers’ retribution or were merely afraid of the authority he represented, he had no idea.
To the west, a solitary spine of black granite rose above what looked like an endless slope of golden sand falling from the long north-south ridge where Intef’s body had been found. Just ahead, the lower end of the spine, washed by the swollen river, had long ago collapsed, forming a mound of boulders, broken and battered by sun and wind and water.
White froth warned off the wary boatman, hinting at rocks lurking beneath the river’s surface.
Imsiba eyed the boiling water with distaste. “I doubt a ship the size of Captain Roy’s could sail this deep into the Belly of Stones during much of the year.”
“I didn’t ask the crew how often they came,” Bak admitted.
“Seldom, I’d guess. Probably only during high water when Wensu could take advantage of the flood to come down the Belly of Stones, bringing a load of contraband to the headless man. Roy, in turn, would sail up here, load as much as he dared carry at one time, and travel back to Abu under a false manifest.”
“Seldom if ever rendezvousing with Wensu because the distances are too great and the timing of a meeting too difficult.”
Bak nodded. “Which accounts for their use of a temporary storage place-the tomb Intef found, most likely.”
The rapids slid away behind and a full sail drove them around the boulders, revealing a small cove. The northerly breeze faltered, cut off by a wall of granite, the surviving portion of the rock spine not yet weathered and broken. The sail drooped and momentum carried the skiff into still waters.
Upstream, a boulder the size of a great warship turned the current aside, while the spine provided a quaylike ledge on the downstream side. Tamarisks grew in profusion at the back of the cove and behind the boulder. The rocky spine, the trees, and the boulder might not hide altogether a ship and men loading cargo, but they would certainly confuse the eyes of the soldiers manning the distant watchtowers overlooking the desert track, especially on a moonless night.
Bak gave Imsiba a tentative smile. He had been too disappointed too many times through the morning to allow himself too great a bout of optimism. “This looks an ideal place to moor a ship.”
“Where’s the nearby oasis?” the Medjay asked, equally cautious. “Not those few tamarisks, surely.”
He took up the oars while Bak lowered the yard and secured the sail. Hardly daring to breathe, they rowed the length of the ledge, searching for signs of wear. They found several spots where the stone was white and gritty, bruised.
With growing certainty, they beached the skiff beneath the trees and hurried out on the ledge. They found with no trouble the mooring stakes Captain Roy and Wensu had left behind. After so discouraging a morning, they could barely believe their good luck. This was the place they sought.
From the height of the ledge, they saw palm trees beyond the boulder to the south. Heavy clusters of reddish dates hung from their crowns. There, Bak guessed, they would find the oasis. And as fruit could not develop unless fertilized by man, the farmer would not be far away.
A well-trod path through the tamarisk grove took them to an irregular triangle of rich black earth deposited at the lower end of a shallow, dry watercourse long ago clogged by a landslide. The core of the oasis lay open to the sun, with ditches delimiting garden plots. Tiny plants peeked up through drying soil-onions, melons, beans, and lentils-while clover burst forth in a rich green carpet. Around the periphery, palms and a few acacias shaded goats, sheep, four donkeys, and a dun-colored ox. A small mudbrick house huddled against the ancient landslide, allowing, Bak assumed, for one room above ground and one or two dug into the earth at the back. Smoke curled into the sky from an outdoor oven. The aroma of baking bread reminded him of the midday meal they had left untouched in their skiff.
The animals, he noted, were plump and sleek. An open shed roofed with reed mats sheltered a dozen or more sheaves of hay. Ducks and geese and wild birds scratched in the dirt around a like number of large red pottery jars used, no doubt, to store grain.
Imsiba voiced Bak’s conclusion. “For a farm so small, these people seem unaccountably prosperous.”
“Do you think the gods dispense gifts in the night?” Bak grinned.
“More likely a headless man.”
At the river’s edge, a man of twenty-five years or so, square of body and firm of build, sat on an overturned skiff, cleaning fish. Spotting the approaching pair, he stood up, a gutted perch in his hand, and watched them, making no move to welcome them.
A plump young woman sat in front of the house in the shade of an acacia, her legs drawn up beneath her, forming a clay bowl in the old-fashioned manner without a wheel. A baby lay on a pallet beside her, sleeping, while a girl of three or four years poked at the rich dark mud in a nearby bowl.
The child noticed the strangers, pointed. The woman scrambled to her feet, scooped up the baby, and caught the girl by the arm to drag her inside the house. A boy of six or so
204 / Lauren Haney stood in the dappled shade of the date palms, sucking his thumb, staring.
“They seem most anxious to befriend us,” Imsiba said with a wry smile.
Bak’s face remained grim, his sense of irony deserting him.
“Like all the others we’ve talked to today, but with more reason, I suspect.”
He raised his baton of office and beckoned. In no great hurry, the farmer laid the fish and a gutting knife in a basket and walked toward them. Bak held his ground, making the man cover the distance. The local farmers might not trust authority, but they respected the power it carried.
“I’m Lieutenant Bak, officer in charge of the Medjay police in Buhen, and this is my sergeant, Imsiba.” His voice was crisp, but pleasant enough. “We’ve come on a matter of importance.”
“Kefia, I’m called.” The man’s face, as square as his body, was impassive, closed to prying. “We see few strangers here and know little of the world outside our small oasis.”
“With so pleasant a mooring place so close at hand…”
Bak waved vaguely toward the cove. “…I’d think any number of men would use it as a safe harbor. Fishermen. Farmers trading excess produce. The men who pull ships up the Belly of Stones during high water.” He paused, letting Kefia think what he would, then hardened his voice. “And men who deal in contraband, thinking to avoid the law of the land.”
The farmer blinked, but otherwise appeared unmoved.
“Those who come to trade either fish or fowl or produce seek us out. Any men up to no good…?” He shrugged. “We don’t invite trouble, nor do they. They stay well away from us, and good luck to them, I say.”
Imsiba gave him a hard look. “To let smugglers go about their business is an offense against the lady Maat-and our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut.”
A flock of pigeons rose with a whir of wings from an island a short distance downriver, giving the farmer an excuse to avoid the Medjay’s sharp eyes. “I mind my own business.”
Bak wanted to shake the truth from him; instead he smiled.
“You’ve a pleasant farm, Kefia, but one too small, I’d have thought, to use an ox as a beast of burden.”
The farmer glanced toward the dun-colored creature and back. His voice took on a hint of surliness. “As you can see for yourself, I’m a man alone, with no sons of an age to toil in the fields. The ox helps me plow.”
“Surely these small fields…” Bak pointed his baton at the clover. “…don’t yield enough hay to feed an ox you use once a year.” He swung the baton toward the animals. “…and four hungry donkeys as well.”
“The dates.” Kefia answered too fast, too emphatically.
“They’re the finest grown along the Belly of Stones. I take them to the market in Buhen. I need the donkeys to carry them.”
Bak gave him an incredulous look. “You haul dates on the backs of donkeys, plodding for a day or more along a dusty desert trail, when a boat would be cleaner and faster?”
The farmer tried to hold Bak’s glance, but could not.
“Two men have been slain, Kefia, their lives lost at the hands of the men you’re protecting. They could as easily turn on you. If I come back tomorrow and find you and your family slain, you alone must bear the burden of guilt.”
With a low whimper, Kefia buried his face in his hands.
His voice shook. “All right! I’ll speak! But I’m a dead man already.”
Bak glanced at Imsiba, sharing a quick look of relief, but the satisfaction he felt did not blind him to the fear he had sensed throughout their journey upstream from Kor. “You must leave this place at once,” he told the farmer, speaking more kindly. “You’ve a skiff, I see. Take your family to Kor.
Tell Troop Captain Nebwa I sent you. He’ll keep you safe until I lay hands on the men you fear.”
“What of my animals? My tender young crops? I can’t leave them to wither and die.”
“He’ll send soldiers to watch over your farm. Now tell me all you know, leaving nothing out, and start first with a description of the men who come in the night.”
“I’ve never seen anyone!”
Imsiba gave a sharp, jeering laugh. “You’ve never gone to the cove? You’ve never hidden in the dark, looking out on the men who load or unload cargo?”
“Never! I swear it!” Kefia hung his head in shame. “I was afraid to, if the truth be told.”
“Those beasts of burden,” Bak said, nodding toward the animals. “Did they appear one day as if by magic?”
Kefia shook his head, moaned. “One night as I lay sleeping, a voice awakened me. The voice of a man telling me to stay in the house and make no effort to see him.” The farmer swallowed hard. “He said he had brought an ox and four donkeys, and he had brought hay and grain for them and jars of oil and lengths of linen for myself and mine. He said I must care for the animals as if they were my own. If I should hear his footsteps in the night, I must make no effort to see or follow. And I must never go near the cove after dark.” Kefia cleared his throat and swallowed again. “As long as I obeyed, he told me, I would be amply rewarded, but if I failed him…” His voice faltered, dropped to a murmur. “…I and mine would perish.”
“So you did as you were told,” Imsiba prodded.
Kefia nodded. “The animals are sometimes taken away and returned in the night, and each time I find gifts on my doorstep. When next I go to the cove, I see signs of a ship and the presence of men.” His voice rose in pitch, trembled.
“That’s all I can tell you! I swear it!”
Bak, like Imsiba, could not believe Kefia had resisted the temptation to spy on his benefactor. To make him admit he had done so would be difficult if not impossible. He thought it best to move on. Perhaps someone with less to lose would have noticed more.
“The pigeons rose from the downstream end of the island.”
Bak, seated in the prow of the skiff, studied a patch of churning foam off to the right, half-submerged rocks lurking beneath a delicate froth. “A flock of a hundred or more.
We’ll find a farmer who’s raising them, I’m sure.”
Imsiba glanced upward, his eyes following a sheer bluff of black rock to a summit crowned by an overhanging acacia.
“The view from up there must be spectacular. How much of the cove, I wonder, can be seen after dark?”
“Look!” Bak pointed. “Goats!”
Ahead, the face of the cliff fell away and tumbled rocks formed a more gradual slope. Acacias, tough grasses, and weeds clung to the upper reaches, while tamarisk fringed the lower. A half dozen of the sure-footed animals stared down, unafraid.
“Did Nebamon’s servant not say that the farmer who talked of the headless man went to Buhen with goats to trade?”
“He did, and with the cove so near…” Bak left the thought, the hope unspoken.
Rounding a shoulder of glistening rock, they came upon a papyrus skiff lying among the weeds above the waterline.
A short, wiry man with limp gray hair sat on a projecting rock, fishing pole in hand. The instant they came into view, he jammed the pole into the earth, pushed himself to his feet, and scrambled down the slope to the water. Catching the prow of their boat, he pulled it close so they could dis-embark.
“Took you long enough to get here, Lieutenant,” he said, grinning broadly.
Bak laughed. News of their mission had traveled faster than they. “If you know who we are, you must know why we’ve come.”
“The headless man.” Helping Imsiba drag the skiff up on the bank, the old man looked with a covetous eye at the weapons lying in the hull and at the basket of food and drink they had yet to consume. “I’ve seen him. Not just from up there…” He waved a hand toward the highest point on the island. “…but from the water. Couldn’t get too close, mind you, but I got near enough to see the black cloth wrapped around his head and to hear him talk to the masters of the ships moored in the cove and to see the grand and worthy objects they’ve been smuggling across the frontier.” Like many a man who lived apart from his fellows, he was gar-rulous to a fault.
Imsiba eyed him narrowly. “If you saw so much, why didn’t you report it long ago?”
“Fear, pure and simple.”
“And now?” the Medjay demanded.
The old man gave an exaggerated shrug. “I think it time the scales of justice are balanced.”
And with us close on the heels of the smugglers, Bak thought, you’ve decided it’s safe to seek a reward. Thus your trip to Buhen. “We’ve brought bread and beer and the flesh of a goose, old man. Could we find a place to sit in comfort?
We can talk while we share the food.”
Eyes sparkling with anticipation, the old man gestured toward a narrow, winding path that led upward. “Ahmose, I’m called. Welcome to my farm.”
The island was a gigantic clump of cracked and broken rock whose nooks and crannies had been filled, through the centuries, with wind-blown sand and silt laboriously hauled from natural deposits found elsewhere. The larger patches of soil were planted with fruits and vegetables, the lesser supported the weeds and bushes and wild trees that provided food for the goats. A close to idyllic situation, safe from most desert marauders and intruders, yet at the same time precarious and one of endless toil. Carrying water to the higher garden plots had to be an arduous and never-ending task.
Not far below the summit, a tiny mudbrick house stood behind a walled courtyard, partially shaded by acacias. A pigeon-cote stood close by, and four pottery beehives filled a rocky nook overlooking the house. As they approached the building, a wizened old woman vanished through the doorway, leaving a mound of coarse-ground flour beside a grindstone.
“My mother-in-law,” Ahmose said. “Just the two of us left now. Everybody else has gone. My wife, my sons and daughters, my grandchildren. Most are dead, the rest moved away.”
Bak could well understand the reason. Not many people would thrive in so lonely a spot. Though the island offered a rare freedom, few could tolerate so much time alone with their own thoughts.
Imsiba sat cross-legged in the shade and cut the goose into four portions. He rewrapped one in several limp leaves and placed it near the grindstone. Ahmose’s eyes flickered surprise, but he made no comment. The other portions, the Medjay handed around.
“Now, old man,” Bak said, sitting beside his friend, “how long have you been watching these secret meetings in the night?”
“More than a year.” Ahmose wiggled briefly, searching for a softer spot for his bony rear. “Mighty entertaining, they’ve been, and often enlightening.”
“Tell us.” Bak handed him a small, round loaf of bread but held on to a beer jar as if too intent on the answer to think to pass it on. He was certain the old man was the source of Nebamon’s tale, a tale sure to draw either a desert patrol or the police, and he was equally certain Ahmose wanted something in exchange for the information he meant to give.
The old man tore a chunk from the crusty bread, stuffed it into his mouth, and began to chew, stretching the time.
The pigeons swept low overhead, returning from their flight with a whirring of wings, and settled on the courtyard wall, the house, their own house, and the earth. Imsiba covered the fresh-ground grain with a reed mat he found draped over the wall.
“I’m in need of a servant,” Ahmose said. “Someone young and strong, who’ll help tend my vegetables and my flocks.
Someone to carry water when the plants are thirsty and feed the animals when they hunger. Someone to help the old woman with cooking and cleaning, neither of which she can do any longer with skill. Someone to care for the two of us when our strength fails.”
Bak stifled a smile. The request was reasonable, the need probably greater than the old man let on, but he had too much experience to agree too readily. “Until I know what you have to offer, I can do nothing but think on the matter.”
“Two ships, I’ve seen.” Ahmose paused, pretending to sort out his thoughts. His eyes drifted to the beer jar Bak held, then dropped to the portion of goose Imsiba had given him.
“One vessel is small and agile, sailing swift and sure among the rocks, its master a man of the south who can see in the dark and who can tell by the whisper of the water what lies beneath the surface. The other vessel is bigger, a trading ship, the captain a man of Kemet who goes by the name of Roy. He, too, knows these waters, but is hampered by the size of his vessel.”
“You’ve told me nothing I didn’t already know.” Bak looked at the jar as if surprised to see it in his hand, and tossed it to the old man, who caught it with the deftness of a youth. “To earn a reward, you must give me information far more worthy than that.”
Ahmose’s mouth tightened to a thin, stubborn line. “I’m no longer young, Lieutenant, no longer able to protect myself and all that’s mine. If I tell you what you want to hear, how can I be sure the headless man won’t come to slay us? Me and the old woman? How can I know he won’t carry off my animals or leave them to starve?”
Bak exchanged a weary look with Imsiba. The question was fair, but it stretched his patience. Ahmose had gone out of his way to draw them to the island, yet here he was, bargaining as he would for fodder. “Soldiers will be coming tomorrow to tend to Kefia’s farm. I’ll see that they also look after you and yours.”
Ahmose gnawed a mouthful of meat from the leg of the goose and chewed, no doubt waiting for word of this servant he needed. When Bak failed to speak, failed to bend further, he heaved a long, resigned sigh. “I’ve watched the headless man fetch the ox from Kefia’s farm and lead the animal away in the dead of night. Sometimes he meets a ship-the Kushite’s vessel-and he loads a wooden box heavy with contraband onto a sledge, which the ox pulls away. At times his burden is so great he also loads Kefia’s donkeys. They form a caravan and all go off together.”
“And at other times?” Bak demanded.
“Hmmmm!” Imsiba, peeking into the food basket, withdrew a leaf-wrapped package and a small jar. “Sweet cakes and honey.”
Ahmose’s eyes lit up and he looked at the package with longing. Sweet cakes, it appeared, were his weakness, maybe a treat the old woman could no longer prepare. “He goes away with the ox and brings back a laden sledge. All it carries is loaded on board Captain Roy’s trading ship.”
“Where does he go, old man, when he leads the ox away?
Into the desert?”
“He walks west, yes, but I know not how far.” Ahmose, watching Imsiba spread the leaves wide, revealing the rich brown, crusty cakes, licked his lips unconsciously. “I long ago learned the value of caution.”
Bak understood. An old, no longer strong man would not wish to draw attention to himself by leaving tracks in the sand that the headless man would be sure to follow. “After his night of labor is ended, he returns the ox and donkeys to Kefia’s farm. Where does he go after that?”
Ahmose hesitated. If the look on his face told true, he was well aware of the value of the information he had thus far given away and was reluctant to part with the rest until he knew for a fact he would be rewarded. As Imsiba trickled honey onto a cake, the old man stared at the rich golden stream, his face registering desire, indecision.
He tore his eyes from the sweet with obvious effort. “I’ve heard you’re a fair man, Lieutenant, one who gives with a generous heart. How can you take from me, giving nothing in return, when you reward in a grand fashion others who’ve helped you less than I?”
Has word traveled so far of the objects I left with Pahuro?
Bak wondered. “Don’t believe all you hear, old man. Tales have a tendency to swell in direct proportion to the wishes of the one who listens.”
Ahmose’s face fell, reflecting the resignation of a man 212 / Lauren Haney convinced he must settle for a sweet cake in place of the servant he requested.
Touching his arm, Bak gave him a reassuring smile. “You’ll get your reward, never fear. Not one servant but two: a young man who’ll ease your burden, and a wife who’ll keep him happy in this lonely place.”
Ahmose stared open-mouthed. Then he lowered his head, hiding his face, and when he spoke his voice was husky with tears of joy. “The headless man goes upriver. A half-hour’s walk above Kefia’s farm is a backwater, and there among the reeds he hides a small skiff. He climbs aboard, poles the vessel into the current, and lets the river carry him downstream through the darkness.”