“I see why you wished to descend before dark.” Bak stood at the top of what looked to be a high and steeply stepped wa terfall-except he doubted any water had flowed down for many generations.
Sergeant Suemnut eyed the ragged line of men standing on the narrow trail behind them. “I pray to the lord Sopdu that none who came with you has a fear of high places.”
Bak followed his glance. His Medjays, who carried their weapons and waterbags, led the procession. Next came four soldiers, two armed with spears and shields and each of the other two carrying a leather bag of turquoise. After them came User and his party. Standing between a steep red slope on one side and the rough face of a low cliff on the other, they could see nothing from their vantage point except the gap where the path dropped away. Farther back, the soldiers who had delivered the supplies to the mines straggled across the plateau, walking easily, carrying yokes from which nothing was suspended. The remaining soldiers, having no prisoners to guard, mingled with their fellows, no longer fearful of raiders. Suemnut had explained that past experience had proven the supplies to be of more value to plundering no mads than the turquoise.
Bak looked again into the deep wadi down whose side they must climb. The dry waterfall seemed to fall away forever. An elongated black peak rose on the far side. Because of the complicated folds of land, he could not see the bottom, but he suspected for the sake of the fearful among them that ignorance was preferable to knowing what lay ahead. The climb down would be long and difficult.
“Should one of them be afraid, could he not return to the lower camp by way of the path we ascended this morning?”
“This late in the day, the shadows hide details on that side of the mountain. It’s easy to get lost or take a wrong step.
He’d have to stay overnight with the miners and come down tomorrow.”
“I’ll talk to them.” Bak walked back and gathered the men around him. He described the path and the alternative of re maining on the mountaintop. “I suggest you stand with
Sergeant Suemnut and look down. If you think you can’t de scend, tell us. A soldier will take you back across the plateau to the mines.”
Standing close by, he watched the men as one after an other peered over the edge. None of the Medjays were trou bled by what they saw, nor were User, Amonmose, or
Nebenkemet.
Ani looked down, sucked in his breath, and took a quick step back. He offered Bak and the sergeant a timid smile and hesitantly stepped closer to the edge to look down a second time. “I’m terrified, but I can do it.” He glanced back at
Psuro, added, “If you’ll help me, Sergeant.”
The Medjay studied the small plump man, weighing fear versus determination. At last he nodded. “I’ll stay with you.”
Wensu moved closer and looked down. His face paled, but he remained at the drop-off, staring at the steep incline. “I, too, am afraid and may need help.”
Such an admission from such a headstrong young man was astonishing. With a hint of a smile, Nebre volunteered his aid.
“Once you start down, you must go all the way,” Bak re minded them. “There’ll be no turning back.”
The two men, so different from each other, spoke as one:
“I’ll climb down this way.”
At a point Suemnut said was about halfway down the trail, they stopped to rest on a flattish and relatively wide ledge overlooking a short, steep ravine-like drop in the dry water fall. On the opposite side of the ravine, miners had, many generations earlier, etched reliefs on the dark surfaces of huge smooth-faced boulders. Immediately above the ravine,
Psuro had had to help Ani down a particularly difficult sec tion of trail where the stone had crumbled, leaving the natu ral rock steps loose and treacherous. Sweat poured from the jeweler and his face was fiery. The descent had thus far been difficult, but his fear had to have made it many times harder.
He dropped onto the ground, wiped his face, and gave Bak a haggard smile. “My knees are shaking. But so far I’ve man aged to hang on to this.” He patted the bulging square of linen hanging from his belt. It held the turquoise Teti had given him.
Psuro handed him a waterbag. “You’ve done well, sir.
When I saw that narrow stretch of trail where the rock along side projected outward, I feared for you. Looking toward the rock as you did instead of facing the slope was wise.”
“I was so afraid, I feared I’d lose my midday meal.”
The sergeant clapped him on the back and laughed.
“Bread and beer. No great loss, I’d say.”
Bak smiled at the two of them. Psuro was not one to easily call a man “sir.” He had come to respect the jeweler. Bak felt the same. Ani had never been high on his list of suspects, but the more he saw of him, the more convinced he was that he would not, could not, slay a man. This journey up the moun tain of turquoise had proven he had immense inner strength and tenacity, but was lacking in physical strength and had no ease of movement in the natural world. With sufficient will, he might be able to bury a dagger in a man’s breast or back, but he could never slip away unseen from a campsite where men were sleeping all around.
Wensu flopped down beside Ani and, with a grateful smile, accepted the waterbag with shaking hands. Where the jeweler was flushed, the younger man’s face was pale and drawn. “My father will never believe me when I tell him of this trail.”
Nebre laughed. “Send him to me. I’ll tell him how often you’ve shaken off my hand, spurning aid.”
User and Amonmose, sweating profusely but undaunted, continued a good-natured argument they had begun halfway down the dry waterfall. The explorer claimed a bird soaring overhead was an eagle. The trader swore it was a vulture. As it was hardly more than a black speck, Bak suspected they were arguing simply for argument’s sake. Nebenkemet, no more troubled by the descent than they, sat with the soldiers carrying the turquoise. They were flipping a small flat stone they had dug out of the bag and were betting on which side would turn up when it fell.
Suemnut studied the sun and the shadows, which were growing longer and deeper. Bak could see he wanted to move on but, evidently believing Wensu and Ani needed more time, he let them rest. He ordered one of his men to take charge of the soldiers straggling down the trail and signaled all but four to pass them by and go on ahead.
Suemnut paced back and forth along the ledge, waiting for the two weaker men to regain their strength. Gradually, some of the flush faded from Ani’s face and Wensu’s color re turned. Very much aware of how anxious their guide was to get off the mountain before darkness fell, Bak stood up and suggested they leave. The sergeant flashed him a grateful smile.
The men responsible for the turquoise reluctantly quit their game and hefted the bags of precious stones. Their guards and the Medjays scrambled to their feet and took up their weapons. The men in User’s party hauled themselves off the ground. Suemnut, in his haste to be on his way, strode down the steep slope at the lower end of the ledge.
Bak, several paces behind, started down the slope. A sharp crack stopped him short. He glanced around, not sure what had made the sound. Seeing nothing, he walked on. Perhaps a rock had rolled off a ledge and shattered. Or could stone burst apart when exposed to too much heat and suddenly chilled by shade?
Another sharp report, this so close that small shards of broken stone erupted from the rock beside him. He ducked and looked around. A movement on the hillside high and to his right caught his eye. A man on the opposite side of the ravine. One who looked to be tall and slender. Too far away to see well and standing with his back to the sun, Bak could not discern his features. From his stance, from the way he pulled his arm back and flung it forward, Bak guessed his weapon.
“Get down!” he yelled, throwing himself sideways. “I see a man using a sling!”
A stone struck him hard on the right thigh, dropping him onto the rocks beside the path. Cursing mightily, he scram bled into the inadequate shelter of a broken boulder. Suem nut crouched low and slid down the slope to a bulge in the hillside. Psuro, Nebre, and Kaha hustled everyone else to the base of the trail down which they had come. Huddled against the hillside in a corner of sorts, the man with the sling could not see them.
Bak glanced at his thigh. Except for a slight redness, he saw no sign of the impact, but a hint of soreness promised an impressive bruise. He had no illusions about the power of a sling in the hands of an expert, and he thanked the lord Amon for his good fortune. Men were trained in the army to kill with the weapon and could strike a man’s head with prac ticed ease and deadly force. He had heard that the desert no mads used slings to slay gazelle and ibex and to take the lives of one another in tribal disputes.
The man with the sling heaved another rock. It skidded across the top of the boulder behind which Bak lay, sending bits of stone flying around him. Suemnut yelled at the sol diers he had sent on ahead, ordering them back. His voice echoed through the wadis, the words lost in repetition. In the unlikely event that his troops heard, Bak doubted they would understand the summons.
The man flung another rock, silencing the sergeant. Psuro leaped out into the open and fired off an arrow. The angle was not good, and the missile fell short. The man stood his ground and may even have laughed, reminding Bak of the man he and Nebre had followed deep into the foothills of the red mountain.
Snarling an oath, Psuro ducked away. He spoke a few words to Nebre and Kaha. The former seated an arrow and raised his bow, ready to leap out into the open.
Favoring his thigh, which was beginning to throb, Bak made motions as if to leave his shelter. If he could draw the man’s attention…
“Stay there, sir!” Psuro yelled.
The man sent another rock flying. With an angry crack, it slammed into the boulder near Bak’s head. At the same time,
Nebre stepped out, the look on his face venomous. He raised his bow in a careful and deliberate fashion and fired off an ar row. It struck the man in the left side, but flew on past. A glancing blow at best. The Medjay snapped out an oath and seated another missile.
The man touched his side, raised his hand to look at his fingers and what had to be blood, and slung a rock at Nebre.
The stone grazed the Medjay’s arm, causing him to fumble the arrow. Kaha stepped out to aid his fellow policeman. The man swung around and began to run. Kaha’s arrow flew high, missing its target. Nebre’s missile struck the boulder behind which the man vanished.
The Medjays grabbed their quivers and a waterbag, ran to ward the stepped waterfall above the ravine, and scrambled across a slope of loose rocks on the opposite side, following the man who had ambushed them. The two guards raced after them. Bak leaped up from his shelter, grabbed a spear, and followed.
“No!” Suemnut yelled. “You can’t go after him. It’s too near nightfall and you don’t know the mountain.”
Bak slowed his pace, torn between common sense and a desire to snare the attacker.
“Come back!” Suemnut yelled.
Snapping out a curse, much against his wishes, Bak or dered the men back. Though he had not had a good look at the man with the sling, his basic physical appearance was too familiar to ignore. He had to be the watching man. The man who had, less than two weeks earlier, tried to entice him and
Nebre into an ever more confusing landscape, where they might well have become lost, where they could easily have died from lack of food and water.
Bak plodded down the trail behind Suemnut, seething with fury. The man he sought had an uncanny ability to choose a place and time that would give him the advantage.
Bak had vowed to snare him, and he knew he would, but when and how?
The path was no longer as difficult as it had been, but each step he took jolted the bruise on his thigh, making it ache with the intensity of an open wound. A dark lump had formed and was beginning to extend downward, blood spreading below the skin from the injury. To make matters worse, the day had been long and he was tired and hungry.
The deepening shadows of the peaks to the east were spread ing across the landscape, harbingers of night. At least the heat of the day was waning.
“There you are, sir.” Suemnut stopped and pointed almost straight down.
Bak looked upon the wadi below with mixed emotions. He thanked the gods that their goal had shown itself at last, but it looked impossibly far away. Huge slopes of broken red sand stone fanned out below them. A thin pale line traversing the lower incline marked the path to the wadi floor. Acacia trees sent long, late-evening shadows across the broad strip of bur nished sand, which meandered away between high reddish hills, maybe spurs of the mountain of turquoise.
“We’re not far from the nearest slope of fallen rock,” the sergeant said. “After we reach that, it’s simply a matter of placing one foot in front of the other.”
The troops who had passed them by, physically fit and ac customed to the descent, were nowhere in sight. Bak as sumed they had gone around a shoulder of the mountain or had descended into a ravine and would reappear on the path below. Or they might have already reached the wadi and walked on to Huy’s camp. A depressing thought considering the distance he and his companions still had to travel.
With a quick glance backward to be sure the men for whom he was responsible were keeping up, Suemnut walked on. Bak also looked back. Psuro was close behind, walking with Nebre, trying to convince him that even if they had gone after the man with the sling, they could not have caught him.
The Medjay, furious at having to let him slip away yet an other time, wore a scowl that would have sent fear into the heart of the lord Set himself. Bak, who felt no less angry, sympathized.
Bak sat on a thick pillow stuffed with straw, his leg stretched out before him in the faint hope that he could ease the pain in his thigh. No amount of pampering would heal the injury, he knew. Only time would erase the ghastly black bruise and the constant nagging ache.
Lieutenant Huy, eager for another game of senet, had urged him to accept the pillow. Now the officer sat on a stool on the opposite side of the game board, setting up the playing pieces. As before, he had taken the blue spools for himself and had given Bak the white cones. Lieutenant Nebamon sat on a rock, his back to the wall of the rough stone structure
Huy and his scribe used as a dwelling and office. His face was hidden in shadow, while the light of the torch mounted on the wall behind him illuminated the game board and the two men preparing to play. A yellow dog lay at Nebamon’s feet, twitching and moaning in its sleep.
Bak allowed Huy to take three of his pieces before he asked, “How many men who toil here are nomads?”
“Twenty or twenty-five. They labor atop the mountain, carrying away waste taken from the mines, helping in the quarries, and performing any number of other tasks that are easy to learn and require physical strength rather than wit or talent.”
Huy studied the pieces on the game board. Blind to an opening Bak had given him, he made an ineffectual move. A partially smothered chortle escaped from Nebamon’s lips.
If Huy noticed, he gave no hint. “Three women and their children remain in this camp to care for the livestock we keep, while their men toil on the mountain.” He studied the board, then nodded his satisfaction. “You’ll have noticed that any number of nomads come and go, seeking to trade or to cadge some small item they need.”
Bak was forced to take the spool Huy had moved. “Do any men come from the Eastern Desert?”
“Not many,” Huy said, blinking surprise that he had lost a piece, “and they seldom remain for long.” With his mouth tight and determined, he moved another spool. “The local men look to us as a source of wealth. They resent sharing with outsiders.”
“Are any here now?”
“Possibly. My scribe would know.”
“All who wish to toil at the mines report to the scribe when they arrive,” Nebamon explained. “Each day a man remains, his foreman makes a mark on a shard. When he’s ready to leave, the shard goes to the scribe and he gives the nomad a token to deliver to the port for payment in kind.”
Bak muttered an oath. A man could pass through the camp and climb the mountain of turquoise without ever report ing his presence. An individual from the Eastern Desert, shunned by one and all, might come and go virtually unno ticed or, more likely, would be looked upon as invisible. He was willing to wager a month’s rations that the man with the sling had walked in and out without so much as attracting a glance.
Bak lost the game by a narrow margin and insisted Neba mon play the next. He found losing to be much more difficult than winning. Offering the caravan officer the pillow, he moved to the rock. The dog woke up, curled into a tight ball, and went back to sleep with a grunt of contentment.
While the officers played, Bak’s thoughts turned to the at tack earlier in the day and to the man who had used the sling.
The watching man, he felt sure. Had someone in User’s party told him they meant to come to the mountain of turquoise?
Or had he simply followed them, with no one noticing? His knowledge of the wadis and mountains on this side of the sea was especially puzzling. While Bak and his Medjays were tied by their ignorance of the land and its people to the cara van and the army, as were User and his party, their foe trav eled with no such constraints. How did he manage?
The question turned Bak’s thoughts to Minnakht. He had vowed to stay close, but had he? Bak thought about the man he had met in the Eastern Desert, the man he had heard so much about through the last few weeks. A man of courage who traveled the barren land undeterred by adversity. One who… suddenly, without conscious intent, a new idea leapt into his heart, a thought that would not be dislodged.
“Do you know of a place nearby where a man might find wa ter, where he could stay alone and undisturbed by other men?”
“Where you find water, you’ll find nomads.” Huy’s voice was curt, agitated. “Women and children bringing their flocks to drink. Sometimes a man or two.”
Realizing something was wrong, Bak glanced at the senet board. Nebamon had taken more than half his fellow officer’s pieces.
“The closest spring is at the copper mines west of here,” the caravan officer said, capturing another spool.
Bak did not know if Nebamon’s thoughts were elsewhere or if he believed Huy had had enough pampering for one night. “I’m seeking a more solitary place, one where a man might slip out of sight should nomads bring their flocks.”
Huy gave his opponent a cool look. “Your return journey to the port often takes an inordinate length of time, Neba mon. Puemre tells me that you stop at an oasis north of here, allowing your troops to play when they should be hastening to the sea with their valuable burden.”
Noticing the venom in Huy’s voice, Nebamon looked more closely at the board. He was clearly surprised by what he saw. “Often? No. Now and again, yes.” He placed a white cone in jeopardy, glanced at Bak, grinned sheepishly.
“There’s an open, running stream in the next large wadi to the north. The journey to the port is longer, but I sometimes return that way, giving my men an opportunity to bathe themselves and the donkeys. The water has an odd smell and we can’t drink it, but washing away the dust refreshes man and beast alike.”
He studied the game board as if trying to decide what he should do next. “A few nomads go there, but a man who wished to remain unseen could easily walk a short way up the wadi, where the stone has been carved by wind and water as if by the hand of a man.”
Bak watched him sacrifice another white cone. From the look on Huy’s face, he would soon be placated. “With no drinkable water, he couldn’t stay there for long.”
“There’s a larger oasis closer to the sea and to the south.
We get water there for use at the port. It’s frequented by the nomads, so a man couldn’t remain unseen for long, but he might slip in and out at infrequent intervals, taking only enough time to water his animals and fill his jars.” Neba mon moved another cone into the path of the spool Huy was driving toward the final square. “Do you think the man who attacked today might be camping at one of those oases?”
“Perhaps.” Bak shifted his position, waking the dog and the pain in his thigh. “You must remember that I’m also look ing for Minnakht.”
“He’s not been seen since he left the port,” Huy said, his disposition soothed. “Most men believe he sailed back to the
Eastern Desert.”
Bak stayed as close to the truth as he could. “I vowed I’d follow his path from the beginning of his journey to the end.
I know he visited the mountain of turquoise and the copper mines west of here. There’s a chance that he sailed away from the port, but returned to this barren land. A place with water would be a necessary destination.” Noting the doubt on their faces, he gave them a humorless smile. “Unlikely or not, I must leave no possibility unexamined. If I find no sign of him, I must return to the Eastern Desert and remain in that wretched land until I learn his fate. I prefer the company of men of Kemet to seeing nothing but footprints of nomads who vanish each time we draw near.”
Giving him a quick, sympathetic smile, Nebamon offered up his last white cone.
Huy made a final move. “You wish to visit those oases,” he said, his voice ringing with triumph.
“You’ll have to go by yourself,” Nebamon said, hiding a smirk from the victor. “I can’t take the caravan the long way around this trip. We’ve another load of supplies awaiting us on the vessels on which you crossed the sea.”
Bak thanked the gods. If the man he sought had indeed gone to one of the oases and if he saw an approaching cara van, he would slip away faster than a desert fox. “Can you give me a man to serve as a guide?”
“I can send a nomad with you,” Huy said. “One I often trust to carry messages to the port.”
“Such a man would serve me well.” Not merely because he would know the wadis better than any soldier, but because the man he hoped to find would have no reason to hide from one who wandered this land. “I’d like first to see the copper mines. When do you plan to move on, Nebamon?”
The caravan officer dropped his playing pieces into the drawer and smiled. “You’ve had enough of the mountain of turquoise, Lieutenant?”
“More than enough,” Bak said, glancing at his throbbing thigh.
“I thought to leave tomorrow before nightfall.”
“I’ll tell User and the others.” Bak stood up, yawned. “I wish them to travel to the port with you, not come with me. I trust you’ve no objection?”
Nebamon gave him a long, speculative look. The kind of look one man gives another when he suspects him of a hid den purpose. “User’s good company, and so is Amonmose.
I’ll keep them and the rest out of your way.”
“You understand what you must do.” Bak spoke softly so his instructions would not carry to User’s camp or to any soldiers.
He sat on his sleeping mat, his leg stretched out, trying again to ease the ache in his thigh. His Medjays sat around him, leaning close, faces intent. The yellow dog, which had followed him from Huy’s dwelling, lay at his feet. The sky was black, the multitude of stars resplendent, the moon large and luminous.
“I’d rather stay with you, sir.” As if seeking support, Kaha glanced at Psuro, sitting beside him on the sand. “Cannot
Minmose or Nebre deliver your message?”
Minmose squirmed, uncomfortable with the thought, and
Nebre grunted. The sergeant remained mute.
“They can’t speak the tongue of the men of the Eastern
Desert,” Bak said. “You can.”
“They understand no more than half of what I say.”
“As long as you can convince them that you must speak with Nefertem, the rest matters not. Once you reach him, you’ll have no trouble. He speaks our tongue as well as you or I.”
“What if I never get to him?”
Bak’s patience was coming to an end. He understood
Kaha’s reluctance to go off by himself into the wilderness, but an order was an order. “I told you before: seek out a fam ily of nomads, show them the pendant, and say you must go to Nefertem right away. Someone will take you to him.”
The Medjay, who could not have missed the impatience in
Bak’s voice, stared unhappily at the chunk of quartz in his hand. “If I manage to speak with him, what am I to tell him?”
“Tell him I’ll soon cross the sea, returning to the Eastern
Desert. I hope to be traveling with Minnakht. I wish Imset to meet us when we disembark at the quay where our sover eign’s cargo ships anchor at the eastern end of the southern route to the sea. The boy must take us to Nefertem, whom I hope to meet at the place where he found this.” Bak lifted the pendant from Kaha’s hand and held it up, letting the quartz dangle from the leather thong.
Several dogs began to bark, momentarily distracting them, and a sheep voiced alarm. The dog at Bak’s feet raised his head and cocked his ears to listen. Bak guessed a predator of some kind was lurking close by in the dark. A ewe had given birth to a lamb during the day. The fragile creature would be a tasty morsel for a large feline or a hyena.
Bak returned the pendant to Kaha and handed him a tight roll of papyrus. “Take this to Lieutenant Puemre. In it I ask that he rush you across the sea to the Eastern Desert. The traveling ship we saw at the port, which he uses to carry mes sages, is manned by soldiers and is fast. You should have plenty of time to contact Nefertem.”
“Am I to await you at the shore with the boy?” Kaha asked.
“You will stay with Nefertem.”
Kaha gave him a dismal look. “I’m to be his hostage.”
“I plan to give him what he wants. He’ll not harm you.”
“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself, sir?” Psuro walked with Bak around the walled pen in which the sheep and goats were kept. They looked to be the sole men awake in the warm, still night. “How can you be so certain we’ll find Min nakht at one of those oases?”
The yellow dog, lured by the other dogs who dwelt in the camp, had run off into the darkness, his voice merging with theirs. Their furious barking gradually faded away as they chased the predator away from the camp. The flock, which
Bak and the sergeant had found milling restlessly within the rough stone walls, had begun to settle down. The lamb was safe among them.
“If we don’t find him, if he didn’t follow us as he vowed he would, I must still meet with Nefertem. We alone can never hope to find one man in an area as vast as the Eastern Desert.
We need the help of a tribal chieftain, one whose people can sweep across the landscape, letting no one and nothing slip out of their grasp.”
“They didn’t find him before, sir.”
“They didn’t know what they were looking for.”
“You vowed to tell no one that he still lives. Now you plan to tell Nefertem. Is that wise, sir? What if he’s right and the nomads wish him dead?”