"Find that boy." Bak hurried up the gully to the fortress, through the main gate, and along the street to the armory, repeating the words over and over in his thoughts, the orders he had given Kasaya and Pashenuro. "If he still lives, we must make sure he stays alive. If he's been slain, we must learn how and when and by whom."
The Medjays had left their quarters with the same sense of urgency he felt. The mute boy Ramose had to be located and, if_ still living, Bak had to find a way to communicate with him. He had to know for a fact the significance of the sketch on the pottery shard. The fortress of Semna, and therefore Amon-Psaro, was too close to Iken for comfort. Even worse, all Bak's suspects would be traveling upstream to Semna with the lord Amon. The god's entourage would provide an ideal refuge for a potential assassin, allowing him to make his play and slip back among the others camouflaged as one among many.
Bak strode into the armory, a building too spacious for the number of men toiling there, its once whitewashed walls now worn and dirtied to the dark brown of river silt. Long ago when the fortress had been fully manned, the structure had bustled with craftsmen striving to arm a large and active force. Now, with the garrison small and the battles reduced to skirmishes, with most weapons brought in by ship from the north, the need was limited to minor manufacture and repairs.
Pausing on the threshold, he nodded a greeting to the chief armorer, a swarthy, muscular man of thirty or so years, and glanced around in search of the scarred man. The hot, stuffy room rang with the sound of two men hammering bronze points to harden the edges. The acrid smell of molten metal filled the air around a thick pottery furnace nested on a bed of charcoal. Quick, sharp clicks and the sound of broken stone skittering across the hard-packed earthen floor betrayed the presence of someone in the next room flaking flint for an arrowhead or some other implement of war. The stench of wet leather drifted through an open door, beyond which several men were stretching reddish hides onto wooden frames, making or repairing shields.
A barrel-chested man of medium height, his cheek deformed by a long scar, strode through the rear door. He spotted Bak, his eyes widened with recognition, and he swung around as if to run. He had nowhere to go; the armory had only a single exit.
"Senmut!" Bak snapped, silencing the pounding and chipping, drawing a dozen gawkers from the surrounding rooms.
A look of craven fear washed across the scarred face. "I didn't slay Lieutenant Puemre! I swear it!"
Bak had expected a denial, but one of lesser consequence. "If you're as innocent as you claim, why did you knock me out? Why search the house?"
The chief armorer scowled at the watching men, sending them scurrying back to their tasks, then hunkered down near the outer door, listening to every word, every shade of meaning. He would no doubt report what he heard to his family and probably to half of Iken as well.
"I've done nothing!" Senmut said. "I swear!"
"Why did you run two days ago, when you found me in Puemre's house?"
"Wouldn't you? Would you want to be blamed for something you didn't do?"
"You're open to blame until you explain yourself." Losing patience, Bak caught Senmut's arms above the elbows and shook him. "Now talk! I want no more denials."
Senmut backed up, his steps clumsy, his eyes fearful. "I went looking for the boy, that's all. I swear it! Then I saw you on the floor, Puemre's belongings strewn around you, and I ran."
"The boy…" Bak's ears took in the silence of the tools, the idleness of craftsmen too busy listening to work. "You need a jar of beer, Senmut." To the chief armorer he added, "I'll not keep him long."
Senmut, startled into obediencg, led the way to a house of pleasure in the next block, where the proprietor sold beer so thick it clogged the strainer. The establishment was neat and clean, with walls freshly whitewashed and a floor sprinkled with water to keep down the dust. Beer jars and drinking bowls stood in tidy stacks, and a few low three-legged stools were scattered among straw-stuffed pillows for seating. The brew was strong and tasty, ideal for breaking down a wall of defense and loosening a tongue. A large helping of patience might also be in order, Bak reminded himself.
"You went looking for the boy," he said, keeping his voice kind, conversational. "The mute child Ramose, you Senmut eyed his interrogator with suspicion. "He needs a new home. I thought to take him to mine, to make him part of my household." He drank from his bowl, taking several healthy swallows. "I've no wife to mother him. She died two years ago. But my children like him, and my oldest daughter is a mother to all."
Bak studied the armorer's face, searching for a lie. "The neighbors haven't seen the boy since the night Puemre disappeared. I fear for his safety."
Senmut's work-hardened hands fidgeted on the bowl.
"He's a tough little fellow, a born scavenger. He can get by where most others would starve."
"Puemre was slain," Bak said, spelling it out. "The child might well have suffered a like fate."
The armorer's voice turned gruff, despairing. "Puernre was a son to me, and Ramose a son to him. I'll care for him as I will my daughter's unborn child." Bak's last grim words must have sunk in then, for he shook his head and gave a pathetic imitation of a smile. "The boy ran away, that's all. He came to my daughter yesterday morning to let her see he was alive and well. In the market, it was, soon after the fishermen brought in their catch."
Bak's emotions leaped to surprise and delight, and gratitude to the lord Amon. Yet he was confused by Senmut's mixed signals, by so deep a despair. "Your daughter cooked for Puemre and cleaned his house?"
Senmut wiped his nose with the back of his hand, sniffed. "She cared for him, yes, and one day soon she'll care for his child." His voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands. His shoulders trembled with silent sobs.
Puemre's child? Bak laid a kindly hand on his arm. "I must speak with her, Senmut. Where can I find her?" Mutnefer, Bak guessed, was close to Aset in age, but there the resemblance ended. Where Woser's only daughter was delicate and lovely, Senmut's eldest child was graceless and plain. Where Aset was girlish and fanciful, Mutnefer was a woman heavy with child and the responsibility for her father's household, six children between the ages of two and twelve.
"Puemre loved me, and I him." Mutnefer rested her hand on her unborn child, and her voice trembled. She wore a loose dress of ordinary linen, a single wristlet of bronze, and the merest touch of kohl on eyes red-rimmed from crying. "He meant to take us with him when he went back to Kemet."
Bak, seated on a stool in the roofless cooking area behind the three-room house, was touched by her faith in Puemre's promises. Hiding his compassion, he watched her drop a lump of well-kneaded dough into a round pottery baking dish, setting it in a mound of hot coals. She covered the dish with a conical lid. A naked two-year-old boy played in the shady doorway and a girl of eight or so bent over a stone mortar, pushing the grindstone back and forth, making coarse flour from grain. He- had seen two other small children, the oldest about five, playing on the roof under the sharp eye of a ten-year-old. The child next in age to Mutnefer, a boy of twelve or so, had gone to the river to fish. All who were old enough had to earn their bread in Senmut's household.
"Without your help, how did your father plan to care for so' large a brood?"
Her smile was as tremulous as her voice. "They, too, were to go to Kemet: my father, my brothers and sisters. Puemre promised us a house on his father's estate, a parcel of land, and even a servant, a woman to care for the small ones. Instead of making weapons, my father would make tools for the men who worked the fields of the estate."
A promise easily made, Bak thought, and equally easy to forget. "What was to become of you? Were you to wed him or…?"
She laughed, incredulous. "I have no noble blood! He loved me, yes, and he meant to take me into his household. I would've been his favorite for all time, he vowed, but his concubine, not his wife."
Bak thought4 best to drop the subject before she guessed how skeptical he was. He did not want to hurt her. "When did you last see Puemre?"
"The evening he disappeared." Her voice dropped to an unhappy murmur. "He walked me home before reporting to the commander's residence."
"What did he say? Will you tell me of his mood? Was he happy or sad or angry, for example?"
Mutnefer retrieved a portable camp stool from the house. The legs were carved and painted to look like the delicate heads of river birds, the seat made of finely woven leather. Bak could imagine a piece of that quality in the commander's residence, not in this poor household.
She noticed his interest. "Puemre saw the trouble I had getting off the ground once I sat down, so he brought this stool to ease my life." Blinking back tears, she placed it in the shady strip next to the wall and sat down heavily.
He wondered what he would do if she had the baby then and there. The thought was unsettling-until he recalled seeing women on the roofs of several houses in the block.
"Puemre came home that day long before dusk. I always cooked his evening meal and ate with him and Ramose, then brought whatever was left back to my family." She closed her eyes, swallowed. "He picked me up and swung me around in a circle, so excited he spoke in riddles. He mentioned the king Amon-Psaro, the prince, revenge, and a great battle with the Kushites. He said our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut herself, would give him the gold of valor and more."
Bak felt like hugging her. She had supplied the motive for Puemre's murder, far exceeding his expectations. Puemre had somehow discovered that Amon-Psaro was to be slain at the hands of an avenger. He should have shared the knowledge with someone in authority, but had kept the matter to himself so he alone could bask in glory. Now he was dead, silenced forever. His secrecy was unforgivable. Even if he mistrusted his fellow officers and his commander, he should have sent a message to Commandant Thuty.
Bak questioned Mutnefer further, but she could tell him nothing more. Puemre had babbled, filling in no details. If he had not opened his heart to her, Bak wondered, with whom had he talked? An image of the sketch on the pottery shard leaped into his thoughts. The mute child. Who better to confide in than one who could neither hear nor speak?
"Your father said Puemre's servant, the boy Ramose, came to you in the market yesterday."
Mutnefer stared at her hands, her fingers entwined over her bulging stomach, her face bleak with worry.
"If he can name the man who slew Puemre, and I've reason to believe he can, he's in grave danger." Bak leaned toward her, willing her to speak. "I must find him, mistress, before the killer does."
"I don't know where he is." Her hands writhed. "I can't talk to him. Puemre never taught me how. But I could tell how afraid he was."
"Did you give him food?"
She bit her lip, nodded. "What 1 could spare."
"How much did he take from Puemre's house the night he ran off."
"Not much. He's surely finished it by now."
He's probably stealing to survive, Bak thought, and what better place than at the market. "If you see him again, will you bring him to me?"
"If I can." She swallowed hard, striving to be strong. "He didn't trust anyone but Puemre, and now… Well, he came to me yesterday, but he ran off again."
Bak rose to his feet, preparing to leave. The gritty whisper of the grindstone drew his eyes toward the thin, silent girl laboring over the mortar. He prayed to the lord Amon that no child of his would ever have to live so hard. "My men and I have more rations than we can use this week. Will you accept a few items in return for what you've told me?"
The pleasucp he saw on her face was as great a reward as the information she had provided.
As he walked the narrow lane outside the house, another thought surfaced. If only one officer was stalking AmonPsaro, why were the others covering his tracks? Could the reason have something to do with a shared experience in the war against the Kushites twenty-seven years ago?
"Lieutenant!" It was Kasaya, running down the lane from the fortress. "I've been looking everywhere for you, sir. Commander Woser and his officers have gone out to the slipway." He stopped in front of Bak, his massive chest heaving. "The barge of the lord Amon is approaching Iken, with Sergeant Imsiba, Troop Captain Nebwa, and half the garrison of Buhen."
Bak broke into a smile, delighted at the news. "It'll be wonderful to see a friendly face again and to speak for a change with officers who're straightforward and honest."
Kasaya grinned. "First you must speak with Commander Woser. He wants to see you right away."
"No more bad news, I hope."
"He didn't bless me with knowledge."
Bak's laugh was short-lived. He recounted his interviews with Senmut and Mutnefer and told Kasaya to go find Pashenuro. They should take all the rations they could spare to Mutnefer, get her description of the mute boy, and goon to the market. The child, he felt sure, would turn up sooner or later and he wanted at least one of them there when he showed his face. The boy had to be found and any secrets he held somehow released. Only then would he be safe.
"I've seldom seen men work so hard," Imsiba said, his eyes on the crowd massed in the distance. The glitter of gold could be seen above their heads, the elegant, upswept prow of the god's barge towed now by men rather than a warship. "I pray the lord Amon makes the effort worthwhile."
"You've heard Amon-Psaro is already in Semna," Bak said.
Imsiba's face turned dour. "How can a man expect a god, no matter how great and powerful, to heal a child so ill?
"What does Kenamon have to say?"
"He speaks with the unflagging faith of a priest, not the practical physician he is. But the closer we come to Semna,
I've noticed, the more often he kneels in prayer."
The big Medjay's gloom was contagious, filling Bak's heart with grim and unwanted thoughts.
They strode across the sandy waste, neither in a mood to talk yet comfortable with the shared silence. Bak's eyes darted ahead, tracing the course of the slipway along which the lord Amon's barge was being dragged past the most formidable of the rapids below Iken. The route stretched across the sandy desert flat, a road paved with logs, slightly curved to form a cradle, lying side by side on a bed of dry and cracking silt.
As they neared the barge, Nebwa stepped back from among the soldiers surrounding the vessel and shouted an order. The men standing in front, well above a hundred troops from Buhen, took up the slack on heavy ropes attached to the craft, while others alongside did the same, their task to prevent the barge from tipping to the right or left as well as to aid with the tow. Several men carrying large round-bottomed jars hurried forward. Commander Woser and the officers Huy, Senu, Inyotef, and Nebseny stood off to the side with Kenamon. The lesser priests and a couple of soldiers purified for the occasion knelt beside the lord Amon's golden barque, waiting to lift it onto their shoulders and move it forward with the barge. The doors of the shrine were closed and sealed, protecting the image of the god from the noise and dust of the outside world.
A second shout from Nebwa. The water carriers tipped their jars, soaking the silt in front of the barge, making it as slick as the grease taken from a fat roasted goose. A foreman counted off the rhythm in a singsong voice, and the tow-men began to pull. Muscles bulged. A few men grunted, others cursed. Sweat poured forth beneath the heartless sun. The lower hull, gently rounded, bare of paint and gilding, slid forward on the bed of logs, its wood creaking and moaning with the strain.
A great golden barge traveling across the barren desert. Amazing! Bak thought.
Nebwa walked alongside, watching with a wary eye, alert for snarled ropes, a fallen man. Ten paces and he shouted again, bringing the barge to a halt, giving the men a chance to rest.
Bak let muscles that he had not realized were tensed relax and looked farther afield, searching out his men. A mixed guard of Medjay police and the spearmen Nebwa had selected formed a rough oval thirty or so paces around the barge. Others stood on higher ground off to the west, widely spaced yet not so far apart they could not communicate with a whistle or a shout. Their task was to watch the desert for marauding tribesmen.
"You've done well, Imsiba. I wish I could say the same."
"I've had no opportunity to speak with Commander Woser." Imsiba stared toward the officers with Kenamon. "Have you learned yet why he raised so high a wall around the news of Puemre's death?"
Bak laughed ruefully. "If he were the only obstruction I've found in Iken, I'd think myself lucky."
The big Medjay gave him a curious glance.
"I'll explain tonight. After the lord Amon is safe within the mansion of Hathor. Now I must talk to Woser." Bak grinned. "I've been summoned."
While Imsiba struck off to the west and the line of guards watching from afar, Bak circled around the weary tow-men. The officers and priests were too intent on their conversation to notice his approach.
Woser was saying, "You surely don't believe Chancellor Nihisy will come all the way to the Belly of Stones!" The commander looked worried, Bak noticed with some satisfaction Nebwa raised his hands palm forward, staving off the words. "You misunderstand. All I said was that I wouldn't want to walk in Thuty's sandals, or yours, if the man who slew Puemre isn't brought to justice in a timely manner." "The chancellor won't come," Inyotef said. "He's too new to his task, too busy slipping into the palace bureaucracy. He'll send someone else in his place."
"Worse yet," Nebwa snorted. "A lesser man who represents a great one is always harsher than his master. Especially when the master is too far away to learn the true facts and soften his agent's decisions."
"Do you always look on the dark side, Nebwa?" Huy kept his voice light, teasing almost, but he looked as worried as Woser.
"I call the score the way I see it." Nebwa spotted Bak and a broad grin erased the gloom. "Now here's the man who can save you from Nihisy's wrath!" He clasped Bak's shoulders in greeting. "No man yet- has escaped his justice."
"You exaggerate." Bak spoke automatically, his eyes darting around the group, noting their reactions.
Woser's face was taut; tired eyes betrayed nights made restless by anxiety. Nebseny's mouth was a thin, tight line. The wrinkles etching Huy's forehead had deepened. Senu's eyes searched Bak's face and Nebwa's, as if he suspected a plot to spread fear among him and his fellow officers. Inyotef smiled, a trait Bak remembered from the past, the pilot's way of hiding tension, worry, fear, or any sign of weakness.
Nebwa eyed the barge and the men around it, some drinking beer from a goatskin, others oiling themselves to prevent their skin from drying, the rest sitting and talking or lying on the sand with their eyes closed. He gave no hint of whether or not he noticed the officers' reactions. "You're too clever by far," he told Bak. "A man impossible to deceive."
"You make me sound like one who walks with the gods," Bak joked.
"You walk with the lady Maat, that I know." Nebwa clapped him on the shoulder, grinned at Woser. "You'll see. When he's in search of justice, he's like a dog with a bone. Once he sinks his teeth in, he never lets go. I wouldn't tread in the slayer's footsteps for all the gold in Wawat and Kush."
Bak was delighted with Nebwa and the reactions he had brought forth, but he wondered if his friend had not gone too far. A cornered criminal, like a trapped animal, was apt to strike out with uncontrolled fury. If he knew from which direction to expect an attack, he could guard against it, but here, where one man seemed as guilty as another, he had no defense.
Kenamon gave the pair a disapproving scowl, patently unhappy with Nebwa's game and suspicious of Bak's part in it. "Have you heard the news, my son?"
Bak caught the censure in the elderly priest's voice, and a deeper worry. "What's wrong? Has something happened to Amon-Psaro?" The moment the words popped out, he knew he had made a mistake. If, as he believed, one of the officers standing with him was determined to slay the king, he had revealed what he knew in one short, ill-conceived question.
Woser gave him an odd look. "Not the king. It's the prince."
"A courier came to Commander Woser not an hour ago," Kenamon explained. "He carried a message from Amon-Psaro, who's gravely worried about the life of his son. He no longer has the patience to wait in Semna while the lord Amon makes his slow progress up the river. He's bringing the child to Iken."
"May the gods save us all." Bak's voice was flat and lifeless, his thoughts stalled.
"As the river is still too low to sail all the way uninterrupted by rapids, Amon-Psaro will come by the desert route. His entourage is large, more than a hundred men including servants, so they'll not be able to travel fast, but they should arrive in two days' time."
Bak did not bother to hide the dismay he felt. No one, with the exception of the would-be assassin, could possibly guess its true source: the Kushite king on his way to Iken, walking onto the home ground of a man who wanted him dead. Like a honeybee buzzing toward a gossamer web, with a spider poised to strike.
He looked toward the golden shrine and offered a fervent prayer to the god dwelling inside. Let us soon find the mute child, he implored, for we've no other trail to follow.