The day was hot, sweltering. The kind of day when predators and prey alike hid among the rocks or under bushes or in the depths of the river. They hid not from each other but from the sun god Re, whose fiery breath drew the moisture from every animal and plant, from the life-giving river itself. Only man, the greatest predator of all, walked about.
Lieutenant Bak, commanding officer of the Medjay police, stood in the sun at the southern end of the long, narrow mudbrick fortification of Kor. Scattered around him were thirty or more donkeys and the baskets and bundles they had carried across the burning desert. A company of spearmen, a few sitting on the collapsed walls of a nearby building, looked on with avid interest, whispering among themselves. Beyond and to the left, four masons repairing a fallen wall sneaked a curious glance each time their overseer's attention faltered.
Sweat pickled down Bak's sun-bronzed face, broad chest, and muscular back, puddled in the crook of his arms, stained his thigh-length white kilt from waist to hem. A fly buzzed around his thick, short-cropped black hair. The sweet scent of cut grain, the ranker odor of manure tickled his nostrils and made him sneeze. He had never in his twenty-four years been so hot. And he had seldom been so disgusted.
"For a single grain of wheat, Seneb, I'd place this load on your back." With his baton of office he prodded several heavy lengths of ebony bound together with leather cords. "Then I'd take you into the desert and make you carry it day after day as you did these poor beasts."
"For every one donkey you see now, I had two before." Seneb's whine was as irritating as the wounded look he affected. "Could I leave so many precious objects behind when the officer at Semna took the other beasts from me?"
Bak's eyes shifted from the trader's round, fleshy face and portly body to the pathetic creatures around them: donkeys so emaciated their ribs protruded and so travel weary they could barely stand. All were galled from heavy, illbalanced loads and all had long, narrow open sores, the marks of a whip. The wounds crawled with flies.
His eyes moved on to the children huddled together in the narrow strip of shade beside the fortress wall. Five girls and two boys, none over ten years of age, hollow-eyed, half-starved, dusky skin caked with dirt, too weak and exhausted to show or even feel their terror. Bak had first seen them tied together in a line like the donkeys had been. A dark, hulking young Medjay policeman binding an ugly lash wound on the tallest girl's back glanced up now and then to give Seneb a look that promised murder. From the faces of the ten or so soldiers helping tend the children and animals, he was not alone in the feeling. Bak knew he had only to walk away and the trader would meet with an unfortunate, no doubt fatal, accident. As much as the thought appealed to him, he could not do so. His task was to serve Maat, the goddess of right and order, not balance the scale of justice as it suited him.
The scribe Whose task it was to collect tolls had summoned Bak from the fortress-city of Buhen to the lesser fortress of Kor. Of no strategic importance, with bleak, unpainted walls in a state of disrepair, Kor was a place of shelter for troops marching through the area and for merchant caravans. As the river upstream was impassable to navigation much of the year, ships docked here to off-load trade goods coveted by the tribal kings living far to the south and to take on board the exotic and precious objects the traders received in return.
"Were the animals confiscated in Semna as unfit to travel as these?" Bak asked the trader. "Is that why you didn't report at Iken as you were supposed to?"
Sweat beaded on Seneb's face, reddened from the sun and the effort of justifying his actions. "I thought it best to come on while the creatures…" He clamped his mouth shut, realizing his mistake.
"While they still could walk?" Bak snapped. "Before they and those children died of starvation, thirst, exhaustion?"
Seneb's spine stiffened with indignation. "If anyone is to blame for their disreputable state, it's the inspecting officer at Iken. He looks upon me with hatred and would make any excuse to take what is mine. I dared not stop, though my heart bled for my servants, the children, and these weary beasts."
"I see no blood on your kilt, Seneb, only on your hands."
"You accuse me wrongly, sir. I've dealt out punishment, yes, but only when due and only in moderation."
Bak nudged with a toe the five whips lying on the sand by his feet, leather whips knotted at the end to hurt more. "These speak louder than you, Seneb. And when with kindness we steal the fear from the tongues of the children, they'll speak louder yet."
"You'd accept the word of those wretched savages over that of a respectable man of Kemet?"
Bak beckoned Psuro, the burly, pockmarked Medjay guarding Seneb's four servants, men as dark as Psuro but taller, reed-thin, naked, bought and paid for like the rest of the trader's possessions. Each man stood with his arms behind his back, wrists clamped together in wooden manacles. "Shackle this swine." Bak eyed Seneb with contempt.
"He'll remain our prisoner until he stands before Commandant Thuty for judgment."
"You can't do this to me!" Seneb cried. "Who'll care for my merchandise, the fruits of my labor through the long months I spent upriver?"
Bak scowled at the contents of the baskets and bundles they had taken off the donkeys: long, heavy lengths of ebony; skins of the leopard and the long-haired monkey and other creatures he did not know; ostrich eggs and feathers; pottery jars filled with precious oils. Two wooden cages held live animals, a half-grown lion in one, three young baboons in another, all emaciated and panting from the heat.
"The donkeys will be cared for here," he said in a hard voice. "The wild creatures and children will go to Buhen for the care they need, and the rest will go into the treasury.
"You can't confiscate all I possess!"
"Take this cur and the others to Buhen, Psuro."
Seneb stretched himself to his greatest height. "I'll have your head for this, Lieutenant."
"Need I point out that my property and yours and that of every man of Kemet belongs in fact to the royal house?" Bak gave him a humorless smile. "I'll not be made to suffer for eliminating you as the middle man between the land of Kush and our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut. You've misused what by right is hers."
Seneb's face paled.
Bak's head swiveled toward Psuro. "If by chance he falls overboard while you take them downriver, so be it." He spoke more for the Medjay's benefit than Seneb's, for by airing the thought, Psuro would be bound to see his charge safe in Buhen.
"No!" the trader cried. "I can't swim! No!"
Psuro shoved Seneb onto his knees and, with the speed of long practice, lashed his wrists within the manacles so tightly he whimpered. Bak caught a glint of satisfaction in the eyes of the five silent children.
He had no time to dwell on his own satisfaction. His Medjay sergeant, Imsiba, strode through the group of watching spearmen, eyed Seneb's animals, and muttered an oath in the tongue of his homeland. Then he spotted the children. The skin tightened across his dark face, he balled his hands into fists, veered toward the bound trader. Seneb saw him coming and cringed.
"No, Imsiba!" Bak lunged toward the sergeant, grabbed an arm bulging with rock-solid muscle. "It's the commandant's task to see him punished, not yours."
Imsiba stared at the trader with smoldering eyes. "I trust he'll not be lenient, my friend, for if he is…" "Lenient?" Bak's laugh held no humor. "You've seen Thuty balance the scales of justice many times. He knows not the meaning of the word." He signaled Psuro to take the prisoners away. Not until the spearmen parted to let them by did he think it safe to release Imsiba's arm. "Now what brought you to Kor?"
The big Medjay tore his gaze from Seneb's back. "So angry was I that I forgot my purpose. The commandant has summoned you." His voice turned ominous. "You and Nebwa."
Bak glanced at the sun, well past midday, and groaned. "Nebwa crossed the river hours ago, Imsiba. I doubt he can stand by this time, let alone appear before Commandant Thuty."
"Tell him you couldn't find me. Say to him…" Troop Captain Nebwa teetered, spread his legs wide for balance, grinned across the rim of his chipped drinking bowl. "Say I went off into the desert, so disappointed was I that you and Imsiba, men closer to me than brothers, couldn't share my good fortune this day."
Laughter erupted from twenty or more men lounging on the shade-dappled sand among a grove of date palms. Their burned and peeling skin identified them as spearmen in Nebwa's infantry company not long back from desert patrol. The sweetish scent of date wine mingled with the rank odor of their sweat.
"Nebwa!" Bak wanted to grab one of several thigh-high pottery water jars leaning against the decaying mudbrick dwelling behind them and pour every drop over his friend's head. "Do you want the commandant to strip you of your Nebwa gave him a mournful look. "He has sons. Has he never celebrated their birth?"
His sergeant, Ptahmose, came through the door of the building, followed by a wrinkled old man carrying an unplugged jar of the pungent wine. Nebwa held out his bowl. The short, swarthy sergeant, a balding man with hard, stringy muscles, took in the scene at a glance and motioned the old man back inside.
Bak was glad Ptahmose, at least, had imbibed with greater caution. He reached for his friend's arm. "Come, Nebwa."
The officer backed away and lifted his bowl high. "She's my morning star, shining bright, the fairest of the fair." He stopped, laughed. "She's not fair!" He pivoted, flinging his arms wide. Wine sloshed from his bowl. "She's as dark as night and as seductive!" He grabbed Imsiba, pulled him close, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "A woman of great worth who's just given me my firstborn son."
Imsiba listed beneath the officer's weight. "The gods have indeed smiled on you, Nebwa. But not for long, I fear, if you don't soon report to Commandant Thuty."
Bak eyed the pair. Untidy, coarse-featured Nebwa, second in rank to the commandant of Buhen, was tall and muscular, as sunburned as his men, about thirty years old. And Imsiba, half a hand taller, a few years older, was as dark as obsidian, as lithe and sleek as a lion. Bak thought of the time not many months before when Nebwa had believed all Medjays of small worth and Imsiba had looked on the officer with contempt. To see them together as friends was usually a pleasure, but to see Nebwa so besotted robbed much of the joy from his heart.
"Imsiba knows of what he speaks," Ptahmose said. "The commandant is not a man of great patience."
Bak stood before his friend, gripped his shoulders, and shook him. "Do you want your son always to remember his birth as the day his father threw away all chance of reaching the rank of commandant?"
"I've no wish to disgrace myself," Nebwa mumbled. "Then you must come with us. Now." Bak emphasized the final word with another shake.
Nebwa slipped away from the offending hands and raised his bowl to Ptahmose and the revelers. "Stay, my brothers, and enjoy yourselves. With luck, I'll be back before nightfall." He slugged down the rest of his wine, gave the bowl a last regretful look, and threw it into a clump of dusty, bedr4ggled weeds.
Ptahmose eyed his unsteady superior. "I'd better come along, too."
"I've no need for a wet nurse," Nebwa growled. "We've a skiff to return to its owner." Ptahmose winked at Bak. "If I drop you on the quay and take it to the village by myself, you can report to the commandant that much sooner."
Bak caught Nebwa's arm and aimed him toward a small stand of acacias growing beside the river, a glistening stretch of water more than two hundred paces to the west, water they had to cross to reach Buhen. With the two sergeants close behind, they headed across a sun-drenched field covered with the golden stubble of cut grain.
Nebwa stumbled on an unbroken clod, laughed at himself and the world in general. "I've a son, my brothers, a son!" He raised his hands high and whooped, "I've a son!"
A flock of startled pigeons rose from the stubble, their wings whirring overhead. A man kneeling in a nearby field turned around to look, shading his eyes with a spray of green onions.
Nebwa began to hum, droning on and on with no discernible melody. A distant donkey brayed, a dog yipped. The remainder of the oasis, sheltered within a long arc of sandy hills, was silent and still, men and beasts alike escaping from the heat in shady groves and mudbrick houses. Except for a few isolated plots, the fields were bare of produce, the irrigation ditches dry, the weeds limp. Trees and bushes were clothed in dust and brittle with thirst. The sky overhead was white-hot, the lord Re a fiery ball sinking toward the horizon.
The near silence, the dormant land, even the erratic breeze carrying heat and dust from the desert wastes, gave Bak a sense of waiting, of anticipation. The river had begun to swell less than a week before, and he felt as if the land around him, this land of Wawat, had paused to rest before the floodwaters overflowed the earth to bring forth new life.
Regretting the need to tarnish his friend's glow, Bak stopped at the river's edge. The acacias clung to the rim of the steep, crumbling bank, their trunks leaning toward the broad expanse of water as if offering homage to Hapi, the god of the river. On the opposite shore and a short distance upstream, the great fortress of Buhen was barely visible in the haze, its stark white walls melting into the pale sandhills behind them.
A breath of air rustled through the dusty trees, winnowing the dying leaves from the living. Bits of yellow rained down on two sturdy wooden fishing skiffs beached on a strip of dark soil running along the water's edge. Nebwa's eyes lit up the moment he spotted the vessels.
"You owe me a race, Bak." He plunged down the bank, letting the loose dirt carry him to the prow of one of the boats. "Come, Ptahmose! Let's show these men from the north a thing or two about sailing, real sailing."
Bak muttered an oath. When voiced by a besotted Nebwa, the last two words sounded ominous indeed.
"I'll bet a month's ration of grain…" Nebwa leaned his weight against the skiff and, with a muffled grunt, shoved it hard toward the water. "… against a jar of good northern wine that Ptahmose and I will reach Buhen before you and Imsiba."
"The wager is too large for so simple a voyage," Bak said, nodding toward the haze-shrouded fortress. "The breeze will be dead astern all the way."
Nebwa, stifling a grin, shook his finger in mock disapproval. "No, no, my friend. You don't understand. We'll sail all the way south to the Belly of Stones before we cross the river. That's the way we did it last time, when you won, and that's the way we'll do it today."
Ptahmose laughed at what he took to be a joke. Imsiba spat out a few words in his own tongue.
Bak glared at the man below. "What of Commandant Thuty, Nebwa? Have you forgotten his summons?" Nebwa gave the skiff another hard shove and it slid into the water. "Make speed, Ptahmose! Do you want me to sail without you?"
With a heartfelt curse, Bak leaped onto the crumbling slope and half slid, half ran to the bottom, setting off a miniature landslide. The two sergeants plunged down the bank a moment later. Bak splashed into the water a step or two ahead of them.
Nebwa, knee-deep in the river, pushing the skiff before him, glanced around and saw the trio coming after him. Laughing like a mischievous child, he hauled himself on board, grabbed the oars, and shoved the vessel into deeper water, well out of reach.
"I'm sailing to the Belly of Stones," he said, making it sound like a royal proclamation. "If you want a race, you can come with me. If not, I'll go alone."
Bak expelled a long, disgusted breath. He hated to admit defeat, especially at the hands of a man too besotted to think straight.
"I'll come!" Ptahmose called. He waded to Bak's side and lowered his voice so Nebwa could not hear. "There's no arguing with him when he's like this, as you well know. I'll take care he doesn't fall overboard."
Bak knew from experience that Ptahmose was one of the best sailors along this stretch of the river, and Nebwa, when sober, was equally good. Only through luck had he and Imsiba won the last race they had run.
"All right, Nebwa, you've a bet!" Bak softened his voice, said to Ptahmose, "We'll stay as close as we can should you run into trouble."
The sergeant nodded, waded into deeper water, and swam toward Nebwa's boat. Bak splashed through the shallows to the skiff he and Imsiba had borrowed after leaving Kor. The big Medjay was already launching the vessel.
"What folly!" Imsiba gave a mighty shove that sent the craft into the water. "I'll consider myself a lucky man if I survive this day without a dunking-or worse."
Bak scrambled on board and, as the vessel rocked beneath him, hurried aft to the rudder. "You should thank the lord Amon you're not sailing with Nebwa. 1, at least, haven't addled my wits with wine."
"True. But he and Ptahmose know this river through all the seasons, know its whims as the floodwaters rise. We don't."
"Surely the path we'll take hasn't changed all that much since last we raced. It was less than a month ago." Imsiba, his expression grim, pulled himself aboard. "The rising waters, I've heard, are already coming with great force out of the Belly of Stones. The river is shifting the earth beneath it and along the banks, changing the currents to fit the new pattern of its bed. And already it's stealing trees and animals and people from the lower-lying parcels of land south of the Belly of Stones."
Bak glanced at the other skiff, saw it floating sideways downstream, Nebwa and Ptahmose fumbling with a snarled pair of ropes. "Without help, what will Ptahmose do if they capsize? Is he a strong enough swimmer to save himself and Nebwa as well?"
"Few men would be so strong, my friend."
Imsiba tugged the halyard, drawing the upper yard up the mast. The heavy white linen spread to a rectangle but continued to droop, even when stretched to its fullest height and the yard snug against the masthead. Bak tucked the rudder under his arm and grabbed the oars to send the craft scooting away from the riverbank in hopes of finding a breeze farther out.
"I hope your wife has been frugal, Nebwa," he called. "If she's saved no grain through the months, she'll not soon forgive you this bet."
Nebwa made a rude gesture with his hand.
Bak's laugh rang out as a faint breath of air kissed his cheek. "We must not sail too far ahead, Imsiba, but I think it safe to take advantage of our lead. I'd not like to lose this bet."
Imsiba gave him a wry smile, then adjusted the braces to haul the sail around. The fabric fluttered and sagged in a desultory breeze, billowed out in a gust that sent the boat skimming over the water. Bak waved at the two men they were leaving behind and set the vessel on a southerly course.
The broad, deep river stretched out before them, its waters flowing a reddish brown tinted with green. Far ahead, blanketed in haze, lay the mouth of the Belly of Stones and the first of the multitude of islands, large and small, that made the river impossible to navigate except at the highest flood stage. Bak's duties had never taken him beyond the first island, and, as always, he longed to see the land farther south, a land both praised and cursed by soldiers, traders, and envoys of the queen.
Taking a quick glance backward, he saw Nebwa at the oars, pulling his skiff around, and Ptahmose raising the patched red sail. Farther downstream, the sun-struck river looked like burnished gold, flowing past the oasis to fade away in a tawny wasteland of sandhills and ridges. He adjusted his rear on a beam and rested his back on the hull, confident he and Imsiba were far enough ahead to win yet not too far away should their help be needed.
Squinting into the sun, he eyed the massive fortress of Buhen across the water. High white mudbrick walls, relieved at regular intervals by projecting towers, rose from stone terraces along the river. Atop the battlements, he could see the tiny figures of patrolling sentries. Moored alongside three stone quays, a sleek trading vessel and two squat cargo ships dwarfed the twelve or fifteen smaller skiffs tied up among them. Except for a few hardy trees and shrubs growing along the riverbank, the land around the fortress was barren of life, a sand-swept, desiccated waste pulsating in the heat.
Bak eyed the scene with a fondness which always surprised him. When first he had come, sent as punishment at the order of an angry queen, he had hated the city and his duties as a police officer. How fast he had changed.
The wind held, and they skimmed the water, covering the distance with remarkable speed. The red sail crept closer, narrowing the lead until the vessels were no more than ten paces apart. Bak began to worry. Soon they would have to turn across the stronger midstream current and swing around. Could Ptahmose do it with only a drunken Nebwa to help?
The walls of Kor, an hour's walk south of Buhen, emerged from the haze. Imsiba adjusted the sail while Bak leaned into the rudder, swinging the skiff across the current. Nebwa's craft made a tighter turn and drew up beside them on the downstream side. Red sail and white lost the breeze and fluttered out of control. Bak again grabbed the oars, saw Nebwa do the same in the other vessel. Imsiba tugged a rope to lower the upper yard. The sail ballooned with a snap, tilting the skiff half on its side, catapulting them off course. The hull slid across the water at a dangerous angle, showering them with spray.
"By the beard of Amon, Imsiba!" Bak threw himself against the upward side for ballast. "Do you want to turn us over?"
Muttering something in his native tongue, the Medjay let the yard drop. The vessel wallowed an instant, then leveled out. A glance passed between them, their thoughts meshed, and they laughed with uneasy relief. Bak's eyes darted toward the other craft, now scudding along ten paces ahead as steady and graceful as a great warship. The will to win, it appeared, had prompted Nebwa to shake off a good bit of the wine.
Bak's worry fled, swept away by the excitement of a real race and a firm resolve to reach Buhen first. He aimed the prow downstream and held the skiff steady in the current while Imsiba bundled away the collapsed sail. Ptahmose, more experienced and faster, had already taken up a second pair of oars and settled down to help Nebwa. Their vessel pulled away, setting a course for the western shore and the towering spur wall that projected from the southeast corner of Buhen.
Bak knew he and Imsiba would lose the race if they followed; they were too far behind. So he set a course for the end of the nearest quay, thinking the current farther from shore would carry them faster than Nebwa could travel.
Imsiba, settling himself on a beam, an oar in each hand, grinned. "You flirt with the gods, my friend."
"Our chance of winning is small, I know, but I'll not give up until I must."
"Do you ever?" Imsiba chuckled.
The current and hard, laborious rowing swept them down the river faster than Bak had dreamed possible. Nebwa's vessel lost much of its speed as it approached the shore and soon fell astem. Bak laughed aloud, confident their momentum and a final burst of effort would drive his skiff to the quay before the other craft touched the solid ground at the base of the spur wall.
Imsiba yelled. At the same time, Bak spotted a halfsubmerged palm tree dead ahead. His stomach knotted, and he shoved the rudder, trying to swing the skiff around. The prow smashed into the short, gnarled roots. The tree rolled, carrying the skiff with it. The masthead arced toward the water. Bak sucked in air and flung himself outward, thought he heard Imsiba's splash not far away. As the river closed around him and he sank to the cooler depths, he had a fleeting thought: Nebwa should have worried about him and Imsiba, not the other way around.
The current carried him downstream, rolling — him head over heels. He staved off the urge to panic, willed his muscles into action, forced his arms and legs to move. When he regained control of his body, he looked up through the water, murky with silt, mottled by the sun. Above, he saw the dark silhouettes of the capsized skiff and the tree floating free beside it. And, caught in the tattered fronds, the shadow-figure of a man, arms and legs dangling from a motionless torso. Imsiba! he thought, not swimming, too still, probably knocked senseless when he was thrown from the skiff. He shot upward, fear for his friend driving him on.
The light strengthened; visibility improved. The figure, he saw, was not dark like Imsiba, but pale. Relief surged through him. An instant later the palm rolled and the light struck at a new angle. Bak stared. His limbs lost the will to move, but momentum carried him on, propelling him toward the body. It grew larger, closer, hanging over him like a nightmare creature from the netherworld. The face was puffy, unnaturally pallid. The head was thrown back; the mouth gap amp; round and red; the eyes were wide-open, staring, as if in the man's last moments he had seen or experienced some special kind of terror. Perhaps the terror of being lost in the river through eternity, with no earthly body for his ka, his eternal double, to return to.
Bak's wits fled. He twisted sideways to escape, sucked in a mouthful of water. He broke the surface within a hand's length of those wide-open eyes and mouth. The water roiled around him; the figure rocked. A pallid hand reached out to touch his shoulder. Coughing, gasping for air, he flung himself backward.
The river, closing over his head, brought him to his senses. He resurfaced, heard Imsiba call his name. Waving a response, he watched the palm drift past with its gruesome burden. Not a creature of the netherworld but a man, white and bloodless, bloated, lying facedown in the water. A victim of the river.
As Bak grabbed a frond to halt the tree's downstream journey, an image hovered in his thoughts just out of reach. He had seen something that was not quite right, something about the dead man. He eyed the lifeless back, but saw in his memory the wide terrified eyes and the gaping red mouth he had glimpsed from the depths. His sense of something amiss strengthened. Curious, troubled, he took a deep breath and, clinging to the tree, ducked below the surface of the water so he could see the face as he had seen it before.
The mouth was as wide-open as he remembered. But the red, which he had thought a swollen, distended tongue, was too perfect a circle and flat on the end. He reached out, touched it. It was hard, wood he thought, and embedded so deep a gentle nudge did not dislodge it. He stared, appalled. The object, whatever it was, had been stuffed into the dead man's mouth.