“You’re staying behind?” User, shaking the dust from his tu nic, eyed Bak with suspicion. “Did you not vow to snare the man who’s been prowling the Eastern Desert, slaying first one man and then another?”
“I will snare him,” Bak stated.
He stood at the edge of User’s camp, studying the men scattered around. He had caught them filling the time with small tasks while they waited for Nebamon’s order to load the donkeys for the short trek to the copper workings and the longer journey to the port. His Medjays were similarly occu pied in their own camp. The sun hung low over the western peaks and the day was beginning to cool, so their departure was imminent.
“Clearly, he followed us across the Eastern Sea,” Amon mose said, looking up from several unusual barbed harpoon points he had received in trade with a nomad. “His ambush on the mountainside left no doubt that he wishes you dead.
Would you not be safer if you remained with us?”
“Four men have died within a few paces of your camp site,” Bak reminded him.
“And yours,” Wensu muttered.
“If the slayer follows us rather than you, more may die,”
User said in a grim voice. “We’ve neither the means nor the ability to protect ourselves, as you well know.”
“Your trek to the port with Lieutenant Nebamon should be safe enough,” Bak said. The cargo ships moored there will sail as soon as they unload the remaining supplies and load the copper and turquoise he’ll deliver to them. I suggest you cross the sea on one of those vessels. If you remain on board all the way to the southern trail, you can cross the Eastern
Desert with the soldiers who’ll transport the stones and cop per to Waset. Any caravan carrying so precious a load is bound to be well guarded.”
“I say we do as the lieutenant suggests,” Wensu said. “I, for one, have had enough of sand and rocks and death.”
“Yes, that would be best.” Ani looked resignedly at the three small bags of stones he had collected since leaving
Kaine. “I feel I’ve seen very little of what I came to see, es pecially in the Eastern Desert, and-for the very practical reasons Lieutenant Bak long ago pointed out-I’ll not return to the royal house with many stones, but I’ve no wish to see other men slain to satisfy my desires.”
User studied the two men he had led into the desert. His face wore no expression, but Bak could guess his thoughts.
In spite of his preference to travel alone, to seek gold and precious stones unencumbered, he had agreed to bring them along in exchange for payment in kind-and because he did not wish to vanish as had Ahmose and Minnakht. Better to return to the land of Kemet with nothing to show for the jour ney than to risk their lives and his.
“In many ways, this trek has been easy, but the toll on men’s lives…” The explorer’s voice tailed off in resigna tion. “I concur. Best we sail on one of our sovereign’s ships and cross the desert with the army.”
Bak thanked the lord Amon for the man’s strong sense of duty. “Will you go with them, Amonmose? Or will you re main with your fishing fleet on this side of the sea?”
The merchant spread his hands wide in a gesture of indeci sion. “Only when my men can safely return to their camp can Nebenkemet build huts and another boat. We could wait, but should we?” He flung a rueful smile at Bak. “If I thought you were close to laying hands on the slayer, Lieutenant…”
“I suggest the two of you cross the Eastern Sea with User,”
Bak said, side-stepping the question.
The merchant eyed him with open curiosity. “That sounds ominous, as if you think never to snare the vile criminal.”
Bak failed to rise to the bait. Instead he said to User, “Once our sovereign’s ships are loaded, they’ll not tarry. If they sail a day or two after your arrival, as I believe they will, I’ll not reach the port in time to board. I’ll need another way of crossing the sea.” His eyes darted toward Amonmose and he flashed a smile. “A fishing boat perhaps.”
The merchant grinned, acknowledging his failure to learn more. “How large a boat will you need?”
“One big enough to carry four or five passengers, the fastest in your fleet.”
“The moment we reach the port, I’ll speak with Nufer.
You’ll find his boat and crew awaiting you.”
User looked with a marked lack of enthusiasm toward
Bak’s camp, where Minmose and Kaha were packing their belongings, while Psuro and Nebre examined the three don keys on which they would carry weapons, water, and sup plies to the oasis where they hoped to find Minnakht. “You’re taking all your men with you?”
“Minmose will remain with you and will see that our don keys are transported back across the sea. Kaha has an errand that will take him to another destination. Psuro and Nebre will travel with me.”
User grunted, in no way comforted.
“I doubt we’ll be more than three or four days behind you,” Bak said. “I’ve been told there are wells at the near end of the southern trail and a village of sorts called Tjau. A con tingent of soldiers, their task to check all who come and go along that route, dwell there, along with a few nomads and camp followers. I suggest you wait for us there.”
“If we wait, we’ll lose the safety of the caravan.”
Bak realized that he had to give them an incentive to delay, had to rouse their curiosity. “With luck and the help of the lord Amon, I expect by then to have found the answers to all your questions and mine.”
The caravan set out at dusk. The trek to the copper mines was short and the donkeys, carrying nothing but the food and water needed for the return journey to the port, made good time in the cooler hours of night. What could have been a single load of turquoise was, for safety’s sake, divided up and concealed among the more mundane objects on the backs of a half-dozen animals.
A small forest of widely spaced acacias dotted the floor of the wadi that served as the center of copper production in the area. They camped a short distance from the trees and away from the well-to keep the donkeys out of the overseer’s gar den, Nebamon explained. Bak walked with him through the night to a grove of palm trees rising above a dark drystone hut. Along the way, they passed a cluster of interconnected stone huts in which the workmen dwelt and several slag heaps that marred the simple beauty of the moonlit water course. The cool night air smelled of dust and goats and of a tangy plant he could not identify.
Nenwaf, overseer of the copper works, roused himself from his sleeping mat and welcomed them with a broad smile and a gush of words. His nomad wife barely made an appearance and that not a happy one, but his five small chil dren leaped from their sleeping mats and rushed to Neba mon’s side for the treats they had come to expect each time he passed through. With faces and hands sticky from the honey cakes they quickly devoured, they hovered around, staring wide-eyed at the two officers talking with their father.
The next morning, the garrulous overseer escorted Bak and the men in User’s party over the surrounding hillsides, delighted to show off his domain. The mines, scattered throughout the area and especially abundant in the next wadi to the east, were much like those on the mountain of turquoise but were more widespread, more abundant, and larger. Here, too, the miners were men from afar, come to toil for Maatkare Hatshepsut and the generous earnings they would take back to their faroff homes. From shafts penetrat ing deep into the hillsides, narrow galleries followed the ore, often widening into underground halls. The tunnels formed complicated networks through which the heavy loads of ore had to be dragged and, in the end, lifted up to the surface.
Ani and Nebenkemet asked a multitude of questions, and
Nenwaf immediately warmed to them both. Unlike Teti, he allowed Ani to sort through the piles of malachite brought to the surface and take as many chunks of the bright green stone as he wished. It was less valuable than turquoise and not as appealing to the eye. Nonetheless, the pudgy jeweler avidly picked up one chunk of rock and another, filling the filthy square of cloth he carried. When he had a good-sized collec tion, he spread them out on the ground and sorted through them, ultimately saving just two or three choice pieces.
As the morning wore on, Nebenkemet’s knowledge of mining became ever more apparent and Nenwaf began to speak to him on equal terms. Bak was intrigued. He doubted
Amonmose would have brought this man into the desert if he thought him unable to build huts and a boat, but he was no simple carpenter.
After a midday meal of bread and beer supplemented with green onions and cucumbers harvested from Nenwaf’s gar den, the overseer led them across the wadi floor past slag heaps containing greenish black lumps of malachite from which much of the copper had been drained. On the hillside beyond, he escorted them to a dozen furnaces where men toiled in the heat. He stopped at one of the few not being worked. It had recently been used, he explained, and had been left to cool. A pile of greenish rock, crushed for easier smelting, lay beside the furnace.
“As you can see,” Nenwaf said, “we’re using the latest methods of extracting the ore from the stone.”
Nebenkemet hovered close, hands clasped behind his back, studying the clay-lined pit dug into the hillside. Rather than the more common goatskin bellows on which men stood to pump air into the furnace, the newer pot bellows were used. Here, a leather top on the flared opening of a pottery nozzle could be pumped up and down by hand or by foot, blowing air into the furnace to make it burn hotter, allowing for a more efficient production of copper from stone.
“By locating the pit on the hillside,” Nenwaf said, “we can take full advantage of the wind that usually blows up the wadi, causing the fire to burn more fiercely.”
“What do you place in the furnace to aid in the separation process?” Nebenkemet asked.
“Several materials found locally.”
Nenwaf went on to discuss the process in detail. As far as
Bak could tell, the method was cruder than that employed at the fortress of Buhen to smelt gold, but similar. He glanced at his companions. Other than User, who looked a bit bored, all but Nebenkemet appeared overwhelmed by the description.
The carpenter followed the overseer’s explanation with no trouble and at times asked questions as difficult to compre hend as were the answers.
Bak was about ready to shout “Enough!” when the over seer pointed out the shallow pit flanked by stones in front of a hole in the base of the furnace. At the bottom, a lump of molten copper had begun to congeal as it cooled.
Ushering them on, Nenwaf showed them every phase of the process: men crushing the stone, loading the furnaces, operating the bellows. If User had not noticed that a long line of donkeys was being led to the place where the ingots were stored for transport, the overseer would probably have gone on for the rest of the day.
As they walked back toward the caravan, Bak drew
Nebenkemet aside. “Who are you, Nebenkemet? What are you?”
The man looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You may well be a carpenter, but you’ve a knowledge of mining that few men can claim. You grasped every word Teti said, and while Nenwaf’s explanation was beyond my under standing, you spoke with him on equal terms.”
During the ensuing silence, a breeze rustled the leaves of an acacia and a desert lark sang its solitary song. The blow ing and complaining of donkeys marked the progress of the loading, along with the shouts of soldiers and an occasional laugh.
“I’ve a natural curiosity, that’s all.”
“No.”
Nebenkemet swung around to face him, his mistrust ap parent, his dislike for what Bak represented if not for the man himself. “I’ve known other men like you, Lieutenant. Quick to charge a man with some foul deed and quicker yet to take away his life, sending him far away from home and family, ofttimes to his death.”
Smothering resentment at so offensive an assumption, Bak kept his voice level, unemotional. “You were a prisoner,” he guessed.
“You may as well speak the truth,” Amonmose said, hurry ing up to lay a hand on Nebenkemet’s shoulder. “You know nothing of pretense. A blind man could’ve seen that you know as much if not more about mining and smelting than
Nenwaf himself.”
Nebenkemet shook off the hand and glared at Bak. “Do you think to accuse me of slaying the men who’ve died since we set out from Kaine?”
“I seek the truth, nothing more.”
Amonmose hovered close as if he feared they would clash.
“I believe the lieutenant to be a fair man, Nebenkemet. If you say nothing, he’ll be bound to believe the worst.”
“He’ll think the worst no matter what I say.”
“Are you in truth a carpenter?” Bak demanded. “Or are you a miner?”
“Tell him,” Amonmose urged.
“The knowledge may not help me find the slayer,” Bak said, “but if it serves to eliminate a single individual-you I’ll be one step closer to snaring that vile criminal. Closer to saving the life of yet another man who might stand in the way of his dagger.”
Nebenkemet looked at Bak and at his friend, his defiance slowly crumpling, turning to indecision.
“What you’ve done in the past is of no concern to me.”
Bak veered around the branch of an acacia. “I came into this desert with a task to perform, and that I mean to do. I’ve no interest in anything other than that.”
Nebenkemet glanced at Amonmose for support, received a quick nod of encouragement. Staring straight ahead, into the past, he said, “I labored in a shipyard in Mennufer, appren ticed to a boat builder. Young and foolish, thinking to make myself look more of a man, I stole a small bauble for a woman I coveted. I was caught within the hour.” He glanced again at Amonmose, who urged him on with a concerned smile. “I was sentenced to spend four years toiling in a mine in the desert east of Abu. Unlike my fellow prisoners, I liked mining, and I had a nose for following the veins of ore. The overseer raised me to the level of assistant and asked me to stay when my punishment ended. I refused.” He expelled a bitter laugh. “I thought to return to my old life in the shipyard in Mennufer, but my master turned me away. I was a crimi nal, a man who couldn’t be trusted.”
Amonmose, seeing his friend’s distress, took up the tale.
“I knew Nebenkemet as a youth. When I came upon him in a house of pleasure, angry and besotted, talking of revenge, I took him away and washed the beer from him. When I heard his tale, I asked him to come with me.”
“So here I am, a prisoner of another sort.” Nebenkemet laughed softly. “A man more besotted with the desert, the quiet and the solitude, than with any woman I’ll ever meet.”
Bak smiled. He believed the tale, that Nebenkemet had been punished as a thief. Would he slay a man-and another and another? He had lived a hard life, to be sure, but from what Bak had seen through the long journey across the desert, he was as steady as a man could be, easygoing, unen cumbered by pride, a man who took pleasure in the simple things. Greed and the quest for gold were not a part of him.
“You remained behind for a purpose, Lieutenant?”
Nenwaf, seated on a mudbrick bench in the shade of the palm grove, glanced at the five children straggling up the wadi. The two largest, both girls, carried a basket between them, sharing its weight. They had followed the caravan to collect the dung dropped by the donkeys. The manure they had picked up, along with the waste the animals had left at the camp, would be formed into flat, round cakes and laid out to dry for use as fuel.
“Do you recall the explorer Minnakht?” Bak sat on a fallen palm trunk facing the overseer, while Psuro rested a shoulder against a tree.
“How could I forget?” Nenwaf offered Bak a handful of dates. “He seemed a fine man and was a joy to speak with.”
“Did he say why he came?”
“To see the mining and smelting.” The overseer smiled at the memory. “He wished to know all there was to know about following the veins of ore while at the same time keeping the tunnels safe, and he was most interested in the furnaces and in the way we take the metal from the stone. Other than
Nebenkemet, I’ve known few men to ask so many apt ques tions.” He laid the dates in a pile on the bench beside him.
“He wanted also to visit the larger mining area to the south. I assured him that the furnaces they use are outdated, as is their way of smelting the ore.”
“All the mines aren’t operated in a similar manner?” Bak asked, surprised.
“The southern wadis have been mined for many genera tions, far longer than here. The quantity of copper-rich stone is dwindling. Soon it’ll no longer be practical to send men and supplies to dig it from the earth. As a result, no attempt is made to modernize the process.” Nibbling the flesh from the seed of a date, Nenwaf eyed Bak curiously. “He seemed de termined to go there, so I suppose he went anyway.”
Bak was well satisfied with the information he was glean ing and Nenwaf lived a singularly uninteresting life. To sat isfy the man’s curiosity was small reward. “Because it was so late in the season, Lieutenant Puemre wouldn’t supply a guide. He urged him to wait at the port until the final caravan came in from the south. Minnakht did wait, and Puemre be lieves he spoke with the overseer.”
“I trust he learned enough to make the wait worthwhile.”
Bak gave him a sharp look. “You don’t believe he did?”
A small naked boy climbed onto Nenwaf’s lap, while an other child laid her head on his thigh. A boy of four or so years ran to Psuro and chattered in a mixture of tongues picked up from the miners and those who smelted the ore.
The two older girls had carried the basket to the hut, where their mother sat on the ground, grinding grain for bread.
“He wished also to learn about the mining and processing of gold.” Nenwaf adjusted his legs beneath the child’s bony bottom. “I could tell him nothing except that I suspect the ef fort is much the same as here. I doubt anyone else in this god forsaken land knows any more than I do. We seek turquoise and copper, not the more precious metal.”
Bak exchanged a quick glance with Psuro, who had never allowed the demands of the child to distract him from the adult conversation. “Minnakht was an explorer, an adven turer who wandered the Eastern Desert in search of precious stones and minerals. Did it not surprise you that he showed so great an interest in such mundane tasks as digging out the ore and smelting it?”
“I’ve met men like him before. Men who have a natural curiosity about the world around them. I took his questions for granted.”
“I’ve never met him, but from what I’ve been told, he was liked and admired by all who knew him. He evidently drew men to him, made each see what he wanted to see. Every man
I’ve questioned has given me a different description.” He eyed the overseer curiously. “How did you see him, Nenwaf?”
“Nenwaf’s description of Minnakht was very much like that of Teti. As far as I could tell, neither was colored by Min nakht’s charm or adventurous spirit,” Bak said, glancing up at the stars to be sure they were traveling north as they should be. He did not mistrust the nomad guide Huy had loaned them, but should anything happen to that guide, he thought it best that they know exactly where they were.
Psuro, trudging along at his side, said, “They’re both prac tical men, too knowledgeable to be swayed by what might be taken as flattery.”
“Unlike the men in User’s party.” Nebre, walking a few paces ahead with the guide, led their three donkeys.
Bak studied the wadi along which they were walking. The bright, clear moonlight made the sand glow and deepened the shadows on the stony hillsides. What had looked in the sunlight to be bright, multicolored mounds and plateaus were flat and dull in the lesser light. An army could be hidden along the slopes and remain undetected.
“I know we’re traveling to the oasis because you believe
Minnakht is there,” Nebre said, shifting the strap of the quiver hanging from his shoulder, “but why would he follow us across the sea?”
Psuro grunted agreement. “Why would he approach us, for that matter, then hide himself as if he doesn’t trust us?”
As before, Bak eyed the slopes to either side, assuring himself that they were too far away for a man to hear what he had to say. “When he failed to appear on the shore of the
Eastern Sea as he vowed he would, a thought struck me, one
I couldn’t shake. Since then, I’ve asked a multitude of ques tions and have gleaned innumerable answers, many of which have strengthened that thought. It’s time I told you of my conclusion and of what I plan. Go tell our guide to walk on ahead. What I have to say is for your ears alone.”
“Listen to the night birds, the squeak of bats,” Nebre said, studying the oasis they were approaching. “I’ll wager he’s not here.”
Bak stared at the long, irregular row of palm trees and tamarisks. What appeared to be a tangle of undergrowth lay partially concealed within the deep shadows beneath the trees. He had hoped to arrive before the moon dropped so low, but his revelations to Psuro and Nebre had taken time, and the hour they had spent refining his plan had been well worthwhile. Now, with the darkness so deep, he mistrusted the oasis and the shelter it offered. Anyone camped there would have heard their approach. Common sense urged him to proceed with caution.
He pointed to a broad sandy spot midway between the hills rising to either side and at least two hundred paces from the shadowy oasis. “Let’s camp there, where no man can come upon us out of the shadows.”
“I’ll stand watch,” Psuro said.
“Don’t watch from afar, but stay among us. To stand apart might be risking death-and we’ve already lost Rona.”
Nebre pointed toward a thick layer of ash lining a hollow dug in the ground, a jumble of footprints and the imprint of a woven reed sleeping mat, and traces of two hobbled donkeys.
“A man camped here for some time, sir.”
“His donkeys are ailing,” Psuro said, standing over a mound of fresh, loose manure buzzing with flies. “He’s not been gone for long. A few hours at most.”
Bak knelt beside the shallow stream that gave life to the palms and tamarisks, the tall rushes that grew along its banks, and the brush that grew among the trees. According to the guide, the water appeared from out of nowhere and vanished in an equally mysterious fashion. It had an odd smell and tasted brackish, but was not so salty that it discour aged the presence of wildlife. Birds, lizards, and insects abounded, and the prints of gazelle and other larger animals revealed occasional visits, probably to eat rather than to drink the disagreeable water.
Hoping to learn where Minnakht had gone, Psuro and the nomad guide walked upstream while Bak and Nebre fol lowed the slowly moving water in the opposite direction. As the guide had predicted, the stream trickled away, leaving be hind a few patches of damp sand and a row of tamarisks clinging to the bank of a dry channel cut through a wider bed of gravel over which long ago had flowed a substantial river.
Beyond the scrubby trees, Nebre found signs partially oblit erated by wind of the explorer’s arrival from the west, but no prints indicating that he had left.
“Did he bring so much water with him that he had no need to replenish his supply?” Bak asked.
“Could he have brought enough for himself and two don keys?” Nebre gave a disapproving grunt. “I’d wager not.”
Psuro and the guide met them at the abandoned campsite.
They had had better luck.
“He’s run away,” the sergeant said. “He took his donkeys and walked upstream. The lord Amon alone knows how far he’s gone.”
Bak’s smile was grim. “I suggest we go hunting.”
Leaving their donkeys in the care of the guide, Bak and his
Medjays walked up a wadi barren of water and life. The high walls to either side entrapped the sun’s heat and the carpet of gravel absorbed it, turning the wadi into an oven. Sweat poured from the men, and the water they drank failed to quench their thirst.
Armed with bows and arrows, they ranged the width of the wadi floor, looking for signs of a man’s passage. The gravel made footprints difficult to find, but swarming flies drew them to two disturbances of pebbles which, when dug into, covered piles of manure similar to the one they had found in the oasis. Bak wondered if Minnakht had allowed the donkeys to drink the brackish water. Whatever had caused their distress, he doubted they could go on for long without proper care.
Frequently, he called out, “Minnakht! We’ve parted from the caravan and are traveling alone. You can show yourself now.”
Sometimes he shouted, “Minnakht! Your donkeys are ail ing. If they should die, you’ll not survive a week alone.”
More than an hour after they set out, they rounded a bend and spotted ahead a man walking toward them. Two laden donkeys plodded along behind him, stumbling at times on the loose gravel. As he and the weary animals drew near, Bak and Nebre identified the man who had approached them in the Eastern Desert. Minnakht. His tunic and kilt were clean and bright, but he needed a shave, his hair was too long, and his face looked haggard. He carried a bow and arrows. A spear and shield and a harpoon were suspended from the load on one of the donkeys.
He walked slowly toward them, cautious, mistrustful. A dozen paces away, he offered a tentative smile.
Bak smiled in return. “You’ve been alone too long, Min nakht. You must learn anew that some men can be trusted.
My Medjays and I among them.”
With a sharp laugh, Minnakht dropped the rope leads of the donkeys and rushed forward. He greeted Bak like a long lost friend, clasping his shoulders and giving him a broad smile. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you, Lieutenant.
I feel as one with the Eastern Desert and don’t mind its soli tude, but here I’m like a bird with a broken wing, unable to fly or care for itself.”
“No more,” Bak said, laughing. “You’ll remain with us un til we see you home.”
Minnakht jerked back, startled. “I told you before. I can’t go home. If anyone were to learn that I still live, word would spread like fire in a stiff wind. Those who tried to slay me would search me out, beat me to learn a secret I don’t hold in my heart, and take my life without a qualm.”
“Your father longs to see you again. You must go to him.”
Minnakht glanced at Nebre, who had taken up the ropes, ready to lead the donkeys back to the oasis, and at Psuro, standing off to the side, bow in hand, waiting. “I’d never complete the journey across the Eastern Desert.”
Bak held out his hand, signaling that they must return to the oasis. “Why imprison yourself in the desert wastes? Do you not wish to bathe in a true river, to walk through lush fields, to lead the life of a man of ease, one free to go where he wishes in a land of plenty such as Kemet?”
Reluctantly, Minnakht fell in beside him and they strode together down the wadi, followed by the Medjays and don keys. “I’d like nothing better, but…”
“Do you not hold your father close within your heart?
Would you not like to see him?”
“You know I would! But I fear you’d deliver nothing to him but the few small items I carry with me and news of my death.”
“I guarantee your safety.”
Minnakht’s mouth curled in a cynical smile. “Senna told me how many men were slain while you crossed the Eastern
Desert. As he also died in the end. And all the while, you and your men slept nearby.”
Bak bit back a sharp retort. The accusation had merit, but stung nonetheless. A hiss behind him told him what Psuro thought, or maybe Nebre. “My men and I will never let you out of our sight, that I vow. We’ll guard you day and night.”
“You tempt me with freedom,” Minnakht said with a bitter smile. “but you’d make me your prisoner.”
“I don’t deny that we’ll hold you close, but only for the time it takes to cross the sea and the Eastern Desert. When you reach Kemet, you can tell all the world that you found no gold and your life will no longer be at risk.”
Minnakht flashed a smile that failed to hide his irritation.
“All right, Lieutenant. I’ll come with you. But should I be in jured or slain, I pray your conscience doesn’t trouble you so much that never again will you rest easy.”