They left the well before dawn to cross a low divide and en ter another wadi, this many paces wide. Striking off in a more northerly direction, it carried them into a world totally different than that of the previous two days. The grayish limestone cliffs that had lined the lower wadi slid away be hind them, replaced by yellow and brown sandstone. Golden dunes climbed the sides of the slopes, a few so tall they spilled over the top. Scattered boulders and stones of all sizes spread across the coarse sand on the wadi floor, casting long blackish shadows before the rising sun.
Nebenkemet’s appraisal of Minnakht refused to fade from
Bak’s thoughts. Ani, Wensu, and Amonmose alike had de scribed a man whose enthusiasm and way with words en thralled those with whom he spoke, filling the hearts of the most unlikely with dreams of adventure, wealth, and fame.
Even User, admittedly envious of his competitor, thought the young explorer a man who loved the life he lived, the land he trod, and the nomads who dwelt in that land.
Bak had known men from all walks of life whose astute observations placed them above their fellows. Could
Nebenkemet be one of them? Or did he, like User, harbor jealousy in his heart? Resentment of a man endowed with the wealth and opportunity he had never had.
“Look at this, Lieutenant.” Ani scooped up a handful of sand and sorted through it with a finger, revealing granules of pink, white, and beige. “Feldspar and quartz washed down from those mountains.” He pointed toward the northeast, where tall, rugged peaks reached up to the turquoise sky, catching wisps of cloud on their craggy tops. Towering above them all was a reddish mountain whose innumerable pinna cles caught the morning sun. Those peaks, several days’ walk ahead, marked the place where the wadis drained eastward rather than toward the west as they did here. “Mere bits of rock, but beautiful, aren’t they? Especially when one consid ers how small they are and how far they’ve traveled.”
Bak hated to dampen the jeweler’s enthusiasm, but he feared for his safety. “They’re very much the colors of a viper, Ani. You must take care when you reach down like that. The snakes bury themselves close to the surface of the sand, and are quick to attack when they feel themselves threatened.” He had long ago exchanged his baton of office for a spear to probe the sand ahead of his feet.
“So User has told me, but I forget.”
Belaboring the subject would be a waste of breath, Bak felt sure. “Could the man we found slain at the first well have been mistaken for Minnakht? Did they resemble each other in any way?”
“I wouldn’t think so.” Ani let the granules fall to the ground and wiped his hand on his kilt. “The dead man was about the same age, but was of medium height and build.
His face was unremarkable, with no distinguishing features that I recall.” The jeweler screwed up his face, trying to re member. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I’d never before seen a man slain in his sleep. I guess I was more upset than I thought.”
“Can you describe Minnakht?”
A smile lit up Ani’s face. “That’s easy enough. He was tall, taller than the dead man by more than a hand’s breadth. He had thick, dark hair, slightly curly, lively dark eyes, and a most expressive face, bright with vitality and good humor.”
Bak wondered how many hundreds of men would answer to that description. “Did he wear any jewelry of note or any special amulet?” This, he felt certain, Ani would be able to answer in detail.
“I saw him only the one time, and that in Waset,” the jew eler reminded him. “He wore a broad collar much too fine to wear into the desert, and bracelets and armlets of an equal quality. He wore a bronze chain around his neck. I remember wondering why he chose bronze instead of gold. I couldn’t see what hung from the chain. Whatever it was was hidden beneath the collar.”
Bak would have given his best pair of sandals to know what hung from that chain. “You told me how you met him and how he swept you away with his tales of the desert and of the many beautiful minerals and stones found here. Did he talk of himself at all?”
“He wasn’t an individual who enjoyed speaking of per sonal matters. He did say…” Ani stopped himself, reluctant to reveal what another man had told him, if not in confidence at least as one man to another. “I suppose, since he’s been gone so long…”
“Anything you tell me might help. The most unlikely bit of information could be of infinite value.”
“Well…” Ani bent to pick up another handful of sand giving himself time to think, Bak suspected. Paying no heed to the possibility that he might disturb a viper. “You see,
Lieutenant, he wanted my assurance that I could go off into the desert, leaving no one behind uncared for. I told him I dwelt alone, that my wife of twenty years had gone to the netherworld not six months earlier and my children were wed and had homes of their own. I told him my overseer, the chief jeweler in the royal house, would allow me to go with his good wishes and a prayer that I’d return with many unique and beautiful stones.”
Ani ran a finger through the sand he held. Finding nothing special, he tipped his hand, spilling out the grit. The hot breeze was strong enough to carry away the dust but too weak to deflect the path of the falling granules. “He spoke of a young woman he had loved and lost. One who had vowed to be his forever. He left her behind to come into the desert, confident she would wait and wait again each time he set out to explore this barren land. Upon his return, he found her wed to another, a young nobleman who had given her a fine home and would never wander from her side.” Brushing the dust from his hands, Ani added, “Six or seven years ago, it was, but he made no secret that the loss still hurt.”
Bak wondered if the tale had been offered casually. Or had its telling been calculated to win the jeweler over? Ani had told Minnakht of a wife gone to the netherworld, and the ex plorer had offered up a mutual loss. A tie that had bound the older man to the younger, personally as well as profession ally.
The wadi narrowed to half its former width. The yellowish sandstone walls rose higher, contrasting with the sky above, making the blue more intense. Bak walked a few paces to the left of the caravan, following the tracks of gazelle that had traveled this way sometime in the recent past. The day of their passing was unimportant, the event memorable for only as long as the tracks remained.
Ani’s description of Minnakht had been sketchy at best, but Bak doubted the man at the well had been mistakenly slain in place of the explorer. Minnakht had vanished two months ago. If the people of the Eastern Desert were any thing like those who dwelt on the southern frontier-and he assumed they were-news traveled faster than locusts laying waste to the land. All the world would have long ago known of the explorer’s disappearance.
Which meant that the unknown man’s death was a sepa rate incident-but was somehow related, he felt sure. That the dead man had carried no means of identification was not unusual, but was frustrating nonetheless. His appearance had been ordinary, his few personal items and clothing of reason ably good quality but not the best. His traveling supplies had been much like those Bak and his men had brought into the desert. His thick wrists and muscular arms looked to be those of an archer. He might have been a soldier, but could as eas ily have been a man who ofttimes practiced with the bow.
Nothing but the gold chain and pendant, both of fine quality and workmanship, had been noteworthy.
Shoving aside thoughts that led him nowhere, Bak crossed a stretch of sand whose grains sparkled in the sunlight and climbed a large reddish outcrop that angled upward until it was twice the height of a man. From the more elevated per spective, he looked up the wadi as far as he could see and scanned the clifftops to either side. He thought he glimpsed a figure on the southern rim, but the glare of sunlight made it impossible to be certain. Kaha and Minmose had slipped away from the caravan as they broke camp, and he assumed they were somewhere above. The figure might have been one of them.
User strode across the sand and climbed up beside him.
“You’ve kept to yourself much of the morning, Lieutenant.”
“I’ve been thinking about the dead man we sent back to
Kemet. Wondering who he was.”
“I pray someone in Kaine recognizes him. I, for one, wouldn’t want to be buried nameless.”
They stood in an uncomfortable silence, enshrouded by the thought. The loss of his name would doom the dead man to the destruction of his memory and would deprive him of existence in the netherworld.
“I’ve also been thinking of Minnakht,” Bak said. “I’ve come to realize I have no idea what he looks like.”
User smiled unexpectedly. “Never fear, Lieutenant. If you should come upon him while you’re with this caravan, the rest of us will recognize him.”
Bak had to laugh. “Are you so pleased with my company that you wish me to stay forever?”
“So far you’ve made no demands on me or my drovers or my animals.” User had become dead serious. “In fact, you’ve given more than you’ve taken. I’ve not the men to scout ahead, and that’s a task I’m beginning to think we sorely need.”
“Because the nomads are leaving the wells before we ap pear? Or because someone has been watching us from afar?”
User eyed the passing caravan, the men and animals trudg ing in an irregular line up the dry, sunstruck riverbed. “I’ve never known the people to be so shy, and I can’t explain it.
They usually come to talk, to hear news of other nomads, and they come to trade for items hard to find out here in this re mote land. Each time I enter this desert, I bring cloth, beads, honey, needles, and other small objects they need or desire.
They’ve come to expect them, so why has no one approached thus far to see what I’ve brought?”
“Could they believe you responsible for Minnakht’s disap pearance?”
“I don’t see why they would. I’ve not been out here since last he left Kaine.” User looked up the wadi toward Senna, marching at the head of the caravan. “I’m more inclined to believe they don’t trust your guide.”
Bak’s eyes followed User’s. Did the nomads hold Senna directly responsible for Minnakht’s disappearance, or did they simply consider him a man who had failed in his duty?
“What did Minnakht look like?”
User barked out a cynical laugh, as if he had guessed
Bak’s lack of confidence in Senna. “He looked a bit like the dead man, but may not have been quite as tall. He had a lot of straight dark hair and dark eyes, and his skin was ruddy from too much sun.”
Interesting, Bak thought. Ani, a short man, had described
Minnakht as tall. User was tall; therefore, he thought the young explorer short. One man remembered his hair as curly, the other said it was straight. The truth must be somewhere in between. After taking a final look along the clifftops, reassur ing himself that all was well, he walked down the sloping rock to the wadi floor. The older man kept pace with him stride for stride.
“He had a way of walking that struck me as an affectation, although I doubt it was,” User said. “I know his father was a military man, and I guess he taught him to move like that, but he marched rather than walked. Chin high, long strides, spine as straight as that spear you’re holding. It gave him the ap pearance of supreme self-confidence. A man invincible.”
“Did he wear any special jewelry that he never took off, something he wore even when traveling through the desert?”
User shrugged. “I seem to remember a chain with some kind of pendant. Exactly what, I paid no heed.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant, but I’m no good at guessing how tall people are.” Amonmose walked up the gradually narrowing wadi between Bak and a donkey, his gait rolling like that of the sailor he had been in his youth, his stride easy. “I judge a man by his actions. If he’s hard-working and honest, he’s tall in my eyes. If he’s indolent and a sneak, I think of him as small.”
Bak could not help but smile at so simplistic a way of looking at others. “Did you see Minnakht as tall or short?”
“Hmmm.” Amonmose probed his teeth with a sharpened twig, thinking. “Interesting. I thought him tall, but I recall standing before him, looking him straight in the eye.”
“What else do you remember?”
“He was well-formed in body and face. What more can I say?”
Bak eyed the trader at his side. As he had before, he mar veled that such a portly man could walk in the sun for hours on end without undue suffering from the heat. Too bad his powers of observation were not as powerful as his stamina.
“From what you told me yesterday, the man who vanished ten months ago was a stranger to this part of the desert.”
“So I assumed.” Amonmose frowned, thinking back. “If the people who spoke of him had known him, their voices would’ve held more warmth or chill. More sympathy for the man, more passion at his failure to return.”
“Did he know Minnakht, do you think?”
“No one said.” The trader took the twig from his mouth and threw it away. “No more than a half-dozen men explore this desert year after year, Lieutenant. The area between the southern trail that runs east from Waset and the northern trail that connects Mennufer to the Eastern Sea is vast. They might never come face to face, but they’ll surely have heard of each other.”
Bak looked back along the caravan, thinking to ask User if he had known the missing man. The explorer was standing off to the side of the line of passing donkeys, watching a drover reload an animal whose burden had shifted on its back. He would have to wait for a better time.
An hour or so before midday, they stopped beside a strip of shade at the base of a cliff on the south side of the water course. The wadi had narrowed to a quarter of its original width. After checking the welfare of men and donkeys, Bak thought to speak with Wensu, another man who might better describe Minnakht than had Ani or Amonmose or User. On the other hand, having seen the explorer as a heroic figure, his description might be as influenced as theirs by his feel ings about the missing man.
Wensu had rolled out his thin sleeping mat in the most comfortable place in which to rest, a wider than average swath of shade free of fallen rocks. While Nebenkemet and
Amonmose had helped the drovers unload the donkeys, while Ani had wandered across the wadi floor in search of in teresting stones, he had surrounded himself with his posses sions, wasting precious shade better used by men and donkeys than by objects.
“I must speak with you, Wensu.” Bak lifted the young man’s waterbag, inadvertently trailing sand along the youth’s leg, and moved it into the sun so he could sit in its place.
Clearly annoyed, Wensu brushed away the sand and moved the waterbag back into the shade, placing it on top of a basket of clothing and toiletries. “I’m not accustomed to rising so early in the morning, Lieutenant, nor am I used to walking so far. I’m tired and need to rest.”
Unimpressed, lacking in sympathy, Bak said, “I never had the good fortune to meet Minnakht. If I’m to find him, I must know how he looks. Can you describe him for me?”
Wensu appeared torn, reluctant to give up his petulant atti tude but eager to speak of the man he had admired above all others. The latter won out. “He’s an admirable man, one who lives a life of adventure and excitement. A brave man, who daily risks his life so our sovereign and the noble ladies of our kingdom can bedeck themselves as befits their lofty sta tions in life.”
Bak wondered if Wensu’s father had risen through the scribal ranks by spouting similar trite phrases to his superi ors. “I seek Minnakht’s physical description, not your assess ment of his character.”
If Wensu noticed the cynicism, he gave no hint. “I see.”
The wrinkled brow, the slight frown, made Bak wonder ex actly how well the youth remembered the man he professed to admire so much. “He’s a fine figure of a man, much taller than average and broad shouldered, as well formed as a statue of our sovereign’s deceased husband, the Osiris Akheperenre
Thutmose. He has short dark hair, piercing eyes as black as night, and the sun-darkened skin of an outdoorsman.”
“What was he wearing when last you saw him?”
“A thigh-length linen kilt. A very fine broad beaded collar and bracelets. A lovely gold chain from which hung amulets representing the ibex, gazelle, and falcon.” Wensu gave Bak a supercilious look. “You’ll not find him adorned like that out here, Lieutenant.”
No, Bak agreed. What Wensu had described was finery one would expect a young man of substance to wear in
Waset. He wondered if the gold chain was the same as the bronze chain Ani had noticed, the lesser metal turned to gold under the uncritical eye of the young admirer. “Did he reveal anything of himself to you?”
“He told me a few of his many exploits. He spoke of the time he climbed the red mountain, which he said was the tallest in the Eastern Desert. And the time he got caught up in a flash flood and…”
“Did he speak his innermost thoughts?” Bak cut in. “Did he tell you of his dreams, his fears, his failures?”
“Failures? Fears?” Wensu looked shocked at the very idea.
“I doubt he fails at anything he attempts. I’m certain he fears nothing.”
Bak prayed to the lord Amon for patience. The youth was so blinded by admiration that he refused to see Minnakht as an ordinary man with ordinary feelings and dreams. “Other than his love of adventure, did he give any reason for spend ing so much time in the desert and so little time at home in the capital?”
“His father is a commander in the army, assigned to the garrison at Waset.” A look of contempt fell upon Wensu’s face. “An overbearing man, he is, one who wants Minnakht to walk in his footsteps. Where he should support his son’s explorations, he never ceases to argue in favor of the army.”
Interesting, Bak thought. Inebny’s every word and action had made him seem a doting father, inordinately proud of his son and the young man’s journeys into the desert. Had Min nakht truly believed his father disapproved of him? Or had he created an image that would appeal to Wensu, one whose fa ther pushed him to rise through the ranks of the scribal hier archy. Or had Wensu heard what he wished to hear?
As the sun moved westward, the shade widened, shelter ing both men and animals from the burning heat. A light breeze blew up the wadi, stirring the air but offering no relief.
Everyone slept except Rona and Nebre, who each took a turn standing watch. When Bak relieved Rona at midafternoon, the Medjay reported that all was quiet, the wadi deserted. A couple of times, he had heard pebbles fall down the cliff face, but had seen nothing on the rim above.
Seated alone in the sparse shade of an acacia, Bak mulled over the inconsistent and ofttimes contradictory descriptions of Minnakht. He tried to blend them together to recreate the man in his thoughts. A dozen images came and went, none in which he had any confidence.
They were slow to leave the shade. A donkey had stepped on a stone early in the day, but had given no sign. After walk ing on it for several hours and embedding it deeper in his hoof, it had begun to bother him. When the drover began to load him, he favored the one leg. The drover tried to dig out the stone, but succeeded only in hurting the animal and mak ing it fractious. User finally ordered the man away, ap proached the donkey with gentle words and hands, and performed the task, exercising an unexpected gentleness and patience.
By this time, Bak had begun to worry about Kaha and
Minmose. He had heard nothing from them since they had walked up the wadi before daybreak. As if to justify his fears, he more than once saw Nebre and Rona looking up or down the wadi and at the clifftops to either side, their faces clouded by worry.
With the lord Re an hour above the western horizon, preparing to descend into the netherworld, and the caravan already on the move, the two Medjays appeared far up the wadi. Instead of walking down the dry watercourse to meet the caravan, as they normally would have done, the pair sat down in the first patch of shade they found and waited. Their decision to rest told Bak truer than words how tired they were.
He grabbed a goatskin waterbag and hurried on ahead of the caravan. The pair made motions of rising as he ap proached, but he signaled them to remain where they were.
He handed the waterbag to Kaha, who drank from it greedily.
As he had suspected, after so many hours walking the hot and barren land, their waterbag was empty.
“What kept you?” he asked.
Kaha wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and passed the bag to Minmose. “Where yesterday we found a few isolated footprints at widespread points overlooking the wadi, today we found a multitude of tracks. Not here, but far ther upstream. We spent much of the day following them.”
“They were fresh?”
“Each print was distinct, not blurred by time. I’d guess a day or two at most.”
Bak imagined the rough terrain to either side of the wadi.
No man would choose the much more difficult path over the sandy floor of the dry watercourse without good reason. He did not like the implication. “You say a multitude. Can you be more specific?”
“Fifteen to twenty men,” Minmose said. “Possibly more.”
Kaha’s expression was grim. “Men alone, with no women or children.”
Bak muttered an oath. “Warriors, do you think?”
“It would appear so.”
“Nomads?”
Minmose nodded. “Most were barefooted. A few wore sandals that were old and worn.”
“Was the watching man among them?”
“No, sir,” Kaha said. “I looked specifically for the print of his sandal, but never found it.”
“Our caravan is small,” Bak said, thinking aloud. “Fifteen men total, with just six of us equipped and trained to fight.
Why did they not wait for our approach? I wonder.”
“They may have thought our force stronger than it is,”
Minmose said. “Maybe they went off to get more men.
Kaha broke the long silence that followed that dire predic tion. “We thought to follow them, to find their camp, but af ter leaving this wadi, they scattered. None took the same path as any other, but in general they went in a northeasterly di rection. Heeding your orders not to go too far afield, we fol lowed none for longer than an hour. Each time we had to return to this wadi to pick up another trail. With so much go ing and coming, we were able to follow five men, no more.”
“No wonder you came back exhausted.”
“One thing we know for a fact: not a man among them re mained behind.”
Bak thought of the falling pebbles Rona had heard and was not so confident.
The wadi narrowed further. The pale glow of sunset faded from the sky, replaced by the light of the moon and a magnif icent display of stars. Bak, walking with Senna at the head of the caravan, felt as if he were traveling up a river of silvery sand running between high walls of sandstone whose stria tions had lost their color with the setting sun, turning to shades of gray. Boulders and stones fallen from above were islets rising from the streambed, and wind-formed ripples in the sand had become minute swells whose form was fixed in time. The soft plop-plop of the donkeys’ hooves were like bubbles bursting in water.
The section of wadi through which they were walking was beautiful, magical almost, but he looked forward to a safer stretch of landscape. The men who had left the footprints
Kaha and Minmose had found had come to the wadi for a reason. That reason had to be the caravan. Since they had not shown themselves, he had to assume the worst.
“We must camp tonight well out in the open,” he said,
“where alert guards can spot in the moonlight any approach ing men and where boulders can’t fall from above. How long must we travel to find such a place?”
He had earlier told his Medjays, User, and both nomad guides of all Kaha and Minmose had seen. Senna had evi dently given some thought to their situation:
“In a half hour or so, we’ll reach a long bend in the wadi. It gradually widens out until we come upon a line of trees.
They grow along the latest channel to be cut through the an cient streambed, near the center of the wadi. We’ll sleep there, where…”
The guide’s words were lost to the rumble of a falling boulder and a smattering of smaller stones. A huge rock struck the wadi floor not ten paces ahead of the two men, sending a burst of dust and shards into the air. Other rocks began to fall, thundering down the cliffside and crashing onto the wadi floor. Senna froze. Bak grabbed his arm and hustled him toward the opposing cliff. The foremost donkey, not far behind, cried out in fear and tried to jerk away from
Minmose, who was leading the string of animals. The Med jay whacked it on the shoulder with his short whip, frighten ing it further.
Shoving Senna forward, Bak grabbed the rope halter and shouted at Minmose to use the whip on the animal’s flank. As the lash snapped against its flesh, the donkey shot across the sand, nearly running Bak down and half-dragging the six an 100
Lauren Haney imals roped together in a line behind. Rona grabbed the hal ter of the last donkey, urging it forward, and screamed a blood-curdling cry to keep the string moving. Within mo ments, they reached the center of the wadi and safety.
By this time, boulders and rocks were falling all along the southern rim of the cliff above the strung-out caravan. The larger missiles struck the earth with a solid thud, settling into the deep carpet of sand. Others fell with a clatter, striking the boulders among which they fell and the stones scattered along the wadi floor. Many burst upon impact, sending sharp bits of stone flying in all directions. The donkeys in User’s string brayed and snorted and squealed, terrified by the noise, by the heavy boulders crashing down and the bursts of shards. Guide and drovers cursed and yelled at the animals, pulling and shoving and whipping them toward the opposite side of the wadi, away from the danger. Psuro, Nebre, and
Kaha ran to help.
Bak looked upward toward the top of the cliff down which the stones were plummeting. He glimpsed men standing on the rim, pushing the rocks over the edge. The nomads Kaha and Minmose had tried all day to find, he felt sure. They must have come a day or so before to seek out the best place from which to attack. They had gone away, leaving conspicuous and confusing tracks for the Medjays to follow, and had re turned by way of a circuitous route to await the caravan. Were they all above, shoving rocks over the rim? Or were a goodly number waiting around the bend to set upon the caravan?
Fearing another attack from the opposing cliff, Bak yelled at Rona and Minmose to hold the frightened donkeys in the middle of the wadi. Senna ran to help. Bak swung around, thinking to offer aid to User, but the other, larger string of an imals had been brought under control and the nomad drovers and Medjays were hustling them well away from the cliff and the stones plummeting down.
With nothing left below to hurt or destroy, the number of rocks falling from above gradually lessened, and the sounds of impact grew sporadic.
“Help! Help!”
Bak glanced quickly around, fearing someone had been caught in the barrage. The men and donkeys strung along the wadi floor were tense and uneasy, but none were missing and none seemed to be hurt.
“Help!”
Rona, Minmose, and Senna flung him a startled look.
They, too, had heard the call. It had come from up the wadi in the direction they had been traveling.
Bak ran toward the sound and Senna followed close be hind. A third cry for help drew them to a steep and narrow cut in the northern wall of the wadi. The moon beamed down from the far end, throwing its light on the rocky floor of the ravine and pockets of sand that had collected in the low spots.
About midway, a man half-crouched on a strip of sand. He looked to be injured and appeared to be trying to get away.
“I’ll see what I can do for him,” Bak said. “Go tell Psuro where I’ve gone.”
While Senna hurried to obey, Bak climbed upward. The floor of the cut was steep, and a tumble of craggy rocks slowed him down to a hard, fast scramble. He had a vague impression of rough walls to either side and the moon hang ing dead center of the opening at the top. A vague thought struck that this man might be Minnakht, but as he neared the figure, he realized he was a nomad.
He knelt beside the man. “You called for help. What…?”
A blow struck him on the side of the head and the world around him went black.