queen's attention to Wawat. Heads would roll, figuratively if not literally, all the way along the Belly of Stones, beginning with the man who failed to catch the slayer.
'I'd like to break Woser's neck!' Thuty paced across his reception room to the courtyard door, swung around, and glared at Bak and Kenamon as if they were as much at fault as Woser.
'He had no way of knowing Nihisy would be named our new chancellor.' Kenamon shifted in Thuty's armchair to set his drinking bowl on the low table at his elbow. 'A messenger was never sent south from the capital. I was asked to spread the word as I travel up the river.'
Bak, leaning against the jamb of the open stairwell door, sipped from his drinking bowl. The wine was pungent and heady, the best to be had in the whole of Wawat. The scent of onions, lentils* and roasting beef filtering through the courtyard door promised a feast worthy of a god, a feast he had been asked to share. Yet he could savor neither taste nor smell. He could think only of the decision the commandant was sure to make and the weight that would rest on his shoulders once the decision was aired.
'Woser should've drawn my attention months ago to Puemre's noble birth, yet he made no mention in his reports. And now…' Thuty's voice hardened. 'Now the wretch has been slain and still he blinds me with silence.'
Again Kenamon tried to mediate. 'He may have believed Puemre had registered here, as he was supposed to, and assumed your chief scribe told you of his presence.'
'Even if true, it doesn't explain why he made no report when the wretch turned up missing.' Thuty beat another path across the room, pivoted, scowled at Bak. 'Nor does it explain his failure to send back with Imsiba a written account of the whole matter.'
Bak was too anxious to hear Thuty's final decision to spend time on useless speculation. 'Do you wish me to go to Iken, sir?'
Kenamon gave him a look of worry mingled with pride. He had made his feelings clear during their walk from the house of death to the commandant's residence. He feared for his young friend's future, but was proud of his nobleness of purpose.
'No, Bak, I don't!' Thuty glared. 'I wish you to travel to Semna with the lord Amon. But that imbecile Woser has made that impossible. Go! Go to Iken. Get this matter over and done with.'
'I'll do my best, sir. That I promise.'
Thuty scooped his baton of office off a nearby stool and sat down in its place. 'I'll send a courier to Iken tonight with a letter giving you authority over Woser as far as Puemre's death is concerned. He'll not like it, but I'll leave him no choice.'
What if my best isn't good enough? Bak wondered. What if this time I fail? He had already asked Kenamon to speak with the lord Amon on his behalf, but perhaps he should make an offering to the god as well. A plump goose. Maybe more than one.
Chapter Five
'Take care, my friend.' Imsiba's eyes were clouded with worry. 'I fear danger will greet you at the gates of Iken.' Bak clapped the big Medjay on the shoulder. 'I wish you could come, too, but you must stay behind with our men, make sure they're well prepared for the journey upriver. And you must arrange with Nebwa to divide the duties throughout the trek. And offer the physician Kenamon any aid he may need. And…'
Imsiba staved off the spate of words with raised hands and a stingy smile. 'I've tasks without number, I know, but I'll worry nonetheless.'
'You've told me many times our company is the finest in the realm, and I'm taking two of our best men with me.' Bak nodded toward Kasaya and Pashenuro, kneeling at the water's edge. 'Are they not sufficient to lay your worries to rest?'
Imsiba eyed the two Medjays, who were watching some aquatic creature invisible to their superiors. The youngest of the pair, Kasaya, was the biggest and strongest man in their company, not greatly endowed with intelligence but good-natured and likable. Pashenuro was shorter, thicker in build, clever as well as brave, next in line behind Imsiba. Both men carried spotted black-and-white cowhide shields and bronze spears longer than they were tall. Each wore a dagger at the waist of his kilt and carried a sling. A cloth bag filled with personal items lay at their feet.
'I could not have chosen better,' Imsiba admitted, 'but they can't stand at your side every moment.'
Bak, impatient to be on his way, looked beyond Buhen toward the long sandy ridge that paralleled the river, where ribbons of orange spread across the sky from the rising sun Khepre, a sliver of flame burning the horizon. 'I've more concern about Commander Woser than the man who slew Puemre. If he chooses to lay boulders in my path-and from what you say, he will-my task will be ten times ten more difficult than it should be.'
Imsiba followed his glance, remembered his own trek south in the heat, and backed off. 'You know where to find me should you need me. If no word comes sooner, I'll see you in four or five days' time.'
Bak swallowed a final unnecessary order, smiled a goodbye, and turned away. Following the vague footprints Kasaya and Pashenuro had left in the sand, he strode down the slope to the river's edge. The trip to Iken, though only a half day's journey for men unburdened by donkeys and trade goods, would be hot, thirsty, and uncomfortable. Best to get on with it.
Bak and his companions were more familiar with the stretch of shoreline between Buhen and Kor during the cooler months when the river was low. Then, they had fished in the shade of hardy acacias and tamarisks, had cast off skiffs for lazy days of hunting birds in patches of reeds along the shore, had dived into the river from boulders laid bare through the, years by swift-flowing floodwaters. But now, with the lord Re burning his hottest, their favored spots were inundated, covered by a river no longer benign. Trees and boulders stood in the silt-laden water; reeds and grassy inlets were vague images beneath the ripples. Vertical banks, undercut by the hungry river, were crumbling, and golden dunes molded by the winds sweeping across the western desert trickled away at the water's edge.
They stopped briefly at Kor, where they spoke with a trader who had arrived that morning, leading a caravan from the south.
'We spent three days at Iken,' said the tall, angular man, his skin burned to leather by the sun. 'This season's been wicked, hotter than any I can remember in the ten years I've been trading upriver. I had to rest the pack animals. And myself, too, if the truth be told.'
'You left when?' Bak asked.
'Yesterday. Late afternoon. My men are well armed and the desert's reasonably safe around here, so we traveled through the night.'
'Did you hear anything of a missing officer?' 'Whispers,' the trader admitted. 'Nothing factual, merely rumors. But I took no note of them. How does one lose an officer in a fortress as large and well run as Men?' A good question, Bak thought.
Bak was bartering with a local farmer for dried fowl and fresh vegetables for a midday snack when Pashenuro hurried up with two soldiers who had just been relieved from several days of watch duty, their post a tall, conical hill a brief walk to the south. Their task was to watch the surrounding landscape for intruders, and to relay with mirrors in the daytime or fire at night any critical messages being sent up or downriver. Bak knew of the place, for the stoneand-mudbrick lean-to that sheltered the men from the sun stood among ancient carvings scratched on the rocks. The hill was not quite a shrine, but a place to visit and stand in awe of the long-ago past.
'Doubt if we'd spot a body coming downriver,' said the older of the two, a grizzled veteran forty or so years of age.
' `He was caught in the roots of a palm tree,' Kasaya said.
The younger soldier, as bald as a melon, laughed. 'One tree looks much like another from our post. And a dead man would look little different than a dead bullock.'
The older man, noting the doubt on Kasaya's face, hastened to explain. 'We're too far from the river to see much. And anyway, our task is to guard the desert trail.'
Bak, though he had faith in Meru's guess that Puemre had gone into the water near Iken, stepped in to describe the dead man. 'Did anyone answering to that description pass by your post?'
