'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
