halfway between here and Buhen. On the west bank of the river. A lonely spot of desert too barren and dry for any man to live.
A fire drew us to the shore, where we found all you see here.
We loaded in haste, barely able to see, stumbling from the fire’s meager light to our ship, where Captain Roy held a torch. After all was stowed on deck, we set sail.”
“Who did you meet there? Who turned these objects over to your captain?”
“We saw no one.” The sailor lowered his gaze, as if the question made him uneasy. “It was a dark night, with no moon to speak of. Away from the fire, we couldn’t see our hands before our faces. Guards may’ve been posted, but we didn’t see them.”
The tale sounded farfetched, like the stories Bak’s father had long ago told his young son to tire him with excitement so he would fall sleep. Like those tales of myth and adventure, Bak longed to believe. “Can you show me that place?”
The man hesitated, frowned. “I think so, but…” He glanced at the boy, who looked as uncertain as he did. “We can try.”
A long, trilling whistle sounded from afar. A Medjay signal.
Bak hastened outside and looked up the wadi toward the path that climbed the escarpment to the north. Imsiba was hurrying down the track, followed by a motley crew of men.
The missing sailors.
Several of Ramose’s men brought up the rear lest anyone try to flee. Bak glanced toward the west and the orange-red glow of the lord Re, a sliver of flame on the horizon. Too late to load Ramose’s ship, and too late to set sail. But a satisfactory day nonetheless. More than satisfactory.
Chapter Four
“Now listen!” Captain Ramose stood at the mouth of the rock shelter, feet spread wide, hands on hips, in what Bak had concluded was his favored position for command. “Except to relieve yourselves, you’ll not set foot out of this shelter while I’m gone. You hear me?”
The four oarsmen he had ordered to remain behind nodded in a desultory fashion, not a man among them eager to spend the next day or so on a rocky ledge, imagining their fellows reveling in Buhen.
“If so much as one object vanishes, you’ll each and everyone be held to blame. Understand?”
They nodded, shuffled their bare feet, threw sour glances at the contraband tying them to this wretched place. One man looked about to complain, but Ramose’s scowl stifled his words.
“So be it!” The captain turned away, winking at Bak as he did so, and strode down the path toward the village and his ship, moored at the foot of the escarpment north of the cultivated land.
The vessel wallowed in the swells, too heavily laden for graceful movement. A wide board serving as a gangplank connected the deck with the rising slope. Two sailors, one at the head and the other at the foot, carried the white coffin across the unstable walkway, stepping quick but careful lest they slip and fall into the water, taking their melancholy burden with them. In addition to the original cargo bound for Abu, the decks were cluttered with animal cages and jars of aromatic oils and incense-the most fragile of the contraband. The shipwrecked sailors hunched down on every unused bit of deck, trying to stay out of the way and attract no notice.
Bak glanced at Pahuro, who stood stiff and straight and tight-lipped, a man too proud to display the indignity he must have felt at being caught so soon and so thoroughly.
Or one who expected to suffer the anger of the gods-or the wrath of mighty Kemet.
“You found nothing else on board the ship?” Bak asked, not for the first time. He was thinking specifically of elephant tusks, for none had been found among the contraband.
“We’ve held nothing back. That I swear by the lord De-dun.” Pahuro’s voice was as stiff as his spine, the oath to an old Kushite god.
Bak believed him, and the false manifest listing all the precious objects seemed to bear him out. No tusk had been recorded.
His eye was drawn to Ramose, hurrying past the village, raising a puff of dust with each step he took. A yellow dog barked halfheartedly from a patch of shade. Getting no reaction, it hauled itself to its feet and trotted down a sunny lane to sniff at the heels of several women kneeling before a small mudbrick shrine dedicated to some local god Bak could not identify from so far away. Women praying, he felt sure, for the safety of their village and their men.
“I’ll keep my vow, Pahuro,” he said, irritated they had such scanty faith in his word. “I’ve no desire to squeeze the life from your village.”
“They’re old women, Lieutenant, frail creatures who remember a time long ago when our men were made to march off to war and not one in ten came back.”
Bak remembered tales he had heard of the last full-scale conflict fought through this area and farther south. Many years had since passed and the village now looked prosperous enough, with plump livestock and fowl, rich fields, lush date palms, and vines that no doubt bore succulent fruit. Not 56 / Lauren Haney visible was the amount of work required, back-breaking labor leaving meager time and energy to repair the poor houses, or to allow the sick to rest and mend, or to travel to Buhen to take part in the festivals of the gods.
Bak turned to the oarsmen, drew in a breath, and closed his heart to thoughts of his responsibility to the lady Maat and his duty to the royal house and his sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut. “Now, so I can show Ramose what I’ve asked you to do before we sail, and he can lay no blame on your heads, you must place in the hands of this headman one copper ingot and two bundles of cowhides.” He paused, scanned the objects in the shelter, selected the most and least useful. “Give him also the smallest of the two lengths of heavy linen, and one jar of perfumed oil for the women.”
Pahuro dropped to his knees and covered his face, too moved to speak. Bak hurried away, cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool. Commandant Thuty, whose fierce tongue had been known to make brave men quake in their sandals, would not be pleased to learn he had rewarded a village which by rights should be punished.
“This is the place, all right. See?” The sailor with the crooked nose knelt beside several small brownish lumps half-covered by sand and dried hard by the harsh desert heat. A few flies crawled over the surface, but none found a morsel fit to hold them for long. “They must’ve thrown water over the cages to wash out the filth.” He glanced up at the youth with the monkey clinging to his neck. “You remember. The sand around them was wet when we came.”
The boy, looking sheepish, pointed. “I stepped in that pile.
It was so dark, I couldn’t see a thing.”
Tjanuny, squatting beside an irregular ring of rocks a dozen paces away, glanced up from the thin layer of ash and a few pieces of charred wood he had cleared of windblown sand.
“If this poor fire was all the light you had, I’m surprised you saw the cages.”
Shading his eyes with a hand, Bak scanned the area, a broad, open plain on both sides of the river. The sands, barren of plants and animals alike, blanketed the earth from the water’s edge to the horizon, lost in a pinkish-purplish haze.
The flat, burnished gold surface, relieved at intervals by low sandhills, appeared to tremble like a living creature, veiled as it was in heat waves. From high above in a vivid blue sky, the lord Re looked down upon the men below, parching their throats and scorching the sands they trod. Other than the makeshift hearth and the animal waste, the storm had conspired to hold the site’s secrets, erasing all signs of man.
This bleak plain seemed an unlikely spot for a rendezvous, Bak thought, too open and visible. Yet it was a place where nothing lived or moved. Its sterility, its utter desolation, would make it one of the few spots along the river where one man could meet another unseen, especially on a dark night.
“Our ship drew in close to shore, and the loading went fast. Not a man among us wanted to tarry.” The sailor stood up, eyed the site, grimaced. “We didn’t like this place. A land of death, we thought, even in the cool of night.”
“Who met you here?” Imsiba asked.
“We never saw anyone,” the man grumbled. “Just…” His voice tailed off; he shifted his feet, uneasy.
