Smiling to himself, wondering what they would find next to wager on, Bak slipped back into his office. He sat down on the white coffin to think over his interview with Ramose.
The burly captain had never sailed upstream beyond Kor, but he had spent many years in Wawat and could have a trusted ally in the south. He could easily have approached Mahu to
carry contraband, and his ship had been moored in Buhen at the time of the murder.
As for Intef, it was impossible to know exactly when the hunter’s ka fled his body. He had died sometime in the early morning, over an hour’s walk south of Buhen, and Ramose had sailed north that same morning from the harbor of Buhen. For him to commit the murder and return to his ship to sail away was close to impossible, a feat of the gods, not ordinary man. If Mahu’s death could be linked to Intef’s, Ramose was surely free of guilt on both counts. The hole in his ship, the fear in his eyes, seemed to bear out his innocence.
“We don’t often play here,” Mery said. “This cemetery is too new.”
“We run errands for the men,” his sturdy friend volun-teered. “Their wives send food and drink, or they need new tools, or someone gets hurt and we go find help.”
Bak eyed the gaping mouth of a nearby tomb, which was contained within a natural sandstone mound, weathered to the shape of a cone. The formation rose in isolated splendor some distance behind Buhen. Farther away lay the low ridge they had followed when traveling south to Intef’s body.
Beyond the tomb entrance, a fluttering light diminished the black inside and voices relieved the silence. Men toiled within, excavating the stone so a local dignitary could be buried in the fashion of Kemet. Mudbricks stacked nearby awaited the day when the digging would be finished and the dead man interred, when the door could be sealed, a vault built over the entryway, and a walled forecourt constructed.
Other newly made tombs dotted the hillside, their roofs and courts whole and undamaged, their offering stones bright and clear, unmarred by sun or wind or hard-driven sand.
He glanced at Imsiba, whose barely perceptible shudder told him what the Medjay thought of toiling in the depths of the earth.
“Four or five of the tombs were built long ago when Buhen was new. You can tell by the bricks they used then; 144 / Lauren Haney they’re bigger than ours.” Mery’s expression was serious, his voice a trifle pompous, much like Commandant Thuty when he showed the viceroy around Buhen. “But they’ve all been reused and sealed. No one could possibly break into them without all the world knowing.”
“Do you know of any other old cemeteries or tombs farther out in the desert?”
“We’ve heard tales, and we’ve searched the sands all around Buhen. But the one time we went so far we lost sight of the fortress, my father was so angry I couldn’t sit down for a week.”
“Neither could I,” the smallest boy said.
The other four boys echoed the plaint.
Smothering a smile, Bak turned away from the tomb. Imsiba, he saw, had already backed off, impatient to be gone.
And in truth they had seen more than enough burial places for the day.
Walking through heavy, loose sand, they descended broad shelves of rock containing scattered tombs, which they had explored on their outbound trek. The boys trailed behind, playing tag with their shadows cast by the midafternoon sun.
Like the mound, this cemetery and another farther to the east was of recent origin. No other burial places lay near the fortress. Bak was satisfied Intef had found the ancient jewelry farther afield.
The thought jarred his memory and he snapped his fingers.
“Nehi. We must go back to her farm.” He glanced up at the sky, nodded. “We’ve time yet before nightfall. With luck, she’ll have heard from Penhet.”
“Maybe we can get from her now what before she wouldn’t tell us,” Imsiba added.
Bak prayed she would speak. He had no desire to force his way into her home and tear it apart in search of the objects he was sure her husband had hidden there.
They left the untrammeled sand to walk along the desert trail leading to the massive, towerlike west gate that pierced the outer wall. A causeway carried them over the dry ditch that protected the base of the fortification. Swallows swooped down from their nests in the battlements, laying waste to a swarm of flies buzzing around a greenish pile of manure deposited not far from the gate, while sparrows twittered, awaiting their turn.
Bak eyed the birds, the unmanned gate, and the empty walkway between the ditch and the base of the fortified tower. “Where’s the sentry, I wonder?”
Imsiba followed his glance, frowned. “He dare not go far.
The watch officer would have his head.”
They swerved around the manure, setting the birds to flight, and strode to the passageway through the tower.
Beyond the shaft of light cast inside by the sun, the corridor was black-dark. Bak hesitated, thinking of Mahu and the way his slayer had used the much smaller, eastern gate to his advantage, the light and shadow, the temporary blindness.
He glanced at Imsiba, read a like thought on the big Medjay’s face.
“I wish I thought more often to carry my spear and shield.”
Imsiba’s voice was light, conversational, playing down his foreboding.
“The sentry’s gone off to relieve himself, that’s all.” Bak glanced at the boys, giggling, scuffling, shouldering each other along the walkway toward the corner of the tower.
“Shall we go on? While they’re distracted with their game?”
The two men strode forward, following the stream of light into the passage, each close to his own wall. Stepping into the dark, they stopped, their eyes on the rectangle of light at the far end. There lay the first of two baffles, courtyards designed to entrap the enemy and protect the defenders of the fortress.
Bak had served as a soldier for more than eight years, most of that time as a chariotry officer, protected from close con-tact with the enemy by the speed of his horses and the height of his chariot. For the first time, he had an idea of how it might feel to assault a fortress, to walk into a baffled gate where men could be waiting overhead, armed with bows and arrows and slings and boiling oil. The worm of fear crawled up his spine.
They strode on, cloaked by the gloom. Four paces, five, six. At the end of the passage and still hidden in shadow, they stopped to examine the baffle ahead. It was open to the sky, with a projecting tower on either side and walls rising to the battlements high above. A low moan drew their eyes to the right, to the sentry crumpled on the brick paving just outside the passage. Bak and Imsiba stood dead still, looking, listening. Seeing nothing, hearing no sound, Bak stepped out of the passage, ducked aside, and at the same time dropped onto a knee beside the senseless man. Something thudded into the brick close to the spot where Bak had just been, an arrow buried to the shaft, its feathers quivering from the force of impact. Across the court, he glimpsed a vague movement in the shadowed passage leading to the second baffle. A hand reached into the sunlight, a bow clutched hard, an arrow seated for flight.
He grabbed the sentry’s tawny shield, swung it upright, and fumbled for the downed man’s spear. The arrow sped through the air, the shield jerked out of his hand. Imsiba made an odd, surprised little sound. Bak pivoted, saw the Medjay clutching his upper arm and blood flowing through his fingers from a long ugly slice through his flesh.
Suddenly the passage was filled with merry laughter and the boys burst into the courtyard.
“Go back!” Bak yelled.
The boys milled around, not understanding.
“Get back in the passage!” Bak snarled.
Mery spotted Imsiba’s bloody arm and the downed sentry.
His eyes opened wide, he gaped. “What happened, sir?”
The shadowy image vanished from the passage ahead.
The archer had opted to flee. Too many boys looking on, too many mouths to silence should he be seen. Bak, his expression stormy, tugged the spear from beneath the sentry and scooped up the shield, its tawny hide scarred by the arrow that had glanced off the edge to strike Imsiba. He looked at the Medjay, at a wound ugly and no doubt hurtful but not life-threatening.
Imsiba urged him on with a forced smile. “Go, my friend, bring him to his knees.”
Bak squeezed the Medjay’s uninjured shoulder and turned to the boys. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll summon
