dead.”
“While they were telling that tale, you made a joke.”
“Who? Me?” Tjanuny slowed to a snail’s pace and scratched his head. “I remember Roy’s men telling of a boat that passed by in the dark, but if I told a joke, it escapes me.”
Bak preferred not to put words in the sailor’s mouth, but…“You made light of their fear, speaking of a man missing a portion of his body.”
Tjanuny snapped his fingers, grinned. “Sure! The headless man.”
“That’s the one,” Bak said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Now where did you first hear of him, and how?”
“The Belly of Stones.” Tjanuny relaxed, the residue of mistrust seeping away, and walked on toward the fortress gate. “I came from a land far to the south, as you know. I worked my way downriver aboard first one ship and then another until I reached Semna. The river was high, the Belly of Stones navigable-I was told. But I’m a cautious man. I watched two ships lowered down some rapids. They made it all right, the men on board safe if not always dry, but the sight wasn’t as reassuring as it should’ve been. I gave the matter serious thought, and wanted no part of so hazardous a voyage. So I walked from Semna to Kor, meeting many people along the way. I often heard whispers of a headless man.”
Tjanuny gave Bak a sheepish smile. “At first I thought him not a man, merely a myth. A tale the farmers tell to scare themselves at night. And to this day, I’m not sure. I never saw him for myself.”
“What exactly did they tell you?” Bak asked, making no secret of how interested he was.
“They say he comes and goes in the dead of night. He’s been seen in a skiff far out on the river, and walking the desert sands. He sometimes meets a ship, so they say, in a quiet spot along the water’s edge. Some claim the vessel is filled with shadows, but others say they’ve heard men talking and laughter no different than yours and mine.” Tjanuny paused, thought over what he had said, shrugged. “I fear that’s all I heard, sir.”
“You’ve done well, very well indeed.” The sailor had earned a reward, a gift appropriate to the man and worthy of his aid. But what? The answer came as if handed down by the gods. “Have you ever been to Nofery’s house of pleasure, Tjanuny?”
After leaving Tjanuny in Nofery’s capable hands, Bak hastened to the commandant’s residence. There he arranged for guards on Ramose’s ship, soldiers who could blend in with the crew, unlike the easily identified Medjays. As he passed through the gate to the outer city, the waning strength of the sun and a stiffening breeze hurried his pace along the narrow, irregular lanes. Dust whirled into the air and settled, powdering his sticky shoulders and tickling his nose. A black and white cur, her teats heavy with milk, loped up the street ahead of him, a limp rat hanging from her mouth.
Men and women laughed together, children shrieked with gaiety, a baby wailed. Off-duty soldiers and traders, idled by Thuty’s ban on travel, walked the sandy paths in search of diversion. A dog barked in the distance, setting off a chorus throughout the city. The raucous bray of a donkey rose above the softer bleats of sheep. The smell of onions cooking, the rank odor of drying fish, and the acrid stench of smelting metals could in no way compete with the sweetish odor of manure carried through the air from the nearby paddocks.
The people living here, Bak felt sure, would get down on their knees and kiss Commandant Thuty’s feet when at last he announced his decision to allow the caravans to move.
A side lane carried him to the house where Captain Roy’s crew was sequestered. He stopped outside a makeshift door made of stout reeds lashed together to form a grid, allowing light to enter. Inside he heard:
“She’s a treasure to behold, I tell you, a creature so great of beauty she could be a goddess. Eyes deep and dark like the midnight sky, skin as pale and smooth as thick cream, lips as red as a pomegranate and as sweet. And what she could do with her mouth…” The speaker paused, gave a long, slow sigh. “Rapture. That’s what I felt. A love so deep and strong, so long-lasting, I thought never to regain my strength once she released me.”
Bak laughed softly to himself. The speaker was Dadu, one of the Medjays assigned to guard the sailors. The tale in its many variations was an oft told diversion in the barracks-imaginary, not real. A tale used to tantalize im- prisoned men, to make them hunger for freedom and the attractions they imagined awaited them outside, to draw the truth from them.
Bak called out, making his presence known. Dadu, a tall, wiry man with flecks of white in his hair, hurried to the door to admit the officer. Bak gave the Medjay a surreptitious wink, then took in the room with a glance. Skimpy sleeping pallets, folded for economy of space, stood in a stack against a wall. A brazier and a mound of pottery dishes had been shoved into a corner, while four large round-bottomed water jars leaned against another wall. Baked clay lamps, their wicks fresh and unburned, shared the prayer niche with the bust of some former resident’s long-forgotten ancestor. The second room, a windowless box, held another stack of sleeping pallets and a mound of bags, baskets, and jars filled with rations. Both rooms opened onto a walled courtyard containing a tall conical grain silo and a round oven. Particles of dust danced in the sunlight falling through the doors; the smell of manure was pervasive.
The dozen men who had been sitting or lying on the floor, 186 / Lauren Haney listening to Dadu’s tale with rapt attention, scrambled to their feet. Five others hurried in from the courtyard. Bak queried the Medjay with a glance. Dadu gave a slight nod; he believed the sailors had had about all they could take of seclusion.
Bak studied the faces before him, noting among them the sailor with the crooked nose and the boy, who had pleaded in vain to keep as a pet the small gray monkey. The men tried to stand stiff and defiant, but their eyes dropped to their feet or slewed to their fellows for aid or narrowed in a calcu-lating manner. He could smell their fear, a fear well founded, for they had been caught with objects that by rights belonged to their sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut. A fear he could use to his advantage.
At the courtyard door, he pivoted on the threshold and stood in the bright rectangle of sunlight, his face in shadow, his back warmed by the lord Re. “One man among you will speak for the rest. Who will it be?”
They looked at one another, confused by the need to choose.
Imsiba had judged them right, Bak saw, men accustomed to following, not thinking for themselves. No wonder their ship had run aground! “Must I decide for you?”
“Min,” someone said.
“He’ll do,” another said, pointing to the man with the crooked nose. “He talked to you before. Let him again.”
Bak remembered the man as surly, but one who could be made to speak. “Come forward,” he commanded. “Sit here where I can see you.” He pointed his baton at his own shadow, stretched across the floor.
Glaring at his fellow crewmen, Min shouldered his way to the spot Bak had indicated. He stood for a moment, rebellious, but a quick, hard look dropped him to his knees fast enough.
Bak spread his legs wide and held his baton at waist level, one hand at either end, filling the portal with authority. “Soon I must take you before the commandant, charged with transporting contraband in a greater quantity than ever I’ve seen before. Your captain is gone, swallowed by an angry river. The burden now rests on your shoulders alone.”
One man yelped like a startled puppy. The others babbled, their voices loud, defensive, resentful, whiny. Dadu, standing before the street door lest anyone try to leave, stared over their heads unmoved.
“In your favor,” Bak said, raising his voice, quieting them,
“is the fact that we’ve not only recovered the contraband, but your ship can be repaired and made a part of our sovereign’s fleet. With luck, you’ll suffer no greater punishment than the desert mines.”
Though he made the servitude sound like a stroll along the river, the prediction struck them dumb, filling the room with unease. Not one among them had failed to see the long lines of men, foul criminals sent south from Kemet, filing off the ships at Buhen and the other fortresses of Wawat and marching off into the desert. Many never returned. Those who came back were bowed and broken.
“I can ask the commandant to spare you-to shorten your stay in the desert or assign you to labor elsewhere.” Bak’s voice turned hard, cold. “You, in turn, must speak to me with a frank and open tongue.”
The men looked at one another. Fearful. Hopeful. Wanting to believe, not sure they could.
“I’d come back an old man!” The youth stared at Bak, shuddered. “What do you want to know?”
All eyes turned toward him; tight-lipped faces accused him of betrayal. But Bak spotted deeper, better-hidden emotions as well: a relief that not one of them had been the first to break, and a spark of hope that the youth had opened the door to possible salvation.
“You told me a tale when last we met,” he said to Min.
