“I appreciate the thought and I’m grateful,” Mahu smiled,
“but even if you could, I wouldn’t accept. What would my fellow seamen think if I were allowed to slip away unscathed while they are forced to submit?”
Bak had thought Mahu a pleasant man; the statement earned him respect. “We should be finished before midday, sir.”
“Lieutenant Bak!” Hori’s voice, insistent, urgent.
Bak swung around, saw the chubby youth running down the quay, clutching his scribal pallet under his arm.
The boy slid to a halt, took a couple of deep breaths. “Sir, there’s been a shipwreck! A long day’s walk to the north. It must’ve happened during the storm.” He paused, wiped the sweat from his face. “Captain Ramose found it at first light.
You must go, sir. The crewmen are gone-either drowned or run away-and the cargo has vanished.
Chapter Three
“Not long before dusk, we found a sheltered spot at the mouth of a dry watercourse, a desert wadi. Captain Ramose deemed it safe and there we tied up for the night-unaware of what lay just around a stony ridge, awaiting discovery.”
Tjanuny, the oarsman Bak had chastened the previous day, paused for dramatic effect.
Imsiba, who sat at Tjanuny’s back, oars shipped while the current sped the skiff downstream, tore his gaze from the east bank along which they sailed and rolled his eyes skyward. Stifling a smile, Bak stared expectantly at the wiry sailor. Soon after arriving in Buhen, he had learned that the people of this wretched land enjoyed nothing more than playing games with their betters. Patience, he had discovered, gave them the chance to amuse themselves and gave him the answers he needed, but he dared not inspire exaggeration by a show of too deep an interest.
“The wadi goes back some distance but is narrow, and the water at its mouth is deep. The banks rise steep and rocky, leaving no space for crops.” Tjanuny scratched a flank, stole a look at Bak. “I and three of my fellows left the ship to walk along the water’s edge. We thought it a good place to search for wood and other items of small value flung ashore by the storm.”
Bak eyed the land sweeping by to either side, a poor, thirsty land where the term “of small value” was the literal truth. To the west, a blanket of sand bleached white-gold by the midday sun clung to the top of the escarpment, sometimes creeping down a long-dry wadi or drifting over the dark cliffs to be nibbled away by the swollen river. Now and again the escarpment drew back, making room for a narrow floodplain of rich black soil that sustained a number of small villages.
Palms, tamarisks, and acacias, their roots soaked by the receding waters, edged fields, ditches, and the river. Men plowed the higher, dryer land, drawing clouds of birds to the overturned earth and the worms and insects thus exposed.
On the eastern side of the river, the golden desert was tinted with brown, the landscape harsher and more rocky.
Squeezed between the higher land and the river, a few stingy pockets of soil were emerging from the flood. A wadi opened up ahead, a narrow triangle of water-logged fertility lying between the high, stony banks of an ancient river, luring ibises, cranes, and egrets. Much of the oasis was shaded by palms, while grapevines flourished on a natural terrace just out of reach of all but the highest inundation. A couple dozen buildings built of stone and mudbrick perched on a sandy shelf overlooking the arable land.
“We’re nearing the wreck,” Tjanuny said. “It lies in the next wadi after this village.”
With quickening interest, Bak studied the small cluster of drab houses. This, he suspected, was where he would find the cargo, and the crew as well if any had survived the storm.
The village looked no different than all the others in this poor land. In narrow, crooked lanes, ducks and geese scratched in patches of mud and dogs squabbled halfheartedly. Naked children stared out at the passing skiff while their mothers washed clothing at the edge of the turbid waters. Two men sat in the shade playing a board game, waiting for the flood to subside. If the people here had been the first to come upon the wreck, they would have made it their own, as would most others along the river.
Bak’s divided attention spurred Tjanuny to get on with his tale. “We walked around the ridge and ahead was the wrecked ship. It was hard to see so late in the day, shadowed as it was by the cliff. One man hurried back to tell our cap-38 / Lauren Haney tain, while the rest of us hastened to the vessel. It lay broken and battered, with no man standing guard.”
“You didn’t notice the missing cargo?” Imsiba’s voice was sharp, holding less patience than Bak’s.
Tjanuny swung around, giving the Medjay a quick look as if to see how far he could go. Not far at all, he must have concluded, for he came straight to the point. “A few items remain on deck, so we thought the cargo skimpy but intact.
It was the captain, when he came, who climbed aboard to look around.” He turned again to Bak. “It was he who found the deckhouse empty and nothing stowed below. That’s why he sent me to Buhen, to summon you.”
Belowdeck cargo served as ballast. No responsible captain would sail far without a load-even if he had to haul rocks.
The shallow-keeled, round-bottomed vessels were top-heavy, easily capsized, especially when traveling upstream under an enormous spread of sail, but also when voyaging north, propelled by the current and a crew of oarsmen. As few men would take so great a risk, Ramose’s assumption that the cargo had been carried off was most likely correct. Unless Ramose himself had salvaged it and, like Rennefer, hopped to cloud Bak’s eyes with a pretense of innocence.
Bak studied the village and a path rising up the natural terraces that walled in the wadi. Above, he could imagine the desert, golden sand too hot to cross bare-footed and out-cropping rocks shading the small creatures who lived there: lizards, scorpions, snakes. “The path leads to the wreck?”
“An easy walk beyond the village, yes.”
Bak pressed the rudder, guiding the skiff closer to shore.
“And it’s from here you stole this boat?” The words slipped out as smooth as a dagger from a well-fitted sheath.
Tjanuny tensed for an instant, then relaxed. His face took on a wide-eyed look of honesty and candor. “I borrowed it.”
Imsiba sputtered, a sound falling somewhere between a laugh and a snort. The oarsman’s expression froze. Bak formed a scowl, squelching a laugh.
Tjanuny dredged up some indignation. “If I’d traveled on foot, sir, I’d not have reached Buhen until after nightfall. I thought it best to get a boat-to borrow one-so you could reach the wreck in a timely manner. Captain Ramose wishes to be on his way north, but as I told you when first I saw you, he feels obligated to help. To carry any survivors back to Buhen-should they summon the courage to appear at a ship that’s been plundered-and to haul back any salvageable goods.”
Bak gave the oarsman a stern look. “Later, after I talk with Ramose, you can row me back to this village. There you can explain that it was you who stole-borrowed-the skiff.”
A look of dismay flitted across Tjanuny’s face.
Bak relented. The man’s offense was minor, easily set right.
“I doubt you’ve cause to worry. If we find they’ve taken the cargo, they’ll be too busy explaining their own actions to complain about your misdeed.”
“Was it truly an accident?” Bak waded closer to the overturned ship, taking care not to stir up the mud beneath his feet, clouding the water more than it already was. He bent low to get a better look at the hull. “Or could the vessel have been deliberately run aground?”
Captain Ramose, his ruddy face taut with suppressed anger, stood close by. “You’re overly suspicious, Lieutenant.”
