'Convince me!' Bak sensed men at the door, attracted by the raised voices. He waved them away, urging them to mind their own business, and spoke more softly. 'Tell me what happened, Amonhotep.' -
The aide dropped onto his stool, fumbled for his drinking bowl, found it empty. Bak strode to the door, signaled to Pahared's wife for two more jars, and returned to his seat. The dog, its attention focused on the shadows between the pottery jars, rested its chin on his sandaled foot.
Amonhotep lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. He spoke in a tired, defeated voice. 'I don't enjoy talking about that storm, or remembering. No man does who lived through it.'
Bak nodded, offering no words of sympathy, his understanding limited by a lack of experience he in no way wished to gain.
The aide looked up, his mouth tight and resolute. 'Desert tribesmen — thirty, maybe forty men from the western oasis of Uahtrest-had been raiding caravans carrying trade goods past the rapids and attacking outlying farms in the province. The garrison was short-manned. To send sufficient troops to protect the caravans strained us beyond our limit; to guard the farms was impossible.'
'Did you not send word to the police at Uahtrest?' Amonhotep gave a short, bitter laugh. 'Twice we did, and neither messenger ever returned. Either they were waylaid in the desert or those men assigned to uphold the law in Uahtrest handed them over to the raiders.' He glanced toward the door, where Pahared's wife stood, a beer jar in each hand. Not until she had delivered the brew and gone back to her other customers did he continue. 'Djehuty and his officers agreed: the raiders must be stopped and we must do it. The best way, they decided, was to march to Uahtrest, taking all available spearmen, and ambush them. Decimate them.'
Bak nodded his understanding. 'By making an example of them, they hoped to discourage other tribesmen from future raids.'
'Yes.' Amonhotep filled his drinking bowl and took several deep swallows, bolstering his will to go on. 'A company of spearmen-a hundred strong-set out, as did their officers and a half dozen scouts who knew the desert well. Each man led a donkey, some burdened with food, some laden with water, all carrying weapons. Djehuty marched at their head.' 'And you with him,' Bak guessed.
Amonhotep gave an odd, strangled laugh, nodded. 'We were four days out when the breeze stiffened and the air grew thick with dust. The world turned black. I could see nothing. Not Djehuty before me or the donkey whose rope I held.' He paused, swallowed hard. 'Over the roar of the wind, I heard shouts, contradictory orders, donkeys braying. Sand clogged my nose, crept beneath my eyelids and under my clothing, abraded my flesh. I tied the rope around my wrist, caught hold of the bridle, and held on as if my very life depended upon the donkey I led. And it did.'
The aide took another deep drink. Bak could see how hard it was for him to go on, how dreadful the memory. He wished he could put an end to the tale, ease the officer's pain, but to do so would be foolhardy, might even cost Djehuty his life.
'The creature turned its back to the wind,' Amonhotep said, 'letting the storm blow us where it would, and I stumbled along beside him. It was I who fell, not him, and I pulled him down with me. He struggled to rise, but I clung to him, burying my face in his neck, burying his head in my lap. The sand built up around us and I…' He paused; a faint, humorless smile touched his lips. 'I felt sure we would die, the donkey and I together.'
Another pause, a soft laugh. 'The wind stopped blowing. In a world as silent as a tomb, I stood up and so did my four-legged companion. His back was bare, I saw; he no longer carried the water jars we had set out with that morning. We shook off the sand and looked around, thinking other men and animals would show themselves. None did.'
Amonhotep's breathing had grown heavy, labored, revealing the torment of memory. 'I panicked, running first in one direction and then another, digging into every small mound of sand until my hands bled, desperate to find other survivors. At last, exhausted and thirsty, I faced the truth: we-my donkey and I-were alone. We spent the rest of the day hiding from the burning sun in the-shade of a low ridge. As darkness fell, we set out, using the stars to guide us. It was cold; our stomachs were empty and our mouths dry. So very dry.'
He swallowed hard again. 'As dawn broke, my donkey brayed. In the distance, we heard another and a second one, both somewhere beyond a stony ridge. When finally I realized the sound was real, not an illusion born of thirst, we hurried toward them, I thinking we'd find the rest of our troops.' His laugh this time was short, cynical. 'We found instead a dozen or so donkeys. Most, like my own, had lost their loads, but two carried water and another food. After that, we had only to ration our supplies, stay out of the sun as best we could, and travel eastward at night, using the stars to point the way. We found other donkeys scattered across the desert, none carrying food or water. We came upon no men.'
Bak could well imagine the hot, burning sands, donkeys left to make their lonely way back to the river or to die, the utter absence of men. A dry and desolate land, eerie in its emptiness and silence.
'13y doling out water in ever smaller portions,' Amonhotep went on, 'I managed to get myself and the donkeystwenty-eight at the end-to the black land of Kemet. I thought never to see so beautiful a sight: fertile green fields, the life-giving river, and men who took us in, fed us, doctored our injuries. Other survivors straggled off the desert a day or two later, sick from too much sun, weak from little or no food and drink. Djehuty, I learned later, had arrived ahead of me. Like me, he'd found a donkey laden with water.'
The dog at Bak's feet moaned in its sleep. He reached down to scratch the creature's ears. Pahared was right; Djehuty could not be blamed for the onset of the storm. Why then, he wondered, did his instincts tell him there was more to this incident than the obvious? Amonhotep had clearly told the truth as far as he knew it, but how much of the truth could he know? He had been separated from Djehuty and everyone else from the onset of the storm.
Bak stumbled down the dark, narrow lane, not as sure as he would have liked that the unfamiliar route would take him to his temporary quarters. His torch, which Pahared's wife had urged him to borrow from her courtyard, sputtered and flickered, threatening to go out, its fuel nearly burned away. Each time he lowered it to examine a suspicious shadow or raised it high to illuminate the lane farther ahead, the sudden movement threatened to extinguish the flame. He muttered an oath, directing it at himself. He should have sought out a member of the night patrol and asked for a better light, but he had not wanted to tarry after half carrying the besotted Amonhotep home to the governor's villa.
He turned a corner; the torch spat sparks. A cat, yowling fear, shot down the lane and vanished in the dark. He followed, counting doors as he walked, praying he was in the right street. Like all older cities in Kemet, Abu had grown at the whim of those who lived there, with villas built and smaller houses built in between, one against another. Now the old single-story dwellings, like the one he and his men had been assigned, were being enlarged upward, many two or even three stories high, to make the best possible use of the confined space. Every lane, every house was different, yet each looked much like the rest to a stranger. Especially in the dark.
Approaching the sixth door and a corner, he heard Kasaya's deep-voiced curse on the rooftop above and Psuro's laugh. He relaxed, smiled. With luck, the odors he smelled of braised lamb and onions came from their roof, not that of a neighboring household, and they had saved some for him. He had had plenty of beer through the evening, but nothing solid since midday.
He brushed aside the mat covering the door and stepped into the house, holding the torch low and to his right, well away from the dry, flammable woven reeds. As he let the mat drop and raised the flame higher, a shower of sparks fell from the torch. He glimpsed a long, fish-like object on the floor beyond his foot, and the torch sputtered out.
'Where's a lamp?' he called, edging sideways, trying to avoid the object he had seen.
'Up here.' Psuro looked down from the top of the stairway leading to the roof, a black silhouette outlined by stars. 'I'll light it from the brazier.'
He disappeared from view, but soon returned. Carrying the lamp in one hand, shielding the flame with the other, he plunged down the stairs. Bak stood where he was, trying to see through the blackness beyond his feet.
Kasaya looked down from above. 'We saved some lamb for you, sir, and stewed vegetables. I hope you're hungry.' Psuro dropped to the floor with a thud and drew his hand away from the blaze. The flame rose tall and straight, free of smoke, illuminating the floor, the few pieces of furniture, and the baskets of supplies, casting shadows against the walls and into the corners. A large fish, its head pointed toward the door, its scales vaguely iridescent in the uncertain light, lay a couple of paces inside the door, outlined by its own shadow. A perch, Bak saw, an arm's length from nose to tail. That the creature was dead there could be no doubt. Its head was crushed.
