Instinct. Amonked would disapprove.
“Hit him hard!” Minkheper yelled. “Don’t addle his wits!
Disable him!”
The young, heavy-muscled guard backed up a couple paces, raised his arm high, leaped at the thick post driven into the ground, and struck hard at the top with a short, stout length of wood cut from a pole that had supported
Amonked’s pavilion. If the post had been a man, the club would have crushed his skull.
“That’s the way it’s done!” Minkheper looked around the ring of men, twenty or so guards, Sergeant Roy, and Lieu tenant Merymose. All had come to learn the rough-and tumble fighting practiced by men of the sea. “Remember, each time you strike with too little force, you’ll soon find your foe back on his feet, ready to fight again. Why not save yourself the added effort? Make each blow count.”
The men looked at one another and nodded, seeing the sense in his words.
Spotting Bak, Minkheper raised a hand in greeting.
“We’re about through for the day, Lieutenant. Anything you wish to add?”
“How’re they coming along?” Bak asked.
The captain clapped the young guard hard on the shoul der. “You saw for yourself how this strapping example of manhood held back his blow. I pray none will be so squea mish when faced with the enemy.”
Merymose came forward, giving Bak a tentative smile.
“I saw you last night, showing the men Sergeant Dedu was training how to use the baton of office for crowd control.
Can you show us, sir? Since the men of the desert have no training in warfare, they’re more apt to attack like a mob than an army.”
“The lieutenant showed us a couple of your tricks, sir,” an older man said. “We’d like to know more.”
The other guards echoed the plea. Bak, who had ceased to be surprised at their eagerness to learn, hastened to agree.
Summoning Roy from among the rest, primarily because the burly sergeant’s disinclination to exert himself made him as stiff and unwieldy as any recalcitrant drunk or rabble rouser, he scooped up a pole cut to the appropriate length and clasped one end in his right hand.
Using the makeshift baton as an extension of his arm, he demonstrated how it could be used to hold off a man at tacking with a dagger or spear and to knock the weapon from his hand. He showed them how to strike a man down, to prod him forward, to lash him across the back or but tocks or legs with the aim of startling or pressing forward or tripping up.
Taking the ends of the baton in widespread hands, he showed them how to push men forward, forcing them deeper into a crowd, causing disarray. How to raise the horizontal weapon above a man’s head and bring it forward and down, entrapping him. How to steal up behind a man, slip the baton over his head, and pull back hard to break his neck.
He taught them a multitude of other actions, other ways to turn the simple object into a deadly weapon. Roy proved a surprisingly apt pupil and at the end, when Bak turned the baton over to him, he repeated every move, every tech nique, proving he had learned well. When Bak suggested the sergeant help teach the evening lessons, Roy dropped altogether his indifference to soldiering.
Bak raised his empty beer jar in salute to Minkheper.
“You’re a valuable man to have around, Captain. Patient, versatile, and able. Not only do you know how to make the best use of available resources, but you know the ways men fight when not guided by reason or training.”
“If I’ve learned nothing else during the years I’ve spent on the Great Green Sea, I’ve mastered the ability to take care of myself, my crew, and my ship.”
Merymose, carrying three beer jars, wove a path through the dozen or so men seated on the ground, putting the fin ishing touches to newly made spears, scimitars, and slings.
Sergeant Roy followed with a basket from which he passed out beer to the toiling men.
Handing a jar to Bak, the young officer said, “Roy is a changed man, sir. I feared his sense of self-importance would make him unbearable, but he’s thoroughly enjoying this new respect you’ve given him.”
“I gave him nothing. He earned it himself.”
Minkheper accepted a jar and broke out the plug. “With a baton in your hand, Lieutenant, you make a formidable adversary.”
“If only I could resolve Baket-Amon’s death as easily as
I use the stick.” Bak rapped the plug on the jar too hard, a measure of his frustration. Instead of the clean break he had intended, the dried clay shattered. “My quest has led me to the houses of pleasure along Waset’s waterfront, and there
I’ve come to a dead end.”
“Would that I could help you,” Merymose said, his regret evident. “He was a good and kind man, one I admired with out reservation.”
“You never accompanied him on his carousing?”
“Never.” The young officer’s regret deepened. “After the one brief time I served as his aide, I hoped he’d summon me. I wanted again to assist him, to run his errands and write his letters, perhaps go with him when he played. But he never sent for me.”
“You never ran into him in a house of pleasure?”
Merymose barked out a cynical laugh. “You must’ve come into this world a man of means, sir. Someone like me, one with nothing but the clothes on my back and the weapons in my hand, must satisfy himself with small and lowly places tucked into out-of-the-way corners of a city.”
“My father was a physician,” Bak grinned. “For lack of wealth, I, too, spent my early years haunting such low places, most likely many of the same establishments you frequented.”
The young officer blushed. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean…”
“I take no offense.” Bak sipped from his beer jar. The brew was thick and warm, scarcely satisfying. “Anyway, from what I’ve learned so far, I suspect you’re too young to help me.”
“You’ve made some progress since last we spoke?” Min kheper asked.
“Not as much as I’d like.” Bak’s scowl turned to a wry smile. “Would that you were as noted a carouser as the prince was.”
“As I believe I told you, I’ve a wife I’m fond of, other young women elsewhere, and…” Minkheper took a sip of beer, grimaced. “… and a cook who makes a far better brew than this. Better, in fact, than any I can get in a house of pleasure.” Someone cursed, drawing the captain’s atten tion. A drover who had cut himself on a sharp flake of flint he had been setting into the cutting edge of a scimitar. “My brother impoverished himself in a search for the good life, a lesson to all who might wish to follow in his footsteps.
I, for one, have no desire to destroy my life so willfully.”
The moment he spoke, regret swept across his face. A family sadness, Bak guessed, a disgrace.
He stood up to look over the wall of shields, out across the fields to the river. In the distance, he saw Nebwa drag ging the commandeered skiff out of the water, while Amon ked watched and Horhotep stood higher on the bank, too important to help, Bak suspected. He prayed his friend’s mission over the past few hours had gone better than his own.
“Lieutenant Ahmose is a reasonable man.” Nebwa splashed water over his shoulders, making them glisten.
“He’ll help us all he can with the resources available to him.”
Bak knelt down in the river and dunked his head under, refreshing himself. “He has no other choice that I can see.”
“He knows of Hor-pen-Deshret, knows what havoc he used to wreak along this stretch of the river. When I told him about the coalition…” A braying donkey drew
Nebwa’s glance downriver, where Pashenuro, Pawah, and a couple of drovers were frolicking in the water with a small herd. “Suffice it to say, he’d rather stand and fight now, with us by his side, than face the swine alone with only one meager company of spearmen.”
