wretched morning in Buhen, if I could once again glimpse Baket Amon standing in the street, I’d close my eyes and turn away.”
“I think you too upright and honest to ignore the de mands of your god.”
“Don’t place me on a pedestal, Lieutenant. I’m a man and nothing more.”
Bak eyed the captain, his thoughts tumbling. How best to ask the question that would give him an answer he was not sure he wanted to hear? “Before his death, I pleaded with Baket-Amon to go to Amonked, to tell him of the need for our army to remain in Wawat. He refused, saying his past had come back to taunt him. I assume he meant you.”
“No doubt he did.” Minkheper glanced toward the door, where a pretty young servant was sweeping the courtyard, all the while humming a merry tune. “He saw me at the harbor, so he said, when I made a last inspection to assure myself that our ships would have a secure mooring while we traveled upriver.”
“You were in command of the fleet, but you were also a member of the inspection party. Did he guess you were staying at the house where they were quartered?”
“He wasn’t surprised to find me there.” The captain could not help but notice Bak’s troubled expression, and quickly guessed the cause. “Did he come to see Amonked to plead your case? I can’t say with certainty. I only know that I heard a commotion in the street and went to the door to learn the cause. While I stood there, listening to the young men of Buhen ridicule our sailors, I saw him standing at the far corner of the block, looking toward the house.
Whether or not he meant to approach before I appeared, I know not.”
“I’ve wondered time and time again if I brought about his death. Now I suppose I’ll never know.”
“Let me put it this way: Instead of walking away when he saw me, as most men would when under threat, he came forward.”
Bak gave him a sharp look. “He was convinced you’d follow him, I’d guess, and thought it best to face you then and there.”
“We were preparing to sail south to Kor. I hadn’t the time.”
That Bak could understand. As a man determined to at tain the rank of admiral, Minkheper might well have set aside his personal mission. “He chose to come forward, but did he enter the building by choice?”
“He asked if I knew of a place of privacy.” Minkheper stood up and walked to the door. Turning his back on the sunlit court, he stood in the portal, making his face hard to see. “I bade him go inside, into the room where you dis covered his body.”
“He invited death?”
“He walked into the room, looked around, and nodded his approval. Then he just stood there. Waiting.” Minkhe per’s voice wavered. “I asked if he had come, intending to die. He said he could no longer tolerate the suspense, the uncertainty of never knowing which day would be his last.
He said the death of the child in Thutnofer’s house of plea sure, the slaying of my brother, and even the effort of living life to its fullest had stolen the heart from him.” The captain paused, sucked in a tortured breath. “He’d lived his life to the utmost, he said, sired an heir he looked upon with pride, and had given his people prosperity and peace. What more could a man leave behind?”
“The prince took his own life, with you as his instrument of death,” Bak said, appalled.
Minkheper left the doorway, an ironic smile on his face.
“So I concluded, but too late.”
Bak stared at the man standing before him. A man of courage and kindness, honest and true. A man who, if al lowed to reach the lofty rank of admiral, would serve the land of Kemet with honor and aptitude. Never before had he snared a slayer with so much regret. Yet he could not set him free. Justice must be done, order restored.
Bak returned to the commander’s residence to prepare reports on his discovery of Baket-Amon’s slayer and the defense of the caravan under Nebwa’s command. The latter, a favor to the troop captain, whose stout-hearted effort to learn to read and write had borne small fruit, was the lengthier of the two and took more time. Many men had to be commended, their exploits described in the hope of ap propriate reward.
He sat alone and undisturbed beneath a lean-to on the roof of the residence, shaded from the sun’s heat, cooled by a breeze that stirred the air, sipping a local beer that smelled as harsh as it tasted. Ahmose had told him he would learn to like the brew. He was glad he would not remain at Askut long enough to develop a taste for it.
As the sun dipped below the western horizon, he scrawled the last symbol on the papyrus. Not long after, while cleaning his reed pen and scribal pallet, he heard
Nebwa cross the triangular square between the house and the main gate. He quickly rolled the scroll, tied it with a cord, and impressed his symbol of office on the mud seal he affixed to the knot. Hurrying down the stairs, he met his friend and Amonked in the second-floor courtyard.
“Ah, there you are, Lieutenant.” Amonked, his demeanor serious, purposeful, glanced into Ahmose’s private recep tion room, which was smaller than that of Commandant
Thuty’s and considerably neater. “Where’s Lieutenant Ah mose? I must speak with the three of you.”
Noting the inspector’s manner, his peremptory tone, Bak flung a querying glance at Nebwa. He got a shake of the head in return and a look that said he, too, was baffled.
Ahmose emerged from a rear door, rubbing his hands in satisfaction. “You’ve come. Good. My wife’s prepared a feast fit for our sovereign, but we’ve time for a bowl of wine before it’s ready.”
Without a word, Amonked walked into the reception room and sat down on the chair, which had been carried upstairs to the private quarters especially for his comfort.
Ahmose gave the two officers from Buhen a startled look, got Nebwa’s shrug in return, and led the way inside. When the three were seated on stools and a servant had handed out bowls of dark red wine that smelled of spices, the in spector said:
“You’re puzzled by my attitude, as you’ve every right to be. We’re here to celebrate our victory, yet I’ve come with a purpose of great and serious import.”
Bak set his bowl on the floor by his feet, his taste for the wine momentarily lost. “Has something happened, sir, that makes our victory look small by comparison?”
“No.” Amonked sipped from his bowl, nodded approval.
“We will celebrate, but first things first.” He sipped again as if reluctant to voice what he suspected his listeners might not wish to hear. “I’ve thought long and hard about Hor pen-Deshret, about the fate of a man who places his own self-interest above that of all who look to him for leadership.”
“His fate?” Nebwa demanded. “Have you not already decided to take him to Waset?”
“I fear we must allow the wretched criminal to escape.”
Bak stared, his power of speech stolen by shock.
“What!” Nebwa roared.
Ahmose looked stricken. “You can’t mean that, sir.”
“I can and I do.”
“But, sir,” Ahmose said, “he’ll come back, just as he did this time. He’ll make the people’s lives a misery, and we’ll once again have to face him on the field of battle.”
Amonked was unmoved. “He knows that no army he gathers, no matter how large, can defeat the might of Kemet. And he knows impalement will be the price he’ll pay when he’s caught.”
“He’ll have nothing to fear if the army is torn from this land,” Bak pointed out.
Amonked formed an enigmatic little smile and bowed his head slightly in Bak’s direction. “Shall I go to Maatkare
Hatshepsut and tell her of the battle we fought, of the many enemy dead and their captured chieftain, of small groups of wandering nomads too downtrodden to do more than pilfer when they bring their flocks to the river? Or shall I tell her of our hard-won battle, of the wandering nomads who covet the riches traveling south to Kemet, and a pow erful chieftain free to strike again?”
Bak began to understand. At least he thought he did.
Nebwa and Ahmose stared at the inspector as if afraid their hearing had failed them.
Amonked wove his fingers together across his stomach and eyed the trio one after the other. “I cannot, in all good conscience, recommend to our sovereign that she leave the army on the Belly of Stones if the major threat to
