Bak scooped up several scrolls and handed them to the nearest scribe, an older man with the harried look of a minor bureaucrat.
“I’ve a question,” Bak said. “Can you help me, sir?”
The man dropped the scrolls into a basket and lunged to grab another rolling cylinder. “Of course I can, but be quick about it, young man. I’ve much to do before day’s end.”
“I’m a police officer, assigned to look into a problem at our sovereign’s new memorial temple in western Waset.
Sometime in the near future I wish to send my scribe here to search the archives for information I need. Will he be welcomed or spurned?”
“We don’t admit just any man,” the scribe said officiously.
“He’d need higher authority than you to gain admission.” He scurried after another scroll, diminishing the effect he had intended. “No less than the chief archivist himself.”
Smothering a smile, Bak tapped his baton of office against his calf and spoke in an offhand manner. “Would Amonked, Storekeeper of Amon and our sovereign’s cousin, be of sufficient rank?”
“He would, sir, yes indeed.”
Bak pretended not to notice the man’s sudden obse-quiousness. “My scribe is called Hori. He’ll come when he has the time, authority in hand.”
By the time Bak reached the small quay where his father moored his skiff, the wind was blowing hard and cold, negating the warmth of the setting sun. He found the vessel empty, Ptahhotep nowhere in sight. The light craft was bumping against the revetment, thrown cruelly at the stone by waves driven by the wind. If he had not expected to leave right away, he would have moved it, dragging it high up onto the riverbank where twenty or more vessels of all sizes were already laying, left there by men who had foreseen the heavy weather.
Two vessels moored farther along the revetment were much larger than the skiff, better able to endure the storm. A traveling ship laden with locally made red pottery shared the space with a small cargo vessel on which every cubit of deck space was mounded with chunks of fine white limestone.
Unlike the skiff, fenders protected their wooden hulls. Fittings rattled in the wind, a loose corner of sail flapped against a yard. Neither was manned, their crews most likely warm and snug in some nearby house of pleasure. A short way upstream an unimposing fishing vessel, weathered to a deep brown, was moored to posts pounded into the riverbank. Its hull repeatedly ground against the rocks buried beneath the mud.
Shivering in the chill, Bak regretted that he wore no tunic.
Nor could he buy one. The casual market that usually lined the waterfront was empty of both sellers and buyers, the lean-tos designed for shade offering no shelter from the wind. Most, in fact, had blown over and lay in scattered heaps of spindly poles and roofmats against the buildings facing the quay. Wind whistled across rooftops, a dog slunk into a dark, narrow lane. A man darted from one doorway to another and vanished around a corner.
Bak entered the only place of business still open, a dark and dingy house of pleasure. There, as had been the case several times in the past, he found Ptahhotep awaiting him.
The older man wore a tunic of heavy linen and carried a second one for his son. It was too snug across the shoulders, but better than crossing the open water with nothing to hold off the cold.
They hurried out of the building and crossed to the skiff, pummeled by a gust of wind. Bak thanked the lord Amon that the sky was clear. At least they would not be drenched to the skin by one of the rare rainstorms that struck the area.
“Do you wish to remain in Waset tonight? The storm is sure to blow over by morning.”
A strong, cold gust made the older man irascible. “What do you take me for? A man who’s grown cowardly in my old age?”
Bak refrained from pointing out that, rather than sailing off by himself, his father had waited, hoping he would come so he would have someone to help with sail and rudder when he crossed the river. “You are cautious, my father, in no way a coward.”
“What kind of physician would I be if I failed to respond when summoned to an individual who could be reached in no other way but by boat?”
Bak knelt at the quay’s edge, caught the rope that bound the skiff’s prow to a mooring post, and pulled the bucking, tugging vessel close. His father released the stern rope. The vessel was similar to the one Bak had grown up with: sleek, fast, and practical, befitting a physician.
“Hurry, Father. Night will fall before long and the lord Amon alone knows where we’ll touch shore on the west bank. If we’re blown too far south, we could have a long trek back home.”
The older man, no novice at boarding a boat in bad weather, waited for the most opportune time and leaped aboard. Bak untied the rope from the mooring post and, with the prow hard against the quay, wound it around the post.
Scrambling aboard, he jerked the cord free. Ptahhotep shoved an oar into his hands and together they pushed the craft away from the quay and rowed like madmen toward open water.
Clear of the shore and other ships, the river ran free of ob-structions. It flowed in a northeasterly direction, while the wind and the waves came out of the north, two powerful forces vying for control of the small vessel and all it contained. Low but fierce waves raced across the surface, lifting the skiff and dropping it hard, throwing a spray of chill water over its occupants.
Bak knew a man accustomed to sailing the Great Green Sea would say these waves were nothing, trifling bumps on the water’s surface, but to him and all who sailed on the normally benevolent river, they were harsh reminders that the lord Hapi was not always a kind and generous god. He had sailed in similar conditions and was not afraid, but he felt a healthy respect for the combined forces of wind and water.
With his father manning the tiller, Bak struggled to raise the single rectangular sail. The moment the heavy linen rose above the lower yard, the wind caught it. The higher he lifted it, the stronger the force that filled it, threatening to tear the halyard from his hands or the cleats from the deck.
Threatening to capsize the vessel. His father, who had sailed all his life and had taught his son the art, eased the boat around, attaining a fine line between letting too much wind into the sail and letting the skiff founder in the waves. At times the craft literally stood still.
At last the upper yard reached the masthead. Working together with sail and tiller, father and son turned the wind and current to their advantage. In a short time they were on course, not following a direct line, for the wind demanded a zigzag route, but they felt confident they would reach the opposite shore not far from the path that would take them home. They sped across the water, their journey strenuous and cold, but invigorating.
The lord Re hovered above the western peak behind Djeser Djeseru, dappling the surface of the rough water in reds and golds. Some distance upstream, a large traveling ship was coming toward them, its sail tucked away, its oarsmen holding the vessel on a course midstream of the current carrying them northward. Other than that, the sole vessel in sight was a fishing boat sailing some distance behind them on a course similar to theirs. Like the vessel Bak had noticed near the quay in Waset, its hull was weathered a deep brown.
Assuming it was the same boat, it must have left not long after they did.
Bak dismissed the two vessels from his thoughts and concentrated on keeping the skiff on course. For all practical purposes, he and his father had the river to themselves. They could go where they pleased, sail as fast as they wished. The world was theirs alone.
Keeping in sight the mouth of a canal on the opposite shore, using the lord Re as a beacon, they sailed roughly in a northwesterly direction. After attaining a heady speed that would set the fastest chariot horse to shame, Bak would adjust the sail, spilling the wind, holding barely enough to maintain western movement while the current carried the skiff downstream. He was exhilarated by the speed, by the challenge of competing with the storm and the river. The wind tugged at his hair and the fabric of his tunic. It whistled through the lines and rattled the fittings atop the masthead. Gulls soared above, wings spread, letting the wind carry them south, squawking as if making light of the men below.
About midstream Bak tore his eyes from the goal ahead to see how his father was faring in the stern. He was startled to see the fishing boat behind them, coming up fast. Too fast.
His heart leaped into his throat and he spat out a curse.
Though a far more cumbersome vessel, it was twice as large as their own and much heavier, with considerably more sail. The master of the vessel was using that sail to great advantage, allowing the wind to push
