across the shed and through the gap in the wall. Outside, he jerked the kilt from its head and slapped its flank with the fabric to send it across the paddock to its mate.
He looked back at the shed. Its blazing roof collapsed, setting off a shower of sparks, and flames were leaping out of the cracks between the boards. Soon nothing would be left but the mudbrick walls, and they would probably fall.
Turning away, thanking the lord Amon for standing beside him while he saved himself and the horses, he walked slowly to the water trough. He dipped his kilt in the none too clean water and wiped his sweaty face. Tension and effort had worn him out.
A movement beneath the portico in front of the house caught his eye. The guard hoisting himself into a sitting position, staring at the burning shed.
Father! Bak thought. Forgetting his exhaustion, half sick with worry, he raced across the paddock, leaped the wall, and sped to the house.
Chapter Fourteen
“My father!” Bak knelt beside Sergeant Huy. “Where is he?
Is he all right?”
The guard, looking dazed, tore his eyes from the burning shed and lifted his hand to his injured head. He flinched, withdrew the hand, stared at the dark, wet stain on his fingers. “He went. .” He frowned, trying to think. “He went to a neighbor’s house, a man whose leg was cut by a scythe.”
“Who came for him? Did you know him?” Bak heard the sharpness in his voice, the peremptory demand.
“No, sir, but your father did. The name was Amonemopet and he said they were longtime friends. Neighbors. He’s a big man, looked as strong as a bullock.”
Bak knew Amonemopet, a man to be trusted. “When?
When did they leave?”
“Not long after sunset. Darkness was falling.”
Some time ago, Bak thought. Close on two hours. “He hasn’t yet come home?”
The sergeant looked again at the burning building, but his eyes were vague, puzzled. “I. . I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing him, but. .”
Fear raced into Bak’s heart. The blow to the sergeant’s head had been hard. It had clearly befuddled him and might also have stolen a portion of his memory. He leaped to his feet, ran into the house, sped from antechamber to main room to bedchambers to bath to storage rooms. The house was empty, his father’s sleeping pallet on the rooftop smooth and unused. A hasty look at the cooking area outside revealed no one. He grabbed a short-handled torch his father kept for emergency use and lighted it on a bit of hot charcoal he found in the brazier. A peek at the lean-to where his father kept his two donkeys revealed one missing. The smell of smoke from the burning shed was making the remaining donkey uneasy, fidgety. The half-dozen goats lying on a bed of drying hay were calmer but wary.
He was not entirely reassured. The man who had trapped him in the shed and set the structure on fire could have waylaid Ptahhotep in the dark somewhere away from the house.
Or he may have had no designs on the physician’s life. The man’s intent had clearly been to slay Bak. Once that purpose was accomplished, why take the life of an innocent party?
So Bak told himself.
He hurried around the corner to the portico, where the sergeant was trying to stand, hanging onto a column for support. He took the guard’s arm and pressed him back down.
“Sit, Huy. You’ve a nasty wound. When my father comes, he’ll never forgive me for allowing you to move about.”
When my father comes. The words were spoken in hope, a prayer.
Huy stared dismally at the shed, where the fire was beginning to burn itself out. “I should’ve been more alert, sir.
You’ve no idea how sorry I am.”
Bak knelt beside him. “Do you remember what happened?”
“I was angry with myself for letting Ptahhotep leave without me. Commander Maiherperi had ordered me to stay with him, but when he insisted that I remain here, assured me his friend would not let him out of his sight, what could I do?
Then I sat where you see me now, upset because I’d failed to obey orders. I was worried, too. I like your father, you see, and. .”
“My father can be a most persuasive man,” Bak said, his wry tone betraying his own past experience.
“Yes, sir.” Looking rueful, Huy reached up to touch his head but stopped himself before his fingers reached the wound. “I’ve no clear memory of what happened, sir, but I must’ve relaxed my guard, and the man who struck must’ve come upon me from behind.”
“How long did this happen after my father left?”
“I’m not sure. A half hour at most.”
“Do you remember the name of the man he went to help?”
“Djehuty.” Huy smiled, pleased that he could answer one question, at least, with certainty. “He dwells on the farm adjoining Amonemopet’s property to the south.”
Convinced the assailant was nowhere near and the sergeant in no danger, Bak stood up. “I must see that my father has come to no harm. Can I trust you to stay where you are and rest?”
“Listen!” Huy stared into the darkness toward the path that ran along the paddock wall.
Bak heard the quick thud of hooves and men’s excited voices. A donkey came trotting at its fastest pace into the circle of light cast by the torch. Two men ran alongside the sturdy beast: Ptahhotep and Amonemopet. Both stared at the shed, where flames still spewed from what remained of the palm frond roof, casting light over blackened wooden beams sagging onto the few charred boards of the wall left standing. Red glowed where the wood smoldered, and flames sporadically darted upward.
Bak offered a silent prayer of thanks to the lord Amon that his father was well, while the sergeant spoke his prayer aloud.
Ptahhotep looked with a critical eye at the sergeant seated on the ground and Bak standing over him. “What, in the name of the lord Amon, has happened here?”
Bak suddenly remembered that he wore no kilt, merely a loincloth, and that he was smeared with soot. “Are you all right, Father?”
“Of course I am,” Ptahhotep said in a gruff voice. “Now tell me what’s happened.”
“No one tried to attack you either coming or going to Djehuty’s farm?”
“No.” Ptahhotep knelt beside the sergeant, who turned his head so the physician could see the wound. “Bring that torch closer. Can’t see a thing.” He gave his son a stern look.
“How many times must I ask? What happened here?”
Bak thanked the lord Amon that he rather than Ptahhotep had been meant to die. The assailant had come to his father’s small estate, either intending to slay him during the night or to check out the lay of the land for another time. When Ptahhotep had been called away and Sergeant Huy had grown careless, the assailant had taken advantage of the moment, thinking to disable the guard and await his arrival. Luck, or that wretched lord Set, had been with him, and he had walked into the assailant’s snare not in silence, but whistling a loud and spirited tune to announce his arrival.
“Defender’s burns are insignificant.” Ptahhotep dropped a rear hoof of the first horse Bak had saved from the burning shed and rose to his feet. “His legs should heal in a few days.”
Bak, who was holding the animal’s head, nodded toward the horse Amonemopet was holding. “What of Victory?”
The physician picked up a bowl containing a thin greenish substance and walked around the flank of the horse that had remained in the burning shed a longer period of time.
Sergeant Huy, seated on the edge of the watering trough, shifted the flaming torch so Ptahhotep could see
