looked all around. He could see no bright, writhing inferno. The fire, he assumed, was smoldering in a bag or two of grain. The bags too tightly packed, too close together, to allow air to fuel the flame. Maybe the heart of the grain still lived, slightly green and moist. How long the fire would smolder, he could not begin to guess.
One thing he knew for a fact: he had to get out of the warehouse. He had heard tales of grain fires, of the very dust in the air bursting into flame. Even if untrue, the air would fill with a suffocating smoke as deadly as a conflagration.
This warehouse, like most others, would have a single door and no windows. It might be vented in some manner, but the interior was blacker than night, making any small opening impossible to find. Therefore he must either exca vate a hole in the mudbrick wall or find a way out the door.
He needed a tool of some sort. Automatically he reached for the leather sheath hanging from his waist, felt the dagger in side. He laughed aloud; his assailant had been careless. The laugh was cut short by a cough, which jarred his splitting head.
He thought of Nebamon, the way the overseer had dug into the mudbrick of the storehouse in the sacred precinct.
The arched roof had to have been at least four palm-widths thick. The walls supporting the heavy arch might be thicker.
He would need a hole almost a cubit in diameter to crawl through. He felt certain the smell of burning was growing stronger. Could he dig himself out in time?
Better try the door. How hard was the wood? he won dered. How thick? Two fingers? Three? No matter. He could delay no longer.
He had not the vaguest idea where the door was, so first he had to find it. The bags beneath his feet were at a slightly lower level than those he sat on, which might mean some had been removed at one time or another. No man assigned to carry the heavy bags would collect them from deeper in side than necessary; he would take those nearest the door.
Also, assuming Bak’s assailant had been eager to get away, he would not have taken the time to drag him deep within the tunnellike chamber.
Satisfied with his reasoning, Bak faced the slope and rose to his feet like a sick, old man, holding his head straight and stiff. He took off a sandal and eased his foot forward, feeling the roundness of the bags and the slight hollows where they touched. The last thing he wanted was to fall-or to step into the fire he could not see. If the man had left him near the door, the odds were good that he had started the fire close by.
A second short, careful step. A third and a fourth. Without warning, his forehead struck the ceiling. The pain in his head exploded. He stood motionless, letting the pounding dwindle to a painful but tolerable throb. He reached into the darkness ahead, found he had struck the downward curve of the vaulted arch. Ducking low, he stepped forward to the wall. A side wall, not the one at the end of the building that held the door.
Again he used the slope of the filled bags as a guide. Those to his right were piled lower than those to the left. He turned in that direction. After two cautious steps, he found himself half stumbling downward on the none- too-stable slope formed by the bags. He stepped onto the hard-packed earthen floor with a jolt. Congratulating himself for having guessed right thus far, he walked along the wall a half-dozen paces to the intersecting wall. Less than three paces away, if his as sumptions were correct, he would find the door, the sole exit.
He laughed aloud, coughed, felt sure his head would split.
Trying not to breathe, trying to ease the tickle in his throat, he realized that the smell of smoke was more notice able than before. He must waste no more time.
Using the wall as a guide, he walked forward and quickly found the door. Well aware of how futile the effort was, he gave it a good hard shove. In this case, his assailant had taken due care. The door had been barred shut. He slipped his dagger from its sheath and, squashing all thought, set to work. He started at a crack between boards and at a point slightly above waist height, where the bars were usually placed on doors. His dagger was sharp, the bronze well hardened. The wood of the door was softer than he expected but with knots as hard as granite.
He put all his strength behind the effort, shaving away the wood along the edges of the adjoining boards, cutting ever deeper and widening the hollow. The sweat poured from him and thirst plagued him. His aching arms and wrists felt heavy and wooden. The smoke thickened and he coughed hard and often. The pain in his head seemed less intense, less nagging. Maybe because he was too distracted to give it attention. Maybe because he was getting used to it, or his senses were too numbed to feel.
He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face. A fit of coughing reminded him again to hurry. Before the ware house filled with smoke. Before the fire burst into life.
With grim determination, he gouged another chunk of wood loose, shoved the blade hard, and burst through the last fragile sliver between him and the outside world. He knelt, tried to see through the hole. It was too small, the night outside too dark. He bared his teeth in a sardonic smile. Now all he had to do was make the hole big enough to reach through to the bar and lift it. An endless task, that promised to be. Or to call for help in the unlikely event that anyone passed by.
He blanked out so discouraging a thought and began to enlarge the hole. The smoke made his eyes sting and tears spilled from them. He had to stop often to wipe them. Sud den, violent attacks of coughing beset him. He needed air.
Good, clean air. Like the air seeping in from outside, caress ing his hand while he enlarged the hole.
Chiding himself for his failure to think of so obvious a re lief, he knelt before the opening, which had grown to roughly the size of a goose egg, and took several deep breaths. After an initial spate of coughing, his breathing be came less labored. How long he knelt there, his forehead resting on the door, taking in the sweet cool air, he had no idea. When he set to work again, he felt considerably bet ter-and more optimistic.
The feeling was short-lived. The blade of his dagger be gan to lose its edge, and he struck a small knot so hard the pointed tip broke off. Spitting out a string of oaths, resentful of every moment it took, he cut the softer wood from around the harder. In the end, with just a small segment holding the knot in place, he turned his dagger around and, with the han dle, broke the stubborn thing away, leaving a greatly enlarged, odd shaped hole that he could almost get his hand through. Anger turned to exultation.
He rewarded himself with another brief respite, wiping his streaming eyes and gulping in air. Somewhat restored, he poked his fingers through the hole and felt around for the bar holding the door closed. He could not reach far enough.
He toiled on, trying not to think or feel. Trying not to see how slowly the hole was expanding and how dull the blade was getting. Trying not to notice how light-headed he was beginning to feel. A long fit of coughing stopped him, forced him to put mouth and nose to the hole and breathe in the clean outside air. When the dizziness passed, he slipped his hand into the hole. It went all the way through and his wrist followed. Offering a quick prayer to the lord Amon, he felt for the bar, found it above the hole, forced it upward with the tips of his fingers. It tilted slightly to one side, but he could not raise it above the supports holding it in place.
Snarling an oath, he shoved his arm painfully far into the opening and raised the bar as high as he could. It fell away, striking the ground outside with a thud. Feeling immeasur able relief, he shouldered the door open and staggered out.
Falling to his knees, he took a deep breath, coughed, sucked in air, and coughed again. He offered a hasty but fervent prayer of thanks, struggled to his feet and ran on unsteady legs toward the harbor and help. The god’s warehouse and the grain within must be saved.
“I thank the lord Amon the fire had no chance to flare.”
Bak bit into a chunk of lamb left over from the previous eve ning. “If it had, the entire block would’ve burned and the god would’ve lost enough grain to feed a small city.”
He sat with Pashenuro and Psuro in the courtyard of his
Medjays’ temporary quarters, savoring the cold stew after an exhausting night and not enough sleep. The bump on his head was no smaller, but it hurt only when touched. The sound of snoring came from inside the building, where many of his men had collapsed on their sleeping pallets after a long night of revelry. A pigeon drank from a bowl of water left for Hori’s dog, and a mouse sneaked a bit of stale bread thrown out for birds.
Pashenuro used a chunk of bread to spoon up the stew.
“The gods truly smiled upon you, sir, placing nearby a cargo ship and its crew.”
“I’m grateful they were on board. They might well have been away, celebrating the festival as our men were.” Bak took a sip of beer, thinking to wash the huskiness from his voice, the soreness from his throat. The brew
