“I once was a chariotry officer, a lieutenant in the regi ment of Amon.”
Khereuf was openly impressed, and any reticence he might have had about speaking to a police officer vanished.
“What do you wish to know, sir? I’ll help you all I can. I liked Maruwa. I want to see his slayer punished.”
“Other than horses, what did the two of you talk about?”
The sergeant shrugged. “Not much of anything, I guess.”
Bak smothered an oath. He had met men like Khereuf in the garrison stables, men who could converse better with horses than with their fellows. But since Maruwa had come from a far-off land, perhaps he had given birth to a wider in terest. “Did he speak of the land of Hatti?”
“Oh. Well, yes. He told me of the mountains, the vast plains, and hills covered with trees.” Khereuf’s step faltered, he gave Bak an amazed look. “Can you imagine, sir? Trees everywhere you look?” Shaking his head in wonder, he walked on.
“What else did he speak of?”
Khereuf said nothing, gathering his thoughts, then the words overflowed. “He told me of the village where he was born and the city where he made his home. He told me of his travels and the many wondrous things he’d seen. Rivers that flow in the wrong direction, from north to south, and moun tains reaching high into the clouds. Frequent rainstorms where the gods throw fire and shake the earth with noise, where in the cold months, rain turns solid and white and covers the land.”
Bak did not smile at the sergeant’s awe, for he, too, had trouble imagining such wonders. From the first time he had heard of them, he had hoped one day he would see them for himself. “Did he dwell in the capital? In Hattusa?”
Spotting a man ahead approaching with a big bay geld ing, Khereuf led the stallion off the path, onto the damp earth between the trees. “No, sir. He kept his wife and fam ily in a place called Nesa. Many days’ walk from the capital, he told me.”
“Did he go often to Hattusa?”
“Not unless he had to. He disliked the endless quest for power he found there, preferring instead a simpler life.”
Bak fervently wished the sergeant was more garrulous.
“Why did he go to the capital? To get passes and other doc uments allowing him to travel and trade?” He paused, giv ing Khereuf time to nod. “I suppose he met men of wealth there, men who felt the need to be close to the seat of power.”
“Yes, sir. Those who had horses fine enough to bring to
Kemet, at any rate.”
The gelding neared them and whinnied a greeting to the stallion, which danced nervously in response. The man nod ded to Khereuf, eyed Bak with open curiosity, and led his charge on by.
“You said he disliked the endless quest for power in Hat tusa,” Bak said, returning to the path. “Does that mean he stayed well clear of Hittite politics?”
The sergeant thought over the question and nodded. “He once told me he valued his life and the lives of his family far too much to play with fire, and he’d toiled too long and hard to allow all he’d earned through the years to fall into the cof fers of the king.”
Bak continued to press, approaching the same subject from different directions, but Khereuf’s answers never var ied. The sergeant was convinced the merchant had had no political dealings, and Bak himself began to believe that the suggestion had been a figment of Captain Antef’s imagina tion.
He thought it time he ventured further afield. “Comman der Minnakht mentioned that Maruwa had a woman here in
Waset. Did he ever speak of her?”
“Irenena,” the sergeant said. “He went to her for many years. She was to him like a wife.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Oh, no, sir!” The sergeant looked shocked. “He would never have asked me to his home.”
Bak could well imagine how a woman might feel about the prospect of listening to endless talk of horses. “Did you never see him away from these stables?”
“We sometimes went together to houses of pleasure, yes.”
“What did you speak of there? Other than horses, I mean.”
Bak thought the sergeant a good, honest man, but his tacitur nity was driving him mad.
Khereuf seemed puzzled as to why Bak wished to know.
“We often played knucklebones or throwsticks and wagered on the games. We talked of hunting the wild beasts, or of wrestling or some other sport. Or of the women we saw around us, those who toiled in the houses of pleasure, whose bodies we took and then left behind.”
Soldier talk. The talk of men away from their families. No different than the thousands of conversations Bak had heard in houses of pleasure along the Belly of Stones. “Did he ever say where Irenena lives?”
Khereuf shrugged. “Somewhere near the foreign quarter,
I think. He spoke with pride of the house he had provided her. Three rooms, he said, and from the roof she can look down upon a well and a small grove of date palms.”
With that, Bak had to be satisfied. How many wells could there be in or near the foreign quarter?
“Lieutenant Bak!” Commander Minnakht stepped out of the walled yard that lay between the well and the building which held offices and storage magazines. “I trust Sergeant
Khereuf was helpful?”
“Yes, sir. He feels even more strongly than you that
Maruwa had no interest in politics. I’m beginning to believe the reason for his death lies elsewhere.”
“After we parted, I thought of something Maruwa once told me. The tale may have nothing to do with his death, but
I’d be remiss in not repeating it.”
“Sir!” A sergeant came through a solid wooden gate in a wall beyond the office building. “We’re getting ready to smoke out the rats. Do you want to see?”
Minnakht glanced at Bak and groaned. “I guess I’d better.
Come, Lieutenant. We can talk while the men get on with the task.”
Bak could understand Minnakht’s reluctance. As a chari otry officer, he also had been obliged to watch while the granaries were cleansed of vermin. A necessary task some men enjoyed, but he for one did not. They followed the ser geant into a walled area containing ten conical granaries.
Three men stood off to the side, each holding two large, thick-chested dogs by their collars. Another man carrying an unlighted torch stood at the top of a stairway on a long, nar row mudbrick platform that ran along the back of the grana ries, connecting them and providing a platform from which to fill the structures.
“All right,” the sergeant yelled, “let’s get started.”
“A miserable chore,” Minnakht said, “but we can’t allow the rats to multiply. In spite of all the precautions we take, they get into everything, leaving their filth behind and con suming far more than their share of grain.”
Bak watched the man at the top of the steps set the torch afire. Rather than bursting into flame, a cloud of thick, dark smoke rose in the air. “You have something to tell me, sir?”
The commander drew Bak off to the side, out of the way.
“Maruwa told me a tale some time ago. Three years, maybe more. A friend who toiled in the royal house at Hattusa, the stablemaster, wished him to relate the story to me so I could pass it on. According to him, someone in the household of the envoy from Kemet was interfering in the politics of
Hatti, fomenting trouble.”
Bak whistled. “A most dangerous endeavor if true.”
“So perilous I wasn’t sure I believed it. Nonetheless, I thought the possibility so grave that I passed the message on to Commander Maiherperi, who stands at the head of our royal guards.”
The man on the platform shoved the torch through an opening at the top of the granary, held it there, and spread a heavy cloth over the hole so no smoke could escape. The sergeant opened a small, square door at the bottom of the structure. Not much grain spilled out, which meant the gran ary was close to empty.
