Bak took several cautious steps deeper into the passage. It was as wide as his shoulders with no room to spare, its walls rough and uneven-bare mudbrick, he realized. The hard packed earthen floor was slick, and he smelled manure.
Shuddering at the very thought of what he might be walking through-and into-he pressed forward.
The men outside had begun to argue about who would en ter the passage first. The gravel-voiced leader barked out a name. A man cursed and shifted his feet, sending a pebble skittering across the lane. Bak glanced back, saw someone standing in the mouth of the passage, blocking what little light there was.
“I can’t see a thing.”
“Then neither can he!” the man in charge snapped. “Go on.”
“But, sir!”
“Get a torch, one of you,” the leader commanded.
“Where?” another man whined. “The houses are all dark.”
“Go find a sentry.”
“But…”
“If you come up behind him, he’ll never know who or what hit him.” The gravel voice paused, growled, “Now hurry up. We can’t let that accursed lieutenant get away.” He spat out the words, as venomous as a horned viper.
Bak’s blood ran cold. If they had set their trap, meaning to snare a man at random, the first to come along, they would not have known his rank. They had planned to catch him and, if their weapons were any indication of intent, they meant to slay him.
He walked on, trying not to rush, placing his feet with care. The last thing he wanted was to slip and fall. He moved through the darkness, his hands against the walls, thinking to find a gap, a door. He could not be sure, but he thought the lane was curving gradually to his right, which might explain his failure to see light ahead. He prayed such was the case, that he would soon find a way out.
Something skittered across the floor. It ran over his foot, its tiny claws sending chills down his spine, and raced away toward the mouth of the passage. A rat, he thought. A yell sounded behind him, the thud of a man falling. Angry curses from gravel voice, nervous laughter from the others. As dire as his situation was, Bak could not help but smile.
His foot bumped into something hairy. If the faint smell of decaying flesh was any indication, an animal had some time ago crawled into the passage to die. Carefully he stepped over it. His foot came down on something wet and soft that squished between his toes. He closed his thoughts to the possibilities.
“He did it!” Bak heard behind him, the shout muted by the rough walls between him and the lane. “Look! He got the torch.”
Bak had no idea how far he had come, probably not a great distance. One thing he knew for a fact: the light would give his pursuers a distinct advantage.
Would this vile passage never end?
He moved forward, two paces, four, eight. Far ahead, the walls had taken on a kind of texture, as if he could distin guish one mudbrick from another. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them. Was the world around him growing lighter? Or was his heart so filled with hopeful thinking that he imagined an end to this nightmare journey? Flinging caution aside, he hurried on into a darkness that seemed not quite so black.
Without warning he bumped into a low barrier, and at the same time the wall to his right came to an end. The barrier was a gate, he discovered, made of the thin branches of a tree. He scrambled over, and the space around him opened up. In the lesser darkness, he saw sheaves of hay stacked along a wall and a water trough built against a second wall.
A pile of straw lay nearby. He was in an animal shelter. Four paces farther and he stood in a courtyard lit by the moon and a sky sprinkled with stars. Seven or eight donkeys lay on a bed of straw strewn around an acacia. One made a blowing sound, the rest were content to stare.
Relieved beyond measure, Bak thanked the lord Amon for freeing him from the passage. Before he could form another prayer, this one asking for a way out, he spotted, beyond the tree, a door closed by a sturdy mat.
Light flashed into the shelter, he heard voices approaching along the passage. His pursuers were closing on him. He raced around the tree, struck the mat with his shoulder, tear ing it down, and stepped into a room as black as the passage had been. He walked forward, sliding his feet along the earthen floor, hoping not to blunder into anything.
A man with a torch rushed through the door behind him.
In the flickering light, Bak spotted an open doorway three paces ahead and a stairway only a pace away. Lunging to ward the stairs, he raced upward and burst out onto the moonlit roof. He swerved aside, narrowly avoiding stum bling over a family sleeping there, taking advantage of the cool night air. The man, jerked rudely from his slumber, sat up and yelled. A baby began to howl. All across the roofs of the interconnected houses, men and women and children sat up and looked around, trying to understand what had awak ened them.
Bak sped across the open expanse, racing around flimsy pavilions and people aroused from sleep, leaping over bra ziers, baked clay pots and dishes, tools, animals and do mestic fowl. His pursuers formed a ragged line behind him, the nearest no more than three paces back. The man carrying the torch was second in line, careless of the light, letting the sparks fly where they would. Dogs barked, men cursed, women screamed threats or demanded their men act, small children whimpered while their older brothers shouted out in excitement.
Bak angled toward the low parapet that marked the edge of the building block and looked into the lane below. The roof was so far above the ground that he would more likely than not break a leg if he jumped. The gap between the buildings was too wide.
“Got him!” a man shouted and raised his staff to swing.
His expression was hard and mean, revealing his deadly in tent.
Bak danced sideways, slammed his baton across the man’s shoulder. As his would-be assailant cried out in agony and fell to his knees, Bak dodged another man’s grasp.
Breathing hard, he swung his baton at a third man, forcing him back against a flimsy pavilion. The structure collapsed, the dry brush atop the shelter tumbled around the nearest pair. One support, a rough pole, broke free and rolled across the rooftop.
Praying it was a good, solid piece of wood, Bak scooped it up, raced toward the parapet, and vaulted into space. He heard the wood crack beneath his weight, but momentum carried him safely over the gap between the buildings.
Later, sitting in the courtyard of his Medjays’ quarters, watching the two men on duty playing knucklebones, Bak let his thoughts return to his near entrapment and narrow es cape. He was following two paths, that of Pentu and the trai tor in his household and that of the possible thefts in the sacred precinct. Which was the one causing the cobra to rear its ugly head? Or were the two paths converging?
Bak went to Pentu’s house the following morning with a renewed determination to lay hands on the man he sought.
He doubted his questions of the previous day had led to the attempt on his life, but one way or another he meant to find out.
The governor was most unhappy when he learned Bak had come to speak with his wife and her sister. He made it clear that the sooner the police officer finished with his household, the happier he would be. After agreeing to tell the women they must cooperate, he summoned a servant to usher his unwanted guest outside the house to a small walled garden, rare in a crowded neighborhood such as this. There Bak had to wait for more than an hour, sometimes sitting, sometimes pacing along neat paths that meandered through an oasis of pruned, shaped, and trained plants and shrubs, none allowed to flourish in their natural form. He thought of leaving more than once, but he, too, wanted the interviews over and done with.
“I know nothing of that Hittite’s death,” Taharet said, sit ting down on a shaded bench beside a small fish pool. “I can’t imagine what gave you the idea that I could help.”
“You were in Hattusa with your husband.” Bak, irritated by the long wait, spoke like a teacher enumerating important points to a callow youth. “Someone who dwelt with you in the envoy’s residence became involved in the politics of the land of Hatti. As a result, Pentu and all his household were recalled to Kemet. Maruwa’s death may well be related to that recall.”
“We returned three years ago. If a connection exists, why was he not slain before now?”
