no need to remind the sergeant that the nomads were Medjays, just as he was.
“They know no better way of life. If they did, my friend, they, too, would find fault with their lot.”
Bak eyed the surrounding terrain, and his smile faltered. Like the sergeant, he thought the land foul, a place forsaken by the gods. The wadi was narrow, the dun-colored peaks to either side harsh, ragged, and barren of life. The heat was intense, the sun blinding. Sweat trickled down his face, breast, back, and thighs. Thirst parched his mouth. He longed to taste the waters of the river and to feel its soothing current the length of his body.
He shook off the dream and spoke with reluctance. “Nebwa drew me aside this morning. He complained of the many times you stand apart with Harmose and speak of things no other men can hear.”
Imsiba’s mouth tightened. “Who I make my friend is no business of his.”
“He thinks the two of you plot against the caravan. He fears for its safety and for the safety of the gold we’ll carry when we return to Buhen.”
“Surely you don’t believe him!”
“You know I don’t!” Bak wiped the sweat from his face and spoke in a more reasonable voice. “No man is more loyal to the land of Kemet than you, Imsiba. But I must admit I feel no better about your friendship than Nebwa does.”
“Because you suspect Harmose of murder and theft?” Imsiba’s laugh was hard, cynical. “You err! He’s as eager to find the man who slew Commandant Nakht as you are, and as worried for mistress Azzia.”
Bak tried to swallow the lump rising in his throat, a lump which formed each time he thought of Azzia. Where is she? he wondered. Safe in Buhen? Or has she gone to Ma’am and is she standing even now before the viceroy? Could she already be dead, unjustly punished?
Shoving away so fearsome a thought, Bak forced an apologetic smile. “I worry at seeing you befriend a man who might be less than he seems, that’s all.”
The Medjay did not return the smile. “I accept your belief in the woman’s innocence. Can you not accept mine that Harmose is without guilt?”
“I’d like to, yes, but I dare not.”
Stiff with wounded pride, Imsiba shouldered his quiver and picked up his bow. “That boulder overlooks the mine.” He pointed to a wind-gouged lump of stone protruding from the hillside farther along their path. “I’ll watch you from there. Should any man approach you with a dagger in his hand or a spear or any other weapon, my arrows will fly true.”
Bak muttered an oath at his friend’s obstinacy. He glanced along the slope in the direction from which they had come, squinting to lessen the glare. A craggy outcrop hid their campsite, but two of his men, both fully armed, were traversing the hillside at a higher level, ensuring his safety. If the man he hoped to catch meant to slay him, he had made no attempt during the long trek from Buhen. Imsiba and the other Medjays were as concerned for his welfare as he was for theirs, and as careful to guard his back. This his adversary doubtless knew.
“The men who follow us can use the bow as well as you.” Bak clasped his friend’s shoulder, determined to mend the rift between them. “You must come with me to the mine. We’ll be here only a few days, and I’ll need your eyes and ears If I’m to learn how gold is stolen.”
The invitation was a declaration of trust and the big Medjay accepted it as such. His gloomy expression dissolved, and a smile formed on his lips, a twinkle in his eye. “You err, my friend. My skill with the bow is unmatched. But if you wish to place your life in the hands of lesser men, so be it.”
Bak and Imsiba stood among a cluster of jagged, broken boulders lying alongside a stream of loose sand and rocks, the rubble left by water which had rushed down the hillside many months, maybe years in the past. They stared across the wadi, taking their first good look at the mine, a gaping hole in the opposite slope fifteen or so paces above the dry watercourse. The peak towered above the hole, its face harsh and precipitous, its summit capped by boulders.
The tunnel opened onto a shelf formed from the refuse of the mining process. A chain of nearly naked men, all burned by the sun, plodded along the shelf, carrying rush baskets filled with rocks. They were hauling their heavy burden from the mine to a dozen or so lean-tos built on a mound of refuse that filled the base of a short, steep subsidiary wadi. A foreman stood on the slope above them, his stubby leather whip held in the crook of his arm. Shadowy figures labored inside the shelters, rickety affairs made of piled stones and twisted branches covered with cloth, rushes, brush, whatever came to hand to stave off the sun. At least a dozen guards, hard-looking men armed with spears, kept a wary eye on the activity.
Paser and Nebwa stood on the wadi floor below the mine, talking to a hulking man with a neck so thick it seemed a part of his head. His left shoulder sagged, the arm hung useless and wasted. Bak saw that he carried a baton of office.
“The man with Paser and Nebwa must be Wadjet-Renput, overseer of this mine.”
“So I assume,” Imsiba said. “A good man, Harmose told me. He once oversaw a gang of stonemasons building our sovereign’s new memorial temple across the river from the capital.”
Bak chose to ignore the reference to the archer. He wanted no further argument. “What of his arm?”
“A column toppled, with him beneath.” Imsiba’s voice grew sad, pitying. “It took him many months to heal and when he did he was sent here.”
So terrible a reward after so dreadful a misfortune might make a man bitter, Bak thought, bitter enough to seek revenge. “How long ago did he come?”
“Five months, no more.”
The gold had been taken over the course of a year, starting long before Wadjet-Renput’s time. True, he could have been made a party to the thefts upon his arrival, but it was equally possible that he, a man with no experience of mining, could be blinded by a clever deception.
“Our sovereign thought him bad luck,” Imsiba added.
Bak tore his thoughts from the gold. He wanted no talk of bad luck. “More likely,” he scoffed, “she wanted no man there to remind the others of the danger they faced when raising those huge blocks of stone.”
His words failed to erase the uneasy look from Imsiba’s face. “Bad luck and danger make an uneasy partnership, my friend. This Mountain of Re strikes a fear in my heart like few other places I’ve been.”
Like most individuals isolated from their equals, Wadjet-Renput proved to be a garrulous man. He greeted Imsiba with as much enthusiasm as he did Bak and, starved for news of the capital, questioned them both at length. Paser made a pretense of being aloof, but Bak noticed he paid particular attention to the sometimes spectacular rise in positions of men close to his cousin Senenmut. Nebwa shuffled from foot to foot, bored with talk of a world he had never known, and scowled his disapproval at the Medjay’s inclusion in the group.
Aware of the time slipping away, Bak took advantage of a break in the conversation. “How many men toil here?” he asked, eyeing the mine-mouth, the line of filthy, sweating men laden with baskets, and the lean-tos.
Wadjet-Renput’s gaze traveled from one end of the shelf to the other, and his chest swelled with pride. “Eighty prisoners and half as many guards. The miners work in gangs of ten, which I rotate from one task to another each week. Half the guards stay here, the rest keep watch from the heights around us.”
Bak could not understand how any man could hold his head high with so cruel an assignment, but he thanked the lord Amon it was so, for it would make his own task easier. “Neither Imsiba nor I have seen gold taken from stone. Will you show us?”
The overseer’s face lit up like a lamp. “Come!” He plunged up a path worn smooth by many feet, as quick and agile as a gazelle in spite of his useless arm, and stopped on the shelf not far from the lean-tos.
Bak exchanged a quick glance with Imsiba and they hastened after him. Nebwa looked down the wadi as if his camp beckoned, but decided to follow. Paser frowned, evidently preferring gossip to a tour of a mine he had visited often, and plodded up the slope behind them.
Wadjet-Renput glanced at the sky, where the sun hugged the weathered peaks to the west. “It’s too late to enter the mine; no man stays inside after dusk.” Shaking off an obvious disappointment, he smiled. “That you can see tomorrow, the rest I’ll show you now.”
A bearer trudged past, reeking of sweat. He stopped at a knee-high pile of broken rock near the lean-tos, swung the heavy basket from his shoulder, and dumped his load. A fine pale dust rose in the air, coating his already grimy body. As he turned back to retrace his path, he looked neither right nor left, merely plodded past the onlookers like an ox across a field. Bak gave silent thanks to the lord Amon that he was not that man.
