Bak tugged the weapon free. The end of the shaft was broken, jagged. The splinter he had found on the summit fit snugly within a long gouge that followed the grain of the wood. The identifying symbol, much to his relief and Imsiba’s, told them the weapon had come from the garrison arsenal rather than their own. Bak murmured a prayer of thanks to the lord Re and another to the lord Amon for good measure. The Medjay’s long silence testified to the fervor with which he gave thanks.
The two men descended a mass of tumbled rocks and came upon a narrow trail which followed the contour of the hillside. Bak thought it a wild animal track, but a closer look told him many human feet had smoothed its surface.
“While you were hunting in the desert, Pashenuro came upon a shrine near the upper end of this wadi,” Imsiba said. “This must be the path to reach it.”
“A shrine?” Bak’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s take a look.”
“Even if the man we hope to find went that way, he’d have gone long ago.”
“True, but he may have left an offering to appease the god for the destruction he wrought on the mine and those trapped within. We might learn who he is by what he left.”
The path rose steadily, taking them up the rough, narrow watercourse. Soon they saw, a hundred or so paces ahead, an uneven rock-hewn stairway rising to a deep semicircular bay atop a ledge. A movement caught Bak’s eye, a bit of white. Someone was up there. The man who had hidden the spear? Would he have remained for so long?
Bak and Imsiba forgot their thirst, their bruised and aching feet. They raced along the path through the deepening shadow of evening. Gripping the damaged spear, Bak took the stairs two at a time and, with the Medjay at his side, burst onto the ledge. The archer Harmose was there, kneeling at the rear of the bay, his head bowed. Imsiba pulled up short, his sandal skidding on the gritty floor. Harmose swung around, startled, and clutched the dagger at his waist. He saw who they were, his hand fell from the weapon, and he rose to his feet.
“I thought no one near,” he said with a sheepish smile. “I should’ve known I’d not be alone for long.”
Imsiba stared, looking surprised and rather confused.
“How long have you been here?” Bak demanded. “Why have you come?”
Harmose frowned, puzzled by the brusque questions. “I came to give thanks for the men whose lives were spared.”
Bak walked deeper into the bay. Boulders lay on the slopes to right and left, most of them etched with graffiti left by men who had toiled in the mine through the passing years. In the center, behind the archer, he saw a small shrine carved in the living rock. The gray-brown body of a dead hare lay in the deep niche. Bak lifted it’s head. It was limp, not long dead.
Imsiba relaxed, smiled at the archer. “We thought…”
“How long ago did you come?” Bak cut in, glaring a warning at the sergeant.
Harmose shrugged. “Not long. I knew nothing of the accident until after the tunnel had been opened. I saw the men come out and thought, while I was close by, to bend a knee in gratitude for their safety. Why do you ask?”
Bak scowled at the offering. Would the man who had caused the landslide have had the time to flush a hare? “Accident?” He shifted the spear so the archer could see the damaged end. “A man used this to unseat a boulder high above the mine-mouth. Now two men are dead.”
Harmose’s horrified eyes darted to Imsiba and back. “You think the slide deliberate? Surely you know not what you say!”
Could anyone pretend such shock, such revulsion? Bak glanced at Imsiba, who gave him an I-told-you-so look. The big Medjay obviously had no reservations about the man he had so recently made his friend.
“Imsiba and I have been high above this wadi since the slide was cleared. How did you get here unseen by either of us?”
Harmose could not help but realize the import of the question. He spoke in a voice tight with suppressed anger. “I came over that ridge.” He pointed west, toward a point from which he could have seen the mine, but Bak and Imsiba could not have seen him. Clamping his mouth shut, he pivoted on his heel and strode to a boulder near the shrine. From a space alongside, he withdrew his bow and quiver and the limp bodies of five hares. He held the creatures up by the thong binding their rear legs together. “I spent much of the day hunting in the wadi west of here.”
Bak knew from his own hunting excursion that to find six hares and slay them took much patience and many hours, especially in the heat of the day when small creatures hid from the sun and from birds of prey.
“I’ve taken no human lives,” Harmose snapped. “Nor will I ever except on the field of battle.”
“You must forgive the questions,” Imsiba said quietly. “We had to ask, as you must know.”
Bak left Imsiba to placate the archer and wandered around the arc of boulders. He looked at the words scratched into the rocks but his thoughts were on Harmose, a man who had volunteered to help his Medjays should trouble arise with Nebwa’s men. The archer behaved like an innocent man. The hares were newly slain. And Imsiba, usually a good judge of men, trusted him.
Bak stopped before a text so worn he had trouble reading it in the deepening twilight: “I came in year eleven of the reign of Khakaure Senusret to take the flesh of Re from this mine.” The simple message, scratched on the stone in the far distant past, had been signed by a man called Nakht. The written name jarred Bak’s memory, reminding him for the first time in many days of Commandant Nakht’s office and the scrolls that had been disturbed by a man who could read. Harmose had been Nakht’s translator, which made him seem an educated man. But basically he was an archer, and few archers knew how to read even the simplest words. Could Harmose?
He uttered a brief prayer to the ancient king Senusret, who had long ago joined the company of gods, then called to Imsiba and Harmose “This text must’ve been written when the mine was first worked.” His excitement was real, but it had nothing to do with the ancient message. “Come, let me show you!”
Imsiba headed his way, openly puzzled by the odd summons. Harmose trailed behind as if suspicious.
Bak touched the faint symbols contained in an oval. “I think this reads Khakaure Senusret.” He moved his finger to the right. “This could be year ten. And this…” He hesitated, glanced at the archer. “Can you make it out, Harmose?”
The archer flushed. “What kind of man are you? First you accuse me of wanton murder. Now you make light of me because I can’t read. Why do you treat me so?”
Bak was certain no man could pretend so great a hurt and frustration. His suspicions vanished once and for all and he started to laugh. The gods had torn that wretched scribe Roy from his grasp, but they had given much in return. He had survived the landslide, he had the false-bottomed bowls, and he had at long last eliminated one of his four suspects.
He clasped the startled archer’s shoulders. “Come back with us to our camp and share our evening meal. I’ve a tale to tell, and then you’ll understand.”
A delighted smile brightened Imsiba’s face.
The long line of men and donkeys plodded across a broad, flat, dun-colored plain which simmered in the heat. Fine sand, disturbed by hooves and feet, rose around the caravan to smudge the clear blue sky. The hot erratic breeze licked up funnels of sand and sent them scudding across the valley floor. Vague images of water and trees and animals, floating near enough to the earth to seem real, tantalized the eye with promises of life where none existed.
Bak and Kasaya walked parallel to the column, well off to the side where the air was clean. They moved faster than the weary, dust-stained men and animals, overtaking one after another on their way to the head of the caravan. They had been on the trail for four days, rising before dawn to travel through the cooler hours of early morning, resting in the midday heat, and traveling again late into the night. From the start, Bak had made a practice of walking the length of the caravan each time they set out, morning and evening. He assumed Roy had passed on at least one cone of stolen gold before his death and that it had been hidden in one of the donkeys’ loads for transport to Buhen. He hoped to find it.
“Kasaya!” a spearman yelled. “Come take this beast on your shoulders. We’d move twice as fast if you carried him.”
The soldier was trudging along beside a black donkey laden with heavy jars filled with water. He and the rest of Mery’s men had been spread out along the caravan by Nebwa to guard the animals and their cargo.
