“Why don’t you carry the water for him?” Kasaya retorted with an easy grin. “Give him a chance to complain of your slow pace.” The young Medjay had become a favorite among the soldiers who had toiled alongside him on the landslide.
The good-natured banter continued as they walked along the column, relayed by men who had helped at the mine and many others as well, men who had remained neutral before, waiting to see which way the wind blew. Bak listened to the jokes and laughter as if they were music, paying little attention to the words but enjoying every note of the tune. His eyes were on the donkeys, his thoughts on the loads he had seen placed on their backs before daylight.
The rangy gray beast with an ugly gall on its shoulder carried food in its baskets: onions, lentils, dried fish. Slung from the back of the next in line, a dainty creature more black than gray, were two equally balanced bundles of spears, a portion of the arsenal. Three spearmen walking alongside joshed Kasaya. A sergeant tried half- heartedly to silence them with a scowl, but failed to do so.
Bak eyed the next donkey, a sullen creature laden with the officers’ tents. He knew from experience it nipped any man or beast who came near its vicious mouth. Mery was walking beside the fat, bow-legged drover. Bak nudged Kasaya and they veered toward the column.
“Mery!” Bak called. “I thought I’d find you at the head of the caravan with Paser and Nebwa.”
The watch lieutenant grimaced. “When those two are together, I prefer the company of animals.”
His hair was tousled and dusty, his well-formed body coated with sweat-streaked dirt. Bak took a perverse delight in Mery’s disheveled appearance. He knew he looked no better, but if Azzia were to see them like this, she would not be comparing a fine-feathered oriole with an ordinary sparrow.
If she was alive and well.
He quashed the thought, refusing to allow his fear for her to distract him from his mission. “They’re still bickering over the disposition of men?”
“That and everything else. Nebwa yearns to take his company into the desert in search of an enemy, and I pray each day he will. Paser gives an order, he countermands it. If we were raided we’d face disaster.”
Kasaya, who had struck up a conversation with the drover, dropped back to walk alongside the plodding donkey. Crooning to it as if to a baby, he ran his hands over its shoulder and flank. By the time he left the animal, he would know every solid object it carried. The method was imperfect. He could not probe deep within the larger bundles and baskets without being noticed. It did, however, narrow the number of possible hiding places.
“And you?” Bak asked. “How do you fare?”
Mery shrugged. “I resent seeing my sentries turned into caretakers of animals, but it does no good to complain.”
“You must be proud of those who helped clear the mine. Did you see the mountain fall and the way they toiled to free the men inside?”
“I’d walked far down the wadi, so I knew not what had happened until later.” Mery stared at an undulating row of hills on the distant horizon. His voice grew thick with emotion. “I mourned mistress Azzia and felt the need to be alone. I loved her, you see, and I’d hoped one day to make her my wife.”
Bak’s usual compassion failed him. He, too, feared the worst, but to take for granted that Azzia’s fate was already sealed was unthinkable. Had Mery simply given up hope as his appearance suggested? Or was his conscience eating away at his heart because he had allowed the woman he loved to shoulder the blame for one of five deaths he had brought about?
“You must forgive me for speaking my thoughts,” Bak said in a tone of friendly concern, “but mistress Azzia has traveled with her husband through many lands. She knows much of the world and can even read and write. Do you think she’d be content as the wife of an ordinary officer, a man whose skills are limited to the arts of war?”
“Except for this vile place, I’ve not been beyond the borders of Kemet,” Mery admitted, “but I am a reasonably learned man. I used to write poetry for her.” He glanced at Bak, flushed. “I dared not show it to her when she was wed to another, but I’d hoped, with Nakht no longer living…” His words tailed off, he sighed. “Now she’s rejoined him in the netherworld-or soon will-and all my dreams have gone with her.”
Bak wanted to silence the young officer with a blow. Instead, he muttered an excuse and hurried on up the column, leaving Kasaya behind. He did not know which he thought more offensive: pessimism or misery born of selfishness. After he cooled down, after he convinced himself that Azzia might well be safe, he thought about what he had learned. Mery could read; therefore, he might be the man who had been stealing the gold. He seemed too weak, too easily broken by adversity, but his appearance could be feigned. A man so selfish would most certainly sacrifice his love to save himself.
“I find Buhen to be an interesting place,” Bak said. “It’s a city but not a city. A place where villagers from far and wide come for all the good things in life, yet the objects they consider desirable would be less than ordinary to those who dwell within the land of Kemet.”
Nebwa dismissed the observation with a shrug. “Other than the fact that we’re the largest garrison in Wawat, and Buhen’s commandant administers all the fortresses along the Belly of Stones, it’s no different than any other in this land.”
“Commandant Nakht told me he thought to tame its frontier demeanor, to make it a city of women and children in addition to soldiers.”
“I knew of his dream and wished him well.”
Bak eyed the long stretch of desert ahead of them. Low, gently rounded ridges of sand punctuated by solitary blackish rock formations and, on the horizon, long table-like mounds that probably rose no more than ten paces above the surrounding landscape, offered a minimum of relief from the monotony. Some men might think the prospect dreary, but Bak rather liked its sparse beauty.
“If you were to become commandant, Nebwa, would you follow that dream?”
“Me? Commandant?” Nebwa’s laugh boomed out. “I was born in this land and grew to manhood here. I’ve served in the army on the southern frontier from the age of fourteen. I’ve had neither the opportunity nor the desire to make friends in high places. Nor do I have the talent, if the truth be told.”
Bak smothered a smile. No truer statement had he ever heard than the last one. “Come now, Nebwa. Don’t you believe that you rather than Tetynefer should stand at the head of this garrison?”
Nebwa’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing, Bak? Are you trying to make a case against me as the slayer of Commandant Nakht?”
“I’m trying to learn who slew him, yes, but I can do that as easily by eliminating a man from suspicion as by pointing a finger at him.”
Nebwa stopped, planted his hands on his hips, and glowered at his interrogator. “Make no mistake about it: never did I think to step into his sandals. He was one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”
“Did he ever say he wished you to inherit his position?”
“No.” Nebwa glanced back toward the unit of spearmen walking at the head of the caravan, saw how close they were, and stepped out of their path. “He said I might in time make a good garrison commander, but he believed the commandant of an administrative center like Buhen should be an educated man.”
Bak gave him a sharp look. “Educated? What exactly did he mean by that?”
“I never had the time or the inclination to learn to read and write. How could I? I’ve lived my life as a soldier, with no leisure for scholarly pursuits.”
Bak chose not to enlighten the infantry officer, but if he was telling the truth-and who would lie about an inability to read? — he had just eliminated another man from his list of suspects.
“This desert is home to many men,” Paser said, “yet we’ve trekked more than half the distance to Buhen and we’ve met no one. Where are they? Why have they not come to trade with us as they always do when we travel this path?”
“Men don’t change their ways for no good reason.” Harmose’s face was dark with foreboding.
Bak sipped from the communal goatskin waterbag and let the warm, stale water roll around in his mouth. It barely moistened his tongue and failed altogether to quench his thirst. “My men believe the nomad shepherds have taken their flocks deep into the wadis behind us to a place where they’ll be safe from theft and destruction.”
Paser accepted the waterbag with a worried frown. “They either fear a tribe that preys on less warlike
