clever by far to allow himself and the others to be caught.”
A donkey brayed as if mocking his words.
Cursing the beast, he pulled his wrap closer around himself and stepped out of the black shadow of the escarpment into the lesser darkness filling the mouth of the dry watercourse. The night was cold, the air so clear the stars seemed close enough to touch. The indistinct figures of men and animals bobbed and shifted in the eerie light before daybreak. The drovers swore at the fractious donkeys, their voices rising above the thunk of hooves on sand, the blowing and squealing and braying. Paser walked among them, overseeing the loading for the morning march. Harmose had drawn his archers aside to issue last-minute orders.
“What if we’ve guessed wrong?” Mery asked. “What if the raiders plan to attack at the first bend in the wadi?”
“What if the lord Khepre fails to rise above the horizon?” Bak snapped. “What if the world is shrouded in darkness forever more?”
Mery recoiled at the sarcasm. “It’s the waiting,” he mumbled. “The thought of battle, the anticipation, makes me babble.”
A sharp whistle pierced the night. Silence enveloped the camp, then the sounds of men and animals gradually resumed. The voices had changed pitch, quickened with tension.
“They’ve come!” Bak let the wrap fall from his shoulders and sprinted up the wadi in the direction from which the whistle had sounded.
Mery raced after him. Paser and Harmose broke away from their duties to join them. As they neared the apex of the wadi mouth, Imsiba emerged from the shadows. The two Medjays he had taken with him straggled behind, each holding a rope looped around the neck of a nearly naked tribesman with his hands bound behind his back. One prisoner grimaced with every wheezing breath; ribbons of torn flesh crisscrossed his back. The other walked with a limp, and dried blood coated the side of his face. They stood as erect as their injuries would allow, their pride damaged but apparently not crushed. They were not the pair who had prompted Nebwa and his infantry to go into the desert, but they were as tall and rangy, as caked with dust.
Bak clasped Imsiba’s shoulders. “We expected you long ago. What kept you?”
Imsiba smiled. “We let the men we followed lead us to their camp, as you suggested. It was farther than we thought, but well worth the patience it took to get there.”
“And you found…?”
“Many men, not an honest shepherd among them. They were resting amid a scattering of boulders about three-fourths of the way along this wadi but to the north. Far enough from our path so any scouts we might send ahead would fail to find them.” In a more ominous tone, he added, “Thirsty men they were. They drank all the water Nebwa sent, saving none for later.”
“Which leaves no doubt of their intent,” Harmose said grimly. “They expect to drink from the jars we carry.”
“Did you get close enough to hear what they plan?” Paser asked. “Could you understand their words?”
“We understood enough.” Imsiba nodded toward the prisoners. “With a small amount of persuasion, those two told us the rest.”
“Why did you bring them here?” Mery’s voice was taut, anxious. “Their companions will miss them, will come looking for them.”
“They were sent to watch us”-Imsiba gave Bak a quick smile-“so I thought to give them a firsthand look.”
“But what if…?”
Bak raised a hand for silence. “We’ve not much time, Imsiba.”
The big Medjay glanced around, spotted a patch of drifted sand a half-dozen paces away. He knelt beside it and the others hunkered around him. With a few deft strokes of his finger, he drew a rough map of the wadi, identifying verbally the landmarks they had passed on the journey from Buhen.
“Here,” he said, driving his finger into the sand, “is the place where the wadi narrows to pass through a granite inclusion. We should reach it by late afternoon.” He broadened the line, forming an oval. “Beyond, the wadi opens into a bowl longer than its width. This wider place is where the boulders have rolled down from above, with no clear path for the donkeys and walls difficult if not impossible to climb. Farther on, the wadi narrows again and turns to the right.” He glanced at Bak. “There they mean to block our path with sand and rocks.”
“And while we take the time to clear it,” Bak said in a grim voice, “they’ll close the path behind us.”
“Trapping every man among us, every donkey, in their snare,” Paser added, though the conclusion was obvious.
Bak cursed beneath his breath. He had spent much of the night working out various schemes designed to capture a band of unruly tribesmen, men of action rather than thought. He had, it seemed, underestimated them.
He glanced at Imsiba. “Many men, you said. How many?”
“They outnumber us, I think, but not by much. In the dark, with most of them lying among the boulders and others scattered as sentries, it was impossible to count their numbers.” Imsiba eyed the prisoners. “Those two claim they’ve two men to our one. I think they lie.”
“A number we can’t ignore,” Bak said, thinking aloud, “a formidable force, but with our superior weapons and discipline…”
“Must we face them?” Mery asked.
“If we evade them now, they’ll attack us somewhere else. With so large and ungainly a caravan…” Paser shook his head, cursed. “I fear many of us will be slain or injured and we’ll lose many animals.”
“I say we wait here for Nebwa,” Mery said. “He’ll not be gone for long. He took only enough water for two days.”
Paser snorted. “Each day we wait, our supplies dwindle. Would you have us cower here, and march on to Buhen with no food or water?”
“I’d rather die in an honest battle,” Harmose said.
While they argued, Bak stared at Imsiba’s map, letting their words drift around him. He visualized the wadi from end to end as he remembered it from their outbound journey. A clever man, he thought, should be able to turn the situation to the caravan’s advantage. Yet try as he might he could think of no way to do so. He had no training in this type of warfare, no concept of fighting with so few spearmen and archers and no chariotry, no knowledge of battling the enemy in a confined space with limited means of escape. Should he try to draw the tribesmen into the open, where he could plan a battle in the manner he knew? No. As Paser had said, too many lives would be lost and there’d be no way to protect the donkeys.
He thought of the raiders’ chieftain, a man he felt sure was very clever indeed. What would he do if he walked in their sandals? Attack from a secret place. What secret place? Bak turned his thoughts upside down, shoved aside his knowledge of conventional warfare. The voices ebbed and flowed around him, with only Imsiba sitting silent and expectant.
“We must walk into their trap.” Bak’s eyes, glinting with conviction, swept around the ring of men. “They’ll attack, intent on their prize, and give us the chance to take them, each and every one.” “Have you gone mad?” Paser exclaimed. “The instant they close the wadi behind us, we’ll be as helpless as ants in a bowl of honey.”
“I know of what I speak. Have you forgotten? I trained as a soldier, not a policeman.”
Paser arched an eyebrow. “You learned the arts of war with the regiment of Amon, where five thousand men fought mock battles in the open desert. In these wadis, warfare is reduced to little more than brawls. More deadly, to be sure, and with more to lose, but all the training in the world can’t take the place of experience.”
“Hear me out,” Bak insisted. “If you think I err, we’ll work out another way.”
“There’s no other way,” Mery said. “We must stay here and wait for Nebwa.”
“We can’t stay,” Paser snapped. “We’ve just enough supplies to get us back to Buhen with no days wasted. We’d do better to climb out of this wadi and follow its course well to the south across the plateau. We’d have a battle, I’ve no doubt, but at least we’d be out in the open and they’d not be able to approach by stealth.”
“We’d lose half the donkeys and supplies in the dunes and wadis we must cross.” Harmose shook his head. “I say we listen to Bak. We’ve nothing to lose, maybe much to gain.”
“To deliberately walk into a trap?” Paser barked out a cynical laugh. “It makes no sense.”
“Both your plan and Mery’s would be costly, too costly,” Bak said. “My plan, should we carry it through to
