“Stranger? Enemy?”
The youth looked at the two sketches, his finger wavering uncertainly between them.
Bak went to the donkey to retrieve their weapons.
The following day, long before the sun peered into the gorge in which they had spent the night, Bak bade a reluctant goodbye to the young nomad. They had spotted the watching man several times during the intervening twenty-four hours, and he feared for the boy on his own. His efforts to convince him to remain with him had been futile, partly because of their mutual lack of words but mostly because Imset was de termined to move on. Nefertem had told him to go to his mother, who needed him, and he refused to do otherwise.
The youth had packed a small bag of food, filled a wa terbag, and wrapped his arms around the donkey’s neck, bid ding it a fond farewell. It could not travel the terrain he intended to pass through to evade the watching man. He had collected his weapons, and, with a stouthearted smile, had pointed in a northerly direction toward the red granite peak, which could not be seen from deep within the gorge where they stood. “Home,” he had said.
They had clasped each other’s shoulders, a silent goodbye, and the youth had walked up the gorge between overhanging cliffs to enter a wider area, where the brightening sky re vealed several open pools of water. Beyond the uppermost pool, he had climbed the irregular steps of a dry waterfall.
Whether the single word meant simply that he was going home, or whether it meant he knew this barren and desolate land better than any stranger, Bak had no idea. He prayed that the latter was the case. Or, better yet, that the watching man would choose to remain behind.
As he watched Imset vanish around a rock formation, loneliness descended upon him and he clutched the leather pouch hanging from his belt. Inside he felt the pendant, his sole way of contacting Nefertem. He had had to trust the no mad that the boy would guide him to a safe place where he would find food and water and where he could await his
Medjays and the caravan. Now that he had reached that place, he had to believe they would come. If not, surely a no mad family would bring their flocks to drink.
Shoving aside the nagging thought that Nefertem had sent him here to be offered up as a sacrifice for some purpose of his own, he stowed the remaining food and waterbag in a niche in the rocks, hobbled the donkey, and collected his weapons.
The nomad had told him large numbers of sandgrouse came early each morning to drink, and he wanted to see for himself this source of food. Leaving his small camp, he walked out of the gorge to the pools. What Nefertem had called a well looked to him like natural springs. Green grass, reeds, and thorny shrubs grew in and around the lower pools, while the water in the uppermost was held in a bare pit of sand.
He climbed a cut in the hillside that looked out upon the water, found a rocky nook where no one could creep up be hind him, and settled down to wait. Not long after sunrise, the birds began to arrive. Finches came first, a whirling mul titude of stubby, dark gray birds twittering a high-pitched nasal song. They darted back and forth as if to make sure the pools were safe and finally settled around the upper pool.
Other birds came in smaller numbers, and several lizards darted through the grass around the lower pools in search of insects.
Next came the grouse, brownish birds twice the size of the finches. They wheeled swiftly around in groups of twenty or more, circling the pools as their predecessors had, voicing something that sounded to Bak like a man fluttering his tongue while expelling a loud breath. Always keeping to their own flock, they landed on the hillside to preen them selves, their color so nearly like the earth and rocks that they were difficult to see. After a short time, they flew swiftly to the wadi floor to walk to the pool, where they lined up around the edge to drink. Satiated, each flock walked away from the pool, faced down the wadi, and leaped upward to fly off to ward the open desert. Bak watched enthralled. Not until the final flock had taken to the air did he think of the birds as food. He certainly would not starve if forced to remain here.
He walked back to the gorge to get the donkey and turned it loose in the fresh grass. Keeping his weapons close by in case of need, he took off his clothing and, using the metal bowl Nefertem had given him, poured water over himself, washing away the desert’s grime. He stayed well clear of the pools so as not to foul them. The water here, Nefertem had told him, attracted not only large numbers of birds and ani mals, but nomads from all across this part of the Eastern
Desert. It was nothing less than a gift of the gods and must be treated as such.
While he bathed and washed his clothing, he studied the surrounding terrain. He did not spot the watching man, but he located near the mouth of the gorge a shaded crevice in which a man might hide through the morning hours. Fin ished with his bath and feeling considerably better for it, he donned his wet loincloth, kilt, and tunic, then led the donkey into the gorge and hobbled it so it would not wander back to the grass. Returning to the open area in which the pools were located, taking care not to be seen from above, he climbed up to the crevice, laid his waterbag beside him, and settled down to wait. With luck and the help of the gods, the watch ing man would grow curious-or fearful that his quarry had slipped away.
The sun climbed slowly into the sky. The day grew hot and the lizards indolent. A flock of cheeping sparrows flitted from shrubs to reeds to the grass and the bare ground, while a pair of larks walked among the rocks. Watching their deter mined but serene quest for sustenance, Bak grew drowsy.
Abruptly, amid sharp chirps of warning, the birds shot into the air. Bak started, came fully awake. Something had fright ened them. The watching man? He had been hidden for over an hour if the sun’s passage told true, plenty of time for cu riosity to eat away at a man. He gripped his spear and shield and rose to his feet, as silent as the lizards that had darted in among the rocks.
A stone clattered down the slope some distance to his right. He eased into a fresh position, trying to glimpse the in truder. A jumble of rocks that had rolled down from above cut off his view. He could see no farther than the uppermost pool and considerably less of the slope. Quelling his impa tience, he remained where he was, listening for another sound, hoping to determine the intruder’s exact position. He heard nothing. The man, if indeed the noise had been made by a man, had to be a nomad to creep so silently down a hill as steep as this one and as covered with loose sand and rocks.
The time stretched to an eternity. Unable to stand the strain any longer, Bak stuck his head out of the crevice far enough to see around the rocks. A man wearing the ragged garb of a desert nomad was climbing downward, watching where he placed his feet. He was a half-dozen paces above the wadi floor at a point almost even with the uppermost pool. His hair was long and unkempt. He carried a bow, and a quiver filled with arrows hung from his left shoulder.
He stopped and looked to his left, down the wadi toward the mouth of the gorge. With nothing there to see, he shifted his gaze-and looked directly at Bak. Bak jerked back into his hideaway, but too late. Skittering rocks and the sound of feet half-sliding down the sandy slope verified the fact that he had been seen.
Shield in one hand, spear in the other, he burst out of his hiding place. He scurried down the slope, sending a minia ture rock slide before him, and hit the wadi floor running.
The nomad stood beside the upper pool, seating an arrow, pulling the string taut. Bak gave a blood-curdling yell, a fear some sound made by attacking tribesmen on the southern frontier, and charged toward the man. The arrow sped past, too high and too far to the left.
Bak raced forward undeterred. He had not lain in wait for more than an hour to turn tail and run.
The nomad quickly tugged another arrow from his quiver, seated it, and let it fly. It sped past no closer than its predeces sor. Bak sprinted on. The man spun around and ran to the dry waterfall. He raced upward, climbing the irregularly shaped and sized rocks as if they were the smoothest of steps. Unfa miliar with the terrain, Bak took longer to reach the top. The last thing he wanted was to break an ankle. He had no idea what had set the nomad to flight: the all-out charge, the howl of the southern desert tribesmen, or simply a sudden fear that he might get caught.
Above the fall, the wadi widened out and low dark gray mountains rose in all directions. Bak raced after the nomad up the most recent channel to be cut through the ancient wa tercourse, dodging fallen rocks and boulders and a few widely spaced silla bushes clinging to life in the dry sand. In stead of slowing to an easier pace, as he should have, and biding his time, he ran hard and fast. Sweat poured from him.
His breath came out in loud gasps and he had a pain in his side. He knew that if he lost sight of the man in this play ground of the lord Set, he would never find him. Worse yet, if the man was at all familiar with this landscape, he could cir cle around and lay in wait until his unsuspecting victim re turned to the spring.
He kept up the pace for as long as he could, but finally slowed to a fast trot. The man ahead also decreased
