top of the hillside be yond, watching a female urging a tiny baby up a lower slope of rough and broken rock.
“I’ll wager he set those gazelles to flight,” the Medjay said.
“He must’ve come down this way, thinking to cross the wadi and enter the rougher land to the west.” Bak looked to ward the foothills of the red mountain and the multiple peaks beyond. “In land so rough, he’d have an easier time of evad ing us.”
“Could he have reached this point ahead of us, I wonder?”
They hurried into the defile. The first thirty or so paces were almost flat and were floored with drying sand. A half dozen shallow runnels left by the receding water retained some moisture. Loose rocks dotted the surface. Bak and Ne bre slowed their pace so the Medjay could search for prints.
“Sir.” Nebre knelt to look at a reddish stone and a wet in dentation where it had recently lain. “Someone came this way not long ago.”
A dozen paces farther, the Medjay spotted the print of the outer edge of a sandal. Bak sucked in his breath, let it out slow and long. The sole was old and worn, curled to fit the foot of the man wearing it, and it had a slight cut near the small toe.
“The watching man.” Bak arose and glanced up the cut.
“He looks to be heading down to the wadi.”
Seeking confirmation, Nebre walked deeper into the de file. A couple dozen paces farther, up the slope where the sand was dryer, they found a long indentation that ran along the edge of a runnel and cut down into it, the sign of a man who had skidded on the loose, rocky soil. Where his other foot had come down hard when he saved himself from falling, he had left a print that matched the one they had seen before.
The man they sought had been in a hurry, racing down the defile, no doubt hoping to cross the wadi before they could round the bend and spot him.
Nebre gave Bak a humorless smile. Bak stared out across the wadi toward the red mountain. He was no more eager than the Medjay to follow a man into a landscape constructed by the lord Set himself, but the task must be done. The sooner they laid hands on the watching man, the sooner their many questions would be answered.
“How many times have we spotted him?” Bak asked.
“Four.” Nebre scowled at the high reddish walls of the wadi up which they were walking. “Each time we lose his trail or can find no footprints, he reappears. Too far away to catch, too close to miss seeing him.”
“So I was thinking.” Bak eyed the way ahead, the narrow ing gorge whose stone floor had been washed clear of sand.
Water filled holes etched deep into the stone. The early part of the storm, which had struck the red mountain from the north, had drained this way. “Those opportune appearances worry me, Nebre. Is he trying to get us lost? Or is he leading us into a trap?”
Nebre responded with a noncommittal grunt.
Kneeling beside a pool, Bak splashed his face and upper body. The water was clear and warmed by the sun. “Let’s walk to the end of this gorge and no farther. We’ve been away from the caravan too long. Psuro will be wondering where we are.”
“We’re to let the man ahead slip away again?” Nebre asked, chagrined.
“He knows this land. We don’t.” Bak walked on up the gorge. “Would it not be foolhardy to let him lead us to our deaths?”
“If we always turn back, sir, we’ll never lay hands on him.”
The Medjay was like a dog, Bak thought. Once he had scented his prey, he’d risk his life rather than give up the chase. “We must find some other way of snaring him.”
“How?”
Bak flung the Medjay an annoyed look. “If I knew that,
Nebre, we’d not be here now, debating whether or not we should allow our quarry to tempt us deeper into his lair.”
Nebre had the good sense to say no more.
They walked on, following a stream that meandered from pool to pool. Bak feared the gorge would narrow further, forming a trap they could not evade, but around the next bend, the walls spread wider. Wisps of cloud passed across the brilliant blue sky and an eagle soared overhead.
They rounded another tight bend and stopped dead still.
The gorge ended thirty or so paces ahead, blocked by a high wall. The stream poured out of a groove eroded over the top and plummeted downward, a silvery, gurgling waterfall splashing down narrow steps of waterworn red granite, each step taller than a man.
The climb to the top was possible, Bak thought, and tempting, but commonsense prevailed. “We’d best turn back.”
Nebre looked half around, turning a wary eye to the gorge through which they had come. “Could this be the trap we’ve been expecting?”
“I can think of no better place.”
Eyeing the high walls to either side, the steep waterfall in front, not sure if they expected one man to set upon them or an army, Bak and the Medjay eased backward toward the nearest bend in the gorge. Suddenly a solitary man came out from among the rocks at the top of the fall and stood beside the lip over which the water spilled. He stared boldly at the two men on the floor of the gorge, then knelt to cup his hands and drink. The action was deliberate, a gibe at Bak’s decision not to follow, a sneer at their worried retreat.
Bak muttered an oath, echoed by Nebre.
The man rose to his feet, stretched, and yawned, making further mockery of the men below. He was tall and thin and had the same dark skin as Nefertem and his tribesmen. His clothing-a dark brown kilt, probably leather, and a ragged, long-sleeved tunic discolored by age or dirt or both-was that of a nomad. He carried a long staff or maybe a spear, dif ficult to tell which at so great a distance
“I’d like to know his purpose, Nebre. Do you think you can disable him?”
Baring his teeth in a eager smile, Nebre drew an arrow from his quiver and seated it. “I’d rather slay him, sir, but since I’m forbidden to do so, will an arrow in the thigh sat isfy you?”
As the Medjay raised the bow, the man on the clifftop flung himself sideways, out of sight. The arrow sped through the air where he had been, traveled high into the sky, and arced downward.
Nebre spat out a curse and strode toward the waterfall.
“I’ll get him for you, sir!”
“No!” Bak barked out the word, an order meant to be heeded.
“But, sir…” Nebre stared in angry frustration up the wa terfall.
“If he allowed us to climb the cliff unmolested-and I doubt he’d miss so tempting an opportunity-he’d be far away by the time we reached the top.” Bak glared at the Med jay, waiting for him to see reality.
As Nebre turned around with obvious reluctance, Bak added, “We must return to the wadi the caravan is traveling. I, for one, would not like to spend the night in this wretched land, with a man who wishes us dead lurking about.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Bak asked.
“He was too far away.” Nebre scowled. He had come to see the sense in their retreat, but his irritation had not entirely fallen away. “Would you, sir?”
“I doubt it,” Bak admitted. “He made sure we got a good look at him, but not good enough.”
He studied the craggy slopes to either side. The sun had dropped behind the mountain, leaving the landscape around them in shadow. Hills and precipices, ledges and steep de files, merged together in the near distance, the loss of light turning them an identical shade of deep red and stealing away depth of vision. Even the patches of sand that had blown into the nooks and crannies had a reddish tinge, as if reflecting the flaming sky.
He guessed he and Nebre were about a half-hour’s walk to the main wadi, which they should reach as darkness fell. The caravan would have moved on an hour or two earlier, but they could easily catch up with it in the cooler hours of night.
Signs of the recent passage of men and animals would be clear on the freshly washed and smoothed sand, eliminating any risk of getting lost.
