unexpected.
Fearing for the Medjay, he ordered Psuro to stay with the car avan and strode rapidly down the wadi, with Kaha by his side. “This isn’t a trap, is it?”
“We saw no one else throughout the night, but Nebre told him that if any stranger came near, he would shoot him in the stomach so he would die a painful and lingering death.”
“The man asked specifically for me?”
“Yes, sir. He said your name. Lieutenant Bak.”
Bak’s steps faltered. “He knows who I am?” Eyes nar rowed, and not from the brightness of the sky, he stared thoughtfully toward the hill around which Kaha had come.
“Did he offer a name of his own by chance?”
“No, sir.” Kaha slung his bow over his shoulder. “There’s something else, sir. He’s a man of Kemet, not a nomad.”
“Lieutenant Bak.” The man stood at the base of the gray ish rocky hill, looking out across the sand toward the ap proaching men. Nebre had placed himself ten paces to the right of his prisoner, too far away to be leaped upon in a sur prise attack.
Bak stopped the same distance away. “How do you know my name?”
The man was taller than he but not as broad across the shoulders, and was about the same age. He was slender of build, with muscles that looked solid and well honed. His dark hair was cropped short, his skin darkened by the sun to a golden brown. Like everyone who walked the paths of this wretched desert, he was none too clean, but his tunic and kilt retained some semblance of white and his sandals ap peared to be fairly new. His back was to the bright splash of orange reaching into the eastern sky, making his features difficult to see.
“Senna told me. You’re a soldier, he said, sent by your commandant into this desert to search for Minnakht.”
Bak’s suspicions sharpened. He thanked the lord Amon that he had never entirely trusted the guide and had not revealed that he was a policeman. Could he trust this man? Had he rather than the nomad they had followed pushed the boulder over the cliff above their resting place? “You knew Senna?”
“Your Medjay told me he’s been slain. He was a good man, dependable to a fault and exceedingly loyal. I shall miss him.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Long enough to trust him. Unlike you, so he told me.”
Bak took a couple steps forward and off to the side, hoping to turn the man more toward the rising sun, making his face easier to read. “You’ve talked to him since we left Kaine.”
The man bowed his head in amused acknowledgment.
“Three times we met in the night. He said your Medjays are like cats, awake at the slightest sound. He had trouble slipping away unseen, so we met less often than we wished.”
Neither Medjay gave any indication that he had heard what Bak suspected was meant as a compliment. “Did you expect to see him last night?”
“He knew where I normally camp outside the gorge. I thought he’d come if he could.”
Sidling closer, Bak maneuvered him around more toward the lighted sky. “Someone has been watching our caravan.
You or another man?”
“I’ve watched you now and then. The nomads are also keeping an eye on you.”
“How have you avoided the men I sent out as scouts?”
The man’s eyes slid toward Kaha and he laughed. “Over the years I’ve explored every wadi and hill and mountain, every pinnacle and ledge. Each time I saw them, I simply dropped down behind a boulder or slipped into a niche be tween rocks or lay in a patch of deep shade.”
“What of the nomads? Do they know of you?”
“They’re more difficult to evade, but I’ve managed to stay far enough away to make any men who saw me believe I’m just another nomad, unworthy of a closer look.”
The man was so self-confident he might be called arro gant. Bak supposed he had every right to be if he could elude men who had dwelt in this desert through a lifetime. “Who are you and why did you wish to see me?”
“You’ve not yet guessed, Lieutenant?” Smiling, he bowed low as if to make an offering of himself. “I’m Minnakht. The man you’ve been seeking.”
“If you’re who you claim to be, why have you not shown yourself?” Bak, whose surprise had immediately given way to skepticism, sat on a large rock that had tumbled down the hillside to half-bury itself in the sand.
Minnakht, taking care not to approach too close lest Nebre or Kaha send an arrow his way, chose a rock at the base of the hill. “I fear for my life.”
“Who wishes you dead?”
“If I knew his name, I’d not be hiding from the world.”
Bak noted the dubious looks the Medjays were giving their prisoner and he almost smiled. Having lost one of their own to a knife in the back, the man who called himself Min nakht was in far more danger from them than from some mysterious man he claimed he could not name.
“Explain yourself,” he said.
“As Senna surely told you, I went off to the mountain of turquoise, thinking to see the mines. Because I traveled with a military caravan, I left him behind. Upon my return to the port, I found him ill. We agreed to meet later at my usual camp near the pools where you spent last night, and I sailed away with two men who claimed to be fishermen.
They brought me across the Eastern Sea and left me on the shore. There two men awaited me, nomads they were, men
I didn’t know. They beat me senseless, trying all the while to make me tell them where I’d found gold. I could tell them nothing. I’d located no gold. In the end, they left me for dead.”
While he spoke, Bak studied him, trying to find a resem blance between him and Commander Inebny. Other than their height and a vague similarity in facial features, the two were as unlike as a pomegranate and a pea. “I’ve been told this coastline is barren, with no water anywhere.”
“Few men would’ve survived, I know, but you must re member that this land is no mystery to me.”
Bak thought of the men he had questioned about Minnakht and the contradictory answers he had received. He could not recall any man mentioning this utter lack of modesty, unless the tales the explorer had told in the houses of pleasure had been so filled with excitement that those whom he had ques tioned had been too enthralled to notice.
“I’ve no memory of that time.” Minnakht, if he was indeed
Inebny’s son, went on with his tale. “I somehow made my way to a place where water seeps through the sand. The nomads seldom go there; the water is too slow to come to sustain animals. The men who beat me had scattered my pos sessions, but the will to live is strong, and I had the good sense to wrap myself in my sheet to save myself from the burning sun. At the seepage, I spread the sheet over some bushes, forming a tent, and there I lay for…” He spread his hands wide and shrugged. “How long, I know not. All I re member is digging for water and drinking.”
An improbable tale, Bak thought, but not impossible.
“As soon as I could, I bathed my wounds and moved on, traveling through the night to the closest well. I didn’t want my assailants to come back and find me alive.”
“If they left you for dead at a place other than the seepage, how would they have known where to find you?”
“I doubt I was thinking clearly.” Minnakht smiled at the two Medjays as if he felt a need to convince them. Their un smiling faces could not have been encouraging. “I made my way to the place where Senna was to meet me and there I waited, licking my wounds, so to speak. He came and he took me to a well high in the mountains, where we camped.
As I knew not who had set upon me, whether friend or foe, I had him pretend to search for me, thinking my enemies would reveal themselves. They never did. I’ve been running and hiding ever since.”
“Your father is eager to know your fate. Why did you not send a message with Senna when he went to Kemet
