With a quick glance backward to be sure the men for whom he was responsible were keeping up, Suemnut walked on. Bak also looked back. Psuro was close behind, walking with Nebre, trying to convince him that even if they had gone after the man with the sling, they could not have caught him.
The Medjay, furious at having to let him slip away yet an other time, wore a scowl that would have sent fear into the heart of the lord Set himself. Bak, who felt no less angry, sympathized.
Bak sat on a thick pillow stuffed with straw, his leg stretched out before him in the faint hope that he could ease the pain in his thigh. No amount of pampering would heal the injury, he knew. Only time would erase the ghastly black bruise and the constant nagging ache.
Lieutenant Huy, eager for another game of senet, had urged him to accept the pillow. Now the officer sat on a stool on the opposite side of the game board, setting up the playing pieces. As before, he had taken the blue spools for himself and had given Bak the white cones. Lieutenant Nebamon sat on a rock, his back to the wall of the rough stone structure
Huy and his scribe used as a dwelling and office. His face was hidden in shadow, while the light of the torch mounted on the wall behind him illuminated the game board and the two men preparing to play. A yellow dog lay at Nebamon’s feet, twitching and moaning in its sleep.
Bak allowed Huy to take three of his pieces before he asked, “How many men who toil here are nomads?”
“Twenty or twenty-five. They labor atop the mountain, carrying away waste taken from the mines, helping in the quarries, and performing any number of other tasks that are easy to learn and require physical strength rather than wit or talent.”
Huy studied the pieces on the game board. Blind to an opening Bak had given him, he made an ineffectual move. A partially smothered chortle escaped from Nebamon’s lips.
If Huy noticed, he gave no hint. “Three women and their children remain in this camp to care for the livestock we keep, while their men toil on the mountain.” He studied the board, then nodded his satisfaction. “You’ll have noticed that any number of nomads come and go, seeking to trade or to cadge some small item they need.”
Bak was forced to take the spool Huy had moved. “Do any men come from the Eastern Desert?”
“Not many,” Huy said, blinking surprise that he had lost a piece, “and they seldom remain for long.” With his mouth tight and determined, he moved another spool. “The local men look to us as a source of wealth. They resent sharing with outsiders.”
“Are any here now?”
“Possibly. My scribe would know.”
“All who wish to toil at the mines report to the scribe when they arrive,” Nebamon explained. “Each day a man remains, his foreman makes a mark on a shard. When he’s ready to leave, the shard goes to the scribe and he gives the nomad a token to deliver to the port for payment in kind.”
Bak muttered an oath. A man could pass through the camp and climb the mountain of turquoise without ever report ing his presence. An individual from the Eastern Desert, shunned by one and all, might come and go virtually unno ticed or, more likely, would be looked upon as invisible. He was willing to wager a month’s rations that the man with the sling had walked in and out without so much as attracting a glance.
Bak lost the game by a narrow margin and insisted Neba mon play the next. He found losing to be much more difficult than winning. Offering the caravan officer the pillow, he moved to the rock. The dog woke up, curled into a tight ball, and went back to sleep with a grunt of contentment.
While the officers played, Bak’s thoughts turned to the at tack earlier in the day and to the man who had used the sling.
The watching man, he felt sure. Had someone in User’s party told him they meant to come to the mountain of turquoise?
Or had he simply followed them, with no one noticing? His knowledge of the wadis and mountains on this side of the sea was especially puzzling. While Bak and his Medjays were tied by their ignorance of the land and its people to the cara van and the army, as were User and his party, their foe trav eled with no such constraints. How did he manage?
The question turned Bak’s thoughts to Minnakht. He had vowed to stay close, but had he? Bak thought about the man he had met in the Eastern Desert, the man he had heard so much about through the last few weeks. A man of courage who traveled the barren land undeterred by adversity. One who… suddenly, without conscious intent, a new idea leapt into his heart, a thought that would not be dislodged.
“Do you know of a place nearby where a man might find wa ter, where he could stay alone and undisturbed by other men?”
“Where you find water, you’ll find nomads.” Huy’s voice was curt, agitated. “Women and children bringing their flocks to drink. Sometimes a man or two.”
Realizing something was wrong, Bak glanced at the senet board. Nebamon had taken more than half his fellow officer’s pieces.
“The closest spring is at the copper mines west of here,” the caravan officer said, capturing another spool.
Bak did not know if Nebamon’s thoughts were elsewhere or if he believed Huy had had enough pampering for one night. “I’m seeking a more solitary place, one where a man might slip out of sight should nomads bring their flocks.”
Huy gave his opponent a cool look. “Your return journey to the port often takes an inordinate length of time, Neba mon. Puemre tells me that you stop at an oasis north of here, allowing your troops to play when they should be hastening to the sea with their valuable burden.”
Noticing the venom in Huy’s voice, Nebamon looked more closely at the board. He was clearly surprised by what he saw. “Often? No. Now and again, yes.” He placed a white cone in jeopardy, glanced at Bak, grinned sheepishly.
“There’s an open, running stream in the next large wadi to the north. The journey to the port is longer, but I sometimes return that way, giving my men an opportunity to bathe themselves and the donkeys. The water has an odd smell and we can’t drink it, but washing away the dust refreshes man and beast alike.”
He studied the game board as if trying to decide what he should do next. “A few nomads go there, but a man who wished to remain unseen could easily walk a short way up the wadi, where the stone has been carved by wind and water as if by the hand of a man.”
Bak watched him sacrifice another white cone. From the look on Huy’s face, he would soon be placated. “With no drinkable water, he couldn’t stay there for long.”
“There’s a larger oasis closer to the sea and to the south.
We get water there for use at the port. It’s frequented by the nomads, so a man couldn’t remain unseen for long, but he might slip in and out at infrequent intervals, taking only enough time to water his animals and fill his jars.” Neba mon moved another cone into the path of the spool Huy was driving toward the final square. “Do you think the man who attacked today might be camping at one of those oases?”
“Perhaps.” Bak shifted his position, waking the dog and the pain in his thigh. “You must remember that I’m also look ing for Minnakht.”
“He’s not been seen since he left the port,” Huy said, his disposition soothed. “Most men believe he sailed back to the
Eastern Desert.”
Bak stayed as close to the truth as he could. “I vowed I’d follow his path from the beginning of his journey to the end.
I know he visited the mountain of turquoise and the copper mines west of here. There’s a chance that he sailed away from the port, but returned to this barren land. A place with water would be a necessary destination.” Noting the doubt on their faces, he gave them a humorless smile. “Unlikely or not, I must leave no possibility unexamined. If I find no sign of him, I must return to the Eastern Desert and remain in that wretched land until I learn his fate. I prefer the company of men of Kemet to seeing nothing but footprints of nomads who vanish each time we draw near.”
Giving him a quick, sympathetic smile, Nebamon offered up his last white cone.
Huy made a final move. “You wish to visit those oases,” he said, his voice ringing with triumph.
