can cross the Eastern
Desert with the soldiers who’ll transport the stones and cop per to Waset. Any caravan carrying so precious a load is bound to be well guarded.”
“I say we do as the lieutenant suggests,” Wensu said. “I, for one, have had enough of sand and rocks and death.”
“Yes, that would be best.” Ani looked resignedly at the three small bags of stones he had collected since leaving
Kaine. “I feel I’ve seen very little of what I came to see, es pecially in the Eastern Desert, and-for the very practical reasons Lieutenant Bak long ago pointed out-I’ll not return to the royal house with many stones, but I’ve no wish to see other men slain to satisfy my desires.”
User studied the two men he had led into the desert. His face wore no expression, but Bak could guess his thoughts.
In spite of his preference to travel alone, to seek gold and precious stones unencumbered, he had agreed to bring them along in exchange for payment in kind-and because he did not wish to vanish as had Ahmose and Minnakht. Better to return to the land of Kemet with nothing to show for the jour ney than to risk their lives and his.
“In many ways, this trek has been easy, but the toll on men’s lives…” The explorer’s voice tailed off in resigna tion. “I concur. Best we sail on one of our sovereign’s ships and cross the desert with the army.”
Bak thanked the lord Amon for the man’s strong sense of duty. “Will you go with them, Amonmose? Or will you re main with your fishing fleet on this side of the sea?”
The merchant spread his hands wide in a gesture of indeci sion. “Only when my men can safely return to their camp can Nebenkemet build huts and another boat. We could wait, but should we?” He flung a rueful smile at Bak. “If I thought you were close to laying hands on the slayer, Lieutenant…”
“I suggest the two of you cross the Eastern Sea with User,”
Bak said, side-stepping the question.
The merchant eyed him with open curiosity. “That sounds ominous, as if you think never to snare the vile criminal.”
Bak failed to rise to the bait. Instead he said to User, “Once our sovereign’s ships are loaded, they’ll not tarry. If they sail a day or two after your arrival, as I believe they will, I’ll not reach the port in time to board. I’ll need another way of crossing the sea.” His eyes darted toward Amonmose and he flashed a smile. “A fishing boat perhaps.”
The merchant grinned, acknowledging his failure to learn more. “How large a boat will you need?”
“One big enough to carry four or five passengers, the fastest in your fleet.”
“The moment we reach the port, I’ll speak with Nufer.
You’ll find his boat and crew awaiting you.”
User looked with a marked lack of enthusiasm toward
Bak’s camp, where Minmose and Kaha were packing their belongings, while Psuro and Nebre examined the three don keys on which they would carry weapons, water, and sup plies to the oasis where they hoped to find Minnakht. “You’re taking all your men with you?”
“Minmose will remain with you and will see that our don keys are transported back across the sea. Kaha has an errand that will take him to another destination. Psuro and Nebre will travel with me.”
User grunted, in no way comforted.
“I doubt we’ll be more than three or four days behind you,” Bak said. “I’ve been told there are wells at the near end of the southern trail and a village of sorts called Tjau. A con tingent of soldiers, their task to check all who come and go along that route, dwell there, along with a few nomads and camp followers. I suggest you wait for us there.”
“If we wait, we’ll lose the safety of the caravan.”
Bak realized that he had to give them an incentive to delay, had to rouse their curiosity. “With luck and the help of the lord Amon, I expect by then to have found the answers to all your questions and mine.”
The caravan set out at dusk. The trek to the copper mines was short and the donkeys, carrying nothing but the food and water needed for the return journey to the port, made good time in the cooler hours of night. What could have been a single load of turquoise was, for safety’s sake, divided up and concealed among the more mundane objects on the backs of a half-dozen animals.
A small forest of widely spaced acacias dotted the floor of the wadi that served as the center of copper production in the area. They camped a short distance from the trees and away from the well-to keep the donkeys out of the overseer’s gar den, Nebamon explained. Bak walked with him through the night to a grove of palm trees rising above a dark drystone hut. Along the way, they passed a cluster of interconnected stone huts in which the workmen dwelt and several slag heaps that marred the simple beauty of the moonlit water course. The cool night air smelled of dust and goats and of a tangy plant he could not identify.
Nenwaf, overseer of the copper works, roused himself from his sleeping mat and welcomed them with a broad smile and a gush of words. His nomad wife barely made an appearance and that not a happy one, but his five small chil dren leaped from their sleeping mats and rushed to Neba mon’s side for the treats they had come to expect each time he passed through. With faces and hands sticky from the honey cakes they quickly devoured, they hovered around, staring wide-eyed at the two officers talking with their father.
The next morning, the garrulous overseer escorted Bak and the men in User’s party over the surrounding hillsides, delighted to show off his domain. The mines, scattered throughout the area and especially abundant in the next wadi to the east, were much like those on the mountain of turquoise but were more widespread, more abundant, and larger. Here, too, the miners were men from afar, come to toil for Maatkare Hatshepsut and the generous earnings they would take back to their faroff homes. From shafts penetrat ing deep into the hillsides, narrow galleries followed the ore, often widening into underground halls. The tunnels formed complicated networks through which the heavy loads of ore had to be dragged and, in the end, lifted up to the surface.
Ani and Nebenkemet asked a multitude of questions, and
Nenwaf immediately warmed to them both. Unlike Teti, he allowed Ani to sort through the piles of malachite brought to the surface and take as many chunks of the bright green stone as he wished. It was less valuable than turquoise and not as appealing to the eye. Nonetheless, the pudgy jeweler avidly picked up one chunk of rock and another, filling the filthy square of cloth he carried. When he had a good-sized collec tion, he spread them out on the ground and sorted through them, ultimately saving just two or three choice pieces.
As the morning wore on, Nebenkemet’s knowledge of mining became ever more apparent and Nenwaf began to speak to him on equal terms. Bak was intrigued. He doubted
Amonmose would have brought this man into the desert if he thought him unable to build huts and a boat, but he was no simple carpenter.
After a midday meal of bread and beer supplemented with green onions and cucumbers harvested from Nenwaf’s gar den, the overseer led them across the wadi floor past slag heaps containing greenish black lumps of malachite from which much of the copper had been drained. On the hillside beyond, he escorted them to a dozen furnaces where men toiled in the heat. He stopped at one of the few not being worked. It had recently been used, he explained, and had been left to cool. A pile of greenish rock, crushed for easier smelting, lay beside the furnace.
“As you can see,” Nenwaf said, “we’re using the latest methods of extracting the ore from the stone.”
Nebenkemet hovered close, hands clasped behind his back, studying the clay-lined pit dug into the hillside. Rather than the more common goatskin bellows on which men stood to pump air into the furnace, the newer pot bellows were used. Here, a leather top on the flared opening of a pottery nozzle could be pumped up and down by hand or by foot, blowing air into the furnace to make it burn hotter, allowing for a more efficient production of copper from stone.
“By locating the pit on the hillside,” Nenwaf said, “we can take full advantage of the wind that usually blows up the wadi, causing the fire to burn more fiercely.”
“What do you place in the furnace to aid in the separation process?” Nebenkemet asked.
“Several materials found locally.”
Nenwaf went on to discuss the process in detail. As far as
Bak could tell, the method was cruder than that employed at the fortress of Buhen to smelt gold, but similar.
