destination before midnight. Here, where a subsidiary watercourse opened into the main wadi, was the first of a string of wells that made travel possible along the route they meant to fol low to the Eastern Sea.
A cluster of hobbled donkeys stood or lay near a stand of scrubby tamarisks that marked the location of the well. They saw no sign of a fire, so assumed the men traveling with the animals were asleep. Opting to remain apart, they made camp about fifty paces down the wadi beside a row of stunted trees that followed the watercourse for some distance down stream. Better to approach in the light of day when they would not be mistaken for bandits.
Rona, a hard-muscled young Medjay who had a slight limp, gathered broken twigs scattered around the trees. Min mose, shorter and broader, as cheerful as Rona was serious, whistled softly as he built a small fire on which to warm a slim but welcome meal of beans and onions, which they ate with dried fish.
While they enjoyed the food, a man emerged from the shadows by the well and walked toward them through the moonlight. “Good evening, sirs. My name is Amonmose.
This is my first night on the trail and I find I can’t sleep. May
I sit with you for a short while?”
Bak motioned him to join them. With luck and the favor of the lord Amon, this man might tell them of the men who had preceded them up the wadi. “Welcome to our humble…”
He laughed. Home was not a proper word to describe their surroundings. He introduced himself and his men and of fered to share the meal.
Eyeing their few donkeys and modest bundles of supplies,
Amonmose shook his head. “You mustn’t be too free with what you share. You’re traveling too light for generosity.”
Bak gave him a quick look. “You’ve previously crossed the Eastern Desert?”
“Several times, but always by way of the southern route traveled by our sovereign’s caravans. I’ve never before trav eled this far north.”
Intrigued, Bak studied the visitor in the dim light of moon and stars. Amonmose looked more a man who enjoyed his comfort than one familiar with the desert wilderness. He was about forty years of age, of medium height and portly, with laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. In spite of his girth, he moved with a rare grace and seated himself on the sand with the ease of a child. Bak suspected the bulk was hard muscle rather than simple obesity.
“Soldiers, are you?” Amonmose asked.
“We’ve recently come from the southern frontier and are on our way to the mines beyond the Eastern Sea.” Bak kept his answer simple, choosing not to discuss his mission, and flung a pointed look at Senna, making sure the nomad un derstood that he should not elaborate. He knew nothing of this man and the others camped near the well, but to find a half-dozen men following a route he had expected to be un used made him wary. “What brings you across this desert so often?”
“I’ve a fishing fleet that shelters in a bay on the near shore of the Eastern Sea. Six boats, but I hope over the next few years to increase the number.” Pride filled Amonmose’s voice to overflowing. “We’ve established a base camp some distance to the north, near a cluster of islands where the fish ing is particularly good. The men live rough, in palm-frond shacks, but within a year or so, I’ll see they have proper housing.”
Psuro flung the bones of a dried fish onto the embers of the fire, making it crackle. “We’ve barely started on our journey and already I miss fresh food. I can well understand that a couple of fishermen, even in so unlikely a place, might find men who’ll buy their catch. But six boats?”
Laughing, Amonmose swept several small pebbles from beneath his backside and settled himself more firmly on the sand. “We supply fresh fish to the port that serves the turquoise and copper mines, to ships that sail the Eastern
Sea, and to nomads who come from inland. When the mines shut down during the hot season and fewer men are posted at the port, we dry a good portion of our catch and supply that to the caravans traveling back and forth between Kemet and the Eastern Sea.”
“You’ve no end of business, I see.” Bak sipped his beer, sa voring the last jar he would see in a long time. Amonmose was so garrulous he doubted he needed prompting, but he asked anyway, “If you always travel the southern route, what’re you doing here?”
“I met a young explorer a few months ago, Minnakht by name.” If Amonmose noticed the sudden interest among the members of Bak’s party, he gave no sign. “He swore he could show me a more direct and time-saving route between Kaine and my fishing camp. If he didn’t exaggerate, I hope, several years in the future, to expand my fishing enterprise and trans port dried fish to Kemet.”
Delivering fish to Kemet and the great river that ran through the heart of the land was very much like hauling rocks to a quarry, Bak thought.
“He said if I’d meet him in Kaine, he’d show me the way,”
Amonmose went on. “I arrived on schedule, purchased don keys and supplies in the expectation of leaving right away and heard he’d gone missing.”
“When you found him gone, you came into the desert any way?” Kaha asked. “You surely don’t plan to travel this wasteland by yourself.”
“A most foolhardy endeavor, sir,” Nebre said, shaking his head.
“No, no.” Amonmose waved away the very idea. “I’ve brought with me a man who’ll build boats and huts at my fishing camp.”
“A man unfamiliar with the desert.” Nebre’s voice was flat, disapproving.
“You misunderstand. I’ve traveled this land often enough to know that one should never make such a journey without a competent guide. That’s why, when I learned that a man named User, a seasoned explorer, and several other men plan to follow a path similar to the one Minnakht described, I thought to seek them out. Their caravan had left Kaine in the early morning, I learned, so we hastened to catch up.” A smile blossomed on his face. “And catch up we did.”
“You know this man User?” Senna asked.
“Oh, no. But men I spoke with in Kaine said he knows the
Eastern Desert as a man knows the curves of his wife’s body.
In addition, he’s brought along a nomad guide, Dedu by name.” Amonmose rose to his feet and brushed off the back of his kilt. “I’d best return to my sleeping pallet. We’re to make an early start tomorrow.”
Bak bade him goodbye and watched him walk away. He rather liked the man, but his tale of a fishing fleet so far from any town or city stretched the imagination.
Chapter 3
Bak awoke to the harsh braying of one of his donkeys. Two others answered from the direction of the well. The lord Re had not yet peered over the horizon, but pale yellow streaks rising above the ridge to the east heralded the god’s ascen sion from the netherworld. Bak rose from his thin sleeping mat, yawned, and stretched. The night had been too short.
Awakened by the donkey as Bak had been, the Medjays scrambled to their feet. Following his example, they looked around at a world they had not been able to see clearly in the moonlight. The plateau that edged the wadi to the west looked taller than it had in the night, and closer. The row of tamarisks followed the modern watercourse around a gentle bend to the north. The secondary wadi up which they would travel-for no more than three days if the gods smiled upon them-led off to the east through the gap they had seen the previous evening between the ridge and the mound they had skirted for much of their journey from Kaine. An irregular row of scraggly trees meandered up that watercourse for a hundred or so paces
Senna, making no secret of his interest in the men camped near the well, watched them as they roused themselves from sleep and began to get ready for their day’s trek. Bak, too, was curious. What had prompted so many men to journey along this particular trail, normally frequented by only a few nomads? Had they, too, heard rumors of gold? Had they been lured into this harsh and unforgiving land by the same tale of riches that he had heard in Kaine?
