The Right Hand of Amon lb-1 Read online

  A shrill, terrified bray drew Bak's eyes toward a cloud of dust rising from the southwest corner of the fortress, where the donkey paddocks lay. The drovers, he guessed, were branding a new herd driven into Buhen the previous day. Closer to hand, thin columns of smoke spiraled up from the metalsmiths' workshops. The sharp smell of molten metal and white-hot fuel mingled with the faint, everpresent odor of manure and the aromas of fish and onions and cooking oil.

  The soft crunch of sandals on grit drew his eyes to the passage through the tower. The large white form within grew more distinct and soon an obese old woman lumbered out. Sweat dripped from her jowls, formed stained crescents beneath the armholes of her long white sheath, and glued the fabric to her back and into the cleft between her heavy, sagging breasts.

  She glared at Bak. "Can you never go about your duties in the early morning or in the evening, as civilized men do?"

  "Would you've preferred, Nofery, that I pull you from your sleeping pallet?" His voice was stern, but his eyes twinkled with fondness.

  She sniffed. "Little you care what suits me."

  The sentry grinned from ear to ear. "Think you can show the scribblers how to hold their morning meal, my little ewe?"

  With a coy smile, she patted the front of his kilt where it covered the joining of his legs. "You jest now at my expense, but you'll seek my favors quick enough when next you come to my place of business."

  The sentry pushed himself against her as if it was she he visited instead of one of the young seductresses who earned their bread in her house of pleasure.

  Laughing, Bak clapped the sentry on the shoulder, caught Nofery's arm, and drew her onto a path squeezed between the jumbled block of buildings and the sunken walkway at the base of the citadel wall. "You can seduce anyone you like when your time is your own, old woman, but now you have a task to perform for me alone."

  He could see she liked the inference that she might still be able to lure a man into her bed, especially a strapping young ram like the sentry, but she jerked her arm from his and hid her pleasure in a scowl.

  "I rue the day I agreed to be your spy," she said. "If I'd not been so free with my promises, I'd not be obliged to answer to your every beck and call."

  She was walking so fast Bak had trouble keeping up with her. For one so put upon, she was wasting no time.

  Bak watched Nofery with smarting eyes and a queasiness that always came upon him in the house of death. Hot, sticky air enveloped him like a cloak. The stench of decay, the sweet perfumes used for embalming, and the musty odor of ceremonial incense assaulted his nostrils. Smoke from a poorly made wick rose from an oil lamp, sending tendrils of vapor drifting through the air like wraiths from, the netherworld. He had come to this place many times, and the oppressive atmosphere never failed to make him feel that he stood on the threshold of an eternity he was in no way prepared to inhabit.

  Nofery stood beside a thigh-high stone embalming table, studying the naked body lying in the shallow trough carved into its upper surface. If she had ever seen the dead man before, the knowledge was hidden behind the perfumesoaked square of linen she held over her nose and mouth.

  "Do you recognize him?" Bak doubted she did; she had been silent too long.

  "The face, I think, is familiar, yes." Her eyes, narrow and sly, slid toward him. "If you were to jog my memory, perhaps with a small favor… "

  He buried his surprise-and mistrust-in a frown. "This isn't the market, old woman. You can't haggle with me over this man's name as you would with a merchant over the price of an onion."

  "I've no wealth to speak of, and I'm no longer in the prime of life," she said in a plaintive voice. "Yet I must make my way alone in this hard, cruel land. Have you no pity?"

  Unmoved, he leaned against the empty table behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. "Before a melon can be eaten, the vine must be given water in sufficient quantities to allow the fruit to mature."

  The wrinkles deepened at the comers of Nofery's eyes, hinting at a smile. "I saw this man alive and well. Four or five months ago it was. He must've come and gone all in one day, for I laid eyes on him only the one time."

  She must really have seen him! Bak could barely believe his good luck. "Go on," he said, keeping his face bland, his voice level.

  "My dwelling is small, but my business grows each day," she said sadly. "Those who come for beer must sit on the laps of those who play games of chance. Those who come for a quiet chat must shout to be heard through the din. Those who…"

  Bak tamped down his impatience with a game he usually enjoyed and strode toward the door. The adjoining room contained nothing but a basket of clean white linen frayed at the edges and a few baked clay jars and pots. "Come along, old woman. If you've nothing to tell me, I'll find someone else who has."

  She eyed him, measuring the strength of his will. He returned her look, saying nothing, waiting.

  Her mouth drooped, she let out a long, aggrieved sigh, and turned back to the table. "I went to the market that day earlier than usual. I heard loud, angry curses so 1, and others like me, ran to see. A sailor-I'd never seen him before nor have I seen him since-was beating his servant with a staff. The child, a boy of mixed blood no more than six or seven years of age, lay on the ground, his back, arms, and face bruised and bleeding. Before those of us inclined to do so could stop the beating, this officer…" She nodded at the dead man. "… burst through the crowd, tore the staff from the sailor's hand, and flung it away. Then he struck the sailor with his baton of office time and time again until he fell senseless to the earth."

  Bak eyed her long and hard. "I heard of no such incident."

  "Nor were you meant to, for when the officer knelt to help the child, he and those of us who watched soon realized the gods had blessed the boy with neither speech nor hearing. We stood back and allowed this officer, who himself looked like a god, to lift up the child with uncommon tenderness and carry him to a warship moored at the quay."

  Bak nodded his understanding. A crude form of justice had been carried out, and, in the eyes of those who witnessed it, the matter was closed. He walked to the table and studied the grayish face of the man lying there. Would one who had behaved in so noble a fashion shun the scribal offices, thinking himself too great a man to register? Would he wear a belt clasp for which he was in no way entitled? "Are you certain this is the same man?"

  "He is. Ask any of the others who were in the market that morning, and they'll agree."

  Bak's final doubt ebbed away, and he gave her a pleased smile. "You've done well, old woman, very well. Now did you ever learn his name and where he was going from here?"

  Nofery's smile was no less sly than before. "I'm in great need of a more spacious house. I went to the chief steward, and my plea fell on deaf ears. Only the commandant carries greater weight, but he'll not listen to me alone."

  "You tell me all you know about this man, old woman, and I'll convince Thuty of your merits, though that, I fear, will be no easy task."

  With a triumphant smirk, she backed away from the table and sidled toward the door. "He boarded a warship carrying replacement troops for the fortresses along the Belly of Stones. I assume they, and he with them, disembarked at Kor and marched on south. How far I don't know."

  Realizing she was trying to escape, Bak leaped across the room and caught her by the elbow. "You never learned his name, did you?"

  "I wanted to!" She tugged her arm, trying to dislodge the fingers clamped around it. "I thought him a fine man and yearned to know him. But few people had seen him and those who had knew nothing of him."

  Mocking himself for letting her trick him, Bak pushed her into the adjoining room. A priest. kneeling beside the basket, examining the linen, looked up, startled. Beyond, through another door, an embalmer bent over the body of a young woman lying prone on an embalming table. The wife of an officer, she had died in childbirth during the night. Using a long slim tool inserted through the nose, the embalmer was scraping the soft matter fr
om within the head. A deep bowl with its contents hidden from view contained, Bak assumed, either the body of the unborn child or the organs that had been withdrawn through the gaping slit in the left side of the dead woman's abdomen.

  "You'll not go back on your word, will you?" Nofery asked, worried. "You asked only that I tell you all I know."

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I'll go to the commandant for you as I promised. But not until the lord Amon has come and gone."

  "Many men will wish to celebrate the god's visit," she pointed out.

  "Thuty has too great a burden to listen now. He'd close his heart to your plea, and you'd be out of luck altogether." Screwing her mouth into a pout, she shook off his arm, trudged ahead down a short passage, and shoved open the door to the courtyard. Hurrying past Imsiba, standing outside with the trader Seneb, the old woman strode to a mudbrick bench shaded by the sycamores and palms lining the high enclosure walls. She flopped down with a grunt that silenced a chirping sparrow and bent over a small fish pool to draw deep into her lungs the sweet scent of white lotus blossoms floating on the surface of the water. Bak smiled to himself. She was not so chagrined that she would return to her place of business before her curiosity was satisfied.

  He shut the door behind him and, with the taste of death still on his tongue, eyed Seneb from head to toe. The pudgy trader's hands were tied behind his back; his kilt was rumpled and dirty. Though not a bruise or cut marked his body, his eyes were wary, frightened. It seemed unlikely that the slain man, one fose actions had been so noble they had even beguiled Nofery, would ever have crossed the path of this foul merchant. Yet the question had to be asked, for they had both come from upriver.

  "Has this jackal told you of his journeys, Imsiba?" The big Medjay hefted the long, heavy staff he carried. "With a bit of persuasion, yes."

  Bak had little faith in words extracted by means of the cudgel, but in Seneb's case he could think of no more fitting way. "How long ago did he travel upstream?"

  "Five months, he claims, as does the pass we found among his clothing."

  "Nofery saw our man four or five months ago." Bak spoke with care, preferring the trader remain in ignorance of how little they knew of the slain man. "He failed to introduce himself before traveling south."

  The Medjay nodded that he understood. If the man in the house of death had come through Buhen only four months ago, Seneb would already have been far to the south in the land of Kush. If five months, the trader might have crossed his path.

  "I'll take this cur inside, and when I'm through, I'll return him to his cell." Bak took the staff from Imsiba's hand. "In the meantime, speak with Nofery. After you hear her tale, send her home. Then go find Hori and see what luck he's had this morning."

  Hori was the police scribe. Bak had roused the boy at daybreak and sent him out with instructions to describe the dead man to all the garrison officers and sergeants. A thankless task, but a necessary one.

  Imsiba nodded. "I'll find him."

  Bak gripped the, trader by the neck and aimed him toward the door.

  "What is this place?" Seneb demanded. "Why bring me here?"

  "Many years ago; when this wretched land of Wawat was ruled by a king not our own, it most likely was a dwelling of the living. Now… " Bak jerked the door open and shoved him over the threshold. "Now it houses the dead."

  The cloying stench stopped Seneb as if he had run into a wall. "What're you going to do to me?"

  Bak dug his fingers into his squirming prisoner's neck and propelled him through the building to the room where the unnamed body lay.

  At the foot of the embalming table, Seneb dug in his heels. "Why have you brought me here? What…?" His eyes landed on the slain man's face. He blinked once, twice, leaned forward for a closer look. "Lieutenant Puemre!" A smile touched his lips, spread; laughter bubbled from his mouth.

  Bak was so startled he relaxed his grip on the trader's neck. It took him a moment to realize he had been handed the name, and even then he was too distracted by the odd reaction to enjoy his unexpected success.

  Seneb walked as if mesmerized alongside the table, staring at the damaged foot and hand, the blotches and tears on the body. He stopped at the head, purred, "You swine." And he spat on the dead man's face.

  "Seneb!" Appalled, Bak lunged at the trader and_ dragged him to the foot of the empty embalming table. "Are you so low you'd violate a lifeless body?"

  "I've harbored hatred in my heart for that man for five long months," Seneb sneered. "What would you have me do? Kneel by his side and offer words of forgiveness to his ka?"

  Bak glared at his prisoner, giving himself time to think. Seneb's caravan had come down the river the same day the body had. The two men could have met and clashed somewhere along the Belly of Stones. Yet if Seneb were responsible for the man's death, would he have reacted with such surprise, such pleasure at seeing his enemy lifeless?

  "What did this man, this Lieutenant Puemre, do to earn such loathing?"'he asked.

  The trader's mouth twisted with malice. "He thought himself above all- mortal men, judging them for faults he failed to see within himself."

  "I want specifics, Seneb, not a bald, flat statement any man could make. What did he do to you?"

  "He…" The trader hesitated as if deciding what, if anything, he should divulge. "He treated me with contempt."

  Bak's mouth tightened. He raised the staff, placed the end under Seneb's chin, and forced his head high. The trader tried to step back, but the table behind him caught him just below his fleshy buttocks. Bak increased the pressure. Seneb's spine arced backward. He clung with bound hands to the rim of the trough. His eyes grew large, frightened.

  With a contemptuous smile, Bak pulled the staff back until the trader could almost stand erect. "Will you now spit on me? Or will you tell me what I wish to know?"

  Seneb, his eyes glued to the pole, tried to swallow. "As I made my way upriver, bound for the land of Kush, he took my pass from me, keeping it day after day for no good reason. He cared nothing for the time I wasted or the goods I had to trade for a mere pittance in order to feed myself and my servants, my donkeys. He'd have bled me until I had nothing left if I'd not finally gained the ear of the garrison commander."

  Bak's thoughts leaped back to the previous morning at Kor and the trader's excuse for driving his caravan so long and hard without a stop. The memory brought a dangerous glint to his eyes. "This, then, was the inspecting officer you wished to avoid at Iken when you came back downriver?"

  Seneb tried to nod, but the staff held his chin, in place. "He was."

  "You could've had no children with you at the time," Bak said, thinking of Nofery's story, "and your donkeys must've been fresh. What reason did he have for holding your pass?"

  "He had none! I swear it!"

  Bak raised the end of the staff a finger's breadth, drawing a fearful moan from the trader.

  "My donkeys were laden with ordinary trade goods, I tell you. Pottery, tools, beads, linen. Nothing more, nothing less." Seneb's eyes darted in all directions but never once met those of his inquisitor. "If that Medjay of yours had thought to bring my pass, you could've seen for yourself."

  Bak was well acquainted with the many and varied ways traders, soldiers, and even the royal envoys tried to slip objects through the frontier without paying the required tolls. False passes were not uncommon. He exerted pressure on the staff, forcing the trader so far back his eyes bulged.

  "Ahight!" Sweat rolled from Seneb's forehead into his ears and hair. "Four donkeys were found in the desert, tethered out of sight of the trail. Two carried fine weapons, the others wines from the best vineyards of northern Kemet. He accused me of hiding them-no doubt one of my servants whispered the thought in his ear, meaning to repay me for an imagined wrong-and he insisted I be punished with the cudgel as well as fined. But I knew nothing about them!" His eyes darted toward Bak and away. "I swear to the lord Amon, they weren't mine! Would I leave my beasts of burden with no f
ood or water?"

  Bak was sure that was exactly what Seneb had done, and Puemre had taken upon himself the task of righting a wrong, just as he had when he beat the sailor who struck the mute child. A man of high principles. Or was he? What of the belt clasp?

  Bak eyed the trader with disdain. "How did you convince the garrison commander to believe you over Lieutenant Puemre?"

  "I saw no love between them," Seneb said in a sullen voice.

  "And you'd. aheady sacrificed… What? Half your investment?… by denying knowledge of the hidden animals and what they carried?"

  Seneb clamped his mouth shut, refusing to admit or deny. Bak jerked- the pole from beneath the trader's chin, grabbed his arm, and swung him around to face the dead officer. "Did you take this man's life, Seneb?"

  "You accuse me of…" The trader stared with horrified eyes. "No!"

  "Did you come upon him standing alone, somewhere along the river between Iken and Kor? Did you creep up behind him and knock him unconscious, giving him no chance to protect himself?"

  "I didn't!" Seneb cried. "Ask my servants. Ask those wretched children I brought from the land of Kush. They'll all tell you. I never left the caravan. Not once."

  "We'll ask them," Bak said grimly.

  But will we get the truth from them? he wondered. They all hated the trader and no longer had reason to fear him. They would as readily lie now to see him punished as they would have lied to protect him while still he held the whip.

  "Lieutenant Puemre, inspecting officer at Iken." Nofery savored each word as if the knowledge was more tasty than fine wine. "I can't imagine why none of the scribes remember him. He was so well-formed and manly."

  Bak scooted his three-legged stool closer to the doorway to catch the afternoon breeze and took a sip from his chipped drinking bowl. The beer she had given him was not the best she had to offer, but it was exactly what he needed: thick enough to coat the tongue and pungent enough to chase away the scent of death.