Lauren Haney - The Right Hand of Amon

Making their way along a series of narrow streets, they brushed shoulders with soldiers, sailors, clerks, craftsmen, and traders, less often with women, children, and servants. White-garbed people of Kemet vied for space with brightly clad people from Wawat and Kush. Cooking odors and the ranker smell of burning kilns and furnaces, the nosewrinkling odors of sour sweat and sweet perfumes, the ever-present aura of human and animal waste, and the musty-fishy smell of the river lay in the still, hot air like an unseen haze. The murmur of voices, the barking of dogs, the squawk of poultry blended together as one. Farther south, the sounds changed to the creak of ships moored in the harbor, the monotonous chant of men carrying bags of grain from vessel to warehouse, and fishermen growing hoarse hawking their day's catch.

Overlooking it all was the huge rectangular fortress whose towered mudbrick walls rose stark white atop the steep escarpment edging the western side of the city.

Bak had heard Iken was a great trading center, but he had had no idea how exotic a place it was, how varied its people, how intriguing its narrow, disorderly lanes and dark doorways. He was struck by curiosity and excitement, a yearning to explore. Hardly able to contain himself, he prayed fervently to the lord Amon that his task would soon be over. The city beckoned.

"I'm afraid I can't help you, sir," Sennufer said. "I don't know who he is."

Bak dropped onto a low, three-legged stool, his spirits utterly deflated, and frowned at the short, wiry man, whose thin hair was so fiery red it had to be hennaed. "Have you any idea why he came here to bare his thoughts?" Sennufer shrugged. "A drunken whim, most likely." "A dangerous whim. If by chance he was overheard and word reached the wrong man, I'd not give a handful of grain for his chances of surviving to an old age."

"I wouldn't worry overmuch." Sennufer glanced outside, where Pashenuro and Kasaya were standing in a narrow lane, chatting with four spearmen. "Meryre heard the tale wrong. Or maybe I twisted it without meaning to, leading his thoughts astray. The besotted man didn't claim he saw a murder; he said he dreamed one man killed another."

Bak scowled at Sennufer, then turned his face away lest he seem unappreciative. He eyed this place of business: two cluttered rooms looking out on the lane and the blank wall of a warehouse. The rear of the room in which he sat was stacked waist-high with beer jars. Stained reed mats covered the hard-packed earthen floor. A basket of drinking bowls, four low tables, and a dozen battered stools stood around the room. Game boards had been painted on the upper surfaces of the tables, providing customers with an opportunity to wager while they drank.

The second room, which reeked of bread and beer, was abustle with activity. Two male servants, sweat pouring off faces made ruddy by heat and effort, chattered together. One crumbled half-baked bread into vats containing a sweetened liquid. The other stirred and strained the fermented brew, poured the thick liquid into large jars, and stoppered them with mud plugs. Sennufer was a frugal man, it seemed, one who manufactured the merchandise he sold. Bak was glad he had not been tempted. Home brew was ofttimes worthy of the gods, but also could be so strong it would lay low a bullock. With Sennufer's business so near the waterfront, the stronger type would no doubt be more in demand.

"You've surely heard of Lieutenant Puemre's death," Bak said. "Doesn't it stand to reason that your drunken friend witnessed that murder?"

"He may have, I grant you. Or he may've been seeing the creatures born in a beer jar: snakes, scorpions, crocodiles, even a murder or two."

"Can you describe this man who dreamed of murder?" Bak asked in a wry voice.

"He was of medium height, neither fat nor thin. He had dark hair cut short and dark eyes. He wore a short kilt, had a flint knife at his belt, and wore no sandals." Sennufer noted the bemused look on Bak's face. "I know. Half the men in Iken could answer to that description."

"Meryre said you thought him a craftsman." "I had that impression, yes."

"Why?"

Sennufer rubbed his earlobe, thinking. "His hands, I guess. The fingers were short and broad, as were the palms, and his nails were dirty. Or maybe stained. They were strong hands, the hands of a man who uses them to earn his bread."

"If he should come again to your place of business, would you recognize him?"

"I would." Sennufer hesitated, frowned. "I think I would."

Bak stood up to leave. One thing he knew for a fact. His interview with Commander Woser could not possibly turn out any more disappointing than this one had.

Bak and his men, unable to spot a path that climbed the escarpment to the fortress of Iken, approached one of a dozen or more spearmen guarding the harbor. The man pointed out a cut in the cliff face and gave directions to a steep path he aUured them they would find there. The route was well traveled, taking them straight to the fortress and a broad, towered gate. After they displayed their passes, Bak led the way inside a city that looked much like Buhen, with blocks of white-plastered buildings lining narrow, arrow-straight streets.

"Go to the garrison stores," he told Pashenuro and Kasaya. "Get food and drink, enough for three or four days, and bedding and a brazier and whatever else we'll need. Talk to all who approach you. Maintain a frank and open face and don't push too hard for news of Puemre's death, but learn what you can. After I talk with Commander Woser, I'll send a message, telling you where our quarters will be."

Bidding them farewell, he hurried to the commander's residence, a large house with a pillared court surrounded by rooms astir with scribal activity. When he identified himself, the men who overheard pretended indifference, but examined him as closely as a physician studies an open wound. A scribe sent him up a flight of stairs to the second level which, like the commandant's residence in Buhen, served as the living quarters.

Commander Woser, a medium-sized man with a slight paunch, was seated in his reception room in an armchair over which the tawny skin of a lion was draped. From his build, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and thick graying hair cropped below his earlobes, Bak guessed him to be in his late forties.

Without rising, he welcomed Bak with a smile so reserved it chilled the room. "So you're Thuty's policeman. Lieutenant Bak, is it?"

His tone rankled. He made it sound as if Bak should be on a leash, sitting at Thuty's feet.

"So you're Woser," Bak said with no smile at all. "An able commander, I've been told, but one too lost in the day-to-day business of his garrison to report a man missing to his superior officer."

Woser flushed. "An oversight, I admit."

Bak, forced to stand until bidden to sit, glanced around the room. A stack of scrolls lay on a table at Woser's elbow. Several low tables, wooden chests, three-legged stools, and camp stools competed for space with weapons and armor piled against the wall and a variety of products from Kush, confiscated perhaps or merely obtained in trade: a basket of ostrich eggs and feathers, a pile of bright skins, and an open chest filled with gaudy bead jewelry. "Commandant Thuty was not even aware you, and therefore he, had a man of lofty birth within your command."

"I shoulder no blame for that," Woser said stiffly. "I assumed Lieutenant Puemre registered in Buhen, as he was supposed to do. I had no knowledge of his failure in that regard."

Bak knew if he pushed too hard, he would be treading on shaky earth, but Thuty had given him authority over Woser in the matter of Puemre's death, so he pressed on. "Would it not have been politically expedient to make special note of a manlike Puemre when you made your reports to your commandant?"