Lauren Haney - The Right Hand of Amon

"What woke you?" Bak asked.

"Nothing., Antef's eyes-darted to his inquisitor's face and fell away. "Nothing, I swear!"

"You heard two men talking, didn't you?" Bak kept his voice hard, his tone positive, as if he himself had been on the spot instead of hearing the tale thirdhand from Meryre. "You saw them arguing. One man turned away, preparing to leave. The other grabbed him from behind. I know what happened then-one man stabbed the other-but I must hear it in your words."

"No! I saw nothing!"

"I don't enjoy using the cudgel, but I will if I must." "It was dark, but…" Antef's voice broke; he dropped his chin to his breast. "Yes, he slew him. I could tell from the sounds I heard and what little I could see. He stabbed him in the face or maybe the neck, dragged him to the river, and pushed him in. It happened so fast… I could do nothing to help, I swear!"

Not that fast, Bak felt sure, but even if Antef had interceded, Puemre would have died. And the potter would probably have died with him. "What did the murderer look like?"

"I never saw his face. If I had, I'd have told." Antef began to sob. "I fear him greatly, and I'll not rest until he's caught. But I can't help you. I saw only his back." Bak believed him. He was too frightened to lie.

"I asked everyone I met to tell me of the boy," Kasaya said, "but no one has seen him. He was like a shadow to Lieutenant Puemre. Now it's as if the sun has gone and the shadow with it."

"Was he slain and thrown into the river like Puemre, I wonder?" Pashenuro asked.

"Antef saw no child." Bak's voice turned grim, reflecting the dread lurking in his thoughts. "We can only pray he wasn't slain somewhere else at another time."

The trio hurried along the row of trees hugging the river's edge. Kasaya, the best tracker of the three, scanned the earth to right and left, searching for tracks or objects that might have been left behind by a child or by a man intent on throwing aside the remnants of murder.

They slowed their pace as they approached their goal, a mound of tortured black granite, broken and cracked by oven-like heat and midnight cold, by blowing sands and raging waters. Rising from a blanket of dun-colored sand blown off the western desert, the mound reached out toward the northern end of the elongated island that lay in the water below the fortress. The channel between mound and island was confined to a passage no broader than ten paces, where the water raged down a series of shallow, foaming falls and swirled around jagged and torn boulders.

They climbed the mound, searching first for the sheltered spot where Antef had dreamed of the lady Hathor. The wind had blown with strength at least twice since Puemre's disappearance, so their chances of finding signs of murder were slim at best. Nevertheless, they had to try.

Bak stood on the tallest chunk of granite and, hands on hips, surveyed the tumbled stones and raging waters below. To the west, the lord Re was resting on the horizon. "The scarred man, you say, is an armorer?"

"If he's the man you saw, and he must be, his name is Senmut." Kasaya knelt on a low, snaggle-tooth boulder to study a likely pocket of sand. "The chief armorer told me he makes and repairs spears, sharpening points and setting them on the shafts."

Pashenuro stole Bak's next question. "What was his connection with Lieutenant Puemre?"

Kasaya moved on to another nook. "Senmut's oldest daughter, a girl of fifteen years, was the one who cleaned and washed and cooked for him and the boy."

Bak scowled. "If she did nothing more than housework, why would her father knock me senseless to search the building?" He stepped across a gap to another, lower boulder. Glancing at a small sandy pocket, he let out a grunt of satisfaction. "Here's Antef's nest, I think. Or someone else's secret drinking place."

The Medjays hurried to his side to look at four empty beer jars lodged in a crack between two weathered boulders. A yellowish stain on another rock reeked of urine. After Kasaya searched the area and found nothing further, they stood where Antef must have and looked down on the sandy waste below the mound. Somewhere there, Puemre had been slain.

The Medjays clambered down and set to work, examining the sweep of sand while Bak searched the rest of the mound. The shadows were long and deep when Kasaya found a small dark stain he thought was blood buried under the fine layer of sand deposited since the murder. Pashenuro hurried to the river and worked his way along the shore. He soon found a brownish spot on a rock poised an arm's length above the swirling waters. It might or might not have been blood, but the rock would have been an ideal place from which to jettison Puemre's body.

Darkness was falling when Bak found the footprint, located half under a rock in a niche so small only a child could have hidden there. From that point, the mute boy Ramose could have peered through a gap between boulders and watched the slayer take Puemre's life. They had to find that child, if still he lived. "I've found something!" he called, his voice pulsing with excitement.

A loud crack sounded beside him. He glanced around, uncertain what had made the noise. He noticed a faint smudge on the rock next to him, like a bruise.

"Get down, Lieutenant!" Pashenuro yelled, ducking into a crack too narrow for his bulk.

Bak glimpsed something fly past his head and heard another, louder crack. A rock! Someone using a sling. A deadly weapon in the hands of a trained warrior, a weapon often used by the soldiers of Wawat. He ducked, rolled between projecting stones, and peeked out to check on his men. Kasaya was hunkered down next to a boulder at the base of the mound, staring out toward the water. Pashenuro's refuge was closer to the river.

Another missile about the size of a goose egg flew over Bak's head, smashed against the boulder behind him, and burst.

"There he is!" Pashenuro called. "Behind the ridge on the island."

"I see himl" Kasaya yelled.

Bak squirmed around until he could see. As if on demand, a man popped up, swung his arm, and let fly another rock that smacked against a boulder within arm's length. He vanished as fast as he had appeared. The way the light was failing, Bak had seen nothing but a vague, colorless silhouette.

He felt no sense of danger-he and his men were safe as long as they remained, where they were-but he hated being pinned down, waiting to be saved by the dark. And he longed to catch the assailant. He studied the channel between the mound and the island, thinking he might swim across. The flow was fast and the low falls, if the foam gave any clue, were pounding on hidden rocks. The risk was too great.

"I might be able to swim across." Kasaya's voice was tentative, as if he too thought the risk unwarranted.

"Let the swine go." Bak glanced at the print of the small, bare foot, making sure he had not scuffed it in his rush for safety. "I've a footprint you must see before the light goes."

They walked back to their quarters in the dark, too intent on making their way through the unfamiliar city to talk of their experience. Bak was puzzled by the attack. Why had the assailant used a sling when a bow would have been a far more effective weapon? Only one reason made sense: a bow and full quiver would have been impossible to transport if the attacker swam to the long island.

A second question troubled him. He and his men had learned almost nothing about Puemre's death. Every tale they had heard since arriving at Iken had been common knowledge. So why would anyone try to slay them? Or had he alone been the intended victim? Most of the rocks had come his way. Had he learned something unique, something no one else knew? Or had one of Woser's officers simply been trying to frighten him off? He worried the problem like a dog frets over a tough piece of leather, but found no satisfactory explanation.