Lauren Haney - The Right Hand of Amon

Bak closed his eyes and let himself drift off. Something moved, something in his bed, some other creature perhaps. His eyes popped open. He lay still, saying nothing, feeling his heart thud in his breast. Except for Nebwa's soft snores, the room was silent. He must have been dreaming.

He started to turn onto his side, felt another movement, the pressure of something round and cold and damp against his arm. Like a snake. A snake? He shot out of bed with a yell.

"Wha…?" Nebwa mumbled. "What? What is it?" "Get outside! Quick!" Bak leaped toward the door, a vague rectangle slightly lighter than the room. With eyes accustomed to the dark and the sky bright with stars, the lane was like a long, straight, dry riverbed, empty and barren.

"What happened?" Nebwa demanded, a pace or two behind.

"I felt something in my bed," Bak said grimly. "A snake, I think."

"You don't — suppose…" Nebwa let the sentence hang in the air between them, the unspeakable thought.

"The house was empty when we moved in," Bak said, thinking aloud. "No, Nebwa. It's probably been inside all along, hiding from us." He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "I'll go get a light so we can see. We can't go back to bed with that thing crawling around, looking for a warm body to cuddle up against."

He trotted down the lane, as naked as the day he was born. As far as he could tell, his yell had not awakened any of the neighbors sleeping inside the nearby houses or on the cooler rooftops. He stopped at the first intersection he came to. In the distance, he spotted a spearman assigned to night patrol, torch in hand. The watchman, a chubby young man barely old enough to shave, was not unduly surprised at the tale he told; snakes often invaded the old houses.

They loped back to Bak's quarters side by side. The soldier held the torch just inside the door and they all peeked in. As far as they could see, the snake was not on the floor. Grabbing a spear leaning against the wall, Bak sucked in air as if it were courage and crept toward the sleeping platform. Nothing moved; the bed looked empty. He nudged the wrinkles with the spearpoint. The creature caught in the folds of the sheet came to life, writhing to free itself, hissing. The whole bed seemed to move and then the sheet and snake, tangled together, fell off the platform. Bak leaped backwards, his heart locked in his throat.

A small flat head slid out of a fold of linen and a brownish body followed. The head rose off the floor, its upper body swelled to form a hood. It hissed at Bak and the men in the doorway. A cobra. One of the deadliest of all reptiles. Bak took the torch from the watchman and stepped closer to the snake. Holding the flame toward the creature, distracting it with fire, he muttered a quick prayer of forgiveness to the lady Wadjet, the goddess whom the cobra represented, and struck out with the spear. He drove the point through the hood, pinning the snake against the sleeping platform. The watchman killed the flailing creature with his spear.

"I've lived in Wawat more than thirty years," Nebwa said, staring at the broken body, "and I've never before seen a cobra this far south."

The watchman prodded it as if checking to make sure it was truly dead. "I saw one a month or two ago. It came south in a shipment of grain. I thought someone killed it, but maybe it got away."

"More likely someone kept it for himself," Nebwa muttered.

Bak felt chilled to the bone. So dangerous a pet would have made a good weapon if one wished to slay a king like Amon-Psaro. Or a nosy police officer.

Bak woke up with what one of his Medjays, a man slain in the line of duty the previous year, would have called a burr in his loincloth. He itched to lay hands on the one who had left the cobra in his sleeping pallet. If the goal had been to stop his meddling, it had failed miserably.

He bade Nebwa good-bye at sunup, sent the twenty borrowed spearmen to the garrison stores for tools and supplies, and hurried to the market to tell Pashenuro of the new task he must shoulder. Following narrow, winding paths between stalls already drawing customers, he searched for his two Medjays. He traded a few faience beads for breakfast-a flat loaf of bread and a bowl of thick lentil stew-and ate as he walked along.

As early as it was, the proprietors of woodframe stalls roofed with reed or palm-leaf mats had set out bowls filled with fragrant herbs; amulets and good-luck charms; lentils and beans; bronze tweezers, razors, and knives; and a multitude of other small objects. Larger items were piled along flimsy walls: flint-edged scythes and wooden plows, lengths of linen, large pottery jars filled with beer or oil or salted fish or meat, smaller jars containing wine or honey. Local herdsmen and farmers were building red and green and yellow mounds of fresh fruits and vegetables on rush mats spread on the ground. Men and women set out baskets filled with succulent dates or sweet, sticky cakes or bread or eggs or grain. Several men had hung unplucked fowl from the wooden frames of lean-tos, while others were spreading fish on the ground.

He liked best the stalls of the men and women who had come from far upriver. Seated cross-legged on the ground or perched on low stools, the people were as exotic as the products surrounding them. Short and fat, tall and thin. Painted, tattooed, scarified, greased, smeared with red clay or white ashes. Some nearly naked, others elaborately robed, a few dressed no different than men of Kemet. Their offerings included tawny or spotted animal skins, ostrich feathers and eggs, lengths of rare woods and chunks of gemstone, caged animals and birds, shackled slaves.

The customers, though sparse at this early hour, were equally intriguing: local farmers and villagers; soldiers, sailors, and traders from Kemet to the north; and herdsmen, farmers, and villagers from far to the south. Each man and woman had brought objects to trade, foodstuffs and luxury items common to them yet desirable or rare to others.

Across a stretch of barren, hard-packed sand, he found Pashenuro sitting on the mudbrick wall of an animal paddock filled with a mixed herd of sheep and goats, talking with a bald, potbellied farmer. A fine dust rose in puffs above the bleating creatures, trotting this way and that for no good reason. Other paddocks contained donkeys, a lone mule, rare in this part of the world, and long- and shorthorned cattle, snorting or lowing or braying in protest of their entrapment. Dust drifted through the air, carrying the smell of animal and the stench of manure.

"The boy's been seen," Pashenuro said after the farmer walked away, "'but he's like a wraith, here one moment and gone the next. Today we'll search for a hideaway outside the market, looking into houses both empty and occupied, and the storage magazines as well."

Bak glanced at the rows of warehouses between the market and the harbor. If the buildings were fully used, two men would need a week to search through the objects stored inside. He yearned to shake Woser until his teeth rattled. "I must tear you away from this task and assign you to another. In the meantime, I've borrowed some men from Nebwa, and I'll send four to help Kasaya."

"Another task?" the Medjay asked, surprised. "I thought finding the child more important than anything else."

Bak gave a short, hard laugh. "To us, yes, but Commander Woser has his own priorities. He's ordered me to make habitable the island fortress so Amon-Psaro can live there in comfort and safety. I've no choice but to make you head of the men who do the work." He swatted at a fly buzzing around his face. "Come, let's find Kasaya, and I'll explain to you both at once."

Pashenuro could not stop shaking his head. "How can the commander do this, sir? Why is he doing it?"