Lauren Haney - The Right Hand of Amon

"Lieutenant Bak!" A boy of seven or eight stood on the end of the northern quay, shouting. "Lieutenant Bak!" "What is it?" Bak lowered the yard and let the vessel's momentum carry it into the still waters of the harbor. "I've a message for you, sir. From the Medjay Kasaya."

"Tell me."

"He found the one he's been looking for. You must go to the market right away. To the animal paddocks."

Bak paused at the edge of the market to look across the sandy waste toward the paddocks. Somewhere behind, he had lost Huy. The officer had insisted on coming along, saying he wanted Bak with him when he spoke to Sergeant Minnakht and the men of Puemre's company.

Bak spotted Kasaya instantly. The big Medjay stood beside a paddock in which a lanky Kushite in a skimpy loincloth was trying to rope a huge; long-horned bullock. The enraged creature was wheeling around, bellowing, raising a cloud of dust that half hid Kasaya, three of the spearmen who had helped with the search, and a small dusky boy. Kasaya towered over the child, his huge hands gripping the boy's skinny shoulders. Bak loped toward them.

The boy watched him draw near, his eyes wide, terrified. Kasaya must surely have made it clear that we pose no threat, Bak thought, that we are in fact trying to keep him alive. Why then is he so afraid?

Without warning, the boy jerked free of the Medjay's grasp, ducked beneath a spearman's outflung hand, and raced away from the paddock through the dust, aiming for a row of stalls at the edge of the market.

"Catch him!" Bak yelled, frantic to keep him isolated from the crowd, where he would be almost impossible to find.

He sprinted across the sand, determined to head the boy off. Kasaya and the spearmen spread out, forming an arc to drive him" lnto Bak's arms. Bak ran to within ten paces of the child and slowed, poised to lunge. Kasaya and the spearmen closed in. The child, looking as desperate as a gazelle held at bay by a pack of wild dogs, veered straight toward Bak, startling him. Bak reached out to grab. The boy ducked low and sideways. Bak's fingers touched hot, sweaty flesh and the child slipped from his grasp. Moments later, he plunged into the throng of shoppers.

Bak swung on his men, furious at the loss. "Imbeciles! How could you let him get away like that?"

"I couldn't hold him, sir." Kasaya looked devastated. "I swear I couldn't. He's as slippery as an eel."

Bak took a long, deep breath, controlling his anger and frustration. He, too, had had a hand in losing the child. "Where's the other man I sent to you?"

"We left him in the storage magazine where we found the boy." Kasaya pointed toward the center of five interconnected warehouses fifty or so paces away. "I told him to guard the child's belongings."

"The boy'll not go back there." Bak glared at the market and the near-hopeless search they faced. "Let's spread out and find him."

With Bak in the center, they plunged into the throng. The aisles were jammed with men, women, and children from all walks of life, people who lived along the Belly of Stones and those who had come from afar to see the lord Amon. Some haggled over prices. Others wandered from stall to stall, squeezing fruits and vegetables, shaking jars, lifting the uppermost layer of a basket in search of hidden perfection-or rot-below the surface. A few gazed at the merchandise in quest of a special bargain or looked wistfully at objects too dear for their meager means.

Heat and a multitude of odors enveloped food stalls, metalsmiths' braziers, and crowded humanity. Shouts and laughter rose above a buzz of voices. Bak shouldered a man aside and was shoved in turn by another man. Bumped from behind, he stubbed his toe on a brick holding down a corner of linen and stumbled into a donkey that swung its head around to snap at him. Sweat poured down his back and chest. Anger and frustration clouded his face, discouraging ~; sharp comments from men whose feet he trod on.

Someone screamed. A woman's high-pitched wail of horror and loss. Silence fell all across the market, as if the people awaited another scream. A curious murmur swelled to a cacophony of speculation and fear.

Bak raced in the direction from which he thought the scream had come, shoving people out of his way. He seldom carried his baton of office, but now he was sorry he had left it behind in Buhen. Sobbing broke out ahead, pulling him toward his goal, a ring of people already collecting around someone else's misfortune.

He burst through the ring and stopped dead still. "No!" he cried, the words torn from him as he took in the scene. "No!"

The armorer's daughter Mutnefer was on her knees, bending over the small dusky child. Her body shook with sobs drawn from the depths of her being. The boy lay on his side in the dust among a dozen fallen jars and a puddle of blood. His bony arms and legs were flung askew, his eyes and mouth open wide, as if he were as afraid in death as he had been in life. A last drop of blood clung to the lower end of a long, deep slit across his throat.

"Troop Captain Huy remained with the body as you asked him to, sir. It was he who ordered the crowd away." Kasaya stared straight ahead, unable to meet Bak's eyes. Nor could he look at the straw nest hidden behind a store of pottery ewers, braziers, and bowls in a rear corner of the warehouse, illuminated by a flaming torch mounted on the wall. The sheet was dirty and stained; an unwashed bowl had drawn ants. A larger bowl was filled with childish treasures; a wooden crocodile and dog, a ball, a boat, a sheathed knifathat must once have been carried by Puemre, and a small ivory scribal pallet with shallow wells containing red and black cakes of ink and a narrow slot holding two reed pens.

Bak, kneeling beside the makeshift bed, could barely look at them himself. He felt as guilty as Kasaya and the spearmen did. If they had not searched out the child, he might never have run into the arms of the one who slew him. "What of the others?"

"They were all in the market, sir." "All of them?" Bak asked, incredulous.

"Yes, sir." Kasaya swallowed hard. "Commander Woser came soon after you left to see what the trouble was, and his daughter, mistress Aset, was with him. It was she who realized the shock was bringing forth the baby and led Mutnefer away. Lieutenant Nebseny came running, as did Lieutenants Senu and Inyotef, each from a different direction."

Bak rubbed his hand across his eyes as if to wipe away the images stored there. No one had witnessed the murder, nor had anyone noticed the boy, not even Mutnefer, until he grabbed the back of her dress as his legs gave way beneath him.

Bak stood up, clasped Kasaya's shoulder, and gave the Medjay a wan smile. "Go find me a basket, and tell Nebwa's men to report to Pashenuro at the island fortress. We'll take the boy's possessions to Mutnefer's house. Her brothers and sisters will like the toys; the rest she can keep as memories."

After Kasaya hurried away, Bak cleaned the bowl with a handful of straw, shook out the sheet and folded it neatly, and laid them with the other objects in the basket. Each item tore at his heart, deepening his determination to lay hands on Puemre's slayer, a man so low he had slain a helpless child. Seething inside, he glanced around, making sure he had everything and searching for… What? A broken chunk of pottery with a sketch on its surface? He poked around in the straw, found nothing.

Rocking back on his heels, he studied the spot where the bed had been and the pottery stacked around it. He noticed, within arm's reach of the boy's nest, a wide-necked ewer lying beside a pile of bowls when it should have been stacked with the other jars. He picked it up. Something rattled inside.

Muttering a quick prayer to the lord Amon, he turned the ewer upside down. Four shards fell out, each covered with rough sketches in red and black ink, sometimes three or four images one on top of another, the red figures mixed with the black, making it hard to tell them apart. One picture, a bolder black than the rest, showed two men of Kemet, one thrusting a weapon down the other's throat, above a wavy line, water. The figures were so much like those in the sketch he had seen in Puemre's house that he was sure they had both been drawn by the same hand.