Lauren Haney - Path of Shadows

“Friend?”

The youth looked confused.

Bak knelt and drew with his finger two stick figures in the sand, men standing close together, their arms around each other’s shoulders. “Friends,” he said. A pace or so away, he drew two widely spaced figures, one face-forward, the other looking away. “Strangers.” In another place, he drew two men facing each other, each carrying a spear in a threatening stance. “Enemies.”

Not until Bak pantomimed the three actions, using the somewhat mistrustful youth as a second party, did his pupil begin to understand. Bak pointed toward the spot where they had glimpsed the figure. “Friend?”

Imset shook his head vehemently.

“Stranger? Enemy?”

The youth looked at the two sketches, his finger wavering uncertainly between them.

Bak went to the donkey to retrieve their weapons.

The following day, long before the sun peered into the gorge in which they had spent the night, Bak bade a reluctant goodbye to the young nomad. They had spotted the watching man several times during the intervening twenty-four hours, and he feared for the boy on his own. His efforts to convince him to remain with him had been futile, partly because of their mutual lack of words but mostly because Imset was de termined to move on. Nefertem had told him to go to his mother, who needed him, and he refused to do otherwise.

The youth had packed a small bag of food, filled a wa terbag, and wrapped his arms around the donkey’s neck, bid ding it a fond farewell. It could not travel the terrain he intended to pass through to evade the watching man. He had collected his weapons, and, with a stouthearted smile, had pointed in a northerly direction toward the red granite peak, which could not be seen from deep within the gorge where they stood. “Home,” he had said.

They had clasped each other’s shoulders, a silent goodbye, and the youth had walked up the gorge between overhanging cliffs to enter a wider area, where the brightening sky re vealed several open pools of water. Beyond the uppermost pool, he had climbed the irregular steps of a dry waterfall.

Whether the single word meant simply that he was going home, or whether it meant he knew this barren and desolate land better than any stranger, Bak had no idea. He prayed that the latter was the case. Or, better yet, that the watching man would choose to remain behind.

As he watched Imset vanish around a rock formation, loneliness descended upon him and he clutched the leather pouch hanging from his belt. Inside he felt the pendant, his sole way of contacting Nefertem. He had had to trust the no mad that the boy would guide him to a safe place where he would find food and water and where he could await his

Medjays and the caravan. Now that he had reached that place, he had to believe they would come. If not, surely a no mad family would bring their flocks to drink.

Shoving aside the nagging thought that Nefertem had sent him here to be offered up as a sacrifice for some purpose of his own, he stowed the remaining food and waterbag in a niche in the rocks, hobbled the donkey, and collected his weapons.

The nomad had told him large numbers of sandgrouse came early each morning to drink, and he wanted to see for himself this source of food. Leaving his small camp, he walked out of the gorge to the pools. What Nefertem had called a well looked to him like natural springs. Green grass, reeds, and thorny shrubs grew in and around the lower pools, while the water in the uppermost was held in a bare pit of sand.

He climbed a cut in the hillside that looked out upon the water, found a rocky nook where no one could creep up be hind him, and settled down to wait. Not long after sunrise, the birds began to arrive. Finches came first, a whirling mul titude of stubby, dark gray birds twittering a high-pitched nasal song. They darted back and forth as if to make sure the pools were safe and finally settled around the upper pool.

Other birds came in smaller numbers, and several lizards darted through the grass around the lower pools in search of insects.

Next came the grouse, brownish birds twice the size of the finches. They wheeled swiftly around in groups of twenty or more, circling the pools as their predecessors had, voicing something that sounded to Bak like a man fluttering his tongue while expelling a loud breath. Always keeping to their own flock, they landed on the hillside to preen them selves, their color so nearly like the earth and rocks that they were difficult to see. After a short time, they flew swiftly to the wadi floor to walk to the pool, where they lined up around the edge to drink. Satiated, each flock walked away from the pool, faced down the wadi, and leaped upward to fly off to ward the open desert. Bak watched enthralled. Not until the final flock had taken to the air did he think of the birds as food. He certainly would not starve if forced to remain here.

He walked back to the gorge to get the donkey and turned it loose in the fresh grass. Keeping his weapons close by in case of need, he took off his clothing and, using the metal bowl Nefertem had given him, poured water over himself, washing away the desert’s grime. He stayed well clear of the pools so as not to foul them. The water here, Nefertem had told him, attracted not only large numbers of birds and ani mals, but nomads from all across this part of the Eastern

Desert. It was nothing less than a gift of the gods and must be treated as such.

While he bathed and washed his clothing, he studied the surrounding terrain. He did not spot the watching man, but he located near the mouth of the gorge a shaded crevice in which a man might hide through the morning hours. Fin ished with his bath and feeling considerably better for it, he donned his wet loincloth, kilt, and tunic, then led the donkey into the gorge and hobbled it so it would not wander back to the grass. Returning to the open area in which the pools were located, taking care not to be seen from above, he climbed up to the crevice, laid his waterbag beside him, and settled down to wait. With luck and the help of the gods, the watch ing man would grow curious-or fearful that his quarry had slipped away.

The sun climbed slowly into the sky. The day grew hot and the lizards indolent. A flock of cheeping sparrows flitted from shrubs to reeds to the grass and the bare ground, while a pair of larks walked among the rocks. Watching their deter mined but serene quest for sustenance, Bak grew drowsy.

Abruptly, amid sharp chirps of warning, the birds shot into the air. Bak started, came fully awake. Something had fright ened them. The watching man? He had been hidden for over an hour if the sun’s passage told true, plenty of time for cu riosity to eat away at a man. He gripped his spear and shield and rose to his feet, as silent as the lizards that had darted in among the rocks.

A stone clattered down the slope some distance to his right. He eased into a fresh position, trying to glimpse the in truder. A jumble of rocks that had rolled down from above cut off his view. He could see no farther than the uppermost pool and considerably less of the slope. Quelling his impa tience, he remained where he was, listening for another sound, hoping to determine the intruder’s exact position. He heard nothing. The man, if indeed the noise had been made by a man, had to be a nomad to creep so silently down a hill as steep as this one and as covered with loose sand and rocks.

The time stretched to an eternity. Unable to stand the strain any longer, Bak stuck his head out of the crevice far enough to see around the rocks. A man wearing the ragged garb of a desert nomad was climbing downward, watching where he placed his feet. He was a half-dozen paces above the wadi floor at a point almost even with the uppermost pool. His hair was long and unkempt. He carried a bow, and a quiver filled with arrows hung from his left shoulder.