Lauren Haney - Path of Shadows

Early the following morning, Psuro and the guide led the donkeys south to the port. His mission was to take them to the paddocks where Lieutenant Nebamon kept his pack ani mals, to find the fisherman Nufer and tell him where Bak waited, and to purchase necessary supplies for the voyage across the sea and south to the trail that would take them home to Kemet.

Bak expected the Medjay to be away for no less than three days. Rather than remain at the oasis, where Minnakht grew irritable and furtive each time a nomad family came to water its flocks, they walked each day to the shore. They swam fully dressed to protect themselves from the hot sun. As had been the case throughout the journey down the wadi, they never let the explorer out of their sight. While Bak swam with him, Nebre remained on shore with their weapons.

While Nebre swam, Bak stood watch.

Minnakht made no comment until the second day after

Psuro’s departure. He flopped down on the sand and grinned.

“I know you vowed to keep me alive and well, Bak, but your scrupulous devotion to duty has begun to wear on my pa tience. Can I not at least walk alone along the water’s edge?

With no donkeys or supplies, I can go no great distance.”

“A man might well be hidden among the rocks on that hill side, waiting for you to go off alone.” Bak pointed toward a high rocky mound rising from the plain.

“No man, no matter how talented with the bow, could strike his prey from so far away.”

“If he carries an ordinary bow, I agree, but have you not seen how far an arrow can fly when delivered by a compos ite bow?”

“How many men in this wasted land would have such a weapon?” Even as Minnakht scoffed at the idea, his eyes darted toward the bows laying on the sand beside Bak, both of the composite variety.

“Where you go, we go,” Bak stated in a voice he hoped would conclude the argument. “You’ve told us time and again that you fear for your life. If you truly do, you’ll talk no more of how weary you’ve grown of our company.”

Minnakht drew a spiral in the warm sand in front of his crossed legs, then erased it with a brusque swipe of his hand.

“I should not have let Psuro take away my donkeys and water jars. You’ve admitted you don’t know the fishermen who’re to take us across the sea. How do you know you can trust them?”

“I trust the man who told me of them.”

Minnakht opened his mouth as if to pursue the argument, but Bak’s closed expression forbade further debate. So he drew another spiral and eradicated it as abruptly as he had the first. He no longer bothered to hide his irritation. “Four of us cooped up on a small boat with the lord Set only knows how many fishermen. I’ve had nightmares no worse than that.”

Bak stood up and brushed the sand from his buttocks and legs. “Do you or do you not wish to be safe?”

“You know I do.” The explorer rose to his feet and formed a bitter smile. “I’ve no choice but to trust your judgment, but

I don’t have to like it, do I?”

Bak grinned. “You’ll one day look upon this journey as a memory to treasure.”

Minnakht’s incredulous look melted into a rueful laugh.

“Will we cross the sea to the Eastern Desert and sail south along its shore? Or will we follow the coastline of this wretched land before crossing over?”

That, Bak suspected, was the question the explorer had been edging toward all along. “I’ll let the fishermen make that decision.”

Psuro returned with the fishing boat, which its crew an chored a dozen or so paces off the beach. The sergeant dropped into the water, waded ashore, and, while he and Bak walked south along the water’s edge, reported the success of his mission. As Amonmose had promised, the vessel was larger than most fishing boats that plied the waters of the

Eastern Sea. In addition to its master Nufer, it had a crew of three. It offered plenty of space for four passengers and, in addition to the supplies needed for an extended fishing expe dition, enough for Bak and his party during a journey that could take as long as three weeks. Satisfied with all Psuro had accomplished, Bak waded out and hauled himself on board, where he spoke at length with Nufer.

They sailed early the following morning.

“What a life this is.” Minnakht placed his fishing pole be tween his knees to hold it steady, spread his arms wide, and stretched luxuriously. “If I didn’t prefer to roam a larger world, I’d remain with these men forever.”

Bak chuckled. “Not a day has passed that you haven’t re minded me that you’re a man of the desert, not the sea. Why this sudden affection for this vessel and the fishing?”

“Can I not enjoy the moment while at the same time I long to be free, to go where I please?” Laughing, the explorer took up his pole and dabbed the line up and down, making the wooden float bob on the water’s surface. “I like you, Bak, and I know you mean well, but your constant companionship is burdensome. Yours and that of everyone else in this small space we inhabit.”

“Thus far, we’ve made good time. These islands mark the halfway point in our voyage.”

Bak swept his hand in an arc encompassing a multitude of brownish or grayish rocky outcrops rising from the water over which they were sailing. Some were islets barely large enough to support the nest of an osprey. Others were consid erably more spacious, with sandy beaches that offered a safe haven to thousands of sea birds and their young. In the water below, a multitude of bright fish swam among plants that rose from the depths, waving long colorful arms in the sea’s currents.

“Once we pass through them, we’ll follow the shore of the

Eastern Desert.”

“At long last! You’ve no idea how much I long to sleep on the land I hold so close within my heart.”

Nufer was a cautious man, one unwilling to sail through the brightest of nights. During the several days’ voyage down the eastern shore of the sea, they had anchored at the water’s edge and camped on the sand. The coastal plain had been bare and uninviting, the mountains to the east high and for bidding. Bak knew their task would be more difficult when they reached the Eastern Desert, but he was glad to leave be hind that wasted landscape.

A smile spread across his face; his eyes twinkled with good humor. “You think we’ve held you close thus far, but what you’ve faced in the past is nothing like the way we’ll guard you when you set foot on the land where your life is most at risk.”

Minnakht rolled his eyes skyward. “Can I not breathe without taking in air you’ve expelled?”

For the next three nights, Nufer anchored his vessel in the shallow waters off small barren islands, lumps of rock and sand that rose in the sea off the coast of the mainland. Min nakht jested about the choice of camping places, asking Bak if he feared he would slip away. Bak had a feeling he was merely going through the motions of complaining.

On the fourth night, rather than camp on an unusually large island lying offshore, they anchored off the mouth of a wadi that cut deep into the Eastern Desert. For the first time since crossing the sea, they slept on the mainland. Minnakht displayed nothing more than a casual interest in what Bak had assumed would be a tantalizing route into the interior.

Had he decided at last to place his trust in them? Or was he biding his time?

Late the following evening, they camped on a narrow spit of jagged black rocks edged with sand that arced around a pool of mirror-calm blue-green water. A ridge rose gradually from the tip of the tiny peninsula to merge into a low cliff that had roughly paralleled the shoreline throughout the day.

Armed with harpoons, Psuro and two fishermen walked north in search of a quiet backwater where they might spear fish for the evening meal. Bak, Nebre, and Minnakht swam among a school of fingerlings that had sought shelter in the cove. Gulls wheeled overhead, squawking at the interlopers, while three white pelicans sat on crags, grooming their feath ers. Nufer, who feared the water as no sailor should, sat on shore with the third member of his crew, trading ribald jokes.