Lauren Haney - Path of Shadows

Eyeing Hor in a new light, Bak guessed, “You’d gone into

Waset to trade?”

“My wife was carrying our first child.” Hor smiled at the thought, but quickly sobered. “I wished her to talk to a woman of Kemet who helps others give birth. I paid the woman dearly to reveal her secrets, thinking to improve their chance of survival during the ordeal.”

“While in the city,” Nefertem added, “they picked up a few items impossible to get in this empty land. We’ve a friend who helps us trade for what we need. What we can’t carry on a single donkey, he brings later on a string of animals.”

Bak thought of the besotted fools who had attacked Hor out of simple malice. If they had only known that he had ar rived in the capital carrying the wealth of the desert. “Your wife is well, I hope?”

“I have a son,” Hor beamed. “We call him Minnakht.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” User stared in awe at the gigantic slash in the earth.

“Nor have I,” Bak said, as amazed as the explorer.

Nebenkemet shook his head, whether in wonder or nega tion was impossible to tell. “Not the best way of taking gold from the earth. Too much effort by far.”

“I’d prefer toiling in the open air to burrowing in the dark ness of a tunnel,” Ani said, “but those high walls don’t look safe.”

Ahmose stood with them, hands bound behind his back, staring at the long ditch cut deep into the side of the high brown hill. A half-dozen nomads were breaking up the stone at the far end and a like number carried heavy baskets back along the cut, taking the broken stone to be processed. The prisoner’s face looked gray. He had come so close to finding what he sought. Now here he was, looking upon his failure.

“You know mining?” Nefertem eyed Nebenkemet with in terest. “Minnakht said there had to be a better way, but this is all we knew to do.”

“I not long ago toiled in the gold mines east of Abu.”

Nebenkemet wiped the sweat from his brow, added, “I could make a few suggestions if you wish.”

Bak turned away from the excavation to walk a half-dozen paces along a well-trodden track to where the bearers were emptying their baskets beside a second group of nomads.

These men were seated on the ground, pounding the exca vated rock, painstakingly reducing the stone to the consis tency of coarse sand. Another man sprinkled the granules into a sloping metal basin partially filled with water. He sloshed them around, allowing the gold to fall to the bottom while the lighter stone remained on top.

“I guessed Minnakht had found gold when I was told of the questions he asked at the turquoise and copper mines,”

Bak said. “Or did you find the vein, Nefertem, and ask for his help?”

“We’ve been taking gold from this place for many years, but we believed the vein had run out. I knew we could trust

Minnakht, so I brought him here. He urged us to dig farther.

He was right. The vein went on and our ditch went ever deeper, its walls higher and less stable. One man was felled by falling rocks, losing his life, and several have been hurt when walls collapsed. Minnakht thought to cross the sea to learn a safer way of mining.”

A pottery bowl sat on the ground beside the man washing out the gold. A mound of the precious metal sparkled within.

Bak glimpsed Ahmose’s face, his look of unadulterated greed.

“I suppose he found other veins in this wadi.”

“He did.” Nefertem beckoned a nomad who stood nearby.

The man poured the glittering grains of gold from the bowl into a leather bag already bulging with earlier deposits and handed it to the tribal chief. “My people have no need for great wealth. We dig only what we require to keep us alive and well in times of hardship. When we come to the end of this vein, we’ll go on to another.”

“I’ve a need to relieve myself,” Ahmose said.

“Can you not wait?” Psuro snapped.

“You must free my hands so I can lower my loincloth.”

Psuro looked to Bak for a decision, but Ahmose groaned and bent over, making his need clear. Not a man among them failed to think of how awkward and unpleasant it would be to clean a man in this place where every drop of water was in valuable. The sergeant nodded to Nebre, who jerked his dag ger out of its sheath and slashed through the leather cord binding the prisoner’s hands.

Ahmose straightened, flung away the cord, and shoul dered Nebre aside. He tore the bag of gold from Nefertem’s hand and raced down the trail toward the camp. He had run no more than twenty paces when Hor and four other nomads came around the shoulder of the mountain, blocking his path.

He swung around, saw Bak, Psuro, and Nebre speeding after him, and veered aside to race up the slope toward the mine.

The rocks on the hillside were jagged and sharp-edged, forcing Ahmose either to enter the huge ditch, which was a dead end, or climb up the hill to right or left. All along both sides of the excavation, the surface had been smoothed by the miners to form a path from which they could suspend a few men to cut away more of the wall. Ahmose chose the path on the downhill side of the ditch.

Bak and his Medjays raced after him. Close behind came

Nefertem and two nomads armed with bows. The other men were spreading themselves across the hillside, cutting Ah mose off should he try to return to the wadi. Bak sped up the slope, angry at the ease with which the prisoner had tricked them and determined to recapture him. Psuro, who was furi ous at having been made to look the fool, and Nebre, adding a new grudge to the old, ran so close behind that Bak feared they would step on his heels.

The hill rose toward the sky; the man-made chasm grew deeper. Bak slowly closed the gap between himself and Ah mose. Fifteen paces. Twelve. Ten. The fresher dirt near the top was softer, looser, slowing the pace. He began to fret.

Soon they would reach the deepest end of the mine. Beyond, the hill rose untouched, a hazardous slope of hard-edged rocks and boulders. Ahmose knew better how to pick his way through these natural obstacles than they did, knew how to use this harsh landscape for cover.

Dredging up an added burst of speed, Bak narrowed the space between himself and his quarry by half. Ahmose must have heard the thud of his feet. He looked back-and stepped on a fist-sized stone. The rock rolled beneath his foot, tipping him toward the chasm. He raised his arms to regain his bal ance and Bak leaped toward him, reaching out to catch him.

An arrow sped past, missing Bak’s shoulder by a hand’s breadth, and plunged into Ahmose’s back. He toppled into the gold mine.

“He had to die at my hands.” Nefertem sat on his stool by the hearth, watching the old man add twigs to the fire over which a lamb stew simmered. “He slew my father and he took the life of Minnakht, a man as close to me as a brother.

What I did was right and proper.”

Bak had trouble resigning himself to the loss of his pris oner. In a way, the tribal chieftain had helped Ahmose escape the justice he had deserved, the wrath of the lady Maat. “I’d hoped to learn where he buried Minnakht. His father would wish him returned to Kemet to be placed in a tomb in western

Waset.”

“Minnakht loved this desert more than any other place, and here he should stay.”

Secretly Bak agreed. Commander Inebny would not be happy that his son was truly lost to him, but so be it. “Did he have a woman here, a family?”

Nefertem stared at nothing, seeking an answer Bak was convinced he knew. After a long silence, he said, “You saved my brother and his wife and child. You found the slayer of my father and Minnakht and of Dedu, a man of high repute among my people.” An unexpected smile spread across his face and he glanced toward Nebenkemet. “You’ve even pro vided me with a man who can tell us how best to mine the gold.”