Lauren Haney: Place of Darkness

He rounded the boulders and looked upward.

Menna, about fifty paces away and not far from the top of the escarpment, stopped to look back. “You’ve told the men at Djeser Djeseru?”

“That you’re the malign spirit?” Bak asked, striding on without a pause.

The guard officer laughed at the appellation, but the sound was brittle, humorless. “Yes.”

“I didn’t, but they’ll learn soon enough.”

Menna’s laugh turned cynical. “Such a choice bit of news would be impossible to keep quiet.”

“The life you led is gone for good, if that’s what you’re thinking. My presence is much like the first drop of rain in a downpour. If I fail to snare you, others will come.” Never slowing his pace, thinking to close the gap between them as much as possible, Bak glanced toward Djeser Djeseru and the unit of guards quickly marching toward the base of the trail. Kasaya, with Tracker on a leash at his heels, hurried along beside the officer leading the column. He felt sure Menna could see them from where he stood. “You’ve reached the end, Lieutenant.”

“My life in Kemet may be over, but I’m a long way from finished. I was a child of western Waset. I know the desert wadis beyond the Great Place like no other man alive.”

Bak doubted Menna intended to escape into the desert. He was too much a man of the river and the city. “You were in the garrison this morning. You must’ve heard that soldiers began searching for Pairi’s and Humay’s fishing boat at break of day. I’ll wager they’ve found it by now.”

“There are other boats, Lieutenant.” Menna pivoted and hurried up the trail to the rim of the escarpment, where he disappeared from view.

With a grim smile, Bak hurried after him. The guard officer had given himself away. He thought to escape by water, not lose himself in the sandy wastes.

Bak stopped briefly at the top of the escarpment to get his bearings. He had not traveled this trail since he was a youth, hunting birds and hares in the surrounding wadis, but it had changed very little over the years. The cliff to the west formed a gentle arc, gradually gaining in height all the way to the back of the valley, where it towered above the two temples. Ahead, Menna ran along a trail that eased away from the rim to hug a long and very irregular series of hills atop the ridge separating the valley in which Djeser Djeseru lay from the Great Place.

Below, the royal guards were trotting up the path that traversed the lower slope, spreading out in a line two men abreast, with one of the pair falling back each time the path narrowed. A faint barking carried upward, and Kasaya was looking Bak’s way. Bak waved and pointed west, letting the Medjay know where Menna had gone and where he intended to go.

Setting off again, he eyed the landscape ahead. He saw no sign of the guards stationed on top of the cliff above Djeser Djeseru, but he assumed they were there. Menna would either run into their waiting arms or, more likely, he would spot them before he reached them and try to escape, using either the trail that would take him to the Great Place or some ill-defined and seldom used track that would take him into one of the many wadis west of Djeser Djeseru and the Great Place. A desolate, barren region in which he could easily disappear until such time as he could safely work his way back to the river.

Given time, the army would track him down, of course, but. .

A sudden thought struck Bak. He did not want someone else to snare the malign spirit. He wanted to do it himself.

The realization added wings to his feet and he sped along the trail, his eyes on the man ahead. The short, sharp cheeps of swallows swooping downward to their nests in the cliffs sounded above the rhythmic crunch of his sandals on the trail. Spurts of dust rose each time a foot touched the path, and the dust risen from Menna’s flying feet hung in the air, tickling his nose.

The trail veered closer to the rim of the cliff, dropped briefly into the upper end of a wadi that ran off to the right, and went on, sometimes wandering closer to the cliff, sometimes away toward the hill-like projections atop the ridge.

Sweat rolled from his body, a stitch formed in his side. The calves of his legs ached and the wooden staff grew heavy in his hand.

The distance between him and Menna shrunk to forty paces, thirty, twenty. The guard officer heard his pounding feet, glanced over his shoulder, and managed an added burst of speed. Bak held his pace; the extra effort required to maintain the distance between them would tax him too much.

The cliff grew higher, the horrendous drop to the valley floor more fearsome. A long hill, more like a ridge, rose to the right. The trail, squeezed closer to the rim of the cliff, rose with it. Bak glimpsed Djeser Djeseru below, pale and insignificant in so large a valley, a series of sharp-edged horizontals in a landscape of sand and stone blunted by time and erosion. The imposing rock face towered above the structure, torn by the elements into towers and crevices and folds and great slabs that appeared to cling by a hair to the parent rock. Its shadows had turned a deep rosy pink, the sunstruck features a multitude of golds and yellows.

A quick glance back gave Bak a glimpse of Kasaya, Tracker and the lieutenant who had come with Senenmut running along the trail atop the cliff, followed closely by a half-dozen royal guards filing out of the trail up the escarpment.

As he neared the top of the incline, he once again began to catch up with Menna. The officer’s energy had flagged, his pace had dwindled. Bak gradually closed the distance between them. Less than ten paces apart, close enough to hear Menna’s labored gasps, he chased his quarry along a narrow ridge that rose between the cliff to his left and a wadi that opened off to the right. Just beyond, the branch trail angled off toward the Great Place. He saw no waiting guards.

Menna veered onto the path to the right. Bak bounded toward him, covering the gap between them in a half-dozen paces. Flinging the makeshift baton aside, he tackled the officer around the thighs and pulled him down. They rolled in the dirt, with one on top and then the other. Bak tried to get a better hold, failed. His arms were slick with sweat and so were the guard officer’s legs. Menna tried to kick free, to strike his opponent in the stomach or high between the legs, but Bak held on tight, restricting movement below the waist.

They rolled off the trail, dislodging a small pile of rocks someone had left alongside for some unknown purpose. The heavy counterpoise at the back of Menna’s broad collar snagged on one of the stones. The collar broke and fell away.

The officer twisted, grabbed a rock, struck Bak across the side of the head. A glancing blow that made his head ring but failed to knock him senseless. A warning blow, he took it. He let go of his opponent’s legs, rolled away, and scrambled to his feet.

Menna stood up more slowly, rock in hand, a calculating look on his face. Bak backed farther away, as respectful of the rock as he would have been of a spear. He glanced around, trying to find the baton he had so thoughtlessly flung aside. He spotted it six or seven paces from where he stood, too far. Taking advantage of Bak’s distraction, Menna jumped toward him, rock raised high, poised to smash his head. Bak leaped aside, spun around and made a fist, and hit the officer as hard as he could in the lower back. Menna’s spine arched and he groaned, but he stayed on his feet. Retreating a few paces, he dropped the rock and tore his dagger from its sheath. Legs spread wide, eyes glinting dangerously, he practically dared Bak to come and get him.

Bak slipped his own dagger free. They faced each other about four paces apart, breathing hard, sweat pouring down their grimy faces and bodies. Bak could tell his opponent was as tired as he was, but Menna was desperate.