Lauren Haney: Place of Darkness

Hearing the sound of running feet, Bak’s eyes flitted back along the trail. The lieutenant and Kasaya, with the leashed dog running alongside, led a long, straggly line of guards up the path two hundred or so paces away.

Menna glanced toward the rapidly approaching men, then leaped at his opponent and struck out with the dagger. Bak ducked, felt the blade graze his arm and the warmth of blood oozing out. Menna stepped closer, pressing his advantage, backing his opponent toward the rim of the cliff. Bak eased himself sideways, hoping to change the direction of their struggle and work his way to the baton. He disliked fighting with the dagger, the closeness of it, the treacherous blade that could bleed a man to exhaustion or lay waste to an inner organ. And he feared mightily a fall over the edge of the cliff.

The guard officer bared his teeth in a mean grin and moved in for what he clearly expected to be a kill.

Bak leaped at his opponent, striking the hand in which Menna held his dagger, knocking it out of the way, and smashed his left fist hard against the officer’s chin. Stumbling back, shaking his head to clear it, Menna lowered his shoulders and charged like an angered bull. Bak jumped aside and retreated. His eyes darted toward the baton, no more than a couple paces away. The rim of the cliff equally close. Menna stepped forward and sidled around, trying to get between him and the weapon. Trying to force him over the edge.

Bak threw his dagger. The blade flashed through the air and buried itself deep in Menna’s right shoulder.

The officer stopped, raised his free hand to the weapon, felt the moisture leaking out around the haft. He looked down, stared with disbelieving eyes at the dagger, the blood seeping between his fingers, and finally at Bak. His weapon fell from his hand. He dropped to his knees, drew in air, coughed. A trace of red trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Bak walked to him. Kasaya, Tracker, and the lieutenant came running up. A sergeant and a few men were close behind, followed by those strung out along the trail. Menna stared at the men collecting around him. Bak later imagined him looking not at them but at the fate that awaited the malign spirit.

Menna struggled to his feet. Without warning, taking them all by surprise, he pushed Bak roughly aside and lurched toward the rim of the cliff. Before anyone realized his intent, he pitched himself over the edge.

Stunned by the act, Bak hurried to the rim and looked down the face of the cliff. Menna lay about two-thirds of the way down on the steep slope of a tower-like formation that rose above the rear corner of the temple. His body lay twisted and torn, his arms and legs flung wide.

Kasaya and the lieutenant came up beside him and they, too, looked down. The officer’s stunned expression changed to one close to relief. “No man could have fallen so far and lived.”

Bak nodded. “He knew he was trapped, a man already dead.”

A sound of cheering carried on the breeze, softened by distance. Cheering?

“Look at the men, sir.” Kasaya pointed downward.

What looked like every man who toiled at Djeser Djeseru stood on the terrace among the statues and column parts, cheering the demise of the man who had, over the past few years, brought into their lives so much injury and death.

“I don’t understand how they could get away with it for so long.” Ptahhotep, standing near the paddock wall, shook his head in amazement. “Are the cemetery guards so blind?”

“Menna was their officer,” Bak said, looking over the neck of Defender, whose long mane he was combing. “As far as I could tell, they didn’t once suspect him. As one of them said: How could they think him guilty of the very crime he was supposed to prevent?”

“They could’ve at least kept their eyes open.” Amonked, standing beside Bak’s father, scowled his disapproval.

“Their failure to uphold the laws of the land, to satisfy the demands of the lady Maat, is unforgivable.”

His porters and carrying chair sat in the dwindling evening light beneath the sycamore tree, awaiting their master’s departure. Even with darkness fast approaching, he seemed in no hurry to go on his way.

Bak thought of the men he had talked with before leaving Djeser Djeseru, hunkered around him in the shadow of their hut, crushed by their failure to do their duty and afraid of the consequences. “They must be punished, to be sure, but I’d not be too hard on them, sir. Other than Pashed, who had no time to oversee them properly, they had no one to look to for guidance.”

“I suppose far more sepulchers are robbed than we’ll ever know-many with the help of a guard or two,” Ptahhotep said thoughtfully. “Just think of the temptation. Walking day after day among the tombs, imagining the wealth lying beneath their feet.”

Bak caught a handful of mane and began to comb out a knot. Defender whinnied, though his master was sure he was not hurting him. “Not even priests are exempt from temptation. Kaemwaset told me a tale so appalling it would curl our sovereign’s ceremonial beard.”

Ptahhotep shifted his stance, the better to watch Kasaya spread a thin poultice on Victory’s singed rear legs. “Did Pairi and Humay reveal all before. .?” He let his voice tail off and looked expectantly at his son and Amonked, who had not yet told him exactly what had happened.

“Before they swallowed the poison?” Bak shook his head.

“No, but they said enough to verify what we’d guessed.”

“I’d not take my own life like that,” Kasaya said, looking up from his task. “I’d try to escape and take an arrow in the back rather than give myself a deadly potion.”

Hori, seated on the wall, measured a length of linen against his arm. Using a sharp knife, he cut it off and handed it to the Medjay. “How could they escape?” he asked scornfully. “They were surrounded by royal guards.”

Kasaya glared at his friend. “If Menna knew those desert trails, the fishermen did, too. Remember, they played together as children, hunted together as youths.”

“ You remember!” Hori demanded. “Those guards bound their arms with wooden manacles and their ankles with strong leather thongs. Then, instead of staying where they should’ve on the trail above Djeser Djeseru, they hustled them off to the workmen’s village and held them within its walls.”

“They snared the two atop the cliff before they could do more damage,” Kasaya said, defending the guards more for the sake of argument than because he cared, Bak felt sure.

“How were they to know the worst of the lot was running toward them?”

Bak wondered how he would be able to tolerate the pair’s squabbling for another month or so, until Commandant Thuty and the others arrived from Buhen and they would all travel on together to Mennufer. He had not been gone long, but he missed them already: Nebwa, Imsiba, Nofery, his Medjays-everyone. “I know you must return to the city,”

he said to Amonked, “but before you go, will you share a jar of wine to celebrate the end of the malign spirit?”

As the three men walked to the house, Ptahhotep asked,

“What brought the workmen onto the terrace? Did someone tell them you were chasing the malign spirit along the rim of the cliff?”

“Pashed.” Bak had to smile. “Like me, as soon as he saw Menna run, he was certain of his guilt. I’d warned him not to reveal the wretched creature’s identity, but he couldn’t help himself. I can’t say I blame him. Would I have been able to hold my silence if I’d stood in his sandals, having watched my work crews suffer injury and death, having seen the most important task of my life being destroyed by a man bent on malicious destruction?”