Lauren Haney - Face Turned Backward

Bak agreed. The man who approached Mahu must have hidden the tusk in the sail. As long as the captain lived, he could and no doubt would point a finger and lay blame.

What better reason for murder? As if reading his thoughts, Imsiba caught his eye and nodded.

“What was the man’s name?” Bak asked, keeping his voice kind, sympathetic, unexcited. “Did he say?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Did he say where he met his friends and who they were?”

“He mentioned no one by name; I wouldn’t have known them anyway.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I do know he went to a house of pleasure. A place run by a woman. She has a lion cub, he told me, and a young male slave to care for the creature.”

“Nofery!” Bak said. “The gods at last have smiled on us!”

And indeed they had. Nofery was his informer, his spy, an old woman who knew everyone in Buhen and missed nothing. One man whispering in another’s ear would have attracted her attention like an unplugged jar of honey would draw ants.

Bak and Imsiba hurried down the narrow lane, scarcely able to believe their good luck. They edged past two soldiers walking at a more moderate speed, and a man they took to be a trader. Ahead they saw the open portal to Nofery’s house of pleasure and the young lion seated on its haunches on the threshold. A thin, roiling cloud of dust rushed up the lane, pushed before a stiffening breeze. The lion sneezed and ducked out of sight.

“Sir!” A large-boned young Medjay, assigned to the day watch at the guardhouse, came running up behind them.

“Sir, you must come right away! There’s been another murder!”

“You’re certain he was murdered.” Doubt registered in Bak’s voice, not because he disbelieved the soldier who had brought the news, but because he could not comprehend another slaying so soon after Mahu’s death. Two murders plus Rennefer’s attempt at murder in five days. Buhen was a garrison usually without serious crime.

Amonmose, a lean, muscular man of about twenty years, took no offense at Bak’s unwillingness to believe. “He had three arrows in his back, sir. Any of the three would’ve felled him.”

Bak and the spearman, member of the six-man desert patrol that had come upon the body, stood just inside the door of the guardhouse. The men on duty, both as staggered by the news as their lieutenant was, had temporarily abandoned the knucklebones to watch and listen.

“We found him…” Amonmose glanced at the shadow outside, a narrowing band made by a sun well on its way to midday. “More than an hour ago, but less than two. Before midmorning, it was. He was slain at the hands of another, of that we had no doubt. So I left then and there to report the news.”

“The other men stayed with him, I hope.”

“He’ll be no meal for jackals or vultures.” Amonmose transferred his shield to the hand holding his spear and wiped his face. His skin was ruddy from sun and wind, and he was coated from head to toe in a fine layer of dust, much of it smudged by sweat. “If we hadn’t come by when we did…Well, it was a jackal that drew our dog to him.”

Though the soldier’s breathing had eased, Bak could see that the long, hurried trek across the desert had sapped his strength. Ushering him into the office, he hauled a stool forward and motioned him to sit. Hori’s belongings no longer littered the floor, he was glad to see, but their presence could still be felt to a much greater extent than he liked. The scribe had thrown everything into baskets, which he had left on the mudbrick bench amid the scroll-filled jars.

Nested on a bed of raw papyrus, Bak spotted the beer jar he had left unopened the previous evening. He broke the plug and handed it over. “My scribe should soon return with food, and Imsiba with men and a litter. As soon as you’ve eaten, we’ll go.”

“Yes, sir.” Amonmose laid his weapon and shield on the floor, sprawled out with his back against the wall, tipped the jar to his lips, and drank deeply. A long contented sigh, a belch, and a broad smile relayed his gratitude and thanks.

“When did he die, do you think?”

“Not long before daylight, I’d guess.” Amonmose wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “There were plenty of flies, let me tell you.”

“He lay lifeless for five or six hours?” Bak’s surprise turned to skepticism. “Other than the one jackal, the eaters of carrion had not yet found him?”

“He’d been covered with sand. Not deep enough to banish his scent, but enough to deceive vultures flying aloft.” The soldier took another deep drink. “We often see a pack of wild dogs in that part of the desert, but for the past couple of days, they’ve been down by the river, harrying a young hippopotamus trapped in a backwater. We’ve spotted jackals there, too, awaiting the kill.”

“I see.” Bak glanced around, searching for another stool.

Unable to find one, he sat on the white coffin. The faint odor of fresh-cut wood teased his nostrils. “Did you find footprints of the slayer? A trail to follow?”

88 / Lauren Haney

“Three men went off to look. I left when they did, so I can’t tell you what they found.”

He seemed no more perturbed by Bak’s makeshift seat than he had been by the officer’s slow reluctance to believe.

A man of good sense, Bak thought, a good soldier to have at one’s back in times of trouble. “Did you recognize the dead man?”

“He lay face-down on his belly. We hesitated to raise his head, thinking you’d want him left as he lay, but finally we did.” Amonmose rolled the jar between the palms of his hands, remembering, not liking the memory. “Most of us knew him. None could call him a close friend, but we liked him.”

A long resigned sigh escaped from Bak’s lips. “Then he’s a man of Buhen.”

“Intef. The hunter.” Amonmose’s eyes darted to Bak’s face.

“You surely knew him, or knew of him. He tracked and killed wild gazelle and other creatures of the river verge and desert.

He traded the meat here at the garrison.”

Bak muttered an oath. He had known the dead man only by sight, but had formed an impression of a quiet, hard-working individual.

“He’s over there.” Amonmose pointed toward what appeared to Bak to be a neverending landscape of sand, isolated rock formations, and more sand. “We’re lucky we found him.

He’s in a shallow depression made by the wind blowing between those two rocky mounds.”

The wind gusted, stirring a fine dust into the air and rolling the coarser grains across the undulating surface of the desert.

A golden-beige carpet come to life. The sand flowed with a whisper so delicate it could have come from the mouth of a goddess. A whimsical goddess, Bak thought grimly, one going to great lengths to wipe away every trace of Intef’s movements and those of the man who slew him.

He was glad he was not alone, and from the way Imsiba watched the flowing sand, it was clear he too felt ill at ease.

The two Medjays who had come with them, one carrying a litter and the second a linen bag of fresh bread, fruit, and beer for the men on patrol, eyed the shifting world around them with deep distrust. The river lay out of sight beyond the long north-south ridge that ran behind Buhen, and the sun beamed down from overhead. Without the ridge, which they had followed south for well over an hour, they would have lost all sense of direction. Walking along its back side, they had passed unseen the fortress of Kor and a watchtower located atop a tall, conical hill farther to the south. Their guide strode forward unintimidated; he had patrolled this wasteland often enough to see important landmarks too small or indistinct for the uninitiated to spot. The twin mounds were a good example. Never would Bak have thought them distinctive in any way.