Lauren Haney - Face Turned Backward

“One of your dogs found him, you said?” he asked.

“Our best bitch,” Amonmose nodded. “She wasn’t following his scent-he came by a different path-but she smelled something. The jackal, I’d guess.”

“Had the wind come up yet?” Imsiba asked.

“It was a breeze then. Nothing like this.” Amonmose veered to the left across a patch of soft sand. “She raised such a fuss we untied her leash and let her go. After a while she started to bark. We called her, thinking she’d cornered a snake or lizard. Usually she comes, but this time she didn’t. So we went to see what she’d found. That’s when we saw Intef.

And the jackal.”

“From what direction had he come?” Bak asked.

“The east, from the ridge.”

“He never traveled in the desert alone,” Imsiba said. “He took one donkey to carry food and water and one or two others to carry the game he killed.”

Amonmose shrugged. “We found no animal tracks, only those of Intef.”

The breeze let up, the whispering sands stilled. They rounded the closest mound and saw between it and the next hillock the five men Amonmose had left behind and three sturdy, broad-chested dogs, a black female and two brindle males. Men and dogs alike were hunkered down around a 90 / Lauren Haney man lying on the ground, arrows rising from his back. To shelter themselves and the body from the blowing sand, the soldiers had built a curved barricade of shields on the wind-ward side. A good-sized drift had formed before it. If Bak had had any illusions that he might find traces of Intef’s slayer, the height of the drift disabused him.

The soldiers, each as dusty-sweaty as Amonmose and as burned by the elements, scrambled to their feet. The oldest among them, a giant of a man with thinning brown hair, raised his hand in greeting. “Lieutenant Bak. It’s good to see you, sir. Not the best of circumstances, I grant you, but if all was right and proper, I’d never have summoned you. Now would I?”

“Heribsen,” Bak smiled. He knew the man from Nofery’s house of pleasure, a favorite haunt. “So it’s you who stands at the head of these laggards. Amonmose didn’t warn me.”

The big man clapped Imsiba on the shoulder, exchanged quips with the Medjays, and welcomed Amonmose back like a long-lost son. One Medjay handed the foodstuffs to soldiers who peeked into the bag like delighted children, the other laid the litter on the ground at the edge of the depression and unrolled the fabric from around the carrying poles.

Bak and Imsiba knelt beside the body. A man of medium height, broad at the shoulder and narrow of waist, thirty or so years of age, lay flat on the ground, arms thrown out as if to break his fall, chest and face in the sand. His kilt was stained from long use and its hem was frayed. He wore a simple bronze dagger in a sheath hanging from his belt. From the cleared areas on his back and legs and odd clumps of grit at unexpected locations, they could see that the men in the patrol had made an effort to brush the body clear of sand.

An inflated goatskin lay near his feet, and a long bow lay by his side, a heavy weapon to bring down large game. A leather quiver lay across his left shoulder, the arrows spilling out onto the sand. The bow, quiver, and arrows were standard army issue, items the hunter had most likely obtained from the garrison arsenal in exchange for fresh game.

The goatskin was full of water, which told them he had not long been away from the river when he was slain.

Three arrows were buried deep in the upper back within a space the size of a man’s palm. As Amonmose had said, any of the three would have killed. Only a small amount of blood had erupted from the wounds to run down his ribcage.

The embalmer would find more in the lungs, Bak suspected.

The arrows were identical to those in the quiver.

Gently, as if the man lay sleeping rather than dead, Bak rolled him onto his side. “Intef,” he said aloud, glancing at Amonmose and nodding. The hunter’s broad chest told no tales, nor did the sand under and around the body. He lay where he had fallen, leaving nothing behind to name his slayer. Hauling himself to his feet, Bak turned to Heribsen.

“You sent men out, Amonmose told me, before the sand began to move.”

“I walked at their head.” Heribsen eyed the body, his face and voice grim. “Intef was a good man. I hoped to lay my hands on his slayer.”

Imsiba arose and brushed his hands together, ridding them of sand. “What did you find?”

“In a word, nothing.”

“Nothing?” Bak signaled the Medjays to bring the litter close and move the body. “The lord Horus can swoop down from the heavens to seize his prey and never touch the earth.

I’ve yet to meet a man who can accomplish a like feat.”

Heribsen smiled at the cynicism. “We went around this spot in ever-widening circles until at last we found signs of the slayer.” He pointed toward a long, narrow rock formation roughly ninety paces away. “Up there, they were, in a pocket of sand. The one who stood there didn’t bother to brush his tracks away, and for good reason. The sand is soft, filling in details as soon as a foot is lifted, leaving nothing specific behind.”

Bak stared across the intervening stretch of sand, nodded.

“His view of Intef would’ve been open and clear.”

“The distance would deter most men,” Imsiba said.

“Not this one.” Heribsen pointed toward the body, which 92 / Lauren Haney the Medjays were lifting onto the litter. “Look at the spacing of those arrows. He’s good, very good.”

The wind gusted, shoving the sand before it, lifting a fine veil of dust. Bak turned his back, closed his eyes. “Were you able to follow his trail?”

Heribsen snorted his disgust. “If we’d found his prints sooner, who knows where they’d have led us. As it was, we tracked him to the ridge, and there we met up with the man I’d sent off to follow Intef’s trail.”

“The slayer followed his victim.” Bak found he was not surprised.

“So we believe.” Heribsen scratched the sparse hair at the crown of his head. “About that time, the wind stiffened and the sand began to move. We followed the tracks south along the ridge for…Oh, probably two hundred paces. Then they vanished, blown away by the gale.”

Bak followed the ridge in his imagination and visualized the land to either side. An arid wasteland to the west, reaching into the unknown, and to the east, a broad stretch of sand broken by rocky mounds, dunes, and low shelves of stone falling away to the river. The farther south one walked, the rockier and more broken the landscape.

“Did you look for his donkeys?” Imsiba asked.

“That’s why I sent a man to backtrack him. I thought to find them.” Heribsen eyed the golden sands and a far horizon lost in a haze of dust. “If he tethered them somewhere and they can’t get food and water…” He shook his head, his expression bleak. “Well, we’ll keep our eyes open, but I don’t hold much hope.”

“Do you think it possible he ran into a wandering band of tribesmen?” Imsiba asked. “Perhaps one among them tracked him down, finding him a temptation too great to resist-especially if his donkeys were loaded with fresh meat.”

“We’ve been patroling this stretch of desert close on a week,” Heribsen said. “We’ve seen no sign of intruders.”

Bak wished the murder could be that simple: a starving band of men and women desperate for food. “No,” he said aloud. “Intef left the donkeys behind, in a place impossible to see from here. If the animals and their burden were the prize, they’d have been taken by stealth and led deep into the desert, with him none the wiser until he went back for them. There’d have been no need to slay him. And if the prize was more modest, merely the objects he carried, his water and weapons would be gone.”