Lauren Haney - Face Turned Backward

Imsiba frowned. “You’re saying his life was taken for him alone. Why? He was a poor man, a hunter.”

Bak gave his friend a wry smile. “I fear the gods are testing us, Imsiba, with each problem being harder than the one before. First Penhet was stabbed, and soon we found a reason and sufficient traces of his assailant to lay hands on Rennefer. Next Mahu was slain and though we have a reason, the ivory tusk, we’ve found no track left by his slayer. Now this man is dead, and we’ve neither a trail to follow nor a reason.”

Bak trudged up a low dune, stubbed his toe on a rock buried in the sand, and cursed. His mouth was dry, his skin gritty and parched, long since stripped of the oil he had rubbed in at daybreak. Pausing at the summit, he shaded his eyes with a hand and looked eastward, where he could now and again glimpse through the filthy air a wide band of brownish water flowing around dark rocky islands, a few bedecked with greenery, and the silvery ripple of isolated patches of rapids. The river, the goal he yearned to reach.

His hope of finding Intef’s donkeys in the bleak landscape between the ridge and the water seemed absurd. Heribsen’s promise to search the desert on the opposite side of the ridge was even more ludicrous.

Amonmose, walking a like path fifty or so paces to his right, appeared and disappeared as the blowing dust and the landscape permitted. Imsiba was somewhere beyond, too far south to see. Nor could Bak see the black dog Heribsen had let them borrow, the bitch that had found Intef. Amonmose had let her run free in the hope that she would find the donkeys-or any jackals attracted to whatever game the crea-94 / Lauren Haney tures might carry. Far to his left, Bak glimpsed the two Medjays carrying the litter, then the wind gusted and dust enveloped them. Because they were burdened with the body, he had given them the northernmost path to the river and the shortest route to the fortress of Kor, too far away to see.

He closed his thoughts to his thirst and plodded forward, his feet sinking to the ankles in the warm sand. Who would slay a man like Intef? he wondered. He considered one reason and another and another, but at no time could he get around one basic fact: Intef had nothing. He was a poor man, one who hunted game to live, a precarious existence at best.

A dog began to bark, a harsh, angry sound that carried across the dunes. Other dogs answered-or were they jackals? — snarling, yelping, growling. Bak stood quite still, trying to see through the swirling dust, trying to locate the direction from which their voices came. To the south, he thought, and sprinted that way. He saw Amonmose run up a knoll, stop on top to listen, point to a spot somewhere ahead.

Bak crested a low mound, rounded a jagged cluster of rocks, and found on the far side an ancient watercourse filled nearly to the brim with sand. The terrified bray of a donkey drew his eyes down the wadi and added wings to his feet.

The black bitch stood in front of three laden donkeys, her hackles raised, her teeth bared, growling at a pack of feral dogs, doing her best to hold them off. The donkeys, their forelegs hobbled, danced nervously around the bitch. Bak yelled to distract the attacking dogs, hoping at the same time to summon Imsiba. Drawing his dagger, a close to useless weapon in the face of a dog pack, he slowed his pace to a cautious trot.

A yellow cur ran at the black dog, nipping at her, trying to distract her. A brown dog outflanked her to leap at a dead gazelle tied onto the back of a donkey. The donkey screamed in terror and kicked out with flying rear hooves. A spotted mongrel slipped between the donkey and its fellows, snapping at a bound foreleg and shoulder, forcing the creature back and away from the safety of numbers. A leggy gray dog leaped at its neck, trying to bring it down. The donkey shook him off, but at the cost of several long scratches down its shoulder. A rangy yellow and white dog, its hackles bristling, crept up on the black bitch’s far flank.

Bak yelled again. A huge white dog swung around to face him, its lips drawn back in a throaty snarl. Amonmose ran up behind Bak, holding his shield before him, his body and spear poised to strike. Imsiba appeared on the far rim of the wadi, spear at the ready. The yellow and white dog crouched, ready to leap at the bitch. With a blood-curdling roar, Imsiba threw his spear, which cut the beast nearly in half. Blood gushed. The dogs not yet frenzied by action paused. Amonmose lunged forward, burying his spearpoint in the white dog’s chest, bringing him down with a fatal yelp. A dog at the rear of the pack slunk away. Two more followed, their tails tucked between their legs. Imsiba dropped into the wadi, jerked his spear free, and prodded the cur worrying the black bitch. Its snarl turned to a yelp and it turned and ran, dragging a rear leg. While Amonmose freed his weapon, Bak ran forward to cut the throat of the leggy gray dog, bringing him down with a strident cry. The remaining mongrels raced off across the haze-shrouded sands.

The three men looked at each other, grinned. But they had no chance to congratulate themselves. The black bitch took off after the pack and Amonmose, cursing her soundly, chased after her. Bak and Imsiba dropped their blood-stained weapons and hastened to the frightened donkeys. Two of the animals carried the game Intef had shot: several hares and two fully grown gazelles. The third beast carried supplies.

The hunter had been a careful man, they found, taking along plenty of food for his animals and two large pottery jars of water. By the time Amonmose returned with the dog, Bak and Imsiba had slaked their thirst, cared for the injured donkey as best they could, and watered the three beasts, using as a basin a deep reddish bowl burned black on the bottom from sitting on a cooking fire.

Imsiba carried the empty water jar to the supply donkey.

“Do you want to search this animal now, before I tie the jar in place?”

96 / Lauren Haney

Bak glanced at the sun, an indistinct golden ball hurrying across a sallow sky.” Later. We must hasten to Kor and have this game butchered before the meat goes bad. Then we can wash the grit away in the river and fill our bellies with food and beer.” He turned to Amonmose, on his knees, wiping the blood from their weapons. “You’ll come with us, I assume?”

“Is that an order, sir?”

Bak laughed. Who wouldn’t prefer the comforts of a fortress to spending the night in the open desert with Heribsen and his fellows? “It is.”

“Who would slay a man like Intef?” Nebwa shook his head, unable to believe, saddened. “He never did any harm to anyone. Never.”

Bak let his eyes travel across the hunter’s possessions, spread out on the sand before him. Other than the weapons, which he had laid off to the side, the objects were no different than those carried by anyone who expected to travel a long distance and depend solely on his own resources. Still, a diligent search might reveal some unexpected article, perhaps even a reason for Intef’s death. “He must’ve trod on someone’s toes. Why else take his life?”

Nebwa planted a foot on a collapsed mudbrick wall. “If so, it was unintentional. He was a good man.”

The supply donkey, freed of its load and fed, nudged Bak’s hip with its head. Scratching the animal’s nose, he eyed the southern end of Nebwa’s temporary domain: the long, narrow mudbrick fortification of Kor. Much of this portion of the old fortress had been given over to the caravans Thuty had ordered held here. A wall had been hastily built to contain the donkeys. Their masters, surrounded by the merchandise the animals had carried, were camped out among the ruined walls of buildings erected many generations ago and no longer needed. The two officers stood in a quiet corner of the paddock, away from prying eyes. The smell of manure was strong, and though the wind had dropped, dust hung in the air thick enough to stifle.