Lauren Haney - Face Turned Backward

The farmer blinked, but otherwise appeared unmoved.

“Those who come to trade either fish or fowl or produce seek us out. Any men up to no good…?” He shrugged. “We don’t invite trouble, nor do they. They stay well away from us, and good luck to them, I say.”

Imsiba gave him a hard look. “To let smugglers go about their business is an offense against the lady Maat-and our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut.”

A flock of pigeons rose with a whir of wings from an island a short distance downriver, giving the farmer an excuse to avoid the Medjay’s sharp eyes. “I mind my own business.”

Bak wanted to shake the truth from him; instead he smiled.

“You’ve a pleasant farm, Kefia, but one too small, I’d have thought, to use an ox as a beast of burden.”

The farmer glanced toward the dun-colored creature and back. His voice took on a hint of surliness. “As you can see for yourself, I’m a man alone, with no sons of an age to toil in the fields. The ox helps me plow.”

“Surely these small fields…” Bak pointed his baton at the clover. “…don’t yield enough hay to feed an ox you use once a year.” He swung the baton toward the animals. “…and four hungry donkeys as well.”

“The dates.” Kefia answered too fast, too emphatically.

“They’re the finest grown along the Belly of Stones. I take them to the market in Buhen. I need the donkeys to carry them.”

Bak gave him an incredulous look. “You haul dates on the backs of donkeys, plodding for a day or more along a dusty desert trail, when a boat would be cleaner and faster?”

The farmer tried to hold Bak’s glance, but could not.

“Two men have been slain, Kefia, their lives lost at the hands of the men you’re protecting. They could as easily turn on you. If I come back tomorrow and find you and your family slain, you alone must bear the burden of guilt.”

With a low whimper, Kefia buried his face in his hands.

His voice shook. “All right! I’ll speak! But I’m a dead man already.”

Bak glanced at Imsiba, sharing a quick look of relief, but the satisfaction he felt did not blind him to the fear he had sensed throughout their journey upstream from Kor. “You must leave this place at once,” he told the farmer, speaking more kindly. “You’ve a skiff, I see. Take your family to Kor.

Tell Troop Captain Nebwa I sent you. He’ll keep you safe until I lay hands on the men you fear.”

“What of my animals? My tender young crops? I can’t leave them to wither and die.”

“He’ll send soldiers to watch over your farm. Now tell me all you know, leaving nothing out, and start first with a description of the men who come in the night.”

“I’ve never seen anyone!”

Imsiba gave a sharp, jeering laugh. “You’ve never gone to the cove? You’ve never hidden in the dark, looking out on the men who load or unload cargo?”

“Never! I swear it!” Kefia hung his head in shame. “I was afraid to, if the truth be told.”

“Those beasts of burden,” Bak said, nodding toward the animals. “Did they appear one day as if by magic?”

Kefia shook his head, moaned. “One night as I lay sleeping, a voice awakened me. The voice of a man telling me to stay in the house and make no effort to see him.” The farmer swallowed hard. “He said he had brought an ox and four donkeys, and he had brought hay and grain for them and jars of oil and lengths of linen for myself and mine. He said I must care for the animals as if they were my own. If I should hear his footsteps in the night, I must make no effort to see or follow. And I must never go near the cove after dark.” Kefia cleared his throat and swallowed again. “As long as I obeyed, he told me, I would be amply rewarded, but if I failed him…” His voice faltered, dropped to a murmur. “…I and mine would perish.”

“So you did as you were told,” Imsiba prodded.

Kefia nodded. “The animals are sometimes taken away and returned in the night, and each time I find gifts on my doorstep. When next I go to the cove, I see signs of a ship and the presence of men.” His voice rose in pitch, trembled.

“That’s all I can tell you! I swear it!”

Bak, like Imsiba, could not believe Kefia had resisted the temptation to spy on his benefactor. To make him admit he had done so would be difficult if not impossible. He thought it best to move on. Perhaps someone with less to lose would have noticed more.

“The pigeons rose from the downstream end of the island.”

Bak, seated in the prow of the skiff, studied a patch of churning foam off to the right, half-submerged rocks lurking beneath a delicate froth. “A flock of a hundred or more.

We’ll find a farmer who’s raising them, I’m sure.”

Imsiba glanced upward, his eyes following a sheer bluff of black rock to a summit crowned by an overhanging acacia.

“The view from up there must be spectacular. How much of the cove, I wonder, can be seen after dark?”

“Look!” Bak pointed. “Goats!”

Ahead, the face of the cliff fell away and tumbled rocks formed a more gradual slope. Acacias, tough grasses, and weeds clung to the upper reaches, while tamarisk fringed the lower. A half dozen of the sure-footed animals stared down, unafraid.

“Did Nebamon’s servant not say that the farmer who talked of the headless man went to Buhen with goats to trade?”

“He did, and with the cove so near…” Bak left the thought, the hope unspoken.

Rounding a shoulder of glistening rock, they came upon a papyrus skiff lying among the weeds above the waterline.

A short, wiry man with limp gray hair sat on a projecting rock, fishing pole in hand. The instant they came into view, he jammed the pole into the earth, pushed himself to his feet, and scrambled down the slope to the water. Catching the prow of their boat, he pulled it close so they could dis-embark.

“Took you long enough to get here, Lieutenant,” he said, grinning broadly.

Bak laughed. News of their mission had traveled faster than they. “If you know who we are, you must know why we’ve come.”

“The headless man.” Helping Imsiba drag the skiff up on the bank, the old man looked with a covetous eye at the weapons lying in the hull and at the basket of food and drink they had yet to consume. “I’ve seen him. Not just from up there…” He waved a hand toward the highest point on the island. “…but from the water. Couldn’t get too close, mind you, but I got near enough to see the black cloth wrapped around his head and to hear him talk to the masters of the ships moored in the cove and to see the grand and worthy objects they’ve been smuggling across the frontier.” Like many a man who lived apart from his fellows, he was gar-rulous to a fault.

Imsiba eyed him narrowly. “If you saw so much, why didn’t you report it long ago?”

“Fear, pure and simple.”

“And now?” the Medjay demanded.

The old man gave an exaggerated shrug. “I think it time the scales of justice are balanced.”

And with us close on the heels of the smugglers, Bak thought, you’ve decided it’s safe to seek a reward. Thus your trip to Buhen. “We’ve brought bread and beer and the flesh of a goose, old man. Could we find a place to sit in comfort?

We can talk while we share the food.”

Eyes sparkling with anticipation, the old man gestured toward a narrow, winding path that led upward. “Ahmose, I’m called. Welcome to my farm.”

The island was a gigantic clump of cracked and broken rock whose nooks and crannies had been filled, through the centuries, with wind-blown sand and silt laboriously hauled from natural deposits found elsewhere. The larger patches of soil were planted with fruits and vegetables, the lesser supported the weeds and bushes and wild trees that provided food for the goats. A close to idyllic situation, safe from most desert marauders and intruders, yet at the same time precarious and one of endless toil. Carrying water to the higher garden plots had to be an arduous and never-ending task.