Lauren Haney - Face Turned Backward

Imsiba broke the long silence. “I see no man on that deck with a weak and shriveled arm.”

“Nor do I,” Bak said.

“Maybe Wensu’s gone off to meet Userhet,” Psuro guessed.

Bak slipped back among the boulders and drew his small party close around him. “Without a head, a fighting force has no direction. We must take that ship before Wensu comes back.”

Imsiba gave a quick smile of agreement, Psuro nodded his satisfaction, and Mery’s eyes danced with excitement.

Bak slipped the quiver off his shoulder and offered it and the bow to Imsiba. “You’re more skilled at this than I, so you and Mery must stay here, pelting them with arrows and rocks. While you draw their attention and-with luck and the favor of the gods-slay or disable a man or two, Psuro and I will work our way along the ledge and onto that ship.”

Imsiba took the weapon, handing over in return his spear and shield. He clasped Bak’s shoulder. “Take care, my friend.”

“Don’t I always?” Bak turned half away, had a new thought, and swung back. “Do you remember, Imsiba, the day we fought those vile desert raiders who attacked the caravan bringing gold from the mines?”

Imsiba frowned, puzzled by the question. “Of course.”

“Do you remember their war cry?”

“I’ll not soon forget that accursed sound.”

“It was enough to drive terror into the hearts of the gods,”

Psuro explained to Mery.

“The moment Psuro and I show ourselves on the ledge,”

Bak said, “you must sound off as best you can.”

Imsiba chuckled. “You’ve a streak of black in your heart, my friend.”

Bak flashed a smile at the sergeant, squeezed Mery’s shoulder, and beckoned Psuro. Together he and the Medjay worked their way across the mound, ducking low, sidling through gaps between the boulders, taking care not to be seen by Wensu’s crew. A cracked and broken shelf, washed by the becalmed waters on the downstream side, took them to the back of the ledge, which was half-cloaked in drifted sand.

Crouching low, they ran along the slope, their footsteps muffled by the grit.

They had gone no more than a dozen paces when an un-godly shriek rent the air. They stopped dead still, looked at each other, prayed to the gods for the safety of the man and boy they had left behind. The ensuing silence was broken by a long, drawn out moan, the sound of a man in mortal pain. It came from the ship, not the boulders in which Imsiba and Mery hid. Relief flooded through Bak. Psuro mumbled a prayer of thanksgiving.

They ran on along the drift of sand, keeping their heads down, trying not to hear the agonized moans that gradually changed to whimpering as the wounded man weakened.

When they thought they had gone far enough, Bak dropped onto his belly and wormed his way upward. Cautiously raising his head, he looked across the ledge. The ship’s prow, abandoned and forgotten by the crew, rose above the stony formation not ten paces away. He nodded to Psuro, who crawled up beside him.

Imsiba and Mery had been busy, they saw, lowering the odds in an admirable fashion. The dying man lay out in the open, curled around an arrow lodged in his stomach. Another man showing no signs of injury lay crumpled behind piled sacks of grain, downed by Mery’s sling, Bak felt sure. The man with the arrow in his thigh huddled in the deckhouse, spear close at hand but nearly useless if he could not stand.

Three sailors remained on deck to fight.

Well satisfied with the new odds, Bak and Psuro scrambled to their feet. A deep-throated howl filled the cove and the surrounding landscape, silencing the birds and setting the air atremble. The war cry of the desert warrior. Bak’s skin crawled. Psuro looked about to flee. Laughing quietly at themselves, at so irrational a response, they darted across the ledge to the ship. The war cry gained in volume and intensity, setting dogs to baying all along the river. The two men

leaped on board and raced down the deck. The Kushite sailors stood wide-eyed and awestruck, clinging to their weapons as if to a lifeline, their limbs paralyzed by fright.

Nebwa’s soldiers hung helpless from the yard, pale-faced with terror.

Bak and Psuro ran up behind the nearest sailor. The former clamped an arm around the man’s neck and slapped the flat side of his spearpoint hard against his face. The Medjay struck him on the head with his mace, tore the spear from his hand as Bak let him sag to the deck, and jerked the smaller weapons off his belt. Bak dragged him behind a stack of wine jars, where his mates could not see him. He and Psuro split up then, each running cat-footed to one of the two remaining sailors. The Medjay clouted his man with the mace, while Bak made a fist, tapped his man on the shoulder, and struck him hard on the chin when he swung around.

With the last man disabled and disarmed, Imsiba ceased the howling. While he and Mery rushed to the ship, Bak cut the ropes binding the soldiers to the mast and restored their weapons. They were shame-faced at having been taken prisoner by common sailors, and they cringed at the very thought of having to explain their capture to Nebwa. Psuro tied the prisoners along the yard where the soldiers had been. The dying man pleaded for death, and the Medjay obliged. The man with the thigh wound was bandaged and bound and tied to the mast with the unconscious man.

Bak stood before the bound prisoners. “Where’s Wensu?”

One man shrugged, another appeared confused, the third looked sullen. With the sun midway to the western horizon, Bak had no time to waste. He turned them over to Psuro, who spoke a halting version of their wretched tongue.

He sent Imsiba off to search the water’s edge for Userhet’s skiff or some other sign of the overseer’s presence, and he sent Mery up the rocky spine to look for footprints. After they set off, he examined Wensu’s ship and its cargo. Instead of the exotic products he expected to find, objects imported from far to the south, he found fine linens and wines, weapons, several stone statues, and two empty man-shaped coffins. Products of the land of Kemet. Exports not imports, none listed on a manifest. Illicit goods bound for the land of Kush. These items, he suspected, explained why Wensu had not fled up the Belly of Stones when he had the chance.

He must have been waiting for them, unable to pick them up as long as traffic stood at a standstill at Buhen and Kor.

Mery burst in on his thoughts. “I’ve found footprints, sir!

A single set, where a man walked up the ledge and struck off into the desert.”

“The tracks must be Wensu’s,” Imsiba said, following close behind the boy. “I found no sign of Userhet-or anyone else, for that matter. Either he hasn’t come yet, or he left his skiff in the backwater Ahmose described.”

Bak stared westward, looking up the gently rising slope of sand to the ridge beyond. “Why would Wensu go into the desert to meet Userhet? The cove-or almost any other spot along the river-would’ve been a more convenient place to meet. Certainly an easier place from which to flee, should the need arise.”

The trail was easy to follow, too easy perhaps. Could a trap lay ahead? With a wariness built on experience, Bak followed with his eyes the footprints along the base of the ridge, a low wall of dark, weathered rock cloaked as often as not by windblown sand. The tracks in the soft, loose surface were deep indentations having no distinct shape and no peculiarities. One man could have left them-or a second could have followed, taking care to walk in the first man’s footsteps.

“Psuro’s competent and careful. He’ll not let those soldiers walk into another snare.” Imsiba shifted the coil of rope hanging from his shoulder. “But once again we’re stalking our prey short-handed.”