The Right Hand of Amon (34 page)

"Strange," Bak said, frowning. "Huy told me AmonPsaro and Inyotef were great friends while both were young and living in Waset. One would think Inyotef would've asked to voyage south. Not everyone can claim friendship with a king."

"It seems to me there was something . . ." Senu paused, giving himself a moment to think, then ducked around a woman trying to console her sobbing baby and strode on. "Yes." He glanced at Bak, nodded "Yes, I remember a time ... Oh, fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. Inyotef had been given his first command, a warship of moderate size. He brought it upriver through the Belly of Stones, lay over at Semna for repairs, and sailed on south with the intent of journeying deep into Kush. The mission was insignificant: a show of power, I think, and no doubt to collect tribute as well."

He paused again, listening to another blast of the trumpet. "I must hurry. My men will be wondering where I've gone."

He rushed around a corner, entering a narrow lane hugged on both sides by small houses buzzing with the voices of those who lived inside. A flock of ducks squawked in a derelict house, which reeked of bird droppings

"The envoy I was to escort was slow to reach Semna," Senu went on. "I was still waiting for him three days later when Inyotef sailed again into the harbor. His ship had been turned back. He gave no reason, but a rumor went around that he was not welcome in the land of Kush."

Bak's heart surged. "Do you suppose Amon-Psaro was behind the rebuff?"

"I often journeyed upriver, yet I never learned the truth."

"Did you travel often to Amon-Psaro's court?"

"Four or five times, no more." Senu stepped around two naked toddlers, wide-eyed with wonder at his magnificence. With an easy smile, he answered Bak's unspoken question. "Yes, Lieutenant, he took me to see his growing herd of horses-and he never failed to ask for Nefer's health."

Bak grinned, forgetting for an instant the gravity of his mission. "I'm still curious. How'd you manage to lay hands on the pair you gave him? Their value must've seemed enormous to a common soldier with no wealth or power."

"I raised my problem to diplomatic status," Senn laughed. "I spoke with the envoy, and when he traveled back to our capital, he in turn spoke to the vizier. That worthy politician agreed that a gift of two horses, mare and stallion, would remind Amon-Psaro of his friendship with our king, not just once, but each time a foal was born. Later, after the trade was consummated, after Nefer was mine and the animals Amon-Psaro's, I felt bound to tell him the horses were a product of my ingenuity rather than

wealth. He thought my tale so amusing and my honesty so admirable that he offered me a lofty position in his court. I chose to remain in the army of Kemet."

Bak laughed heartily, as did Senu, until another blare of the trumpet reminded them of their mission. They hastened across an intersecting street, passed a block of well-kept interconnected houses, and veered into a dead-end lane bounded on one side by a serpentine wall built to hold back encroaching sand dunes. Kasaya stood before a door located near the far end of the lane. The Medjay's discouraged expression told them the house was unoccupied, and none of the neighbors knew of the pilot's whereabouts.

Senu muttered an oath.

Bak had not expected the gods to drop into his hands the solution to his problem, but his spirits dived nonetheless. "If he's gone for good, I doubt he left anything of value or interest, but I must search anyway."

"I'll leave you then. The men on the battlements will need further orders, and I must find Huy and Nebseny and warn them as well. The men they've placed on the rooftops along Amon-Psaro's route must be told."

"You must also warn Imsiba and my Medjays. I'll send Kasaya to the island to alert Pashenuro and Minnakht." "Consider it done." Senu strode a few paces up the lane, paused, turned around. "Amon-Psaro is haughty, imperious, cunning. But, he's a good man, Bak. Don't let Inyotef slay him."

Bak forced a smile. "A prayer to the lord Amon, an offering, might help."

Inyotef's hofe was much too grand for a man alone, five spacious rooms around an open court that would have better suited Senu's large family. It was neat and clean but had an air of abandonment. Two chambers were furnished, and those not well; the remainder were empty. A few stools, a couple of tables, several chests, a sleeping pallet. The basics of housekeeping a wife might bestow on the husband she was leaving, the remnants of a marriage.

Bak went from chest to chest, raising each lid and peering inside. He found a few sheets, a man's clothing, a few dishes and cooking paraphernalia. A small chest held eye paint, perfumes, and oils. A fine inlaid wooden chest contained jewelry, mostly of the beaded variety and of small value. He found no golden flies. A somewhat larger, unadorned wooden chest contained a few small weapons, including a hefty and powerful sling-the weapon used, Bak felt sure, during the initial attempt to warn him off.

Returning to the main room, he settled down to a long and tedious search, looking specifically for clues as to where Inyotef might have gone and the reason he wanted Amon-Psaro dead. Bak tried to lose himself in his task, moving systematically from one chest to another and on to the walls and floor, probing for a secret hiding place. The first room finished, he searched the next and then the next. The rich smell of braised lamb ,wafted through the open doors, rousing pangs of hunger, announcing the approach of midday. He longed to quit, to leave this dreary house and walk the streets of the city, searching for the man rather than some minuscule clue he could overlook as easily as find.

Finished with the interior, he had nothing to show for his effort but a growing sense of failure. When Senu's oldest son arrived with a leaf-wrapped package of grilled fish, a cluster of plump grapes, and two jars of beer, Bak could have hugged the boy. The food and drink, the cheerful voice, and the smile were welcome indeed.

"How far away is the caravan?" he asked, ripping the flesh from the bones, gobbling it like a man starved for a week.

"They'll reach the gate within the hour."

The youth reported that his father had relayed Bak's messages to Imsiba and the others. Extra guards had been assigned to Amon-Psaro's route, and every man who could be spared was searching for Inyotef. As far as anyone knew, he had not been seen all day. Bak, his self-confidence wavering, tried not to think how foolish he would feel if someone other than the pilot attempted to slay the Kushite king.

He could see the boy longed to be on his way, afraid he would miss the upcoming spectacle, so he dismissed him and went out to the courtyard to finish his meal in a sliver of shade beside the wall.

His hunger sated, he searched the court with its round oven, large water jars, and grain silos. He was sweeping up the last of the grain he had spilled when the sounds in the distance changed. The strident call of a single trumpet was lost in the blare of several. Now and then, when the breeze blew from the right direction, the faint sound of the accompanying clappers and flutes wafted across the lower city. A rumble of drums filled in the background. Amon-Psaro's caravan was approaching the fortress gate.

Bak was on the roof, almost finished with his search, when a flourish of drumbeats announced the presentation of arms to Amon-Psaro. Soon, the king would march inside the fortress. He and Woser would lead the slow ceremonial procession down the main thoroughfare to the mansion of the lady Hathor. There they would make obeisance to her guest, the lord Amon, and to the goddess herself. Then, with the priestly contingent and the gods joining the procession, they would march back through the fortress, down the cut in the escarpment, and through the lower city to the harbor.

Bak thought Amon-Psaro fairly safe inside the fortress. It was the latter portion of the march he worried about most. The descent throligh the cut and the streets of the lower city would be lined with hundreds of civilians as well as soldiers. More worrisome yet would be the harbor, the confusion of boarding the rivercraft in a place Inyotef knew better than any other man in Iken.

Tired and discouraged, he walked to the edge of the roof and eyed the low golden dunes outside the wall. Long fingers of sand, drifts deposited through the years by winds blowing in from the desert, reached out to a distant, ruined block of buildings.

His eye was drawn to the base of the serpentine wall and a wedge of golden brown close against the mudbrick. The end of a board, protruding from around a curve. It looked too sturdy to discard in the desert, too valuable. With his senses quickening, he stepped off the roof and, arms spread wide for balance, walked slowly along the top of the wall, following its curve. The board, he soon saw, was the sidepiece of a ladder partly covered with sand. From the way the drift lay around it, he guessed it had been buried there and a recent stiff breeze had uncovered it. Consumed by curiosity, he dropped off the wall, letting the sand cushion his fall.

He shoved his fingers into the soft, warm sand, picked up the ladder, and stood it on end. It was almost new and tall enough to reach the roof of Inyotef's house. Had the pilot hidden it, meaning to return at a later time? Or had he used it to leave the house?

Turning his back to the wall, Bak studied the low dunes. The smooth parallel ridges were marred by the tiny footprints of birds and rodents, but no larger, deeper indentations that would indicate the recent passage of a man. A rough funnel-shaped disturbance twenty or so paces away could mean a small creature had found something of interest beneath the surface. Trying not to hope, but hoping anyway, Bak hurried to the spot, dug into the sand, and revealed a big, tightly woven reed chest. Practically holding his breath, he swept aside the sand on top, broke the seal, and raised the lid. It was filled with large pottery jars, each stoppered with a dried-mud plug to keep out prying animals and insects. A jar containing grain had cracked, inviting a mouse or rat to investigate. Elated by his discovery, Bak broke the plugs on all the other jars, revealing beer, food, clothing, small weapons, and jewelry including two golden flies.

Inyotef, he guessed, had dared not leave the chest of supplies on his skiff for fear every vessel in the harbor would be examined before Amon-Psaro set foot on the quay. So he had buried it here, intending to return after the search for him died down.

Bak saved the most intriguing item until last, a pottery cylinder plugged on both ends with mud. He broke one end away, reached inside, and pulled out a papyrus scroll. Sitting on the warm sand, praying for enlightenment, he unrolled his prize, which was stained and dog-eared, yellowing from use and age. Almost afraid to breathe, he began to read.

"To my beloved brother Inyotef," it said. "He's gone, the one I loved above all others. His many sweet words, his pledge to love me forever, were like chaff in the wind. One night he lay with me, whispering endearments; the next day he was gone. A message came, I've heard, a letter announcing his father's death. He boarded a ship for vile Kush without so much as a good-bye. I told myself he would summon me as soon as his throne was secure, but now four months have passed, and I've heard nothing. I can no longer bear the pain, my brother. The river beckons. Remember me always, dearest Inyotef, and forgive me."

It was signed "Sonisonbe."

Bak let out his breath long and slow. The words brother and sister were often used between lovers, but in this case he felt sure Sonisonbe was in fact Inyotef's birth sister. The elation he felt at finding the letter, the sense of accomplishment, vied in his heart with pity and sadness for the girl abandoned by Amon-Psaro and the dark legacy she had left Inyotef.

Bak stood on the northern quay, looking down into Inyotef's skiff. Nothing had changed since last he had seen the vessel. Sails, lines, oars, fishing gear were exactly as they had been the evening before. The pilot either meant to flee in another boat or intended to leave Men in a manner Bak could not begin to imagine. Surely not by way of the desert. If he chose a path close to the river, he would easily be caught. To leave the river and its life-giving water was suicide.

No, Bak thought, he's a sailor, a man of the river. He'll escape by boat. The wording was too pessimistic, so he amended the prediction: He'll try to escape by boat, and I'll be there to stop him.

Clinging to the notion, he studied the vessels moored along the quay. Other than a fishing boat with a broken rudder and a raft built of papyrus bundles so soggy it was near to foundering, Inyotef's skiff was the only small boat remaining. The rest had been claimed by their owners and moved across the harbor to the southern quay. The barge of Amon was tied close against the revetment, rocking on the gentle swells, its gilded hull glittering in the midafternoon sun. On the warship moored close by, pennants of every color fluttered from masts and lines; its wood-andbronze fittings gleamed. Sailors lounged on its deck and atop the cabin, awaiting the gods and the king, the priests and the local dignitaries. Their lively banter with the men on the decks of the two traveling ships, which would ferry the king and his party carried across the water.