‘Did you use this place many times?’ he asked Nehesy, his voice sounding loud and coarse in the velvet darkness, in the season, once or twice a month.’
‘And just as often recently?’
‘Less so.’
That explained the desolate atmosphere. Unless there was a ghost here. Huy looked at Nehesy but he seemed unmoved by any other presence. Nor were the animals distressed. Perhaps being in the open at night, at this time just before dawn when the legions of Set were at their most powerful, when most men died and when most men were born, when the king under the earth was preparing for his rebirth, all his power drawn into himself – perhaps that was all it was.
But the feeling did not desert Huy as he climbed back into the chariot.
‘Take me to where you found him,’ he said.
The huntsman turned the chariot again and they headed further south, at a gentler speed this time. As they rode, the sun rose over a great emptiness. Away to the east were low hills, and immediately in front of them a clump of palms showed the location of a small oasis. Otherwise there was nothing, though the horses paced their course as if they were on a road.
They continued for an hour before Nehesy came to a halt.
'It was here,’ he said.
Huy looked around. As far as he could see there was nothing to indicate that the place where they had stopped was different from any other they had passed, or which might have been to come. It crossed Huy’s heart that if a trap had been laid to shut him up, then he had walked straight into it. Had he trusted Nehesy too easily? If the years spent in his new profession had taught him nothing else, it was to trust the most open People least.
'How do you know?’ he asked, looking about him, but not descending from the chariot. Against his back, stuck into the waistband of his kilt under his cloak, he could feel the horn a t of his knife. Whether he would be able to defend himself against Nehesy he did not know.
'I left a marker.’ Nehesy leapt from the chariot and walked over to where a javelin was stuck in the ground. ‘The wind’s blown all the tracks away – it had done that by the time we got here the first time – but I wanted to be sure I’d know the place again.’
‘Had you intended to come back yourself?’
Nehesy paused. ‘I don’t know. I thought it might be useful.’
'It was,’ said Huy, climbing down himself. ‘Did anyone see you leave the javelin?’
‘I didn’t do it secretly, but there was a lot of activity. We were all in a panic. Our hearts had been taken over by the gods.’
‘Where are the king’s weapons?’
‘At the palace.’
‘Do you remember where you found the body lying?’ Nehesy walked and pointed. ‘The chariot was here. The horses stood over there. A good way: fifty or seventy paces. Sherybin was hanging over the edge of the chariot, cut by a wheel.’ He pointed again. ‘And the king lay there.’
‘I see.’ Huy walked round to the chariot they had come on, and ran his thumb along the bronze-bound rim of one of its wheels. ‘This is too thick to cut a man.’
Nehesy shook his head. ‘This machine is old. The new ones are much faster, and the wheels thinner, made of metal.’ He stamped on the sand, in the dry season, except for a thin covering, most of the desert is hard like a road here. There would be little danger of the wheels sinking in.’
‘And the king’s wound?’
‘I told you. His head was smashed in at the back.’
‘But how?’
Nehesy was exasperated. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘What smashed it? It can’t have been a rock. There are none here.’
Nehesy looked around, his expression clearing. ‘No…’
‘Then what happened? Could he have struck it on some part of the chariot as he was thrown clear, or was he hit by a horse’s hoof?’
'It’s possible. But a horse is unlikely, because if they’d still been in the shaft, the chariot wouldn’t have capsized.’
‘And if he’d struck the chariot itself?’
‘It’s possible,’ repeated Nehesy, but he looked doubtful again.
‘Why is it unlikely? What is it?’
Nehesy shook his head. ‘He must have hit the shaft somehow – or perhaps the hub of one of the wheels.’
‘Why only that?’
‘Because the body of the chariot is made of electrum – it’s very light. If a man’s head – or a block of wood or stone -anything hard – were to hit it, it would dent and cave in.’
Huy was silent. Somehow, he had to see the chariot. But doubts were turning into certainties now.
The dogs were specks on the desert, two hundred paces away, near the low rise of a dune. They would not respond when Nehesy called them.
‘Let’s go,’ said the huntsman, if they won’t come, they’ve found something.’
They mounted the chariot and drove the short distance. As they came to a halt once more, the horses shook their heads uneasily.
There would have been more of a stink if it had not been for the drying quality of the sand. As it was, the usual sweet stench, which filled your mouth and nostrils like foul rags, driving its long fingers down your throat and into your stomach, was replaced by a strong, musky odour. The dogs had not uncovered much yet – the meat was too bad for them to eat and in any case they were well enough trained to see that this was no food for them. From beneath the sand an arm rose, the fingers crooked except the index, which pointed towards the sky- Nehesy fetched a wooden spade from the chariot, strapped there to dig out bogged wheels, and began to clear away the soft sand of the dune.
The man was a husk – skin dried, eyes gone, mouth open, the cavities, cleaner beetles were busily at work. He might ave been caught in the act of swimming, the raised arm Caching diagonally back from his shoulder. Nehesy scraped away further, while the dogs watched with detached, intelligent interest. The hair of the corpse was dark and choked with sand, a forest in which small creatures crept. It stared at them forlornly from its eyeless orbits.
There was an untidy wound in his ribcage near his heart – someone had slashed at him from horseback. In his other hand he grasped a small linen bag. Huy took it and opened it. It contained five kite.
‘A hard fee to resist,’ said Huy. ‘Your tracker?’
‘Yes. But why leave him here?’
‘There probably wasn’t time to take him with them. How would they have done it? A quick burial. It’s far enough away. No one would have expected anyone to come up here again within days – and with dogs.’
‘But why kill him?’
‘That’s another question,’ said Huy. ‘Maybe he changed his mind, decided to try to warn the king. Perhaps there was a panic. Perhaps they never intended to let him live.’
‘And why leave the money?’
‘He’d earned his fee. Take it back, and his Ka would have sent a ghost after it.’
Nehesy nodded.
They reburied the remains of the tracker, as deep as they could, and Nehesy left the wooden shovel stuck in the mound above him as a marker. Huy recited what protecting words he could remember from The Book of the Dead: