“I’m Bak.”
“I’ve come with a message, sir.” The child spoke rapidly, running his sentences together in his eagerness to pass on what he had to say. “A man named Amonked wishes to see you, sir. He asks you to meet him at a grain warehouse near the harbor. Right away, he said. I’m to take you there.”
The three men looked at one another, their curiosity aroused.
“Shall we go with you, sir?” Psuro asked.
“What did this man look like?” Bak asked the boy.
The child shrugged. “Like a scribe, sir.”
“You could be describing any one of a thousand men,”
Pashenuro said, disgusted.
“Wouldn’t Amonked send a note, sir?” Psuro asked.
“He may not have had the time or the means.” Bak scooped up his baton and rose to his feet. “I suspect we’re making too much of a simple summons. Lest I err, I’ll send the boy back after we reach the warehouse. If I don’t return by moonrise, he can lead you to me.”
The building they approached looked like all the other warehouses strung along the river, especially in the dark, and the slightly ajar door before which they stopped opened into one of countless similar storage magazines in the area.
A strong smell of grain greeted them, making Bak sneeze.
He shoved the door wider and peered inside, expecting a light, finding nothing but darkness and an empty silence.
Amonked was not there. Disappointed, Bak turned to speak to the boy. The child was halfway down the lane, run ning as fast as his legs could carry him. Something was wrong!
Bak sensed movement behind him, started to turn. A hard object struck him on the head, his legs buckled, and his world turned black.
Chapter Seven
A pounding head brought Bak to his senses. He lay still and quiet, reluctant to move. Time passed, how much he did not know. He opened his eyes. At least he thought he did. But he could see nothing. What had happened? Where was he? He tried to rise, but pain shot through his head, intense and ago nizing, centered somewhere over his right ear.
He had no choice but to lay motionless, allowing the pain to lessen to a fierce, persistent throbbing. He felt himself ly ing on… On what? He tried to think, to remember. He had been summoned by Amonked. A boy had led him to a ware house near the river. He recalled standing outside, watching the child run away, and then… Yes, he had heard a move ment behind him. After that… Nothing.
He could see no stars overhead, nor could he hear the creaking and groaning of ships moored along the river’s edge or feel the light breeze. His assailant must have moved him.
The air was hot, heavy, and dead silent. It carried the musty smell of grain and another odor he could not quite identify. A food smell. He was inside a building. A warehouse. Probably the one to which Amonked had summoned him.
No. Not Amonked. Someone else. Someone who wished to slay him? Or get him out of the way for a while?
He slid a foot back, raising his knee, and crooked an arm, thinking to prop himself up. The realization struck: his as sailant had left him untied. Offering a heartfelt prayer of thanks to the lord Amon, he explored with his fingers the rough bed beneath him. He felt fabric, the heavy weave of storage bags, and a layer of dust. Touching a finger to his tongue, he tasted ashes, used to protect grain from insects and worms.
The sacks were full, plump with grain. A few kernels had escaped to lay among the ashes. As he had guessed, he was in a warehouse, most likely the same one he had approached without a qualm, thinking to meet Amonked. A block of buildings near the river, the lanes around it untraveled at night. In the unlikely event that his cries for help would carry through the thick mudbrick walls, no one would be outside to hear.
Why, in a warehouse, could he smell food? He frowned, trying to think. Not food, but what? Something scorched, burning. A thought, the sudden certain knowledge, sent a chill down his spine. The grain was on fire.
He sat up abruptly. The world spun around him and his head felt ready to burst. He thought he might be sick. He swallowed hard, reached up and gently probed the painful spot. A lump beneath his hair came alive to his touch and he felt a small patch of something wet. Blood.
Not enough to fret about, he told himself.
Twisting his upper body, taking care how he moved his head so as not to arouse the evil genie inside, he looked all around. He could see no bright, writhing inferno. The fire, he assumed, was smoldering in a bag or two of grain. The bags too tightly packed, too close together, to allow air to fuel the flame. Maybe the heart of the grain still lived, slightly green and moist. How long the fire would smolder, he could not begin to guess.
One thing he knew for a fact: he had to get out of the warehouse. He had heard tales of grain fires, of the very dust in the air bursting into flame. Even if untrue, the air would fill with a suffocating smoke as deadly as a conflagration.
This warehouse, like most others, would have a single door and no windows. It might be vented in some manner, but the interior was blacker than night, making any small opening impossible to find. Therefore he must either exca vate a hole in the mudbrick wall or find a way out the door.
He needed a tool of some sort. Automatically he reached for the leather sheath hanging from his waist, felt the dagger in side. He laughed aloud; his assailant had been careless. The laugh was cut short by a cough, which jarred his splitting head.
He thought of Nebamon, the way the overseer had dug into the mudbrick of the storehouse in the sacred precinct.
The arched roof had to have been at least four palm-widths thick. The walls supporting the heavy arch might be thicker.
He would need a hole almost a cubit in diameter to crawl through. He felt certain the smell of burning was growing stronger. Could he dig himself out in time?
Better try the door. How hard was the wood? he won dered. How thick? Two fingers? Three? No matter. He could delay no longer.
He had not the vaguest idea where the door was, so first he had to find it. The bags beneath his feet were at a slightly lower level than those he sat on, which might mean some had been removed at one time or another. No man assigned to carry the heavy bags would collect them from deeper in side than necessary; he would take those nearest the door.
Also, assuming Bak’s assailant had been eager to get away, he would not have taken the time to drag him deep within the tunnellike chamber.
Satisfied with his reasoning, Bak faced the slope and rose to his feet like a sick, old man, holding his head straight and stiff. He took off a sandal and eased his foot forward, feeling the roundness of the bags and the slight hollows where they touched. The last thing he wanted was to fall-or to step into the fire he could not see. If the man had left him near the door, the odds were good that he had started the fire close by.
A second short, careful step. A third and a fourth. Without warning, his forehead struck the ceiling. The pain in his head exploded. He stood motionless, letting the pounding dwindle to a painful but tolerable throb. He reached into the darkness ahead, found he had struck the downward curve of the vaulted arch. Ducking low, he stepped forward to the wall. A side wall, not the one at the end of the building that held the door.
Again he used the slope of the filled bags as a guide. Those to his right were piled lower than those to the left. He turned in that direction. After two cautious steps, he found himself half stumbling downward on the none-too-stable slope formed by the bags. He stepped onto the hard-packed earthen floor with a jolt. Congratulating himself for having guessed right thus far, he walked along the wall a half-dozen paces to the intersecting wall. Less than three paces away, if his as sumptions were correct, he would find the door, the sole exit.
He laughed aloud, coughed, felt sure his head would split.