Trying not to breathe, trying to ease the tickle in his throat, he realized that the smell of smoke was more notice able than before. He must waste no more time.
Using the wall as a guide, he walked forward and quickly found the door. Well aware of how futile the effort was, he gave it a good hard shove. In this case, his assailant had taken due care. The door had been barred shut. He slipped his dagger from its sheath and, squashing all thought, set to work. He started at a crack between boards and at a point slightly above waist height, where the bars were usually placed on doors. His dagger was sharp, the bronze well hardened. The wood of the door was softer than he expected but with knots as hard as granite.
He put all his strength behind the effort, shaving away the wood along the edges of the adjoining boards, cutting ever deeper and widening the hollow. The sweat poured from him and thirst plagued him. His aching arms and wrists felt heavy and wooden. The smoke thickened and he coughed hard and often. The pain in his head seemed less intense, less nagging. Maybe because he was too distracted to give it attention. Maybe because he was getting used to it, or his senses were too numbed to feel.
He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face. A fit of coughing reminded him again to hurry. Before the ware house filled with smoke. Before the fire burst into life.
With grim determination, he gouged another chunk of wood loose, shoved the blade hard, and burst through the last fragile sliver between him and the outside world. He knelt, tried to see through the hole. It was too small, the night outside too dark. He bared his teeth in a sardonic smile. Now all he had to do was make the hole big enough to reach through to the bar and lift it. An endless task, that promised to be. Or to call for help in the unlikely event that anyone passed by.
He blanked out so discouraging a thought and began to enlarge the hole. The smoke made his eyes sting and tears spilled from them. He had to stop often to wipe them. Sud den, violent attacks of coughing beset him. He needed air.
Good, clean air. Like the air seeping in from outside, caress ing his hand while he enlarged the hole.
Chiding himself for his failure to think of so obvious a re lief, he knelt before the opening, which had grown to roughly the size of a goose egg, and took several deep breaths. After an initial spate of coughing, his breathing be came less labored. How long he knelt there, his forehead resting on the door, taking in the sweet cool air, he had no idea. When he set to work again, he felt considerably bet ter-and more optimistic.
The feeling was short-lived. The blade of his dagger be gan to lose its edge, and he struck a small knot so hard the pointed tip broke off. Spitting out a string of oaths, resentful of every moment it took, he cut the softer wood from around the harder. In the end, with just a small segment holding the knot in place, he turned his dagger around and, with the han dle, broke the stubborn thing away, leaving a greatly enlarged, odd shaped hole that he could almost get his hand through. Anger turned to exultation.
He rewarded himself with another brief respite, wiping his streaming eyes and gulping in air. Somewhat restored, he poked his fingers through the hole and felt around for the bar holding the door closed. He could not reach far enough.
He toiled on, trying not to think or feel. Trying not to see how slowly the hole was expanding and how dull the blade was getting. Trying not to notice how light-headed he was beginning to feel. A long fit of coughing stopped him, forced him to put mouth and nose to the hole and breathe in the clean outside air. When the dizziness passed, he slipped his hand into the hole. It went all the way through and his wrist followed. Offering a quick prayer to the lord Amon, he felt for the bar, found it above the hole, forced it upward with the tips of his fingers. It tilted slightly to one side, but he could not raise it above the supports holding it in place.
Snarling an oath, he shoved his arm painfully far into the opening and raised the bar as high as he could. It fell away, striking the ground outside with a thud. Feeling immeasur able relief, he shouldered the door open and staggered out.
Falling to his knees, he took a deep breath, coughed, sucked in air, and coughed again. He offered a hasty but fervent prayer of thanks, struggled to his feet and ran on unsteady legs toward the harbor and help. The god’s warehouse and the grain within must be saved.
“I thank the lord Amon the fire had no chance to flare.”
Bak bit into a chunk of lamb left over from the previous eve ning. “If it had, the entire block would’ve burned and the god would’ve lost enough grain to feed a small city.”
He sat with Pashenuro and Psuro in the courtyard of his
Medjays’ temporary quarters, savoring the cold stew after an exhausting night and not enough sleep. The bump on his head was no smaller, but it hurt only when touched. The sound of snoring came from inside the building, where many of his men had collapsed on their sleeping pallets after a long night of revelry. A pigeon drank from a bowl of water left for Hori’s dog, and a mouse sneaked a bit of stale bread thrown out for birds.
Pashenuro used a chunk of bread to spoon up the stew.
“The gods truly smiled upon you, sir, placing nearby a cargo ship and its crew.”
“I’m grateful they were on board. They might well have been away, celebrating the festival as our men were.” Bak took a sip of beer, thinking to wash the huskiness from his voice, the soreness from his throat. The brew was too bland to serve the purpose. “The captain sent a man off to get more help, and the fire was out in less than an hour.”
Psuro toyed with his beer jar, his brow wrinkled with worry. “That was a deliberate attempt to slay you, sir.”
“So it would seem.”
“Who was responsible? The man who slew Woserhet?”
“Fire was used in both cases.” Bak’s grim expression changed to one of puzzlement. “Yet if both vile deeds were the acts of a single man, why did he not slash my throat as he did the auditor’s? He had every opportunity.”
“He felt certain you’d perish in the fire,” Pashenuro said.
“He must soon be snared. To start a fire in such a place was an abomination, proving he has no regard for man or beast. There are housing blocks nearby, other warehouses, ships moored along the waterfront. The lord Amon only knows how many might’ve died if the fire had not been quenched.”
“Are you sure you’re all right, sir?” Hori, seated on the rooftop in the shade of the pavilion, flung a worried look across a large round basket containing several rolled scrolls.
Bak waved off the youth’s concern. “Other than this cough, a raw throat, a headache, and the stench of smoke lin gering in my nostrils, I feel well enough.” Dropping onto the stool, he eyed the scrolls in the basket, most undamaged, a few singed, and a pile of five or six lying flat beside the con tainer and held down by stones. The latter documents’ edges were blackened and irregular; the writing tailed off at the burned ends. “Tell me what you’ve learned so far.”
“The morning’s young, and I haven’t had much time.”
“When a man tries to slay me, I wish to learn his name as quickly as possible.” Bak formed a smile, thinking to soften the sting of words all too true.
Flushing, Hori wasted no time in prologue. “I wanted first to get a general impression of the scrolls’ contents, so I started by reading an undamaged document and writing down all the items it mentioned.” He gestured toward the basket-which held the scrolls he had read so far, Bak as sumed-and a white-plastered board on the rooftop beside him, containing several columns of the youth’s small, neat symbols. “I went on to a partly burned document and did the same.” He pointed to the pile of scrolls spread flat on the roof. “After that, I tried to read a badly burned one.” He nod ded toward the charred scraps laid out where Bak had last seen them. “Those were so fragile I thought it best not to move them.”