“Not until Pashenuro signals that the last man is within range. We’ve a while yet. They’re spread out far too much for their own good.” Keeping his eyes on the approaching men and others appearing behind, Bak said, “Menu pur chased a few hours with Meretre, you told me. Did Baket Amon arrive about that time and interfere?”
“Would that he had,” the youth said fervently.
“What did happen?”
The boy tried to look defiant. “Can I not tell you later?
After we face these miserable barbarians?”
Bak caught the boy’s chin, pulled his head around, and looked him straight in the eye. “Pawah, if you hadn’t gone out with Pashenuro to spy on the tribesmen, we’d not be here today, with a good chance of winning the battle. None theless, I feel like turning you over my knee and spanking you.”
Pawah’s face flamed, he swallowed hard.
“I want no more evasion, do you hear me?” Bak said, releasing his chin.
The youth’s eyes teared, but anger and pride kept them from overflowing. “Menu took her to the back of the build ing. Thutnofer bade me carry on, walking around the room, showing myself to best advantage. I did so, all the while trying not to think of Meretre, thinking of nothing else. And all the while Thutnofer bragged of the wealth Menu had exchanged for her. A house-not large, he kept saying, but of good value in a city as crowded as Waset.” The boy’s words resonated with fury. “I hated Thutnofer. I wanted to slay him with my own two hands. But I could do nothing.”
The foremost group of tribesmen reached a point im mediately below their shelter, giving Bak his first good look at Hor-pen-Deshret. The tribal leader walked at the head of his army, strutting like a high-bred stallion. He was tall and lean and glistened with oil recently rubbed onto his body.
He wore a leather kilt painted red, studded with circles of metal. A broad multicolored beaded collar adorned his up per chest, he wore wide leather bracelets and anklets, and a bright red feather rose from his short dark curly hair. He carried a long spear and a shield decorated with a red chev ron design.
His army followed, loose clumps of men, widespread in many cases, coming down the trail in no particular order.
Where their leader was a show horse, they were donkeys.
Men dressed in leather or linen or wool, simple garb, un adorned, often ragged and patched. Men dragged away from their wives and children and flocks, wearing on their backs all they had brought with them, in many cases all they owned.
Bak longed to attack then and there, to slay with his own hands the man who had lured these people off the desert with promises of glory and wealth. He spurned the urge.
That rag-tag army had to be crushed, putting an end forever to dreams of a tribal coalition.
Pawah, his voice husky with raw emotion, said, “Time passed. How many hours, I don’t know. One, maybe two, maybe longer. When only a few men remained, Thutnofer ordered me away, telling me to get on with my duties as a household servant.” The boy’s face took on a strained look.
“As I walked toward the back of the building, I passed the sole room that had a wooden door. I heard beyond that door a terrible cry. A woman in desperate need.” His voice broke, words merged with sobs. “I knew before I flung the door wide that it was Meretre.”
Bak placed a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. By this time, he had an idea of what must have happened.
Tears rolled down Pawah’s cheeks. “There she was, lying on the sleeping pallet, beaten and bloody, her life flowing away. A filthy, bloody rag muffled her screams. That vile beast Menu was on his knees astraddle her, his fist red with her blood, the rest of him smeared with it.” Gasping for air through his sobs, Pawah gave Bak a look wild with anger and pain. “I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to her. I ran away, screaming, to the front of the building.”
“That’s all you could’ve done,” Bak said, trying to calm him. “You had to get help.”
“The ram of… the prince had just come in,” Pawah went on as if in a trance. “I don’t know what I said-I don’t remember-but he ran with me to the room where
Meretre lay helpless. He saw the state she was in and he saw that repellent creature pulling himself off her. He caught him by the arm, flung him against the wall, stunning him, and went to Meretre. She breathed her last in his arms.
Crying out that her ka had fled, he laid her on the sleeping pallet. As he turned away, his face filled with sorrow and fury, he saw Menu trying to slip out the door. He caught him, took him by the neck, and squeezed the life from him.”
The tribesmen walked by below, a broken stream of men.
A word here and there floated up, a language Bak did not understand. Although he had foreseen much of the truth, he had trouble taking in the story, the terrible reality.
“You saw it all?”
“I did,” Pawah whispered.
“Is that when you fled Thutnofer’s establishment?”
The youth nodded. “The… the prince told me to leave that low place, to run as far and as fast as I could.” The boy wiped his wet, swollen eyes. “I raced to the harbor and hid on a traveling ship moored at the quay, thinking it would carry me to some far-off place. It did. We sailed downriver to Mennufer. Sennefer, whose ship it was, caught me there, hungry and afraid, sneaking off the deck.
He took pity on me and took me to his home, where he told everyone he’d bought me.”
“Did you tell him of the slayings you witnessed?”
“I told him of Meretre and I said another man whose name I didn’t know avenged her death. That’s all.” The boy drew in a deep breath, tried to smile. “Prince Baket Amon saved my life, sir. I know he did. If I’d stayed in that accursed house of pleasure, I’d’ve died, as Meretre did.”
Of that, Bak had no doubt.
The clumps of men walking along the trail below were wider apart, the number of stragglers growing. Bak fretted.
Surely half had come and gone, possibly more. Yet no sig nal from Pashenuro. Had something happened to the Med jay? Had he been spotted and caught? Would the rabble army walk by untouched, making the final confrontation in the valley difficult, maybe impossible to win?
Recognizing his penchant to worry too soon, he asked,
“Why are you so afraid, Pawah? Do you know who slew
Baket-Amon?”
“No, sir, but you said yourself that the man who took the prince’s life is among those who came with us from
Waset. Would he not think me a threat?”
“Do you know something you haven’t told me?”
“No, sir.”
Bak doubted Pawah was in danger, but he could under stand the youth’s fear, rational or not. “Tell me of Menu.
Anything you can think of, no matter how insignificant.”
“He must’ve been a man of wealth.” The youth knelt beside Bak and stared at the men on the path below. “Each time he came to Thutnofer’s place of business, he drank the best vintage wine from the northern vineyards; wagered far too much on games of chance, whether or not he played; and used the most desirable and costly of women.”
“Did he hurt any women before Meretre?”
“They’d sometimes come away bruised, and none wanted to go with him a second time.”
“Thutnofer has much to explain.” And to answer for, Bak thought. “What more can you tell me of Menu?”
“He always wore fine clothing and jewelry. When he had nothing else to trade, he sometimes offered a bracelet or anklet or collar for a night of pleasure.”
Bak’s eyes darted toward the men on the trail and back to the boy at his side. “A man who barters away his per sonal possessions isn’t always as wealthy as he appears.
Could that be true here?”
Pawah cocked his head, thinking. “I never thought about it before, but…” His eyes suddenly widened. “Yes! The house he traded for Meretre cleared other debts to Thut nofer.”
A fragment of a recent conversation came back to Bak, words spoken by chance and regretted at the next breath.