Bak stared across the intervening stretch of sand, nodded.
“His view of Intef would’ve been open and clear.”
“The distance would deter most men,” Imsiba said.
“Not this one.” Heribsen pointed toward the body, which 92 / Lauren Haney the Medjays were lifting onto the litter. “Look at the spacing of those arrows. He’s good, very good.”
The wind gusted, shoving the sand before it, lifting a fine veil of dust. Bak turned his back, closed his eyes. “Were you able to follow his trail?”
Heribsen snorted his disgust. “If we’d found his prints sooner, who knows where they’d have led us. As it was, we tracked him to the ridge, and there we met up with the man I’d sent off to follow Intef’s trail.”
“The slayer followed his victim.” Bak found he was not surprised.
“So we believe.” Heribsen scratched the sparse hair at the crown of his head. “About that time, the wind stiffened and the sand began to move. We followed the tracks south along the ridge for…Oh, probably two hundred paces. Then they vanished, blown away by the gale.”
Bak followed the ridge in his imagination and visualized the land to either side. An arid wasteland to the west, reaching into the unknown, and to the east, a broad stretch of sand broken by rocky mounds, dunes, and low shelves of stone falling away to the river. The farther south one walked, the rockier and more broken the landscape.
“Did you look for his donkeys?” Imsiba asked.
“That’s why I sent a man to backtrack him. I thought to find them.” Heribsen eyed the golden sands and a far horizon lost in a haze of dust. “If he tethered them somewhere and they can’t get food and water…” He shook his head, his expression bleak. “Well, we’ll keep our eyes open, but I don’t hold much hope.”
“Do you think it possible he ran into a wandering band of tribesmen?” Imsiba asked. “Perhaps one among them tracked him down, finding him a temptation too great to resist-especially if his donkeys were loaded with fresh meat.”
“We’ve been patroling this stretch of desert close on a week,” Heribsen said. “We’ve seen no sign of intruders.”
Bak wished the murder could be that simple: a starving band of men and women desperate for food. “No,” he said aloud. “Intef left the donkeys behind, in a place impossible to see from here. If the animals and their burden were the prize, they’d have been taken by stealth and led deep into the desert, with him none the wiser until he went back for them. There’d have been no need to slay him. And if the prize was more modest, merely the objects he carried, his water and weapons would be gone.”
Imsiba frowned. “You’re saying his life was taken for him alone. Why? He was a poor man, a hunter.”
Bak gave his friend a wry smile. “I fear the gods are testing us, Imsiba, with each problem being harder than the one before. First Penhet was stabbed, and soon we found a reason and sufficient traces of his assailant to lay hands on Rennefer. Next Mahu was slain and though we have a reason, the ivory tusk, we’ve found no track left by his slayer. Now this man is dead, and we’ve neither a trail to follow nor a reason.”
Bak trudged up a low dune, stubbed his toe on a rock buried in the sand, and cursed. His mouth was dry, his skin gritty and parched, long since stripped of the oil he had rubbed in at daybreak. Pausing at the summit, he shaded his eyes with a hand and looked eastward, where he could now and again glimpse through the filthy air a wide band of brownish water flowing around dark rocky islands, a few bedecked with greenery, and the silvery ripple of isolated patches of rapids. The river, the goal he yearned to reach.
His hope of finding Intef’s donkeys in the bleak landscape between the ridge and the water seemed absurd. Heribsen’s promise to search the desert on the opposite side of the ridge was even more ludicrous.
Amonmose, walking a like path fifty or so paces to his right, appeared and disappeared as the blowing dust and the landscape permitted. Imsiba was somewhere beyond, too far south to see. Nor could Bak see the black dog Heribsen had let them borrow, the bitch that had found Intef. Amonmose had let her run free in the hope that she would find the donkeys-or any jackals attracted to whatever game the crea-94 / Lauren Haney tures might carry. Far to his left, Bak glimpsed the two Medjays carrying the litter, then the wind gusted and dust enveloped them. Because they were burdened with the body, he had given them the northernmost path to the river and the shortest route to the fortress of Kor, too far away to see.
He closed his thoughts to his thirst and plodded forward, his feet sinking to the ankles in the warm sand. Who would slay a man like Intef? he wondered. He considered one reason and another and another, but at no time could he get around one basic fact: Intef had nothing. He was a poor man, one who hunted game to live, a precarious existence at best.
A dog began to bark, a harsh, angry sound that carried across the dunes. Other dogs answered-or were they jackals? — snarling, yelping, growling. Bak stood quite still, trying to see through the swirling dust, trying to locate the direction from which their voices came. To the south, he thought, and sprinted that way. He saw Amonmose run up a knoll, stop on top to listen, point to a spot somewhere ahead.
Bak crested a low mound, rounded a jagged cluster of rocks, and found on the far side an ancient watercourse filled nearly to the brim with sand. The terrified bray of a donkey drew his eyes down the wadi and added wings to his feet.
The black bitch stood in front of three laden donkeys, her hackles raised, her teeth bared, growling at a pack of feral dogs, doing her best to hold them off. The donkeys, their forelegs hobbled, danced nervously around the bitch. Bak yelled to distract the attacking dogs, hoping at the same time to summon Imsiba. Drawing his dagger, a close to useless weapon in the face of a dog pack, he slowed his pace to a cautious trot.
A yellow cur ran at the black dog, nipping at her, trying to distract her. A brown dog outflanked her to leap at a dead gazelle tied onto the back of a donkey. The donkey screamed in terror and kicked out with flying rear hooves. A spotted mongrel slipped between the donkey and its fellows, snapping at a bound foreleg and shoulder, forcing the creature back and away from the safety of numbers. A leggy gray dog leaped at its neck, trying to bring it down. The donkey shook him off, but at the cost of several long scratches down its shoulder. A rangy yellow and white dog, its hackles bristling, crept up on the black bitch’s far flank.
Bak yelled again. A huge white dog swung around to face him, its lips drawn back in a throaty snarl. Amonmose ran up behind Bak, holding his shield before him, his body and spear poised to strike. Imsiba appeared on the far rim of the wadi, spear at the ready. The yellow and white dog crouched, ready to leap at the bitch. With a blood-curdling roar, Imsiba threw his spear, which cut the beast nearly in half. Blood gushed. The dogs not yet frenzied by action paused. Amonmose lunged forward, burying his spearpoint in the white dog’s chest, bringing him down with a fatal yelp. A dog at the rear of the pack slunk away. Two more followed, their tails tucked between their legs. Imsiba dropped into the wadi, jerked his spear free, and prodded the cur worrying the black bitch. Its snarl turned to a yelp and it turned and ran, dragging a rear leg. While Amonmose freed his weapon, Bak ran forward to cut the throat of the leggy gray dog, bringing him down with a strident cry. The remaining mongrels raced off across the haze-shrouded sands.
The three men looked at each other, grinned. But they had no chance to congratulate themselves. The black bitch took off after the pack and Amonmose, cursing her soundly, chased after her. Bak and Imsiba dropped their blood-stained weapons and hastened to the frightened donkeys. Two of the animals carried the game Intef had shot: several hares and two fully grown gazelles. The third beast carried supplies.