Feeling as if he were getting nowhere with Mahu’s murder, Bak hoisted himself onto the terrace wall overlooking the waterfront. The harbor was quiet, with no produce to unload, no trade goods or tribute to inspect, no tolls to collect. Sailors stretched out on decks to snooze in the sun. Guards strolled the quays at a snail’s pace. Midway across the river, two fishing boats slowly closed the distance between them, drawing on board their nets. Slivers of silver flashed in the intervening space, fish leaping, writhing, frantic to escape.
Dozens of birds wheeled overhead, drawn by the promise of a feast.
The familiar sights, the fishy-musty smell of the river, the splash of water on the shore, lightened the load Bak carried.
Soon he turned his thoughts to Intef. The gods had conspired to erase all sign of the hunter’s passage across the barren desert, nor had they left any trail to his slayer. Unless the ancient jewelry could be made to speak.
Intef must have found the precious items-perhaps in a long-forgotten tomb-during his last hunting trip. If he had come upon them earlier, he would have hidden them away at his home, not carried them with him into the desert. Was he slain for the jewelry? Or for his knowledge of a tomb that might still contain a treasure? Ridiculous! As Nofery had said, all the old tombs had long ago been plundered.
Plundered did not necessarily mean empty.
Tombs littered the sands in and around Buhen. The closer the cemetery, the better known it was and the more likely to have been despoiled. Though he suspected Intef had found his small treasure in some isolated spot in the desert, probably somewhere in the area where his body was found, Bak decided first to eliminate the easiest potential source of the hunter’s unexplained wealth-and the most unlikely: an ancient cemetery that lay within the walls of Buhen.
Bak stood before a low shelf of rock that marked the site of a very old and ruined cemetery. Mudbrick walls and mounds, the tops of low structures built many generations ago, protruded from sand blown against the face of the shelf.
Gaping holes and sandswept stairways led to black cavities in the ground. The tall outer wall of Buhen loomed over the sandy waste, giving a bird’s eye view to a sentry looking down from the battlements. The outer city stood aloof and indifferent to the long-forgotten men and women who had been buried a few paces away.
He had found, playing in and among the tombs, six boys close in age to Nofery’s servant Amonaya. They were the sons of a growing number of soldiers and scribes who thought Wawat safe enough for their families. Unlike the thin, slightly built servant, who had scant opportunity to play outside, these were sturdy, muscular children, deeply tanned by the sun. Their bodies were dusted with fine sand, their short kilts stained with sweat and dirt.
“I’m in need of help.” Bak smiled, hoping to set the boys at ease. From the apprehensive look they gave each other, he failed to do so. He was not surprised at their mistrust.
His Medjays had rousted them out of the cemetery two or three times, and the garrison sentries often harried them.
He focused on the tallest of the six, forcing him to be their spokesman. “I’ve seen you out here time after time, and I could think of no one in Buhen with more knowledge of the tombs. Will you tell me what you know of them?”
“Well, sir, we…” The boy’s voice tailed off; he looked to his companions for help.
“I’m not here to punish you,” Bak assured him, “nor have I come to complain. It’s information I seek, knowledge I suspect you alone possess.”
The boy shifted his weight, unconvinced.
Bak decided to try another tack, one that might make them look beyond themselves. “Did any of you know the hunter Intef?”
A sturdy boy close on ten years old piped up, “Long ago, when I was little, he let me lead his donkeys each time he came to Buhen.”
The smallest boy, plump with baby fat, stared at Bak wide-eyed. “They say a patrol found him far out in the desert, slain from behind. Is it true?”
The taller boy silenced them both with a scowl. “What does Intef’s death have to do with us?”
Bak ignored the challenge in the boy’s voice. Opting instead to take the question as an invitation, he sat down on a partially fallen wall and began to talk. The taller boy hesitated, but finally rested a hip on a waist-high chunk of broken stone and crossed his arms over his chest. One by one, his companions arranged themselves around his feet and Bak’s on overturned pots and mounds of tumbled bricks. Bak first gained their full attention, pledging them to secrecy, and then he earned their loyalty and respect by telling them all he knew of the hunter’s death, holding nothing back.
“Poor Intef.” The sturdy boy swallowed hard. “I liked him.
A lot.”
“Now you see why I’ve come to you,” Bak said. “I know nothing of the ancient tombs, while you spend much of your time among them.”
The taller boy looked to the others for guidance and they at each other, eyes probing, searching for an answer each could find only in his heart. A secret message passed among them, a decision reached and agreed upon without a word being uttered.
The taller boy rose to his feet, pulled his shoulders back, and added depth to his voice. “My name is Mery, sir. And this is…” He identified his friends. “We’ll be glad to help you.”
Five nods of agreement, a chorus of affirmatives.
Bak expelled a well hidden sigh of relief.
Mery looked along the rocky shelf, with its broken walls and collapsed vaults. “Intef found nothing here. The bigger tombs have long been open and empty, the smaller ones contain no wealth.”
Bak eyed a rock-cut stairway surrounded by what looked like a low mudbrick wall. A rounded projection on one end set him straight: the wall was in fact the remains of a vaulted roof. A black hole at the bottom of the steps beckoned. “I must see for myself what they’re like.”
Another hasty consultation.
“We’ll take you to our favorite, one of the safest,” Mery said. “It’s dug into the stone, not roofed with mudbrick.”
Weaving a path among mounds and broken walls, shallow holes and open pits, they followed the rock shelf to a walled flight of steps that looked much like the others. Two large clay pots that must once have held the tiny bodies of children stood to either side of a stone slab, the inscription on its face too weathered to read. Mery plunged downward. Bak followed, reached a doorway at the bottom, ducked under the low jamb, and found himself in a dark chamber. Three more steps took him to the floor of the sunken room. As he cleared the door, sunlight flowed through, dim but good enough to see by.
The chamber was small, not much wider than his out-stretched arms and twice as long, with a rough-hewn pillar in the center. Its ceiling was so low his hair brushed the stone. Two rooms opened to the right, forming a space as large as the entry chamber, and each contained an empty niche. The place was hot and dry, smelling of dust. The walls throughout were bare, rough and pitted by the mason’s chisel marks. The bodies that had been interred here for eternity had long ago vanished.
This was nothing like the burial places Bak had heard about near Waset, large and sumptuously decorated excava-tions prepared for ranking members of the royal court. But what could one expect? This was the frontier, not the capital of the rich and powerful land of Kemet.
“Is this tomb typical?” he asked, careful not to show his disappointment.
“This is one of the best,” Mery said proudly. “Most are smaller, not much more than holes in the ground, and the roofs of many have fallen in-or look about to.”
“Is the same true of the cemeteries outside the gate, to the west of this fortress?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bak led the way up the stairs, paused at the top, and looked at the ruined superstructures that lined the face of the ledge. “Have you ever come upon an unopened tomb?”