Bak had served as a soldier for more than eight years, most of that time as a chariotry officer, protected from close con-tact with the enemy by the speed of his horses and the height of his chariot. For the first time, he had an idea of how it might feel to assault a fortress, to walk into a baffled gate where men could be waiting overhead, armed with bows and arrows and slings and boiling oil. The worm of fear crawled up his spine.
They strode on, cloaked by the gloom. Four paces, five, six. At the end of the passage and still hidden in shadow, they stopped to examine the baffle ahead. It was open to the sky, with a projecting tower on either side and walls rising to the battlements high above. A low moan drew their eyes to the right, to the sentry crumpled on the brick paving just outside the passage. Bak and Imsiba stood dead still, looking, listening. Seeing nothing, hearing no sound, Bak stepped out of the passage, ducked aside, and at the same time dropped onto a knee beside the senseless man. Something thudded into the brick close to the spot where Bak had just been, an arrow buried to the shaft, its feathers quivering from the force of impact. Across the court, he glimpsed a vague movement in the shadowed passage leading to the second baffle. A hand reached into the sunlight, a bow clutched hard, an arrow seated for flight.
He grabbed the sentry’s tawny shield, swung it upright, and fumbled for the downed man’s spear. The arrow sped through the air, the shield jerked out of his hand. Imsiba made an odd, surprised little sound. Bak pivoted, saw the Medjay clutching his upper arm and blood flowing through his fingers from a long ugly slice through his flesh.
Suddenly the passage was filled with merry laughter and the boys burst into the courtyard.
“Go back!” Bak yelled.
The boys milled around, not understanding.
“Get back in the passage!” Bak snarled.
Mery spotted Imsiba’s bloody arm and the downed sentry.
His eyes opened wide, he gaped. “What happened, sir?”
The shadowy image vanished from the passage ahead.
The archer had opted to flee. Too many boys looking on, too many mouths to silence should he be seen. Bak, his expression stormy, tugged the spear from beneath the sentry and scooped up the shield, its tawny hide scarred by the arrow that had glanced off the edge to strike Imsiba. He looked at the Medjay, at a wound ugly and no doubt hurtful but not life-threatening.
Imsiba urged him on with a forced smile. “Go, my friend, bring him to his knees.”
Bak squeezed the Medjay’s uninjured shoulder and turned to the boys. “Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll summon help as soon as I can.”
Mery, he saw, was not among them. Quick footsteps drew his eyes to the far end of the baffle, where the youth, running along the pathway as fleet as the wind, vanished in the next dark passage. Snapping out an oath, Bak raced after him.
He doubted the archer remained inside, awaiting his chance to take another shot, but the risk remained. The boy could be taken captive, killed even.
He raced into the next passage. Though half-blinded by the dark, he spotted Mery’s silhouette in the rectangle of light at the far end. He saw no sign of a man armed with a bow.
He sped on through, grabbed the boy by the upper arm, and gave him a hurried, whispered reprimand. They went on then, Mery close on his heels, working their way up the second, larger baffle, darting from one projecting tower to another. They slipped into the shadow of the third and final passageway and crept through the darkness to the last door.
In the sunlight beyond, the usually well-traveled thorough-fare from the gate to the citadel lay empty and deserted. A flock of pigeons perched on the broken walls and ruined vaults of the ancient cemetery, preening themselves in the sun. Thin coils of smoke rose from the outer city. Behind the blank walls facing the cemetery, children laughed, a man cursed, women chattered. A sweet childish voice sang an old love song accompanied by a lute played with surprising ability. They saw no man carrying a bow and arrows.
“He’s gone,” Mery groaned.
Bak muttered another oath. The outer city was not large, but he could think of no easier place for a man to disappear than in its rabbit warren of lanes. “We must report to the sentry at the citadel gate and have him summon help for Imsiba and the injured man. Then, my young friend, we’ll go from house to house, asking questions of one and all.”
With the day so close to completion, the streets teemed with life. Men set aside the tools of their trade to walk home, filling the lanes with laughter and camaraderie. Women and children moved from inside to outside, from dark, still rooms to bright and breezy rooftops. That, Bak told Mery, would ease their quest if not make it more successful.
Moving quickly but systematically from one roof to another, probing stairways, airshafts, and courtyards, querying everyone they saw, they explored one block of buildings after another. By the time they had searched half the outer city, Bak was sure their quarry had long ago eluded them. He persisted nonetheless, thinking someone might have seen a man in a hurry armed with bow and quiver.
Spotting yet another open trapdoor, he plunged down the stairway, the boy close behind, to a shabbily furnished room.
The hippopotamus-headed, pregnant goddess Taurt looked out from a dusty prayer niche.
A scraggly headed woman of indeterminate years burst through a rear door. She gave him a long, hard stare, her mouth tight, angry. “Get out of my house you…You…”
Words failed her.
“I’m Lieutenant Bak, head of the Medjay police. I’m looking for a man…”
“You then!” she snarled. “Lieutenant…Whatever your name. You’re the one I want to talk to!”
Mery opened his mouth to object. Bak, controlling his own tongue with an effort, silenced the boy with a cautionary look. He was worried about Imsiba and discouraged by a quest he was certain was futile, but he knew also that help sometimes came when least expected.
As he took a step toward the woman, she ducked backward through the door. Not sure why, whether she feared him or wanted to show him something, he followed her into her kitchen, which reeked of burned onions and fish.
She grabbed an object he couldn’t see from beside the oven. Swinging around to stand before him, flat chest thrust forward, eyes blazing, she held out a long bow. “Here!” she snarled, shaking it in his face. “Take this thing before I wrap it around somebody’s neck.” In her other hand, she held a quiver containing a dozen or so arrows.
Bak caught the bow, fearing she would blind him in her rage, and took it from her. She gave up the quiver reluctantly, as if afraid she would have no further grounds to complain.
The objects were standard army issue, he saw, no different than those he had found after Mahu’s death and Intef’s.
“Where did you get these?”
Her mouth tightened to a thin, angry line. She pointed to a roof of smoke-darkened palm fronds loosely spread across a framework of spindly poles. “There! Somebody dropped them into my kitchen while I prepared our evening meal.”
Her voice grew shrill. “It fell on the brazier, breaking my bowl and spilling our stew. We’ve nothing left to eat but bread and beer!”
Chapter Ten
“It burns like fire,” Imsiba admitted, “but I can use it if I must.”
Bak, standing in the doorway of his office, noted the drawn look on the Medjay’s face and eyed the bulky bandage wrapped around his upper arm, tied with a large untidy knot.
An oily green salve with the sharp smell of fleabane oozed from beneath the edges of the linen. Experience had given the garrison physician an unsurpassed skill with wounds, but his bandaging technique left much to be desired. “Stay quiet today, as the physician ordered. With Hori moved and the bench now usable, I can think of no better place than here.”
“Ten!” yelled one of the men on duty, and the knucklebones clattered across the entry hall floor. The man leaned over to look, banged his fist on the hard-packed earth, and snarled a curse. His companion chortled.