Ahmose’s mouth tightened to a thin, stubborn line. “I’m no longer young, Lieutenant, no longer able to protect myself and all that’s mine. If I tell you what you want to hear, how can I be sure the headless man won’t come to slay us? Me and the old woman? How can I know he won’t carry off my animals or leave them to starve?”
Bak exchanged a weary look with Imsiba. The question was fair, but it stretched his patience. Ahmose had gone out of his way to draw them to the island, yet here he was, bargaining as he would for fodder. “Soldiers will be coming tomorrow to tend to Kefia’s farm. I’ll see that they also look after you and yours.”
Ahmose gnawed a mouthful of meat from the leg of the goose and chewed, no doubt waiting for word of this servant he needed. When Bak failed to speak, failed to bend further, he heaved a long, resigned sigh. “I’ve watched the headless man fetch the ox from Kefia’s farm and lead the animal away in the dead of night. Sometimes he meets a ship-the Kushite’s vessel-and he loads a wooden box heavy with contraband onto a sledge, which the ox pulls away. At times his burden is so great he also loads Kefia’s donkeys. They form a caravan and all go off together.”
“And at other times?” Bak demanded.
“Hmmmm!” Imsiba, peeking into the food basket, withdrew a leaf-wrapped package and a small jar. “Sweet cakes and honey.”
Ahmose’s eyes lit up and he looked at the package with longing. Sweet cakes, it appeared, were his weakness, maybe a treat the old woman could no longer prepare. “He goes away with the ox and brings back a laden sledge. All it carries is loaded on board Captain Roy’s trading ship.”
“Where does he go, old man, when he leads the ox away?
Into the desert?”
“He walks west, yes, but I know not how far.” Ahmose, watching Imsiba spread the leaves wide, revealing the rich brown, crusty cakes, licked his lips unconsciously. “I long ago learned the value of caution.”
Bak understood. An old, no longer strong man would not wish to draw attention to himself by leaving tracks in the sand that the headless man would be sure to follow. “After his night of labor is ended, he returns the ox and donkeys to Kefia’s farm. Where does he go after that?”
Ahmose hesitated. If the look on his face told true, he was well aware of the value of the information he had thus far given away and was reluctant to part with the rest until he knew for a fact he would be rewarded. As Imsiba trickled honey onto a cake, the old man stared at the rich golden stream, his face registering desire, indecision.
He tore his eyes from the sweet with obvious effort. “I’ve heard you’re a fair man, Lieutenant, one who gives with a generous heart. How can you take from me, giving nothing in return, when you reward in a grand fashion others who’ve helped you less than I?”
Has word traveled so far of the objects I left with Pahuro?
Bak wondered. “Don’t believe all you hear, old man. Tales have a tendency to swell in direct proportion to the wishes of the one who listens.”
Ahmose’s face fell, reflecting the resignation of a man 212 / Lauren Haney convinced he must settle for a sweet cake in place of the servant he requested.
Touching his arm, Bak gave him a reassuring smile. “You’ll get your reward, never fear. Not one servant but two: a young man who’ll ease your burden, and a wife who’ll keep him happy in this lonely place.”
Ahmose stared open-mouthed. Then he lowered his head, hiding his face, and when he spoke his voice was husky with tears of joy. “The headless man goes upriver. A half-hour’s walk above Kefia’s farm is a backwater, and there among the reeds he hides a small skiff. He climbs aboard, poles the vessel into the current, and lets the river carry him downstream through the darkness.”
Chapter Fourteen
“You should not have promised so much.” Imsiba stood ankle-deep in coarse wind-blown sand, looking back across the cove and the channel of fast and turbulent water toward the island they had just left. “Commandant Thuty will not be pleased.”
“What would you have me do?” Bak demanded. “Give the old man nothing?”
“Where will you get these servants you promised? With Thuty already complaining that you seek to usurp his powers, he’ll not command the chief steward to search them out and hand them over.”
Imsiba meant well, Bak knew, but the promise was made.
“That farm will only thrive with much hard work. Should Ahmose break a bone or become too sick to toil, it’ll revert to the wild in a single season and he and the old woman will starve.”
Turning away, closing his heart to further criticism, he climbed to the top of the long, narrow spine of weathered rock whose lower end formed the ledge where Wensu and Roy had moored their ships. He glimpsed Ahmose on the summit of the island, staring across the water toward him and Imsiba, too curious to go on about his business. A patch of white among the brush lower down could have been the old woman, also watching.
The big Medjay climbed up to join him. “It looks a lonely life to us, but when all is said and done, Ahmose and Kefia are close neighbors.”
“Close, yes, but separated by endless toil. I doubt they see each other from one week to another.” Struck by a new thought, Bak chuckled. “Unless they’ve gossip to pass on.”
Imsiba had to smile. As old Ahmose had reminded them, rumors moved faster up and down the river than messages carried by official couriers.
In silence they walked side by side up the rocky spine. The surface was cracked and broken, sharp-edged and treacherous where it lay half buried in sand. A light breeze stirred the air, carrying to them the chirping of hundreds of sparrows massed in the tamarisks near the cove. Ahead, the sun hung close above the western horizon, tinting the sky gold.
The formation carried them up the shallow sand-swept incline, ending abruptly about halfway to the north-south ridge. To either side, the sand showed a few tracks of small animals-dogs or jackals in search of prey and the delicate prints of birds. No human footprints marked the surface.
Imsiba muttered a curse in his own tongue. “Why must the gods forever hold out a promise they fail to keep?”
Bak, too, was disappointed to find the trail had ended so abruptly. “I pray they’re not giving the headless man and Wensu an extra day or two to flee.”
“The thought is abhorrent.”
Bak studied the sweeping landscape and the long shadows of evening. A multitude of colors, gradations from the palest gold to the deepest amber, formed a map of dips and rises invisible in the harsh light of midday. The stony ridge that formed the horizon was the sole natural barrier, other than a few isolated mounds, of any significance along this stretch of the river. If one wished to remain hidden and at peace through eternity, he could think of no more isolated a place, though why any man would wish to spend eternity in this wretched land, he could not imagine.
“We’ll come again tomorrow,” he said, glancing toward the setting sun, “and then we’ll go into the desert.”
The Medjay eyed the vast expanse of sand with disapproval. “Our time would be better spent, my friend, if we summoned our suspects one by one and turned them over to a man with a stout cudgel.”
“Need I remind you that all are men of high repute?”
“To search the desert for a tomb when no tracks remain will be like looking for a boat at night on the great green sea.
We could come within arm’s length and miss it altogether.”
“How long do you think it would take them to run to the vizier with tales of unwarranted beatings and policemen no better than the men they hunt?” Bak gave a hard, sharp laugh. “I fear we’d both spend many months far from home, guarding the prisoners who toil in the desert mines.”
A cynical smile broke through Imsiba’s gloom. “It might be worth a year or two if only to see Userhet bent low beneath the stick.”