While the man in charge of the mule gave the creature a drink, another man wiped the animal down, working around Bak’s limbs as best he could, and the third massaged its trem bling legs. The leader paced back and forth, looking at the sun at irregular intervals, silently nagging them to hurry. His impatience failed to move them. They dithered and fussed over the mule, giving themselves a rest as well as the animal.
Bak was too drowsy to consider escape, but was alert enough to know that he could not allow himself to become too lost. The thought was so ludicrous he almost laughed aloud. He had been senseless for hours. He had not the vaguest idea of how far they had come or in which direction they had traveled. Nonetheless, certain natural features stood out above all others and they would not have changed.
Letting his cheek rest on the mule’s wiry mane, Bak forced himself to concentrate. Mule and men stood on a nar row trail that wound around a steep hillside on which were strewn chunks large and small of a dull yellowish sandstone.
Spread out around them was a vast broken landscape of hills, ridges, and tablelands in various shades of yellow, brown, and beige. He glimpsed the pale gold of sand far below and a hint of green, the floor of a wadi containing a few trees or bushes. They had evidently left the system of wadis Senna had been leading them through and were following a track across the higher elevations.
Slightly off to the right, beyond a range of dark gray hills,
Bak spotted the same high reddish peak he had seen the pre vious day. Thanking the gods for its very existence, he stud ied its jagged profile. It appeared closer than it had before and the perspective was somewhat different, but it gave him a general idea as to where he was. They had to be traveling in a similar direction to the caravan. If the caravan was still on the move.
One of the men noticed that Bak’s eyes were open. He said something to the leader, who pulled out the jar containing the sleeping potion. He grabbed Bak by the hair and twisted his head around, indifferent to the sharp jolt of pain he brought on, and forced the liquid down him. Bak was asleep before the mule moved on.
When next Bak came to his senses, he was lying on the sand in the shade of an upturned slab of dark gray granite that had long ago fallen from above to form a room open at both ends. His hands were bound behind his back with a leather thong. Ten or so paces away, the mule stood in a similar deep, shaded passage, nibbling the leaves and a few stubby branches broken from a shrub Bak did not recognize. The an imal’s caretaker dozed nearby.
Bak felt weak and drowsy. The pain over his ear was mod est, no longer a thing to fear and avoid. He squirmed around until he could rise on shaky knees and made his way to the end of his shelter. They were, he saw, in a narrow wadi whose floor was covered with drifted sand and along whose walls the fallen chunks and slabs of rock formed rooms of various odd sizes and shapes. The leader and another man lay sleep ing in the shade twenty or so paces to his left. The fourth man was nowhere to be seen. Bak guessed he was sitting in some sheltered aerie, keeping watch.
Or maybe he, too, was asleep.
Even as he thought of sneaking away, Bak felt himself nodding off. How could he hope to escape when he could not keep his eyes open? Shaking his head to wake up, jarring the sore spot above his ear, he began to probe the sand, searching for a sharp bit of rock, thinking to cut himself free.
He glanced toward the leader of the nomads, who lay still and silent, watching him. With a grimace, the man sat up, fished through the ragged bundle beside him, and withdrew the container holding the sleeping potion.
Bak next awoke lying in a band of shade at the base of a cliff whose black face rose into a blue-white sky. A faint breeze wafted past, drying the film of sweat on his body, soothing him. The quiet was absolute.
He struggled to a sitting position. Licking his dry lips, longing for a drink of cool, pure water, he watched a grasshopper fly downstream in search of a tastier meal. He began to realize how hungry he was.
His head felt heavy and his body felt thick and sluggish, but he was more aware of his surroundings than he had been for… For how long? How long ago had the nomads cap tured him? At least one night and one day. Possibly longer.
Several days could have passed without his knowing.
Other than the insect, a pair of larks, and a lizard, he saw no sign of life. He was alone in the wadi, and if the creatures’ lack of fear told true, he had been for some time. Had his ab ductors decided to abandon him, to leave him here to die? He thought of the two men who had vanished, the one who had been slain. Would he be the next to disappear?
Commonsense said no. They had gone to too much trouble to abduct him and to carry him across a landscape that had to have been molded by the lord Set himself. Set was the god of the barren desert, of violence and chaos, and such was the land Bak vaguely recalled: deep and rugged wadis; high, bar ren plains; narrow trails up steep escarpments so rugged the nomads had trouble placing one foot in front of another, where the mule had dropped down on his haunches and had had to be dragged forward.
Yes, they had gone to considerable trouble to bring him to this place. Why, then, had they left him alone if not to aban don him to death? He must free himself.
He had just located a thin black stone he thought would slice through the leather thongs binding his wrists when he heard voices approaching up the wadi. A nomad rose from among a shaded pile of rocks a dozen paces away. He had been there all along.
A half-dozen nomads, men Bak had never seen before, hustled him over a low rise. From the greater height, he saw a huge orange sun drop behind a haze-shrouded horizon. They descended into a broad, open wadi, with a smattering of aca cias across its surface. As they strode out across the rocky streambed, swerving around the trees and clumps of silla, he saw in the lingering twilight fifteen or so seated nomads scat tered loosely around a small fire. Not far away, the failing sunlight glinted on the mirror-like surface of water that filled a depression in the center of the dry watercourse. The mule and a half-dozen donkeys stood at the edge, nibbling shoots of greenery someone had gathered for them.
A man left the camp and walked out to meet them. Bak’s heart sank as he recognized the leader of the quartet that had abducted him. The man withdrew a dagger from a sheath at his waist and, approaching the captive, snapped out an order.
Someone pivoted Bak around so his back was to the weapon.
His skin crawled and he could practically feel the dagger plunged deep into his flesh.
Another man grabbed his hands and jerked them back, away from his body. The blade struck the leather thong bind ing his wrists together and sliced it in two. Bak was so aston ished his mouth dropped open. Laughing, the leader, beckoned and stalked toward the camp.
A tall, thin nomad stood up as they approached. His arms and legs were as bony as those of an adolescent boy, but stringy muscles hinted at stamina and power. “Ah, here you are.” He eyed Bak curiously. “You seem to have fared well enough during your journey.”
“You speak the tongue of Kemet,” Bak said, surprised.
“While a young man, I spent three years with your army, serving as a scout and guide. I’ve a talent for languages, I discovered.”
The heavy scent of roasting meat drew Bak’s eyes to the fire, where the carcass of a young lamb had been tied to a stick raised above hot coals. He could not recall when last he had been so hungry. “What did you do to my men? What’s happened to the caravan I traveled with?”