The lord Re entered the netherworld and darkness fell.
The moon glowed its brightest and stars lit up the sky, allow ing the men to see a surprising distance ahead. Bak and User were watching two gazelles, a mother and her young, climb a steep, rocky slope when Nebre and Kaha appeared around a bend in the wadi. The Medjays hurried up the watercourse to meet the caravan.
“We found a place to camp, sir,” Nebre said. “A wide, flat shelf too high for floodwaters to reach. It offers plenty of space for all of us, men and animals.”
“How far away?” User asked.
“At the pace you’re traveling, it’s almost an hour’s walk down this wadi. And there’s no clear path up to the shelf.
We may have to unload the donkeys to get them up the slope.”
“Nothing closer?”
“No, sir.”
“The gazelle have been climbing to higher ground for al most an hour,” Bak pointed out.
“We saw a few, and a couple of ibex.” Kaha, looking none too happy, eyed the mountain, a dark mass looming above the wadi to the northwest. “We can climb up into the rocks at any point along the way, but getting the donkeys to safety wouldn’t be easy. If water comes racing down this wadi, we wouldn’t have time to unload them.”
“We must push them harder,” Bak said, “and tell the men in the back to close ranks. We don’t want the caravan spread out should we have to save ourselves.”
Looking grim, User swung around and walked back along the row of animals.
Thanking the lord Amon that the explorer was proving far less difficult than he had originally seemed, Bak walked with the Medjays back to his sergeant. “You must take our don keys on ahead, Psuro. Kaha will show you the place where we’ll camp. The two of you must find the best paths up to the shelf and clear them of obstacles if need be. The rest of us must stay behind to keep User’s caravan moving.”
“What of Senna?”
Bak eyed the nomad guide leading the caravan. “You won’t need him. We will.”
“We’re about two-thirds of the way to the shelf where we’ll camp,” Nebre said, eyeing a large monolithic rock pro jecting from the wadi floor.
Bak accepted the statement as fact. While on the southern frontier, his Medjays had learned from the desert tribesmen to use such formations and other less obvious natural forms to find their way across the desert.
Nebre paused, raised a hand for silence, and listened.
Bak heard it, too, a faroff roaring sound. “A landslide?”
“You might call it that.” User scowled at the mountain towering off to their left. “That’s water rushing down a slope, carrying rocks and boulders with it.”
Feeling the worm of fear creep up his spine, Bak tried to sound hopeful. “It sounds too far north to flood this wadi.”
“The mountain must be draining in that direction. The first rains fell there, I’d wager.”
“Would the rain have traveled with the lightning as it came this way?”
User gave him a grim smile. “You never know what the gods intend, Lieutenant, but I’d not be surprised to see water before sunrise.”
“Pull him up!” Amonmose yelled and slapped the donkey hard on the flank.
Nebenkemet, standing at the animal’s head, holding a rope that had been tied around its neck and forequarters in a fash ion Bak thought exceedingly clever, literally hoisted it up the steep, narrow gap between two boulders.
While the craftsman urged the donkey on up the hill to the shelf where Minmose and Psuro waited to unload the sup plies it carried, Bak went to the next animal in line. There he found Ani standing a couple paces up an incline covered with loose rock chips, tugging ineffectually on a donkey’s halter.
The animal’s two front hooves were on the slope, but it re fused to climb farther on the treacherous surface. Bak whacked it on the flank and shoved. With a furious bray, the creature lunged up the slope, sending rocks clattering down behind it. Ani scurried out of its way and hurried along be side it, guiding it to the shelf.
Bak helped Rona coax a donkey up a steeper but more sta ble path and waited to help Wensu follow with another ani mal. He and User had decided not to unload the donkeys except as a last resort. They had to assume their time was limited, and they did not have enough men to carry the heavy water jars and other supplies and, at the same time, urge the tired and stubborn creatures up the difficult slope.
“How many more?” User called from above.
Bak glanced back at the animals yet to be urged to safer ground. “Four.”
Nebenkemet plunged down the slope. Sweat poured from him as he stopped beside the first donkey in line and began to tie the rope around it so he could haul it up the gap while the other men urged the remaining animals up the easier paths.
Catching the halter of the second donkey, Nebre urged it up a sloping rock along which, six or eight cubits above the wadi floor, a diagonal channel filled with sand made an easy path to the shelf. Just below the channel, the animal’s hooves slid on the granite and it fell to its knees. Amonmose climbed up to help pull it erect.
Wensu started down the hillside to get another donkey.
Bak heard what at first sounded like a child rolling rocks around the inside of a pottery bowl. To the southwest, some where up the dry watercourse. The sound became a faraway rumble, which steadily grew louder.
“Go back, Wensu!” he yelled. He grabbed the rope halter of the third donkey and flung it at Kaha. “The water’s coming!”
Terrified by the sound, which had grown ominous enough to frighten the lord Set himself, the donkey bolted, practi cally dragging the Medjay up the slope. A wide-eyed Wensu met him part way, let him pass, and stood in the one spot as if turned to stone. Amonmose and Nebre got their donkey on its feet and urged the frightened animal onto and up the diago nal path.
Flinging a quick look up the wadi, Nebenkemet tied the fi nal knot and hurried to the head of the donkey he meant to haul upward. Bak slapped it hard on the flank, getting it started, and swung around to grab the halter of the last ani mal. The creature, terrified by the rumble of rocks, which had swelled to a dreadful roar, swung away from his hand. Bak caught the strap holding the water jars in place, halting its flight. The donkey flung its head and kicked out, trying to break free. Staying well clear of those mean little hooves,
Bak dragged it to the slope up which Kaha had gone. Amon mose met him, managed to catch the halter, and began to pull the animal upward.
Bak glanced up the wadi and saw, coming around a bend, a wall of water taller than he was, gulping up rocks and boul ders, dead brush and trees. Its roar was horrendous. The don key, white-eyed with fear and braying wildly, fighting to free itself of Amonmose’s grip, blocked his path. He slapped it hard, hoping to get it moving. It kicked out, forcing him to duck onto the slope covered with rock chips.
Senna came down the incline above him, half-running, half-sliding on the loose surface. To slow his headlong plunge, he grabbed hold of a projecting crag, his feet slid out from under him, and he kicked Bak into the wadi.
Bak fell against the wall of water so hard it knocked the breath from him, and he thought his back was broken. The flood sucked him up, tumbled him like the rocks and debris around him, and swept him downstream. The rumble of the rushing water and rolling, twisting rocks was deafening, the sand swirling around him blinding. Trying not to breathe, forced to close his eyes, he was caught up in dead brush and pelted by rocks, chunks of wood, and the lord Amon only knew what else. He was too shocked, too paralyzed by fear, to think. Unable to tell up from down, one side from another, he curled into a ball, trying to spare his face and chest from the battering, and let the current carry him downstream.
Along with a craving for air, the will to live rushed through him. He recalled falling against the wall of water, the trememdous impact. Could he save himself?