He forced himself to take several deep breaths, to collect his wits. Jerking a branch off a half-dead bush, he brushed away the flies and knelt beside the dusty body. Gently, as if the Medjay could still feel pain, he turned him onto his stom ach, revealing a pool of dried blood where he had lain. A long thin streak on his cheek betrayed the fact that he had also bled from the mouth. His body had barely begun to stiffen.
Tears flooded Bak’s eyes. In the years since he had stood at the head of his company of Medjays, he had lost only one man. He had vowed at the time never to lose another. Now he had. Out here in this godforsaken desert where he could not be buried as a man should be. Where he could not be sent off to the netherworld with the proper spells and incantations.
Gathering himself together, he stood up and looked around. The gorge was deep, flanked on either side by the huge rounded boulders piled to the tops of the cliffs. He could imagine many thousands of nomads coming for water through the ages, a daily parade of humanity and their live stock. A place dark and forbidding at night. A place of myth and superstition, he felt certain. Why had Rona come here?
“Sir!” Psuro called, hurrying to Bak’s side. He spotted the
Medjay, let out a deep, heart-wrending cry, and dropped to his knees. “How did this happen, sir?”
“He must’ve seen something…” The words caught in
Bak’s throat. “Something that made his life forfeit.”
The sergeant rose slowly, like an old stiff man, aged by the death of a longtime friend. “I must tell the other men.”
“Send Nebre and Kaha to me.” Bak’s voice grew hard, res olute. “We must not let his slayer slip through our hands.”
With Bak looking on, Nebre and Kaha, both grim-faced and determined, painstakingly examined the stony ground around the body. The few patches of sand had been thor oughly churned up by donkeys and goats and men. Nonethe less, they persisted. They finally found, partly hidden by a scrubby bush, one small pocket smoother than the rest where some telltale sign had been rubbed out. This hint of stealth spurred them on and they gradually expanded their search.
They had been toiling at their grim task for about a half hour when Psuro ran into the gorge.
“Sir! Senna is gone!” The sergeant stopped well back on a slab of rock where he would disturb no sign of the slayer.
“We’ve looked everywhere. I’d wager a jar of the best brew in the land of Kemet that he slew Rona and fled.”
Bak snapped out an oath. “He must’ve sneaked away from our camp to meet the man who slew Dedu. Rona probably followed.”
“Into this gorge?” The sergeant eyed the towering walls and the boulders heaped to their summits and shuddered. “At night this place must be as black as a sealed tomb.”
Bak followed his glance. The ravens had circled around to drop onto the rocks about a quarter of the way up the mound.
Their loud, raucous cawing merged with that of two others, perched on boulders slightly apart. “Why he allowed himself to be drawn into a place with no way out, I can’t imagine.”
“We’ll track Senna down like the snake he is,” Psuro growled. “I know you believe the cudgel a faulted means of questioning a prisoner, sir, but surely in this case it’s fitting.
We can strike him and strike him again until he reveals the name of his partner in crime.”
In his heart, Bak applauded the sergeant’s enthusiasm for the hunt-and hunt down their prey they would-but he wanted Senna alive, not beaten to death. The nomad must face the law of the land of Kemet, his guilt weighed on the scales of justice, not meted out in this wretched desert. The punishment would be no less severe.
“Should we go on with our search, sir?” Nebre asked.
“We’re seeking two men, not Senna alone,” Bak reminded him. To the sergeant, he said, “Go find men to carry Rona to our camp. We must see that he’s buried at once.”
“But, sir, the sooner we go after Senna, the better.”
The harsh scolding of the ravens jarred Bak’s senses, wak ing him to another possibility. He studied the birds perched on the piled boulders, cocking their heads one way and an other, peering expectantly at… At Rona’s body and the hu man intruders into their domain or at something else? He glanced higher. In the brightening morning sky above, three vultures circled the gorge.
“Look at the birds, Psuro. What do they tell you?”
The sergeant barked out a curse. An instant later, he and Bak had thrown off their sandals and were climbing the steep, irregular boulder pile. Four or five paces above the floor of the gorge, they came upon a brownish smear, blood drained from a man being dragged upward. They followed other smears until, about ten paces higher, they found a sec ond body stuffed in among the boulders. A man jammed headfirst into a narrow cleft. They had to pull him out to know for a fact that he was the one they sought.
Like Rona, Senna had been stabbed. Unlike the Medjay, the dagger had been plunged into his breast. He must have known and trusted his slayer.
Using spears with sleeping mats fastened between, the
Medjays made two makeshift litters on which to carry Rona and Senna down the wadi to their camp. Bak hated to leave
Rona in this wretched desert, but he had no choice. The cara van was too far from Kaine to send him back and the land of turquoise lay far to the north and beyond the Eastern Sea.
He and Psuro located a suitable burial spot on the south bank that was high enough to escape flooding. After the bod ies were moved to their final resting place, he sent Nebre and
Kaha back into the gorge to continue their search for signs of the slayer. While Psuro and Minmose set about digging the graves, he examined both bodies more thoroughly.
Finding nothing of note on either man, he hurried back to his campsite. While he searched through Senna’s posses sions, seeking he knew not what, he heard raised voices com ing from User’s camp. By the time he finished his task, having found nothing but the personal items one would ex pect, the volume of the voices and the intensity of the argu ment had escalated dramatically. He hastened to the explorer’s camp to look into the problem.
User stood with Amonmose, Nebenkemet, Ani, and
Wensu, facing the drovers. His face was ruddy from anger and the effort of getting across a message in a tongue of which he had limited knowledge. He spotted Bak, snarled,
“Where’s that wretched Medjay of yours? Kaha? Maybe he can talk some sense into these men.”
“What’s wrong?” Bak asked.
“As soon as they learned of Rona’s death they started whispering to each other. Then Psuro told us Senna had been slain. That did it.” User glared at the two men. “They’ve packed up their belongings, preparing to leave.”
Bak noted the way the nomads’ eyes strayed toward the south and the men digging the graves. “They’re afraid.”
“Aren’t we all?” User snapped.
“Dedu was kin to them,” Bak reminded him. “I’m sur prised they’ve remained as long as they have.”
“I know. I know.” User looked contrite, but only for an instant. “They stayed when he was slain. Why must they leave now?”
Bak could see that the explorer had worked himself into a state that would allow him no retreat. He flung a resigned look at the portly merchant. “Go to Kaha, Amonmose. Ex plain what’s happening and tell him we need him.” He doubted the Medjay’s far-from-expert knowledge of the tongue of the nomads would help, but he must try. Watching
Amonmose hurry away, he asked User, “If the drovers go, will they take the donkeys with them, leaving you with no means of carrying supplies and water?”
“They’re my donkeys. I bought them in Kaine and hired these swine to care for them.”
Bak thanked the gods that such was the case. Without the animals, User’s party would be in dire trouble. “Can we not go on without these men?”