“Three times we met in the night. He said your Medjays are like cats, awake at the slightest sound. He had trouble slipping away unseen, so we met less often than we wished.”
Neither Medjay gave any indication that he had heard what Bak suspected was meant as a compliment. “Did you expect to see him last night?”
“He knew where I normally camp outside the gorge. I thought he’d come if he could.”
Sidling closer, Bak maneuvered him around more toward the lighted sky. “Someone has been watching our caravan.
You or another man?”
“I’ve watched you now and then. The nomads are also keeping an eye on you.”
“How have you avoided the men I sent out as scouts?”
The man’s eyes slid toward Kaha and he laughed. “Over the years I’ve explored every wadi and hill and mountain, every pinnacle and ledge. Each time I saw them, I simply dropped down behind a boulder or slipped into a niche be tween rocks or lay in a patch of deep shade.”
“What of the nomads? Do they know of you?”
“They’re more difficult to evade, but I’ve managed to stay far enough away to make any men who saw me believe I’m just another nomad, unworthy of a closer look.”
The man was so self-confident he might be called arro gant. Bak supposed he had every right to be if he could elude men who had dwelt in this desert through a lifetime. “Who are you and why did you wish to see me?”
“You’ve not yet guessed, Lieutenant?” Smiling, he bowed low as if to make an offering of himself. “I’m Minnakht. The man you’ve been seeking.”
“If you’re who you claim to be, why have you not shown yourself?” Bak, whose surprise had immediately given way to skepticism, sat on a large rock that had tumbled down the hillside to half-bury itself in the sand.
Minnakht, taking care not to approach too close lest Nebre or Kaha send an arrow his way, chose a rock at the base of the hill. “I fear for my life.”
“Who wishes you dead?”
“If I knew his name, I’d not be hiding from the world.”
Bak noted the dubious looks the Medjays were giving their prisoner and he almost smiled. Having lost one of their own to a knife in the back, the man who called himself Min nakht was in far more danger from them than from some mysterious man he claimed he could not name.
“Explain yourself,” he said.
“As Senna surely told you, I went off to the mountain of turquoise, thinking to see the mines. Because I traveled with a military caravan, I left him behind. Upon my return to the port, I found him ill. We agreed to meet later at my usual camp near the pools where you spent last night, and I sailed away with two men who claimed to be fishermen.
They brought me across the Eastern Sea and left me on the shore. There two men awaited me, nomads they were, men
I didn’t know. They beat me senseless, trying all the while to make me tell them where I’d found gold. I could tell them nothing. I’d located no gold. In the end, they left me for dead.”
While he spoke, Bak studied him, trying to find a resem blance between him and Commander Inebny. Other than their height and a vague similarity in facial features, the two were as unlike as a pomegranate and a pea. “I’ve been told this coastline is barren, with no water anywhere.”
“Few men would’ve survived, I know, but you must re member that this land is no mystery to me.”
Bak thought of the men he had questioned about Minnakht and the contradictory answers he had received. He could not recall any man mentioning this utter lack of modesty, unless the tales the explorer had told in the houses of pleasure had been so filled with excitement that those whom he had ques tioned had been too enthralled to notice.
“I’ve no memory of that time.” Minnakht, if he was indeed
Inebny’s son, went on with his tale. “I somehow made my way to a place where water seeps through the sand. The nomads seldom go there; the water is too slow to come to sustain animals. The men who beat me had scattered my pos sessions, but the will to live is strong, and I had the good sense to wrap myself in my sheet to save myself from the burning sun. At the seepage, I spread the sheet over some bushes, forming a tent, and there I lay for…” He spread his hands wide and shrugged. “How long, I know not. All I re member is digging for water and drinking.”
An improbable tale, Bak thought, but not impossible.
“As soon as I could, I bathed my wounds and moved on, traveling through the night to the closest well. I didn’t want my assailants to come back and find me alive.”
“If they left you for dead at a place other than the seepage, how would they have known where to find you?”
“I doubt I was thinking clearly.” Minnakht smiled at the two Medjays as if he felt a need to convince them. Their un smiling faces could not have been encouraging. “I made my way to the place where Senna was to meet me and there I waited, licking my wounds, so to speak. He came and he took me to a well high in the mountains, where we camped.
As I knew not who had set upon me, whether friend or foe, I had him pretend to search for me, thinking my enemies would reveal themselves. They never did. I’ve been running and hiding ever since.”
“Your father is eager to know your fate. Why did you not send a message with Senna when he went to Kemet to report you missing?”
“My father loves me too well. If he knew I lived, he’d pro claim the news as a farmer sows grain during the season of planting. All the world would know and he’d unwittingly commit me to death.” Minnakht rubbed a thin scar on his right arm. “I’ve another reason for caution: not quite a year ago, a man closer to me than a brother, Ahmose by name, vanished in this desert. I suspect he was slain, as were Senna and the others who’ve died since your caravan set out.”
Ahmose, Bak guessed, was the missing man Amonmose had heard of in Kaine. “You didn’t recognize the men who beat you, yet you knew not if they were friend or foe. That makes no sense.”
“They referred often to someone they called ‘he’ or ‘him.’
‘He’ would be angry if I didn’t reveal where the gold was.
They feared to tell ‘him’ of my stubborn refusal to talk. ‘He’ had no love for me and wouldn’t mind seeing me dead.”
The argument failed to convince Bak that Minnakht had good reason to turn his back on all men, especially his father.
Perhaps he had been too much alone and had begun to see danger where no peril existed. “Do you have any idea who that man might be?”
“I’ve thought long and hard through many lonely days. I believe him to be User.”
Bak eyed him thoughtfully. He had begun to like User his quiet competence, his acceptance of his own strengths and limitations-and he preferred not to think of him as a slayer of men. “Explain your reasoning.”
“Through the years, he’s made no secret that he hopes to find gold or precious stones. Now his wife is ill and he has a need in addition to an obsession. He’s one of the few men who knows this desert almost as well as I, and I’d wager he’d need no guide should he plan a deed he’d want no other man to witness.”
“I think you err.”
“Senna suspected that you believe someone in the caravan murdered the man found dead north of Kaine. Who else but
User? Who but he could’ve kept in constant contact with the nomad you call the watching man, the man Senna believed took the lives of all who’ve died since you left that first well.”
Minnakht seemed exceedingly sure of himself, but Bak had heard no proofs, nothing but a few generalities. Also,
User’s skepticism about the possibility of finding gold seemed very real.
He glanced at the two Medjays. Both men had relaxed to an extent, but neither had laid his weapons aside. Both ap peared to be absorbed by Minnakht’s tale, and both exhibited a healthy mistrust.
“Why did you choose to make yourself known to me?”
“You’ve been wasting your time searching for me.” Min nakht flashed a smile. “I thought to set you on a right and true path.”
Bak eyed this man, essentially a stranger. He thought him arrogant, but he might merely be overcompensating for his fear of an unknown enemy. His tale was well rehearsed, but would it not be after so long alone in the desert? For a man who had been described as close to the nomads, why had he not gone to them for help?