"The news is a blow," he admitted. "How can I accuse men so valiant of slaying a fellow officer?"
"There's worse," Pashenuro said grimly.
Bak closed his eyes for a moment, resigning himself. "Go on."
"According to several men I spoke with, Troop Captain Huy and Lieutenant Senu came upon Puemre in a house of pleasure one night. They left before he did and were seen later, waiting in the shadows of the lane outside. The next morning, Puemre showed up at his men's barracks, bruised and battered from head to toe. He'd been beaten, he claimed, by men he never saw."
Bak leaped to the obvious conclusion, as every man in the garrison must have.
"Another time," the Medjay went on, "Puemre mysteriously fell overboard when on a ship piloted by Lieutenant Inyotef. Thanks to the lord Amon and the fact that he could swim like a fish, he saved himself."
Men of valor, Bak thought cynically. "What of Nebseny?"
"He once threatened publicly to castrate Puemre, but I heard of no instance where he tried to follow through. One reason given for the threat was mistress Aset. Another was an accusation Puemre made, saying Nebseny's archers failed to support his infantry during a riverside skirmish a month or two ago."
"With the officers divided, were not the troops also divided in their loyalties?"
"Not yet, thanks to the good sense and strength of purpose of their sergeants, but I felt an undercurrent of unease. A breach would soon have come, I think."
"Puemre's death came at a most opportune time, it seems."
Bak picked up a handful of small stones and pieces of broken pottery. One by one he threw them at the river, skipping them across its surface, giving his body something to do while he put Pashenuro's gleanings into perspective. Two facts leaped out from the rest: First, the officers had told him nothing more than every man and woman in Iken already knew. Second: "Did Amon-Psaro lead the Kushites when our soldiers faced them in battle twenty-seven years ago?"
"I thought the same," Pashenuro smiled, "but no. He was a prince then, only ten years of age, too young to go to war."
With a sigh, Bak transferred the last bit of pottery from his left hand to his right-and stopped to stare at the squarish lump. The shard was a greenish gray. And gray ware was made in Iken for trade upriver. The besotted witness must be a potter.
"I didn't see a thing!" Antef sprinkled a small handful of fine chaff on the lump of wet grayish clay and kneaded it in with all the power in his thick, stubby fingers, taking out his distress on the material. "I didn't! It was too dark! I swear to the lord Khnum!"
Bak controlled his impatience with an effort.
The chief potter had explained that Antef had once been a skilled craftsman, but was no longer trusted to form the clay into the mediocre ware shipped south to the land of Kush. The reason was apparent. Antef's hands shook uncontrollably, not so much from fear as from too much beer over too many long years.
Bak knelt beside the short, grizzled man and laid a soothing hand on his shoulder. "I'm accusing you of nothing, Antef. I merely want to know what happened that night."'
"I saw the lady Hathor. She came to me, offering me the pleasure of her body."
Antef looked around as if to assure himself his fellow potters were not listening. From the studied way they concentrated on their respective tasks, Bak could tell they were. The potter talked on, his tension receding as the goddess filled his thoughts. He told the same story Meryre had repeated but with many and sundry details, most of which, Bak suspected, had crept into the tale not from memory but through frequent repetition.
While the potter spoke, Bak glanced around the workshop, which he had found among the broken walls of an ancient house in the lower city. It was a good-sized enterprise employing four potters, each with an assistant to turn his wheel. Spindly wooden frames covered with reed mats shaded them and their work through the heat of the day. Another man puddled the clay, treading it out with his bare feet, adding sand or chopped straw or dung as required, while Antef kneaded special batches by hand. A younger man, maybe sent by his father to learn the craft, carried the formed pots into a roofless room, lining them up to dry.
The chief potter stoked a cylindrical brick oven as tall as he was.
"Saying she wanted me alone, with no other man to see or hear, the lady took my hand and led me outside the walls of the city." Antef was deep into his story, his eyes locked on some distant place well out of reach of men with less imagination. "We stopped many times to kiss, and she fondled me and 1, her. When at last we found our nest among the rocks, we fell to the earth together, starved for satisfaction."
Bak hated to interrupt so vivid a tale. "Where was this place, Antef?"
The potter shook his head, dragging himself back to reality. "North of here it was, among the rocks overlooking the far end of the long island." He pointed vaguely toward the river. "The place is rough and lonely, but the sand has made a bed as soft as the fuzz on a newly hatched duckling."
Bak remembered seeing the low rock outcrop some distance downriver from where he and Pashenuro had talked. It would have been a long walk for a man besotted by beer. "You've more to tell, I know."
Antef went on, describing in lurid detail every man's dream of a night with a goddess. His coworkers sneaked glances at each other and at Bak, their mouths twitching with silent laughter.
"When at last she wore me out," Antef said, "I closed my eyes and slept. When next I awoke, a sliver of moon was showing and she was gone."
"What woke you?" Bak asked.
"Nothing., Antef's eyes-darted to his inquisitor's face and fell away. "Nothing, I swear!"
"You heard two men talking, didn't you?" Bak kept his voice hard, his tone positive, as if he himself had been on the spot instead of hearing the tale thirdhand from Meryre. "You saw them arguing. One man turned away, preparing to leave. The other grabbed him from behind. I know what happened then-one man stabbed the other-but I must hear it in your words."
"No! I saw nothing!"
"I don't enjoy using the cudgel, but I will if I must." "It was dark, but…" Antef's voice broke; he dropped his chin to his breast. "Yes, he slew him. I could tell from the sounds I heard and what little I could see. He stabbed him in the face or maybe the neck, dragged him to the river, and pushed him in. It happened so fast… I could do nothing to help, I swear!"
Not that fast, Bak felt sure, but even if Antef had interceded, Puemre would have died. And the potter would probably have died with him. "What did the murderer look like?"
"I never saw his face. If I had, I'd have told." Antef began to sob. "I fear him greatly, and I'll not rest until he's caught. But I can't help you. I saw only his back." Bak believed him. He was too frightened to lie.
"I asked everyone I met to tell me of the boy," Kasaya said, "but no one has seen him. He was like a shadow to Lieutenant Puemre. Now it's as if the sun has gone and the shadow with it."
"Was he slain and thrown into the river like Puemre, I wonder?" Pashenuro asked.
"Antef saw no child." Bak's voice turned grim, reflecting the dread lurking in his thoughts. "We can only pray he wasn't slain somewhere else at another time."
The trio hurried along the row of trees hugging the river's edge. Kasaya, the best tracker of the three, scanned the earth to right and left, searching for tracks or objects that might have been left behind by a child or by a man intent on throwing aside the remnants of murder.
They slowed their pace as they approached their goal, a mound of tortured black granite, broken and cracked by oven-like heat and midnight cold, by blowing sands and raging waters. Rising from a blanket of dun-colored sand blown off the western desert, the mound reached out toward the northern end of the elongated island that lay in the water below the fortress. The channel between mound and island was confined to a passage no broader than ten paces, where the water raged down a series of shallow, foaming falls and swirled around jagged and torn boulders.