by Lauren Haney
As the lord Re dropped toward the western horizon, the wind died down, allowing the heat to build and the dust to settle on sweaty bodies. Thirst was ever-present, and the water boys hustled back and forth to the nearest well. Children came from the nearby villages, leading donkeys laden with water.
Bak shared the burden and so did Kasaya, moving stones and debris, carrying the injured to the physician, locating friends or relatives who would see the walking wounded safely home. Hori wanted to help, but Bak sent him back to the tomb to stay with Imen. He felt certain that the cliff face had fallen at the hands of a man. The raspy sounds he had heard might well have been that of a lever being used to pry away rock, the sharp crack had sounded like the breaking away of stone. He was uncertain of the reason. Had he, Bak, been meant to die? Or had the rockfall been intended as a distraction so someone could. . What? Rifle the tomb? Or was it meant to seem a warning from the malign spirit that any who doubted its existence would bring catastrophe upon Djeser Djeseru?
“This temple is cursed,” Bak heard a man say. The voice was loud and angry and every man on the mound could hear.
“There’ve been too many accidents, too many men hurt or slain. We must leave this valley before we all die.”
“What’re you saying?” another man asked.
“I say it’s time we turned our backs on this temple, this valley.”
“Our sovereign would never allow it.”
A third man broke in, “If we all lay down our tools, what can she do?”
“Yes,” a fourth said, as if the idea was new to him. “What can she do? Not a thing.”
“She can bring prisoners to toil here in our place,” a fifth man said. “She can send us to the desert mines.”
No one heard him. No one wanted to hear him.
The first man said, “I say we-all of us together-go to Waset and stand before Senenmut. He’s responsible for the building of this temple. Let him tell our sovereign we’ll never again risk our lives in this accursed valley.”
“She’s known of the malign spirit for months, and what’s she done about it?”
“She sent her cousin. Amonked.”
“What’s he done? Nothing!”
“He brought in that Lieutenant Bak.”
“Who’s he?” Scorn entered the man’s voice. “A soldier.
An officer from the southern frontier. A man who’ll say what he’s told to say.”
“This is what I think we should do,” the first man said.
“We should meet here on the terrace at first light tomorrow and. .”
Bak stood on the slope above the fallen section of retaining wall. The dead and injured had been carried away and the men were clearing the last of the slide. Their words, their anger and fear, ran through his thoughts. Their scorn ran-kled, but was of no significance compared to their threat to lay down their tools and walk away, a threat that had spread to every man and boy since first he had heard it. They might dismiss Maatkare Hatshepsut as helpless and turn their backs on her temple, but as one who had suffered her wrath, he could not take her so lightly. The men must remain at Djeser Djeseru.
Cursing them for creating so foolhardy a plan, he turned his back on the temple and forced himself to concentrate on the cliff face. A large elongated scar, lighter than the rest, marked the source of the fallen rock. In his heart he was certain someone had pried loose a boulder to start the fall. A man, not a malign spirit. A man responsible for yet another death, another serious injury, and three more broken limbs.
Not to mention the cuts and bruises, the heartache, of those who had survived.
Anger boiled within him each time he thought of the slide, the injured and the dead, the many workmen who had been willing to toil until they dropped to save their fellows.
This so-called accident was the most recent of many, perhaps not the last. Unless he could lay hands on the culprit.
He must do so. He must. And as a beginning he must climb that wretched cliff. He and Kasaya.
The husky young Medjay, standing on the terrace below, called, “I think we must grow wings, sir.”
“If someone else climbed up there, we can.”
“Surely a man would’ve been seen from below.”
“Not if he climbed up farther to the east and crossed along the tops of those tower-like formations.”
“The men are convinced a malign spirit. .” The Medjay bit back the rest. He knew well how Bak felt about that subject.
Giving no sign that he had heard, Bak walked along the slope, studying the cliff looming above him. Its face was far from smooth. For untold generations the soft limestone had been eroded by heating and cooling, by the wind, and by infrequent but pounding rainstorms to form the deeply weathered tower-like formations that protruded from the mass. As far as he could tell, none had actually broken free of the cliff face. Immediately above the slope where he stood, a row of these formations rose about a third of the way up the seem-ingly endless wall of eroded rock that reached for the sky behind them. They bunched against other tower-like projections, taller and much more irregular, that rose between them and the upper rim. The scar marred the surface of one of the lower formations.
Lower, yes, but a long, hard climb nonetheless.
This late in the day the clefts between the towers were shadowed and not easy to see. He walked back the way he had come, his eyes probing their depths. Some were shallow and very steep. Others had been etched deeply into the cliff, giving them a more gradual rise and what appeared from below to be an easier slope. Rocks had fallen and lodged there.
Weathering had formed rough, irregular steps. Sand had blown or trickled from above, filling cracks and crevices, blanketing only the lord Amon knew what.
Could he come down from above? Certainly not before nightfall. The trail over the high ridge that connected Djeser Djeseru to the Great Place, the deep dry watercourse in which Maatkare Hatshepsut’s illustrious father Akheperkare Thutmose had chosen to have dug his eternal resting place, rose up the slope some distance to the east. Its path was cir-cuitous, traversing a fairly steep but, to Bak’s way of thinking, reasonably easy grade in an easterly direction to a point where the cliff diminished and merged into the ridge. There the trail turned back on itself to follow the top of the cliff, passing above Djeser Djeseru, where a branch path ascended to the summit, passed a cluster of workmen’s huts, and dropped down to the Great Place. Given enough time, a long enough rope, and several men he would trust with his life, he might be able to climb down from that path, but time was crucial. He must go without delay, while signs of tres-pass remained: the tracks of a man or possibly the mark of a chisel or lever.
Two clefts in the rock face looked less steep than the others and easier to climb. He selected the one closest to the whitish scar.
“Come, Kasaya. We must be up and back before darkness falls. We don’t want to spend the night on the cliff.”
“We could climb up at first light,” the Medjay said hopefully.
Bak scowled at him. “I’ve explained once why we must go now, and I’ll not repeat myself.”
With ill-concealed reluctance, Kasaya lifted a coil of rope onto his shoulder, tied a small bag of tools to his belt, and picked up a goatskin water bag. Climbing onto the slope, he scrambled up to Bak’s side.
“We must climb with care and patience,” Bak said, head-ing upward. “Should one of us fall and be seriously hurt or killed, or should we cause another rock slide, the workmen’s conviction that a malign spirit walks this valley will be impossible to dislodge.”
“They’re already convinced. You heard their threat to lay down their tools-as did I.”
“You’d better pray that threat is empty, Kasaya. If they’re sent to the desert mines, there to spend the remainder of their days, we may spend the rest of our lives guarding them.”
“Will this accursed climb never end?” Kasaya mumbled.
“We’re almost to the top,” Bak answered, though he was certain the young M
edjay had been talking to himself. “Just a few more steps, I think.”
“What do you mean by a few . .” Kasaya’s foot slipped on the sand-covered edge of rock that was his sole support while he lifted the other foot. He muttered something Bak could not hear, added, “Sir?”
Very much aware that the sun no longer reached the cliff face and of the long distance they would fall if fall they did, Bak stopped to study the boulder that barred their path. This was one of the steps he had referred to. He could barely see over it, but it looked to be the highest-he thanked the lord Amon. It filled the cleft from one side to another. It seemed to be solidly planted, but he had learned early on not to trust appearances. Should he forget, a long patch of chafed skin on his left thigh burned like the very sun itself, reminding him to value caution.
He placed both palms against the boulder and shoved. It did not move. Putting his weight behind the task, he repeated the process several times, studying the edges of the boulder and the sand built up around it. Not a grain trickled into some hidden void. It looked to be safe.
“Give me a hand, Kasaya.”
The Medjay gingerly shifted his weight to test the solidity of the rocks beneath him. Satisfied none would move, he wove his fingers together and held out his hands. Bak stepped into them and let Kasaya heave him upward. He scrambled onto the boulder, which held steady.
“How am I to get up there?” the Medjay asked.
Bak scrambled to his feet and studied the irregular rock steps and the steep slope between him and the top of the formation. “The rest of the cleft looks easy enough to climb. I should be able to do it without help.” He looked down upon the younger man, who was taller and heavier than he, and not an easy lift. “If you want to stay where you are, you may.
If not, cut hand- and footholds for yourself and call me if you need help.”
Kasaya looked upward, undecided. Irresolution turned to certainty and, his mouth tight with determination, he dug into the sack of tools tied to his belt and retrieved a chisel and mallet.
“You’d better use the rope for safety,” Bak said.
A short time later, with precautions taken to prevent the Medjay from falling to a certain death should he make a misstep, Bak issued a final warning. “Don’t do anything to dislodge this boulder, and don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
“No, sir.”
Conscious of the passage of time, Bak climbed from one stone step to another, testing each before he placed his weight on it. At the top lay debris that had fallen from the cliffs towering above. A thin layer of loose sand and stones overlay a firmer base that had been packed through the years to form a steep but fairly stable incline. He climbed slowly, looking for signs of another man’s passage, but the rough surface held its secrets. In a short while he stood atop the tower, a rounded patch of weathered stone separated from its mates and the parent cliff by sand-filled crevices.
A faint breeze ruffled his hair and kilt and dried the sweat on his face and chest. Swallows chattered in the nearby cliffs, undisturbed by the sharp tap-tap-tap of Kasaya’s mallet. Bak wished he had thought to get a drink before leaving the water bag behind with the Medjay.
The valley spread out below, an open bay enclosed on three sides by the high walls of the cliff, floored with sand faded, so late in the day, to pale gold. Nestled within their own shadow, the tall eroded walls had turned a deep, dark brown cut by crevices black and mysterious. The sun had dropped lower than he expected, the time they had taken to climb the cleft longer. They must soon return to the valley or spend the night cold and hungry.
The two temples, shrunk by distance, spread across the head of the valley, the older a mass of fallen stones, the newer fronted by a field of stones waiting to be raised. Nebhepetre Montuhotep’s temple stood empty and abandoned except for a pack of dogs nosing among its fallen columns.
The temple of Maatkare Hatshepsut should have been equally deserted but for the guards assigned to stand watch through the night.
Instead, not a man who toiled there had left. They were standing or kneeling or sitting among the statues and column parts and rough stones strewn across the terrace. Located at what they must have believed to be a safe distance from the northern retaining wall, they were looking up toward the face of the cliff. Watching him and Kasaya, Bak guessed. Waiting to see if the malign spirit would strike them down. He spat out an oath. That’s all they needed. Men watching their every action while they slipped and stumbled and slid down the cleft. He thought to wave, but decided not to. Why tempt the gods with too brazen an action?
Erasing the workmen from his thoughts, he looked for the scarred stone. He could not see it from where he stood. He recalled the terrain as he had seen it from below and compared it with the rocks and crevices around him. He was too high, he decided, too far west. Climbing down a narrow defile, he found a ledge about five paces long and less than a pace wide. Careful not to think of the long deadly drop should he fall, he crossed to a shallow slope of sand that filled another, wider crevice, this running along the face of the cliff behind the tower-like formation. The scar that marked the fallen stone was clearly visible beyond the sand, where the crevice narrowed and dropped off into space. He saw at once that the crevice walls would almost completely conceal a man from below.
He knelt at the upper edge of the sand. No footprints marred its surface, and neither was it as smooth as were other nearby patches. It was slightly rippled, as if someone had hurriedly brushed away with his hand any signs left behind, any footprints. He was certain of what he saw, but Kasaya was a better tracker. Thinking to preserve the ripples so the Medjay could see them, he sidled along the wall to the lower end of the crevice.
The whitish scar on the cliff face was much larger than he had expected, a long trail left by large chunks of stone knocked loose by what had probably been a single boulder torn from a spot near where he stood. Wind, heat, cold, and rain, he guessed, had slowly eaten away a vein of more fragile stone, forming an ever-deepening crack. The loosened rock, a large and heavy chunk, would have fallen sooner or later. But someone had been unwilling to wait. Several deep, bright-white gouges told him the boulder had been broken away with the aid of a pointed metal tool, a lever.
“You were right all along, sir.” Kasaya stared at the scarred wall of rock, his expression as dark and angry as Bak felt. “A man was here-no question about it-and he broke loose the boulder that started the slide. If ever I lay hands on him. .”
He said no more, leaving the rest to the imagination.
“He was very careful. I doubt he left anything behind.”
Bak looked at the deepening shadow in the valley below and tamped down a sense of urgency. He had no desire to spend the night on the cliff. “Nonetheless, we must sift through the sand.”
Kasaya, too, looked at the shadowed valley. “Can’t we come back tomorrow, sir?”
“If you want to climb down by yourself, do so. But take care. I’d not like to find you battered and bruised partway down the cleft.”
Kasaya stood undecided, looking as miserable as a man could look. He knew his officer well enough to know that he would remain through the night if need be.
Bak dropped to his knees near the scarred cliff and began to run his fingers through the soft warm sand. Another long moment passed and Kasaya dropped down beside him. Bak bit back a smile. The Medjay was far from the brightest policeman in his company, but he was among the most loyal and steadfast.
Bak found the amulet within a pace of the scarred cliff face. It was a fish, a Lates, slightly longer than the width of his thumb. It had been carved from a green stone, malachite.
From a tiny hole bored through its head, he guessed it had been part of a broad beaded collar. It must have torn free while its wearer was swinging the lever, the intense physical exertion causing the cord to break.
“Others must’ve fallen, too,” Kasaya said, and set to work with renewed enthusiasm.
Bak was not so certain. The tiny fish was b
eautifully carved. If the collar was of the same quality, each bead and amulet would have been individually tied. If they were to find another, the lord Amon would indeed have smiled upon them.
They searched with care, leaving no grain of sand unturned, but diligent effort proved fruitless. By the time they reached the upper end of the sandy incline, their sole trophy was the single green amulet.
Dusk had settled on Djeser Djeseru when Bak and Kasaya came down the final slope. Hori raced across the terrace to meet them at the retaining wall. Pashed and the chief scribe Ramose hurried after him. The many men waiting among the statues and column parts came to life, rising from their makeshift seats to mingle, to chat, to speculate. Bak heard a jumble of words, felt the relief of men who had feared his action might bring upon them the wrath of the malign spirit.
A tentative relief, he sensed, not everlasting freedom from fear.
He gave the youthful scribe a broad smile and greeted Pashed and Ramose as if nothing of note had occurred since last he had seen them. With luck and the help of the gods, the men would take heart from that smile and casual greeting.
“What did you find up there, sir?” Hori asked.
Bak raised a finger to his lips, warning the men around him to speak softly. He had thought long and hard of how best to slay the rumor of a malign spirit, but to let the workmen overhear would sap the strength of what he planned.
“No malign spirit,” Kasaya whispered, as scornful as if he had never believed in so ridiculous a thing. “The signs of a man, as Lieutenant Bak expected.”
Pashed, his face gray from fatigue, looked like the weight of a monolithic column had been added to the burden on his shoulders. Ramose muttered a litany of curses.
“Who, sir?” Hori asked.
“I don’t know, but one day I will.” Bak’s voice and his expression were hard, determined. He turned to Pashed. “Send the men to their dwelling places. They must eat and sleep, for tomorrow is another day of toil.”
