by Lauren Haney
An opening through the ruined wall at the back of the main court took them into an open court surrounded by a colonnade. Above, soaring high in a deep blue sky, Bak saw a falcon making a sweeping circle over the valley, searching for its evening meal. At the far end of this colonnade court, a veritable forest of eight-sided columns had once graced the temple. Here, the cliff face closed in on the structure. The wall of the building, instead of standing free, became a retaining wall, holding back the slope at the base of the cliff, where a huge chunk had been cut out to provide space for these rear chambers.
The front portion of the colonnade court had weathered the years fairly well, while the southwest corner of the outer wall had been felled by a rock slide and the eight-sided columns toppled and broken. The hall of columns beyond had not been so fortunate. Many of the columns still stood and a portion of the roof was in place, but these had suffered a battering from above. For over five hundred years, rocks had fallen from the towering cliff, racing down the slope at a frenzied speed and with immense force. As a result, the back of the building was a chaotic landscape of standing and fallen columns, architraves, and roof slabs, of broken stone, fallen rock, and sand. A rough hole, about as wide as Bak’s arm was long from closed fist to shoulder, marred the pavement near the damaged end of the colonnade court. Pashed had warned of the opening, the tomb robbers’ hole.
Bak and Kasaya explored the columned hall as best they could and managed to enter the sanctuary, cut into the living rock behind the temple. They found nothing but chaos, no recent footprints on the dusty floor.
Returning to the colonnade court, Bak glanced at the long shadows cast by the standing columns. “Tonight we’ll return to this temple. The workmen are no less likely to lay down their tools and flee than they were when the rock slide felled the northern retaining wall. We must once and for all convince them that the malign spirit is a man and not an apparition.” Hands on hips, he surveyed the tumbled stones around him. “First we must learn our way around. We’ve another hour of daylight, plenty of time. I want no broken limbs because we stumbled over a fallen stone we should’ve known was in our path.”
“You know what you’re to do,” Bak said.
Pashed gave him a wry smile. “The moment we spot you, Ramose, Ani, and I will direct the men’s attention to the old temple. They’ll be certain they’re seeing the malign spirit.
We’ll give them some time to work themselves into a state, then Ani will climb onto the roof of our hut with a torch.
When you see his signal, you’ll light your torches and let the men see who you are.”
“If that doesn’t convince them they’ve been duped, nothing will.”
As darkness settled on the valley, Bak, Hori, and Kasaya slipped through a gateway in the stone wall that enclosed a vast expanse of sand in front of the ruined temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. They loped across the low dunes that filled the space, passed through another gateway near the southeast corner of the structure, and hurried alongside the platform on which the temple had been built. With the workmen’s huts on the opposite side of the building, they had no fear of being seen.
They had discovered, during their daytime visit, a pile of rocks they could use to climb up to the temple. The steps were so regular that Bak wondered if the mound had been built by the malign spirit to ease his path onto the platform.
They stopped there to prepare for the night’s excursion.
Hori set down the basket he carried and took from it two baked clay oil lamps sized to fit in the palm of a hand. Using a hot bit of charcoal stored in a small pottery container, he set the wicks alight and handed one to each of his companions. Bak handed to the scribe the three torches he carried, each soaked in oil and ready to fire. With great reluctance, Kasaya left his spear and shield with the basket Hori hid in a dark space at the base of the platform. By the time they were ready to move on, the quarter moon had risen as if on command and the stars shone as bright as tiny suns, reborn mor-tals emulating the lord Re. The night could not have been more ideal for the malign spirit to show himself.
“Shouldn’t Kasaya bring along his spear?” A slight tremor of Hori’s tongue, the question itself, betrayed his nervousness.
“Are you certain we’re doing the right thing?” the Medjay fretted. “What if the malign spirit takes offense?”
Bak gave no answer. If he could not convince Kasaya, who had seen with his own eyes several proofs of the truth, dare he hope this charade would convince the workmen?
Shielding the small flames with their hands so they wouldn’t be seen from afar, they climbed onto the platform.
They stepped over fallen columns and walked around piles of rubble, and soon they reached the north colonnade, which faced the workmen’s huts. There they turned west and walked slowly toward the rear of the temple. Clinging to the shadows, Bak and Kasaya wove a path among the twin rows of partly fallen columns, giving the men at the workmen’s huts glimpses of their lights, sporadically shielding them so they would seem from a distance to vanish and reappear.
Hori remained close to the wall, seeking its security.
Kasaya’s heavy breathing betrayed his uneasiness.
The moon aided their journey, but also hindered them.
The shadows were deceptive, hinting at foreshortened distances and deeper depths. Bak prayed the effect looked equally dramatic from afar. Either the lights had struck the workmen dumb or the breeze was carrying their words in another direction.
They reached the low spot in the wall where they had crossed into the main court during the day. Bak, expecting at any time to see Ani’s signal, stopped to shield his lamp before turning back. Murmuring voices teased his ear, voices carried over the wall behind him by the slight breeze. The malign spirit, he thought, and cold fingers of fear crawled up his spine.
Nonsense!
Shrugging off so preposterous a thought, he raised his hand, signaling his companions to stop, and placed a finger before his lips. Hori, paying no heed, stubbed a toe and muttered an oath, silencing the voices-if voices Bak had heard.
“There’s Ani’s signal,” Kasaya said loud enough to awaken the dead.
He set his lamp on the pavement, grabbed a torch from Hori, and touched it to the burning wick. The oil-soaked linen burst into flame with a whoosh. He grabbed another torch, set it alight, and shoved it into Bak’s hand. As Kasaya lit the third torch for himself, Bak stepped back close to the wall. Not sure of what he had heard-if anything-he tilted his head, listening. All was quiet.
Holding the burning torches aloft, he and his men strode out of the ruined colonnade to stand on the open terrace that faced the workmen’s huts.
“You see!” they heard Pashed bellow. “That’s Lieutenant Bak, his scribe, the Medjay. Men no different than you and I.
Now maybe you’ll lay blame for the accidents where blame belongs: at the feet of a man, not a being without life or substance.”
“What the. .?” A deep and surprised voice behind Bak.
He swung around, saw a man standing at the low place in the wall, glimpsed short-cropped hair, a flattish face, and a small nose. The man slipped back into the shadows beyond the wall.
“We’ve company, my brother!” the man shouted through the darkness. “Let’s go!”
“Kasaya!” Bak yelled, running to the broken wall, hur-dling it, and racing after his quarry through the maze of fallen columns, roof slabs, architraves, rubble. Sparks flew from his torch. The flame, blown backward by his speed, made the shadows ahead dance and change shape and the path he followed elusive, his flying steps perilous. Once, he thought he glimpsed a man off to his right, decided it was cavorting light and shadow.
The man ahead sped through the opening into the colonnade court. Bak, close behind and with no better weapon, hurled the torch at him. It struck his back, drawing forth a furious snarl, and dropped to the pavement. Bak leaped the sputtering light, flung himself at his quarry, and they grap-pled. The man was slightly taller than B
ak and broader. He was slick with sweat and not easy to hold on to. They flung each other from side to side, each trying to throw the other.
Their feet slid across the paving stones. They stumbled on rough joins between the stones, their feet struck fallen chunks of rock, but neither dared allow himself to fall.
They struggled along an erratic path, gradually working their way toward the columned hall. They were within a half-dozen cubits of the hole in the floor when something hard struck Bak on the back of the head. He fell half-senseless to the pavement.
“He’s not alone,” he heard. “We have to get out of here.”
“Let’s get rid of him first.” A different voice, a second man, the one who had hit him.
“We’ve no time.”
“Throw him down there. That won’t take long.”
There. What did they mean by there? Bak wondered.
“Lieutenant Bak!” he heard Kasaya yell. “Where are you?”
Strong hands gripped his upper arms and dragged him belly-down along the paving stones. He opened his eyes, saw before him the hole cut through the stone, the old tomb robbers’ shaft. His heart leaped into his throat. They were going to drop him into the tunnel.
Chapter Twelve
One man grabbed his feet and dropped them into the tomb robbers’ hole. The man holding his arms stepped close to the edge, letting him hang, and released him. He plunged downward. The lord Amon and the will to survive came to his aid, clearing his head. Both his arms shot out. His right elbow bumped the rim of the shaft. He flattened his arm on the pavement and caught with his fingertips a broken edge of paving stone. At the same time, his left arm slid over the rim, grating away a layer of skin. He managed to grab hold of the edge and cling with the fingers of that hand. His bottomward flight stopped with a jolt that threatened to tear his arms from their sockets.
“Lieutenant Bak!” Kasaya bellowed.
“Let’s go!” one of his attackers hissed, and they ran.
Bak offered a hasty prayer to the lord Amon, thanking the god that the tomb robbers had cut the hole small to save themselves unnecessary labor. His position was precarious, but he thought he could hang on until help arrived.
Barely aware of a frustrated oath and the pounding footsteps of his assailants racing away, he pushed his left hand hard against the side of the hole, using the pressure to hold him in place, and scrabbled on the wall below with his feet.
One foot found a minuscule ledge. With the other, he could feel slight projections, but the woven reed sole of his sandal was too slippery to allow a firm hold. He shook it off, heard it strike the stone below with a slight thunk, planted his toes on a protrusion.
“Lieutenant Bak!” Hori’s alarmed call.
“The colonnade court!” he yelled. “Come quickly!”
He heard the swift flight of his assailants, retreating through the main court toward the front of the temple, and the thudding feet of Kasaya and Hori speeding toward him.
“Sir!” Kasaya burst through the doorway and looked around, confused by the torch sputtering on the pavement, the rapidly fading sound of running feet, and what on first glance looked to be an empty court. “Where. .?”
“There!” Hori pointed. “The robbers’ hole!”
“Get me out of here,” Bak called. “Quick! They’ll get away.”
The two young men leaned their torches against a fallen column and ran to him. Each grabbed an arm and, with Bak using the rough surface of the shaft wall to help himself, they pulled him to safety.
He scrambled to his feet and picked up his torch, giving it new life. “Come on! There were two of them.”
He dashed into the main court, though he had little hope of catching the pair. They had too much of a head start and knew the temple and its environs far better than he and his men. The birds they had flushed had flown away.
“Did you see a light other than the two we carried?” Bak asked, looking up at Ani, standing on the roof of the scribes’
hut. The boy would have had the best view of the old temple.
“No, sir. I saw no one but you. The way you made the lights vanish and reappear was confusing, and if I hadn’t known there were two lamps, I’d never have guessed. But your lights were always in one small area. I saw none anywhere else in the temple.”
“We didn’t see anything either,” Pashed said, speaking for himself and everyone else within hearing distance.
A rumble of assent arose from the large group of workmen standing in the darkness around them.
Ramose, Seked, and Useramon nodded agreement. The light of the boy’s torch played on the planes of their faces and deeply defined the muscles of their arms and torsos. The sharp smell of the flame tainted the air.
“So whatever the intruders came for, they never got to it,”
Bak guessed, “or they were in some part of the temple not visible from these huts.”
“Or they can see in the dark,” Kasaya muttered.
A voice came out of the darkness: “I’d wager my month’s ration of grain that they’re tomb robbers. That they have nothing to do with the malign spirit. I bet they’ve been taking advantage of our fear of him to roam around at night, trying to find an old tomb to break into.”
“Yes,” another man agreed. “The malign spirit always makes himself seen.”
A third said, “I, for one, wouldn’t walk around this valley at night for any reason at all. Look what happened to Montu.”
The men’s faces were pale ovals in the darkness, their features ill-defined, their bodies lost among their mates, each voice one among many but speaking for all.
“Some of those old tombs are filled with gold,” yet another said. “Would it not be worth the risk?”
A grizzled oldster at the front of the crowd spoke up. “A lot are empty, too, long ago rifled by men who’ve defiled the dead to satisfy their greed.”
“I’d wager my father’s donkey that the malign spirit is one of the disturbed dead,” said the water boy standing beside him. “Who else would wish us ill simply because we spend our days toiling in this valley?”
The surrounding men murmured assent, their voices rising in a chorus of agreement.
Bak muttered an oath under his breath. His plan to set to rest the workmen’s belief in a malign spirit had gone badly awry. “Are you certain, Pashed, that the old shaft in which they threw me leads nowhere?”
The chief architect stood, hands locked behind his back, looking toward the ruined temple. “There is a burial chamber, I feel sure, but it’s long since been closed. The mountain above has settled through the years. It collapsed the robbers’
shaft and I’d guess the tomb itself. A man braver than I-or far more foolhardy-might venture inside with mallet and chisel, but I’ve no wish to be buried alive.”
“You’ve never been inside?”
“Perenefer has crawled to the end, but no one else, and he only the one time.”
“I suggest you send him down in the morning to be sure no new attempt has been made to reopen the tunnel. I’ll go with him.” Bak made the offer reluctantly. For a task so perilous, he could not expect another man to go alone.
He doubted they would find any sign of fresh digging. If the intruders had been excavating there, trying to reach the burial chamber, they would not have thrown him into the hole, drawing attention to the tomb and losing their chance to continue within. An inspection must be made nonetheless.
“Also, assign the crew who’ve been removing stones from the old temple to another task elsewhere. I mean to seek for signs of the intruders, and I want no fresh disturbance to destroy or hide any traces they might’ve left.”
“Who do you think they were, sir?” Hori opened his mouth wide in a deep yawn. “Tomb robbers or men pretending to be a malign spirit?”
Bak spread his borrowed sleeping mat on the rooftop of Ramose’s hut and sat down on it. He much preferred slumbering under the stars to sharing the crowded and smelly quarters of the workmen. “I
’m too tired to guess, Hori.”
The scribe got down on his knees before him and wrapped a swath of linen covered with a sour-smelling poultice around his skinned arm. “If they were the malign spirit, wouldn’t they have been carrying a light to frighten the workmen?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Bak spoke through gritted teeth. The salve burned like fire.
“If they were tomb robbers, do you think they found a likely target?” Kasaya asked.
“Other than the shaft they threw me into, I noticed no signs of burials when we explored the temple today. Tomorrow we’ll look again.”
Finished with the knots that held the bandage in place, Hori plopped down on his sleeping mat, took off his broad collar and bracelets, and laid them with his scribal pallet.
“Would you recognize them if you saw them, sir?”
“I’d recognize only the one. The second man struck me from behind.” Bak heard again the words “Let’s get rid of him” and his expression hardened. “If ever we meet-and I vow we will-I’ll look forward to repaying him in kind for dropping me into that shaft.”
The next morning soon after first light, Bak returned with Hori and Kasaya to the ruined temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. They found Pashed and Perenefer there ahead of them, waiting beside the old tomb robbers’ hole. The foreman did not hesitate to let himself down into the shaft, taking a torch with him. It was no more than two and a half times the height of a man, he assured them, and so Bak found it when he allowed himself to be lowered. Which made him wonder if the previous night’s intruders had wanted him dead or had simply used him as a distraction while they made their escape.
At the bottom, the tomb robbers had cleared a rough chamber in which to stand while they excavated deeper and raised the dirt and rocks to the surface. A pitch-black hole about the size of the one above led off at a downward slope in a westerly direction. A close examination around its mouth revealed that the material through which it had been cut was the debris used to fill the tunnel after the ancient king’s burial. A slight discoloration off to one side hinted at an earlier attempt to reach the burial chamber.
