Face Turned Backward lb-2

by Lauren Haney

Without a word, they drew shields and spears from the donkey’s load and made sure their smaller weapons were close at hand. Bak patted his dagger, seeking reassurance.

  Imsiba hung a mace from a segment of belt adjoining his dagger. Mery drew a rock he liked from the heavy leather bag tied to his belt and loaded the sling. They strode on, studying the ridge and the rolling sandscape, searching for a sign of life, finding none. The footprints led them to the fissure, which formed a good-sized entryway, crossed a thick layer of sand on the floor, and disappeared in a chamber at the rear.

  They eyed the tracks that vanished in the dark, tempting them to follow. Chisel marks dimpled the walls where the natural crack in the stone had been widened and smoothed.

  The open doorway at the back, carved and painted in the ancient style but too faded to see well, revealed nothing in the blackness beyond. A large boulder lay across the space overhead, forming a roof of sorts, shading much of the entryway. Wensu-or someone-had to be inside. Why, then, was the tomb so silent?

  “A single set of footprints, probably Wensu’s, and no trace of Userhet.” Bak scowled at the dark portal, troubled by the scarcity of revealing signs. “I think it best, Imsiba, that you stay outside. I’d not like to be trapped in there with no one the wiser.”

  “Nor would I.” Imsiba looked as concerned as Bak.

  Mery hurried to the donkey and dug out a torch, the drill used to start fires, and kindling. Kneeling, he rapidly rotated the stick to get a spark. Bak shifted the tools from the animal’s back to the entryway, while Imsiba climbed the ridge in search of footprints or any other sign that another man was lurking nearby.

  The dried grass and twigs soon flared and Mery held the torch to the flame.

  “Have you found anything?” Bak called.

  Imsiba, towering above him atop the ridge, shook his head. “The track of a jackal, that’s all.”

  Not entirely satisfied, but unable to think of any further precautions they could take, Bak took the torch from the boy and led the way into the tomb, his body taut, his senses alert, his spear poised to fend off attack. Beyond the entryway, they found themselves in a room twice as wide as it was deep, the walls blackened by campfires of wandering tribesmen, the ancient drawings indistinct. Two square columns that had once supported the ceiling lay broken on the floor.

  The room was empty, the silence so dense Bak could feel it.

  Drawn to a doorway at the back, Bak plunged into a second chamber, which was as wide as the first and twice as deep. This, too, was empty.

  “Where’s Wensu?” Mery whispered, his eyes wide, scared.

  “I don’t know.” Tamping down his own unease, Bak raised the torch high, casting the light over walls, columns, floor, ceiling.

  The chamber, when first adorned, must have been magnificent. In the flickering light, colorful figures of men and women and children, all a hand’s length in height, marched and danced and wrestled across the walls, working and playing as they had in the distant past. Hunting and fishing, plowing and harvesting, weaving, making wine and leather and pottery. A large painting of the deceased held pride of place on the back wall, seated with his family and fawned upon by his minions. Three octagonal columns still stood, while a fourth lay in good-sized chunks where it had fallen near the back of the chamber. The smooth stone floor was dusty-gritty but, like the antechamber, had been too heavily trod upon to reveal its secrets.

  A wooden sledge leaned against the fallen column. Several rollers lay beside it. A large wooden box had been shoved into the corner behind the column. Its dimensions were roughly those of an outer shrine-shaped coffin, but it had no lid and the wood was plain and unpainted. Surely Wensu would not have thought to save himself by hiding inside!

  Bak hastened to look-and found the box empty.

  Curiosity got the better of Mery’s fear. He got down on his knees and began to sift through the small piles of sand that had collected around the fallen column. “I see no sign of a burial. Not a bead, not a piece of rotted wood, not even a broken bit of pottery.”

  “The ancient tombs in Kemet have a deep shaft going down to a burial chamber.” Bak glanced around. If this was the tomb Intef had found, the shaft would be open. But where could it be? His eyes settled on the wooden box, shoved back in the corner for no apparent reason. Unless…

  He walked to the box and moved the torch slowly around its lower edge. Mery came close to watch. A flicker of flame, the play of light and shadow drew Bak’s eyes to a patch of disturbed dust beside the container and a pale, fresh gouge in the stone. A narrow strip of black spoke of a void under-neath.

  “That’s it!” Mery said. “The shaft!”

  Propping the torch against the fallen column, Bak leaned against the box and pushed hard, putting all his weight behind it. The container refused to budge. He wiped the sweat off his face and tried from the opposite end, but he could not get it to move.

  “I’ll bring the tools,” Mery said, already on his way, his feet skipping across the sandy floor.

  Bak bent low to examine the base of the box. One end, he saw, had dropped into the shaft and was firmly lodged there, probably no deeper than the width of a finger, but enough to hold it tight. The shaft had been covered deliberately-and recently-he was sure. But why? If Userhet’s goal and Wensu’s was to cut and run, why not simply abandon the tomb?

  Puzzled, he sat down on a broken chunk of column to await Mery and the tools. His thoughts returned unbidden to the footprints they had followed, seeing no other sign of man or beast. Wensu had surely come from his ship, for the trail had led unbroken from the cove to the tomb. Userhet might well have followed-or even preceded-his confeder-ate, with the second man taking care to walk in the first man’s steps. But where had they gone? How had they managed to disappear without leaving signs of their passage? Had they backtracked over the same footprints? Were they even now hiding somewhere outside, lying in wait for the chance to entrap him and Imsiba and the boy?

  A chill crept up Bak’s spine. He rose to his feet, anxious to leave the tomb, and at the same time chided himself for an overactive imagination.

  Mery hurried into the chamber, laden with tools. The boy shoved a lever at Bak, dropped the rest on the floor, and let the rope slide down his arm and onto the turned-up end of the sledge.

  “Did you see Imsiba?” Bak demanded.

  “I didn’t look.” Mery glanced up, noted the tension on Bak’s face. “Is something wrong? What…?”

  A startled squeal cut him short. Hooves clattered along the entryway and across the antechamber floor. The donkey burst through the door. The portal was narrow, catching the burden on the beast’s back, holding it. The creature fell to its knees, eyes wide with fear, and pulled back its lips and brayed. Suddenly the rumble of stones filled the tomb and rocks rattled across the floor of the antechamber. Dust bil-lowed through the air. The torch flared. The donkey gave a second terrified shriek, heaved itself up, and jerked forward, tearing the burden from its back. It plunged into the room and, with a rat-a-tat of hooves took a quick turn around the standing columns and headed back toward the door.

  A groan sounded outside. The donkey stopped in its tracks, hooves planted wide apart and firm on the stone, and screamed. Bak leaped to the animal’s head and caught the rope halter. Beyond the doorway, he glimpsed overturned 244 / Lauren Haney baskets spilling loaves of bread, food packets, the waterbag, and weapons around the sandy floor of the antechamber and he saw Imsiba lying among them, his legs and arms flung wide. The rest of the room was dark, the floor around the exit littered with stones, the entryway blocked by fallen rocks. They were trapped inside the tomb.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Here!” Bak caught Mery’s arm, pulled him close, and shoved the halter into his hand. “Hold this creature! Quiet him!”

  “What happened?” Mery grasped the rope and drew the trembling animal’s head against his chest. He stared through the dust cloud at the supplies and rocks scattered across the floor, Imsiba lying am
ong them, and his voice grew hushed.

  “Is he dead?”

  Fearing for a moment he had imagined the groan, Bak hurried to his friend. He knelt alongside and, as his physician father had taught him, laid a hand on the pulse of life in the Medjay’s neck. Its beat was strong and steady, outpacing the regular rise and fall of the unconscious man’s breast. A good sign, but…“Imsiba. Can you hear me? Imsiba!”

  He received no answer.

  Clutching the Medjay’s shoulders, resisting the urge to shake him awake, he repeated the query. Again no answer came. He rocked back on his heels, whispered a quick but fervent prayer to the lord Amon, and bent again to search for a bump on the head. The whirling dust tickled his nose and abruptly he sneezed. Once, twice, three times.

  Imsiba’s eyes flickered open; he gave his friend a wan smile. “Could you not wake me with a gentle whisper instead of the blast of a trumpet?”

  Weak with relief, Bak laughed softly. “Who struck you down?”

  “I don’t know.” Imsiba touched the back of his head, grimaced. “I heard a noise among the rocks above the tomb.

  When I went to investigate, someone must’ve crept up behind me. The next thing I knew, I was draped over the donkey’s back, my hands tied to my feet beneath its belly.” Biting his lip to stifle a moan, he raised himself onto an elbow. “I was untying the rope-the knot had been made in haste-when something hit the creature’s flank, frightening it, sending it racing into the tomb. I struck…A wall, I think. And once again the world went black.”

  “You hit the doorjamb and the donkey brushed you off his back.”

  Imsiba raised himself higher, gave Mery a crooked smile, and looked at the supplies on the floor around him. Seeing the stones among them, his eyes darted toward the entryway and he spat out an oath in his own tongue. “Userhet?”

  “Or Wensu. Or maybe the two of them.” Bak stood up and offered a hand. “Let’s get you into the next chamber, where you can rest. If I’m to clear the entrance, I’ll need space in which to work.”

  “Don’t treat me like an invalid, my friend. I’ve a headache, that’s all.” Nonetheless, he took the proffered hand and, with Bak’s help, rose slowly to his feet, holding his neck and shoulders stiff and straight so he would not set his head to throbbing.

  Bak gave the Medjay a stern look. “You’d best relax while you can. Who knows how deep this slide is, how many rocks lie between us and freedom?”

  Imsiba eyed the stones blocking the door. “We were meant to die in here, all of us together.”

  Bak, too, studied the blockage, stones of all shapes and sizes packed tight together in the entryway. A fist-sized knot formed in his stomach. Could they breach it while still the torch burned? Or would they find a boulder too large to move? The boulder that had served as a roof over the entryway? He formed what he hoped was a light-hearted smile. “At least I had the good sense to bring the proper tools.”

  Imsiba’s smile was rueful. “I erred, my friend, that I freely admit.”

  “Wretched thing!” Mery growled. “I’ll move you yet.”

  The two men, querying each other with a glance, hastened into the larger chamber. They found the donkey tied to a standing column, munching a skimpy sheaf of grain, and the boy standing by the wooden box, trying to get a lever under it. His expression was set, determined. Sweat poured down his face and breast. Bak bit back the urge to tell him he was wasting valuable time; clearing the entry was of primary importance. But the boy was right: they needed to know what lay at the bottom of the shaft-and the task might be the perfect one to distract Imsiba, keeping him quiet until the pounding eased in his head.

  Bak scooped up a mallet and heavy chisel and knelt at the end of the box resting on the floor. A few solid blows raised it, and Mery shoved the lever in the gap. Bak exchanged places with the boy and elevated the box a hand’s breadth off the floor. Mery slipped a wooden roller beneath it. Moving closer to the open shaft, they installed a second roller that lifted the end of the box out of the hole. Using a third roller, they easily pushed the container off the shaft and out of their way.

  Imsiba held the torch at the mouth of the opening so they could see below. The shaft was square, an arm’s length long and wide. If the uncertain light did not deceive, it was twenty or so paces deep. A man lay sprawled face-down at the bottom. His left arm was thin and weak, the hand drawn and misshapen. The stub of an arrow protruded from his bloodied back, the feathered end lay beside him. Wensu, without a doubt.

  Bak muttered an oath.

  “Userhet’s wits must be addled,” Imsiba said. “He slew one of the few men who could navigate the Belly of Stones and carry him south to freedom.”

  Mery stared wide-eyed. Evidently finding a fresh body in a tomb was vastly different than playing among the dried and dismembered remains of long-dead people. “With no 248 / Lauren Haney one left to point a finger, maybe he thinks he can return to Buhen and go on with his life as a highly placed scribe, respected by one and all.”

  “If so, he’s deluding himself,” Bak said in a grim voice.

  “Too many men know he’s the one we’ve been seeking.” He tore his gaze from the body and shook his head. “A falling out of thieves, more likely.”

  Bak ducked back, narrowly avoiding a miniature slide of rocks, but caught in a burst of dust. Leaning on the wall, he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, smearing the dirty streaks already there. The tomb was stifling, the oil lamp feeble and smoky, the air tainted with the sweetish scent of donkey manure. His muscles ached, his hands were scratched and bleeding, his lower right leg bruised by a falling rock, yet he had opened the entryway less than a pace. Even at twice the speed he was toiling, Userhet would be in faroff Kush or Kemet by the time the tomb was open.

  If the boulder had not fallen from above, sealing them inside through eternity.

  The thought was loathsome, planting fear in his heart, sapping the will to carry on. Blanking out the notion, he set to work moving out of his way stones large and small that had tumbled around his feet. A waste of time with the entryway to clear, but necessary.

  “Mery?” he heard Imsiba call.

  “The chamber’s been plundered!” The boy’s voice, high-pitched from excitement, resonated up the shaft. “It’s small, barely big enough for two coffins. They’ve both been broken open, probably a long time ago, and they’re so rotten they crumble at a touch. Several chests have turned to dust, and so have most of the objects inside-models of boats and servants, I think. Two bodies, bones mostly with their wrappings torn off, lie among a pile of pots at the back.”

  Briefly he was silent, then his words tumbled out in delight.

  “I just found a gold bead among some bones on the floor. I bet there are a lot more here.”

  “Is Wensu among the living?” Imsiba called, his voice edging on impatience.

  Bak glanced into the second chamber, where the Medjay knelt at the top of the shaft, looking down, the planes of his face vague in the residue of light cast by the torch he had lowered with the boy. The rope, tied to one of the standing columns, snaked over the edge and down.

  “He’s dead.” A short pause, and the boy added, “Not for long, I think. He’s warm to the touch and his arms and legs are limp.”

  “Do you want him brought up?” Imsiba asked Bak.

  Bak let out a hard, sharp laugh. “How can we carry a dead man and at the same time chase Userhet across the burning sands?”

  Imsiba had the grace to remain silent, keeping to himself any doubts he had that they would escape.

  Bak returned to the task of moving the stones from around his feet: bending, lifting, carrying, dropping with a puff of dust. Going back for another and another and another. The dogged actions of a man sorely in need of a respite.

  “Do you see any objects unsullied by time?” Imsiba asked Mery. “Anything fresh and new that Userhet hid down there?”

  “No. I bet this chamber was too hard to reach.”

 
; “Come on up then.”

  “I’m looking for gold beads. I’m sure I can find a few more.” The boy’s voice brightened further. “And who knows what else?”

  “Do you not want to leave this wretched tomb?” Imsiba demanded, exasperated. “We must help clear the entryway, and we need the torch up here.”

  “Oh, all right,” Mery said, his disappointment evident.

  “Very nice.” Bak, seated on a chunk of fallen column in the rear chamber, twisted the ring between his fingers, looking at the reddish scarab mounted in a bezel so it could rotate for use as a seal. The design, a simple motif of interlocking spirals, told him nothing about the deceased owner, but the stone and mounting, carnelian and gold, were valuable and the workmanship exquisite.

  “Can I keep it?” Mery asked.

  The clatter of falling stones spared Bak the need to answer.

  Dust erupted, filling the tomb with a thick roiling cloud.

  Imsiba leaped back, out of the entryway, and snarled a curse.

  The donkey tugged hard at the rope binding him to the column, half-snorting, half-braying, his hooves beating a quick tattoo on the floor.

  Unable to breathe, Imsiba abandoned his task and sat down on the sledge to wait for the dust to settle. A pinched look across his eyes was the only sign that his head still ached. Bak slipped the ring on Mery’s finger, too small by far for so large a circle, and cupped his hand for the beads the boy had found. They dropped in a golden cascade, eleven perfect orbs, all the size of chickpeas, hollow-cored and pierced for a string. They matched those he had found among Intef’s possessions.

  He handed them to Imsiba and took from Mery the last object the boy had salvaged, a statuette whose rectangular base fit neatly in the palm of his hand. It was a small master-piece, a scribe seated cross-legged, carved from a grayish stone and unpainted, with no inscription to identify him.

  Nagged by the passage of time, by the growing closeness of the air, he handed the figure to Imsiba and stood up. Mery slipped the ring off and sat on the floor to make impressions of interlocking spirals in the soft dust around him. The boy’s eyes drifted to the shaft, Bak noted, and his mouth tightened in disappointment.