The Right Hand of Amon by Lauren Haney Page A

times our company is the finest in the realm, and I'm taking two of our best men with me." Bak nodded toward Kasaya and Pashenuro, kneeling at the water's edge. "Are they not sufficient to lay your worries to rest?"
    Imsiba eyed the two Medjays, who were watching some aquatic creature invisible to their superiors. The youngest of the pair, Kasaya, was the biggest and strongest man in their company, not greatly endowed with intelligence but good-natured and likable. Pashenuro was shorter, thicker in build, clever as well as brave, next in line behind Imsiba. Both men carried spotted black-and-white cowhide shields and bronze spears longer than they were tall. Each wore a dagger at the waist of his kilt and carried a sling. A cloth bag filled with personal items lay at their feet.
    "I could not have chosen better," Imsiba admitted, "but they can't stand at your side every moment."
    Bak, impatient to be on his way, looked beyond Buhen toward the long sandy ridge that paralleled the river, where ribbons of orange spread across the sky from the rising sun Khepre, a sliver of flame burning the horizon. "I've more concern about Commander Woser than the man who slew Puemre. If he chooses to lay boulders in my path-and from what you say, he will-my task will be ten times ten more difficult than it should be."
    Imsiba followed his glance, remembered his own trek south in the heat, and backed off. "You know where to find me should you need me. If no word comes sooner, I'll see you in four or five days' time."
    Bak swallowed a final unnecessary order, smiled a goodbye, and turned away. Following the vague footprints Kasaya and Pashenuro had left in the sand, he strode down the slope to the river's edge. The trip to Iken, though only a half day's journey for men unburdened by donkeys and trade goods, would be hot, thirsty, and uncomfortable. Best to get on with it.
    Bak and his companions were more familiar with the stretch of shoreline between Buhen and Kor during the cooler months when the river was low. Then, they had fished in the shade of hardy acacias and tamarisks, had cast off skiffs for lazy days of hunting birds in patches of reeds along the shore, had dived into the river from boulders laid bare through the, years by swift-flowing floodwaters. But now, with the lord Re burning his hottest, their favored spots were inundated, covered by a river no longer benign. Trees and boulders stood in the silt-laden water; reeds and grassy inlets were vague images beneath the ripples. Vertical banks, undercut by the hungry river, were crumbling, and golden dunes molded by the winds sweeping across the western desert trickled away at the water's edge.
    They stopped briefly at Kor, where they spoke with a trader who had arrived that morning, leading a caravan from the south.
    "We spent three days at Iken," said the tall, angular man, his skin burned to leather by the sun. "This season's been wicked, hotter than any I can remember in the ten years I've been trading upriver. I had to rest the pack animals. And myself, too, if the truth be told."
    "You left when?" Bak asked.
    "Yesterday. Late afternoon. My men are well armed and the desert's reasonably safe around here, so we traveled through the night."
    "Did you hear anything of a missing officer?" "Whispers," the trader admitted. "Nothing factual, merely rumors. But I took no note of them. How does one lose an officer in a fortress as large and well run as Men?" A good question, Bak thought.
    Bak was bartering with a local farmer for dried fowl and fresh vegetables for a midday snack when Pashenuro hurried up with two soldiers who had just been relieved from several days of watch duty, their post a tall, conical hill a brief walk to the south. Their task was to watch the surrounding landscape for intruders, and to relay with mirrors in the daytime or fire at night any critical messages being sent up or downriver. Bak knew of the place, for the stoneand-mudbrick lean-to that sheltered the men