“Let’s go,” he said.
With three men behind him and another three behind them, they swept forward, filling the lane so no one could slip past. The nearest pair of besotted men, both on their knees swinging ineffectual punches, glanced up and gaped. Bak relished the look of disbelief on their faces. He could imagine what they saw: a baton-wielding officer of Kemet followed by a wall of bright shields, the Medjays’ legs, arms, and heads vague shadows in the dark. One of the pair bellowed like a rampaging bull, scrambled to his feet, and tried to run away from what he clearly thought were demons from the netherworld. The second man tried to rise, blundered into the first man’s legs, and they fell together. Bak prodded them with his baton, forcing them forward into the melee.
The pair stumbled into another man, who grabbed one of them, shoved him against the wall, and slammed his head onto the plastered surface with as much force as he could muster. A Medjay broke ranks, grabbed the attacker by the hair, and pitched him into a trio wrestling on the ground.
“The Medjays!” someone shrieked. “The Medjays!”
Bak’s eyes homed in on Nofery, whose hands were cupped around her mouth to form a horn.
“Don’t let them take you without a fight!” she screamed. “They don’t belong here! You do!”
Bak saw the closest of the brawlers stiffen, pull away from each other, stare at him and his men. He saw the besotted grins forming on their faces and knew he had just a few precious moments before every man in the lane took up the old harridan’s challenge.
“Let’s move!” he shouted to his men. “Quickly! Before her words give them the courage of lions!”
Irritated by her defiance, afraid of what would happen if she had her way, he swung his baton wide and whipped it down, clouting a swaying figure. Then he used it as a prod, forcing others to scramble forward. The Medjays followed, using their staffs on heads and arms and legs, their shields to squash the closest men into those farther ahead, shoving them into a helpless mass that could do nothing but retreat.
As they drew closer to the house of pleasure, Nofery’s voice took on a note of urgency. “Fight, you curs! You’re men of Kemet! Show the barbarians what you can do!”
The words fueled Bak’s anger and his mouth hardened into a thin, tight line. With his shield clamped to his forearm, he gripped both ends of his baton, raised it horizontally at breast level, and shoved it forward, pushing the bodies ahead of him. Nofery glanced his way; her sly smile dissolved. She tried to back off, but he grabbed her upper arm. It was so fat and soft, all he caught was a wad of sagging flesh. He squeezed, forcing a groan from her lips. With the other hand, he shoved the end of the baton into the mass of fleshy wrinkles beneath her chin, forcing her head high.
“You, old woman, will be silent.” He spoke with the soft hiss of a crocodile slipping into the water. “If not…” He nudged the baton deeper into her neck, letting the threat hang unspoken, planting a seed of anxiety he hoped would sprout and grow.
He pushed her into the building and hurried after his men, who were already two-thirds of the way along the lane. Beyond them, he heard angry shouts and ugly, resentful taunts. He cursed aloud, knowing he must resolve the situation before it developed into a pitched battle. He caught up, slipped past his men. Facing the Medjays at the far end of the lane were six or eight men who had worked themselves into a mindless fury.
A hulking dark-visaged man-a sailor, Bak thought-was standing in the center of the group, hands on hips. “Sons of whores!” he sneered. “Hairless monkeys!”
Imsiba and the Medjays with him stood stiff and mute, their muscles as taut as bowstrings, their eyes glittering with anger.
“We police ourselves!” yelled a tall, gangly man, a clerk, from the look of him. “We don’t need outsiders to do it for us!”
“My father came here with the army twenty-five years ago,” hissed a stocky, balding man. Bak had seen him on guard duty at the quay. “He was slain fighting your fathers. Am I supposed to submit to you now?”
Bak shoved his way around the motley group to stand with Imsiba. He whistled a long, piercing note to summon additional men. The sergeant gave him a tight but relieved smile. Some of the tension seeped from the other Medjays’ faces.
“You!” Bak aimed his baton at the sailor. “And you and you!” He pointed to the guard and the clerk. “And you!” He swept his arm from right to left to indicate all those standing with them. “You will spend the night as my prisoners. Tomorrow the commandant will pass judgment.”
Defiance darkened the faces of the sailor and two or three others. The less belligerent looked at one another with flagging confidence. The rabble behind them muttered and shrank back as if to distance themselves.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” a squat bow-legged man whined. “We were having a good time, that’s all.”
“Go!” Bak commanded, aiming his baton toward the intersecting lane that ran along the base of the fortress wall.
The sailor sneered. “Who are you to tell us…?”
“Look!” the clerk exclaimed. “Patrol dogs!”
All eyes turned in the direction he pointed. Six Medjays had appeared in the lane behind Imsiba. Standing among them were an equal number of brindle and tan and white dogs with pointed muzzles, upright ears, and lean, powerful bodies. Each was poised for action yet ominously quiet.
The sailor’s words died away; his companions’ last drop of resistance dissolved. With drooping shoulders and slow, shuffling feet, they allowed themselves to be taken into custody. Well contented with the outcome, Bak ordered his men to escort all the brawlers to the commandant’s residence. There, a scribe would register their names and offenses before they were taken to the barracks to sleep off the beer.
As soon as the lane was empty of humanity, Bak entered Nofery’s house of pleasure, a mean and cramped space, hazy with smoke from oil lamps, though only three burned. The obese old woman was standing at the back beside a table piled high with pottery drinking bowls. A dozen low three-legged stools were scattered about, some overturned. Large pottery jars were stacked next to dirty, scarred walls. The air reeked of burned oil, sweat, and Nofery’s alcoholic wares. Beyond the curtained door at the back, he had been told, lay the room where her women serviced their customers. They would have slipped away during the melee.
“Now, old woman,” he said, “we will talk.”
Rather than cringing and whining as he expected, she gave him a sly, gap-toothed smile and handed him an unplugged jar of beer. “I’ve heard of you, Officer Bak, and I think we can be friends, good friends.”
He eyed her narrowly, sniffed the contents of the open jar, and wrinkled his nose at its sour odor. “You serve this swill to your friends?”
Cackling like a trussed guinea fowl, she pawed through a stack of jars against the rear wall. “From what I hear, you aren’t always so particular, but maybe I can find something that’ll please you more.”
He stiffened at her words but kept his expression coolly indifferent.
She took the beer jar from him and presented a taller, slimmer vessel, this one topped with the clay seal of one of the finest breweries in Kemet. He broke the seal and removed the plug, sniffed the contents, and nodded his appreciation. Waving away the drinking bowl she offered, he sat on a stool and pulled another close to use as a table.
“What have you heard, old woman?” he asked. “Tales of vile Medjays? Savages one and all?”
Her smile was smug. “You were a charioteer, they say, a lieutenant in the regiment of Amon. They say you led the men of your company in a brawl in a house of pleasure. Not a lowly place like mine, but one in the capital itself, where the wealthy and powerful play. The scandal reached the ears of our sovereign, they say, and you were stripped of your rank and sent here with the Medjays so you could no longer embarrass your regiment and your commander.”