The walls of Kor, an hour's walk south of Buhen, emerged from the haze. Imsiba adjusted the sail while Bak leaned into the rudder, swinging the skiff across the current. Nebwa's craft made a tighter turn and drew up beside them on the downstream side. Red sail and white lost the breeze and fluttered out of control. Bak again grabbed the oars, saw Nebwa do the same in the other vessel. Imsiba tugged a rope to lower the upper yard. The sail ballooned with a snap, tilting the skiff half on its side, catapulting them off course. The hull slid across the water at a dangerous angle, showering them with spray.
"By the beard of Amon, Imsiba!" Bak threw himself against the upward side for ballast. "Do you want to turn us over?"
Muttering something in his native tongue, the Medjay let the yard drop. The vessel wallowed an instant, then leveled out. A glance passed between them, their thoughts meshed, and they laughed with uneasy relief. Bak's eyes darted toward the other craft, now scudding along ten paces ahead as steady and graceful as a great warship. The will to win, it appeared, had prompted Nebwa to shake off a good bit of the wine.
Bak's worry fled, swept away by the excitement of a real race and a firm resolve to reach Buhen first. He aimed the prow downstream and held the skiff steady in the current while Imsiba bundled away the collapsed sail. Ptahmose, more experienced and faster, had already taken up a second pair of oars and settled down to help Nebwa. Their vessel pulled away, setting a course for the western shore and the towering spur wall that projected from the southeast corner of Buhen.
Bak knew he and Imsiba would lose the race if they followed; they were too far behind. So he set a course for the end of the nearest quay, thinking the current farther from shore would carry them faster than Nebwa could travel.
Imsiba, settling himself on a beam, an oar in each hand, grinned. "You flirt with the gods, my friend."
"Our chance of winning is small, I know, but I'll not give up until I must."
"Do you ever?" Imsiba chuckled.
The current and hard, laborious rowing swept them down the river faster than Bak had dreamed possible. Nebwa's vessel lost much of its speed as it approached the shore and soon fell astem. Bak laughed aloud, confident their momentum and a final burst of effort would drive his skiff to the quay before the other craft touched the solid ground at the base of the spur wall.
Imsiba yelled. At the same time, Bak spotted a halfsubmerged palm tree dead ahead. His stomach knotted, and he shoved the rudder, trying to swing the skiff around. The prow smashed into the short, gnarled roots. The tree rolled, carrying the skiff with it. The masthead arced toward the water. Bak sucked in air and flung himself outward, thought he heard Imsiba's splash not far away. As the river closed around him and he sank to the cooler depths, he had a fleeting thought: Nebwa should have worried about him and Imsiba, not the other way around.
The current carried him downstream, rolling — him head over heels. He staved off the urge to panic, willed his muscles into action, forced his arms and legs to move. When he regained control of his body, he looked up through the water, murky with silt, mottled by the sun. Above, he saw the dark silhouettes of the capsized skiff and the tree floating free beside it. And, caught in the tattered fronds, the shadow-figure of a man, arms and legs dangling from a motionless torso. Imsiba! he thought, not swimming, too still, probably knocked senseless when he was thrown from the skiff. He shot upward, fear for his friend driving him on.
The light strengthened; visibility improved. The figure, he saw, was not dark like Imsiba, but pale. Relief surged through him. An instant later the palm rolled and the light struck at a new angle. Bak stared. His limbs lost the will to move, but momentum carried him on, propelling him toward the body. It grew larger, closer, hanging over him like a nightmare creature from the netherworld. The face was puffy, unnaturally pallid. The head was thrown back; the mouth gap amp; round and red; the eyes were wide-open, staring, as if in the man's last moments he had seen or experienced some special kind of terror. Perhaps the terror of being lost in the river through eternity, with no earthly body for his ka, his eternal double, to return to.
Bak's wits fled. He twisted sideways to escape, sucked in a mouthful of water. He broke the surface within a hand's length of those wide-open eyes and mouth. The water roiled around him; the figure rocked. A pallid hand reached out to touch his shoulder. Coughing, gasping for air, he flung himself backward.
The river, closing over his head, brought him to his senses. He resurfaced, heard Imsiba call his name. Waving a response, he watched the palm drift past with its gruesome burden. Not a creature of the netherworld but a man, white and bloodless, bloated, lying facedown in the water. A victim of the river.
As Bak grabbed a frond to halt the tree's downstream journey, an image hovered in his thoughts just out of reach. He had seen something that was not quite right, something about the dead man. He eyed the lifeless back, but saw in his memory the wide terrified eyes and the gaping red mouth he had glimpsed from the depths. His sense of something amiss strengthened. Curious, troubled, he took a deep breath and, clinging to the tree, ducked below the surface of the water so he could see the face as he had seen it before.
The mouth was as wide-open as he remembered. But the red, which he had thought a swollen, distended tongue, was too perfect a circle and flat on the end. He reached out, touched it. It was hard, wood he thought, and embedded so deep a gentle nudge did not dislodge it. He stared, appalled. The object, whatever it was, had been stuffed into the dead man's mouth.
Chapter Two
"Careful!" Bak ducked away from the body dangling between Nebwa and Ptahmose, in the skiff above him. "We've no wish to fish him out again."
"We sped to your rescue fast enough," Nebwa said, winking at his sergeant. "We can surely hang on to your catch."
Bak ignored the gibe. The less said, the sooner Nebwa would stop his infernal crowing.
"Let's pull him in." Ptahmose adjusted his grip on the man's upper arm. "Now!"
The pair gave a mighty heave. The vessel rocked, sending Bak and Imsiba, who were clinging to the hull, bobbing up and down in the water. The body dropped into the skiff with a sodden thump and an expulsion of air that reeked of decay. Nebwa, Bak noticed with a secret smile, swallowed hard. Evidently the taste of palm wine did not mix well with the stench of death.
Nebwa managed a lopsided grin. "The next time you overturn your boat, I pray you'll find, a trophy sweeter to the nostrils."
"Stop babbling and move him out of the way," Imsiba growled. "One more mouthful of water and the weight of the silt I've swallowed will sink me to the bottom."
Amid grunts and curses, Nebwa and Ptahmose manhandled the deadweight forward and seated the body high in the prow. While they stared at the swollen, terror-filled face, Bak scrambled on board. He clung to the mast, which stood naked, the faded red sail crudely wrapped around the yards. The stench made him queasy, and he felt waterlogged. Imsiba tumbled aboard to collapse on a beam. The effort of removing the sail from the capsized skiff and stuffing it in the hole so the boat could be towed had worn them out.
They had long since drifted past Buhen, but not until Bak looked back did he realize how far. The fortress was nothing more than an indistinct speck of white in the distance. "Commandant Thuty will not be pleased with us today," he said grimly.
Ptahmose, a veteran of many years who valued his lofty rank of senior sergeant, jerked his gaze from the body, hastily changed places with Bak, and began to shake out the sail. Imsiba scooted aft to the rudder.
Turning his thoughts to the more immediate problem, Bak knelt beside Nebwa. The slain man's face he could see with his eyes closed, but he had yet to get a good look at the swollen body. The skin was gray-white. Pale blotches and ragged tears marked flesh scraped by rocks or other obstacles. A foot with three toes and a missing finger marked the passage of hungry fish or some other carnivorous creature, perhaps a crocodile too young and small to hold on to its feast. Bak had seen worse, for the river was a cruel burial place, but the sight never failed to bring a prayer to his lips that he would die far away from its waters.