Chapter One

"Lieutenant Bak!" The scribe Hati plunged through the portal atop the tall, twin-towered gate and raced along the walkway, oblivious to the heat, the heaviness of the air, the sentry whose duty it was to patrol that sector of the battlements. His attention was focused on his superior officer, a man in his mid-twenties, taller than average with broad shoulders and black hair, cropped short. "Sir! A man's been hurt! Stabbed!"

Bak, head of the Medjay police at the fortress of Buhen, swung away from the crenel through which he had been watching the men working below. Soldiers, sailors, traders, fishermen going about their business in and around the ships moored along the three sandstone quays that reached into the river. "Who? Don't tell me the archer May went back to Dedu's village!"

The chubby youth wiped rivulets of sweat from his face. "No, sir. A night in the guardhouse cooled his temper, and his ardor as well. He had many long hours to think about Dedu's threat to unman him. He swears he'll avoid the old man's granddaughter as if she were of royal blood." He drew in air, then blurted, "It's the farmer Penhet. His wife found him in a field, bleeding, a dagger laying in the dust beside him."

"Penhet." Bak's smile at May's plight turned to a frown, and he searched his memory for a face. When the answer came, he glanced across the river toward the long strip of green on the east bank. The oasis, like Buhen, was a bastion of life in the midst of a golden desert barren of all but the most hardy creatures. "Yes, owner of a good-sized farm near the northern end of the oasis, the one whose wife has always worked the fields by his side,"

Hori's eyes were wide with boyish excitem