Year of the Hyenas by Brad Geagley Page A

more like that of a folk-hero
than a real person. Seeing him so unnaturally subdued caused his crew
to regard one another with concerned frowns.
    Many years had
passed
since the “piercing,” or excavation, of the tomb had been accomplished;
now the team labored on the lavish paintings of rituals and spells that
covered its walls, ceilings, and galleries. Because Pharaoh Ramses III
had been blessed with so long a reign, generations of village
tomb-workers had lived and died without ever working on another royal
tomb. These men, including Paneb, were in fact the sons of those who
had started the work.
    Inside the
large tent
where the men slept nights, Paneb sat cross-legged, surrounded by his
men. They carefully cleaned their brushes and reed pens, and sharpened
their metal tools. This was a nightly chore never entrusted to
servants, done even before dinner was prepared; the men’s tools were
the most precious things they owned.
    The boy Rami
sat
closest to Paneb. Though he was the son of the scribe Neferhotep, he
was a large lad, big-boned like the foreman, and shared Paneb’s gold
eyes and wide, determined mouth.
    “Paneb?”
    “What is it?”
    “Have I done
well with
the gridding of the figures this week?” Rami was charged with creating
large grids on the painted gypsum surfaces of the tomb, snapping
strings imbued with red chalk into precisely measured squares. This
allowed the master painters to map the designs from smaller test
paintings their fathers had created on papyrus years before.
    “Yes.”
    The boy looked
at him
significantly. “I’m fifteen next month.”
    Paneb drew a
whetstone
across the blade of his chisel. “Well?”
    “Am I old
enough,
then, to start outlining the figures? Not the important ones, of
course, but those at the edges of the tomb, or on the backs of the
pillars? The ones no one will see?”
    “But you’ve no
experience in it.”
    “I’ve been
practicing.
Here, I’ll show you!”
    Eagerly, Rami
took
some limestone shards from his straw knapsack. The boy had made a
variety of practice strokes on them. Some of the lines tapered to fine
points, some twisted into curls and circles, while still others ended
in sharp, blunt edges.
    “Very
impressive,”
Paneb said.
    Rami beamed.
    “But these are
short
pen-lengths,” Paneb continued. “Can you sustain such a stroke for the
span of an entire wall, to keep the reed pen steady all its length?”
    “I know I can.”
    “Can you draw,
as
Aaphat here can”—Paneb winked at the tomb’s master painter—“the line of
a pharaoh’s lip, to catch only the hint of a smile? Or a god’s eye that
peers into a world we cannot see? Or the curve of a queen’s delicate
fingers grasping the stem of a lotus blossom?”
    Rami’s mouth
dropped
in dismay. “All I wanted was to outline a few images,” he said
dolefully, “not to finish the entire tomb.”
    Paneb’s sudden
yelp of
laughter echoed loudly in the Great Place. It was the first time since
his aunt’s death that his men had heard any mirthful sound from him.
They laughed with him.
    Though Paneb
had once
beaten a tomb-worker to death for insubordination, his men adored him
for the thoughtful kindnesses he lavished on them. They remembered the
time when his team had completed a task in advance of its deadline and
he’d broken into the stores for extra rations of beer and oil, heedless
of Neferhotep’s protests. Another time, Paneb had traded his own copper
chisels for half an oxen because he thought his team deserved it. They
had trumpeted with laughter when he had requisitioned new tools the
following day from the apoplectic Neferhotep.
    In fact, his
men loved
him as much for his prodigious faults as for his virtues. And chief of
these, whether fault or virtue, was his prowess with women. The fact
that sometimes Paneb even made a conquest of their own wives did
nothing to dampen the men’s loyalty; they would lay down their lives
for him.
    “So you’ll let
me do
some