by Jim Johnson
"Guess I’ll have to pull you away from another meal, my friend. Life is so unfair sometimes, but we gotta get to work. Ain’t what I had in mind when we left Asyut, but no other Ranger was dumb enough to get sent out here, so this one is up to us."
He vaulted up onto Heker's back and gathered up the reins, and pushed into a steady trot. They followed the trail for another solid hour, and then a large shape in the road ahead caused him to slow and then stop.
Wary, he cast out about the area with his hekau, but his weary senses didn't detect anyone or anything waiting in ambush. All the same, he pulled his pistol and held it at the ready as he gingerly nudged Heker ahead.
Tjety recognized the form in the road as the horse Meret had ridden out of the village. Tjety nudged Heker forward, but his mount held firm and pinned his ears back. Heker wobbled his head back and forth as if to suggest there was no way he was getting any closer.
Tjety sighed and dismounted. “I guess I can’t blame you.”
He moved toward the dead horse carefully, alert to anything untoward. It was still and silent, and had been in the road long enough that flies and other vermin had already gathered for a midnight feast.
Tjety glanced up. A dozen or more carrion birds wheeled high overhead. They'd seen the potential feast but hadn't yet descended to investigate. He suspected they were waiting to see what he and Heker were going to do; to determine if they were a threat to their meal.
“Oh mighty Nephthys, your creatures are free to do their cleansing work. My horse and I won’t interfere.” He moved closer to the dead horse and reached out a sandaled foot to nudge one of its stiff limbs, but the thing didn't budge.
He got a good look at the horse, flinching back a bit upon seeing the ruin of its head. The salty remains of dried sweat on its flanks and the mix of bloody froth and drool on the remains of its lower jaw told him part of the story. Meret must have ridden the horse near to death, switched mounts, and then shot this one dead in the road to put it out of its misery.
Tjety holstered his pistol and glanced up again. The carrion birds were being a little braver, having descended somewhat in the air, still wheeling. There were now perhaps two dozen, all waiting to see what was going to come of their meal.
Meret had left the horse's bridle behind, but had taken the saddle and any other gear that might have been strapped to it. Bridles were cheap, but good Hesso saddles were hard to come by. Few in Kekhmet could afford them. The Pharaoh’s personal guard used them, and rumor had it that Pharaoh himself had a couple, but most people of Kekhmet didn’t have a use for them. Even he and his fellow Rangers rode with little more than blankets and good bridles, although they had adopted the use of pistols and rifles, which the Hesso had brought to Kekhmet when they invaded the empire so long ago.
The missing saddle made him wonder if Meret and his allies were well-funded, and, if so, who was providing those funds.
Tjety stroked his stubbled chin as he stared at the dead horse, something nagging at him. He glanced toward the vegetation to the west that soon gave way to sloping sand dunes and piles of rough rocks. The rugged terrain might make for a useful hole to hide in. Or perhaps a decent ambush site.
Suspicious, Tjety again dropped his hand to rest on the juniper butt of his pistol and tapped his hekau. He studied the ground around the dead horse more closely.
A large pool of blood had gathered under and around the horse. A thin trickle followed the terrain's contours and into the tall grass edging the road. The ground here had good irrigation from the river just to the east.
Tjety cast about with his senses and his eyes, leaving Heker to stamp his foot impatiently in the road behind him. After another long minute or two of scanning, and another tap into his precious hekau reserves, he found what he was looking for on some of the old pave-stones. A few drops of blood, long dried and at first glance blending into the ground cover—far enough away from the horse's remains to suggest a different source.
“Son of a bitch. Gotcha.” He was confident that he’d caught Meret with at least one bullet as he made his escape from the village, and these few drops of blood seemed to confirm the matter. He focused on the dens of rough rock, noting the nooks and crannies that could hide any number of creatures great and small…or even just one desperate and wounded cultist.
Tjety darted a glance at Heker and gave his mount a staying motion. He then drew his pistol and moved toward the entrance to the rocky den, opening his senses to the full, feeling the drain on the dregs of his hekau.
CHAPTER 8
TJETY LINGERED AT THE ENTRANCE TO the den, debating whether he should call out to Meret, or just go in and try to track the man down. If his guess was wrong and the bandit wasn't here, he'd just make a fool of himself, but if Meret was in the rugged terrain somewhere, then the effort might pay off.
His senses offered nothing but breezes moving through the rocky den and the flutter of wings from the wake of Nephthys’s daughters overhead. His gut told him Meret was in that den. After one more glance at Heker, Tjety grimaced, cocked his pistol, and headed into the rough maze of rock and debris.
Parts of the den were wide enough to walk easily, though some areas required him to contort himself to get through closely-packed boulders. On one such tight fit, he left a couple inches of skin behind, and soon enough his leather greaves and bracers were marred by fresh gouges.
The path ahead opened slightly. A small bunch of homespun fabric, possibly Meret’s plain headcloth, lay lumpy near one of the rocky walls. He cautiously moved toward it, senses wide open. It was a trap, he was sure of it, but sometimes all you could do was to spring it and…
The pile of fabric let out a strange muffled rattle as he approached. He leveled his pistol as he moved in. His senses a-tingle, he moved closer…
...and then ducked as a gunshot exploded somewhere nearby. The bullet creased the air just past his head.
“Shit!” Tjety yelled. That one was too close.
As the gunshot reverberated around the rock walls, the pile of cloth moved on its own accord. A massive hooded death-rattler revealed its thick form and terrible black and red banding. He’d seen snakes like it before, but this fucker was at least three times the size of his forearm.
He took an instinctive step backward, stumbling on the rough rocky ground. A second gunshot cracked out. “Fuck!” He howled out in pain and surprise as a bullet knifed through the meat of his right arm, sending out a spray of blood. He clutched at the wound with his free hand. Somehow he held onto his pistol. As if in response to his cry, the death-rattler rose up and up on its rippling coils, spreading open its massive crimson hood and baring its glistening fangs.
In a mix of shock and surprise, he fell backwards and put two frantic shots into the spawn of Apep, spattering broken scales and ichor onto the rock wall. His wounded gun arm shook from the effort.
Tjety rolled away from the convulsing thing even as it snapped its barbed tail in a dying gambit to take him with it. The barbs caught on the straps of his leather over-kilt and he counted his blessings that none of the poisoned barbs found his flesh. He switched his pistol to his left hand and awkwardly put two more shots into the fucking thing for good measure. His left wasn’t near as good as his right when it came to shooting and sword-work, and a quick glance at his ruined right bicep suggested that his lack of off-hand training was going to be a problem real soon.
A third gunshot puffed dirt a mere hand-span away from his face. He rolled toward the closest cover, wincing as dirt and debris ground into his wounded arm.
He rolled right into a rocky outcropping pushing up through the rough ground. He lifted his head to try and seek out wherever Meret had hidden himself.
Sudden tremors rippled into the rocky den and then it was all he could do to keep his head down.
The ground under his belly shuddered, and a low, throaty rumble grew in resonance and volume, shaking the world around him. Brain and ears rattling, he tapped into the last of his hekau and cast
about in alarm, wondering if Meret had set off some form of explosive. Hesso-made blasting sticks were hard to come by, particularly out on the frontier, but not impossible to find.
No, this had to be something else, judging from the syncopated jolts in his hekau, which jittered in time with the shaking ground. It felt like something darker and more sinister, but what, specifically, he couldn’t hope to guess at.
Larger rocks crashed near his feet, and then the ground shook with another massive upheaval. Tjety curled up into a ball, legs pushed tight against his chest and his arms tucked over his head. As the tremors worsened, he closed his eyes and mumbled hasty prayers to Mayat and every other god and goddess he could think of for protection.
As the tremors convulsed the ground beneath him, loud groans sounded from the rock walls as they shifted and ground against each other.
Someone uttered a loud cry of pain through the cacophony, and Tjety wasn’t sure if it had been Meret or himself. Clouds of dust and debris obscured everything, got into his lungs, and set him on a bout of severe coughing. He reached up with one shaking hand to unravel his headcloth and wrap it around his mouth and nose as a sort of makeshift filter.
An unearthly groan sounded from the depths of the earth, and he felt an unnatural chill deep within his hekau. The world around him gave one last, great heave, as if the earth were giving birth to a new moon. A shower of debris descended and then turned into a downpour that blocked out the waning moonlight. Rocks caromed off his back and his head and plunged him into sudden, utter darkness.
CHAPTER 9
RUIA STARED AT THE BODIES IN the wagon, unable to fully comprehend what she was staring at. How could they be dead? All these people she knew from her village, all dead?
Gruff voices from beyond the wagon startled her out of her reverie and she looked around the small camp in panic. Two men were walking toward the wagon from a small tent at the edge of the camp, carrying her friend Yuti between them.
Her breath caught in her throat, a hundred moments of joy with Yuti flashing by. She leaped into the wagon and forced herself in and among the cold, stiff bodies.
She hunkered down and forced her breathing to slow. She clamped her hands over her mouth to try and stop the scream rising in her throat. If she wasn’t silent now, she was going to die.
Harsh Hesso words filtered in, and the steps of the men crunched on the cold ground outside the wagon. The two men grunted, and then the remains of poor Yuti thudded onto the pile of bodies around her.
She tightened her hands over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, and willed her roiling thoughts to slow down, to be quiet and still. She reached down within herself for any scrap of calmness and coherence, and slowly built a cell in her mind to lock away her fear and despair.
Ruia breathed as quietly as she could and strained with all her might to listen to the two men. They made more Hesso talk with each other, which somehow sounded more familiar to her now even though she couldn’t piece out the words. They laughed coarsely and then walked away from the wagon. She breathed fast through her nose, whistling slightly with every breath.
She sat like that for what felt like a thousand heartbeats, eyes clamped shut to the horrors pressed in around her. She heard a lot of cries from the wagon where she had left Nauny and the other children behind, and then the thud of feet on the ground. Someone was scampering away from the camp! Two Hesso voices shouted out, and then the air was split by the single crack from a long rifle. The running sounds stopped, replaced by a shuffle, and then there was a final thud of a body hitting the ground.
Her eyes snapped wide open and she muffled a scream into her hands. She heard it as a moan, and then clamped down again, hoping desperately that the bastards hadn’t heard her.
A cry sounded from the children’s wagon, answered by shouts from the guarded wagon where she assumed the village adults were being held. Then there was a lot of angry Hesso yelling, and a lot of thudding and banging around, and another gun shot, this one higher-pitched, like from a pistol. Things got quieter after that, and then she heard sandals on the ground crunching away again and more muffled Hesso talk.
She shook her head, the tears flowing freely from her eyes. There was nothing she could do. She was trapped in a wagon of the dead, waiting for her turn to die. Desperate, exhausted, and more afraid than she had ever been in her short sixteen years, she pulled her legs to her chest, wrapped her arms around herself, and just shook in the cold night. She retreated deep within her mind, seeking solace in a silence that soon changed to a form of companionable whispering sounding deep within her.
Confused, she focused on the whisperings. They had come and gone over the last couple days, though the realization struck her that she had actually started occasionally hearing them more than a year ago, around the time her childlike body had started to change over toward full womanhood.
The whispers slowly coalesced into a formal-sounding language that she hadn’t heard before, though as she thought of it a memory snapped into place and she realized that she had heard it once, when she was born and the provincial priest had come to visit the village and offer her blessings on all the newborn babes and their parents. It was the heightened language of the priests and the nobles. No one in her village could speak it, not even old Elder Henutawy, who had seemed to know something about everything.
The elevated voice was soothing and calm, and in spite of all the terror around her, Ruia felt herself relax into the words, into the litany. An image formed in her mind’s eye, a vague outline that soon slid into focus as a tall, regal woman with a perfect complexion and kohl-lined eyes, her whole body framed in a light blue nimbus. She carried a stern yet kindly expression and had a magnificent hawk’s feather prominently arranged in the long plaits of her dark hair. Ruia had never seen a goddess before other than in an old scrap of papyrus Elder Henutawy had kept safe, and was certain that this gorgeous, glowing woman was divine.
As if in response to her thought, the vision before her offered the slightest nod of her head. The smile soon changed to a firm line, and then without moving her mouth, she somehow spoke into Ruia’s mind. “Time grows short, fisherman’s daughter.” The words were kind yet firm, and Ruia found herself unable to resist hearing every word, spoken clearly in her language.
“You walk a difficult path, but there is strength within you. Look to my servants, and live forward rather than back.”
Ruia nodded, unsure if the goddess would see. Of all the endless questions rolling around in her mind, she picked the most basic. “Who…who are you?”
The goddess said, “I am Mayat, the Lady of the Judgment Hall, the One Who Guides. My eyes see all. And I see you, Ruia. Mark me, and remember. Go, now.”
The bright form of Mayat faded from her mind’s eye, leaving her in silence and darkness once again. However, the whispers in her mind altered to something more familiar and comforting, and she felt her hands reach up to clasp the simple lapis amulet hanging around her neck, the amulet that had been a birthday gift from her ma.
Ruia opened her eyes and focused on the amulet. The rounded piece of lapis lazuli had depth to it, and even in the poor moonlight filtering through the bodies packed around her, she could just barely see the outline of a single feather etched deep within the stone. A coincidence or trick of the light? Or a sign of the Lady Mayat?
A loud Hesso curse roused Ruia from her confusion. She jerked her head up and banged it against something cold and unyielding. She glanced up into the darkness and bit her lip to keep from crying out.
The mottled, unseeing face of Yuti stared back at her, a neat little hole lined with dark crusted blood in her left cheek. Ruia buried her face into the crook of her arm, trying desperately to quiet her sobbing.
Everywhere she looked was a dead person from her village. Yuti here, Ankhu there, good old kindly Henutawy over there, with her prettily embroidered shift torn open and a vicious stab wound gaping between her breasts. Some of the people had their eyes closed, the
ir faces twisted in pain. Others gaped widely toward the Duat. Some seemed to stare right at her, as if they were silently pleading for relief or remembrance.
She shut her eyes and mind to all of them and sought solace within herself.
A knot of grief formed in her belly and started to crawl up her throat, but a cooling wave of calmness pulsed from somewhere deep within her ba and through the amulet in her hands. She forced herself to take some deep, relaxing breaths, and slowly she regained control of herself. She opened her eyes, steeled herself against the carnage around her, and wormed her way around the bodies so that she could get some sort of vantage point and look outside the wagon.
Three horses rode into the camp from what she thought was the west, their hooves clattering on the cold earth. One of the riders, a man with an ugly scar on his face, called out in harsh Hesso, and was answered by several of the bandits manning the camp. They didn't sound happy.
The scarred man, astride his sweat-stained horse, pointed at some of the other bandits and at the horrible creatures milling around near the camp. She wished she could understand what he was saying, and tried to focus on how he was acting rather than on what he was saying.
The whispers in her mind returned and the amulet around her neck pulsed softly, in time to the rise and fall of the voices. She rubbed absentmindedly at the bump on her head, which had cooled somewhat from earlier. She focused on the whispers and realized that through them she could make sense of the scarred man’s words. As she made the connection, she felt something like a pulling from deep within her stomach, or somewhere just below it, as if she was channeling something of herself into the amulet and enabling the whispers in her mind to translate the ugly Hesso words.
The scarred man said, “What do you mean Meret stayed behind?”
