The Bloody Frontier (Pistols and Pyramids Omnibus Book 1)

by Jim Johnson

  Zezago luxuriated in the feel of the wind buffeting his newfound wings; the rush of air over his beak and eyes. He settled into the senses and sensations the owl’s body offered him, and wheeled into the air. He cut some lazy circles, getting used to the feeling of the body under his control. In particular, he took several deep cleansing breaths with its little lungs, cherishing the feel of a breath without the catch of a shuddering cough.

  It had been far too long since he had taken flight. He made a mental note to himself to do this more often. Gliding up through the sky, fluttering over the treetops with this super light body under his control, reminded him of how hard it was to be a land-based human, chained to the same sickly body and limited to walking or riding.

  But to fly! He flapped his wings and rose higher in the sky, caught a thermal and soared higher and higher, the mountain range far to the west coming into view as well as the blue ribbon of the great river snaking below him, curving far to the north and looping to the south. He could see so far from up here, even though this particular bird’s eyes weren’t as good as some others. Perhaps next time he would capture a hawk or an eagle, and…

  He stopped his foolish thoughts. For now, on to business. He tucked in his wings and streaked down toward the ground, heading toward the rugged terrain the locals called the Dunes, crossing over that and moving toward the low foothills and rugged canyons between the quarry and the river. Somewhere down there was his caravan and his new shipment of slaves, and he was tired of relying on other people to deliver him information.

  Sometimes you just had to take things in your own hands. Or wings, in this case. He laughed silently within the mind of the owl, sensing an animalistic, unfocused terror from the little corner of the beast’s mind.

  He glided over the trees, ruffling the very top branches with his passing. A nest of starlings took flight in a spray of feathers and indignant cheeps.

  Reminded of an unfortunate moment in his past, he siphoned off part of his hekau and used it to scan for possible threats. A hungry predator might pick him out for an easy target, and he had no desire to lose this body and get snapped back to his own body without due warning. The return would hurt, and he didn’t have time to waste.

  He braked his descent and banked through tall cedars lining the rough road through a series of switchbacks set into the hills leading toward the river, focusing his new eyes at the ground.

  Just ahead a veritable swarm of carrion birds had started to gather. If he was careful, they would pay him no mind, thinking of him as another bird coming to join whatever party they were celebrating. He focused on the area below their circling, and a dark rage filled his mind.

  His caravan was in shambles. Two covered wagons and one plain buckboard lay clustered along a swath of land that appeared to have been used as a campsite. Bodies of horses, his soldiers, some villagers, and most of his constructs lay sprawled as well, evidence of a recent bloody melee.

  As he joined his other feathered cousins in wheeling around the impromptu battlefield, a deeply tanned, olive-skinned young man stood up from behind one of the wagons, a khopesh in his left hand gleaming in the moonlight. The man swung the weapon down to decapitate a construct flailing on the ground at his feet.

  Zezago noted the awkwardness of the movement, then saw that the man’s right arm was in a sling. Perhaps he’d been wounded. Interesting.

  He continued to wheel around, taking in as much information as he could. A girl in a tattered dress rushed toward the young man with a satchel in her hands. When she handed it to the man, they touched hands, and when they did, their respective hekau flared in a brief flash of mystical energies. Zezago knew then and there that the man was a hekau practitioner of some unknown ability. And somehow that girl had vestiges of talent as well. Most interesting, indeed.

  Curious, he angled in closer. The khopesh in the man’s hands and the tangled headcloth wrapped around his wounded arm and chest suggested he was a servant of Kekhmet, one of Mayat’s vaunted Rangers. The girl’s hekau flared as well, though hers was far less bright than the Ranger’s.

  Zezago frowned, or frowned as best he could in his new skin. He didn’t know what to make of the girl, but was curious to learn more. He lowered his wings and circled even closer to the action, diving lower than the other carrion birds.

  From this closer vantage point, he saw a solitary survivor in familiar leathers slipping away from the battle, leading a horse through the thickest cluster of trees. Zezago focused in on that survivor and experienced mixed feelings. It was his foreman, Qebsenuf. That the man had survived the battle wasn’t a great surprise—Qebsenuf was his most resourceful servant and a determined survivor to the core of his being. That he was apparently the only survivor, save for the odd construct that had wandered off into the trees chasing shadows, was more disturbing.

  Qebsenuf mounted his horse and rode hard to the north, no doubt toward the quarry. Zezago continued to circle the campsite with the other birds, watching as the villagers gathered under the guidance of the young girl with the matted sidelock and the strangely fluttering hekau. She soon led them over to meet up with the Ranger.

  Zezago let out a sigh that sounded like a plaintive hoot. These two would require closer attention.

  He lifted himself up higher, his mood fluctuating as his mind raced with questions and possibilities. What would the Ranger and the girl do now? Their home was in ruins, and with many of their fellow villagers dead or wounded, they wouldn’t have enough people to turn the village into a going concern any more. They’d have to find a new life somewhere else.

  His initial survey suggested many of them were wounded, some severely, including the Ranger with that bloody bandage on his arm. There were also several dead horses on the makeshift battlefield, and only a few that appeared capable of being pressed into service. Too few for all of the survivors to ride.

  The fort, he decided. It was the only logical place for them to go. Situated in the hills overlooking a bend in the river, Fort Sekhmet was much closer than their broken village and the other, more northerly, fishing village that his men had already emptied and gutted. If that Ranger had any sense of the local terrain, which had to be likely, he would see the fort as the only real choice of destination.

  Zezago nodded his little owl head. Yes, the fort is where the Ranger would lead this sad assembly of survivors. And on the road from here to there, his soldiers and his constructs would take them all.

  Boldly, he angled down under the curious eyes of carrion birds of all stripes, and in the moonlight found several of his feathered brethren perched upon a mighty cedar at the edge the campsite. He flared his wings, landed amongst the other birds, and then settled in. He rotated his head and focused his hateful stare upon the survivors, in particular that curious upstart Ranger.

  CHAPTER 19

  WITH THE MOON AT FULL RISE and peeking out from a thin spread of clouds, Tjety took a ragged breath and settled himself onto a makeshift bench near the fire pit in the center of the camp. He was bone-weary, and he ached all over, particularly the bullet wound in his arm.

  Fucking thing had to be infected. He winced as he rubbed at the wound. Nothing to do for it now but to try and fix the worst of it. He had grabbed one of the metal tent spikes from the bandit supplies and stuck it into the fire.

  He drew his small belt knife and sliced into the dirty scab that had built up around the wound, shoved a length of rope in between his teeth, and then reached out with his good hand bundled in his headcloth for the heated metal bar. He pulled it out of the fire and then held his breath as he pushed the red-hot end of it deep into his wound. He screamed around the rope in his mouth but focused with all his remaining hekau on the task at hand, working the metal bar around, burning out as much of the diseased flesh as he could.

  At some point he must have passed out, because he woke up with Ruia shouting his name.

  He roused and she knelt over him, the weariness in her body and eyes evident. “Oh, Tjety. What have
you done?”

  He lifted his good arm toward her, and she grabbed it and helped him up to a sitting position. “Did what I had to…to try and save my arm.”

  She sat down next to him and looked doubtfully at the still-hot length of metal. “Do you think it helped?”

  He shook his head and with a shaky hand pulled a dented flask off the ground near his feet. “Damned if I know.” He took a swig from the flask and then offered it to her.

  She gave it an uncertain look. “What’s that?”

  He indicated she should drink. “Not sure, but it’s got a nice warmth to it. I found it on one of the bandit’s bodies.” He stared into the fire. “He won’t need it any more.”

  She gave him a look, then accepted the flask and took a sip. She flinched back and coughed.

  “Gods, that’s awful.” She gave him a sour face, then handed the flask back to him. “You’re right, though. It is warm.” She rested one hand on her stomach. “I can feel the heat all the way down here.”

  He picked up his last length of clean bandages and tried to wind them around his wound, but fumbled with it and dropped the linen into the dirt. Ruia made a little clucking sound and knelt down next to him. She picked up the bandage, shook off the dirt, and started to wrap his wound.

  “I don’t know what to do next, Ranger. Some of my friends want to return home, back to the village.”

  “That’d be the fool’s path.” Tjety watched her as she bound his arm. “With maybe more of those unliving things out there and who knows what other frontier creatures lurking about, your people would never make it back to the village, not without suffering even more casualties.”

  Ruia gave him a sidelong glance. “Not if we had your gun and your help.”

  He snorted into the dirt. “You wouldn’t get there unscathed with a dozen Rangers helping you.”

  She frowned, frustration evident in the set of her shoulders and mouth. She tied off the bandage, making him wince with the tightness.

  “That doesn’t speak too well of the Rangers, does it? And it’s not like you’ve been much help! You needed me to rescue you! Why aren’t my people good enough for you to return the favor?” She stood up, shaking, her hands balled up into fists and pressed hard against her thighs.

  He thought she’d take a swing at him; was surprised she managed to rein it in. He shook his head. “You take offense where none is offered, Ruia. My point is that going back to the village won’t do you or your people any good. All that’s left there is death and bad memories.”

  Tjety saw the tears in her eyes well up and looked away. How much more pain would he see? The look in her eyes reminded him again of Neferuta. Gods damn it all.

  Ruia sat back down. After a long moment of staring into the fire, she asked, “What are we supposed to do? Where do we go?”

  Tjety shook his head. “I don’t know, Ruia. I really don’t. I think the best thing is to make for Fort Sekhmet. There we can get food, water, bandages…” He rubbed his wounded arm, nodded. “And maybe some answers. The soldiers there might know something about this band of brigands and those…creatures.” He sighed, then added, “And I think there’s a priest at the fort. They can help too.”

  Ruia thumbed a tear out of her eye. “So we go there for food and rest. What then?”

  He shrugged. “Then you find a new life for yourself, I guess.” He winced at the spears of heat in his wound and channeled some of his remaining hekau into blunting the worst of the pain. It wasn’t much, but it helped.

  Ruia crossed her arms and shivered. “But where? Maybe head for the city of the provincial governor? Report the attack on our village?”

  Tjety spat into the dirt. “I bet the provincial governor hasn’t taken a step out of his palace for years. Given the state of the frontier, I don’t think he has a clue how tattered his domain is.”

  Ruia shook her head. “Or maybe he does know and just doesn’t want to do anything to help us.” She stared at him with hollow eyes. “I don’t know anything about such things. I’m just a dumb girl from a fishing village.”

  He nudged her with his good hand. “Don’t you say that. No, Ruia. You’re far beyond that. You’re someone special.”

  She scoffed. “Special how?”

  Tjety screwed on the cap to the flask and shoved it into his satchel. He reached out with a tendril of his tired hekau to touch her ba. “You’re a survivor, Ruia. And that means a lot. Think about what you’ve been through over the last few days. Think about all your friends and family who weren’t so fortunate. You survived all that, and here you are.”

  She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around herself. “Yeah, here I am. Nowhere.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, you’re here, and you’re alive. Don’t take that for granted. No matter how beat up you are, no matter how sore your body, you’re still alive and able to fight another day.” He stared at her, confirmed his guess with a tendril of thought, then shut down his hekau so he could rest. “And there’s something else. You have some hekau talent about you. Remember your amulet, and your vision of the Lady Mayat?”

  She turned disbelieving eyes on him. “What?”

  Tjety raised his chin toward her. “How did you get away from the bandits in the first place? How did you get through their camp and into the trees?”

  “I’ve always been good at hiding.” Ruia glanced at him and then focused on the fire. “I was always the winner in the sneaking games the children played in the village. I once hid for two days straight. They never found me.”

  “That’s not just luck, Ruia.” He reached out and gently turned her chin to face him. “That takes a talent a lot of people don’t have, and a talent it takes years to master. It’s the hekau. The life-force that dwells within all of us. Some of us can learn to use it, in a variety of ways.” He touched his chest. “I’m shit at not being seen. I just don’t have the talent for it.” He offered a wan smile. “Though my trainers would suggest that I just didn’t have the patience.”

  She frowned. “The patience for what?”

  “To be trained.” He stared at her. “Ranger training teaches us a lot of things. Not just how to shoot a gun or swing a blade, but how to sense things others can’t sense, how to look into the hearts and minds of men and women, how to navigate the paths between right and wrong. All through the strength of our hekau.”

  She shook her head and focused again on the dying fire. “I don’t know such things. I can cook bread, skin a fish, and occasionally hide from other children. No one in my village knows anything about any hekau.”

  Tjety reached out a tentative hand and rested it on her shoulder. “Someone did.” He reached a finger out and hooked the simple necklace that supported her lapis amulet. “Who gave you this?”

  She glanced down, and defensively cupped a hand around the amulet. “My ma.”

  He dropped his hand back to his lap. “She knew something about hekau. Couldn’t be a coincidence. That’s a centering amulet, Ruia. Students new to the mysteries use them to focus their hekau. Most grow out of using them, but sometimes they hang onto them.”

  Ruia stared at him with wonder and sorrow in her eyes, then glanced down into her hand at the amulet. “My ma knew?”

  Tjety nodded, even though she didn’t see. “She must have known you had some talent, more than the other children.” He nudged her. “The whispers in your head. How long have you heard them?”

  She leaned away. “I haven’t heard any voices.”

  He snorted. “Horseshit. You told me you did.” He offered her a smile. “Come on, how long?”

  She met his eyes and then stared into the fire again. “A year? Maybe more. On and off, only on occasion. Stronger lately, including that thing with the Lady Mayat. That was the loudest they’ve been.”

  “It’s the gods, you know. Talking to us, helping us. Hard to understand them, to figure out what the fuck they want. But, you can learn to quiet them in time. Even without training. Just, focus on w
hat you want your hekau to do, and with practice, you’ll be able to use your abilities without hearing the voices.”

  Ruia dropped her chin to her chest. “I don’t know such things. I’m just a fisherman’s daughter.”

  Tjety slapped his good hand against the ground. “You’re more than that! Or, at least, you have the potential to be much more. If you want it, anyway.” He clenched a hand to his chest. “I can feel it.” And then, for a moment, his spirit lightened. “You remind me of someone, you know.”

  She glanced at him. “Who do I remind you of, Ranger?”

  He smiled, the connection fusing in his mind. “My sister. Neferuta. She’s a survivor too. And she’s tough, like you, and smart as a whip.”

  Ruia met his eyes, curiosity shining in them. “She a Ranger too?”

  He shook his head. “No, fuck, no. She was too smart to join the Rangers. She joined the priesthood, actually. Started off as a priestess of Pakhet but is probably a Daughter of Isis now. She has more of a mind for politics than I ever want to bother with.”

  “You miss her.” The statement was flat, not a question.

  Tjety stared at her, then back to the fire. “I…I don’t know. I guess so. The last time we talked—we had an argument. She won, of course, but I was too full of piss and pride to admit it. I stormed off, she stormed off, and we haven’t talked since. Been a couple years now.”

  Ruia stared into the fire for a time, sitting with him in something resembling companionable silence, then sighed and slowly stood up. She glanced down at him. “I’ll talk to my friends. If you can help us get to the fort, I’d be grateful, for all of us.” She shrugged. “For whatever that’s worth.”

  He met her eyes and pushed himself up to his feet. He reached out and took her hands in his good hand. “Ruia, by my commission as a Ranger of Mayat and as a hopeful new friend, I promise to get you all to Fort Sekhmet or die in the trying.”

  She stared at him over their clasped hands, then gave him a tired smile. She then let go of his hand and headed for the covered wagon that had been converted into a sleeping den.