by Jim Johnson
Bennu said, "We've been on patrols to the north the last couple weeks. The new captain intended to get to the southern villages next."
He brought her to the closed door of the larger house, and rapped on the door with his free hand. There was no response from the first knock, so he tried again and then called out as well. "Captain? It's Sergeant Bennu. We have a situation, sir."
Muffled sounds reached her from inside the house, and then a man coughed a few times and then shuffled over to the door. A bolt was thrown, and then the wooden door opened and swung inside.
A youngish man peered out. His short dark hair was rumpled and he was buckling on a drab military-cut kilt over his nakedness. He blinked bleary eyes at the torchlight and squinted alternately at her and at Bennu. "Sergeant, what's this all about? Not another runaway seeking escape from Madame Teteri’s?"
Bennu shook his head. "No, sir. This one's name is Ruia. Say's she's here at the bequest of a Ranger."
She offered Tjety's headcloth and letter to the captain. "It's urgent, captain. Our village was attacked a couple days ago and the Ranger was there to help us, but..."
The captain stared at the headcloth as if it were a snake that might leap out and strike him. He retreated a step into his home. “I’m sorry, we can't get involved in Ranger business." He glanced at Bennu. "See that she and her horse are adequately provisioned and then send her on her way."
Bennu and Ruia traded a look, then Bennu focused on the captain. "With respect, sir, shouldn't we at least hear her out? Her village was attacked, people killed…"
The captain glanced at her again, then at the headcloth, and then back to Bennu. "I made myself clear, sergeant. Or at least I hope I did. Give her some food and water, and get her out of here. We are not about to involve ourselves with Ranger business. We have our own battles to face."
The captain shook his head. Something, maybe her hekau, helped her sense fear behind his eyes. "I am sorry for your troubles and for the plight of your village. If you have a complaint to lodge, I entreat you to approach the provincial governor's court. He will hear your concerns in due course and, if warranted, will send the army to investigate." He glanced at Bennu. "Sergeant, dismissed."
Bennu opened his mouth, but the captain stepped back into his quarters and shut the door on them. Ruia heard the wooden bolt snap home inside the door, the sound offering hollow finality to her feelings of despair.
She blinked a few times, the despair in her soul at odds with the rage building inside her. Without another thought, she launched herself at the door and bashed away at it with fists and feet. “Gods damn you! Open this door and talk to me! My people are bleeding and dying out on the trail! We need your help!”
Bennu put his arms around her and pulled her bodily away from the door. “Hold there, Ruia! Hold!” He was stronger than he looked. He half-carried, half-dragged her a few steps away. “Hold, damn you!” He adjusted his hold against her struggling and managed to get one arm around her neck, in a move that she vaguely remembered from her childhood wrestling bouts. She felt pressure on her neck, felt her breathing struggle, and forced herself to relax. Getting knocked out wasn’t going to do her or her people any good.
She forced a few deep breaths into her lungs, and then slapped Bennu’s arm several times. “All right, all right! Let me go.”
He held her for another moment, then released her and took a few deep breaths of his own. “Gods, Ruia. You’re wiry. Like an eel in the water. Gave this old man a bit of a run.”
She stared at him, fuming. “If the captain can’t help me, who can? My people don’t have time for me to go to the governor’s palace!”
He raised both hands in supplication to calm her, then indicated the letter in her hands. “May I see that letter?”
“Tjety said it was for the captain.”
Bennu shook his head and spat toward the captain’s closed door. “Our fearless captain is the worst kind of sand-dancer. He ain’t gonna be any use to you, Ruia.” He indicated the letter. “May I?”
She bit her lip, and even tried tapping into her hekau for some guidance. She didn’t sense anything other than genuine curiosity and friendliness from Bennu. After another moment’s thought, she handed it over, then draped Tjety’s headcloth around her neck.
Bennu moved toward a long building set against the fort’s walls. “Come with me, Ruia. We’ll get this sorted out, somehow.” He nodded toward her. “And it looks like you could use something to eat.”
She glanced at the captain’s closed door again, sorely tempted to put a few bullets through it, just out of spite. She resisted, though, and followed Bennu, wondering if things would ever get any easier.
CHAPTER 14
TJETY BOUNCED ALONG IN THE BED of the wagon, feeling the fever taking root deep within his body. Wounded villagers and children rode along with him while healthier folks jogged alongside the wagon, some with one hand on the wagon for support, the others just trotting along making the best time they could. The moon, the face of divine Khonsu, was high overhead in the cloud-filled sky, surrounded by countless stars. Trees lined the road on both sides, looming mysterious in the moonlight.
He occasionally found the strength to sit up and look along the path behind them, but it was hard to make out details between the low light and his fever-wracked sight. He would have made judicious use of his hekau to help detect anyone following them, but he was tapped out. The wound in his arm was a constant distraction, and he could feel the malignant heat within the wound creeping up and down his arm. The infection was spreading, and if he didn’t get to a healer soon, he was going to die on this forsaken frontier.
Dwelling on the nearness of his eventual journey through the Duat, he had a sudden pang of guilt and longing for Heker. He was confident that it had been the right decision to have Ruia ride him to the fort as soon as possible, but he missed that horse. If he was going to die out here in the middle of nowhere, fighting for these people, he wanted to do it with his long-time friend with him. The thought of traveling the Duat without Heker was a frightening thing, and as he stared at the road passing behind them, he blinked hot tears out of his eyes.
One of the crones glanced at him. “You’re leakin’, Ranger. What do you see?”
He glanced at her and palmed away the tears with his good hand. What was he going to tell her? That he could see the deaths of all of them closing in, that they weren’t going to make it to the fort? That they’d all be turned into those horrific unliving things, cheated out of any hope at a kind judgment?
No. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and found some vestige of inner peace. If his end was to be today, he’d go out with a fucking fight. He glanced at her.
“Just thinking about my horse. Been riding with him a long time.”
She snorted. “Well, that’s a strange fuckin’ thing to be thinking about at a time like this.”
A rifle shot rang out just as he was about to offer a response. Setesk had stopped and fired at something behind them.
Tjety glanced down as the wagon rolled past the man. “What did you see?”
Setesk turned to jog alongside the wagon. “Maybe just a shadow, but I was sure I heard a horse.”
Tjety focused on the road behind them and stared as hard as he could into the darkness. There might be forms out there moving through the trees and along the road, but it was just so damned hard to tell with the imperfect naked eye. He cursed himself again, wishing he had spent more time on his hekau studies. Master Waperineb would have been appalled at his student in the field.
Tjety shook off his doubts and glanced at Setesk. “Hard to see anything. Best if you save your ammo for something more sure.”
Setesk stared at him, then nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out back here.” He backed off from the wagon and lagged along behind.
Tjety took a breath to call out to the man, to encourage him to stick with the wagon, to not give himself up so easily, but no words came. He just didn’t have the stren
gth. He slumped back down into the bed of the wagon and dragged out his pistol and made sure it was loaded again. He knew he was stalling, but he needed something to do with his hand and his mind other than despair and doubt. He had five rounds left. The belt loops on his gun belt were all empty, something he hadn’t had to deal with since training.
He glanced in the bed of the wagon. There were a handful of rifles and pistols taken from the bandits. If they got into a fight, they’d be able to last a little while, but at a guess he and the villagers had maybe fifty rounds among them. Definitely not much of an arsenal against an unknown number of enemy troops.
He wished he hadn’t wasted the rounds on that dark man, that he had engaged the man blade to blade, as that Zezago seemed to have wanted. But…no. He had no regrets. The Rangers were trained with the traditional forms of bladework, but more and more this modern world favored fast guns and hot ammunition. The old ways were falling by the wayside, along with the old empires. The new world was rising, one of steel and fire and big dreams bigger than national borders. He was alternately excited at the endless prospects and terrified to let go of the known world.
He snorted. He wouldn’t have lasted long against Zezago with one fucking hand to fight with, anyway.
In spite of the bumping wagon, he drifted off, from exhaustion, from lack of food, from dwindling hope. He had a waking dream of staring out onto the wild frontier as a freak brushfire bit into the grasslands and swept over everything in its path, laying waste to all he could see from horizon to horizon.
Then, he saw himself reflected in a silvery pool of water, and his eyes changed from their dusky brown to a terrifying glowing emerald green. The flesh melted off his cheeks and his hair lengthened and turned gray. A grinning death’s head wearing his Ranger blue headcloth leered back at him, the glow from the green eyes searing into his ba. It opened its mouth and let out a blood-chilling yell.
Tjety snapped back to wakefulness as the driver of the wagon, Aniba, called out to him. “Wake up, Ranger! Something’s happening!”
Tjety groggily blinked his eyes and stared around the wagon in confusion, his bearings slow to recover. A dozen pairs of frightened eyes stared back at him. He realized that the wagon was coming to a halt as Aniba called out to the horses to stop. Tjety reached out to the bench and hauled himself up to his knees, his legs and wounded arm screaming from the exertion. He glanced at Aniba. “Why have you stopped?”
Aniba pointed up into the sky. “Look!”
Tjety looked up into the star-dotted sky. A thin, bright red streamer of light soared up from a position ahead of them on the road, almost like a shooting star rising from the earth. It streaked high up into the sky and then suddenly exploded, bathing the ground all around in a flash of bright light.
In that moment of almost sun-like light, Tjety looked ahead and felt the blood in his face drain away. “Oh, shit.”
Aniba glanced at him, then toward where he was looking, and echoed the curse.
A long line of those unliving creatures blocked the road to the fort. They were stretched from tree line to tree line, at least a dozen abreast, all with their green glowing eyes. They were profanity against the Lord Osiris and everything that Tjety held dear about life and death. The creature in the center of the group staggered a couple paces ahead of the line, and at some unheard command, the creatures started to shuffle toward the approaching wagon.
Tjety stared at the line of dead, certain that his premonition meant that he would join their ranks and soon. How could they fight such creatures?
A whooping noise behind them made him turn around. Shadowy forms on horses were moving in from the trees and the road behind them.
Oh, Lady Mayat. This was it, his last stand. His eyes felt as big as deben coins but a sudden spear of strength pierced his ba and shuddered up into his hekau. A mighty djed pillar wreathed in silver light flashed in his mind’s eye, and he heard a simple command from his dread Lady Mayat.
“To the fort!”
She had spoken to him! By all the gods, she had spoken! Inspired, he yelled out to the villagers milling around. “Come on! Get on the wagon!”
Tjety grabbed hands and arms and helped bodily drag the other survivors onto the wagon. He turned and slapped his hand down on Aniba’s shoulder. “Drive, man, drive! Straight through that line!” He pointed toward the lurching creatures. “It’s all we can do!”
A crazy jolt of hope crashed through his body, jerking his muscles to action. If they were going to die, they would go out in a white-hot blaze and take as many of those bastards as they could with them.
CHAPTER 15
SERGEANT BENNU GUIDED RUIA TO THE long building set against the side of the fort wall and reached out to open the wooden door for her. A chorus of snores assaulted her ears, followed by the occasional grunt and a muttered request to close the fucking door and stop letting in the damn light.
Bennu gestured for her to enter. She walked into a lamp-lit bunkhouse, lined with twenty double bunks, most of which were filled with sleeping forms. Many of the soldiers had raw woolen blankets pulled over them, though a couple were laying naked on their bunks, their blankets fallen to the dirt flooring. She averted her eyes from the handful of naked and sleeping men and women.
Bennu indicated she take a seat at one of the low tables set against one of the building's long walls. Cushions had been set on the floor, and she reluctantly sank down onto one, tucking her legs underneath her.
A sleepy voice sounded from one of the bunks. "A little young, ain't she, Bennu? Thought you liked them older."
Bennu glanced into the deeper darkness beyond the candles on the table. "Shut up, you, and get some sleep. We have ourselves a guest tonight."
The other voice muttered something she couldn't make out but suspected was rather rude.
Bennu grabbed an empty mug off the top of a cask, stuck it under the wooden tap, and filled it about halfway with a dark brew. He walked it over to Ruia and placed it on the table in front of her, then grabbed a half-loaf of bread thick with seeds out of a basket and broke it in his hands as he sat down.
"Here's a little beer and bread for you. I'll get the cook to work up some cold pork for you shortly." He indicated that she should eat and drink, and numbly, she did so, not sure what else do to.
She took a deep draught from the beer and coughed. It was much stronger than she was used to, even stronger than the stuff they had appropriated from the bandit's camp. She gnawed at the bread heel, finding that it tasted like rosemary and another herb she couldn't place. She nodded appreciatively as she ate. "Thank you for the bread."
He nodded and fished around behind him in another basket for a handful of figs. A couple looked to be on the edge of turning, so she picked out the best of the lot from his hand and nibbled around the edges, savoring the sweetness of it in her mouth compared to the bread and beer.
Bennu opened Tjety’s letter and tipped it toward the candlelight, silently mouthing the words as he read. He chewed thoughtfully on another fig. "Cultists of Apep attacked your village?”
She heard the confusion in his voice. She glanced at him and then swallowed the bite of fig in her mouth. "Bandits, one-eared, with pistols and rifles. They also had…things with them, like justified dead pulled from their graves. Their eyes glowed green." She continued, alternating her story with drinking the beer and eating bread and figs. “They attacked during the day. Right out in the open under the bright watching eye of Re. They had guns and horses, and those unliving creatures…”
She took a breath, reliving the horror of the attack. “We had a few guns in the village, but they weren’t enough. I saw my da get hit and go down, and then my ma and the other elders. And there was so much blood. And the screaming.”
She closed her eyes, clenching the scrap of bread in her hand. She reached up with her other hand and clasped her amulet, trying to find some peace from its soft pulses. “So many dead. I tried to fight, but one of those things hit me, and then there
was a bandit with a rifle, and he hit me hard on the head.”
She shivered, yet felt a calming through her hekau. “I woke up in a wagon with the other children from the village.”
She focused on Bennu, and saw that several of the other soldiers had gotten out of their bunks and donned kilts or blankets and had joined them around the table. She drained the mug of beer. "There's maybe twenty of us left now, plus the Ranger, and they're all coming here, but I don't know how soon they'll get here, and I don't know if they're in trouble." She fought back the tears threatening to leak out of her again. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Bennu shook his head. "And that damn captain, so afraid of his own shadow that he's not willing to lift a finger to help." He glanced at the other soldiers gathered around. "This ain't how we're supposed to defend the frontier for the pharaoh. If we're ever gonna take back our land and push the Hesso out, we're gonna need the villages in the province to support us, for supplies, if nothing else. Leaving them undefended is piss-poor policy."
Muttered agreements sounded through the room. Bennu dropped Tjety’s letter on the table. “This here is a travesty of military proportion. And our captain ain’t gonna do shit to protect anything except his own position.” He banged a hand against the table. "He has conflicting orders from the governor and a mandate to do nothing but patrol areas that don't need to be patrolled." He focused on Ruia. "We should be riding out to escort your people back here, and then figure out what to do with them."
"But you’re not. Is there anything you can do?"
Bennu glanced at the other troops. "Technically, no. When the captain tells us to do something or not do something, we have to follow those orders."
She glanced at him and then the other troops. "What if I asked for your help?" She stood up and glanced at each of them in turn. "The survivors of my village are out there somewhere, along with a wounded Ranger of Mayat. They're all tired, hungry, and hurt. They're riding in the dark. Can you help me guide them here?"
