by Jim Johnson
"You care a lot about your friends." His drawly voice had an unusual tone, like honey over gravel.
She fished out the last two loaves of bread and then dropped the basket at her feet. She took three long steps and stood in front of him. "I do. They're all I have left in this world, and it'd be awful if anything else were to happen to them." She glanced at him, then offered him the two loaves. "My name's Ruia."
He looked down at her, and accepted the smaller of the two loaves. "Call me Herikhet. Looks like you could use this more than me, m'dear, but thank you all the same. Sometimes I get so caught up feeding the god and tending to the sick that I forget to take care of myself." He tossed a wave in the direction that girl had stomped off. "Usemi reminds me from time to time too, but I don't think I take care of myself as much as she thinks I should."
Ruia frowned as she broke her loaf of bread and nibbled at it, prizing out a couple of the large seeds baked into it. "Is she your wife?"
Herikhet snorted as he broke a chunk off his loaf and chewed around it. "Gods, no. Usemi is a loyal servant of Amun-Re and a fine neophyte in her own right. She'll make a good priestess someday, assuming she doesn't poison herself with all that piss and vinegar she carries around inside."
Ruia raised both eyebrows. She'd never heard a priest talk of another in such a way before, though, as she thought about it, she'd never actually been in a place where there had been more than one priest.
Herikhet pointed his end of bread at her. "Not that you heard that from me." He winked at her.
She smiled, feeling instantly at ease with him. He was clean-shaven all over his body, save for that droopy mustache. She looked at him closely. No hair on his arms, the bits of his legs she could see, and his head was hairless. Even his eyebrows were gone, giving him a rather weird appearance.
She furrowed her brow. "I thought priests were supposed to be fully shaved."
He snorted. "When they're likely to be inspected by their superiors, they are." He stroked his mustache. "Out here on the frontier, no one cares about this. Least of all the lord Amun-Re, anyways." Herikhet offered her a grin. "I suspect you want to see to that Ranger."
Ruia nodded. "How is he?"
He popped another chunk of bread in his mouth and then crooked a long finger toward her. "Come on, and I'll show you."
He led her through the doorway and into a series of hallways and chambers. Her eyes widened as they walked, the plain white plaster walls of the temple somehow soothing in the afternoon warmth. She'd never been inside a temple before, not that she could remember, and this one felt…holy, for lack of a better word. She feared each of her sandaled footsteps was too loud.
He led her to a small side room and gestured that she precede him inside.
She did so, seeing that it was a plain room with a cot and a simple wooden dresser set against one wall. Asleep on the cot was Tjety, who had a blue and white checked sheet draped over his body. His clothes had been piled to one side of the dresser, along with his gear and weapons. His headcloth had been cleaned and folded on top of the dresser.
She stood just inside the doorway and moved to one side to give Herikhet room to come in. "How is he?"
Herikhet shook his head. "Poorly, I'm afraid. Infection's set in, deep and strong. I cleaned out the wound as best I could, but I need to get in there if we're really gonna help him."
Ruia shrugged off a sudden chill. "That bad?"
He scratched underneath his bare chin with his long fingers. "If we were on a battlefield and I was still just a young sawbones, I'd have told you we'd have to take that arm in order to save the rest of him."
She pressed her hand to her mouth to cover an exclamation of surprise and fear. "He might lose the arm?"
"I'm not gonna lie to you, Ruia. If I can work hard and clever, I can probably save that arm, and him besides." He raised one finger in front of her face. "But, if I'm gonna be able to do that, I need help. A lot of help."
She frowned. "I'll do anything I can to help Tjety. He's done so much for me and my friends. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have made it to the fort."
He made a little doubtful noise. "Not sure I've heard the whole story, but we can save that one for later." He glanced at Tjety, then back to her. "What I need are volunteers willing to exert themselves for this Ranger."
She frowned. "Exert ourselves…how?"
He scrunched his lips up sideways. "Do you know anything about hekau, Ruia?"
"A little." She nodded toward Tjety. "He told me some things."
Herikhet grunted. "Suffice to say that through the careful use of hekau and a lot of help, I might be able to heal this one." He pointed at Tjety. "But doing so is gonna be hard, and dangerous. More for me than anyone working with me, but dangerous enough."
She considered it as she stared at Tjety with compassion and concern. "Before he fell outside the gates of the fort, he'd done so much to help me and my friends."
He stared at her with an expression she couldn't interpret. "And how's that make you feel?"
"I'm fortunate to have met him. I hope I have the chance to tell him as much." She pulled her eyes away from Tjety's prone form and stared at Herikhet again. "What can I do?"
He gently took her shoulder and ushered her out of the room and shut the door behind him. "What we need are willing volunteers to offer a little of their own hekau, their own life, to help me and Usemi heal Tjety. I can sort of…pull strength from others to heal him."
"I'm not sure I fully understand, but I trust you, Herikhet. How many people do you need?"
"The more the better. If there are a lot of volunteers, then the strength I need to draw is that much less per person." He shrugged. "We'll take anyone willing to lend a hand." He glanced at the closed door of Tjety's room. "Did he have any friends among your people?"
She shook her head. "He wasn't around us long enough to make friends, I don't think. But, I know some of them are very fond of him, as I am."
He led her toward the chamber where the other wounded villagers were resting. "All right. Go see how many folks you can round up. I'll start making preparations with Usemi and then tomorrow morning we'll take a crack at breaking that fever of his and see if we can do some deep healing."
She smiled and then impulsively hugged him. He was leaner and more muscular than his loose tunic and pleated kilt suggested. She frowned as she hugged him, wondering what other surprises he possessed. She backed away from him. ”Thank you, Priest Herikhet. For everything."
He rested his hands on her shoulders. "May the lord of all, the blessed and righteous Amun-Re, justified in all the heavens, smile down upon you and all your friends, Ruia."
She felt a calming wave wash through her and into her hekau. Touched by his blessing, she smiled and made her way out of the temple with a newfound lightness to her step. Going to the temple hadn't been such a scary endeavor. She smiled to herself, then thought about what Herikhet had said, and rushed toward the town with purpose in her stride.
CHAPTER 7
UNEARTHLY HOWLS SOUNDED LOUD IN THE wasteland, moving closer and closer. Tjety opened his eyes and saw his death closing in. Fearsome four-legged monsters with a gruesome mix of offal and blood caking their flanks and dripping from their mouths loped toward him, alongside the massive, slithering forms of sand dragons and smaller snakes, all with glittering scales and prominent fangs that glistened in the relentless sun.
He staggered away from his prone human form but then collapsed, his ba-bird body flapping around pathetically in the hot sand. The lumbering forms closed in and the dark clouds all around crept ever closer.
With nothing left to do and no other hope in sight, Tjety simply closed his eyes to the horrors around him. “Great Lady Mayat, please hear the final cry of your faithful servant. If there was ever a time in my life that I could use your gods-damned guiding light, it’d be now!”
The ground shuddered underneath him and then convulsed, and he was lifted to his feet by an unseen force. He crack
ed open his weary eyes. A glowing female form rose up out of the sand in front of him and soon focused into the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He stared at her in wonder, and somehow found his words. “Oh, Lady Mayat.”
She was resplendent in a fine white linen dress with a multicolored pectoral collar around her neck and chest. A bright white hawk’s feather was woven into her long, black hair. Her face was feminine perfection. She grasped a long bird-headed scepter in one hand and, in the other, a large silver ankh, the looped cross of life.
She glanced toward the encroaching shadow-forms and bleak clouds, and then turned to face him. She thrust the ankh out toward him and a column of silver light flecked with gold burst toward him, bathing him in a divine glow. Tjety’s senses reeled at the impact from her glorious hekau.
Lady Mayat’s voice reverberated in his mind. “You stand before the veil between the mortal world and the Duat, Tjety. I gift you with a choice. Surrender now and travel the last road through the wilderness toward the Lord Osiris’s court and subject yourself to the final judgment we all must someday face.”
He stared at her in a mix of wonder and terror. How else should he feel when in the presence of his god?
Her eyes bored into his, penetrating deep into his very ba. “Or, fight the darkness closing in with all your strength.”
Tjety kept his eyes locked on her, wonder freezing him to his spot. “Oh dread Lady Mayat…why fight when there is no hope?”
She glanced back toward the encroaching shadows and then raised her scepter. A brilliant shimmer of golden light rose up out of the sand, forming a wall blocking their movement. She turned back to him.
“You have devoted your life to my service, though you sometimes stumble in that service. There is always hope. Even now, help is gathering. Fight, beloved Ranger. Fight to live.”
He glanced at the shadows through the radiant wall she had erected. There were so many of them. And the dark clouds all around the small pocket of light she had created, how could he hope to push those back?
He stared into her eyes. For a moment her features changed to those of another woman he had so recently met, the young survivor of the fishing village, Ruia. He remembered what he had seen in her, the part of himself he’d seen reflected.
They were both fighters, and survivors. They would fight on until there was no breath left in their lungs and no blood left in their veins.
He blinked, and the Ruia image was gone, replaced by that of his incredible bastion of faith, Lady Mayat. He nodded, once. “In your service, my lady. I want to live.” Those last four words felt more true to him than any other he had ever uttered. He felt the certainty of them down to the very core of his ba.
She seemed to stare through him, and then she simply nodded. “Then, fight, my Ranger. Fight to live.” She focused her ankh on him and he was again battered by her divine hekau. Her arcane energies crashed into him and buttressed his own depleted wellspring with incredible strength.
And then, in a flash, she was gone. The glittering golden walls around him evaporated, and he was left standing alone with cruel, monstrous forms and the clouds of darkness closing in.
But he was not alone! He tapped into his resurgent hekau, felt the gift of her power. He might not yet survive the battle to come, but he would fight with everything he had left, everything the Lady Mayat had given him.
He gathered arcane energies all around him, and stared down the dreadful shadows. “Come, you gods-damned creatures. I fight to live! And I will send you to the depths of the Duat before you take me there!”
CHAPTER 8
WALKING INTO THE DEPTHS OF A heated argument, Ruia called upon her hekau for strength. She then stepped into the center of the long tent among her people and raised her arms.
“Please, friends! Let’s have some quiet!”
The arguing all around her died down and then tapered off to silence as she stood among them and simply passed what she hoped was a steady look over them. After she was sure she had their attention, she cleared her throat. "I see I've missed the start of a very hard discussion."
One of the elders, Ma Pemra, shot a glare across the tent toward Sefer. "You've missed nothing, Ruia. We've made no decisions."
Sefer stood up. "No, we've just been sitting here arguing for the last hour, wasting time!"
Several villagers nodded and a couple added their vocal agreement to that while others shook their heads and muttered negations. The tenor of the group felt evenly divided.
Ruia raised a hand, and again got gradual quiet in return. "We've been so busy trying to survive the present that we've had precious little time to talk about what our future looks like." She found a spare seat, and nudged it so that she was sitting among the circle, and neither ahead of anyone nor in the center of the group. She wanted to sit among her people, not apart.
"I've had little chance to think about it, mostly…mostly because I've been avoiding thinking about it." She recalled what Teteri had said, and nodded at her own admission. She saw several others also nodding. Clearly she hadn't been the only one to avoid the hard thoughts.
"That we have no home now should be clear. A village of over a hundred has been reduced to, what?” She glanced around the room, estimating. “Less than thirty. We could restart, but…it's clear that with just a third of us, our village cannot last. Not because we’re unwilling to work, but because the frontier is too unsafe for an outlying village to stand on its own any more."
Setesk raised his hand and stood up. "I agree that we can’t return for good. But can’t we at least return to tend to our dead and gather our things?"
Ruia nodded. "I hope we can talk to the fort captain soon and make such a request. We’d need a military escort to travel with us. Otherwise, we might end up being attacked by those…things, all over again."
She paused, then added, "I had little time to talk to Tjety before we split up and he…fell…but he told me that our village being attacked had to have a larger purpose, that we weren't targeted just because we lived along the river. The evil forces bent on our captivity needed us for some dark reason."
Ma Pemra called out. "But why, Ruia? Why us?"
Ruia shook her head. "I don't know. I'm just a simple fisherman's daughter. I don't know of such things as the walking dead and battles and chases through the night."
She shook her head, then sudden inspiration struck her and she stood up. "But, I do know one man who might know such things, and who might be able to help us answer those questions. He won't be able to tell us where to go or how to pick up our lives, but he might be able to help answer why."
Some of the villagers mouthed it, but others vocalized it. One stood up. "Who, Ruia? Who can tell us these things?"
"The Ranger, of course."
“Hah!” A couple villagers craned their heads around. One of the old crone sisters, Gheti, stared at Ruia with dead eyes. "He bleeding out in the temple, ain't he? How's he gonna to be a help to anyone if he’s dead?"
Ruia sighed. "He is at the temple, and while he’s not dead yet, he’s very much not well. In the last few days, he's been shot, beaten, and had to make a run for the fort, right along with us. His hurts are significant."
She passed her gaze over them as she talked, finding the words she needed to say, and drawing strength from the well of her hekau. "I talked to the priest and he says that if Tjety does not get help soon, he will lose his wounded arm and may very well lose his life."
She let that hang over them for a few moments. "But we can help the priest heal Tjety."
Gheti asked, "How? None of us are healers or curates. At best we can wash his wounds and hold him down while that priest saws his damn fool arm off."
Ruia shook her head. "Most of you adults know of the hekau."
Some of the older villagers made the warding sign with arched fingers, hoping to fend off the dark forces of Isfet.
"The priest says there is a means by which he can heal Tjety through the use of hekau, but that he ne
eds a lot of help to do it. He needs people willing to act as…as strength during the healing."
Gheti stood up and gestured around the room. "What does he expect of us? None of us are priests. We have no training and no experience. We are simple fishers and farmers." She tossed a dismissive wave toward Ruia. "Besides, what do we owe this Ranger?"
Ruia tamped down the rising frustration she felt in her heart. "We owe him our lives."
A few villagers, including Gheti, scoffed, though a few looked embarrassed or guilty—others frowned, waiting for Ruia to continue.
She latched onto that faint hope. "He was captured along with the rest of us, and worked with us to defeat the bandits at the camp. With his guidance and his efforts to delay the enemy, we were able to very nearly reach the fort. It took all our efforts to get here, but I believe we would not have made it without him leading the way."
The villagers conversed with each other in low voices for a few moments. Ruia sat down again, letting the discussion wash over her. She dug down into her hekau again for patience and strength. As the chatter slowly died down again, Setesk stood up and cleared his throat.
"You ask much of us, Ruia. We have suffered so much already, and you say that we might risk even more if we help you now." He raised his palms to the sky, a hopeless gesture. "It just seems like our sacrifices will never end."
Ruia sighed, having not expected this much resistance to her request. "I don't even know how dangerous the process is to us. The priest said the risk to participants other than him should be minimal."
Gheti snorted. "’Should be’? Trust a gods-damned priest to say something like that. It's their job to bend the truth to suit their needs. For all we know, healing the Ranger could kill all of us, and for what? Some concept of the greater good?"
Ruia shook her head, confused at the dissent. Why wouldn’t they just shut up and help? "It's not like that at all. I saw the priest and his acolyte—they were helping our friends, treating them well. And Tjety, he looked as well as I've seen him…"
