by Jim Johnson
“Maybe take an ear for Master Deshi before we turn you into a slave, yeah?” Meret glanced toward Qebsenuf, and then leaned down and whispered into his ear. “Boss Qeb might want you alive, but there’s a whole lotta hurtin’ between livin’ and dyin’.” He shoved his knife into his belt and then flicked Tjety’s face with the tip of his own khopesh. “That’ll have to do for now. Later, I’ll take me that ear.”
Tjety felt the hot sting across his face, and then a warm ooze of blood slid down his cheek.
“That’s enough, Meret.” Qebsenuf wheeled his horse to stand near Heker. “I said I wanted him left alive.”
Meret turned and uttered some Hesso curses, but backed away from Tjety and Heker.
Qebsenuf pulled Tjety’s fouled pistol out from his waistband and tossed it to Meret. “Here, see if you can clean that up while we ride. It’ll replace the one you lost and, who knows—maybe Master Deshi will let you use it to finish him.”
Meret turned the pistol in his hand, examining the dirt within it. Tjety squinted through the sunlight and pain and watched the bastard handle his precious weapon. He struggled against his bonds, but was just too weak. He offered a silent prayer to Mayat that he’d somehow find a way out of this mess before Meret turned that weapon on him.
At the end of his prayer, he felt a tingle in his hekau and, for just a moment, saw the clear image of a sturdy djed pillar haloed in a light blue glow. As it faded from view, hope sparked. The djed was a symbol of stability and strength, and its brief appearance suggested that maybe, just maybe, one of the gods was keeping a watchful eye on him.
Giggles led his horse over to Meret and Qebsenuf, and then gave Meret a hand getting into the saddle. Giggles said, “You’re wounded. Take my horse. I’ll ride double with Wendje.”
Meret nodded his thanks, and picked up the reins in his free hand. He nudged the roan next to Heker and stared down at Tjety. “And you, ya feckin’ Ranger. You’re gonna take a nap.”
Even with the warning, Tjety wasn’t prepared for the thunderclap as he was pistol-whipped into sudden oblivion.
CHAPTER 13
RUIA HURRIED ALONG THE SHORELINE, ALTERNATING splashing through the water with walking on the dry shore. She hadn’t run into another crocodile or any more hippos, though she had seen a couple of the huge gray beasts sunning themselves on the far shore. She had also frightened a flock of geese into taking a honking flight away from her. Other than that, she hadn’t seen another living creature.
Feeling that she had to be getting closer to the crossroads and the bridge, she took to the tree line more frequently, intent to see someone on the bridge before she herself was seen. She moved through the low brush and closely-packed trees, working her way around the river’s bend. She crouched down when the rough wooden slats of the bridge came into view. This particular bridge had been standing for some years, and judging from the looks of it had weathered more than one small flood. She didn’t know when the last flood had come through, though she remembered her da and some of the other elders muttering over dinner some weeks ago that the village was ‘due for a good drenching’. The memory of that dinner made her sad.
Clattering hooves pulled her out of her recollection, and she instinctively ducked down to stay hidden. Along the trail on her side of the river, four horses came into view. Two had single riders, one had two riders on it, and the fourth had someone tied onto its back. She couldn’t tell if the man was sleeping, dead, or something else. All the upright riders wore similar plain headcloths and riding leathers. She recognized the rider in the center as the man with the scar who had ridden out of the bandit camp earlier in the day.
Ruia frowned as she tried to remember the details. She didn’t remember Scar’s name, but knew that he had been the one giving orders and was the one the other bandits deferred to. The two riders doubled up on one horse were the same men Scar had ridden out with, and the other was slumped over and holding his hands to his bloody leg. That one she didn’t recognize at first, but then his face flickered in her memory as the bandit who had been ordering men around the village. He was the one who had led the destruction of her village.
She tightened her grip on her spear, the rage building in her. She struggled against the urge to jump up and charge them all. She willed herself to focus on them. Frowning, she studied the man laying across the one horse’s back. He looked different from the other four. A faint pulse from her amulet and a twinge from her stomach suggested that she should pay close attention to that one.
The bandits walked their horses over to the edge of the river and allowed them to drink and pull at some of the lush grass along the river’s edge. She took the opportunity to carefully and quietly slip through the trees toward them.
She neared the edge of the tree line, where the crossroads to the bridge and the old trader’s road leading north and south broke up, and hunkered down to examine the little party.
Scar got down off his horse and stretched out his legs, then walked over to the two men riding double and started talking to them. She heard the whispers in her mind again, and this time tried focusing on the pull of…something from her gut that fed into the amulet and allowed her to understand their words.
“Gods damn it, Meret,” said Scar. “We are taking him back to the quarry. Let Master Deshi decide what to do with him. It’s not up to us to execute him out here.”
The one riding on the back of the doubled horse, the injured one, Meret, swore. “Damn you, Qebsenuf, you’ve got to let me do him now!” He spat out a wad of spit. Even from this distance, she could see the red-tinged foam.
Meret added, “I’m not sure I’m gonna make it back to the quarry.” He turned angry, pleading eyes onto Scar, the man he’d called Qebsenuf. “Grant me my dying wish and let me kill that bastard.”
Scar rested his hands on his saddle horn and shook his head. “You’re such a whiny desert-dancer, Meret. You’ve been shot in the fucking leg. It’s not like you’ve been gut-shot.” He shook his head again. “I can’t let you shoot him, Meret.” He held Meret’s gaze for a moment longer, then pulled a waterskin off his horse’s back. “I’ll get you some water. Anything else you want?”
Meret shook his head. “Just the water. I’m damned thirsty.”
Qebsenuf handed Meret his waterskin, then pulled another one off his horse and walked over to the river’s edge to refill it. Meret drank greedily from his waterskin and shot hateful stares alternately at Qebsenuf’s back and at the man slumped over the other horse. Whoever he was, he’d made Meret really angry.
Ruia frowned as she watched and listened. The man lying on the horse looked like he’d been worked over pretty good. Bloody face, swollen lip, and what looked like a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his right arm. His arm sling was a long piece of fabric dyed a deep blue, and that sparked a glimmer of hope in her mind. It looked an awful lot like a headcloth, and only one group of people wore headcloths that color, though she had never seen one before—only heard stories about them.
A Ranger of Mayat? Her hand clenched around her amulet. Her brow furrowed. Mayat Rangers didn’t roam this far north—they were only in the central area of the Empire and on the southern borders. Why would a Ranger be here, on the frontier?
She focused to get a closer look, but her eyes hadn’t deceived her—the sling was definitely the deep blue coloring of a Ranger headcloth. And none of the stories the elders had told about the Rangers ever suggested that someone would either steal a Ranger headcloth and wear it, or wear one without having earned it. The stories said that doing so would be to invite the righteous wrath of the gods and even Pharaoh himself.
She focused on the bandits. One of them had a fine curved khopesh strapped to his satchel that looked very out of place. The other bandits had straight knives and blades—what she’d expect to see on frontier soldiers and Hesso troops. It was the Kekhmet army and the Rangers that used the curved blades.
As Ruia puzzled over the situation in front of her, the sudden sens
ation of being watched tingled at her senses. Puzzled, she glanced around but then focused on the group ahead of her. The man laid out on the horse, the man she was certain was a Ranger, had lifted his head and was staring right at her!
She plastered herself to the ground, hiding in amongst the branches and fallen leaves and dirt. She reached out to pull a branch aside, too curious to look away. He was still staring in her direction, but not directly at her. His mouth moved slowly, breaking up the dirt and blood on his face, but she didn’t hear a sound. That pleading look in his one unswollen eye told her all she needed to know.
Oh gods, what was she going to do?
CHAPTER 14
AS RUIA STRUGGLED TO CALM HERSELF and her fearful thoughts, Scar refilled his waterskin and remounted his horse, then waved at his allies. “Enough of this. We have a caravan to catch up to. Let’s ride.”
He wheeled his horse around and nudged his horse’s flanks with his heels, and started along the path, passing the bridge and heading in the direction of the caravan.
Ruia’s eyes widened. What now? Wait for them to pass her by and then head for the fort? She considered it but shook her head. The Ranger could help her, could do something, and it seemed like he needed her help as much as she needed his. If she was going to act, she had to act now.
The riders moved close to her position in the undergrowth. She stood up straight, pulled back, and with the whispers in her head sounding a warning, heaved her makeshift spear with all her strength toward one of the mounted men.
It struck a glancing blow on his chest and skittered off into the dirt beyond. He leaned hard on his horse’s back, nearly falling off. He gathered his reins and cried out as he tried to regain his balance and control of his mount.
She stood there stupidly for a moment, only just realizing that she had thrown her only weapon away. And it hadn’t been sharp enough or thrown hard enough to do any real damage. Her feet froze to the ground in her indecision. She gasped and tried to regain her breath, but nothing seemed to be working. Time slowed to a crawl.
Scar and his allies wheeled around to see what had happened to their ally, and then one of the riders mounted double drew his pistol and fired a wild shot toward her. One of the branches to her left shattered in an explosion of wooden fragments. She blinked dumbly, rooted to the spot. She was going to die right here, right now.
The man cocked his pistol for another shot, but then Scar hit his hand and the second shot went wild, lancing up into the branches far above her head. Her eyes grew wide.
“Don’t shoot!” Scar yelled at his men. With those words, Ruia’s world snapped back into regular time. She felt the heaviness shed off her legs, and ran as hard as she could toward the horse with the Ranger strapped to it. She scrambled in among the bandit’s horses and managed to get a hand on one of the ropes holding the Ranger to the horse, but then a hand grabbed hold of her sidelock and pulled. She fell, spinning into the dirt.
“What do we have here?” asked one of the men. Somehow, her newfound ability to understand their words was still working.
Scar circled around to stand his horse between her and the Ranger. “Damned if I know. Any of you recognize her?”
The men shook their heads and made negative noises. Meret coughed and said, “Bitch’s from the village, or the fort. There ain’t no other settlements out here.” He stared at her hard. “Nah, gotta be from the village. The only girls in the fort town are whores.”
“I am no whore!” Ruia yelled.
Scar laughed, a harsh hollow sound. In her tongue, he said, “There, Meret, you see? Not only a fisherman’s daughter but she understands Hesso too! Quite the frontier maid.” He wheeled his horse around and stared down at her. “You’ve got a lot of spirit, girl. I give you high marks for attacking four armed men with little more than a stick.” He glanced at his men and then gave her a strange smile. “What in the lower depths of the Duat did you think you could accomplish?”
She fumed up at him. “You destroyed my village! I need the Ranger to help!”
His smile turned into an angry frown. “Bad answer.” He motioned to one of his allies that had gotten in behind her. “You’re coming with us.”
The other man reached down and managed to get a hand under one of her arms. He pulled her up bodily onto his horse. She struggled as hard as she could, with no desire to be taken back to the caravan and that wagon of death.
Ruia cried out, but then the man shoved his hand into her mouth. She bit down as hard as she could and got a cuff on the side of her head for her trouble. Stars danced in her eyes. She bit down again, and got a strong punch across the side of the head, and then the arm around her waist moved up to encircle her neck.
“See how you like this, bitch.” The arm tightened around her throat and she struggled as she felt her breath being taken away. She punched her hands against the arm and kicked the horse underneath her.
Soon, though, her vision started to swim, growing dark along the edges, and then she was struggling to get any breath in past the constricting passages in her throat. She croaked ineffectually, and her squirming and protestations slowed down.
Then, Ruia was hanging limp in the bandit’s arms, just barely holding onto a thread of consciousness. Scar’s head swam into view in front of her.
“Damn, she’s got some life in her. Didn’t know they bred them so hot out here. Hold her close and let’s get moving. We’re late enough already.”
He moved back out of her line of sight and then the arm around her throat squeezed tight, like the one time she’d seen a snake suffocate its captured prey. The fog dappling at the edges of her consciousness swept in and over her, and plunged her into a deepening well of darkness.
CHAPTER 15
TJETY HAD LOST ALL SENSE OF time and place. Sometimes he’d see trees bordering the road, and sometimes the Iteru shining in the sun. His battered body was subjected to constant shakes and bounces, none of which helped his aching head. He cracked open a swollen eye and found it hard to focus on any one particular landmark.
He tried to call to mind the face of the girl he’d seen hiding in the trees, but the constant jostling conspired to keep his senses muddled and his concentration uncertain. He tried tapping into his hekau for some measure of relief, but it was tapped out. He needed rest and food to replenish his hekau, and neither seemed likely to come to him any time soon.
His body felt like one big bruise, with added flares of pain from the gunshot in his arm and the cut on his cheek. Other than the girl he’d seen, the only glimmer of hope he had to hold onto was the brief image of the djed pillar he’d seen in his mind’s eye before getting knocked unconscious again.
At some point during the seemingly endless ride, with the sun maybe an hour or two from setting, someone, probably Qebsenuf, called for a halt.
Tjety lifted his head and looked around. He was still stretched out on top of Heker, who was drenched in foamy sweat. Qebsenuf and his men had brought them near a small assembly of wagons, two covered and one uncovered. The covered wagons were guarded by armed bandits dressed much like the ones who had worked him over. The uncovered wagon was unattended, and a glance showed him why—it was clogged with unmoving bodies.
Why would the bandits have brought a wagon full of bodies? He puzzled that over, then a low groan nearby distracted him. One of the other bandits, Giggles, carefully dismounted his horse, balancing a groggy girl in his arms.
Something in Tjety’s mind sparked, perhaps a glimmer of hope. It was the girl he’d seen in the trees along the trail. She had a bloodstained headcloth wrapped around her head in the same pattern as those of the villagers he’d laid out in the communal hall. Cuts and scrapes marred her face and arms, and she was filthy from head to toe—covered in dirt, dried blood, and bits of twig and leaves. She looked like she had rolled around in a series of fresh graves.
Mustache untied him and pulled him off Heker and onto his shoulder. To Qebsenuf he said, “I’ll get this one squared away, Boss Q
eb.” He carried Tjety over to one of the covered wagons and heaved his body into the back of it.
Tjety hit the wagon’s wood floor hard, and groaned. He managed to roll over to one side and cracked open his eyes to try and get his bearings. Several adult villagers sat dejectedly in the wagon. Each was dirty and looked tired, and showed signs of one sort of wound or another. They all looked beaten, defeated, and scared.
The closest villager, an older man, stared at him. “You ain’t one of them brigands.” He scooted closer to Tjety and gestured toward his tangled headcloth. “Dark blue? Are…are you one of them Mayat Rangers, son?”
Tjety met his eyes and nodded. “I am.”
The old man’s eyes widened as whispers of ‘a Ranger!’ ‘here on the frontier?’ echoed around the wagon.
“You here to rescue us from them bandits and their…things?”
Tjety frowned as the man’s tone sent an unpleasant ripple through his hekau. “What things?”
The man indicated the opening of the covered wagon. “The dead reborn. The dead come to new life.”
Tjety’s frown deepened. “You ain’t making sense. The dead can’t walk.”
Another villager piped up, wringing his hands. “But these can! May the gods preserve us!”
Tjety dragged himself to hands and knees and crawled over to the opening in the wagon’s covering, looked outside, and blanched.
True to the villagers’ comments, the dead did seem to be walking. A pair of mummified forms, gender uncertain, shuffled slowly along the perimeter of the camp, a strange sickly cloud of green essence surrounding them. Even without his hekau, he could sense their foul auras.
The things were unnatural, unliving creatures, constructed by some dark art well beyond his understanding. He’d never heard of such a thing. None of his training as a Ranger had even touched on being able to animate the dead. The very thought of profaning the justified dead in their final mortal repose was repulsive to his upbringing, an affront to every god, but especially the Lord Osiris.