David didn't want to die. But he couldn't see what else he could do. He'd given everything he had. He'd watched himself, as though from a distance, laying into attacker after attacker. He'd been like a dispassionate observer, admiring his own technique. The use of the flail to distract and stun, the crook to deliver a disabling or killing blow. How well the army had schooled him. Those countless hours out on the training ground, repeating the actions and combinations till they were enshrined in his muscle-memory, being barked at by instructors because he wasn't keeping his guard up, wasn't putting his weight on the correct foot, wasn't doing this, wasn't doing that. All so that he could become the man who could do what he had just done — slaughtered scores of foes with brutal, unremitting efficiency. And now he was finished. Every part of him hurt, a symphony of pain, from the bassy throb of sore muscles to the sharp high notes of slashed skin. There was nothing else for it but to stand and wait. Wait for whatever came.
He was David Westwynter, the brother of the Lightbringer, not that anyone knew that apart from him and Steven. He was a long way from home and from the aegis of Osiris and Isis. He was a success as a warrior and not much else. That would have to be his epitaph.
Finally the Nephthysians came to a decision. They started to close in. He counted at least ten of them. They were faceless to him, not individuals, just people in identical uniforms and rectangle-and-semicircle-crested helmets. He couldn't hold it against them, what they were about to do, any more than the condemned man could hold it against the executioner for wielding the axe. They would kill him because they must.
How many times had he faced death in recent weeks? Stared it straight in the eye? So many times that he was getting used to it. Starting to get bored of it, even. If Anubis wanted him so badly, he should stop pussyfooting around and just take him.
The Nephthysians formed a semicircle in front of him, swords at the ready. Each seemed reluctant to step within range of David's weapons, as if hoping another would be the first to take the plunge. What was their problem? Couldn't they tell he was past being capable of defending himself? What did they need, an engraved invitation?
Then one of them fell down.
The rest turned, startled.
Another of them looked down to find that the end of a crossbow bolt had sprouted from his chest. He keeled over.
A third had a chin. Then he had no chin. His jawbone was ripped away by a bullet impact.
The remaining Nephthysians scattered, trying to find cover. Bullets and crossbow bolts blizzarded at them. David heard gunshots and a diesel engine. Then there were Freegyptians all around him, hounding the Nephthysians through the wheat, scything them down. To use range weapons in a hand weapon situation was dirty fighting, but they didn't care. He recognised the faces of several of his saviours. Zafirah's Liberators. And here came Zafirah herself, dishevelled, caked with grime, but still in command.
''This way,'' she told David. ''Come on. Don't just stand there. We have to fall back. The forward positions are overrun. There are Nephs everywhere. Come on!''
Jolting around in the back of a ZT. Zafirah saying that the Lightbringer had ordered a retreat to the second line of positions on the plain. Hold that line till sunset. The Nephthysians would most likely halt their advance then and everyone could retrench overnight.
David didn't care. He had just one question to ask.
''Do you love him?''
Zafirah seemed not to understand. He wasn't sure he had asked the question correctly. He tried again.
''Do you love him?''
Even to his own ears the words sounded nonsensical, as though phrased in a foreign language neither he nor Zafirah knew.
She stared at him.
''Look at you,'' she said. ''Delirious. You're barely here. We need to get you to the field hospital.''
Barely here. She was right. David felt like a passenger in his own body, much as his body was a passenger in the car. And to lapse into unconsciousness, to go from barely here to not here at all, was easy, akin to agreeing to let someone else be the driver for a while. A surrendering of control. A case of: go on then, why not?
Under canvas. A large marquee-like tent. A place that reeked of excrement and death. Cries of distress that came as regularly and insistently as the tolling of a bell. Bodies lying on blankets, arranged close-packed and neatly like the blocks of a parquet floor. Men and women moving among them, ministering — people David knew to have been doctors back in Luxor, nurses, even a couple of veterinarians.
Steven, talking to one of them in Arabic. About him. About David down here on the ground, who didn't know what time it was or how long he had been there or whether the lack of pain he was feeling was due to analgesics or not and, if not, whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
Steven squatting down next to him. Whispering.
''You're going to be fine, Dave. They'll take good care of you. It's blood loss. The faintness? The disorientation? Blood loss. Nephs cut you up pretty badly, but you'll be OK. Just lie there and recover.''
And with that, he was gone, quick as a snake slithering through grass.
And David slept.
Profoundly.
30. Terebinth
Sometime during the night, a doctor came to check on him. The man's face, lit from below by the battery-powered lantern he carried, was familiar, even though he was not actually one of the Luxor medics. David recognised him at some whole other, deeper level. His bronzed, perfect features set off a chime within. So did the scars that laced his body. David knew he was looking up at Osiris, and knew he was dreaming.
Osiris did not speak, merely studied David from head to toe, examining him as a doctor might, diagnosing.
''I've strayed,'' David said. ''I know that. And even though I have been killing your enemies, it's not been in your name or the name of your sister-wife. Please forgive me.''
Still Osiris said nothing, and now he was holding a djed-pillar, the ribbed column that was his sacred emblem. It was a sheaf of corn. It was a leafless tree. It was a backbone. It was all three at once, and it was laid on its side, the position that symbolised defeat and death.
Carefully, gently, Osiris began rotating it from horizontal to vertical. The djed-pillar thickened and grew tall as it turned, sprouting fleshy vegetation. Osiris smiled as it came alive in his grasp, pulsing with vibrancy. He pointed with his free hand to the erect pillar, then to David.
He did this three times, then took his lantern and the pillar and strode off, disappearing with a halo of light around him into darkness.
Darkness.
Darkness.
Dawn.
David's eyelids fluttered open. A doctor, a real one this time, was bent over him, changing the dressing on the worst of his wounds, a deep gash in his left upper arm. She peered at him with the sore eyes of someone who hadn't slept for at least a day and a half. She finished her work, and later brought him some lamb broth in a bowl.
David slurped the broth and thought about his dream and knew it had been a true divine visitation, unlike the dream in which Courtdene and his parents had figured. In which case, it must mean something. It wasn't just some delusional brain-phantasm brought on by exhaustion and injury. The dream had to have contained a message. But what?
Osiris was the god of resurrection. Just as he had been restored to life after Set tore him to pieces, so he oversaw the transmigration of each person's ka to its new, eternal existence in the Field of Reeds, helping them surmount death as he had. He fulfilled a similar function in nature. In spring, Osirisiac farmers prayed to him to make their crops shoot up and be plentiful. From the dead winter earth Osiris generated life.
With his djed-pillar he had been illustrating… something.
My own life? David wondered.
When the doctor returned for the soup bowl, David asked her how he had been during the night.
''You lie very still all night,'' she replied in halting English. ''Not good. We worry. But you are good now, I think. You
are come through. Worst is over.''
David had to admit that he didn't feel too bad. Felt better, in fact, than he had any right to expect. He ached all over, but the pains were external, superficial. At the core of him, where it counted, he felt hale and whole.
Osiris's doing? Or just the body's own healing processes?
He had the strength to sit up. Soon he had the strength to stand and walk about a bit.
Was he the djed-pillar Osiris had raised?
Perhaps he was placing too great an emphasis on his place in the grand scheme of things. Did Osiris care that much about him? Was the god taking a personal interest in him? If so, why? God dreams were meant to clarify your thinking. So how come his thoughts felt cloudier and more muddled than ever?
He exited the field hospital to get some air and shake off the stench of human suffering. Not far from the tent, a score of bodies lay on the ground, covered with blankets and awaiting burial — those who'd been wounded so severely, the doctors hadn't been able to save them. David moved away, shunning the bodies not so much through squeamishness but because they seemed just so mundane. So banal. The blankets shrouded them incompletely. Here a bare foot showed, there a hand. The meat that was left behind after the ka had flown.
His eye fell on a solitary terebinth tree standing proud at the edge of a field, straight-trunked, its leaves in full early-summer ripeness and roundly, succulently green. He went and sat in its shade. The tree's sharp, resinous aroma surrounded him. Nearby, a cicada began to chirrup.
He remained there for a while, with his forearms on his knees and his chin on his hands, inhaling the turpentiney smell of the terebinth and feeling its rough bark against his back and listening to the cicada's clicking, buzzing proclamation of territory and desire. He stared into space, and so deep was the reverie he sank into that a sudden uproar from the far side of Mount Megiddo, the sound of combat being resumed after the night's lull, barely impinged. His ear heard, but his mind was elsewhere.
Out on the plain, the armies clashed again. The Nephthysian infantry had regrouped overnight, drawing reserves up from base to bolster its main force. The Lightbringer's troops had distributed themselves along the second line of positions, in accordance with their leader's instructions. Rather than clustered in knots, the Freegyptians were now strung out thinly so as to afford fewer concentrated targets and a more even spread of resistance. Universally it was accepted that, in this formation, they could not hold out for long.
And they didn't. Within an hour the Nephthysians had broken through in several places. The order came down from the Lightbringer: retreat. Pull back to the third line at the foot of the mountain.
The Nephthysians powered onward, blasting at the Freegyptians, who mounted a rearguard action as they went, strewing landmines and tripwire-triggered grenades in their wake. These slowed the Nephthysians but didn't deter them. On they came, advancing with the stalwart self-assurance of soldiers who knew that victory was, if not at hand, then at least within reach.
The Freegyptians, bunching around the base of Mount Megiddo's southern flank, fought valiantly. The Nephthysians were brought to a standstill, though not repulsed. They hurled themselves repeatedly at the infidels but couldn't seem to make a dent in their defences. The gun emplacements atop the mountain poured bullets down on them. Still they pressed hard, not allowing the enemy one moment's peace. Their generals urged them on from the rear, insisting that the Freegyptians would be worn down soon. They couldn't keep taking this much punishment indefinitely. They must buckle under.
Thousands of Nephthysians made the journey to Iaru that day. Hundreds of Freegyptians, too, found themselves in the afterlife. Anticipating oblivion, it came as a shock to them to discover that the godless person possessed a ka and it lived on. Then, soon enough, they set to work harvesting reeds alongside the billions of other souls already there, and swiftly the rhythm of toil became all they knew. The capacity to feel surprise, or much of anything else, was lost to them, falling away like some surplus, vestigial organ. They were as happy as ants, wishing nothing for themselves but to be among others of their kind and contribute to the communal workload.
Meanwhile, in the world they had recently departed, battle raged on, and twenty miles to the north of Megiddo one of the Lightbringer's scouts caught a first glimpse of the approaching Setic reinforcements.
The scout could hardly believe his eyes. At first he thought that what his binoculars were showing him must be the entire Setic task force, but he soon perceived that it was simply the vanguard. It alone stretched from horizon to horizon, and there was more behind.
This wasn't a mere handful of battalions. This was everything.
31. Influence
For the first time in memory, Mandet, the Night Barque, has carried an onboard complement of more than two. Ra and lion-headed Aker, its usual crewman and passenger, have been joined by the entire Pantheon for the nocturnal journey through the realm of the dead. Their main aspects ride the boat, confined there in accordance with Ra's will, and none of the gods has enjoyed the voyage, especially not Anubis. The others grumble about the darkness and the bitter cold, their voices echoing sibilantly off the stone walls of the caverns through which they are passing, and Anubis grumbles about their grumbling. This is part of his kingdom, after all. Who are they to criticise it so? He doesn't go to their realms and complain about the brightness and warmth, does he?
Arrival at the eastern gate of heaven and transfer to Mesektet, the Solar Barque, does little to lift anyone's mood. Suspicion and resentment continue to bristle among the gods. The traitor has not come forth. No one has made it known that he or she is the Lightbringer's divine ally. Ra expects the culprit to own up. It would be the proper thing to do. He cannot force a confession out of anyone, but he believes guilt must surely be preying on the conscience of the individual in question and will prick the truth out of him or her in due course. Everyone just needs to be patient.
Apophis rears out of the river, and Set duly leaps to grapple with him. As he does so, one of Horus's children, Hapi, can be heard to remark, ''There's your man, if you ask me. Great-Uncle Set. Who else could it be? A known deceiver. A prince of lies. With a track record like his — of course it's him.''
When Set returns to the boat, bloodied from battle, he heads straight over to Hapi. Grabbing the androgynous young godling by the throat, he hoists him off the deck. Hapi's long hair flaps around and his pendulous breasts quiver as Set holds him aloft.
''I have sharp ears, girly-man,'' he says. ''If you have an accusation to make, make it to my face, not behind my back.''
Hapi gargles, clutching his great-uncle's forearm, trying to claw his way out of Set's grasp.
''Reckon I'm the one, do you?'' Set goes on. ''Well, think about it. The Lightbringer's people hurt Wepwawet. My grandson. Right now they're fighting Nephthys. My wife. Why, then, would I be collaborating with him? Eh? Eh?'' He shakes Hapi about like a dog with a rabbit. ''Why? What do I gain? It makes no sense.''
In a paroxysm of fear, Hapi's bladder lets go. Urine sluices down the insides of his legs.
Set sneers. ''The God of Inundation. Bringer of the Flood. Pissing himself. How apt.''
Horus appears at Set's side and appeals to him to put Hapi down.
''I thought you couldn't abide your children,'' says Set.
''Can't control them,'' says Horus. ''Not quite the same thing. Besides, I am still their father. Hapi spoke foolishly. He meant nothing by it and regrets it now. Don't you, Hapi?''
Hapi nods as best he can with Set's hand locked around his neck.
''So, my dear Uncle, begging you kindly, would you let him go?''
Set glares at Hapi, then with an inclination of the head to Horus, a mark of his newfound esteem for his nephew, does as asked. Hapi tumbles to the deck and lies there in a heap, wheezing for breath. Set turns smartly on his heel and makes for the bows, where he keeps a basin of water so that he can wash off Apophis's blood.
Ra scowls. A dis
agreeable episode, and there will be more of its kind if matters continues as they are. Tempers are fraying. But he cannot back down. His path is set. He must stand firm. The guilty god will be identified. It is only a matter of time.
Meanwhile, Osiris has drawn Isis aside for a quiet word.
''I don't know about you, Isis,'' he says, ''but I'm not prepared to sit around on this boat for who knows how long, waiting for something that might not ever happen. I won't have it. Ra cannot treat us in this way. Keeping us here like a teacher holding the class back after school because someone placed a tack on his chair…''
''It's a little more serious than that, dear.''
''Even so, I find it insulting. Demeaning.''
''It's Ra's will,'' Isis counters. ''He is the All-Father. We must do as he asks — however misguided what he asks may seem.''
''If we were to just up and leave, though, how could he stop us?''
''He couldn't. But think about it. Anyone who left would immediately have suspicion fall on them. It would be seen as being tantamount to an admission of guilt.''
''A fair point,'' says Osiris. ''Then let me confess something to you.''
Isis's jaw drops. ''Osiris! It isn't you, is it? You're the one who's been helping the Lightbringer? It can't be. Why?''
''No. No! It isn't me. And keep your voice down, will you?'' Osiris glances around. Luckily no one appears to have overheard his sister-wife's outburst. ''Just listen for a moment. I did leave the boat last night. Only briefly. I sent out a tiny aspect of myself to the mortal realm. It was such a minuscule amount of my essence, nobody could have noticed.''
''I certainly didn't, and if I didn't, I doubt anyone else did. Where did you go?''
''To where the Lightbringer is battling with Nephthys's worshippers, at Megiddo.''
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