by Alan Baxter
…steals breath.
—and claimed her lips in a fierce kiss.
* * *
The firelight flickers.
Brightening, strengthening.
A false dawn.
Gleaming gold in a doorway, casting a gangly moving shadow against a wall.
A man appears, tall and thin, angular as a heron. Even with a heron’s walk, beak-nosed head bobbing with each stilted step.
His robe and sun-disk jewelry proclaim him a priest. He carries a candle in a dish of bronze. It quavers in his grasp, and his eyes dart about like anxious flies.
The swiftest and most silent of them, at the signal, moves to attack.
Fangs emerge whisper-quick. And strike. Piercing just below the collarbones, just above the ribs, to either side of breastbone, plunging hilt-deep into lungs.
A single, startled gasp, barely begun… eyes bulging wet with horror… and it is done. The bronze dish falls from the priest’s loosening fingers but is caught before it hits the ground. The candle tumbles from it, rolling across flagstones, flame guttering and sputtering.
Then, it all goes wrong.
Then, somebody screams. A high voice, piping and shrill. In the doorway is a child, a boy, soft and well-fed, his hair a mass of curls. Other voices join in, a clamoring alarm. Two women are there, one short and squat, the other slim and shapely. Several men rush past the women, muscular men in leopard skins and gold pectorals. They carry stout staves topped with rounded, sharp-edged blades.
Coils lash and snap, black in the dim-lit gloom. One twines about a staff and yanks it from the hands of the wielder, sending it to clatter. A second snares the same man by the calf and ankle; a hard pull flips him off his feet. The lengths of other coils entangle wrists, encircle throats.
The closest serpent, the one who struck the priest, darts at the screaming boy. But the boy, surprisingly fast for his soft pudginess, scurries out of the way. He flings something limp and ropelike in the serpent’s face – a cold, dead snake. The squat woman seizes him, pulling him back as if to hurry him to safety.
“Murderers!” shrieks the shapelier woman, she of the exquisite beauty garbed in sheer, thin linen. “Murderers and thieves!”
Another coil whips toward her. She dodges with a dancer’s grace. It misses wrapping her slender neck; its tip splits the skin of her shoulder. Blood runs down her arm. She shrieks again, as much in outrage at her marred perfection as in pain.
With a lunging leap, the priest-killing serpent is upon the shorter woman. The curved fangs plunge again. Her last act is to shove the boy through the doorway, to almost throw him in a final desperate burst of strength.
From rooms around the courtyard come the sounds of waking query, confusion, concern. On high in the sun-tower, the chanting abruptly stops. Burnished mirrors swivel, casting sunbeams of false day over the commotion. Shadows leap stark and strange against the walls and pillars, against the ruined visages of gods.
The fangs draw blood. The coils constrict.
A staff swings. A serpent twists aside; the rounded blade’s bronze edge shears through scales and flesh in a long but shallow cut. It swings again, up-around-down in a whistling arc. Heavy wood cracks on flinty head, on bone. The serpent drops, stunned… or worse.
* * *
Releasing her was as difficult as he’d expected, and he’d expected it to be all but impossible.
Khemet stepped back, every sinew feeling drawn tight as a bowstring, his body surging like the rising Nile floodwaters.
Breathless, yes, she was breathless. The carefully-daubed carmine of her lips had become a rich, red smear.
“You will be queen,” he said.
Sia gazed up at him, eyes hazed with desire, heavy-lidded in a slow cat’s blink. Her cheeks were flushed, her intricate braids in disarray. The fine-pressed pleats of her linen garment hung rumpled and askew.
The way she had melted against him, molded to him, melded, her own kiss as fervent, her own hunger as intense… in the privacy of that rushlit passage, unseen, unknown, they could have…
“You will be queen,” Khemet repeated.
Then he turned, striding perhaps not silent but still swift. He dared not linger, dared not wait for her to speak. Dared not tempt himself further.
In a matter of moments, he had reached a sunlit alcove overlooking a bustling crafter’s yard. Potters and painters, weavers and carvers, and others of such normal trade went about their business. The bright air rang with voices – chattering, haggling, laughing. Children ran about, side-locked naked boys just as he and Mahenef had once been, getting into mischief. He smelled pan-bread frying in oil, fish and water-fowl roasting on spits.
Life, this was life, ordinary daily life. And here he was, apart from it. Squinting; his vision, like his spirit, more accustomed to the dark.
With the ease of much practice, he slung a loose fold of his black shoulder-wrap to drape around his head. A lozenge of polished onyx, set with chips of flint and two small green gems, weighted the cloth at his brow.
He made his way through crowded streets and marketplaces, avoiding contact, being avoided in turn. Those who happened by chance to notice him were quick to divert their attention elsewhere.
At the river’s edge, a small boat waited, likewise studiously ignored by most along the docks. The serpentine design woven into its reed construction was subtle, as was the stitching in its shade-awning. The men waiting with it wore garments similar to Khemet’s, their shaved and oiled heads similarly covered.
They nodded as he approached, picked up their steer-poles as he boarded, and pushed the small craft off into the wide and smoothly rippling waters.
* * *
They are five now.
Five, and more guards are coming.
Charging from the barracks, some with tanned-hide breastplates hastily buckled, having grabbed shields and spears, brandishing khopesh-blades. Many priests run into the courtyard as well, priests carrying bronze knives or torches.
And, beyond the wooden gate, others have begun to gather. Workers. Merchants. Sentries. Slaves. The builders and people of Sefut-Aten, calling out to one another, shouting with confused consternation. Most are men, strong men, builders, arming themselves with whatever tools they find most handy.
The last of the leopard skin-clad warriors has fallen. A serpent has snared the beautiful woman in his Coils. Pharaoh’s mistress, his favored concubine, his Lily-of-the-Nile. She struggles and spits and scratches like a cat. She curses them with vile language for presuming to lay their hands upon her.
Then the boy, the irksome and obnoxious child who’s caused them all this hardship, comes running back out. Demanding they release his mother, promising them the burning deaths of a thousand angry suns, do they know what they are doing? Do they not know who he is?
He snatches up the dead priest’s dropped candle. Before any of the serpents can stop him, he hurls its guttering flame into a broken bale of straw. The dry and brittle stuff ignites with a gusty flare. The boy’s next action is to heave all his pudgy weight at an oil-cask, which overturns.
Two serpents seize him by the arms, haul him off his feet, carry him suspended between them. He is visibly shocked by this, astounded, as if he earnestly believed they could not touch him.
But the damage has been done; the spreading spill of oil feeding hungry fire, hastening its appetite for wood and rope and scaffolding.
In a mere span of heartbeats, the entire courtyard is ablaze.
* * *
The sun had set into cooling darkness by the time Khemet and his men emerged from their hidden stronghold in its deep river-carved caverns below the desert.
He chose six to go with him, six of his best, six of his fellow Sons of Apophis.
Instead of their simple tunics and shoulder-capes, they wore the Scales. The close-fitting armor cov
ered their entire bodies, made from supple oiled hide to which small overlapping pieces of stiff black leather and greened copper had been sewn. On their heads were helm-caps covered with angled wedges of flint.
At his waist, each man carried the Fangs, twin knives with narrow, curving blades and needle-sharp points. Around their wrists and forearms were tied the shorter sets of Coils, sturdy lengths of cord suitable for binding or strangling. The longer Coils, loops of limber rope-whips, hung on their backs, snakeskin-wrapped handles within easy reach.
“To betray our king,” one said, in a musing, thoughtful tone.
“To save Egypt,” another replied.
“By any means necessary,” added a third.
“Even the shedding of royal blood?” the fourth asked.
“No crime greater,” said the fifth.
“No crime more certain to weigh the heart heavy as stone,” the sixth agreed.
“I will not put so great a burden upon you,” Khemet said. “No, that task I shall take upon myself, and answer for it to Anubis and Ma’at.”
They rode for Sefut-Aten on the dark winds of the night.
* * *
“Now you are done for, you wretched crawling snakes!” says Lily-of-the-Nile, as the fire grows and the guards advance. “Pharaoh will flay you alive and leave your corpses for the jackals.”
She is terrified, but she is also furious. Her shoulder is a sheet of pain where the whip split her flawless flesh. They’ve bound her wrists behind her back and hold their knives poised at her throat. Her most faithful slavewoman and half a dozen of her hand-chosen warriors are dead.
And they have her son. Her precious Utatenhotep. The look he gives her is a strange mix of betrayed belligerence and fear. How many times has she told him this would never happen? It must be her fault, his sullen pout proclaims. She must have lied to him or failed him; how could she, when he has been so good? Her own little shining god, and now she has let the demons get him!
The guards seem cautious, even hesitant. None wish to be the first to charge, whether for their own safety or hers and the child’s. The priests also hesitate. She sees Bennu or Sennu among them, whichever of the heron-legged brothers is not splayed in the dirt with holes piercing his lungs.
Rising flames leap and roar, racing up ladders and scaffolding. At the gate are cries of Fire!, cries for water and sand, to quench it before all their work is undone, before Sefut-Aten lies in ashes.
A shape moves in front of her, blotting hot light with his dark shadow. Beneath the flinty edges of his helm-cap, his eyes are not the monstrous slit-pupiled glowing green she has imagined. Ordinary eyes. An ordinary man, after all. Not some creature of Apophis.
“Where is Pharaoh?” this serpent – this man! – asks her.
Lily-of-the-Nile spits in his face. The movement earns her a sharp pinprick jab to the neck, but she does not care. It is worth it.
The man, leader of serpents, gestures. The two who hold Utatenhotep between them by the arms drag him forward.
“Where is Pharaoh?” he repeats, placing a scaled hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Utatenhotep begins to snivel.
“You dare not harm my son.” She lifts a defiant chin. “He is Pharaoh’s child, of the royal bloodline of the gods.”
The flint-edged head tilts one way, the man’s grim mouth tilts the other. “The gods you have forsaken?”
“Not Ut-Aten! My son is Ut-Aten’s chosen, Ut-Aten incarnate and reborn! He will rule over all of Egypt—”
“With Pharaoh’s daughter as his sister-queen,” he finishes.
“Ha!” Lily-of-the-Nile scoffs. “He’ll have no need of her!”
Even as she says this, she realizes it is somehow a mistake. The man’s eyes – which still are not slit-pupiled, still do not glow – narrow and become more dangerous than ever. He moves his scale-covered hand to encircle the boy’s throat. Strong fingers press deep indentations into soft and vulnerable flesh.
“Oh, she will be queen,” he says. “I have promised her that.”
* * *
In the cool, shaded salon, wine sat untouched. No music wafted on the garden-fragrant air; the harpist had been sent elsewhere, as had the maids. Even the tame white monkey nibbled its fruit in some other corner of the palace, though the cats, of course, sleek and pampered, with their collars of gold, continued lounging wherever they pleased.
Neferisu waited, tranquil and elegant as a statue of a goddess. Her serene, noble features displayed no outward sign of impatience.
Sia was another matter.
“You’ll wear holes in your sandals,” Neferisu said, after a while of her daughter’s pacing.
“There should be more news by now.”
“We shall hear it when there is.”
What little they so far had heard was, as such news tended to be, fragmentary, filled with rumor and exaggeration and contradiction. Sefut-Aten had been destroyed, the entire city swallowed up by the desert just as the Great Devouring Serpent swallowed the sun. Sefut-Aten had not been destroyed, far from it, but would-be murderers of Pharaoh had been captured and burned alive.
Pharaoh was murdered. Pharaoh may have been murdered, but rose again from the dead to take his revenge. Black snakes rained from the skies and killed a hundred of Ut-Aten’s priests. A thousand bronze fire warriors were marching, would be here with the dawn, and brought with them a mirror so immense it would sear people to cinders and melt the sands to glass.
That famous beauty, Pharaoh’s Lily-of-the-Nile, was a witch, a witch dripping her sweetly poisoned nectar into his kingly ear. No, Lily-of-the-Nile had been bestowed to him as a gift to guide him on the path of the new god. No, she was a test, a trick, sent by Isis to determine if he could be so easily swayed.
Her child was Pharaoh’s own son, of the royal bloodline. So Lily-of-the-Nile claimed, and no one would publicly dispute her, but hadn’t it been years since he fathered any children by any wife or concubine? Why her, why then? The will of Ut-Aten, of course! Though it was hardly as if she lacked for company.
So it went, the news, on and on as the long day passed.
“The sun is setting,” Sia said.
“You did not truly believe they would banish night forever.”
“Of course not. I believed Khemet would do what must be done.”
Neferisu smiled gently. “To save Egypt.”
“By any means necessary.”
“And if he did, if he has, could you still love him?”
“I always have.”
“I expect,” said Neferisu, her smile widening as she glanced past Sia toward the discreet doorway of the hidden passageway, “he’s glad to know it.”
Sia whirled, braids flying, crossed hands pressed upon her breast. A cry burst from her lips. She all but sprang across the salon to meet the dark and weary, wounded figure who stepped into view.
He had paused long enough to divest himself of Scales and Fangs and Coils, Neferisu saw, and to rinse away the worst of the travel-dust, blood, and smoke. Wildly improper though it was, and painful though it looked, he caught Sia in his arms. He held her to him, shaking, head down upon her shoulder.
“Well?” Neferisu prompted, after giving them a moment.
Without raising his head, Khemet replied, “It is done. The Fire of Ut-Aten is snuffed out, the priests and their followers slain, the survivors scattered.”
“The woman and the boy?”
“The serpent sinks its fangs,” he said. “The serpent steals breath.”
“And Pharaoh?” asked Neferisu. “What of my husband and king?”
At that, he did lift his head to look at her. “As you commanded. We have brought him home.”
SEAL TEAM BLUE
A New World Novella
John O’Brien
Prologue
It first made
its appearance in Cape Town, South Africa and quickly spread to the rest of the world with a speed seldom before witnessed. Many fell into its grasp, the phone lines into businesses filled with more people calling in sick than with customers. The aged, the young, and the ill succumbed to the virus, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Services within cities became limited, prompting action by national governments. A coalition of pharmaceutical companies was formed to develop a vaccine, and money flowed from nations to speed up the process. Without the usual testing, the vaccine was released to military forces, followed a day later to the public.
In terror, verging on panic, most of the world’s populace was inoculated within a short period of time. Within seventy-two hours most of the world’s military lay sick in their beds, feverish and sweating. The vaccine was recalled, but it was too late. Ninety-six hours later, seventy per cent of them were dead. With the exception of a scant one per cent who proved immune or didn’t take the virus, the remaining were transformed.
Within those infected, the live virus caused genetic mutations that created elevated hearing, enhanced smell, the ability to see in the dark, and to communicate telepathically through the use of picture messages. The fast-twitch muscles were increased, allowing quicker responses, greater speed, and more agility. Higher brain function and memories were obliterated, leaving only anger and a lust for blood. Skin pigmentation was so altered that sunlight burned instantly, causing great agony and almost immediate death. Those transformed became ferocious creatures of the dark. Now pack animals, they laired during the day in shadowed places. When the sun sank below the horizon, they emerged to hunt the darkened streets, tearing apart any living thing they found. Dubbed the night runners, they ruled the night.
For the one per cent, life became a daily battle. Death was one moment of carelessness away. Outnumbered nearly thirty to one, that ratio increasing with each passing day, the survivors fought back as best as they could. Firepower was the only way to keep the ravenous hordes somewhat at bay.