by Dana Fredsti
“Settle down now, settle down,” he growled. “Still your mutinous tongues for a moment longer, you drunken louts!” With a few jeers and catcalls, the rowdy commotion dwindled to a dull roar. “I have one final important announcement.”
The last of the hecklers were shushed and elbowed into silence. The lieutenant paused for effect before beginning again.
“As you know, we—”
With an odd sound, he jerked his head and coughed, placing his hand to his throat. When he lifted his hand, his fingertips were suddenly stained red, and a small gleaming metallic point stuck out from his throat. His eyes rolled back and he pitched forward to the hard stone floor.
The hilt of a slim bronze Egyptian dagger protruded from the back of his neck.
* * *
Leila screamed, a sound quickly echoed by the dancing girls.
Cam wheeled out of his seat to see where the blade had come from. Behind them, a frescoed panel of the wall had been swung out into the room—a hidden door. A shaven-headed Egyptian stood there, drawing another dagger. He swiftly pulled his arm back and hurled it at Cam’s head.
Just as fast, the Celt swung his heavy drinking cup to block the coming blade, spraying an arc of ale. With a clang of metal, the deflected knife rebounded off to the side and skittered across the stone floor. Before it hit, Cam charged the assassin, seizing his arm just as the man drew a third dagger. Their bodies collided, Cam crushing the man painfully against the edge of the secret entryway.
Durand rushed to his lieutenant, but Géroux’s eyes were already rolling back. The top of his shirt was saturated with blood from the entry and exit wounds, a pink froth bubbled around the tip of the blade poking out from his windpipe. The sergeant-major looked up past the screaming performers as a deafening, bloodcurdling roar filled the air.
The entire hall erupted into violence. Crowds of Egyptians wielding torches stormed through the main entrance, a dark tide of enraged faces. The undulating mob bristled with staves and scythes. They charged down the narrow spaces between the long tables, hacking down the drunken French troopers as they tried to rise from their benches.
Plates and goblets scattered in all directions. So much crimson ale and blood spilled across the tabletops and stone floor, it was soon impossible to tell which was which. Some of the soldiers tried to put up a fight, only to be surrounded, swarmed, and brought to ground where plunging knifes made quick work of them. Others were bound by their wrists and dragged away, kicking and screaming.
No more than a handful of the fiercest French troopers managed to grab nearby muskets and brandish them, but they were quickly surrounded by Egyptians with long staves, billhooks, or wooden pitchforks. The Frenchmen were soon ringed in on all sides or pinned against the wall. The vibrant hieroglyphs soon were stained a dark red.
Cam’s opponent wasn’t alone in the secret passage. Another slipped past the two of them at a run, his khopesh sword raised to attack the officer’s table. With one smooth sweep, Kha-Hotep swung his chair up and into the side of the attacker’s head, battering him into the wall. He quickly scooped up the man’s fallen sickle-sword and brought it down, point first, finishing him before he could rise again.
A third attacker came right behind. He emerged from behind the door and stabbed Cam in the side with a vicious thrust. The Celt tried to twist away from the attack, but the force of it knocked him to the ground. His two attackers rushed in to finish him off, just as Kha-Hotep stepped up with a sturdy swing of his blade, lopping off the head of one foe, then bringing the blade singing back down again to decapitate the other.
He rushed to where Cam lay, but the Celt was already pulling himself up.
“Are you—?”
“It’s nothing,” Cam grunted, but he didn’t refuse when Kha-Hotep helped him back to his feet. He kept his hand clutched tightly around his ribs, a red stain on his tunic spreading from beneath his pale fingers.
* * *
Amber stared as the musicians and dancers screamed and stumbled over one another to escape the carnage. The mob had finished slaughtering the French. Now it was coming for them.
“Quick! Through the passage!” she shouted in Arabic to Leila and Ibn Fadlan. But before Amber could follow them, she saw Durand cradling his dying commander and ran over to him.
“Come on!” she yelled, grabbing the sergeant-major by his shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do!” He looked up at her in a daze, his eyes wet and haunted.
With a howling battle cry, one of the Egyptians broke ranks, scattering the cowering dancing girls as he came running up from the tables, his billhook raised like a spear. Durand blinked and without thinking, pulled out Géroux’s pistol, cocked it, and shot the man in the face.
Amber flinched at the blast as their attacker and his improvised weapon crashed to the floor, but then she pulled the sergeant to his feet and tugged him by the arm, urging him along, back through the secret passage.
Kha-Hotep waited for them to get through before he cut down one last attacker and pulled the secret door closed behind them.
The hidden passageway was lit by oil lamps. Leila and Ibn Fadlan took two of them. Long, narrow, with a low ceiling, the corridor seemed fit only for spying and other acts of skullduggery. The five hurried as quickly as they could in the dim light, hoping to escape before the secret door behind them was discovered.
“Wait!” Durand cried out, and they came to a short side passage. “This way!”
They followed him down the branching passage and through another disguised door, this one opening into a chamber with weapons spread out on a wooden table. Amber and Cam stared in shock at the dissected ruins of one of their two crossbows.
Durand wasted no time. “Grab your weapons quickly and go!” he ordered, rushing to grab his own.
Amber needed no further prompting. She snatched up the remaining crossbow and all the clips, while Cam gathered up the sword belts with his free hand. Kha-Hotep offered a sickle sword to Ibn Fadlan, who shook his head. Kha-Hotep turned to Leila, who looked at the khopesh as though it were a viper before impulsively clasping it against her chest. The group then hurried out again, continuing down the primary passage.
From the way he was moving, Amber could tell Cam was in pain, but he remained stoically silent, keeping pressure on the wound in his side. Alarmed by the sight of the blood soaking his tunic, she slung an arm around his shoulder, slowing her pace to match his—until a crack of light opened up down the long corridor behind them.
The mob had found the door.
“Run!” she shouted. Instead, Kha-Hotep raced back to them. “Kha, get him out of here!” she cried.
The Egyptian put an arm around Cam and hustled him down the corridor at double speed, Amber close on their heels. Durand squeezed in to let them pass. The cramped passageway echoed with hoots and shouts from the charging mob. Amber raised her crossbow and unloaded it in three quick bursts, firing blind. She couldn’t miss at this range. Screams and curses followed.
Jettisoning the empty clip, she slapped in another while Durand drew his pistol and fired, tossing the spent firearm to the floor. Amber sent another nine shots whistling down the narrow passageway.
“Fall back!” Durand said, grabbing her arm. She obeyed and they turned, running toward the bobbing, unsteady light coming from the oil lamps. The roar of their pursuers filled the corridor. Some half-seen thing flew at them in the dark, clattering off the wall beside them—a thrown axe or a dagger. She half turned and fired the last bolt of her clip as they ran, uncertain if she’d hit anything.
Then something struck her hard from the front, knocking her to the floor. She gasped for air as she sprawled on the dusty floor, winded and unable to see. Leila called her name, trying to help her to her feet. Then without warning, Kha-Hotep scooped her up in his arms and carried her off.
Amber didn’t try to resist—she was too busy trying to get her breath back. She caught a glimpse of boulders and rubble choking the floor, and thick square timbers jut
ting out from the ceiling and walls at odd angles. She must have hit one of those.
Then there were stars.
Kha-Hotep set her down gently. They had made it to the end of the hidden passageway—it ended where the building did, where the shard boundary had sliced through that part of the temple complex. They were outside again, alongside the ruins of its towering walls.
The mob’s howls echoed in the passageway, coming closer.
“We need to keep moving, little one,” Kha-Hotep urged her.
She looked over to see Durand standing at the ruined entrance, saber drawn and ready, its blade a silver gleam in the moonlight. The French officer nodded silently to Kha-Hotep, who returned the gesture, and then Durand turned to face whatever was rushing toward them in the dark.
“We can’t leave him—” Amber began to protest.
“He knows what he does,” Kha-Hotep replied. The Egyptian shepherded the two women away from the temple complex, and they hurried to catch up to Cam and Ibn Fadlan, making for the riverbank of the Nile.
44
German Afrika Korps Encampment
Eight days after the Event
Professor Harcourt wiped his forehead yet again. The heat was brutal and inescapable, and his mind squirmed with desperate thoughts he strove to ignore. The pair of taciturn German soldiers, doubly annoyed with their slippery prisoner, marched him out of the camp and away from the oasis. Nothing but the bleak emptiness of the wasteland awaited them, a flat tableau of rocky, ashen ground the color of bleached bone and sackcloth. His heart sank.
Against his own better judgment, he continued to talk. After all, words were the only real tools in his toolbox.
“I say, we don’t appear to be going anywhere,” he said. “Might I ask where you are taking me?”
“Where do you think?” the bigger soldier muttered. “Into the ground.”
A swooning spell nearly dropped him where he stood. His head spun, and he struggled to keep his footing. The soldiers grabbed him by the arms and shoved him along. Desperately he took stock of his dwindling options—a rogue’s gallery of promises, lies, threats, enticements, distractions, wild plans for escape, and emotional pleas for mercy all jostled about in his head, but none seemed capable of saving him.
“That’s far enough,” the bull-faced trooper growled.
Harcourt stopped dead in his tracks.
Oh god, he thought. So this is where I depart this mortal coil. He wished he had something fitting and memorable to say, but his golden tongue failed him at the last. Besides, who would immortalize his final words? Not this pair of Huns. What a cruel fate to end up in the hands of the Boche.
He dearly longed for a swig of his tonic.
A trio of tawny-skinned Carthaginian locals stood nearby, watching the proceedings with mild interest. Were they the burial detail? Releasing him, the soldiers moved a few paces away. A generally disregarded portion of his brain urged him to comport himself with dignity and bearing, but this noble sentiment was the minority opinion.
“W-wait, now,” he stammered, his voice squeaking with panic. “Surely we can talk about this, c-can’t we?”
The troopers raised their rifles.
“You heard the order yourself,” the big man said. “You’re not going anywhere but in the pit with the rest of the undesirables.”
“Please, I—” He raised his hands high in the air.
“Now!”
“Oh, god!” Harcourt wailed, flinching away from the upraised rifles and the sharp crack of the shots—but the shots never came. He risked opening his eyes to look. The rifles were still aimed at him, the soldiers bristling to shoot him where he stood.
“I said now, Gott verdammt!”
Harcourt could only stare back in confusion.
“I’m t-terribly sorry,” he said, “but I’m deucedly perplexed. Do you not mean to shoot me?”
It was the Germans’ turn to stare back at him. The big trooper gestured sharply with the barrel of his rifle, jerking it toward the ground.
“Ah hink he means it, sairrr,” came a disembodied voice with a hint of a deep, eerie echo. “Best ye dae whit he says.”
Harcourt looked in bewilderment at the Carthaginians, then back at the soldiers. “Pardon, but did… did you hear a Scotsman just now?”
The voice came again, louder this time. “Doon haur, ye bludy Sassenach—in th’ pit!”
His hands still held in the air, Harcourt craned his neck around, looking for the source of the Scottish burr. It seemed to be coming from the ground behind him. Turning, he took a tentative step toward what he had thought was chalky rock. The lip of an ancient limestone cistern blended in so well, he scarcely noticed it at all until he nearly tumbled in. A rickety wooden ladder, no more than a thin pole with branches for handholds, awaited his descent into a murky darkness.
“In!” the guard ordered harshly. “Now!”
Gulping, Harcourt carefully took hold of the shaky wooden pole. It quavered beneath his weight, but held steady long enough for him to reach the bottom. Once he stepped off onto the rough stone floor, the ladder was immediately pulled up out of reach.
The pit was deceptively large. Its central shaft opened into a wide circular chamber of limestone—not a well after all, but a tomb. It appeared to have once been part of a series of catacombs. Excavated alcoves ringed the chalky white chamber, twenty rows stacked three high. Where once entombed bones must have once lain, living prisoners now made their bunks.
“Welcome tae th’ pit,” one of them said.
It was his phantom Scotsman. A ruddy-faced young man in his late twenties, with long bushy sideburns. He wore a khaki uniform shirt and regulation boots, along with a military tam o’shanter and a Black Watch tartan kilt. The man gave a smart salute.
“Pipe-Major Duncan MacIntyre, Fifty-First Highland Division, Fifth Seaforth Highlanders, at yer service.”
“Professor Winston Harcourt,” he answered, doffing his top hat.
“Please make yerself at home, Professur. Let me introduce ye tae lae ay th’ lads.” He made a broad sweeping gesture to the rest of the prisoners, pointing out a dozen or so British soldiers, all dressed in the same sort of later-day drab uniform Harcourt associated with Blake’s time.
“These wee jimmies are frae th’ First Royal Dragoons an’ One Hundred and Thirty-Third Lorried Brigade.” He jerked his thumb toward a knot of them with fierce Polynesian faces. “An’ these big black bastards, th’ Kiwi’s own Twenty-Eighth Maori Battalion.”
“Kia ora,” one of them said with a grin, and stuck out his tongue.
Harcourt raised an eyebrow.
MacIntyre turned to another group of uniformed Sepoys, some in turbans, some in helmets. “Thes dodgey lot is frae th’ Fourth Indian division, ay coorse.”
The Indians gave curt nods of their heads.
“An’ these Boer reprobates an’ their bloody Zulu stretcher bearers come tae us courtesy ay th’ Sooth African First Infantry.” The trio of white South Africans wore shorts and pith helmets. The black South Africans wore the same, along with medic armbands.
Harcourt gathered that the Zulu medical orderlies were trusted enough to go under heavy fire to rescue wounded soldiers, but not quite enough to be carrying firearms themselves—perfectly in keeping with his Victorian sensibilities. As a proud citizen of the British Empire, he took seriously the great responsibility of the White Man’s Burden. Deuced shame that they couldn’t be properly segregated down here. It was already bad form enough that a bagpiping Scot in a kilt seemed to be running the show.
“Quite the mix you have in here, I daresay,” he responded to the litany.
“Och, ye don’t ken th’ half ay it, Sunny Jim.” MacIntyre grinned, and indicated the remaining groups of prisoners. They were indeed, quite a mixed band.
“An’ lest but nae leest, thes lot haur, is uir wee collection ay strays. Tae be honest, we dornt quite ken whaur they cam frae. They’ur mostly Froggies, but nane ay us can parlez much ay th�
�� Francais.”
“Not to worry, my man,” Prof. Harcourt replied. “I’m quite fluent in French. Salutations et félicitations, Messieurs.”
Surprised, the French contingent rose and saluted as one. They were in three quite distinct groups. First, a small squad of French Foreign Legionnaires in their long blue coats and white pillbox kepi caps. Also, a pair of sailors in white kit, with smart navy blue jackets and wide-brimmed hats, and finally, a swarthy trio in most unusual uniform.
These last three had a distinctly Oriental cast about their features—each sporting a rather satanic-looking little beard and mustache—as well as their costume, open cropped jackets of dark blue canvas, embroidered with a swirling, serpentine vine design in rich red. Beneath silken blue sashes, their baggy trousers were the same bright red as their jacket piping, as were their hats, which looked somewhat like a deflated Morrocan fez with a long golden tassel. White spats over their boots completed their outfit.
There was a Middle-Eastern roguishness about them that Harcourt did not fully like – they looked more suitable as circus performers than soldiers.
“Sous-Lieutenant Guillaume Brackmann d’Alsace, Légion Étrangère, at your service, Professeur Harcourt,” one Legionnaire said, giving the French pronunciation to Harcourt’s name. The professor enjoyed this reception. He doffed his top hat and the two men shook hands.
“Very pleased to make your acquaintance. Forgive my impertinence, sous-lieutenant, but surely you weren’t stationed anywhere nearby. However did you manage to find yourselves in Upper Egypt?”
“You’re quite right, Professeur,” d’Alsace acknowledged. “Our home base is in the Maghreb, as is the garrison of our three friends here in the Second Algerian Zouave Regiment. They are quite notorious in the provinces. The people call them ‘the Jackals of Oran.’”
“A name we are proud to embrace,” one of the Zouaves declared.
At this, all three stepped forward and simultaneously performed an elaborate obeisance, stretching their front leg forward as they leaned back and bowed low, unrolling a swirling movement of their arms. They rose and introduced themselves in turn.