The Age of Ra (21 page)

They located a Wepwawetian monastery on the very first day.

It was a primitive, semi-subterranean edifice, more tomb than dwelling, more cave than tomb. A dozen monks occupied it, pallid creatures, their modesty barely preserved by the tattered remnants of black robes. Their bodies were so thin as to be almost skeletal, emaciated by a meagre diet of jackal flesh and baked dung beetle. Wepwawet was Anubis's son and a regular chip off the old block, pure darkness and annihilation, so his worshippers delighted in mortifying themselves, spending their lives teetering as close to the brink of death as possible.

Consequently the monks were too feeble to put up any resistance as the Lightbringer's troops rousted them from their sarcophagus-style beds and dragged them blinking into the sunlight. Held at gunpoint, they stood in line like living scarecrows, swaying and moaning while David supervised the laying of charges inside the monastery.

When the blast happened, the monks cried out in a strange sort of ecstasy. As their holy home collapsed in on itself in a vast billow of dust, they looked both aghast and perversely gratified, as though this act of violent desecration confirmed everything they believed in. All was ruin and decay. Life was a bleak catastrophe. Here - here was the proof.

One of them, apparently the abbot, hissed a command to the rest. The monks immediately began advancing on their captors, ignoring requests to stay put or be shot.

David realised what they were up to. He shouted to Zafirah, telling her to tell the others: on no account were they to open fire.

But too late. They did.

Bullets flew. The Wepwawetian monks went down happily, willingly. It was an act of mass suicide. They died with blissful smiles on their skull-like faces.

''They could see no need to carry on,'' Zafirah said later. ''What we did, destroying the monastery - it made their lives complete.''

''Yes, well,'' said David, guiding the ZT around a rock outcrop. The off-roader's initials stood for Zemlya Tantsovschik, Land Dancer, but it hardly lived up to the name. It was murder to drive, the steering wheel asking for effort all the way from your shoulders to your wrists before it would rotate even a few degrees. The ZT could be said to dance in the same way that a portly octogenarian babushka could be said to dance. ''Nobody else dies. Not if we can help it. That's not what we're here for. Our targets aren't civilians, remember. Or even enemy troops.''

''No. The gods. Only the gods.'' Zafirah smiled grimly. ''I wonder if we're not insane, David West
ween
ter. What are we doing, provoking them like this? It's asking for trouble.''

''Of course it is. But the Lightbringer'' - he nearly said
Steven
- ''has calculated the risks. He thinks he knows how this is going to play out.''

''And do you trust him?''

''I do.''

''You sound surprised.''

''I am, a little. But only a little.''

''Is it because he's an Englishman like you? You wouldn't have gone along with this if he was from any other country? Compatriots sticking together.''

''That's not it. I just feel...''

David wasn't sure what he felt. He knew only that he felt
something
. Whenever Steven spoke about his plans, his grand scheme, his crusade, it sounded right. Sounded plausible. Sounded like a cause worth fighting for and a confrontation that could be won.

''I don't know,'' he said. ''I mean, this goes against everything I believe in. Used to believe in. Somewhere inside me a faint little voice is going 'Don't!' But there's another voice, a louder one, and it's saying 'Why not?' I've never heard it before, I don't recognise it - but I quite like it.''

''I hear that voice,'' Zafirah said. ''I think it may be the voice of freedom.''

David adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. ''I think it may be too.''

It was a tiny village, a handful of houses clustered around a water hollow. In the hollow, a stone effigy of the hippopotamus-headed goddess Tawaret squatted, thigh-deep in the muddy water, belly bulging, breasts heavily pendulous.

''Ugly bitch,'' Zafirah commented. ''I hope someone will shoot me if I ever let myself get that fat.''

''Fertile, though,'' said David. ''Isn't that the point? Tawaret's all about the babies.'' He gestured at the largest of the nearby buildings, into which the villagers had all been herded, as much for their own safety as anything. They were howling with rage and indignation from inside this makeshift corral. ''At least half the women are pregnant, and I've never seen such a high child-to-adult ratio as in this place.''

''The women lie beside the statue for a day,'' said Zafirah, ''then lie beside their husbands at night.''

''Stinking of brackish water...''

''But it still works. Perhaps it's the only time they do lie with their husbands. The poor men are so desperate, they'll forgive the smell.''

David inserted a blasting cap into the last of the charges, then waded out of the hollow, unspooling wires as he went.

There was a massed scream from the house as the effigy exploded, followed by high-pitched ululations of despair.

The Freegyptian vehicles were pursued as they left the village. Women chased them down the road, cursing and hurling rocks.

Only women, though, David noted. The village menfolk had looked... relieved?

An intimidated local gave them directions. Follow the river, three miles, where it bends, there is the shrine to Sobek.

What they found was an altar stone on the riverbank and a heavily tattooed priest holding down a young sheep, barely a lamb, preparing to sacrifice it. A cluster of onlookers chanted rhythmic prayers. The sheep's terrified bleating sounded close to a scream.

The priest raised his left arm. He had no hand, only a stump with a hook attached. He brought the hook down towards the sheep's throat.

David fired into the air, and everyone shrieked and froze. The priest remonstrated with the new arrivals, furious that the ritual had been interrupted. While he was shouting at them the sheep wriggled out of his grasp and skittered away, tossing its head.

''Not much to destroy here,'' Zafirah observed. ''That altar stone will have to do.''

Then there was a thrashing in the water, and a ten-foot-long crocodile emerged, clawing its way up the bank.

The locals retreated in alarm. Even the priest backed off, rubbing his hook-ended arm. He, it seemed, had better reason than anyone to be wary of this beast.

The crocodile eyed them all with a slow, yellowy stare. It shuffled over to the altar and opened its jaws wide, revealing tooth upon tooth. It thrashed its tail, eager for the offering of a meal, which the sheep's bleating had promised.

The rifle David was carrying was a Brazilian-made Anaconda, loaded with .303 brass-jacketed fragmentation rounds. He brought it up to his shoulder and took careful aim.

The crocodile turned towards him.

A sacred animal. For an uncanny moment David felt as though he was looking down the gunsights straight into gaze of Sobek himself, son of Neith the goddess of war. Set once hid briefly inside a crocodile, hoping to escape being punished for the murder of Osiris. Apophis, the serpent Set fought twice daily, was the son of Sobek.

He was conscious of all these associations, the linkage of god to god embodied within the reptile in front of him. His finger squeezed the trigger but not all the way.

He couldn't do it.

It was more than sacrilege. It felt like cold-blooded murder.

Blam!

Zafirah lowered her rifle.

The crocodile writhed and rolled, grunting horribly as the message passed along its nervous system from its bullet-smashed brain -
you are dead
.

It lay on its back, soft pale underside exposed, as the last few twitches of life ran through it.

The priest and the crowd of locals were on their knees, weeping.

''It was just a fucking crocodile,'' Zafirah said tersely, striding back to the cars.

On the evening of their fifth day in Libya, as they were making camp for the night, one of the team spied a Saqqara Bird in the distance. It was flying in a criss-cross pattern, searching the area by grid.

''Looking for us?'' Zafirah wondered, peering at the bird's small black silhouette as it glided to and fro against the twilight sky.

''You can count on it,'' David said. ''Word of what we've been up to will have reached Tripoli by now.''

''What should we do? Shoot it out of the air?''

''And give away exactly where we are? No, for the moment we stay put. The vehicles are camouflaged, and we personally are getting a measure of invisibility from these.'' He tapped the amulet around his neck. All of the team were wearing them. ''But I think our time here is coming to an end. The Lightbringer said we should avoid direct engagement with Neph forces if we can, and that's going to become inevitable if we stay much longer.''

''So our little jaunt is over.''

''Jaunt?'' David laughed. ''Don't you mean hostile sortie? Act of deliberate provocation?''

''That's what I said.'' Zafirah laughed too, and it occurred to David that this was an all too rare sound from her. She didn't laugh enough. Neither did he. They both took themselves too seriously. It was something they had in common and something, he felt, that was keeping them apart.

He wanted her. He desired her. She, he was certain, felt the same about him. But unless he did away with the reserve which he wore like a suit of armour and she stopped using her ability to wrong-foot him as though it were a weapon, nothing was ever going to happen.

''How many Anubians does it take to change a light bulb?'' he said.

Zafirah frowned. ''What?''

''It's a joke. Go on. How many Anubians does it take to change a light bulb?''

''I don't know. One?''

'''What's a light bulb?'''

Zafirah looked blank.

''You know. Anubians. Their thing about darkness. They don't like bright light. Try to avoid it. Therefore... they don't have...'' He trailed off.

''Oh. I see. Funny,'' said Zafirah, and she wandered off to talk to one of the Freegyptians.

David cursed himself for an idiot. He'd only wanted to hear her laugh again, and now he felt like a teenager on a fumbled first date.

What did it take to win this woman?

Whatever it was, he was now all the more determined to do it.

He was David Westwynter. Back in England, in his old life, in the circles he'd moved in, that had meant something. It had meant he could have just about any woman he set his cap at.

Here, the same rules did not apply. But that was fine. It upped the challenge, and the stakes. Here, where the name Westwynter and the reputation attached meant nothing, everything came down to the man himself. With Zafirah it was about admiration and lust, a combination David recognised as being the cornerstones of love, but it was about more than that too. It was about him finding out whether there was anything more to him than the sum of his upbringing.

Was he a somebody, as in England? Or was he
somebody
?