Mabruke pointed to the left, and the two men set off at a jog. The path zigzagged back and forth, switchbacks snaking sharply up the stony slope in silvered lines. The river sang below, and the stars sang above. The unreal nature of the night’s events grew in terrible proportions in the predawn dark, with only the stars as witness.
THEY REACHED
the top of the stony ridge with dawn glowing ahead of them, drawing a fine mist that flowed across the treetops and hard stone like a caress from the sky. Every breath tasted of rain. They looked down into a blanket of silver fog, to another small vale perhaps a half league across.
The river sound was only a faint whisper behind them. There was the buzz of insects flitting around in search of skin, the scrabble of gravel disturbed by their passing. The ground was reddish orange and crumbly. The slopes held clumps of scrubby pine, with scatterings of smaller trees and spiky grasses. Stone huts among them looked deserted, the thatch decaying. There was no temple compound, no building big enough for rockets. Sections of trees and scrub had been burned and rocks blackened. Pieces of burnt and twisted metal were flung across the scene, speared into the stumps of blackened trees. Fog covered them in a translucent shroud.
“They must be farther into the hills,” Mabruke said finally. “Good thing I wore my hiking boots,” Oken said, taking out his pocket farscope. He methodically scanned the scene before them. No one moved among the trees or around the buildings. He put away the farscope and the two men descended into the little vale, along an ancient path at the western end. A cold stream ran down the center. They stopped there to drink, finding the icy water bracing. The air was still. They startled wild conies from time to time, who ran out from the brush and dashed away from the men’s feet. There were not many birds. Fire falling from the sky had perhaps chased them away.
The day was warming as they climbed the next slope, a half league or so from the manor, Oken guessed. A path zigzagged up this slope as well. Oken noted the faint marks of heavily shod boots on the path, with a familiar pattern from the hard heels of European- style boots. He wondered about that, and pointed them out to Mabruke. Mabruke examined the heel marks carefully, then looked around at the quiet landscape. “Let usrest here a bit.. The air is thinner here than in Memphis, and I do not want to tire us out too quickly.” They picked a site under the thickest stand of nearby pines and settled on the stone beneath the roots, swept clean of fallen needles by the winds. Mabruke pulled off his backpack, and Oken did the same. Inside they found leather flasks capped with gold and still warm, containing another hardy serving of demon’s piss. “Excellent,” Mabruke said as he tasted his. “What was this called again?” He was pleasedwhen Oken told him. “Fortifying, indeed.” Oken sat, knees drawn up, surveying the options of the landscape around them. The fog was thinning as the Sun rose. They sky was turning blue above the wisps. The innocence of the place seemed to float along with the mist, as though nothing could happen here that was not accepted by the gods of the land.
The corpses of the gods’ demonic enemies lay scattered over this valley. What were the priests telling the people about these burntmetal bones on the sacredbattleground? Oken felt a moment of cultural superiority, accompanied by a pang of guilty pride. No Egyptian child could behold such a scene without wanting to understand the reality behind it. No Egyptian adult would tolerate such intentional obfuscation of the facts.
Mabruke was surveying the vale’s silent story with a look of scholarly dismay. “They have been doing this for years. What keeps all those people silent? Surely they saw what we saw? Heard what we heard?”
Oken shrugged. “What ever the priests are doing, it’s working.” He picked up his backpack and slipped it on. “Let’s go ask some questions.”
From the top of the next ridge, they found it in the little vale below. The Sun had dried the mist, leaving the temperate air comfortably fresh under a clear blue sky. A long slope led down to their goal—high stone walls around a compound that could easily be the site from which the errant rocket had taken off, ending its flight so abruptly.
Oken and Mabruke stretched themselves out flat on the sharp ridge of reddish rock, to survey the landscape before them. Oken took out the farscope and adjusted it to see the inner courtyard of the compound. Mabruke waited patiently beside him, chin on hands, seeing what he could with the naked eye.
The compound was quiet. There was no movement, no sign of guards. A central courtyard was surrounded on three sides by low buildings, attached to the compound wall. The fourth wall was a fortified entrance with heavy steel barricades. Everything within the compound, and on the perimeter for many cubits, was coated with soot, so that the bright sunshine was dimmed, a pall hanging in the air.
At the center of this was a square block, a giant altar with a blackened gantry atop it, much like the railing around Mixcomitl’s viewing platform, thicker and more complex. A stone-covered access corridor led from the middle building to the outer edge of the blackened altar. A noise teased the morning air, almost beyond the edge of hearing, a snarling, unhappy sound of metal on metal.
Oken memorized the layout of the buildings ahead of them, then handed the farscope to Mabruke.
He took it without comment and scanned the scene before them, then returned it to Oken.
Oken put it away and looked over at Mabruke, an eyebrow raised in query.
Mabruke nodded. The two men slipped over the crest of the ridge and slid down the face of the rock to the single path leading to the compound. They ran quickly down this path, then dashed into the stand of pines at the bottom of the slope. Mabruke motioned for Oken to stop.
“What’s the plan?” Mabruke said.
Oken almost laughed. “You’re leading this charge!” he whispered.
“I am just consulting your expertise.”
“We can use the trees as cover,” Oken said. “That will get us close enough to work out the next step.”
They turned off the path and slipped deeper into the shadows under the trees. As they made their way toward the compound, the grinding snarl grew clearer, accompanied by muffled bangs, which made them bolder. Their approach might be seen, but no one would hear them. They paced through the trees, scanning the walls as they went past. The walls were high—seven or eight cubits, Oken estimated—of the same enigmatic stonework, so closely fitted that no fingerholds could be found.
The sound of hounds barking caught them up sharply.
The next sounds were even more ominous. A steel barricade was raised with a hard clang. Oken and Mabruke ran, more concerned with distance than quiet. The barking of the hounds stayed relentlessly behind them.
Oken had a sudden idea, and called a halt. “How are you at tree- climbing?”
“I grew up in the desert. I can ride anything on four legs, but I’ve never ridden a tree.”
Oken quickly slipped off his backpack and unlaced it just enough to reach inside and find, by touch, the leaf-wrapped dried fish. He shredded the fish quickly, scattering the pieces into the brush beside the path. He then motioned for Mabruke to run in the opposite direction, to a stand of wind-twisted pines. In the center of the stand, Oken hissed at Mabruke, then pointed upward. “Like this,” he mouthed, then leaped up to grab a low-hanging branch with both hands and swing himself up. As he climbed from branch to branch, he kept looking down at Mabruke, watching his progress. They reached a section of dense needles, where the branches from several trees pushed together, and Oken signaled a halt.
Mabruke drew the hieroglyph for Nubia in the air with his fingertip. Oken nodded.
Tense minutes passed while the barks and whines of the hounds weaved around the confused trail Oken had set out. Much too quickly, the baying of the hounds came closer, bringing with them the tramp of booted feet.
Oken kept a tense watch on the ground at the foot of their perch.
A trio of black and gray Alsatian hounds appeared, circling the base of the tree while sniffing eagerly at the trunk. They wore leather collars banded with steel spikes, as well as protective leather guards around their ankles. They raised their heads, and their eyes lit with triumph. They whined, and pawed at the tree as though they might climb up after their quarry.
A man called the hounds with a voice immediately commanding and pompous, “Stumm, kinder! Sitzen zie!”
The dogs sat, with eager whines in their throats.
The man stepped into view and leaned his head back to look up at Oken, meeting his eyes.
Oken’s first impression was a man made of iron—shiny, gray, and hard. He was not young. Long years of experience and pressure had shaped his face into strict lines behind the sharply trimmed thatch of his wide mustache. Oken did not need the immaculate cut of his gray military uniform, cuffed gauntlets, and thigh-high boots to recognize this man. Oken had seen photographs and portraits of that face since his first classes in the P.S.I Academy. This was Graf Otto von Bismarck himself, Minister of War for Victoria, Queen of Oesterreich. The only person more determined to destroy Egypt than Bismarck was Victoria herself.
“Meinen herrn?” Bismarck said crisply.
Oken smiled amiably. “Hoy!” He made his voice slip into the brogue of his childhood bodyguard, the happy Gaelic soldier. “Fine hounds, those be. A fine afternoon for a run with them, eh?”
“Namen?” Bismarck said in sharp demand. His iron-colored eyes did not leave Oken’s face. His expression did not change.
“Hoy, names you be wanting!” Oken gestured at Mabruke, not daring to look away from Bismarck’s fierce gaze. “This be Professor Mabruke, from Nubia. Not a word of Trade. He’s stubborn that way, just like his mum. Me? Scott Oken, along as his interpreter. And yourself, sir?”
“Bismarck. Graf von Bismarck.” An expression in his eyes, a brief flash quickly submerged, told Oken that the right note had been struck.
Mabruke nodded gravely, greeting Bismarck in high Nubian. He smiled down at him as might Osiris or Rae, drawing mere humans into his golden gaze, then flashed a look at Oken, in a gesture of one accustomed to waiting for a translator’s exchange. He returned his powerful beam to the man looking up at him.
“The professor, here, he says that you have some beautiful hounds,” Oken said. “He wonders if you might introduce him?” Oken smiled as one might while indulging a child or a favorite nephew—or a less than brilliant employer. “He’s quite fond of animals, ain’t he, now, the professor. Quite fond of animals, he is. They are fond of him the same, ain’t they now.”
Bismarck continued to stare at Oken, brows drawn down.
“You speak Trade, sir?”
Bismarck nodded, inclining his neck in its high, stiff collar without releasing Oken from his gaze.
“Hoy, that be fine, then. The professor and me been weeks in these mountains, looking for new plants and such for his perfumes and skin-oils. He heard tell of some fabulous black orchids growing in this magical valley here, the Land of Endless Summer.” He glanced over at Mabruke with an indulgent smile. “Ain’t had no luck on that end, though.” He turned his smile to Bismarck. “You maybe heard rumors of black orchids in these parts, sir? If you been here long enough?”
At the code name “Black Orchid,” Bismarck’s eyes narrowed, and he drew up straighter, his hand straying to the hilt of the military sword at his side. “Nein,” he said, with less bluster.
“Can he meet your hounds, then?” Oken smiled down at Bismarck. “He’s keen on hounds. You have a handsome brace of them, there, don’t you, sir. A handsome brace!”
Breathless seconds passed while Bismarck stared up at him, the calculation in his gaze as powerful as Mabruke’s fierce attraction. Then Bismarck barked a command to the hounds, and they backed away from the tree. Oken told Mabruke in a patois of Swahili and Nubian that they were invited down to meet this gentleman and his beautiful hounds, and he waited until Mabruke had begun an awkward descent. Once Mabruke safely reached the ground, Oken made himself turn his back on Bismarck and climb down as well. He swung down from the last branch, getting a swift glance at the men behind Bismarck.
There were six of them, six of Oesterreich’s special guard, in neatly tailored uniforms, leather, wool, and brass. Oken smiled casually around once he had landed on his feet, showing his gloved hands with a rueful smile. “Another fine pair of gloves ruined by pitch—but then he will insist on climbing!”
The hounds came forward and sniffed enthusiastically at their boots. Bismarck let them.
Mabruke went down on one knee, his face alight, a genuine smile gleaming in his dark face. He held his hands out to the hounds, palms up, his long fingers relaxed, and crooned at them soft and low. He had used the same sound and tune when introducing Oken to the security hounds of Ibis Road in Memphis, on the other side of the world. Oken had been just a youth, having only just gotten “hair on his balls,” as Usqhullu said. On such a connection, those hounds had died for him.
Oken stood unmoving, smiling down with fake indulgence, insincere innocence, deliberately ignoring Bismarck and his men with the same confidence as Mabruke.
The hounds whined in the back of their throats, straining against training and instinct. Instinct won. They crowded close to Mabruke, tails wagging, clipped ears forward, and tongues showing in open canine smiles.
Bismarck watched with clear fascination.
Mabruke held his hands out to each animal, speaking to them with skillfully modulated tones. They licked his palms, his wrists, his face, and then each other in their growing delight. He rubbed their handsome heads, tugged at their ears, roughly combed the dense fur along their throats with his fingertips. They raised their heads in delight as his fingers moved down their necks. Hind feet began to thump. Tail wagging made their entire bodies sway.
Mabruke, with perfect timing, looked up at Bismarck, and poured out a question in Nubian.
When Bismarck turned to Oken with the automatic expectation of a translation, Oken felt a dangerous thrill. “The professor here, he wonders if you would introduce him to these fine beasts?” His easy expression said that this was not an unusual request from his employer.
Oken was surprised by how surprised he was that Bismarck, the most dangerous man in the world, went down on one knee among his hounds and introduced them, beginning with the female in the middle.
“Brunhilda,” Bismarck said with pride. “She is the mother-bitch of my best trackers.” When he touched her, she turned her head to grin at him, tongue lolling.
Bismarck tugged at the ear of the hound to Brunhilda’s left. “This one, he is her firstborn dog, Schwarzkopf.” He patted the third hound. “This is her youngest bitch, Gutrune.”
Gutrune spun around, licking Bismarck’s face with puppylike happiness, then turned back to Mabruke.
Mabruke snapped his fingers in front of Brunhilda’s chest, tilting his head as he met her eyes. She put her paw up, and he took it in his hand as he would a new friend. “Brunhilda,” he said soothingly. She keened in the back of her throat and licked his fingers.
He released her, and Schwarzkopf immediately offered his paw. Mabruke repeated the greeting, then again with Gutrune.
Bismarck stood up, briskly brushing dirt from his knee. Oken and Mabruke also stood casually, waiting for Bismarck to speak.
“It is good my hounds have found you,” Bismarck said. The downturned lines of his eyebrows said otherwise. “These hills are dangerous, especially at night. You would do well to join me. I have quarters close by. You will join me for dinner.”
“Splendid!” Oken said enthusiastically. “It would be a pleasure!” He turned to Mabruke and repeated the offer in High Nubian.
Mabruke smiled broadly at Bismarck.
Bismarck signaled his men. They turned with clean precision and stood aside in two rows of three to let Bismarck and his guests pass between them. The hounds leaped up and ran ahead, their tails wagging happily.
Bismarck gestured for Oken and Mabruke to precede him. They did so without hesitation. Bismarck stepped in behind Mabruke; then Bismarck’s men lined up behind him. Once they returned to the wider path, Bismarck caught up with Oken and walked beside him. “Where does your professor teach?” he said.
“He does a few classes in Memphis—perfumes and makeup for royals. He prefers Barcelona— have you ever been there? The most fascinating young architect was discovered there recently, Antoni Gaudi. Do you know the name?”
Bismarck regretted that he did not.
“My professor, he’s on a rest leave—at least, that’s what he tells me!” Oken made a scoffing noise. “I’ve done more walking up and down mountainsides and tree-climbing in the last few weeks than in my whole life!”
Bismarck was listening closely, his head tilted toward Oken. He smiled at those words. Oken was sure he saw a look cross Bismarck’s face, for just an instant, suggesting Oken had been dismissed as a useless dandy, perhaps even assumed harmless by the evaluation.
“Has he been ill, your professor?” Bismarck said.
“He was brutally attacked by a criminal gang— almost sold into slavery, he was!”
“I see.” Bismarck frowned at Mabruke walking ahead of him. “Schrecklich.”
Oken shook his head in apparent dismay. “He’d have done just as well in Andalusia, if you ask me. This is a strange land, full of strange people!” He held out his gloved hands. “How do I find a new pair of these in such a place!” He made an unhappy, “Tsk, tsk,” as he peeled them off and folded them away in a pocket.
Bismarck was brushing the left wing of his waxed-down mustache with a serious gesture. Oken wondered if translating from Trade was awkward for him. After that, Oken just walked, smiling with the giddy disbelief of one who has momentarily escaped the gallows.
A quick glance at Mabruke saw a similar expression. Mabruke met his inquiring gaze and winked lazily, just enough to let Oken know that this was going well.
The march back to the compound was a casual affair. Oken kept his hands in his pants pockets and grinned with idiotic delight at the scenery around, listening harder than he had ever before in his life.
The hounds were led away by one of Bismarck’s lieutenants, when they reached the towering outer wall of the compound. The steel barricade was opened for them, and once they were inside, it clanged shut behind them with a disturbingly final sound. The courtyard reeked of burnt smells, denser than the exploding powder of Chinggis Khan. Mabruke wrinkled his nose as if displeased. Oken could see, however, a look of intense excitement in his eyes. This was the kind of fieldwork dearest to Mabruke’s mind and heart.
Oken would have preferred a slightly different outcome—at least they were still alive.
Bismarck did not speak as he led them along the inner wall of the compound to the door of the first building. The raised path had beencleaned, yet clouds of black puffed up at every step. A soldier stood at attention, holding the door open for them. They entered a small foyer room, with stone benches around the walls, and hooks and shelves for coats and hats. A washstand next to one bench held a pile of clean towels and a pitcher and basin. A corporal stood at attention beside this.
“Gentlemen.” Bismarck indicated the washstand. “Soot in the courtyard is insidious. Hintermann will clean your boots for you while we have tea.”
Corporal Hintermann saluted smartly, then held out a basket with colorfully embroidered silk slippers. Oken and Mabruke slipped off their backpacks and piled them on one of the shelves, then sat down to remove their boots. Bismarck also sat down, and the corporal sprang over to wipe his boots. Bismarck did not take them off.
Oken’s and Mabruke’s hands were blackened by the time they had their boots off. They put on the slippers and washed their hands in the basin. The water turned gray.
The interior of the building was spacious, more “a little piece of Egypt in a strange land” than the Moss Rose had been. Egyptian spunglass sconces provided light, despite the lack of windows. Lush rugs covered the floor. Ebony chairs upholstered with dark leather were grouped around a wall map of the world at one end of the chamber, and a curiously shaped control panel at the other. Oken was reminded at once of the control panel on Mixcomitl. He did not look at it, but strolled over to one of the chairs before the map and sat down with an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Much kinder to the arse, sir,” he said. “Much kinder.”
Bismarck served them Jägermeister in pewter mugs with hunting scenes in deep relief, stags with mighty antler spreads. He was generous in the servings, pouring it himself despite the aide standing at his shoulder. After a few rounds, more aides brought in bowls of hot soup, dark and aromatic, with fat dollops of sour cream, as well as platters of roast goose and venison, with crackling glazes and thick gravies. Loaves of black bread, still warm, with white butter and sliced radishes, were brought out, as well as boiled white asparagus, onions, and wedges of yellow cheese. Glass bottles of dark brown beer were generously handed around. Oken wondered who the Mama Kusay of Bismarck’s kitchens might be.