Chapter 17 #2
“Did you feel that?” Sitamun whispered.
“What?”
“The ground. It’s shaking.”
As soon as she said it, Karim felt it too. The earth beneath them had begun to quake, like something under the sand was clawing to get out. Then, like an unholy growth, a blackened arm sprang from the ground a few lengths in front of them, reaching for the sky.
First one, then three, then a dozen, then more.
There were copper spears, khopesh, and maces gripped in the hands, each one covered in a greenish-brown patina.
As the sand fell away, heads and shoulders emerged after them.
Karim watched in horror as men crafted of dark, pitted stone, their features either grotesquely distorted by cracks and fissures or worn smooth by time, rose from the ground.
They’d been carved wearing Khetaran headdresses and false beards, and they were all identical aside from what the centuries had wrought upon them.
Then, one by one, they climbed to their feet and began to speak in voices as dry as the khamsin wind.
“Here I am,” said the ushabti.
“Here I am.”
“Here I am.”
Setnakht’s army, Karim thought with a shudder.
The ancient pharaoh wasn’t done yet. Turning back to the statue of Set, he raised his arms and began again.
“Heed me, O Shesmu!” Setnakht commanded.
“Wake and hear my call! You whom I name Butcher, Mutilator of Living Flesh! You who I call the Dismemberer, who slays man and god alike, who makes the blood of the unworthy flow like wine! Wake, Shesmu, and remember that purpose for which you were crafted! Wake and lead my legion to glory!”
The shaking intensified, and the ground directly in front of the statue splintered, then exploded, sending a cloud of sand into Karim and Sitamun’s faces.
Karim shielded his eyes from the stinging grit. Then he saw it, emerging from the reddish dust like a mountain from primeval waters.
Shesmu knelt before Setnakht, an enormous figure made from the same blackened stone as the ushabti but at least twice their size. He was sculpted in the image of a broad, powerful man clothed in scale armor, and he held two copper butcher knives crossed in front of his chest.
His head was a helm in the shape of a lion’s skull, and as Shesmu looked skyward, red sand poured from the holes where his eyes would have been.
When the red dust had settled back to earth, Shesmu rose to his feet, brandishing the knives in a salute to the pharaoh. Karim noticed that the symbols for Setnakht’s name—the cloth, the loaf, the jagged line, the vulture—were engraved on his chest.
The name of his master.
Shesmu moved to join the ushabti. The stone men stood at attention, waiting for their king’s next command.
“I-I don’t understand,” Sitamun murmured. Her face was haunted. “Magic this powerful…it’s not possible…”
Just then, a horn sounded from the village.
“Elyas is raising the alarm,” Karim whispered.
In response, Setnakht wheeled his steed to face the city. His horse squealed and stomped the ground.
“Patience, imi-ib,” Setnakht cooed, tugging on the reins. Then he shouted once more in that unnaturally loud voice: “Heed me, Shesmu! Heed me, my ushabti! I command you to cleanse this city of its human pestilence. Root them out to the last man and leave no survivors!”
With that, Setnakht kicked his horse into a gallop and thundered down the palace road toward the heart of the city.
Shesmu and the stone men followed, weapons in hand, their stiff walk becoming a steady march as they cast off a thousand years of stillness.
Karim tried to count them. Were there a hundred? Two hundred?
He waited until the last ushabti had passed before he stood, scouring his mind for a plan. “There are a lot of them, but they’re slow,” he said in a rush. “We could reach the Hudjefa first if we hurry, but what do we do once we get to them? How does one defeat an army of stone?”
Sitamun rose next to him, the serpent staff in her hand. “For now, we only need to get the Hudjefa out of the city. Khetaran magic is very literal. Setnakht’s command was to kill every person they find in Perset. But if they aren’t within the city limits…”
“Then there’s no one to kill,” Karim said, finishing Sitamun’s thought. He nodded. “It’s our best chance. Let’s go.”
He took off at a run. Sita sprinted by his side, her expression resolute—a far cry from the delicate princess he’d met in Thonis, who fatigued after only an hour of walking. They veered off the palace road to flank the ushabti, making their way through the winding city streets.
“Find Elyas,” Sitamun told him, her chest heaving with exertion.
“He will have assembled the men and will not want to abandon the city without a fight, but you must convince him that the threat is too great to make a stand here. I will go to the women and children and direct them to flee the valley.”
“All right,” Karim said. He hesitated. “Sitamun…”
“We will see each other again,” Sitamun said, her voice catching with emotion. She reached out to press her palm to his cheek.
He put his hand on top of hers, suddenly desperate not to let the moment pass. Their brief respite from the turmoil of the outside world was over, he knew that. The little life they’d built there…that was over too. But it had been good.
So good.
He hated to let her go.
He dropped his hand, and she dropped hers. Fate was calling. They could not wait any longer to answer.
With one last look at Sitamun, Karim bolted toward the courtyard at the center of the village where Karim had first met the Hudjefa. He’d learned that it was often used as a meeting place, so he suspected it would be where Elyas and his men would assemble.
Sure enough, a crowd had already gathered when he arrived. Men were pulling weapons from their armory, albeit with less haste than Karim had hoped. Dumiya stood slightly apart from the rest, spear in hand. Karim found Zev and the tribe leader among them, engaged in animated disagreement.
“You’ve brought damnation upon us, Elyas!” Zev said, the scar on his face purpling with agitation. “We had peace before the outsiders came. You should have let me kill them while I had the chance!”
Elyas bristled at the accusation. “Get ahold of yourself, Zev! I have done as you’ve asked and prepared the men—but you still haven’t explained what in god’s name is going on!”
Zev was about to reply when both men noticed Karim.
“Take whatever you can carry and leave the rest!” Karim shouted to the crowd. “You cannot defend yourselves against what is coming. We must flee the city!”
The armed men stopped what they were doing and erupted with protests and confusion. Elyas grabbed Karim by the shoulder and pulled him aside.
“Are you mad, sen? Raising an alarm is one thing, but fleeing the city? If this is a ploy to go back to your people and betray us, then I swear to you—”
“It’s not a ploy,” Karim broke in. “It’s too much to explain right now. Please, for the safety of your people, we must go now.”
Dumiya came over and watched the men’s exchange with growing apprehension.
Zev shook his head, furious. “No. Absolutely not. The women and children can leave, but I am not going anywhere!”
Dumiya turned her head in the direction of the palace, her gray eyes narrowing and her body growing tense.
“Elyas!” Karim begged. “Listen to me!”
The old man’s expression darkened like a thunderhead. “No, sen, you listen to me. Until you tell me what you’re so afraid of, we aren’t leaving.”
The sound of barking joined the clamor of the crowd. Behkai came racing down one of the side streets and ran to Karim, his mouth foaming, his eyes wild. Then, a distant, terrified shout pierced the air.
“To arms!” the voice cried. “To arms!”
The crowd went still and silent.
In the quiet, Karim heard the rumble of many feet marching.
Elyas stared at Karim with growing unease. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s coming?”
A second later, a man stumbled backward into view on the main road, his sword raised defensively.
“To arms!” he bellowed again, just as a great stone hand came down from above, grasped his head, and squeezed it like a grape. There was a pop, and a profusion of blood burst from between the stone fingers. The man’s body went still before dropping to its knees and toppling to the dust below.
Shesmu the Butcher’s shadow fell over the crowd as he stepped over the body and into the courtyard. He opened his fist, releasing the wet wreckage of the man’s skull before unsheathing the second knife from his belt.
For one shocked moment, not a single person moved or spoke.
Then came pandemonium.
Zev and a dozen others loosed war cries and charged the stone warrior, while others fled in terror down the side streets, only to be cut off by the ushabti marching toward them.
“Tell them to retreat!” Karim yelled, shaking Elyas by the shoulders.
The old man’s gaze remained locked on the bloody corpse, his mouth agape.
“Tell them!”
“Retreat!” Elyas shouted, finally finding his voice.
It was too late.
No one could hear him over the screams.
Cursing, Karim pushed Elyas away from the oncoming horde and sprinted into the fray with Behkai galloping at his side.
Up ahead, Shesmu’s knives were slicing toward another Hudjefa tribesman, who was too distracted by the approach of the ushabti to notice the imminent danger.
With a burst of speed that felt miraculous, Karim dove into the man, driving him to the ground before the swinging blades could cut him in two.
“Run for the desert, sen!” Karim told him.
Meanwhile, Behkai had bounded onto a barrel, then a rooftop, and started barking furiously at Shesmu, distracting the stone warrior so that the man could get away unscathed.
“Behkai, watch out!” Karim cried, and the dog leaped from the roof as Shesmu’s enormous fist crashed into the mud-brick house.
Karim was on his feet and caught the dog before he could hit the ground. How did I do that? he wondered. His resurrection had given him a second chance at life, but he’d begun to wonder if there was more to it than that.
Karim set the dog down, his body buzzing with vital energy begging to be expended.
With Behkai at his side, he dashed back into the crush of men and ushabti, following the dog’s lead by jumping onto obstacles and using them to launch himself into the stone warriors, unbalancing some and toppling others long enough for the Hudjefa to escape.
He caught a glimpse of Dumiya similarly bounding from one enemy to the next with fluid, silent grace, narrowly avoiding one fatal blow after another.
Still, for many others, the damage had already been done.
The ground was littered with bodies, the sand sodden with blood.
Karim had just landed on the ground in a crouch after having kicked two ushabti into each other, when he saw Zev sparring with another stone warrior across the way, their copper blades clashing.
Karim could see the killing blow coming, could see the opening for a slash after the parry, but even he couldn’t cross that distance in time.
He was a mere arm’s breadth away from Zev when the ushabti’s sword sliced deep across the man’s torso, disemboweling him.
Behkai rushed in from the side to attack the ushabti while Karim dropped to one knee beside Zev, lifting the man’s head off the ground. Blood burbled from Zev’s lips as he eyed Karim with fierce recrimination. “This is on you, sen,” he said with difficulty. “Hudjefa blood is on your hands.”
Then Zev’s grimace relaxed, and he was still.
His chest burning with shame and despair, Karim set Zev gently on the ground and stood. Why did death follow him like a shadow everywhere he went?
The priestess Nefermaat’s face appeared in his mind, her every word a premonition.
You had two shadows.
The oracle asked too much of him. He was nothing and no one, as Babu once said. What was he supposed to do with such a task? Such a burden?
Roaring, he threw himself into the nearest ushabti, shoving and kicking with reckless, careless rage.
The stone men fell away from him like pawns on a game board, toppled but unharmed, some falling onto the corpses of men who lay beyond suffering’s reach.
He lost track of Behkai in the fray and prayed that the dog would have the sense to not get himself killed.
Then Karim heard the clip-clop of hooves approaching at a canter, followed by a booming command.
“Wait.”
The ushabti stilled, stopping mid-battle as if transformed back to mere statues.
Battered, his clothes torn, Karim whirled to see Setnakht astride his horse in the middle of the courtyard, taking in a scene of total carnage.
The monstrous horse snorted and stamped, maggots dropping from its flanks to feast on the bodies below.
Setnakht removed his helm and set it on his knee, revealing his long, unearthly face.
He eyed Karim with amazement. “Is it really you, my acolyte? You look quite well for my having killed you.” The ancient pharaoh reached out toward him, and Karim felt the amulet pushing against his ribs as if it were trying to get out.
Dizzy, Karim pressed a hand to his chest until the sensation faded.
“Apparently you did a poor job of it, sen,” Karim replied through gritted teeth.
Setnakht dropped his arm back to the saddle, smiling.
“So, you’ve taken my heart, as I’ve taken yours.
Or rather…someone has given it to you. Very resourceful.
I commend them. Still, it’s irritating to find you here, interrupting the cleansing of my city.
Perhaps the Lord of Chaos has chosen to set you in my path once more to test my will.
” He gave Karim a small nod. “So be it.”
His next words were unnaturally loud, spoken in what Karim now recognized as his spell-casting voice: “Kill him, my ushabti. Make a home for your blades in his flesh, so that his body may better remember its demise.”
Before Karim could react, before he could take a breath, he felt a jolt as a spearhead was thrust through him, sprouting from the middle of his chest.
Time slowed. The sounds of copper clashing with copper, of screams and shouts and wails of terror, grew muted and distant.
Karim staggered but remained standing. He took a lurching step toward Setnakht.
He sensed movement at his left as another spear lanced into him. His body jerked with the impact, and the pain took his breath away.
His vision grew dark. There was barking somewhere. Perhaps he was no longer on his feet but his knees. The weight of the spears made him heavy and unbalanced. He tried to rise, to move forward, and a third spear slid through his belly.
He fell.