Servant of the Gods (2 page)

She could almost pity him, not knowing which of them suffered the worst fate.

Faintly, she could hear the Horn call as he blew endlessly, drawing air in through his nose, blowing out through his mouth. That sound must not falter until the doors were shut and sealed. Forever.

Beyond, outward, there was all of Egypt, all of the world. They couldn’t let what resided so restlessly within that chamber escape to lay waste over it. Not again. She couldn’t set what lay within the tomb loose upon the peoples of this world, not with what the priests and priestesses now knew of what was imprisoned behind the stone beneath them. Those below would devour every living thing, turn the people of the Nile, the distant peoples from which she’d come, and those of all the lands where she’d served and fought as a mercenary into cattle, chattel, something to feed upon…and their feeding…the torment of it…

Horror shook her.

If those of the world outside were to be free, safe, she must hold, even as her body bucked, fought for air…and so she held. It seemed an eternity and yet it was only minutes.

She remembered…and clung to her memories, lost herself in them, held them against the pain, against the cold that seeped into her. The cold and the darkness.

Alone in the dark she remembered the ones, the one, she loved and would always love.

His hand upon the stone, Khai remembered, too, remembered his beloved Irisi with her swords flashing, her hair swirling around her as she did battle that first day he’d seen her and all the days thereafter. Priestess and warrior. So lovely, strong, so seemingly indomitable. It was her laughter, though, that rang in his memory most. That beautiful hair, her glorious eyes…her laughter and her joy.

In grief and sorrow, he touched the face carved into the stone of the stele…laid his forehead against the cold stone forehead as he would do with her in life.

His fingers traced the words engraved in the pillar, the chants for Coming Forth into the Day, for Going into and Coming Out of the Realm of the Dead, and For Taking on Any Shape. She would need to know them in the centuries to come.

He willed her strength and he willed her love. How did she fare within? Was her struggle over yet? Had the Gods taken her, given her surcease? Were her Ba and Ka yet free of her body?

He looked to Awan, to Djeserit, and saw the same thoughts mirrored in their faces.

In the darkness of the cavern far below, the great iron doors slid closed as bands of gold and silver were hammered across it to secure it with the powers of the Gods Ra and Isis. The seal, carefully balanced, was placed in its niche to enclose what lay within, hopefully forever.

The chanting didn’t end…their task was not complete, not yet.

As one, the priests and priestesses closed around the stele. Each lay a hand on the stone and willed strength to the one within. The Gods came to the one within then, all but Set, each to render her a gift.

Sekhmet was the last.

In the chamber below, the great iron doors were closed and sealed, and Irisi set to stand guard over it, to ensure it remained sealed, forever.

Alone through the ages to come.

Tales were told of one’s life flashing before the eyes as one died, but Irisi was not dying nor would an afterlife await her.

So many memories…

Irisi remembered…

It had been a day like any other, save that it was sunny and Eres – the child Irisi had once been – preferred the sunny, dry days to the dreary, not surprisingly. Folk said she was a child of sunshine with her bright hair and brilliant eyes, born to the hot days of summer. It was certainly hot that day. Around Eres were the folk of her village, and like the folk of so many villages they worked in the fields, as did she. Eres liked the heat but not the thick dampness that clung to the air and skin. Still, it was prettier when the sun was shining even if she had to chase silly sheep.

The shouts and cries, the distant smoke, caught her attention. She turned and saw smoke billow thick above the village where there should be no smoke at all. She ran back toward the cottages but it seemed she ran in slow motion …back to her mother, heavy with child. Her mother had been carding wool when Eres had last seen her, and her father nearby with the birth of the new baby so close.

A squeal tore the air.

Eres saw a man, a stranger, chase after one of the pigs. With the pig screeching and the man so intent on his task, he didn’t see her…

In an instant, young as she was, she understood.

Thieves. They were under attack by bandits intent on taking what little their poor village had.

Reversing her shepherd’s crook, she barely paused but smacked it smartly and hard across the man’s neck at its weakest point, only slightly aware of the way he collapsed bonelessly behind her as she ran past.

The piglet escaped as she darted between the huts.

Other men were there.

Margret lay still in the dirt, her brown eyes blank and unseeing…her skirt thrown up, her throat cut. There was so much blood. The air reeked of the dead, of death and dying.

Cries and shouts rang out.

A man reached for her almost as if from nowhere…

Instinctively she thrust the end of her crook into his belly. His breath escaped with a whoosh even as she spun the other end around to bring the crook end up beneath his chin, snapping his head back.

He fell, dead, although she didn’t know it.

Eres saw her father across the square, blood gushing from his throat as he crumpled while within their cottage her mother screamed.

Snatching up the fallen man’s sword, Eres shrieked her fury and grief and attacked…

In the time that followed she would never be able to say or remember all that happened, only that she fought, not wildly but with a cold and unthinking wrath. Not thoughtlessly, either; it was just that there was no need for her to think. It was instinctive. She just knew. Understood. It was a blur of motion and intuition…

As a rough sword came at her, she threw the borrowed one up to meet it, turned her sword and body in the same motion to dissipate the force and throw the thief off balance. As he staggered sideways, she put the sword through him.

The other villagers came to help defend against the raiders, most armed with only rakes and hoes.

In the end, though, Eres’s mother and father were dead and she was an orphan who hadn’t yet become a woman. She was all of eleven years. Too young yet to marry.

Another mouth to feed for those who had little to spare.

The Druid Priests and Priestesses consulted their oracles and took her in, raised her up among them.

They fed her curiosity with knowledge of the mysteries, of wisdom, of language, even as they brought warriors to teach her to use the talents the Gods and Goddesses had given her. Her skills with sword and bow were honed as sharply as her mind, and so they sent her off too, as soon as she became a woman, finding a mercenary troop who would take her and let her use those abilities.

The Captain of the band of mercenaries wasn’t a harsh man, else the Druids wouldn’t have put her in his charge, but he was a stern one and Eres’s native lightness of nature was sometimes a trial to him. And sometimes not.  He was a tall man, broad in the chest, with a solid, plain, battered face and a wooly brown beard.

Irisi/Eres remembered him with a smile.

He’d had the right to use her as he wished but hadn’t. Instead, he’d educated her in strategy and tactics as his sergeants increased her knowledge of the use of sword and bow.

His name was Childric and when he finally educated her in the ways of men and women, he did so with gentleness and kindness, awakening her body slowly so she would know pleasure before pain.

It had been the night before her first battle and both of them had found solace and comfort in the act, if for different reasons. Only later would she understand the timing – so she would know pleasure first before she might learn the harsher lesson of rape and never learn to take pleasure in act again.

The memory made her smile even as her body thrashed futilely, reflexively, within the confines of the stele.

As the battle closed on them, at first she’d been afraid. The clamor had been terrifying. The fierce aspect of the other warriors had been daunting as well but there were those on each side of her she knew, that she’d drilled with, good friends who depended on her… Ehlbert and Grigg… Tall Aregunde, with her sword held in clenched hands.

The shout had gone up, and then she’d been running with the others.

Eres saw the warrior run toward her. His sword gleamed in the thin spring sunlight. Instinct and training took over…

In a harsh and terrible way, it was glorious. As each moment of near dying passed, she had a tremendous sense of living fully in that moment. Her swords flashed. One opponent after another fell as she ducked, parried and spun. Without needing to look, to think, she was aware of Ehlbert and Grigg, of Aregunde nearby. She guarded their flank, held the line. She knew when Grigg fell and Aregunde was wounded, but then it was over…and to her astonishment night had fallen.

She found she’d taken wounds she didn’t remember. A shuddering weakness went through her and she braced herself on her sword. Ehlbert and Aregunde took her to the Healers.

Childric came while they sifted herbs into the wounds and stitched them closed. Her teeth were clenched tightly on a piece of leather, the taste thick in her mouth as her eyes burned from the pain. But she was alive. She’d survived.

He shook his head, something strange in his eyes, and laid a hand on her shoulder as they patched the rest. And he’d sighed.

Inside the stele, the struggles of her body faded as Irisi surrendered to her fate and took a long deep breath… Her lungs filled with the Waters of Life…fought it…tried to expel it and instead drew in more through her nose and mouth.

Distanced from the struggles of her body, she remembered Childric’s look. She understood it now. Lessons she’d gained with the passage of time. Duty, responsibility…and love of a kind.

They followed contract after contract eastward. Aregunde was wounded so badly in one battle they had to leave her behind as they crossed into the South, into new lands…sunnier, drier lands.

Here the folk were different, darker-skinned and fierce. Some fought with curved swords. Those swords were sharp, harder than any she’d known, and less likely to break from a single powerful blow.

After the battle, Eres sought out a sword maker there. Tales were told of this man, of his skill at sword-crafting. With no family and only herself to feed, her coin and spoils of war were hers to spend as she would. She’d kept her coin close, save when she gave them to the quartermaster before battle. If she died then, her coin would return to the mercenary band, as it should.

She told the man what she wanted.

He simply studied her, and then he smiled.

It would take time, he said.

His eyes spoke different. It would be a challenge.

Eres smiled in return and nodded. She understood the challenge.

When she returned she found not one but two blades awaiting her.

One was a sword, plain and simple, but crafted by the best.

When your life depended on your weapon, it was better to have the very best. She’d seen lesser swords shatter when lives depended on them. This one would not.

The other…

Smiling, Eres clasped it.

It seemed to run counter to all other blades, running backward, not forward. The broad finger guard protected her fragile fingers while the back of the sword – the dull edge – had been thickened and flattened along the rim. A cushion of padded leather ran half the length. Exactly the length of her forearm. As a rudimentary shield it would block a blow; as a blade she could jab it backward into an opponent behind her; a forward stroke with her arm would cut a man’s throat at close quarters; while a backhand would open his throat or belly.

It was a unique weapon, hers and hers alone. Even now, it waited outside the stele for her hand to draw it once again.

She spun both swords in her hands to test their weight, balance and handling, and smiled.

Childric led his band south by sea, to the lands of the deserts, to where the air was drier still and the sand in some places rolled seemingly endlessly. He’d heard there was work to be had there in the South and plenty of it. He’d been right.

Stark and seemingly barren, it was an oddly beautiful country. It had strange tall trees with thick scaly boles and branches that swayed high above them, creaking and rattling. The heat had been intense, like standing before a forge when the bellows were applied, a sere dry burst of air. Water, so abundant where they had come from, was a precious resource in these lands, save for the great central river that ran to the sea.

Eres studied their language, fascinated by the cadences.

Childric was no fool; he learned from those around them and drilled his mercenaries in the heat so they became accustomed to it.

They would do battle against warriors who came from the south and the west, from a mighty kingdom there that sought to bring these lands beneath its dominance and sway.

Many of these folk fought on foot, but some fought from chariots with spear and bow. They fought in measured ranks and not in a line. They were skilled, practiced, trained and drilled.

The day of the battle came.

It was like no other battle Eres had ever fought.

As the realization that they were losing came to her, she vaguely remembered screaming her fury as her swords glittered in the sunlight. Throwing her other arm up to shield, she thrust to defend, a throat gushed blood… Another came. And another.

Childric was at her left, his strong, broad face determined. It was clear by the look in his eyes that Eres’s berserker instincts were their only chance of winning free, but his expression was empty, their cause nearly hopeless…  She remembered the moment he fell and she’d realized she was alone.

She stood surrounded by the soldiers of the enemy, startled that they hadn’t killed her.

All around her were the bodies of her opponents and her compatriots, those who’d fought beside and behind her, using her as their last shield against the onslaught.

Only she had survived.

The captain stood in his chariot, held up his hand to restrain his people. She looked up to meet his dark, kohl-rimmed eyes. She eyed the strong but well-formed features of his face, the high cheekbones, the slightly aquiline nose. In appearance, he was a handsome man, but not a cruel one. Like many of these folk, his skin was darker than hers, tawny, almost golden. His hair was as black and as glossy as a raven’s wing, falling to his shoulders in thick waves. He was bearded but more neatly than she was accustomed to seeing, his beard trimmed far more closely than the men of the north. A narrow band of it framed his full mouth, traced his square jaw, but he was clean-shaven between.

Like his men and officers he wore only a simple kilt but with the gold pectoral of his rank around his throat. His eyes were a dark deep brown with just a hint of gold. He was tall, well-muscled, and broad-shouldered. And foreign.

She looked at him, at all the others that surrounded her. Her heart sinking, she crouched slowly and put down her swords for the first time since she earned the right to carry them.