The Buried Pyramid (70 page)

“Very good,” Neville said.

Neville gestured toward the map.

“If we have Jenny and Rashid go inside, that leaves three of us to handle the men outside. I suggest we space ourselves out. Behind those rocks,” he pointed to three, “should be best. At a prearranged signal, we make some sort of noise, try to spook them.”

He glanced over at Ra.

“What’s the lighting situation?”

“Lighting?” Ra looked amused. “The thieves may have paid off the guards, but there is still reason for them to take care. The only lights are for those working in the tomb itself. These are small lamps burning fat. They give some light, but the robbers work more by touch.”

“I expect so,” Neville agreed. “Time enough to inspect their loot when they’re safely away. What is the phase of the moon?”

“Khons is a waning crescent,” Ra answered, “but the night is clear and at the time you will arrive he will give some light.”

“Enough to let them get a good look at us,” Neville said. “That’s just fine. You told Jenny we can’t bring firearms, but can we bring anything else?”

“What you are wearing,” Ra said, “and perhaps a few other small things, within reason.”

“You already said we could have our knives,” Neville said, “but we’re hoping not to kill anyone. How about a stout short club for each of us, some lengths of rope, writing paper, ink, and pens?”

Ra looked amused again.

“These are not unreasonable.”

Jenny admired how her uncle was acting, treating the matter as if it was part of his normal day’s work to plan operations into the past—or was it future?—at the behest of a variety of theriomorphic creatures who just might possibly be gods. She decided to imitate him.

“I’d also like my doctor’s bag,” she said. “We’re going to do our best not to harm anyone, but that doesn’t mean the robbers will feel the same way—or we might hurt one of them. Is that reasonable?”

Ra inclined his hawk head, gestured, and Jenny’s familiar bag appeared on the sand next to the map. He made a second gesture, producing this time the rope and the clubs. Wordlessly, Eddie handed these out.

Jenny noted that her supply of rope had already been cut into lengths just about perfect to use to tie someone up. The clubs were about the size of a policeman’s billy—to which they bore more than a passing resemblance. She wondered if Ra had somehow drawn an image out of Uncle Neville’s mind and reproduced it.

She tucked the lengths of rope into her bag, then slid the bag’s straps over her shoulders so that her hands would be free—a neat adaptation designed by a mountain man who had stayed with her family while his broken ankle was mending. Swinging the club to accustom herself to its weight and heft, she tried to look as if she coshed people on a regular basis.

Neville glanced around the circle.

“Everyone comfortable with their part in this?”

Stephen cleared his throat.

“We haven’t asked just how many men we’ll be dealing with.”

“Ten or so,” Ra replied, cooperative as ever. “Several will be within the tomb, several positioned along the tunnel to hand out items as they are secured, and the rest are above ground, packing away those things that have been stolen, and watching just in case their bribes were not enough to keep away guards who might find a profit in turning them in—after taking a bribe in advance.”

“We’ll worry about the ones in the tunnel later,” Neville decided. “Above and below first.”

He turned and looked squarely at Jenny.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, Jenny? We might be better off keeping you and your medical kit above—in fact, the more I think about it, the better I like that idea.”

Jenny shook her head.

“I’m going down. I have a feeling any of the rest of you would be crowded.”

Rashid laid his hand lightly on her arm.

“Except for Rashid, of course,” she said.

The Egyptian youth beamed, then handed Mischief to Ra. Club in hand, he stood ready for whatever was to come.

Jenny attempted to mirror Rashid’s attitude, but she knew she didn’t seem nearly so confident.

Neville tried hard not to think about the task he was about to undertake. It was so much easier to plan if he thought of this as just another military action, leaving out where, when, and against whom this action was going to occur.

To his surprise, he found this selective amnesia worked. After his attempt to convince Jenny to take a different post had failed—an effort he had suspected was futile, but one he had to make—he looked around his group.

“All right, you two who are staying with me, pick your positions.”

Predictably, Eddie chose the post closest to the opening of the tomb, Stephen the one farthest back. Neville thought it showed wisdom on both of their parts. Whatever Neferankhotep’s physician had done for him had mended Neville’s newer injuries, but the ones he had sustained all those years before remained, limiting his mobility.

Eddie’s post placed him behind one of the rubble heaps, and he looked over at Ra.

“Will we be visible from the moment we appear?”

“That is so,” Ra said.

Eddie hunkered down in a crouch.

“You said the rubble heaps were about waist high, so this should give me a moment to reconnoiter.”

Stephen licked his lips, obviously nervous, but still game.

“The rock I’ve chosen,” he asked, “how high is it?”

Ra made a gesture about four feet off the ground.

“This is where they have picketed their donkeys,” he said. “Does that change your mind?”

“Not as long as I don’t land right on a donkey,” Stephen said. “I might be useful there.”

Neville mentally kicked himself for not asking such an obvious question. The tomb robbers would not have gone to such trouble only to settle for what they could carry off in their pockets.

“Can you tell us where the robbers themselves will be?”

Ra considered, “I think that would be too much. Even though they desecrate this tomb, they are, after their own fashion, my worshippers as well—many of them more so than the king whose tomb we move to defend.”

With this cryptic comment, Ra turned to Jenny and Rashid.

“Into which room do you wish to be placed?”

Jenny glanced at Rashid, then indicated the larger, central room.

“This one okay? I figure everyone has to go through there. If we go further back, they may just wall us up.”

The Egyptian youth nodded.

“They may try that anyhow,” Eddie said. “You’re going to be on the wrong side of that tunnel.”

Jenny gave him a grin.

“We’re counting on you to make sure that tunnel stays open.”

“Are you prepared?” Ra asked.

Neville watched as four heads nodded, then he turned to Ra.

“We’re ready.”

Ra nodded stiffly, and raised his hands as in benediction. A glow of golden light as of the rising sun wrapped them each around, then almost instantly began to fade. Neville felt the surface under his boot soles change from smooth sand to sand interspersed with broken chunks of rock.

Better watch my footing,
he thought. Then the time for thought had ended.

Despite the brilliance of Ra’s translation, Neville found he could see perfectly—or at least as well as the natural light permitted. Within a moment he had located four men.

One was standing at the entrance to the tomb, accepting an irregularly shaped bundle a second man was handing out to him. A third man was crossing the open area between the entrance to the tomb and the slightly higher ground where the donkeys were tied. As he passed Neville’s hiding place, Neville caught the odor of a strong, musky perfume from the objects he carried slung back to front over his broad shoulders. A fourth man, only partially visible, was busy packing bundles onto the mules. All four men were stripped to the waist, though the night was not oppressively hot. Indeed, Neville guessed the season to be sometime in the winter.

There was a rhythm to their labors, to the way the man in the entrance to the tomb handed out his bundles, to the way the second man secured them about his person, to the steady tread of the man crossing to the donkeys, that suggested they had been about their labors for some time now, and expected to continue working a good deal longer.

There was no excitement, no eagerness, though they must be handling fortunes in every load—especially when compared to their daily earnings. Nor was there any fear, neither of gods or of men. The tomb robbers were doing a job, a job at which they were very good, and that was all.

Then the man nearest to the donkeys let out a scream of raw wordless terror. Its high shrill notes falling to guttural moans cut through the nighttime silence like lightning through a storm-darkened sky.

Neville had been worried that sound might bring attentive guards, but no one would come into a graveyard after hearing that horror-stricken cry. Even the most devout would believe that the gods were taking a hand in daily affairs.

The man crossing toward the donkeys froze, uncertain what to do. Neville didn’t give him a chance to decide. Moving as stealthily as possible, he swung his club, catching the man hard behind the knees and dropping him onto his loincloth-covered backside. The thief fell with a thud, releasing so strong an odor of flowers and exotic spices that Neville nearly stepped back in revulsion.

Instead he stepped forward, letting the man see his pale features, his un-Egyptian beard and slightly curling hair. The man’s eyes widened in terror. He tried to surge to his feet, though whether to run or to fight, Neville would never know, for his feet slipped in the costly oils spilled on the ground around him. He fell onto his knees, and remained there, trembling.

Eddie was not having as easy a time of it. He had gone for the men in the doorway of the tomb. Perhaps there was courage in numbers, perhaps the surrounding stone had deadened the sound of their fellow’s cry, perhaps these two were made of stronger stuff, but the man on the outside wheeled, dodging Eddie’s cudgel with lithe, muscular grace. He swung at Eddie, a bare-fisted punch that argued he was a brawler. Eddie dodged, but now the other man was crawling out of the tomb entrance, eager to join the fray.

Neville looked down at his oil-soaked and trembling victim, and made a quick decision. He could hear Stephen saying something back among the donkeys. If Neville waited to tie up his man, Eddie might be badly hurt. Who knew how many others would emerge from below? For a fleeting moment, Neville wished desperately to know how things were going for Jenny, then he knew he could not spare the concentration.

“Stephen! I’ve one here, hurry!”

Stephen’s glad-sounding response came instantly, and Neville limped as fast as he could to where Eddie had backed up against a rubble mound and was whaling away with his cudgel. One of his opponents had a mace-like weapon and was swinging at Eddie with this. The other had a simpler club. Neither appeared to have knives or swords.

But then worked metal would be expensive,
Neville thought,
and I doubt their authorities like armed peasantry any more than ours do.

“I’m coming, Eddie!” he called, hoping that the sound of his voice would prove a distraction.

The man with the mace checked his blow, turning to face this new intruder. Although he handled his weapon with confidence, his eyes were wild. He might not have broken at the sound of his fellow’s scream, but clearly he was shaken by the appearance of these peculiar guardians.

“Who paid you, barbarian? Who paid you? Was it Pawara? I knew he’d cross us!”

All of this was gasped out between ferocious swings of his mace.

“Pawara didn’t send us,” Neville replied, blocking some blows with his mace, dodging others. “Ra did. We have ridden the Boat of Millions of Years with Ra, and have looked on the face of Anubis, protector of the dead.”

The mace wielder looked properly terrified, but he didn’t stop fighting.

No wonder,
Neville thought.
He knows he’s damned if he dies now and goes to Osiris with this on his soul. Tomb robbing violates the Negative Confessions—and I bet he’s violated a few others, too. Better, as he sees it, to fight and hope to escape, and make amends later.