Under Cover of Darkness (20 page)

“I've just performed the ‘Eye of Anubis' spell with ritual dust made from the mummy of a golden jackal. I now see the mundane world through my right eye, and the metaphysical world through my left.” That eye appeared obsidian black against an angry red background. Lawrence's energetic, restless aura glowed like fire in Percival's enhanced sight. “It's what will show me the creatures that left those strange marks on the dead Turkish soldiers you found. And perhaps other things.” He fitted the lenses over his eyes again. They disguised, but not quite hid, the change.

The train chuffed closer. The nomads crouched to both sides of the Englishmen. Percival faced the tracks, inching upward until he could see over the dune's crest, shoulder to shoulder with Lawrence. He fumbled for the detonator attached to his mine. Lawrence grabbed his own plunger.

“I'll make the Turks' eyes slide away from us,” Percival muttered in English. “I must also pray to my patron, the Archangel Michael, and to Sekhmet.” He grinned. “They make a fine team when they decide to work together.”

“I think,” Lawrence said, “that I contacted the right man for this job.”

Turkish soldiers pointed out the trampled sand from the train's forward vantage points. The engineer slowed the train. Five men armed with rifles jumped from a wagon, approaching the area and avidly discussing reasons for its disturbance. Two, more curious than the rest, neared the dune.

“We're discovered,” whispered Lawrence.

“Not yet. Wait.”

The Englishmen remained motionless, their noses just above the dune's edge. Percival's normal eye focused on the pair of Turks as they closed the distance. The soldiers stopped, craning their necks and lifting their rifles as if hoping to provoke anyone in hiding to break cover. The train crawled forward at walking speed. The Arabs and their leader held their breaths.

One of the Turks shrugged and returned to his compatriots. The other seemed to sense something odd and stepped toward the dune, rifle ready.

He took another step, and another. He was so near that the hidden men heard the rasping of breath in his dust-sore nose and throat.

“Now,” whispered Lawrence.

He and Percival pushed their plungers. Seven, eight, nine heartbeats and more passed—nothing happened.

“Damn!” Lawrence abandoned his plunger and thrust to his hands and knees, reaching for his pistol, preparing to lead a charge.

Percival grabbed his friend's forearm and yanked. Lawrence tumbled against sand, his features contorted with anger until odd accents reached his ear. Percival's lips already moved in patterns of archaic language. The eyes of the hidden tribesmen flicked between the curious Turk and Lawrence. Their faces showed alarm; in moments, they'd be discovered.

“Change in plan,” Percival muttered in English, centering his internal force as he turned to Lawrence. “Shoot the guards. I'll stop the train.”

With a bloodcurdling yell, Lawrence leaped up, followed by trigger-happy nomads. Turkish soldiers fell, riddled with bullets. Seconds after, the tribesmen atop the rock opened fire. The soldiers manning the gun car all dropped, dead within moments. At the second volley, the engineer opened up the train's throttle, obviously hoping to get away.

Percival scrambled to the top of the mound, his body quivering with power. Sekhmet and the Archangel Michael had both answered his request. Reaching out his right index finger, he pointed toward the locomotive, and to the rails. Forming both hands into a triangle and lifting them to center on the engine, Percival sent a metaphysical command.

The locomotive groaned, cracking in several places with sharp reports. A blinding blue flash came from the rails beneath. Belching smoke, the engine skidded sideways and toppled. The tender and the car behind it skewed off the tracks and plowed into the sand on their sides. Turkish soldiers in the passenger car yelled and swore as it leaned, uncoupled from the wagon ahead of it, and crashed in a dusty cloud.

It took long moments for the battered Turks inside to recover. Some began shoving heads and shoulders through the train windows. Lawrence's rebels stormed forward, yelling dedications to Allah and insults at their enemies. They shot each soldier climbing out.

An imposing figure in his white robes, Lawrence strode among the tribesmen, pistol in hand but firing at no one. Percival stood alone atop the dune, aiming his enhanced eye at each car of the train. He slid the holster of a pistol hanging at his back along his belt to his right side.

“I know you're here, Devlin Quint,” he murmured to his real enemy. “Or your minions are. Your evil makes the hairs on my neck quiver. Come out, come out, wherever you are. There's little cover left.”

His left eye halted on the caboose. “Ah. Found you.” Skidding down the dune, he strode toward the last car of the train as if no bullets sang around him. A few Turks from the passenger car had mustered, and now fired back at the Arabs.

The caboose still stood upright, bullet holes in its thin wooden walls. Climbing its metal rungs, Percival pushed open the door in the back and looked in.

An empty chair meant the trainman of the caboose had fled into the questionable security of the desert. In the other two seats, flies already buzzed over bodies slumped there. Above-standard Mauser rifles with state-of-the-art telescopic sights were still clutched in their hands, revealing that the deceased were marksmen sent with a specific purpose.

Expressions of surprise and horror froze the Turks' bruised, distorted faces. Making a quick job of it, Percival unbuttoned their uniform shirts one after the other, finding the same hideous black-purple-red marks over each heart.

He sighed. “Good thing I expanded Lawrence's protection to include the ugly things that made these wounds, as well as bullets, swords, knives, and poisons. Quint, I'm sure the Arabs appreciate your consumption of their enemies. The vessels holding the spirits of these two have probably already started their flight back to your stronghold.”

Rebuttoning their shirts, he left the soldiers as he'd found them, and turned to leave. Percival hesitated, hearing an odd noise. Something of power still inhabited the caboose. Taking care to make it look like his interest was the Mausers, he searched the compartment with both eyes.

Got you!
There was a panel in the front wall.
Let surprise be my advantage.
Percival called a neutralizing spell to mind, and whispered it just before he lunged forward and split the partition open with a double fisted blow.

A mage stood in a niche barely wide enough to hold him, intoning a spell in ancient Egyptian.

“Robbie Chickering!” Percival controlled his emotions and damped his surprise as his old friend from the Servants of the House of Light refused to recognize him. “Sekhmet, be my strength,” he said quickly. “Archangel Michael, protect me.” Wards around him became as thick steel. Wrapping his arms around his head, he crouched.

The mage's spell slammed against Percival's metaphysical shield and rebounded, blowing the walls and roof of the caboose to flinders. The metal bed of the car rocked violently.

Momentarily deafened by the concussion, Percival straightened as the mage's body, impaled by hundreds of splinters, sagged to the floor. His eyes were still open, registering shock. His spell had returned to him threefold.

“Robbie, my good friend. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry that Devlin coerced you to his side.” Percival's head ached from the explosion, and his heart with loss. Working quickly, he tried to tie the spirit of Devlin Quint's mage to the section of desert where he stood. He was too late: the body had already lost too much essence in the explosion. The rest of Robbie Chickering's spirit fled as Percival touched the cooling flesh. He recoiled.

“He's linked to Quint. That scoundrel will feel Robbie's death, and know there's someone with power in this area,” Percival muttered. “Ah well, I'll just have to figure out how to deal with that little problem later.”

Slipping on his protective lenses, Percival leaped from the caboose into the sand. An odd pulse in his left eye made him hesitate. He looked upward to see two narrow inky wisps, foreign to this land of bright contrasts, hovering above what was left of the car. They snaked off against the wind.

“You hid them well, Quint,” Percival said, trotting away from the ruined caboose. “I thought those vessels of yours would already have fled back to you. Heaven help the rebellion if Prince Feisal ever stays in one place long enough to attract your ravenous attention.” Satisfied that nothing else at the end of the train merited his attention, he jogged back toward the dune.

The Arabs were busy pillaging Turkish bodies for gold, jewelry, coins, and intriguing objects. Lawrence stood supervising, elevated on a rim of the tender fallen on its side behind the locomotive.

Percival's trained senses saw a tragedy in the making. “Get down, you fool!” he shouted, leaping into a run.

A shot sounded. Lawrence jerked, spun, folded, and dropped to the sand. Percival's trained eyes picked out motion in a shadow between prone rail cars. Drawing his pistol without aiming, he shot the wounded Turk through the eye.

“Aurens! Aurens is hurt!” Ahmad cried, shocked. The rebels abandoned their work as the stunning news traveled from mouth to ear in moments. Gathering around their English leader and good luck symbol, they stared downward in consternation, too amazed to do more.

“Let me through,” Percival demanded in Arabic, pushing tribesmen out of the way to get to Lawrence. Kneeling, he checked for a pulse.

“He's alive. Get water. Hurry.” A skin sloshed into his hands. Percival squeezed it, splashing liquid on Lawrence's face.

“Ah, uh,” the reluctant rebel leader sputtered, looking upward. Incomprehension changed to surprise. “How did I get here?”

“You were shot, old boy,” Percival replied. “Lie still.”

Lawrence struggled against friendly hands to attain a sitting position. “Shot!” The nomads forced him to remain down. He raised his head, looking at his chest from beneath furrowed brows. “There's not enough blood.”

“Shot slightly, I should have said, by a Turk when you were standing on that tender. You're bruised where the bullet glanced off, but no worse. It'll hurt like the very devil for some days, especially when you ride camel-back.” Percival sat back, grinning, swiping away moisture streaming from his left eye. “You're a lucky fellow.”

“Fine, I'm fine,” Lawrence assured the worried rebels. “Look.” He surged to his feet. Breath hissed between his teeth and he staggered as bruised muscles in his chest protested. Worried tribesmen supported him as his knees buckled.

“Thomas.” Percival's sudden voice of command shocked the tribesmen to stillness. Lawrence's eyes jerked to gaze at his friend. “You can do no more good here. Rest for a few hours. I know that's difficult for you, but these men can offload goods and herd horses and mules without your help.” He gestured to Lawrence's Juheina assistant. “Ahmad, help Aurens to a place in the shade behind the rock. Have someone make coffee. Give him several cups with plenty of sugar. And dates, if you have any. Make him stay still until everyone's ready to head back to Prince Feisal's camp. When you leave here, travel slowly.”

Ahmad nodded, and gave orders to the tribesmen. A few strode toward the saddlebags on their camels for coffee-making utensils, while the others assisted Lawrence to a comfortable resting place.

Percival recovered the mines and the wires, digging them from the sand along the rail bed. There was nothing wrong with the connections.
Robbie's magic stopped them. Poor Robbie.
He repacked the explosives, then sought his own camel.

“Percival.” Lawrence's voice shot through the air like a bullet. “You're not leaving until you've answered my questions.”

He walked back to where Lawrence now sat on a rug, sheltered by a tattered canvas anchored to the rock. He knelt. “Very well.”

“Your gift deflected that bullet, didn't it?” Lawrence asked in English, touching the talisman beneath his robes.

“Likely. You're going to have to be more careful.”

“I know,” Lawrence sighed. “There's quite a bit of Turkish gold offered for my head.”

“Exactly. And I found two sharpshooters with excellent long-distance rifles in the caboose.”

“Sent for me, you think?”

“None other.”

“Were they . . . were they dead?”

“Yes.”

“Did they carry the marks I described in the letter?”

“Yes.”

Lawrence squinted at him in frustration. “Did you learn anything at all from looking at them?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I suggest that you keep up your work here, Thomas. If you and I both fail, it will brew a whirlwind that will make this war appear as a tempest in a teacup. Time is of the essence. My Order has pledged to fight a man corrupted by power named Devlin Quint. He's gathering as many ancient artifacts as he can find, such as the Spear of Destiny, the Ark of the Covenant, the Song of Mary Magdalene, and Buddha's Jewel, to further that power. He won the race for the ‘Papyrus of Nesser-Khamit, ' and used the rite on himself.”
He's now a living mummy, sustained by the spirits of those dead Turkish soldiers you discovered,
Percival thought, unwilling to share too much.

His voice gained an edge sharp as a scimitar. “I will not allow him to succeed again. I must save the Tablets of Takhisis.”

“The first codified law that the goddess of the Sumeri ans wore on her breastplate, the ancestor to the Code of Hammurabi?”

Percival nodded.