'I don't know the details. The report was garbled.'
Tepy stood up, grabbing the edge of the table for support. 'Oh cruk,' she said. 'Oh cruk. The Zargoids are here.'
'Tepy,' said Sesehaten, alarmed, 'What's a Zargoid?'
75.'The people who killed the Doctor. They've come looking for me. Whatever they are.' She pressed her hands to her face, trying to think. 'They'll scan for high-technology equipment. Oh cruk, Sedjet '
This is the home of the Lord Sedjet.
In the courtyard, torches are burning, sending thinning curls of smoke into the sunset. A soft wind blows the smell of ash over the surrounding fields, carries it through the rooms of the mansion.
Inside the main hall, the braziers have burned low, filling the room with cool red light. In a corner, there are instruments scattered across the floor: drums, castanets, sistra sistra with their tiny rattles silenced. A pair of flutes have rolled across a reed mat to stop at a lute with a broken string. with their tiny rattles silenced. A pair of flutes have rolled across a reed mat to stop at a lute with a broken string.
The stools and tables have been overturned, and the floor is covered in food and flowers.
A cat picks its way across the floor, its fur still standing out with fright. It steps delicately over a fallen necklace and picks up a grilled fish in its mouth.
There is a single bite missing from the fish.
The cat pads out of the room, silently. There is no sound but the hiss of wind through the grain.
Ace came sprinting up the narrow path that lead to Sedjet's estate, at the very edge of the city of Akhetaten.
She was drunk and unarmed, totally unprepared for combat. But she ran like a leopard, on naked feet with soles as hard as leather, her blood thumping through her. She was sure she could see in the dark. The air was cold and dusty and it tasted like clear water. It was as though she had woken up.
The estate was dimly lit, and silent. She hoped that just meant everyone had gone to bed early.
Slowly, staying in the shadows, she circled the house. Nothing hiding behind the grain bins at the side, nothing in the garbage yard the first flush of adrenalin was starting to wear off, the bright battle feeling becoming a distant nagging in her belly. She thought of Sedjet's tiny daughters. What had followed her here? Whose fire had she drawn?
The entrance courtyard was on the inside, the mansion had no windows; torches at the corners of the building, created wide pools of light. She tilted her head. Listening. Gathering intelligence.
There was a cat sitting at the front door, chewing on a scrap of meat. It hissed at her and shot into the night, leaving its meal behind. Ace watched it go. Little bugger had the right idea.
She went into the house.
76.They'd been having a party when they were interrupted. The spoor of panic was all over the place, smashed dishes and trampled fruit.
She went from room to room, listening carefully. She found the armoury, wished for a phased plasma rifle in the 40W range, picked up a khopesh khopesh.
When she was in the girls' bedroom, someone started shouting in the main hall.
She loped back out, the heavy weapon flashing in her hand. 'Oh, god!'
Sesehaten was crying, stumbling about the room. 'Oh, my gods! Was it the demons?' Ace didn't bother to shut him up. She went back to her search.
The place wasn't damaged. It hadn't been empty for too long, either, judg-ing by the torches and the braziers. Some of the meat was still warm. Now, if everyone just decided to leave, they'd run back down the path into the city and Ace would have seen them. So they'd gone into the desert, or they'd vaporized altogether.
Bandits?
She knew it wasn't bandits.
Sesehaten started to scream.
Ace was back in the hall in a moment. The scribe had fallen backwards over a stool, and was staring up at an enormous metal Ant. The insect turned its oval head to look at her, with complex stalked eyes or antennae whirring.
In that instant Ace's world exploded back to its full size. A high-tech extraterrestrial in the living room. There was a numb tickling in her chest, and she realized that she ought to be laughing.
What was the damn thing packing? Didn't matter. If the enemy is in range, so are you; which means that if you're in range, so is the enemy!
Ace sprang over the table and smashed the thing's face with her sword.
There was a delightful sound of metal on metal, even a few sparks, and several antennae twisted into new and interesting shapes.
The robot reared backwards. Sesehaten screamed again. Ace swung her khopesh in a beheading arc, but the Ant's slender neck refused to give.
Now she could feel a fierce humming at the edge of her mind, and snarled, battering at the thing's legs as it distorted subtly, like a dream monster, its bent antennae reaching for her face.
Sesehaten hit it with a stool. It turned, and the droning in Ace's head got worse, like a headache coming on, occluding her vision. The sword trembled in her hand.
The Ant fell over.
The buzzing stopped, as though someone had thrown a switch. Sesehaten and Ace looked at one another over their fallen enemy.
'Where have you been all my life?' Ace asked the machine.
77.She knelt down beside the insect, put down her sword, started probing it all over. She ran her fingers over its seams, testing the swivelling joints of the antennae. It really did look like an ant, with the wasp waist and the six, jointed legs, though there were far too many things attached to its head. It was a sophisticated little bug. But it wasn't The Enemy, it was just a lackey.
'What happened?' gasped Sesehaten, keeping well away from the machine.
'Someone cut its broadcast power,' said Ace, which really didn't answer his question.
Perhaps when the Ant(s) hadn't been able to find her, it had taken everyone else. Possibly as hostages. Equally likely because it didn't want to return to its controller empty-handed, or empty-mandibled or whatever. They'd snatched the passengers from starliners, and now they were kidnapping Egyptians.
'Right,' she said. She stepped past Sesehaten, who was quivering with confusion. As far as he was concerned, this thing was a demon. 'Where are you going?' he asked.
'The desert. Where the Ant came from.'
'Where you came from,' said the scribe.
They rode a chariot for two, thankful that the sun hadn't quite gone down.
Ace knew from practice how dangerous it was to drive the things at night.
Especially when you were still half-sloshed. Though finding an alien robot in your former living room was a sobering experience.
Sesehaten grabbed her hips and held on for dear life as they hurtled over the desert rocks. She had sod-all in the way of strategy. Just rock up with one sword and a quivering ex-priest.
However she'd got here, the Ant had obviously come the same way. She should have checked the desert more carefully. Maybe there was a hidden machine or some sort of gateway. Maybe all this time she could have escaped.
Maybe she'd been supposed to work that out for herself. Maybe there was a big clever plan, and she just hadn't seen it before now.
Or maybe not. She was so used to trying to work out what the Doctor was up to, and now he wasn't up to anything except pushing up daisies.
The ridges became more familiar. She pulled up the chariot, Sesehaten clutching at her as they skidded to a halt.
Silence. Desert darkness. 'You feel that?' she said to him, invisible under the starlight.
Sesehaten shook his head.
Ace stepped down and lit up a torch. 'Come on,' she said.
Silence. Desert darkness. 'You feel that?' she said to him, invisible under the starlight.
Sesehaten shook his head.
78.Ace stepped down, lit up a torch. 'Come on,' she said, and 'What the hell was that?'
Sesehaten said, 'What was what?'
'Didn't I didn't we '
Sesehaten shook his head.
Ace stepped down, lit up a torch. 'Come on,' she said, and 'What the hell was that?'
Sesehaten said, 'What was what?'
'Didn't I didn't we ' Ace spun, the torchlight waving over the ground.
'You didn't notice anything weird just then?'
'Nothing,' whispered Sesehaten, alarmed. 'What's going on?'
'Let's find out.'
She led him down the rough path into the valley. There was the water hole, dried up now. Good. Armed with only her torch and the khopesh khopesh, she wasn't in the mood for wild animals.
No sign of the Ants. Damn. Where were they? Had they left any tracks?
Slow down, slow down. The problem with the easy way out is that it's been mined.
Her hackles were standing up, but it was more than just grunt caution.
There was some sort of distortion here, the sort that only someone who's crossed the time field dozens of times can sense. Like a sphere talking to a circle, she thought crazily, I've got perspective.
They were walking up the ridge she had rolled down, all those months ago.
She'd been over the place with a fine-toothed comb, looking for clues. How could she have missed something?
There was a popping sound in the air, just ahead, as though something were frying.
Sesehaten grabbed her hand and pulled her backwards.
She dropped the torch, yelling. The red flames went out as the torch rolled in the sand. She struggled with Sesehaten, who was still grabbing at her, trying to drag her away from the sound.
BANG! Pop! Splitch! BANG!
Ace ripped herself free of the scribe's hands and leapt up the ridge. The air was distorting, shafts of intolerable light exploding out of a point perhaps five feet above the sand, Coming out of nowhere as the popcorn noise intensified and the burring in her brain made her stomach twist and her hands ache.
Cornwall, she'd felt this before in Cornwall, when the sky had torn like paper, and she'd felt it on the organic ship, lying on a floor made of flesh while Benny tried to drag her into a rip in space-time.
With a silent explosion the rift opened above her.
79.Wind screamed into the hole in reality, whipping dust over her crouching form. She couldn't help looking into the hole, like when there was an eclipse when she was a little girl and they told you not to look at it in case you went blind and she spent the whole day staring at her shoes in case she saw the eclipse and her head just couldn't get itself around what she was seeing inside the hole!
She was being dragged across the sand, lifted into the air. Sucked in, she thought dizzily.
Sesehaten caught her ankle and pulled hard. Somehow she struck the khopesh khopesh into the hard ground, like an anchor. into the hard ground, like an anchor.
The rift imploded, and they both dropped to the ground, dust and tiny stones falling onto them in a layer. They lay there, winded and dazed.
Then Ace hauled herself to her feet and ripped the sword out of the ground.
'You son of a bitch!' she screamed at Sesehaten. 'You knew! You knew all the time!'
He scrambled backwards across the sand, out of range of her rage, convinced she could see him in the pitch blackness.
'You knew how I got here! You knew about the rift! You bastard, you knew the whole time! Why didn't you tell me, you Why didn't you tell me?'
'Tepy!' he screamed.
'Jesus Christ,' she breathed, and suddenly she was on the other side of him, and he couldn't see which way to run. 'If you're working for the people who killed the Doctor, I'll gut you. I swear I'll slice you up. Come here here.'
'Tepy,' said another voice.
They both looked up.
Torches, a dozen torches, flickering in a dozen hands. Red light reflecting from shaved heads. White robes. Eyes watching.
What Ace wanted to do was come at them with the khopesh khopesh and wreak havoc. Vengeance for seven months in hell. and wreak havoc. Vengeance for seven months in hell.
Instead, she said, 'Oh, for God's sake. Who are you?'
'The gods are banished,' gasped Sesehaten from the dirt. 'Banished but not forgotten. The priests are unemployed, but they haven't forgotten their duty.'
'Which gods?' Ace asked, but she already knew.
'We are the men of Set,' said the leader of the priests.