CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
Marty heard the monster’s rasping breath. It sounded as if it were right over him, the beast looming and raising its hand for the death blow. It also sounded as if it were coming from Marty’s own chest.
He felt squashed and shattered. Surely, he had broken ribs. He opened an eye to the blinding spears of the daylight sun and found there was no monster looming over him, only Gunther. He tried to sit up.
“Not yet,” Gunther said. “I’m working on you.”
“You’ll have to work later, Doc.” Marty rolled over onto one elbow and almost screamed in pain. From this vantage point, though, he could see Seth. It stood swinging its mace, mowing down Narmer’s and Surjan’s warriors with casual muscularity.
Narmer’s warriors—they had returned! And that couldn’t be Narmer in the lead, could it? Something had restored the dying king.
Probably not the Gettysburg Address.
The battle had passed Marty by. He stood with his friends and a small squad of spear fighters, to the side of the battle and behind the enemy. A rear guard glowered at him from Seth’s flank, but didn’t make any move to advance.
And Seth was moving more slowly, wasn’t it? And it lurched from side to side as it moved.
Had Lowanna got the message? He couldn’t tell from this angle, but some god of storm had heard his plea, and dropped a lightning bolt. Good luck. You couldn’t count on it, but when it happened to you, you had to press your advantage, and maybe, just maybe, Marty’s side had had a stroke of good luck. Two strokes of good luck, even.
And maybe just in the nick of time.
Gunther was trying to lay his hands on Marty, and Marty pushed him away.
“There’s a time for everything,” he grunted as he climbed to his feet. “The time for healing comes later. If it comes at all. Use it for someone who needs it. Like Tafsut did.”
“Tafsut is dead, Marty,” Gunther said.
“That’s my point.” Somewhere in his brain, Marty knew he wasn’t making a coherent argument, but he would hate himself for taking Gunther’s healing at this moment.
Then François was there, pressing an orange pot into his hands and giving another to Gunther and Kareem.
“Has anyone seen Surjan?” Marty asked. “Or Lowanna?”
François cackled. “Surjan is working with me. Narmer’s arrival has given us the time to roll one last cracker out onto the field. God willing, as Kareem likes to say.”
“Praise God,” Kareem said. “You are learning to talk like a civilized person.”
“Lowanna, I’m not sure,” François continued. “She was on a hill, at one point. About when that lightning fell.”
“Remind me not to fight in a storm next time,” Marty said.
Gunther looked down at the pot in his hand. “I don’t know,” he murmured.
“What is this cracker?” Marty asked the Frenchman.
“Big bomb,” François said. “All the remaining gunpowder. But that makes it heavy and awkward, you know? Hopefully we don’t need it, though. See if you can get the huge guy with the grenades I’ve given you. Pretty sure if he goes down, the rest of them run away. And if you can’t get close to him, maybe knock out some Sethians.”
“If only we had a cannon,” Marty said.
François chuckled. “I wish.”
Marty nodded and François shuffled away. Marty lost sight of him in the sheets of rain. Had he somehow slipped past the fighting lines and back to Narmer’s side? Or were he and Surjan working in some other corner?
“I don’t know how good my aim with this thing will be,” Gunther said.
“Feeling qualms about throwing a grenade?” Marty asked.
“Sort of,” Gunther said.
“I feel no qualms,” Kareem said. “Let’s blow these demons up.”
“I’ll throw yours,” Marty said to Gunther. “Just hold it for now.”
Were they demons? Marty jogged toward Seth and his rear guard, grenade in his right hand. Functionally, they were. They oppressed and murdered mankind. They seemed to be from another world, with strange technologies that might as well be magic.
And they were damned hard to kill.
The rear guard was a squad of men with swords and shields. They glared at Marty and his companions and then one of them shouted a command. Seth turned and looked over its shoulder briefly, and Marty saw that it had lost its nose ring.
Had Lowanna heard his desperate shout to the birds, then? Or had someone else seen what he and Kareem had seen, Sethians with ringless noses struggling to breathe? Or had the crew simply gotten lucky?
Then Seth turned back to face the fighters in front of it. Marty saw Narmer, on his feet, mace in hand. The king waded slowly forward through the enemy line, his face fearless. But he was making his way directly to Seth.
“You throw first,” Marty said to Kareem. “Let’s get these swordsmen out of the way.”
Kareem nodded. He waited several seconds. The swordsmen picked up their pace, raised their blades over their heads, and hollered.
Then Kareem threw the grenade at them.
It exploded as it hit. The four men closest to the center of the blast fell shrieking and clutching grievous wounds.
“For Narmer!” Marty shouted.
“For Narmer!”
The spear warriors with him surged forward. Kareem charged with them, and Marty recognized only now that Badis was among their number. Was Usaden commanding the remaining spear fighters of the host, then? Or Surjan himself? Marty’s men fell on the enemy, downing two more of them immediately and driving the others into a blind and panicked flight.
“Here we come, monster!” Marty roared. “Hold the line!”
“Hold the line!” Badis shouted. The warriors formed up in a defensive rank in front of Marty.
“Monster!” he bellowed. “Come get this!”
Seth wheeled about. It was tottering and unsteady, and at the sight of Marty and the grenade in his hand, it hissed.
Marty hurled the grenade.
Seth’s reflexes were not entirely gone. The pot arced neatly through the air, and the hulking monster swiped with one enormous paw. Marty thought Seth would bat the bomb aside. Even, for a split second, he feared that Seth would swat the grenade back in Marty’s direction, and that Marty would die in the explosion at the end of history’s first, and worst, tennis match.
But Seth caught the grenade.
Boom! Smoke enveloped Seth. Stinging sulfurous smoke and microfragments of pottery struck Marty in the face, making his eyes water. A ragged cheer went up from Marty’s men and from Narmer’s front line. Marty, his companions, and their warriors jogged toward the enemy.
The sky opened and rain crashed to the ground. In moments, the falling sheets of water obliterated the smoke, as if pushing it into the soil itself.
And Seth was revealed, alive. It was down on one knee and one hand, shaking its head slowly. It sucked in loud, rattling breaths. Blood ran down from its ear.
The grenade hadn’t killed it. It had been holding the bomb in its hands as it exploded, and it hadn’t died. Another grenade likely wouldn’t kill it, either. Unless Marty could get Seth to eat the explosive, or maybe hold it against its face.
Marty’s heart fell.
“Give me the grenade,” he said, and Gunther did.
Marty took a deep breath. There was nothing for it but hand-to-hand combat. And Marty would try to press the grenade against Seth in some vulnerable spot as it went off. Marty would die, but maybe he could kill Seth in the process.
Or could Marty maneuver Seth into falling on top of the grenade as it detonated?
No way.
“Look!” Kareem shouted.
Marty looked where the young Egyptian pointed; into the seething mass of humanity where the two armies stood toe to toe and pushed and bled each other. At first, he saw nothing new or interesting. But he knew Kareem had better eyesight than he did, vision that had served Marty in good stead before, so he kept looking.
He saw François and Surjan.
They were carrying a pot with a fuse. Like the grenade Marty held in his hand, except that it was significantly bigger. This pot was big enough that an adult human could curl up inside in a fetal position.
The last bomb. The big one.
But they stood behind the line of Narmer’s men, stuck. They moved left, and the enemy moved left. The enemy tracked them to the right, too, and each time they moved, the enemy pressed the soldiers in front of François and Surjan, keeping the line impenetrable, and the bomb trapped on the other side.
“Shield wall!” Marty yelled.
Surjan’s head snapped up. The acute senses that allowed him to smell water from two miles away let him hear Marty, too.
“Shield wall!” Surjan bellowed, and Marty barely heard him across the two lines of fighting men.
Seth was on its feet and rumbling toward Marty. Behind it came its standard banner, holding the carved staff and flag high. Marty hefted the last grenade.
Surjan’s men formed into a shield wall. Narmer’s soldiers to their left and right were confused. Surjan yelled at them, and then Narmer yelled, too.
Narmer’s men formed into a shield wall, too. It was ragged and gap-riddled, but it was approximately right. The Sethians’ human soldiers pounded on the heavy leather shields of the wall with swords and spears, and yelled taunts and jeers at their enemy.
Seth picked up speed.
Marty threw the grenade. It flew barely over Seth’s head. It struck the ground right behind the heels of a squad of the Sethian’s swordsmen, top-down, and exploded.
The blast knocked Seth off its feet again and sent it rolling sideways. Marty himself staggered back, wiping grit, sweat, and smoke from his face. The explosion also cleared the line in front of Surjan and François. They lurched to their feet, picked up the pot, and rushed forward.
“Light it!” Marty shouted to his companions.
He had to keep Seth near the bomb. Near enough that, when it exploded, Seth would be killed. Which might mean that Marty would also be killed.
Which would be worth the sacrifice.
Narmer’s men pushed the Sethians’ troops, inching them back one step at a time and peeling them away left and right past Seth.
Surjan and François set the bomb down beside Seth. François struck fire to the superweapon’s fuse, and then he and Surjan retreated.
Marty circled to the right. He felt like a fighter in a sparring match. You circled to look for weaknesses in your opponent’s stance and guard. You circled to make him move, to keep him off balance, and maybe to get around the outside of his defenses.
Here, he was circling to try to get Seth to watch him.
And turn its back on the bomb.
Seth shook itself and rose to its feet. “Human!” it bellowed. “Finally, your kind vomits up a champion who can stand against us, however briefly. Your triumphs have been admirable, in their fashion.”
“Why won’t you leave mankind alone?” Marty shouted. He had reached the point he wanted, so he stopped circling and prepared to battle. The smoking fuse grew shorter. “What gives you the right to prey on my people?”
Surjan and François retreated.
“Why won’t you leave cattle alone?” Seth huffed and struggled to breathe. “What gives you the right to herd and eat them?”
Marty shook his head. Not giving an answer, but counting down the seconds as they elapsed.
“Because you are superior!” Seth roared. It looked at the standard-bearer in its shadow and laughed. “This is not only the way of mankind, little man. It is the way of all life.”
The soldiers of both sides had settled into an uneasy stasis, the lines two paces apart, all eyes watching Seth and Marty.
“Hilariously, you believe that you are my superior.” Seth stepped back, stooped, and picked up the large pot with its smoking fuse. It hoisted the bomb casually over its own head, despite the rattling, ragged sound of its breath. “I have watched you throw these for two days. Do you think I do not understand how they work? Thank you for this. Let’s see if your King Narmer can catch it, shall we?”
Marty’s heart sank.
Then he saw a streak out of the corner of his eye. It was a javelin, and it was only the first. A storm of short javelins launched over the top of Narmer’s battle line.
They were on fire.
The javelins slammed into Seth and into the jar all at once. One moment, Marty was looking at the orange clay vessel gripped in the monster’s enormous hands, and the next, a deafening thunderclap and an orange ball of light threw Marty to the ground.
Marty screamed. Pain lanced his ribs. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt a tightening around his chest.
Before he could see, before he could hear again, he dragged himself to his feet and charged into the cloud of dust. Rain sloshed down around his ears and chest, his feet slipped in mud, and he kept upright as he drew his ankh from his belt.
He found Seth. The monster had lost both hands and both ears, and one eye was sealed shut with blood. Seth’s herald was crushed beneath his master, only one leg protruding. Seth’s breath came thick and throaty, and bloody foam bubbled from its lips. But as Marty approached, it roared, showing massive teeth, and rocked forward, trying to rise.
Marty leaped. He hurled himself on the enormous Sethian’s body, straddling the giant like a child astride his downed father when wrestling on a living room floor. And then he jammed the sharpened stem of his ankh down into Seth’s one good eye.
Seth screamed.
Marty lunged forward. He grabbed the arms of the ankh like a construction worker grips the handles of a jackhammer, putting the weight of his belly onto the loop and driving the silver emblem of life down into Seth’s head as a messenger of death.
Seth swung his arms. Screaming, he knocked Marty aside.
The giant rolled over, rose to all fours.
Then collapsed onto its face.
Narmer’s men cheered. “Narmer!” they shouted. “Narmer!”
Marty saw Gunther looming over him, his hands glowing as he pressed them against Marty’s chest.
Marty gasped as he felt bones snapping into place. He immediately vomited blood.
Sethians turned and fled. Some men fled with them, and others threw down their weapons to surrender. Some took up chanting the victorious king’s name. Marty rose and staggered away from Gunther’s ministrations. He tried to get at his ankh, but couldn’t; it was pinned beneath the monster’s head. However, within moments, Seth’s body began to shimmer.
Marty was exhausted. He sat down beside the corpse as it glowed, dissolving into mud that the rain beat into the sands and dissolved. The light that pooled on Seth’s body and then entered Marty made him feel younger and lighter and refreshed, but not refreshed enough.
He was level four now, whatever that really meant. But no amount of leveling would allow him to forget the corpses piled all across the battlefield.
Munatas.
Tafsut.
Others.
When he was certain that Seth was really gone, he lay back on the sand and let the rain pummel him.