The Age of Ra

3. West

The desert hissed and shimmered. It was earth that had been flayed by the sun, a patch of planet stripped of all softness, peeled back to the bone. Wadis spoke of rain that came abruptly and in torrents, scored channels in the ground, then vanished, offering little relief. Plants here lived a half-existence, deep roots tapping for moisture while shoots were brittle to the point of crumbling. Snakes and scorpions raced from shade to shade.

Three men came walking. Two of them supported the third, who hobbled along on one leg. The other leg ended in a ragged mass of flesh, a thing that hung limp and useless and looked only vaguely like a foot. A belt was tied around the thigh in a tourniquet.

McAllister had insisted on being left behind at Petra. David had insisted that if McAllister didn't shut up, he would put a bolt of ba through his head. McAllister had asked him to do just that. David had hoisted the sergeant up by the armpits and set off.

They had no radio equipment. Theirs and the Nephthysians' had been buried by the bombs. They had no weapons except a single Horusite ba lance, which David had retrieved from the body of a dead Nephthysian. All of their own weaponry had, of course, been confiscated earlier, and the bombs had buried that too. They had no food or water. They had been deprived of their emergency rations and bottles by their captors.

All they had was themselves.

Getting far away from Petra was vital. The bombardment was bound to attract attention and the area would soon be teeming with Nephthysian troops.

They had to go west.

West would get them across the al-Jayb river and onto the Sinai Peninsula. Any other direction would take them deeper into hostile territory. West was their only hope. West, and the one neutral country left in the world.

''How far?''

This was Gibbs's question. David didn't know the answer for sure.

''Fifty, sixty miles,'' he replied confidently. ''No more than that.''

The sun towered down on them. David was already acutely thirsty and hungry.

They would never make it to Freegypt.

They kept going anyway.

Night was bitterly cold, the stars like flecks of ice.

McAllister groaned dazedly in the dark. David sat with him, trying to distract him and keep him quiet by chatting to him in a low voice. Sound carried at night in the desert. A whisper was a shout.

''Ah'm such a heid-the-ball,'' McAllister complained in one of his lucid moments. ''Getting my leg all mashed up an' that.''

''Yes, it was your fault a chunk of cave roof collapsed on you,'' David said. ''What an idiot.''

''Ah'm just holding you up. You have to leave me.''

''What, and miss your cheery Scottish temperament?''

''Go an' fuck yourself, sir.''

''That's the spirit.''

At dawn, as much through luck as skill, David managed to catch and kill a lizard. He chiselled off its head with a sharp stone and they took turns to drink drips of its blood. Then they took turns to vomit.

The sun blazed, Ra at his least forgiving. The paratroopers draped their battledress blouses over their heads and felt their bare backs and shoulders start to blister. The horizon was one long wavering line, melting into the blue of the sky. However far they trudged it never came any closer.

Soon David had almost stopped thinking. All that filled his mind was thirst. His tongue was a lumpen, desiccated object in his mouth; it no longer felt a part of him. His brain throbbed inside his skull like a prisoner beating on the walls of his cell.

McAllister was scarcely walking any more. David and Gibbs were carrying him, and every step they took with his extra weight seemed to drain one more ounce of hydration out of them, one more erg of strength.

Eventually they set him down in the feathery shade of a tamarisk bush. They knew they were not going to pick him up again. Their arms were too stiff to lift him any more, and McAllister was too pain-wracked and feverish to bear any more of being lifted.

A few words hissed from his parched lips.

David leaned close.

''Could murder a brew,'' McAllister said.

''Afraid we're all out,'' said David.

''Whisky?''

''I seem to have mislaid my hip flask.''

Even more quietly, so that Gibbs couldn't hear, McAllister said, ''They bombed us.''

''I know.''

''Our own planes. Cleansing the scene.''

''I know,'' David said again.

''To shut us up. And so there'd be no bodies. No evidence. Nothing for the Nephs to parade on TV. Just a ruddy great mess of rubble that both sides can claim the other did.''

The term that Captain Maradi had used popped up in David's mind: deniability. ''We all know we're expendable.''

''Still,'' said McAllister. ''The stupid wee bastards.''

''That's the military, Sergeant McAllister. That, in a nutshell, is who we work for. A bunch of stupid wee bastards. And some might say we're stupid wee bastards ourselves, for working for them. Look on the bright side. The bombing freed us.''

''Not that that was the plan.'' McAllister gave a cough that was a laugh or a laugh that was a cough. He fumbled with the small, shatterproof glass phial that hung on a chain around his neck. ''You'll… you'll do the necessary for me, sir?''

It was a last request. David nodded.

''You're not so bad, you know,'' McAllister said. ''For a poncey English posho.''

''I'll be sure to have that carved on my gravestone.''

Within the hour, the sergeant was dead.

David unstoppered the phial and dribbled myrrh onto McAllister's bare chest. At the same time he murmured the Prayer of Anointment.

''Lord Osiris, Ruler of the Netherworld, I commend to you the ka of Malcolm McAllister, that his sins may be judged kindly by wise Maat in the Hall of Judgement at the Weighing of the Heart, and that he may pass on safely into the care of your nephew Anubis for all eternity.''

The myrrh's sickly-sweet odour rose in David's nostrils, so cloying he wanted to gag.

''With this oil I purify and sanctify his mortal remains and raise him to a state of holy grace, that he may be worthy in your eyes, O Hundred-Named One.''

He and Gibbs did not have the energy, or for that matter the tools, to bury the body. They had no choice but to leave it out in the open for the jackals to find and dispose of.

''You'll do the same for me,'' Gibbs said. ''When the time comes. Won't you, sir?''

''The time isn't coming,'' said David, striding purposefully on.

Frigid night. Relentless day.

The landscape became no smoother, no less stone-strewn and rugged. Nothing changed except the amount of effort it took to keep going. They must have covered sixty miles by now. They must have covered far more. Gibbs kept casting sullen looks David's way, as if to say, You lied to me. David kept ignoring the looks, as if to say, So fucking sue me.

There was no one else. There was nothing here. Just desolation. You could have called the place Ra-forsaken, but for the fact that Ra was there most of the time, a pitiless shining presence, baking the sky, blast-furnacing the air.

Gibbs was flagging. For every twenty paces David took, he managed ten. David repeatedly had to stop and wait for him to catch up.

Gibbs was mumbling. Mostly he was cursing his luck, wishing he'd never joined the army, sometimes hurling veiled insults at David, sometimes talking to his own father as though Gibbs senior were strolling alongside him. It wasn't quite delirium but it wasn't far off.

Gibbs was refusing to take one more step. He had had enough. They weren't anywhere near Freegypt. They were never going to reach it. They were going to die here in this fucking desert where nobody would even find their bones.

He made a lunge for David, catching him off-guard. Before David could stop him he had snatched the Horusite ba lance off his back.

''Gibbs,'' David said, ''give that back to me. Now. That's an order.''

Wild-eyed, raw-skinned, Gibbs shook his head. ''Can't do that, sir.''

David moved carefully towards him, one hand extended. ''Give me the god rod, Private Gibbs. Please.''

''Don't come any closer.'' Gibbs twisted the lance's power regulator to narrow beam setting. His thumb quivered over the trigger.

''Killing me isn't going to help,'' David said. ''We need each other. We need to do this together. We can make it, I promise.''

''With all due respect, sir, I don't believe you. And anyway, it's not you I'm planning to kill.''

''Gibbs…''

''I'm not going to spend days dying out here. Not when there's a better way.''

''Gibbs! No!''

Gibbs flipped the ba lance to vertical, lodging its falcon-head nozzle under his chin. He pressed the trigger.

A flash of gold.

A mist of crimson.

A headless corpse crumpled to the ground.

One month ago, Private Gibbs had turned twenty years old.

Alone, westward, David Westwynter walked on.

And on.

Knowing that with every step, there would be just more desert. Over the next rise, and the next — just more desert.