The Age of Ra

4. Steven

One of David's earliest memories was of his brother being born.

Not the birth itself. He was kept well out of the way while that happened, bundled off to his grandparents' for a night and a day.

But on returning home, he was keenly aware that everything had changed in the house. His father looked even more tired and preoccupied than he normally did, while the housekeeper, Mrs Plomley, was all grins and bosomy welcome, as though David had been away for weeks, not twenty-four hours. New toys — big primary-coloured plastic ones — littered the main hallway. In the library the butler, Jepps, was busy unwrapping more gifts for the new arrival and making a careful note of the donors' names.

Then there was the baby itself, lying in the basinet by his mother's bedside, curled like a caterpillar on a leaf.

''His name is Steven,'' David's mother said. ''Why don't you say hello?''

David leaned over the basinet. Say hello? He couldn't see the point. The baby was sound asleep, scarcely moving. It wouldn't hear. Or it might hear and wake up, and David knew enough about babies to know that it was important to be quiet around them and not disturb them.

''He's your brother.'' Cleo Westwynter's face was doughy white, her smile blurry around the edges. ''When he's a bit bigger you can play with him. He'll be your best friend.''

David already had friends at nursery. He didn't need another.

He didn't say hello, or anything else, to little Steven. He simply turned and walked away from the basinet and staggered across a desert plain on feet that were rubbed raw, constantly tripping over small rocks and stumbling in crevices. The sun seemed to have boiled his brainpan dry. No more headache, just a scoured-out emptiness behind his eyes. At one point he found himself face down in a patch of scrubby grass, and couldn't recall falling. All he knew was his six-year-old brother was jumping up and down on his back and whipping him with a dressing gown cord.

David was under strict orders not to retaliate when Steven got too rowdy. What he should do was remove himself from the situation. Calmly get up and walk away.

But he had had enough. A game of horsey had turned into something more violent, and this was after a morning in which Steven had broken the lid off David's favourite sarcophagus toy, the one with the articulated Tutankhamen figurine inside. With a growl he threw Steven off and started punching him, and Steven shrieked and bawled, and their mother came running and scolded David and sent him to his room, and it was unfair; it was so unfair; it was not fair at all that out of twenty paratroopers, twenty comrades, he should be the only one left alive. Of course he wanted to survive. Who wouldn't? But not like this, alone, the last of a stick. To make matters worse, he was the commanding officer, the one with responsibility. His stick. He'd always put his men first before. Their lives, he believed, were more important than his. Yet now, through no fault of his own, he remained while the rest of them had gone to the Field of Reeds. That wasn't right. That wasn't how it was supposed to be.

You looked out for those you were put in charge of. That was one of the fundamental, unshakeable rules. His father told him this the day Steven joined him at boarding school.

''Keep an eye on your brother,'' Jack Westwynter said, having drawn David aside for a private word, while around them cars pulled up and trunks were offloaded and sons said farewell to parents and cars pulled away. ''He's not as sensible as you and he's not as bright as you. You've built a hell of a reputation at this place. You're a hard act to follow, and Steven may well not live up to the standards you've set. That'll make it tough for him, and you must help. Do you understand?''

David nodded.

''Good lad.''

Jack Westwynter slipped his older son a twenty, then went back to the car, where Steven was trying to disentangle himself from their mother and her tight hug and her tears.

David put the money in his pocket. He was accustomed to his father paying him to do things. His father lived in a world of money. As current CEO of the family business, Jack Westwynter's life was one long series of fiscal exchanges. Cash and kin were synonymous to him. There was no difference.

Within a fortnight, Steven had got into trouble. He'd taken to sitting at the wrong table in the dining hall. There was an informal hierarchy in force. Certain areas of the hall were, by tradition, reserved for pupils of a certain seniority. A first-year did not eat where only sixth-formers were supposed to.

But Steven didn't care. Steven had no respect for this well-entrenched system of segregation. Steven declared that one table was as good as any other. He should be free to eat where he pleased.

Three boys in David's year took it upon themselves to teach Westwynter Minor the error of his ways. They beat him up quite badly, then for good measure hacked off his long, trendy side-lock of hair with a penknife.

Westwynter Major, in turn, felt obliged to demonstrate that if you attacked one brother, you attacked them both.

''Three against one?'' David said as he kicked the living shit out of the bullies behind the cricket pavilion. ''Fucking cowards!''

Afterwards he went to Steven and told him that this was the first and last time he would ever stand up for him like that. Steven had to develop some common sense. You didn't get anywhere by antagonising people.

''So keep my nose clean, huh, Dave?'' Steven sneered through black eye and swollen lip. His head looked lopsided, thanks to the missing side-lock. He had been growing it since the age of ten. ''Be a good little boy? Do as I'm told? And then I'll get to be a prefect, like you next term. And captain of the First Fifteen. And head of the school senet club. And, oh why not, head of the Upper Sixth as well. Everyone's all-round bloody hero.''

''You've got five years to go, and I'm not going to be here to protect you for four of them.''

''I don't need you to protect me.''

''Fine. Then I won't.''

''Fine.''

Steven was a little more careful from then on, however. He flouted the school rules whenever possible and was a regular visitor to the headmaster's study and the regular bearer of the stripes of a good arse-thrashing. But he never again trespassed on the unwritten codes which the pupils themselves lived by. And after David left for university Steven prospered in his own way, setting himself up as a black marketeer and trafficking lucratively in such prohibited items as cigarettes, alcohol, and porn. He smuggled the contraband into school and sold it at inflated prices, and David often wondered what their father would have done if he'd ever found out. Would he have punished Steven, or congratulated him on his entrepreneurialism? Profit, after all, was what drove Jack Westwynter on. It was his pole star, his compass. It gave him a sense of direction, and David's own sense of direction was hopelessly confused. He should be heading west. He thought he was. But the sun would not stay still in the sky. It kept turning around, pirouetting, dancing tantalisingly. When it ought to be behind him, suddenly it was in front. When it ought to be directly overhead, suddenly it was somewhere to his left or right.

Ra's Solar Barque was no longer cruising in a straight line across the heavens. Someone was asleep at the tiller.

So David thought, although a precise voice deep inside him wanted him to know that the Solar Barque was sailing as true as ever. He was the one meandering, straying, circling. His course was wayward. Steven's course was wayward. He didn't do as David did and join the family firm. A seat on the board of AW Games had been waiting for David the moment he stood up from the exam-room desk having completed the last of his finals. He'd been welcomed in by the company executives. They'd said they had high hopes for him. A sound brain. His father's son. A chip off the old block. They were looking forward to working with him.

Steven, on the other hand, shunned further education and joined the navy.

He joined the navy because there was a war on and the armed services needed able bodies and the Parent Hegemony needed defending. Or so he said.

But it was obvious that he did it because it was the exact opposite of what everyone expected him to do and wished him to do.

Six months later, following the Battle of the Aegean, Steven was listed as missing in action.

Just as David would be. Probably was already.

He sat on a rocky outcrop overlooking a valley that was wide and brown, shot with pink by the rays of the setting sun. A bird wheeled above, wings outstretched, riding the evening thermals. At first David had taken it for a Saqqara Bird and had felt a faint stab of hope. Even now, some priest back in Cyprus was coming round from a fever-trance and informing David's superiors that he had found him. The army hadn't written him off after all. The government might have ordered Petra to be bombed but the Second Paratroop Regiment had refused to give up on its men.

But the bird was in fact a real bird, a vulture, and it was here for only one reason.

David felt empty. There was nothing left inside him. He was a shell, a brittle man-shaped crust enclosing a vast, exhausted void. He had gone as far as he was able to. There was no more distance to go.

He knew it. The vulture knew it too.

The Horusite ba lance lay across his lap. He was trying to summon up his last dregs of strength in order to pick up the weapon and place it against his head.

Gibbs had been right. There was no other way out. Death was inevitable. But at least, like this, you had some control over it. You could decide the when and the where and the snap-of-the-fingers how.

The life beyond awaited. In Iaru, the Field of Reeds, David would plough, sow, and harvest for all eternity. He would toil happily, with Steven beside him. There would be no more turmoil and dispute between the two of them. They would be as they were always meant to be, brothers who loved one another and forgave one another.

David tried to anoint himself from his phial but his hands were weak; his fingers couldn't grip the top to unscrew it. He gave up, thinking that simply saying the Prayer would suffice. But he couldn't manage that either. His lips were rigid, too cracked and flaked for speech, his throat too dry.

An unceremonised death, then. His ka would still make its way to Iaru, but perhaps not as swiftly as he'd have liked. There would be a time in limbo, before he at last found his way to the land of the dead.

He checked the ba meter on the lance. After Gibbs had used it, there was now just enough charge left for a single shot.

It would do.

The lance seemed to weigh as much as a bar of solid iron. David braced it beneath his chin and groped for the trigger.

There was light, golden light, and a spray of blood.

David lay on his back, feeling the blood cooling and congealing on his skin.

He could hear a babble of voices and knew they belonged to the souls of the dead in the Field of Reeds. The sound grew louder as his ka leapt free of his body.

Leapt free into the purpling sky.

Into the fading sun.