The Age of Ra Read online

  He stirred.

  Still alive. Just.

  David knelt. Maradi blinked up with scarlet eyes. His mouth moved, wordlessly, or so it seemed.

  ''I told you I would kill you,'' David said. Or thought he said. His ears were ringing too loudly for him to hear even his own voice.

  Maradi's expression was resigned - the irony of it.

  David rammed the heel of his palm against the base of the man's nose, driving bone and cartilage upwards into the brain.

  Outside, dust hung across the valley in a red-brown fog. Through its skeins and swirls David could see that the place had been devastated. This portion of Petra was more of a ruin than it had ever been. The temple façades were gone, a few spars of column jutting here and there from landslides of rock. The rest was red, cratered moonscape.

  The Eagles had dropped dual-cell fusion bombs. Green Osirian ba in one half, white Isisian ba in the other. Within the casing, a thin dividing wall of ceramic that shattered on impact, bringing the two divine essences into sudden contact. The result: a violent melding of diverse powers and a half-kiloton yield.

  Having delivered their payload, the jets were now gone. David doubted they would return. Job done.

  He went in search of McAllister and Gibbs.

  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 mi
les 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.

  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 c
lub. 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.