31 July 30 BC
Screams of wounded and dying men rang out across the sand.
Golden grains, once dry and loose underfoot, clumped into red-soaked clods, as if the earth itself wept tears of blood. Beyond, shrouded by clouds of dust, a shape hundreds of cubits tall stabbed into the air like an accusing finger.
Saar wiped blood from his eyes and cleaned his sword on the body of the dead man at his feet. ‘Forward,’ he cried. ‘Drive them back to the river.’
As if his voice gave strength to those still standing, he watched his men pierce the Roman forces and continue until the first line broke and scattered.
‘Use your gifts, blessed sons and daughters. Show them the true power of we who are god-touched. Offer mighty Set his rightful tribute.’
The change in atmosphere was palpable. The excited energy of his soldiers lifted the hairs on his arms and neck. A prickle of warmth rushed over his skin. Fangs lengthened from his gum line to brush his tongue.
Many of his men tucked their swords away. Others tossed down their weapons and formed tight fists. None stopped fighting.
Stares and whispers among the enemy quickly changed to screams as Saar’s chosen soldiers exposed their deadly fangs. Men and women alike attacked like animals: biting, scratching, pulling, kicking.
Saar threw down his own sword, flexed his fingers and attacked. His first victim shrieked as he gripped the man’s head, yanking it to one side. A quivering expanse of naked flesh showed above his breastplate.
In that straining throat, Saar saw a pulse, beating against the skin like a trapped butterfly. Hunger swelled within him, moistening his tongue. With effort he tamped it back and closed his lips over the jumping flesh. He bit down in one smooth move.
Blood spurted into his mouth, hot and smooth, tinged with a sweet edge that characterised the taste of fear.
Two swallows later he let the man fall, unwilling to let the pleasure of feeding distract him. Instead, he moved on and saw, all around him, others of his men performing similar savage acts.
Even Kiya, after hurling her daggers into the back of a fleeing soldier, leapt on his flailing body and rode it to the ground. She bent over his throat and bit deep to access the blood beneath.
A rush of pride tingled through him as he watched her. Her beauty, her skill, her deadly accuracy. Never before had women fought at his side, but today, he could think of nothing better.
Despite the change in hand-to-hand tactics, Octavian’s men displayed an impressive level of discipline. After recovering from the initial shock they resumed their attack and several Alexandrian soldiers fell.
Saar smiled.
Those soldiers unmarked by his blood fell and quickly died. Others touched by the power of the mighty god Set, healed within moments. Though they bled and screamed like all others, they resumed battle after a brief rest, most of them as if untouched and often with renewed ferocity.
Through the heat of battle Saar felt a new tug on his senses. He had no other way to describe it. Deep inside, where he felt the minds of all of his God-Touched children, he recognised the touch of one he feared he’d never feel again. Hope soared within him.
His lungs tightened. ‘Mosi? As he spoke the name he saw the man approaching from the city, sword in hand. He laughed. ‘Mosi! In my hour of greatest need you return to my side.’
Anger crackled across the bond between them, stinging his skin like insect bites. Hot enough to steal his breath. He stumbled on the sand. Stared. ‘Why, Mosi?’
The answer became clear as he looked.
Mosi wore unfamiliar armour, his dark hair hidden beneath an ugly plumed helmet. He carried a Roman sword.
The hairs on Saar’s neck and arms snapped to attention. His innards tensed into painful knots. ‘No. You wouldn’t. Please, no.’
Their gazes locked.
Mosi smiled. A cold smile, the like of which Saar had never seen on his face before.
His sometime friend pointed with his sword and began to run. With him came a fresh unit of Roman soldiers, charging down the slope in tight formation. They sliced through the unprepared Alexandrian forces, scattering them into smaller, vulnerable groups.
Kiya screamed, her voice shrill with panic as the enemy charge washed over her. When Saar saw her again, she lay pinned to the sand by a heavy wooden spear.
Saar forgot the battle. Forgot Mosi. Forgot everything.
He dashed towards Kiya with single-minded purpose, beating or kicking those who strayed across his path. Before he could reach her, arrows filled the sky, temporarily blocking the sun like a flock of birds. Though they came from the direction of the city, they had nothing to do with his men. He barely had time to bellow a warning before the first arrow struck his shoulder. The impact spun him around. Pain robbed his breath. The next rain of arrows landed with deadly accuracy, peppering the Alexandrian forces until they resembled porcupines.
First to fall was a tall, thin man with eyes the colour of charred wood. Distantly, Saar recalled his name to be Aswad. Six arrows sprouted from his chest, neck and shoulder, their shafts shuddering in the dying sunlight. He held out his hands, screaming, then fell into the sand on his back. Aswad’s skin paled to the colour of faded parchment. His flesh withered, drying like an animal carcass left too long in the desert sun. Then the limbs began to crumble.
Saar froze, fingers slack on the arrow shaft protruding from his left shoulder. His heartbeat filled his ears like a steady drum until he could hear nothing else.
‘What—’
An explosion of pain cut him short. Searing agony as though he’d been dipped in hot tar. But not his pain. Saar gazed at Aswad and knew it was his pain. Knew that the younger man was going to die. With that knowledge, the rock of Saar’s mind cracked and a fragment broke free, like a piece of amber beneath a clumsy hammer.
He could hear it, the shattering of that secret place in his head which housed the connection to each of his children. Though he fought to gather the pieces, the act resembled futile attempts to repair broken pottery without clay.
Saar dropped to his knees. Sweat coursed down his back. It burned in his wounds and mixed with the blood before running down his skin like crimson tears. His exposed fangs lengthened from his gum line and slashed his lips and tongue.
Aswad’s body crumbled like an aged statue. Dust gathered beneath his writhing limbs until nothing remained but a large pile of golden sand, encased in bloodied clothes.
He gaped. Stared. Brushed his hand through the warm sand. It couldn’t be real. His eyes . . . perhaps an illusion. A trick of the fatigued mind.
Pain winked out, taking all sensation of Aswad with it. The place he once inhabited in Saar’s mind ached like a raw wound; a deep gouge in the mountain face of his senses.
Saar clenched his fists to stop them shaking. A deep breath in, then out again, but the drums in his head intensified. He couldn’t stop them. More arrows rained from the sky. Fresh screams rent the air as the deadly projectiles met their targets.
To his left, another of his children screamed and grasped her stomach. Eyes bulging, body shaking, Moswen stared at her belly where the same terrifying decay consumed her flesh. Sand cascaded from the tips of her fingers, climbing both arms and meeting at her chest. Her legs collapsed beneath the weight of her trunk and spilled sand across the ground.
Saar gasped as the pain began anew along his abdomen.
Another fragment chipped free in his mind, the piece called ‘Moswen.’
Her screams cut short as the decay claimed her face, and Saar felt the loss like a deep pit in his head. He shrieked and gnashed his teeth until blood filled his mouth. It seemed to take hours, though he knew mere moments had passed.
Battle raged around him, a roaring, shrieking, thunderous clash of determined forces vying for supremacy and control of the field. No time to sit. To lie still. Fight, fight, always fight, pushing forward, attacking, driving the enemy back.
When Saar eventually scrambled to his feet, a sea of panicked face
s stared back, a small circle of calm in the midst of the swirling storm of fighting.
Nobody spoke.
For long moments Saar could think of nothing to say. Shock, fear and anger stoppered his voice. Then the sounds of continued battle returned him to his senses.
‘I—’ he licked his lips. ‘Those unworthy of our gift will return to the sand. Look, I stand. You stand. Set blesses only those worthy and destroys the weak. Take heart in your strength and fight on.’
It worked. For a short time. Then Mosi’s archers recovered from their own shock and fired another volley. Three more arrows punctured Saar’s body; spine, thigh and buttocks.
He stumbled. Fell again. Saw every god-touched soldier within two hundred yards do the same. Even those beyond the line of fire pitched to the ground with agonised howls and shrieks, all of them clutching at buttocks, spine or thigh.
Close by, a soldier almost as old as himself crashed to the ground. Blood poured from the side of his mouth. ‘Help me!’
‘Adofo, are you hurt?’ Saar demanded.
‘No.’ The other man clutched his thigh. ‘I’ve taken no arrow, nor felt any sword’s bite.’ Yet florets of glistening red formed beneath his clothing, spreading from three distinct and familiar points.
Victory and the chances of attaining it visibly slipped from Saar’s grasp. Over his shoulder, he saw the enemy forces form two groups. One broke off to march on the city whilst the other stayed to deal with the flagging Alexandrian men. The few still standing either dropped their weapons or fled towards the river.
‘Fight. Stay and fight, you craven beasts.’ Saar yanked the arrow from his thigh. Blood jetted into the air.
The battlefield dipped in and out of focus. Cold crawled through Saar’s limbs. His leaden legs dragged beneath him, demanding a brief pause while his god-touched body handled the blood loss.
‘We heal,’ he cried, though his voice trembled. ‘Warriors touched by Set are blessed with his strength and resilience. His blood gives us unending life.’
Adofo’s body exploded in a skin-shearing blast of desert sand.
Saar’s words morphed into a scream. His back arched. He felt pain like thousands of claws pulling his skin, shredding it from his flesh one agonising scrap at a time.
It took seconds. Felt like hours.
The drum-like thud of his heartbeat reached a fevered pitch and when he next opened his eyes, Saar realised he was lying on his face. The moisture on his cheeks was not blood or sweat.
Staring at the darkening sky, Saar fought to catch his breath. He felt the dry caress of the wind on his cheek and the tickle of sand on his neck and shoulders. He wondered why he could still feel them. Why the sting of sweat in his cuts and scrapes burned in the heat of the sun. As blood pulsed from the wound in his thigh he realised that the flow remained steady.
He was no longer healing.
Saar turned his head and sought his immediate children; the seven men and seven women touched directly by his gift.
He found them one by one and realised that with Adofo, Aswad and Moswen already gone, the others might soon follow. Hasina, Ife, Faki, Jamila, Jafari, Kakra, Atsu, Musa, Nubia, Kiya and Mosi.
Mosi . . .
‘You betrayed us.’ Saar saw him lying on the sand close by, cupping both hands around a wound on his thigh. He felt a burning desire to touch the other man’s cheek, to brush away the blood and tears on his smooth skin. Instead he spat in his face. ‘You betrayed me.’
‘I had to correct your mistake,’ said Mosi.
‘Saving our home from Antony’s idiocy is no mistake.’
‘Are you so blinded by your hate of the man? He loves Cleopatra.’
‘His love brings ruin to the rest of us.’ Blinking away tears, Saar tried to stand. On the fourth failure he lay still. ‘If we lose this battle Octavian will add us to his growing pile of toys. But I could stop him. I could save us all if you would let me.’
Mosi sighed and lay back. He took his hands from his thigh and let the blood flow free, a slow pulse that would surely kill him.
Saar growled through his teeth. ‘Alexandria will fall because of your weakness. Our queen. Our home. Our families.’
‘I have no family.’
‘You have me. Your god-touched brothers and sisters. Was I not good to you?’
‘You were. Once.’
‘Yet you reject my gift and kill us all.’
‘Believe what you will but I won’t share your illusions. This is no gift. We’re dying.’ Mosi heaved himself into a sitting position long enough to point across the battlefield. The gesture encompassed the hundreds of men dying from three distinct arrow wounds. Wounds from arrows still embedded in Saar’s body.
‘Your wounds destroy all of us. Our bodies are linked to yours. Your gift becomes weaker with every child, and our every breath, thought and desire rides on your whim.’
Mosi’s insight startled Saar into sullen silence.
‘And with every death of a man or woman “blessed” with Set’s black blood, a piece of you dies too.’
Across the battlefield more god-touched soldiers succumbed to Saar’s injuries and to some extent he felt them all.
Saar scrunched his eyes shut, clenched his fists and squeezed down on each connection. He began his own battle to shut down his senses and keep them out as he’d learnt to do years ago.
But it was all too much. Too close. Too many.
‘We’re dying, Saar. All of us. Accept it.’ Mosi’s gaze met his, all soft browns and flecks of gold. He smiled and, despite his impending death, peace filled his features.
‘All of us . . .’ Saar sat up. ‘All of us.’
Panic seized him.
Scrambling away on his hands and knees, he made his painful way across the sand, mindless of the decaying bodies he crushed on the way.
‘All of us,’ he said again, swallowing the bitter rush of bile at the back of his throat.
Kiya lay a short distance away, still pinned fast by the spear shaft through her abdomen.
Tears trickled down her cheeks, stained red. Blood pumped from her thigh and more oozed into the sand beneath her. ‘My love . . . why? How?’
‘Be still.’ He touched her face. ‘I’ll save you.’
‘You told me we would live together forever.’
Tears dampened his own cheeks. ‘We will. I promise.’
She held out her hand. Sand slid from her fingertips.
Saar moaned and grasped his head with both hands. ‘No. Not you too.’
She smiled, even as the terrible decay consumed her arms and legs. ‘My love, you must win. Show them what it means to be god-touched.’
‘I can’t do this without you.’
‘Kiss me, dear love.’
Saar leaned forward, eyes closed, eager to enjoy one last taste of her lips. His mouth brushed the dry coarseness of desert sand. When he looked again, all that remained of Kiya were the clothes she once wore, and the spear shaft which then fell flat to the ground.
Physical pain meant nothing any more. Cramps and convulsions rocked Saar’s body but he barely felt them. Numbed to it all, he stirred his fingers through the sand that once made his lover’s body and felt . . .
‘I’m done,’ he whispered.
As he spoke the words, the last traces of Kiya’s presence cracked free from his mind and crumbled away.
The sole survivor of his fourteen children sighed and touched his shoulder. ‘It’s over. This curse of yours isn’t the future. Human men and women must rule.’
Saar gripped the bloodied linen of Kiya’s dress. The lingering warmth mocked his pain. He held it to his face, inhaling the sweet, familiar scent of figs and cumin. ‘I love like a man,’ he whispered. ‘I fight like a man. I’m as human as any other.’
‘You stopped being human the day you first drank blood to pay your debt to Set. It ends now. Here. With us.’
Saar gagged as Mosi’s hands wrapped around his throat, once so warm and loving, now hard an
d cruel. The last rays of the dying sun caught the edge of a bronze dagger with a double curved blade. The gems in the hilt sparkled like tiny red eyes.
Mosi wept as he plunged it home.
Saar screamed, writhing as the deadly weapon pierced his chest and sank into his heart.
Chapter Four