Already a few men were stumbling out of the barracks, daggers in hand, blinking into the dark as the young soldier continued to sound the alarm. Somewhere in the din, Rae heard the urgent call of the nightjar.
Kroo! Kroo! Kroo!
The two burning braziers at the front of the building toppled with a metallic clatter, spilling their red-hot embers onto the pools of naft that had been poured at their bases. There was awhooshing sound as the pools burst into flame. In the next instant, twin fires began traveling along the trails of naft the men had poured on each side, alighting the heavy curtains as they went. There were shrieks of surprise and pain as men who’d been coming out of their barracks were torched, their clothes and hair catching fire as they tried to push through the flaming curtains. Rae had never seen anything burn so hot, so fast.
The House of the Medjay was all smoke and screaming and chaos. A second later, Rae and Omari were buffeted by a burst of force as the naft-soaked armory behind them exploded. Rae stumbled and nearly fell, but Omari yanked her to her feet and kept running. Their only chance at survival was to get away in the confusion, to vanish into the night before the Medjay got their bearings—
Someone ahead was blocking her way. The hem of his robes was aflame.
It was Big Ears, the man who’d menaced her with a knife when she’d arrived at the first Horizon meeting. He’d lost his mask in the fray, and she could see the panic on his face as he tried desperately to extinguish his robes. Then, one of the Medjay soldiers spotted him.
Rae moved to intervene, but she couldn’t get there in time. The young soldier closed the distance first, spun the rebel around, and delivered a savage blow to his jaw. Big Ears reeled and would have gone down, but the soldier caught him and, in one fluidmovement, thrust his dagger into the rebel’s gut.
No!
Before Rae could react, Omari pushed her aside and hurtled toward the two combatants. He wrested the dagger from the soldier’s grip, grabbed him by the back of the head with one massive hand, and bashed his skull against the mud-brick wall. The soldier’s head bounced back, and he collapsed, leaving a circle of blood on the wall.
Panting, Omari hoisted Big Ears’s arm around his shoulders and started to drag him away. “Let’s go!” he shouted to Rae.
She moved to follow when another soldier ran toward her from the left, attempting to cut off her escape.
“Hey! Stop!” The soldier’s face was monstrous in the firelight, ash-black and bubbling with burns. Rae reached for her dagger, but her fingers closed around the handle of the sekhem scepter instead. With a primal cry, she struck out at the soldier with a savage swing, the heavy stone paddle connecting with his shoulder and dropping him to the ground. He lay writhing and clutching his shattered arm, adding his screams to the clamor.
Rae felt fingers close around her ankle. She gasped and tried to wrest her foot free, but the grip was too strong. Then a body slammed into her hips, sweeping her legs out from under her. Rae lost her grip on the scepter as she fell and landed heavily on her back.
The impact left her breathless—but only for a moment. Her attacker still had her legs pinned, but the scepter was only an arm’s length away.If I could just reach it…
She twisted, groping for the weapon. Her fingertips brushed its handle when suddenly the man mounted her. It was the soldier who’d had stabbed Big Ears—apparently Omari hadn’t finished him off, after all.
The soldier panted, his eyes wild, and his head was a bloodymess from where he’d hit the wall. He struck her once, the blow like a thunderclap. Rae brought her arms in to protect her face. He kept hitting her, again and again, his face contorted with rage. Rae tried to block the blows, but her head was swimming, hervision darkening at the edges.
“I want to see your face before I kill you,” the soldier snarled, grabbing Rae’s black hood and pulling it free, “you stinking—”
The insult died on his lips as his rage transformed to confusion at her young battered face.
“A woman?”
It was only a moment’s hesitation, a slight shifting of his weight on top of her, but it was enough time for Rae to reach out and grasp the sekhem scepter. Her fingers closed around its handle, and with every ounce of strength she had left, she struck the soldier’s temple with a sickening, wet crack. A profusion of blood sprayed across his startled face, and his eyes, still fixed on hers, went still. Then he slumped on top of her, dead.
Rae’s breath came in short bursts as her body flooded with panic. The soldier’s head lay on her chest, his blood soaking her clothes, the smell of it nearly as suffocating as the crushing weight of his body.
Horrified, she pushed his corpse off her and scrambled to her feet, the scepter still gripped in her hand. She stared back at the soldier, lying on his stomach on the ground, his head a bloody ruin. The world spun.
Rae shook her head to clear her vision. There was no time to waste. She only had seconds before someone would notice her and attack. The edge of the building was just ahead. If she could just make it back into the city, she’d be safe. Many of the other soldiers were still emerging from their barracks and fighting the fire, still trying to comprehend what was happening.
She ran, feeling the weight of the scale armor under her robes.
Don’t hold your breath.
There was a cry behind her. More shouting.
Don’t stop.
Her robes stuck to her skin, saturated and stinking of death.
Run faster than your fear.
She ran beyond the reach of the firelight. The shadows embraced her, but even then, she didn’t stop. When the job was done, the rebels were to scatter to the four winds, so that it would be impossible for the Medjay to track them to any one place. So Rae ran through the darkened streets until they fell away to farmland, until she’d made it all the way up the path to Omari’s workshop. Only then, once she’d pushed through the doorway, did she stop running.
