Maahes

The man dragging Hori toward the temple had a knife between his teeth.

Maahes lowered his own blade across the doorway.

Beyond it, Leontopolis rang with the noise of men breaking things. Pottery smashed in the lane. Someone called for water, then stopped. The stranger staggered up the last step with Hori’s arm hooked over his shoulders, his mouth stretched around the knife’s wooden grip.

Hori’s feet left two dark tracks on the stone.

“Put him down,” Maahes said.

The stranger looked up into the lion’s face. His knees struck the step. He let the wounded temple keeper slide from his shoulder and flung both hands over his head.

Hori hit the ground with a grunt.

Maahes caught him before his skull struck stone. Blood warmed the god’s palm. An arrow had passed through the meat above Hori’s knee; the shaft broke off short against his robe.

“Knife,” Maahes said.

The stranger spat it out. It clattered down the steps.

“For his leg,” he gasped. “I was cutting—”

From beneath Hori’s robe dangled a strip of linen, half severed. The stranger had tied it above the wound. His own tunic was torn across the belly where he had taken it.

Maahes moved his blade aside.

“Inside.”

The stranger crawled past him before trying to stand.

Hori clutched the god’s wrist. He had tended these doors for so long that a shallow hollow marked the place where he sat to mend the temple sandals. Now his mouth worked without sound.

Maahes bent close.

“The little gate,” Hori whispered. “They came through the little gate.”

Behind them, from within the enclosure, a woman screamed.

The Open Court

Maahes carried Hori through the entrance passage and laid him beside a column. At the far end of the court three men were wrenching a chest through the service doorway. Another stood over a fallen porter, waiting for him to move.

The god crossed the court.

The man over the porter turned at the scrape of Maahes’s foot. He jabbed upward with a spear. Maahes caught the shaft beneath his arm, pulled the man within reach, and drove his knife below the lifted shield.

The shield struck the paving first.

The other men dropped the chest.

There was room for one of them in the little doorway. All three tried to take it.

Maahes roared.

The sound filled the enclosed court and came back from the stone walls. The men at the gate flattened against one another. One fell; another ran over him.

But the people huddled beside the well also broke and ran.

A basket overturned. A child disappeared beneath the press of bodies entering the passage to the inner rooms. Maahes heard her cry cut short, saw a bare foot trapped under a man’s heel.

He reached into the crowd, lifted the man bodily out of the way, and set him against the wall. The girl pulled herself free. She stared at the god’s bloody knife, then at his teeth, and backed into the darkness.

“Stay by the well,” he told them.

No one stayed.

Across the court, the last raider squeezed through the service entrance. Maahes could hear him scrambling in the lane. A dozen strides would bring him down. Beyond him were the others, carrying away the temple’s vessels, the grain, whatever else they had stripped from the storerooms.

Then Hori cried out.

A man had emerged from the shadows behind the column. He wore a broad leather belt hung with stolen cups. He held Hori upright with one hand twisted into his robe; with the other he pressed a short spear beneath the keeper’s jaw.

“Stay there, lion.”

Maahes stopped.

The man’s gaze flicked from the dead spearman to the knife. His own weapon trembled once against Hori’s neck. He steadied it.

“Your mother has cats enough,” he said. “Let her keep this one alive.”

Hori shut his eyes.

Maahes looked at the man’s feet. The right heel was raised. He was preparing to run, but not through the little doorway. He wanted the broad gate behind him, the straight road out.

“You will not reach it,” Maahes said.

“Then come and stop me.”

He shoved Hori forward.

The keeper’s wounded leg folded. Maahes caught him, and the spear struck the god across the shoulder, slicing through mane and skin. Before Maahes could close his hand on the shaft, the man had dragged it back and fled into the entrance passage.

Pain opened hot along the god’s collarbone.

He set Hori down.

The man was still within reach. Maahes could hear the stolen cups knocking against his thighs.

Behind the god, something cracked overhead.

A burning bundle rolled from the storeroom roof into the court.

Beneath the Beam

Flame crawled along the dry reeds under the roof. A raider had fired the storeroom before retreating; now the wind through the open service gate drove sparks toward the inner passage.

The girl was still there.

Maahes saw her crouching behind the others, one hand clamped around her bruised foot. Smoke lowered beneath the roof. The adults bent under it, trying to find a way back into the court.

At the outer gate, the man with the cups stopped running.

He had seen the fire. He looked from it to Maahes, then stepped backward into the street and vanished.

The god took one stride after him.

A roof pole fell across the inner doorway.

The people behind it shrank away. Fire caught in the curtain above their heads. A woman tried to pull it down and staggered back, slapping at her burning palm.

Maahes turned.

He drove his shoulder beneath the sagging timber. The wood bit into the spear wound. He lifted until a gap opened below it, high enough for a bent man.

“Come through.”

They crowded forward.

“One at a time.”

The first man ducked beneath his arm. A woman followed carrying a baby wrapped so tightly that only its nose showed. Then another man, supporting his father. Maahes felt their shoulders knock against him as they passed.

The beam shifted.

He put his knife down and raised his other hand to brace it.

Beyond his fingers, the wooden lintel split. The great door on the passage’s right side tipped from its upper pivot. A rope fastened around it by some long-dead repairer caught its weight. The rope tightened across the opening at knee height.

A man stumbled over it and fell against the god’s leg.

Maahes could not move to help him. The roof settled another finger’s breadth onto his back.

“Crawl,” he said.

The man crawled.

Hori was dragging himself across the court.

“Back,” Maahes told him.

Hori kept coming. His bandage had slipped. He pushed with his good leg and hauled the other after him, his breath whistling between his teeth.

“The door,” he said. “If the rope parts—”

“It falls.”

“Across their way.”

Maahes looked down. His knife lay beyond the reach of either foot. The next woman in the passage had seen it too, but she would not bend beneath that trembling wood.

“Hori. Take the blade.”

The keeper reached it. His bloody fingers slid on the grip.

“Cut when I tell you.”

Maahes shifted his weight onto his left leg. The wound at his shoulder tore wider. He drew his right foot back, placed it against the failing door, and pushed.

The rope hummed.

“Now.”

Hori sawed at it. One strand parted, then another. The door lurched. Maahes forced it outward as the last fibers snapped, throwing its weight toward the empty court.

It crashed flat on the paving.

The way was clear.

From the outer entrance came the clink of cups.

The raider had returned.

He moved quickly now, spear held level, eyes fixed on Maahes’s exposed ribs. The god’s hands were overhead. His legs were spread beneath the weight. There would never be an easier moment.

Hori lifted the knife.

The man kicked him aside.

Maahes heard bone strike stone. He bared his teeth, but the people were still passing beneath him. The girl with the hurt foot was last. She pressed herself against the passage wall, trying to become smaller than the smoke.

“Come,” he said.

She shook her head.

The spear point touched his side.

Maahes twisted. It scored along a rib instead of passing between them. The movement brought the beam down against the back of his neck.

The girl flinched.

“Past me,” he said. “To Hori.”

She looked at the keeper lying in the court.

The man drew his spear back for a second thrust.

The girl ran.

Maahes held until her dragging foot cleared the fallen door.

Then he came out from beneath the roof.

The timber struck behind him with a crash that drove dust through the court. The spear glanced off his forearm. He seized its shaft, wrenched it sideways, and sprang before the man could let go.

His jaws closed at the base of the raider’s throat.

The cups rang once against the paving.

Water

By the time the last roof reeds had burned through, the people were carrying water from the well in everything that would hold it.

Maahes lay beside Hori. The keeper breathed in shallow, uneven pulls. Someone had tied a fresh bandage above his knee. Someone else had rolled a cloth beneath his head.

The god’s knife lay between them, its handle black with blood and soot, cut fibers stuck to the blade.

The girl approached with a bowl.

She stopped when Maahes turned toward her.

Water trembled over the rim. Her eyes rested on his mouth. He could still taste the man there.

Maahes lowered his head onto his forearms and closed his jaws.

The girl remained where she was.

Behind her, a woman called for the bowl. The girl glanced back, then looked at Hori. He was trying to wet his lips with his tongue.

She took one step.

Maahes stayed still.

She passed so close that her wet fingers brushed his mane. Kneeling beside the keeper, she lifted his head and tipped the bowl against his mouth.

A little water escaped. It ran across the stone, around the knife, and into the hollow where Hori used to sit.