But without an enemy to confront ... they grew bored. That’s why these brave militiamen passed their time with a friendly game of knucklebones. Sek could understand their motivations. When Hathor had attacked, he’d followed Skaara’s militia onto the battlefield, found a gun, and joined the fighting. But when his ardor cooled, he’d collected several guns and sold them. Skaara worked hard to make his militia a good thing for all of Abydos. Sek saw where it could also be a good thing for himself.
The gambling game ended with a series of impreca-tions that would have earned the swearers immediate death from the members of Ra’s pantheon-not merely for blasphemy, but anatomically impossible blasphemy. The most creative and heartfelt swearing came from young Aha. As Sek had hoped, the new man in the company had lost-and lost heavily. “You know, pup, a man of this company has to be good for his losses-we pay in silver,” one of the old hands said.
“Silver?” the young soldier repeated in dismay, coming out of his gambling fever to realize the depth of his losses. He’d need weeks of back-breaking work in the mines to earn the amount his comrades demanded.
“And we’ll expect it tomorrow,” another militiaman added.
Dismay went to despair on Aha’s face.
Sek stepped in. “Hold on, you sons of mastadges! I’m sure Aha will make good.”
He took the grateful youngster aside among the stored weapons. “Thank you, Sek,” Aha said nervously.
“I don’t have the kind of money the others are demanding. Unless,” he said hopefully, “the Council of Elders de-cides on this plan to pay the militia from their earn-ings from the mine.” Sek shook his head.
“From what I hear, pup, they’ll only be paying us in food. Good enough, but it won’t satisfy our comrades.” He held up a hand. “And don’t look to me. I don’t have that sort of coin. Though I know a fellow who does.”
“He’d lend me that much silver?” Aha said in
disbelief.
“No, but he’s a buying man, is old Gerekh. He deals in weapons-ammunition. And here we are, in the middle of urn after urn of bullets. A handful or two from each jar, some stones in the bottom-“ He raised his eyebrows expressively. “You may even find a few stones in the bottom already. There was a time when that pack in there had no silver to bet, either.”
Sek said no more, leaving Aha to come to his own conclusions. But he had high hopes that Gerekh would be paying him the usual finder’s fee. After all, it had worked with the rest of the company.... “I guess some people just have this knack for lan-guages.” Daniel Jackson was so enthusiastic, he was eating his own cooking without complaint. “When I saw the progress Faizah was making with English, I wanted to put her immediately into the advanced class.”
“She’s really that good?” Sha’uri said dubiously.
“Better,” Daniel assured her. “But Faizah asked for a place in the hieroglyphics class instead-she did outstandingly there, too.” He smiled compla-cently. “You’ve got to see her work. It’s as though she instinctively knew how to put the symbols together.”
Sha’uri rolled her eyes. In the past couple of weeks, she’d grown to expect a running commentary on Daniel’s star pupil. There’d been no report for several days, so she figured her husband was just about due. “What has the paragon accomplished now?” she asked.
“Your vocabulary keeps expanding,” Daniel complimented. Sha’uri shrugged. “I pick up the oddest things working with Barbara Shore. Which reminds me. What is testosterone poisoning?”
Daniel’s latest mouthful nearly came out his nose. “Where did you hear that?” “Barbara mentioned it about Dr. Meyers. She didn’t make it sound as though he were seriously ill.”
“He’s not,” Daniel laughed. “That’s just a phrase some Earthwomen use when a man is acting like a
fool.”
“A jerk,” Sha’uri said.
“Uh-right.” Daniel blinked. Sha’uri was certainly picking up a lot of slang from the feisty physicist.
“So, what has the fabulous Faizah done now?”
Daniel’s smug smile returned. “For the past week she’s been handling a triple course load-the original English class, hieroglyphics ... and my advanced Eng-lish class.”
Sha’uri’s eyebrows rose. She didn’t know that she could have handled that much work. “And what’s the verdict?”
“Today we decided to try an additional project. Starting tomorrow, Faizah will be working part-time on your translation project.”
Now it was Sha’uri’s turn to blink. She ought to feel glad that her husband would be spending less time with a beautiful girl who also had a superlative mind.
But she wasn’t sure she wanted to be responsible for the Fabulous Faizah.
“Daniel,” she asked, changing the subject. “Why do you never call me darling?”
The long single file of mastadges covered ground with their peculiar ambling gait. Most of the hairy, skinny-legged beasts bore packs on their backs-the caravan’s cargo of food. But there were outriders and caravaners as well. In the lead, caravan master Menna leaned for-ward in his travel-worn howdah, scanning the dunes around them.
The farming enclaves where they had traded were far behind them now. The caravan was in the high desert, where of late, too many human lice were to be found-raiders in search of food.
Menna shifted the rifle he carried braced against his hip. He hoped that the working weapon and the dummy his son carried at the rear of the caravan would be enough to keep any would-be reavers at bay.
If not, he had two magazines worth of ammuni-tion-sixty shots.
In his mind Menna ran over the demonstration the warrior Sek had given him, dry-firing the M-16. He wished he could actually have fired the weapon for practice, but every bullet was worth its weight in silver. He’d just have to be content-Menna stiffened in his seat. His eyes, roving the dunes as usual, had caught a glint of metal ahead-an unsheathed blade, he thought. “Bata,” he called to his son, “bring up the other weapon. The rest of you sons of mastadges line up on either side of us. Look ready for a fight.”
The outriders formed a rough skirmish line, fin-gering the clubs and knives they carried in case of trouble.
With luck they’d show the skulkers in the dunes that they weren’t to be trifled with. Who-ever made that glint would disappear, waiting for easier prey.
Menna went to engage his weapon. “Ra’s ass!” he swore when instead he released the magazine.
He snatched for the other magazine, seating it quickly but not chambering a round, when a flare of pure energy lanced from one of the dunes. The bolt caught Menna in the chest, superheating the fluids in his chest cavity. The caravan leader literally exploded.
Menna’s son Beta watched in horror as the caravan’s defensive line disintegrated. Men and mastadges plunged away from the horrible form that moments before had been their boss.
Other forms appeared out of the dunes-the raiders charging in to reap the rewards of their ambush.
Bata threw his useless weapon away, urging his mastadge toward his father’s mount, which stood frozen, honking in terror at the smell of burnt meat. The M-16 lay across the palanquin. Bata snatched up the weapon, aiming it to spray across a knot of men rushing towards him. Their leader was brandishing a particularly nasty-looking blade.
As he futilely jerked the trigger, the blast-lance in the dunes fired again. Bata’s mount reared on its spindly legs. A lifeless form toppled from the howdah, the rifle still gripped in its hands.
Pa’aken had watched the caravan trickle its way from dune to dune, following its progress with the distance watchers the Urt-men had brought to Abydos. He’d salvaged the binoculars from a dead Army officer in the killing fields outside Nagada. But he’d been too late getting to the battlefield to secure one of the wonder weapons.
By the time Pa’aken had arrived, warriors of the Urt-men had returned to the field, separating the wounded from the dead and discouraging those en-terprising souls who were trying to loot the burnt-out personnel carriers. Pa’aken had just tucked the glasses into his robe when he’d been evicted. He still felt a bit put out. Imagine attending the greatest battle in the history of Nagada, and having only binoculars to show for it! That might change today, he thought greedily, surveying the oncoming file of burdened beasts. They’ve got two guns over there.” Normally, his band would never think of attacking a caravan so heavily armed.
But he had an extra blade up his sleeve this time ...
Crouched beside Pa’aken, Hay ran his knife across a whetstone. The monotonous scrape-scrape-scrape began to get on Pa’aken’s nerves. Besides, sound carried out here in the high desert-something city men never seemed to realize. “Will you stop that?” he finally demanded in a tight hiss. “As you wish, lord,” Hay replied sarcastically, using the term of address usually reserved for a Horus guard. He held the blade in the sunlight, examining it critically. “Looks sharp enough-“ Pa’aken snatched his fellow thief’s arm. “What kind of idiot shines light across a blade in an ambush?” he rasped.
One glance through the binoculars showed that Hay had given them away. The caravan master was bring-ing his men into a defensive line. This might be too difficult a proposition....
A blast-bolt lashed out. That did for the caravan master. Pa’aken rose to his feet The choice was out of his hands. “Up! Now! Take them!” Members of the raider band erupted from the sands, rushing to take the disorganized line. Pa’aken clutched his staff as he charged down the dune. He’d always been good with the long stick, and it was use-ful against a mounted foe. Hay was in the lead, waving that damned knife of his. A figure on mastadge-back aimed a rifle at them, and the blast-lance flared again. Then there was no time for fancy shooting. They were mixed in with the enemy, fighting hand-to-hand.
Metal flashed in Pa’aken’s face as he twisted aside. He could feel the slash of pain across his cheek, then the slow ooze of blood. Even as he moved, his staff battered the arm wielding the knife. In quick succes-sion the rider lost his weapon, his seat, and his life as Pa’aken knocked him to the ground and bludgeoned him to death.
Clapping a hand to his bleeding face, the bandit leader quickly surveyed the field. The caravaners were finished. Most of them were stark on the sands, except for the few that were riding for their lives.
A couple of his men were bruised or bloody. And Hay’s knife glinted in the sun not far from his out-stretched hand where he lay, brained by an outrider’s cudgel.
Exactly what he deserved, Pa’aken thought. He bent to retrieve the caravan master’s rifle, shaking sand from the barrel. He’d have to search carefully. Somewhere there might be more bullets.
As Pa’aken arose, he saw another figure coming toward them over the sand. The newcomer moved with his hood up, his cowled shape seeming to shimmer in the heat haze from the sands. The weapon he carried was as tall as Pa’aken’s staff, but it gleamed gold in the burning sunshine.
“Was my contribution worthy of its reward?” the late arrival asked in a quiet voice.
Pa’aken gazed at the blast-lance with naked greed. But the stranger had proven himself too formidable even to allow the hope of stealing that weapon. With a snarled order Pa’aken ended his men’s pillaging of the pack animals. “As we agreed,” he said to his powerful new ally. “You get first pick of the loot, Khonsu.”
Lieutenant Charlton was not a happy camper as he reported to Jack O’Neil. “Some of our people on long-range reconnaissance found another caravan wasted.” The colonel frowned. Desert raiding was becoming serious enough to have an impact on the Nagadan economy-and his own force’s supplies. But Charlton had worse news to impart. “Six locals killed and just left out for the local wildlife. Even so, the recon boys could tell that two of the dead had been toasted by a blast-lance.”
“Won-der-ful.” O’Neil bit off each syllable. Raiders with Ra’s technology represented a new low in the high desert war zone that had developed in the last couple of weeks. Regular patrols by the militia and O’Neil’s forces had kept the areas around the base camp, the city, and the mine relatively safe. Inside Na-gada was another story. Despite Skaara’s best efforts, the place was turning into Dodge City.
Scavenged Earthly ordnance was being used in faction fights all over the town.
“What do we have next?” he groaned. “Drive-by shootings on mastadge-back?” “I couldn’t say, sir,”
Charlton said almost primly. “But Skaara is here to see you.”
O’Neil was inwardly amused at the lieutenant’s faint unhappiness. Charlton wanted to tack on a proper military rank to the leader of the Abydan mili-tia. But Skaara had resisted the urge to name himself generalissimo, or even acting colonel. He believed in leading without ranks. O’Neil only hoped his young friend could make that notion stick.
Nonetheless, Skaara gave the colonel his usual crisp salute as he entered the office. His face went pale as O’Neil passed on the long-range reconnaissance re-port. “If the sand scum have gotten weapons like that, we have troubles indeed.”
He sighed. “And here I thought I had good news to report. My people caught a caravan trying to smuggle two blast-lances out of Nagada.” “Where were they going?” Charlton wanted to know.
‘The farmers.” Skaara made the term sound like a curse. “I thought you were bringing some of Nakeer’s people into the militia,” O’Neil said. The deal between the two head Elders had been one of the few bright spots in the present political scene.
“Oh, some of the farmers are good fellows,” Skaara admitted. “But even if I could trust Nakeer-which is not necessarily a sure thing-his people have as many factions as mine. I know there have been farmers in town, offering lavish amounts of food for any guns- pardon, weapons-they can get their hands on.” He gave the Marines a sour smile. “Certain mer-chants have been very annoyed-the farmers have been driving prices up.”
“Where did the blast-lances come from?” O’Neil wanted to know. “Probably they came from some of the shot-down udajeets out on the battlefield,” Skaara said. “At least they’re not militia items. I checked our stocks, both here at the ship and in the arsenals.”
He looked as if he’d taken a large bite of rotten fruit. “But rifles and grenades were missing. Urns of ammu-nition turned out to be mainly filled with stones. My people have been selling to the farmers and the fac-tions in town-Ra damn them, some of them probably belong to the factions.” “We’d heard about fighting in town,” O’Neil said diplomatically. “And what they’re fighting over is weapons,” Skaara burst out. “The only good thing is that some-times the fighting uncovers a faction’s cache. We had an explosion in a ruined building after a firefight. The place burned down. We found several bodies, grenade spoons-and what might be the remains of another blast-lance.”