The Age of Ra

30. Terebinth

Sometime during the night, a doctor came to check on him. The man's face, lit from below by the battery-powered lantern he carried, was familiar, even though he was not actually one of the Luxor medics. David recognised him at some whole other, deeper level. His bronzed, perfect features set off a chime within. So did the scars that laced his body. David knew he was looking up at Osiris, and knew he was dreaming.

Osiris did not speak, merely studied David from head to toe, examining him as a doctor might, diagnosing.

''I've strayed,'' David said. ''I know that. And even though I have been killing your enemies, it's not been in your name or the name of your sister-wife. Please forgive me.''

Still Osiris said nothing, and now he was holding a djed-pillar, the ribbed column that was his sacred emblem. It was a sheaf of corn. It was a leafless tree. It was a backbone. It was all three at once, and it was laid on its side, the position that symbolised defeat and death.

Carefully, gently, Osiris began rotating it from horizontal to vertical. The djed-pillar thickened and grew tall as it turned, sprouting fleshy vegetation. Osiris smiled as it came alive in his grasp, pulsing with vibrancy. He pointed with his free hand to the erect pillar, then to David.

He did this three times, then took his lantern and the pillar and strode off, disappearing with a halo of light around him into darkness.

Darkness.

Darkness.

Dawn.

David's eyelids fluttered open. A doctor, a real one this time, was bent over him, changing the dressing on the worst of his wounds, a deep gash in his left upper arm. She peered at him with the sore eyes of someone who hadn't slept for at least a day and a half. She finished her work, and later brought him some lamb broth in a bowl.

David slurped the broth and thought about his dream and knew it had been a true divine visitation, unlike the dream in which Courtdene and his parents had figured. In which case, it must mean something. It wasn't just some delusional brain-phantasm brought on by exhaustion and injury. The dream had to have contained a message. But what?

Osiris was the god of resurrection. Just as he had been restored to life after Set tore him to pieces, so he oversaw the transmigration of each person's ka to its new, eternal existence in the Field of Reeds, helping them surmount death as he had. He fulfilled a similar function in nature. In spring, Osirisiac farmers prayed to him to make their crops shoot up and be plentiful. From the dead winter earth Osiris generated life.

With his djed-pillar he had been illustrating… something.

My own life? David wondered.

When the doctor returned for the soup bowl, David asked her how he had been during the night.

''You lie very still all night,'' she replied in halting English. ''Not good. We worry. But you are good now, I think. You are come through. Worst is over.''

David had to admit that he didn't feel too bad. Felt better, in fact, than he had any right to expect. He ached all over, but the pains were external, superficial. At the core of him, where it counted, he felt hale and whole.

Osiris's doing? Or just the body's own healing processes?

He had the strength to sit up. Soon he had the strength to stand and walk about a bit.

Was he the djed-pillar Osiris had raised?

Perhaps he was placing too great an emphasis on his place in the grand scheme of things. Did Osiris care that much about him? Was the god taking a personal interest in him? If so, why? God dreams were meant to clarify your thinking. So how come his thoughts felt cloudier and more muddled than ever?

He exited the field hospital to get some air and shake off the stench of human suffering. Not far from the tent, a score of bodies lay on the ground, covered with blankets and awaiting burial — those who'd been wounded so severely, the doctors hadn't been able to save them. David moved away, shunning the bodies not so much through squeamishness but because they seemed just so mundane. So banal. The blankets shrouded them incompletely. Here a bare foot showed, there a hand. The meat that was left behind after the ka had flown.

His eye fell on a solitary terebinth tree standing proud at the edge of a field, straight-trunked, its leaves in full early-summer ripeness and roundly, succulently green. He went and sat in its shade. The tree's sharp, resinous aroma surrounded him. Nearby, a cicada began to chirrup.

He remained there for a while, with his forearms on his knees and his chin on his hands, inhaling the turpentiney smell of the terebinth and feeling its rough bark against his back and listening to the cicada's clicking, buzzing proclamation of territory and desire. He stared into space, and so deep was the reverie he sank into that a sudden uproar from the far side of Mount Megiddo, the sound of combat being resumed after the night's lull, barely impinged. His ear heard, but his mind was elsewhere.

Out on the plain, the armies clashed again. The Nephthysian infantry had regrouped overnight, drawing reserves up from base to bolster its main force. The Lightbringer's troops had distributed themselves along the second line of positions, in accordance with their leader's instructions. Rather than clustered in knots, the Freegyptians were now strung out thinly so as to afford fewer concentrated targets and a more even spread of resistance. Universally it was accepted that, in this formation, they could not hold out for long.

And they didn't. Within an hour the Nephthysians had broken through in several places. The order came down from the Lightbringer: retreat. Pull back to the third line at the foot of the mountain.

The Nephthysians powered onward, blasting at the Freegyptians, who mounted a rearguard action as they went, strewing landmines and tripwire-triggered grenades in their wake. These slowed the Nephthysians but didn't deter them. On they came, advancing with the stalwart self-assurance of soldiers who knew that victory was, if not at hand, then at least within reach.

The Freegyptians, bunching around the base of Mount Megiddo's southern flank, fought valiantly. The Nephthysians were brought to a standstill, though not repulsed. They hurled themselves repeatedly at the infidels but couldn't seem to make a dent in their defences. The gun emplacements atop the mountain poured bullets down on them. Still they pressed hard, not allowing the enemy one moment's peace. Their generals urged them on from the rear, insisting that the Freegyptians would be worn down soon. They couldn't keep taking this much punishment indefinitely. They must buckle under.

Thousands of Nephthysians made the journey to Iaru that day. Hundreds of Freegyptians, too, found themselves in the afterlife. Anticipating oblivion, it came as a shock to them to discover that the godless person possessed a ka and it lived on. Then, soon enough, they set to work harvesting reeds alongside the billions of other souls already there, and swiftly the rhythm of toil became all they knew. The capacity to feel surprise, or much of anything else, was lost to them, falling away like some surplus, vestigial organ. They were as happy as ants, wishing nothing for themselves but to be among others of their kind and contribute to the communal workload.

Meanwhile, in the world they had recently departed, battle raged on, and twenty miles to the north of Megiddo one of the Lightbringer's scouts caught a first glimpse of the approaching Setic reinforcements.

The scout could hardly believe his eyes. At first he thought that what his binoculars were showing him must be the entire Setic task force, but he soon perceived that it was simply the vanguard. It alone stretched from horizon to horizon, and there was more behind.

This wasn't a mere handful of battalions. This was everything.