We had a space of time in which to breathe, which was well-deserved. We were all busy, of course, but for once we were busy with more peaceful pursuits than we had been for the last several weeks.
Unfortunately, all that was about to come to an abrupt and tragic end...
27 HetHert, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (October 13th, 1275 BCE)
We've all spent the last week in various pursuits; I perfecting my personal fireball and lightning spells (including testing them on Grrrbek, who was kind enough to stand still for me while I adjusted the range on them) and doing assorted pieces of research. I and Amunet identified all of our new weapons, and they are quite shiny indeed--my newly crystal staff stores a spell for me, and will cast Mirror Image for me, as well. The others engaged in their own obsessions and responsibilities. Mayet is glowing; she's taken to marriage (and the marriage bed) quite well. The extra maturity granted by the aging mist seems to have settled her down into the sort of woman I knew she was going to be when she finally grew up.
Usi and Isu have grown restive and snappish. Being inside the palace isn't particularly good for them, and in the center of Pi Rameses, places to run are really quite far away. I had to let them into the doorknob for a bit, just so they could find places to run, though Raam still won't let me herd some prey animals into it for them to hunt. I'll be happy when we're away, but I've been enjoying the time to rest and work on things that I've kept meaning to get to, but that traveling has prevented me from starting. I've had a chance to work with Imhotep on things. (And there's the other stuff I'm learning about from him as well. Which I'm quite enjoying, but it's really nobody's business but my own.)
Unfortunately, our peace was broken, far too soon...
I was woken early this morning by the sound of a heavy fist pounding a door nearby. Peeking out into the hallway, I saw the First Prime speaking with Amunet. I caught the words, "asking for you" and "very badly wounded", and retreated into my room to quickly dress.
We gathered into a room where a man was lying on a low couch, bleeding on it. He was speaking to Amunet, telling him that they'd been compromised--"The whole council", he said, "They have all of the names, and I think it was an inside job."
Mayet interrupted to do some healing on the man, and noted during the process that he seemed to have been tortured. The cuts on him were deep and deliberate.
The man said that he'd been tortured but had escaped, and come straight to the palace. The people who had tortured him had been mostly human, except for a few who were...winged hyenas? I'd never heard such things, but there was a silence from Usi that meant that there was something he wasn't telling me. I held my tongue.
The wounded man told us where he'd been held, a place that Pepy had scouted recently, a place north of the city that had held a myriad of Anubites. The axe he'd turned into an artifact detects Anubis worshipers, and he'd been out and about in the last week.
We questioned Amunet more closely about this council he's evidently on. He said that it was a group of people, all of whom wanted to change the social structure of Egypt. At this, Mayet fled the room and Raam pulled himself up to his full height and asked, suspiciously, "What?"
Amunet reassured Raam that it was nothing to do with the upper reaches of Egyptian society. I believe that the council is trying to free slaves, then. Strange that he wouldn't have told us. Though it might be reasonable, considering that if we didn't know that Rameses was in favor of freeing all of the slaves, we'd have to consider the idea more or less treason.
After that had been cleared up, we looked at each other and shrugged. Yes, it was probably a trap. Yes, we needed to spring it. We rounded up everyone and headed out.
When we got there, we found...nothing.
There was a large camp, now completely and hastily abandoned. In what had been a campfire, Amunet found a sheaf of half-burned paper. One of the pieces had a picture of a box on it, with a carved design in the lid. Another was a list of names and numbers that might have been amounts (perhaps of money, or goods) or might have been dates. We all recognized the name Horemheb, and the other that Pepy recognized was Thuthmosis (the first one, Pepy thought). If they were dates, the one next to Horemheb was about today. The one next to Thuthmosis was two days from now.
The other paper had a map of the area on it, with markings in a straight line between the Nile and the Palace. This was getting more and more worrying as time went on. There were tracks around of what appeared to be the winged hyenas (maresh, said Imhotep), about five of them.
Terik found where they'd been torturing the guy, and there was too much blood for only on person there--and some of that blood was definitely Unas. Terik tracked some footprints to a shallow grave, which of course we dug up. We unearthed the body of a girl of about seventeen years who'd been not tortured to death but apparently ritually sacrificed.
Terik talked to her shade, and she had indeed been sacrificed to Anubis. They had used her death to power some sort of spell...that would blind the Pharaoh Guard to their presence...
Oh, fuck.
Raam sent his little red dragon off to warn Rameses about what was about to happen. We stashed the corpse in a side room in the doorknob so we could give her a proper burial later. Pepy elected to go the slow way and check the places that had been marked on the map. I put a Fly spell on Raam and the rest of us piled into the doorknob, followed by a very tense fifteen minutes of preparing for battle. I elected to leave the hyenas in the doorknob--whatever was going on out there, I needed to know that they would be safe.
We got there, and immediately the confusion started.
There were dead and dying people all around us. I'd given Amunet an invisibility detection spell, and he and Grrrbek both pounced on invisible people who had been going around killing the wounded. Raam took off towards the pharaoh and the First Prime, who had been reported to be badly wounded, and Terik and Amunet headed to the wives' wing, which had been very badly fire-damaged.
I immediately attracted the attention of three maresh, who began shooting arrows at me. Fortunately, we were outside, so I could fling lightning bolts upwards at them with impunity. Unfortunately, their arrows were poisoned. I was hit three or four times, and damn that was painful. I took one out, Grrrbek took another one, and then I cast invisibility on myself and went to look for Mayet, because I was suddenly feeling really terrible.
While I'd been doing that, Pepy had shown up (using one of our set of teleporting knives), saying he'd run into Horemheb outside of Pi Rameses. Raam had taken care of a couple of people who were trying to get through to the pharaoh. Horemheb was, unfortunately, right on Pepy's heels, and as I turned my attentions to the last remaining maresh, I heard Mayet casting a spell. Then she called out, "Topple!"
I glanced over my shoulder to see what was going on. Horemheb had fallen over in a heap, following Mayet's command. Mayet was looking smug. Pepy, arriving on the scene with the head of some Anubite, blinked and then took the opportunity to take Horemheb's head.
Silence fell.
Terik said, "We have a problem."
He and Amunet had found out that two of Rameses' wives and two of his children weren't accounted for, and it appeared that they'd been taken south of the city on horseback. There was a place south of Pi Rameses that Pepy had found had a lot of Anubis energy contained within it--ground consecrated to Anubis, certainly, and possibly a temple. Grrrbek and I hauled ourselves and the First Prime to the temple of Hathor that adjoins the palace, as both of us had taken more poisoned arrow wounds, and the First Prime was in a pretty bad way--barely conscious and muttering nonsense. At least, I'm pretty sure it was nonsense.
That taken care of and the First Prime back on his feet, we gathered everyone together again and it was back into the doorknob for a quick flight in pursuit of the men who had taken the wives and children. I polymorphed into a hyena, and Usi, Isu and I charged in to scatter the horses. Fortunately, the wives were riding separate horses, holding the children in front of them. There's nothing quite like a group of laughing hyenas to panic horses.
Of course, this put me in front of a pair of swordsmen, who I promptly started throwing spells at. (I was feeling very out of sorts, possibly a reaction to the poison that had been in my bloodstream earlier. I was fully prepared to fireball everyone who got in my way that afternoon into the next life.) A few of the others chased the horses with the wives on them, while the rest, apparently figuring I had the swordsmen in hand, advanced on a robed figure who crackled with power.
The fighting, unfortunately, ended before it seriously got underway, as Pepy yelled, "One hundred, no, two hundred Anubis priests, heading this way!" Raam ordered a retreat--well, yelled at us to run, anyway, good enough--and we did so.
Unfortunately, as I glanced back over my shoulder, I saw Pepy and Amunet freeze. My heart twisted as we piled into the doorknob, Raam making an executive decision to leave them behind rather than risk getting us all killed.
The last thing I heard was a cold, cold voice, saying, "Take the elf and make him comfortable. We'll need him later. Take the other one to the torture rooms."
Then the door slammed shut and Raam's little red dragon flew away with it.
Xeres, as is her habit when we go into battle, had been waiting near the door for us to return. She looked us all over, anxiously seeking one familiar face, and blinking as she didn't see Pepy. She looked us over once more, and the color drained out of her face as she saw that Pepy wasn't with us. Her eyes went wide, but she was otherwise silent. She clutched Rosetta to herself hard enough to make the infant squirm and whimper complainingly.
"I'm sorry," Mayet said. "Pepy and Amunet were captured. We'll go back for them as soon as we can."
Xeres' eyes had gone wide and staring, and she whispered, "If they have him, then Menes won't be far behind." She was holding on to Rosetta as if the child was the only thing real in the world.
Another thought entered my mind, then. Amunet was carrying much of our equipment in his pouch. He was in possession of Peribsen's soul jar.
I can only hope that this particular enemy does not know this...and we rescue them before Menes arrives. Pepy cannot die except in battle, so they can do whatever they like to him. And whatever they like may include removing pieces of him that he might miss later.
We have to leave them there at least overnight while we regain our spells and marshal our forces. The Pharaoh Guard has been decimated--at first glance, it looks like they've been reduced to less than half of their number. I really wouldn't want to be the First Prime today. Much of his command has been killed, leaving him with many fewer resources to protect the pharaoh with, and I would bet that many of those spared that initial devastating assault (the Anubites snuck in, and on a prearranged signal, they slit the throats of whoever they were standing behind) belong to the other side. And on top of that, he was wounded badly enough that even though he's had the best care the Hathor temple could give him, he's not going to be fully whole for a week or so.
Tonight, I'm nearly as irritable as the hyenas myself, the remnants of the poison working their way through my system. But soon I'll be left alone to prepare for the morrow, and I have some questions that I believe Imhotep can answer...
Quotes:
"You're trying to remove the iron heel of oppression from the throats of the people?"
"Pretty much."
--Mayet, Amunet
"I resist the urge to attack these people."
--Graham
"Yelling for help is probably a free action."
--Kris
"He's tricking you into monologuing!"
--Bryan
"The first guy's paste, I think."
--Raam
(Pepy walks in with the head of an Anubis cleric, and brandishes it at Horemheb, who is lying on the ground)
"See this? This is your last chance...what are you doing down there?"
--Pepy
"I will carry the First Prime!"
"To the temple of another god?"
"I'm...busy."
--Grrrbek, Raam
"Outnumbered by a zillion percent!"
--Mayet
"Part of my training is to recognize when it's hopeless and I need to run away."
"The army term for that is fuckarooed."
--Raam, Mayet
"Where did Ray go?"
"He was just here, unconscious. Or relaxing. He's invisible."
*Derek hits the couch where Ray just was*
"Poor man's d-invis?"
"Yep!"
--Graham, Derek, Kris
