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CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX

“Livers,” François said. He’d woken Marty from a disjointed dream.

Marty had dreamed of Narmer’s face, slipping away into darkness.

François spun a ring in his fingers and said again, “Livers.”

Kareem stood beside him, an anxious look on his face.

Marty realized that he hadn’t actually spoken out loud. “What? What about livers?”

“There’s something wrong with the Sethians,” François said. “What did Narmer tell us? That they came from another world?”

“That’s not exactly what he said,” Marty mumbled. “But that’s what we think he meant.”

“So their bodies aren’t used to the environment here somehow,” François said. “Maybe it has something to do with the iron. The human liver is the most iron-rich part of the body, so maybe they eat human livers to enrich their own blood.”

“Why not cattle livers?” Marty asked.

“Maybe they eat those, too.” François shrugged. “And Hathiru livers and who knows what else. But why exempt humans? And maybe eating human livers is also a convenient way to terrify a population that might otherwise resist. And maybe they want humans generally to stick around, for whatever reason. To farm. To keep down the lion population. Who knows?”

“Maybe they find human liver delicious,” Marty suggested.

“Also a possibility. So what’s the function of this ring?”

Marty realized where he’d seen the ring before. “They all wear nose rings. The Hathiru, the Bastites, the Sethians.”

“They all wear nose rings,” François agreed. “As fashion, it seems to show astonishing uniformity. So I think it isn’t fashion.”

“My brain is throbbing,” Marty said.

“You’re sleep-deprived and adrenaline-shocked,” François said. “It’s kind of impressive that you still have a brain at all.”

“But say this part slowly,” Marty said, “so I make sure I follow.”

“Maybe the nose ring helps them process the iron in the liver,” François said. “Think about the crops we’ve found at their outposts. Beans, near Ahuskay village. And figs near Jehed. Both iron-rich, right? Or maybe the ring helps them breathe, binding the oxygen to the iron they consumed. Maybe there’s something wrong with our atmosphere, for their bodies.” He chuckled. “Maybe their native atmosphere is iron-rich, so they need help breathing here, and they have to eat iron. Can you have atmospheric iron, is that a real possibility?” He shrugged.

“Or maybe the ring controls them,” Marty suggested. “Maybe the big one uses the rings to send commands, or electric shocks, or guiding stimuli. Or maybe it heals them.”

“Maybe.” François jerked a thumb at their Egyptian companion. “Except that Kareem saw one of them without his ring tonight, and he said the monster seemed to be struggling. Choking to death.”

Kareem nodded vigorously.

Marty hesitated. “Coincidence?”

“The scientific method does not jump to a conclusion of coincidence, Dr. Cohen,” François said. “The scientific method comes up with a theory to explain the known facts and then tries to devise a test.”


A sheet of black clouds hid the sunrise. Marty had slept only briefly and fitfully, wrapped in a blanket and lying on the bank of earth. As he looked eastward from the top of the bank, trying to gauge both the hour and the enemy’s numbers, a flash deep inside the cloud and the rolling boom of thunder washed over the battlefield.

The enemy advanced again.

Surjan bellowed, and under his command, his Spearspeakers Usaden and Badis organized their battle lines along the bank, left and right. Lowanna and Idder placed the sharpshooters in mobile squads spaced evenly apart along the flat ground behind the bank.

They’d tallied at least one hundred twenty enemies killed yesterday. During the night, Surjan, Lowanna, and Kareem had killed three Bastites as well. Scouts? Assassins? Whatever the intended role of the cat-people, they were the only forces the enemy had sent out during the night. No further attempts had been made to outflank the host.

And Kareem had reported seeing a Sethian that struggled to breathe.

But none of that knowledge lightened Marty’s heart. Looking down at the enemy this morning, their forces were, if anything, greater than the day before. Now he saw multiple Sethians among them, and here and there a Bastite.

“Kareem,” he said, “I can’t see anything else approaching on the horizon. Do you?”

“Nothing.”

“Good.” Marty handed a grenade to the only bird he had that was capable of carrying one and gave it instructions.

He watched as the tawny eagle flew over the battlefield and he winced as the animal dropped the grenade and careened awkwardly away.

It had almost been hit by an arrow.

Whoomph.

But the bird had been startled off its aim, and the grenade hadn’t hit any enemies.

“Dr. Cohen, there is one thing . . . have you seen the giant Sethian?”

Marty frowned. “They’re all giant.”

“I mean the really big one.” Kareem wrinkled his nose as he focused on the scene below. “About twice the size of a man.”

“Twice the volume?” Marty asked. “Twice the mass. Twice the height?”

Kareem shrugged.

Marty grimaced. “Is the giant Sethian over ten feet tall?”

His mind immediately raced back to the ruins.

The great one is clear about this, and the one speaks for him. You must die if you don’t help kill Merit Nuk Han and those who come with it.

The so-called Great One sent another Sethian to find Marty. Could a mega-sized Sethian be the Great One that had been mentioned? And if it had some way to find Marty, that might explain why the advancing army had swerved to the north to intercept the crew.

Narmer had had visions of Marty and his people. Was there a giant Sethian that had had similar dreams?

Marty felt sick to his stomach.

“Yes, over ten feet,” Kareem said. “And he’s fast, by God. He’s either knocking things out of his way or people are just fleeing.”

“We need to let the others know—” A bolt of lightning slammed into the other side of the bank. Marty and Kareem both staggered and fell.

With his ears ringing, Marty motioned to Kareem. “Let’s get down before we get electrocuted.”

They both slid down the dirt.


One of Idder’s skirmishers approached Surjan. Surjan couldn’t recall his name in the moment, but he remembered the man as one of King Iken’s men, from Jehed. “You asked for someone who is an expert with a sling?”

“Yes.” Surjan pulled a grenade out of a large box. “I need this to be flung over the top of the enemy. Almost straight up, so that it falls on him from a great height.” He mimicked the trajectory he had in mind with his hands. He thought that gave the grenade the best chance of landing heavy-side down, and igniting. “Can you do that?”

The man nodded. “I think so.”

Surjan put his hand on the man’s shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. “Are you sure? Because if it accidentally goes in the wrong direction, you could really make a pig’s ear of it.”

“A pig’s ear?”

“You might kill our friends.”

The warrior nodded again. “I’ve hunted with my sling for more than twenty years.”

Surjan handed the man a grenade and ducked under a makeshift shield as a barrage of arrows landed in the vicinity. “Okay, show me what you can do.”

The man placed the grenade into the well-worn pouch of his sling and with a practiced rotating motion spun the sling around his head and suddenly let go of one end, sending the grenade flying.

The grenade went up like a rocket.

The grenade came down.

The whoomph sound of the explosion put a smile on Surjan’s face. The screaming from the approaching army was just a cherry on top of a sundae.

Surjan heard a load roar.

It sounded like a Sethian.

But much, much louder than he’d ever heard.


François inspected the jar filled with powder, gravel, and tinder. It was ready, and he motioned for two soldiers. They awkwardly carted the bomb toward the front line where Surjan would find a use for it.

The Frenchman had barely slept a wink. Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly and held his hand out to Kareem, who was assembling the last of the grenades.

The young Egyptian rubbed beeswax into the threads, screwed the cap on tightly, and handed the finished product to François. François checked the seal, placed the bomb into a box with several others, and passed the box back to Kareem.

Kareem rushed away.

That was the last of the explosives. François sighed. His penicillin had been a bust, but his bombs had worked. The screams on both sides were awful, but he didn’t try to shut them out. He owned the screams. Some of the dead had died and were dying because of his bombs, and he would deny no man his final cry.

But they were necessary deaths. They were deaths to end the scourge of the Sethians.

He wished there was more that he could do, but for now he bowed his head and prayed.


Lowanna stared up into the sky and felt a heaviness in the air. It was more than just the unusual humidity. There was a pressure building up in her chest and as she breathed it almost felt like static. The air around her felt as if it was filled with electricity and that was a dangerous thing.

She’d never been struck by lightning, but her Aunt Sally had. Twice. Sally Lancaster had had her drinks paid for for twenty years on the back of her account of getting hit by lightning on repeat occasions. The detail that Lowanna could never forget was her aunt’s insistence on the prickly feeling of static electricity just before getting hit.

Crouching down on the top of the bank between two files of spearmen, she saw the enemy flooding over the ditch. Behind them, Sethians roared and drums pounded. The front ranks of the enemy fell shrieking on the spikes and died, and the seconds were simply crushed by those coming behind them, but then the ditch slowly filled with corpses. The later waves marched over the bodies of their fallen comrades, and then clashed with Surjan’s spear-fighters.

As people waged battle all around her, she touched her knees and hands to the ground and felt the sensation abate.

A roar erupted from somewhere just ahead.

She saw the monster-headed creature rising from the mass of the enemy. It rose head and shoulders above the tallest men and with one swipe of his hand three people went flying. They landed in twisted, unnatural positions, necks and spines broken.

One corpse lay at Lowanna’s feet.

She looked down and gasped as she recognized Udad, the young man from Ahuskay who had been healed of lameness as a boy.

The creature turned and locked eyes with Lowanna.


Kareem stabbed a Sethian in the back with his ankh. The spike sank all the way to the crossbars and it must have pierced the heart, because the Sethian dropped like a stringless marionette. No shuddering, nothing.

To be certain, Kareem pulled the weapon out and stabbed it into the base of the demon’s skull.

The glowing life essence bubbled up from within the monster and Kareem absorbed it with a smile.

Kareem was out beyond the embattled bank and the corpse-filled ditch. He slipped between enemy ranks, trying to attack heralds, drummers, officers—anyone whose death would impair the enemy.

It was especially satisfying to kill one of the Seth-headed devils that had murdered his uncle.

He heard a tremendous roar and he raced toward it. He slipped past two enemy squads, moving laterally, averting his face, and finally putting on a red helmet stolen from a dead man to go unseen. Up ahead he spotted the back of a Sethian that was literally twice his height. There was no way for him to reach a critical organ.

This was the big one he had reported to Dr. Cohen. It was immense, and it was growling at a corps of drummers and trumpet players.

But as the demon’s attention turned to something else, Kareem ran in and sliced across the back of the giant Sethian’s knee. He felt the blade part the creature’s skin and scratch roughly against a tendon, not quite severing it.

Suddenly, Kareem was launched through the air. The blow stole his breath and he crashed into two enemy soldiers.


The lines of both armies had broken.

Where there had been a rank of disciplined spearmen holding back the enemy horde, there was now a chaotic swirl of sweating, cursing warriors, spraying blood.

Marty waded through that swirl, looking for key targets. He found Kareem’s giant Sethian, a dozen yards away.

If anything, Kareem had understated its massiveness. The thing looked unearthly, like two bulls had been bound into a single, muscular body, and now lurched together across the landscape. Its jackal head with the square ears was bigger than Marty’s chest.

If the others were Sethians, then this monster was Seth himself.

It had charged up the bank, trampling its own men. Behind it came a burly armored warrior gripping a tall carved staff in both hands. From the tip of the staff flapped a green banner bearing the Sethians’ infinity symbol. Now the monster was surrounded by Marty’s warriors, and fighting them all hand to hand . . . 

And winning.

Seth bellowed loudly and spun around, showing a wound across the back of its left knee.

Someone had managed to wound it.

Marty threw a spear directly at the beast, and with preternatural speed it caught the weapon in midair.

Then it leaped forward, knocking down two of Marty’s warriors and two of its own men as it chased Marty.

Marty ran.

Somewhere Surjan yelled something barely intelligible, “. . . water jug . . .”

Marty slammed a fist into an enemy soldier’s face as he ran past him.

Seth’s ponderous footsteps were getting closer behind him. They were faster than Marty’s steps, and his stride was much longer.

Whoomph.

Marty looked over his shoulder at the sound of the explosion, hoping to see Seth on the ground. No such luck.

The creature bellowed and spun on its heels, looking for whoever had thrown the grenade.

Had the explosion missed?

Had the grenade hit, and simply done no damage?

They had no plan for Seth. They had planned to hold their ground on the fortifications until the enemy decided it wasn’t worth their time, or broke on the ditch and bank and the spearwall.

But they hadn’t counted on this monster. Their defenses would not stand up to that thing.

How could Marty possibly kill it?


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