Silk Over Razor Blades (4 page)

Battle raged around him, a roaring,
shrieking, thunderous clash of determined forces vying for
supremacy and control of the field. No time to sit. To lie still.
Fight, fight, always fight, pushing forward, attacking, driving the
enemy back.

When Saar eventually scrambled to his
feet, a sea of panicked faces stared back, a small circle of calm
in the midst of the swirling storm of fighting.

Nobody spoke.

For long moments Saar could think of
nothing to say. Shock, fear and anger stoppered his voice. Then the
sounds of continued battle returned him to his senses.

‘
I—’ he licked his lips. ‘Those
unworthy of our gift will return to the sand. Look, I stand. You
stand. Set blesses only those worthy and destroys the weak. Take
heart in your strength and fight on.’

It worked. For a short time. Then
Mosi’s archers recovered from their own shock and fired another
volley. Three more arrows punctured Saar’s body; spine, thigh and
buttocks.

He stumbled. Fell again. Saw every
god-touched soldier within two hundred yards do the same. Even
those beyond the line of fire pitched to the ground with agonised
howls and shrieks, all of them clutching at buttocks, spine or
thigh.

Close by, a soldier almost as old as
himself crashed to the ground. Blood poured from the side of his
mouth. ‘Help me!’

‘
Adofo, are you hurt?’ Saar
demanded.

‘
No.’ The other man clutched his
thigh. ‘I’ve taken no arrow, nor felt any sword’s bite.’ Yet
florets of glistening red formed beneath his clothing, spreading
from three distinct and familiar points.

Victory and the chances of attaining it
visibly slipped from Saar’s grasp. Over his shoulder, he saw the
enemy forces form two groups. One broke off to march on the city
whilst the other stayed to deal with the flagging Alexandrian men.
The few still standing either dropped their weapons or fled towards
the river.

‘
Fight. Stay and fight, you craven
beasts.’ Saar yanked the arrow from his thigh. Blood jetted into
the air.

The battlefield dipped in and out of
focus. Cold crawled through Saar’s limbs. His leaden legs dragged
beneath him, demanding a brief pause while his god-touched body
handled the blood loss.

‘
We heal,’ he cried, though his
voice trembled. ‘Warriors touched by Set are blessed with his
strength and resilience. His blood gives us unending life.’

Adofo’s body exploded in a
skin-shearing blast of desert sand.

Saar’s words morphed into a scream. His
back arched. He felt pain like thousands of claws pulling his skin,
shredding it from his flesh one agonising scrap at a time.

It took seconds. Felt like hours.

The drum-like thud of his heartbeat
reached a fevered pitch and when he next opened his eyes, Saar
realised he was lying on his face. The moisture on his cheeks was
not blood or sweat.

Staring at the darkening sky, Saar
fought to catch his breath. He felt the dry caress of the wind on
his cheek and the tickle of sand on his neck and shoulders. He
wondered why he could still feel them. Why the sting of sweat in
his cuts and scrapes burned in the heat of the sun. As blood pulsed
from the wound in his thigh he realised that the flow remained
steady.

He was no longer healing.

Saar turned his head and sought his
immediate children; the seven men and seven women touched directly
by his gift.

He found them one by one and realised
that with Adofo, Aswad and Moswen already gone, the others might
soon follow. Hasina, Ife, Faki, Jamila, Jafari, Kakra, Atsu, Musa,
Nubia, Kiya and Mosi.

Mosi . . .

‘
You betrayed us.’ Saar saw him
lying on the sand close by, cupping both hands around a wound on
his thigh. He felt a burning desire to touch the other man’s cheek,
to brush away the blood and tears on his smooth skin. Instead he
spat in his face. ‘You betrayed me.’

‘
I had to correct your mistake,’
said Mosi.

‘
Saving our home from Antony’s
idiocy is no mistake.’

‘
Are you so blinded by your hate of
the man? He loves Cleopatra.’

‘
His love brings ruin to the rest of
us.’ Blinking away tears, Saar tried to stand. On the fourth
failure he lay still. ‘If we lose this battle Octavian will add us
to his growing pile of toys. But I could stop him. I could save us
all if you would let me.’

Mosi sighed and lay back. He took his
hands from his thigh and let the blood flow free, a slow pulse that
would surely kill him.

Saar growled through his teeth.
‘Alexandria will fall because of your weakness. Our queen. Our
home. Our families.’

‘
I have no family.’

‘
You have me. Your god-touched
brothers and sisters. Was I not good to you?’

‘
You were. Once.’

‘
Yet you reject my gift and kill us
all.’

‘
Believe what you will but I won’t
share your illusions. This is no gift. We’re dying.’ Mosi heaved
himself into a sitting position long enough to point across the
battlefield. The gesture encompassed the hundreds of men dying from
three distinct arrow wounds. Wounds from arrows still embedded in
Saar’s body.

‘
Your wounds destroy all of us. Our
bodies are linked to yours. Your gift becomes weaker with every
child, and our every breath, thought and desire rides on your
whim.’

Mosi’s insight startled Saar into
sullen silence.

‘
And with every death of a man or
woman “blessed” with Set’s black blood, a piece of you dies
too.’

Across the battlefield more god-touched
soldiers succumbed to Saar’s injuries and to some extent he felt
them all.

Saar scrunched his eyes shut, clenched
his fists and squeezed down on each connection. He began his own
battle to shut down his senses and keep them out as he’d learnt to
do years ago.

But it was all too much. Too close. Too
many.

‘
We’re dying, Saar. All of us.
Accept it.’ Mosi’s gaze met his, all soft browns and flecks of
gold. He smiled and, despite his impending death, peace filled his
features.

‘
All of us . . .’ Saar sat up. ‘All
of us.’

Panic seized him.

Scrambling away on his hands and knees,
he made his painful way across the sand, mindless of the decaying
bodies he crushed on the way.

‘
All of us,’ he said again,
swallowing the bitter rush of bile at the back of his
throat.

Kiya lay a short distance away, still
pinned fast by the spear shaft through her abdomen.

Tears trickled down her cheeks, stained
red. Blood pumped from her thigh and more oozed into the sand
beneath her. ‘My love . . . why? How?’

‘
Be still.’ He touched her face.
‘I’ll save you.’

‘
You told me we would live together
forever.’

Tears dampened his own cheeks. ‘We
will. I promise.’

She held out her hand. Sand slid from
her fingertips.

Saar moaned and grasped his head with
both hands. ‘No. Not you too.’

She smiled, even as the terrible decay
consumed her arms and legs. ‘My love, you must win. Show them what
it means to be god-touched.’

‘
I can’t do this without
you.’

‘
Kiss me, dear love.’

Saar leaned forward, eyes closed, eager
to enjoy one last taste of her lips. His mouth brushed the dry
coarseness of desert sand. When he looked again, all that remained
of Kiya were the clothes she once wore, and the spear shaft which
then fell flat to the ground.

Physical pain meant nothing any more.
Cramps and convulsions rocked Saar’s body but he barely felt them.
Numbed to it all, he stirred his fingers through the sand that once
made his lover’s body and felt . . .

‘
I’m done,’ he whispered.

As he spoke the words, the last traces
of Kiya’s presence cracked free from his mind and crumbled
away.

The sole survivor of his fourteen
children sighed and touched his shoulder. ‘It’s over. This curse of
yours isn’t the future. Human men and women must rule.’

Saar gripped the bloodied linen of
Kiya’s dress. The lingering warmth mocked his pain. He held it to
his face, inhaling the sweet, familiar scent of figs and cumin. ‘I
love like a man,’ he whispered. ‘I fight like a man. I’m as human
as any other.’

‘
You stopped being human the day you
first drank blood to pay your debt to Set. It ends now. Here. With
us.’

Saar gagged as Mosi’s hands wrapped
around his throat, once so warm and loving, now hard and cruel. The
last rays of the dying sun caught the edge of a bronze dagger with
a double curved blade. The gems in the hilt sparkled like tiny red
eyes.

Mosi wept as he plunged it home.

Saar screamed, writhing as the deadly
weapon pierced his chest and sank into his heart.

The bright light made Lenina
wince. She squeezed her eyes shut. Cried out. Rolled left and, just
before toppling, felt hands around her waist, pulling her back from
the edge.

She struck out with both fists,
flailing and kicking. ‘No, let go!’

‘Nina, whoa. Stop, it’s
me!’

Several seconds passed before
Lenina recognised the voice. When she did, she froze and peered
over her shoulder.

Nick lay on the bed beside her,
wrinkles of worry slashed across his forehead. The bruise forming
on his left cheek gave him the appearance of a blond, lopsided
Quasimodo.

‘What happened? Where did the
guy go?’

‘Shh.’ He pressed her shoulders
against the sheets. ‘Calm down. Sit for a second. We’re home.’

‘But how? We were in the park.
That guy— he attacked you. You were screaming.’

‘Me? No, babe. Not me.’

‘
Someone
was screaming.’
Lenina put her hands to her head, picking at the tattered shreds of
her memory.

There was no battle. No sandy
city covered by a pallor of smoke.

Instead a familiar room, filled
with the comforting scents of deodorant and cocoa butter. Soft
ticking from the Dali-style clock above the bed. CDs on shelves.
Clothes on the floor. A wine glass with a ruby red smudge around
the rim. Soft sheets of Egyptian cotton rustled beneath her hands.
She clutched them, rubbed the softness between her fingers.

Nick watched. ‘Better?’

‘There was a man. I saw him—
no, I
was
him. He was looking for Cleopatra. Or I was.’

He sighed. ‘I’m calling the
hospital. I think you hit your head. Wait here.’

‘Don’t leave me!’ She grabbed
his arm, burying her head against his chest, fighting for the
familiar smell of his body. Instead she found cold patches of damp,
sticky blood. She shrank back with a cry.

‘Babe, calm down.’

‘Blood. It’s all over you.
You’re bleeding.’

‘I’m not, promise. It got on my
clothes when I carried you home.’

‘I’m bleeding?’ She tensed.

‘You were. Please sit still. I
don’t know how much blood you lost, but you need to calm down. Now
you’re awake I can get the first aid kit.’

She grasped his hand. Hers
trembled. ‘Don’t go.’

He hugged her. ‘I won’t. Never.
You’re safe now. I’ve got you.’

Lenina clutched him, listening
to the steady thud of his heartbeat through the warmth of his
chest. When she pulled back, his shirt stuck to her cheek. Pulling
it free brought a hiss from her lips. ‘He cut my face,’ she
whispered.

‘And your neck. You sure you
don’t want the hospital?’

‘I don’t want to, Nick. They’ll
keep me in and I won’t be able to see you. I want to stay with you.
What happened?’

‘When I found you on the park
that guy was—’ he gritted his teeth. ‘It’s really muddled. You were
lying there, staring at the sky like you were hypnotised. I punched
him. He hit me back. I blacked out. I think.’ He ruffled a hand
through his hair. ‘When I woke up there was blood everywhere and he
was lying on you. Kissing your neck. I thought—’ he lowered his
head.

Lenina saw tears shining in his
eyes. ‘Nick . . .’

‘I told you not to go through
the park. Why did you do that?’

Lenina hugged herself. ‘I
didn’t know he followed me.’

Nick’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’d
seen him before? Christ, babe, what is it with you? What are you
trying to prove?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t want you to
worry. I thought he was gone.’

‘So you thought you’d sweep it
under the carpet and it would all go away?’

Her eyes burned with the threat
of tears. ‘Please don’t shout at me.’

The frown deepened, lit by
angry fire. ‘He tried to rape you.’

Though the word ‘rape’ made her
stomach writhe, it didn’t feel right. Memories of the last few
hours returned in snatches but in none of them did she fear for
anything but her life. And perhaps her sanity.

Then she remembered the solid
press of an erection against her leg.

She chewed her bottom lip to
stop it wobbling. ‘I’m sorry.’

He stroked her face. ‘I was so
scared. What if he’d really hurt you?’

‘You got there in time.’

‘Barely.’ He leaned over,
tugging her into a hug and burying his face in her hair. ‘Ek het
jou lief,’ he whispered. ‘So much.’

Lenina gave a tiny smile. ‘I
love you too.’

Nick kissed her forehead.
Glanced at his watch. ‘The police said they’d send someone over
half an hour ago. Where are they?’

‘You didn’t need to call
them.’

‘Of course I did. What about
everyone else? What if this guy kills someone?’

Lenina gazed at her fingers,
noting her nail varnish had chipped in several places. ‘I just want
to forget about it.’

‘We can’t do that. You must
realise that. The guy knew my name. What if he’s been watching us?
What if he comes back?’