Hi,
I've only ever posted anything online a few times, let along a story. However, I was inspired by all the effort and creativity of everyone else here to try it myself. It is a bit long-winded for this medium, I'm afraid, and I'm worried I'm heading more for a novel than a short story! Anyway, constructive criticism welcome.
GATES OF ANUBIS
PART I
.... Be a craftsman in speech, (so that) thou mayest be strong, (for) the tongue is a sword to [a man], and speech is more valorous than any fighting. No one can circumvent the skillful of heart....They who know his wisdom do not attack him, and no [misfortune] occurs where he is...
[From the Instructions of Merikare, written by the Herakleopolitan king Kheti to his son Merikare (ca.2200 BCE)]
Nowadays we refer to the year in which the Elder War began as 1515 Anno Regina Divinus. This is the new, ‘progressive’ way of talking. To my mind, it is a mental infection spread by the calculating pads of the merchants and usurers in the markets. They in turn contracted it from the Romans, who as everyone knows are reincarnated field-scribes [tax collectors – ed.].
At the time of the war we still talked in the old way; we would have said it began in the eighth year of twenty-fourth reincarnation of the Divine Queen. My philosophical friends at the Great Library of Thoth earnestly inform me that the old way was ‘cyclical’, ‘reactionary’ and ‘stunted our thinking’ whereas the new way is ‘linear’, ‘progressive’ and ‘conducive to innovation’. They smile tight, sympathetic smiles and nervously scrunch their scrawny, academic bottoms on their chairs.
Stunted! Ha! Pity the poor Hindi then, I say, who to this day retain their elephantine vision of time based on the life cycle of their great God, Amar. That heaving mass of dusty peasants and corpulent rajas believes that the entire world is no more than a dream of their God - a ponderous entity that sleeps six thousand year at a time. The catch is that inevitably, he shall awake at some stage and we shall vanish like so much mist before a morning sun.
“Cyclical”, I exclaim, “bloody chronically depressed, I would have thought! But they didn’t fight badly for all that and know quite a bit that we don’t for an ‘unprogressive’ nation, as well as still holding quite a few our people in their slave pens.”
I am, thank goodness, a lifetime member of the library by divine charter or I am sure I should have lost my privileges by now.
Ah. I have wandered, haven’t I?
No matter. This is no more than a sentimental throw at immortality by an evil-minded, old schemer from a bygone age. The only reason anyone will read it is because She once loved me above all others. Old court reprobates and their unctuous protégés will avidly devour this small hovel of words in a vain search for hints and tips on how to similarly ingratiate themselves in the divine affection.
Of course, that was the twenty-third reincarnation and some say that the Great Mystery, the reincarnation of the Queen, is a myth. But I know better: if the new queen were not a continuation of the old, then I would not be here, neck intact. I know too many unpleasant, dangerous and just embarrassing secrets for any ruler who didn’t love me to let me live. Thus does faith find succour in logic!
Ah! Wandered again. And I the one who used to tell my staff, ‘intelligence finds the prey but focus make the kill’!
So, the war. The war was inevitable. Most wars are given the nature of humanity and the fact that some people could own an entire world, possess every luxury and safety and yet still not be happy until they dominate another… no, I won’t begin with a sermon. This is a history not a psalm and if you are reading it a few years hence – and if those pale, goat-born worms in the library get their proposals for ‘mass education’ adopted - you will no doubt know less than anyone has ever done before. So, I shall treat you as though you were a baby; a stranger; an ignorant young puppy abandoned in the market. A Roman, even!
GATES OF ANUBIS
PART 2
Come, [let me tell] you the woes of the soldier, and how many are his superiors: the general, the troop-commander, the officer who leads, the standard-bearer, the lieutenant, the scribe, the commander of fifty, and the garrison-captain.
[Instructions in letter writing by Nebmare-nakht (ca. 1080 BCE)]
Our people settled this land one thousand, five hundred and sixty-eight years ago.
Every Khemetan knows this number because that is the day the first – and by religious doctrine, our only – great leader, Cleopatra, became a God [the ancient Egyptians referred to their land as Khemet – ed.]. One fine, spring day a redoubtable old woman named Cleopatra, the matriarch of the tribe at the time, led our ragged, nomadic ancestors into the Valley of the Lambs. She saw the verdant splendour of the meadows and forests that lay between two hills like a lush oasis between a woman’s buttocks; saw the placid sweep of the River Nicolia (and the dark evidence of it’s fertile annual flooding); saw the deep violet of the distant sea that indicated a natural harbour; and decided to put up house.
“Here we shall stay. We shall not wander like wild dogs on the plains but possess this valley, build tents of wood and stone, and raise many children. We shall grow fat and prosperous and spread our seed upon this land like a King with a Queen and so make it give birth to the greatest tribe ever seen…”
Etcetera, etcetera.
Ah well, we know the date is right because the priests are meticulous with their tithing calendars, if not their devotions. Only She knows whether the speech is accurate and She, when questioned, does no more than give a sly, enigmatic smile before changing the topic. Irreversibly. One does not question Her on the same matter twice.
Anyway, the important thing is she was right. There is no aphrodisiac like a loaf of bread and a stable of horses. Metaphorically speaking, of course. (Or perhaps not if you believe the rumours about those country lads in the Theban Cavalry Corps concerning the hours they spend grooming those magnificent beasts).
Over the next twenty-three reigns (one-and-a-half millennium for those of you who wear togas), we spread from Gulf of Horus - across which lies the realm of yellow, bow-legged Chin – to the chilly, northern ocean that marks the end of the lands of men. We spread from the eastern tip of the world, where lies Holy Thebes nestled between its protective buttocks, to the Gates of Anubis through which Ra goes to sleep at the end of every day. We were more fertile than rabbits, more intrepid than tigers and more powerful than any tribe we had ever met. In fact, by time of Cleopatra’s fifth lifetime, we no longer felt the word ‘tribe’ was appropriate to us and invented another word to describe our swollen, prosperous clan – Empire.
And it was here, at the Gate of Anubis, where grim and frigid claws of stone tear at the very fabric of the sky, that we discovered that we were not alone.
Of course, we had always known we were not the only people but all other tribes we had encountered were primitive, simple people, who scrabbled and scratched at the Earth like dung beetles or hunted in packs like wolves. They had never heard of the true Gods and the Divine Queen. These benighted innocents were easily, if sometimes forcefully, brought into Her warm embrace.
One day, though, there came through the frigid pass a strange group of men whose skin was like wet earth and who wore brightly coloured clothes and much jewellery. They looked like nothing so much as giant parrots and the guards at our most remote outpost might have been amused had it not been for two sobering facts: they rode on monstrous beasts with horns the size of men and massive, pendulous noses that could pick up a man and rip him apart; and secondly, these mud-coloured men were, of course, the dead.
Who else would come through the Gates of Anubis?
In time, we learned that our theology was, if not wrong, perhaps requiring re-interpretation. The Gates, it seemed, were not so much a portal to the land of the dead as the gateway to the bringers of death. For this first party of gaily clad warriors were simply scouts for a large and powerful nation – the Hindi. At first, after recovering from our shock and reassuring ourselves that they indeed had heartbeats, we entertained them lavishly and gave no thought to danger. Indeed we sent them back home a few months later loaded with gifts and accompanied by a number of our most senior nobles as ambassadors. Soon we learned our mistake.
Two years later a larger party, this time followed by women and livestock, appeared at the Gates and after moving a short way inside, began to build a city without so much as a please or thank you.
Now, new neighbours are one thing but neighbours who invite themselves into your sacred, God-given, God-ruled, God-granted house and set up shop at the bottom of your garden, are another. This could not be tolerated. We had no interest in living in their dim realm (for most of us were still convinced they lived in some ancillary portion of the netherworld) but equally it was theologically impossible for us to share our land with heathens, let along those we recently considered undead or demons.
Upon hearing of this affront, the Queen was incensed to the point of speechlessness for three days. This was not so much an invasion of Her property as an alien growth upon Her very body, as if someone had placed leech on Her breast and told her to suckle it. When She recovered Her voice, couriers were sent racing to Memphis, Giza, Aten, Alexandria and our other cities. Her chariot brigades, including even Her personal squadrons of women warriors – the Cleopatra Brigade - streamed north from all over the Empire; the spear divisions of Thoth, Horus, Hathor, Isis, Amon, Ra and Seth followed determinedly in their wake. In a little under six moons, over thirty thousand men and women were assembled but a few miles south of the invaders.
And where was I, you ask?
Well, I, my friends was engaged in the gravest task of all… satisfying the Queen’s fury-inspired and truly deity-proportioned lust.
Do not laugh, my friends! This may sound like a frivolous exercise but when a living God has your manhood in Her hands (or mouth) one is not relaxed, not one bit. One is simply trying very hard not to defecate in terror all over Her finest linen sheets.
Besides, a distracted and lustful Queen would not make a wise general, would she now?
So, on an already sultry, summer morning in the eighth year of the twenty-fourth reincarnation of the Divine Queen, we struck.
