I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her, Rae thought.Doesn’t matter. We don’t need her.
“For Khetara!” she roared again. She didn’t attack, she merely stood there, a resolute colossus gleaming in the sun.
The crowd withdrew in confusion, erupting in noisy chatter. Tam vanished among them.
The head guard called to his gawking men. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Take her down! She’s disrupting the ritual!”
“For Khetara!”Rae shouted a third time as the guards closed in.
A thunderous wave of sound came crashing toward them, the clamor of running feet and war cries from more than fifty throats. Rae turned to see a horde of Horizon rebels charging from the far side of the courtyard, weapons raised—the same weapons they’d taken from the Medjay in what felt like another lifetime. She saw Buto and Kay the fisherman, and at the front, leading the charge, she saw Menk.
Rae smiled as she recalled the words written on the scroll she’d found after Omari disappeared. A note from Menk himself.
The Horizon sails for Thonis, it said.Come what may, we are with you.
The royal guard, who had been focused on Rae, lost preciousseconds to prepare to meet their attackers. While the courtiers fled screaming, the guards barely had the chance to unsheathe their khopesh before the Low Khetarans crashed into them at full force.
The courtyard fell into total mayhem.
Rae brought the sekhem scepter swooping down into a guard’s forearm as he reached for his blade. The guard shrieked as the bone shattered on impact, then rounded on Rae, head down, barreling into her like a raging bull. Rae sidestepped nimbly and kicked the guard in the back as he passed, sending him sprawling. Her neck tingled as she sensed movement behind her, but when she whirled around, she found Menk pulling a spear from a guard’s chest—one who had been about to run her through with his khopesh. The guard collapsed.
Menk grinned and waggled his enormous ears.
“That was cutting it close, don’t you think?” Rae asked as the battle raged around them.
Menk scoffed. “That’s a funny way of saying ‘thank you.’ I speared him as rapidly as I could!”
“Not that! The break-in, you goose! A second longer and it would have been too late!” She pressed her back to his, and they circled around, weapons at the ready.
“Oh, because breaking into a fortress is so easy!”
“You found the conduit on the riverbank?”
“It was exactly where you said it would be.”
So, Femi’s information had been accurate. After she’d helped him escape the palace, the former guard had told her about an underground stone channel that ran from the Iteru under the fortress wall and emptied into a cistern that supplied water to those stationed inside. Since it was the dry season, the channel wasn’t flooded and could be traversed on foot. When she’d first suggested the plan to Neff, the young priestess had brought upa serious concern. There would be archers positioned along the ramparts who could easily pick off the rebels with arrows as they climbed out of the cistern.
“We need a distraction,” Neff had advised. “Something to hold their attention long enough for your people to get their feet on the ground.”
“I can do that,” Rae had assured her. “I’ll tell them to send a signal when they’re ready. There’s still a problem, though. Once the fighting breaks out, the archers will start shooting from above. It won’t be as easy for them to target us amid courtiers and guards, but there are still a lot more of them than there are of us.”
“That’s where I’ll come in,” Neff had said with a smile. “I know just the thing.”
“What’s the plan now?” Menk shouted over the din, jabbing with his spear when a battle between a guard and a rebel got too close for comfort. “I thought the young priestess was going to make a move!”
Rae dodged a swinging blade and kicked out at her attacker, doubling him over. “Yes, well, somebody’s got to free her first! The situation got a little out of hand before you showed up.”
“Go!” Menk told her. “Get your father and release the girl! The boys and I will try to hold them off until you do!”
Rae nodded and turned toward the platform. Rae could see through the fray that Meryamun hadn’t moved from his position. He still stood over her father, his face purpling with rage as he surveyed the chaos.
“Keep going!”he commanded the Heka priests.
After a nervous pause, the three men resumed their chanting.
He means to finish the ritual!
Rae shoved a dueling pair aside, trying to forge a path through the crush of people. Another man hit the ground in front of her, and she vaulted over him.
