[u][b]The Valley of the Kings, Egypt[/b][/u]

Heruy had said something once, as they crossed over old foot-trails and river beds in their effort to avoid sight of the city of Luxor. "Thank God the Pharaohs died so we might have this road." That thought came into Leyla's mind as they ascended into the valley. There was no other reason for these dunes and rocky bluffs to have so many roads attached to them. And this abandoned tourist trap was of no use to the authorities at Luxor, so the chances of meeting an enemy here were slim.

Leyla remembered a rant about the Turkish handling of Egyptian antiquaries from a school teacher when she was younger. For the Egyptians themselves, these places were hallowed and symbolized an eternal greatness for their people. The Turks, however, had saw them as opportunities to bring tourist money and legitimacy to their occupation. They had added new roads, and spent obsessionally on archeologists to scour the nation for any find that might increase their prestige. These places were of course abandoned now, but they presented serendipitous highways for the fleeing Ethiopians. She hadn't considered it before, but the Copts had informed her of this route.

They left the Coptic village three days after they arrived. She had never meant to stay so long, but the rest had been a welcome one, and the Copts were welcoming to the point of obsession. It was understandable. They were threatened by the Imam at Luxor. It was why they hadn't asked any questions about their prisoner, the sullied priest Junedin. When the priest had commenced his delirious mix of obscenity and pleading, the needful Copts didn't bat an eye. 

Few words passed between the surviving Ethiopians the day they traveled to the Valley. Their short rest among the Copts made the desert seem even more hateful than before, and they had to travel slow in the hills. Junedin's shouting echoed from his place in the back of a landrover, and his curses put Leyla in a bad mood. She kept her mind on the prize.

It was twilight when they reached the Valley of the Kings. The tombs themselves were not what made the place obvious; their entrances hardly stuck out from the bluffs. There was a stone road and signs written in Turkish and Arabic that marked where they were. Sand dusted the paving stones, and a thin layer of the stuff was beginning to obscure the already unassuming tomb entrances. This place hadn't been visited for a while. It seemed as good a place as any to rest for the day.

"This is a morbid campsite." Heruy said in a lowered voice. 

Leyla smiled, ignoring Junedin's raging chant of 'cunt' in the background. "You afraid of dead people now?"

"Well, who isn't?" Heruy sounded sincerely defensive as he helped her drag out sleeping bags from the back of a landrover. 

"These people have been dead longer than... well, any tombs I have seen now I think on it. What is in these places is only human-shaped clumps of dirt."

"Souls, Leyla." he replied, and his face betrayed only seriousness. "This is their place, and they have had it for some time."

"They will have to give us some room for tonight." she tried to sound consoling. "We can't go anywhere else."

They ate bread and cold chicken for dinner, being careful not to start a fire. Leyla felt painfully aware the only thing between them and Luxor was a rocky ridge-line and a few miles of farmland. How much of that did this Imam of Luxor patrol? What was the true nature of his control? The Copts had made him and his sound like a fully-constructed government with real control of Egypt, but was that just an exaggeration born from their precarious situation? Perhaps this Imam was little more than a priest with a weak militia of followers. 

She hoped she wouldn't have to learn.

The stars were bright against a crisp black desert sky. Moonlight bathed the ground in a comfortable blue glow. Heruy elected to go on guard first, and the other men kept to themselves as they usually did, leaving Leyla with the large Barentu. His unkempt dreads were crusted with dust, and he had grown a respectable beard in the time since the Battle for the Suez. She watched as he finished his dinner, tearing manfully into the tough bread the Copts had provided them with.

"I wonder how the war is going." Leyla said in an attempt to make conversation. Barentu only paused his eating. "The Egyptians told you the dam down the river is ours." he said. "That must mean something."

"I got the impression they only knew rumors." she replied in a soft voice, like a mother afraid of waking the children.

"That is the only news we have heard. What else can we expect?" he said slowly.

"You saw the strength the Spanish showed at the Suez. This is a power we are dealing with."

"You sound like you respect them, Leyla." he said, tearing another rip of bread

"I do." she spoke strongly this time. "I do respect them even if they are my enemy. It would be a mistake for me to do otherwise. I might be disgusted in what they are doing, but that does not change [i]what[/i] they can do."

Barentu stopped eating. Bread crumbs clung to his beards like the stars in the sky. "I do not want to spend time respecting ferengi. If a man killed my mother, I would not think about how skilled he was at murdering."

"I understand." Leyla said. She looked into Barentu's eyes and tried to gage his mood. They reflected wetly in the moonlight. There was a simple weight in them, like the eyes of a hunting dog, and in that she found comfort somehow. 

"It is like Junedin." he continued. "I know there are rules, you have told me your rules, but all I need to know is that he did a horrible and selfish thing to the Egyptian woman. He should die for that despite the rules."

The harsh tone he took on this subject always made her uncomfortable. When she thought of him, she liked to think of the loyal giant, and the harsh soldier parts of his personality always eclipsed that when it came out. "There are no military laws about... what he did. Not for foreigners."

"Insubordination." he answered.

"He isn't my soldier, and I am not his officer. Not really. Remember we killed some of the people defending that village, and only to steal food and water. It's... it's an ugly affair. If he acted against one of us, or against me... well, that would be a crime I could punish. No. I can only report him to the authorities when we return."

"He will do something to hurt us. I know he will." Barentu leaned back and looked into the sky. 

Leyla had the same fears. But what could she do? Despite what Junedin had done, to that woman and to their mission, she didn't hate him as much as she had before. She could tell his captivity in the hot sun was driving him completely mad. And why would it not? Their conditions had strained her nerves, and she had complete control of herself. He was hogtied in the back of a landrover and hated by everyone around him. He had done such a horrible thing to that innocent woman, and empathy for her own sex should bring her to despise the man more than Barentu seemed to. But... the world was horrible. She knew that, and she always had. The entire situation left her feeling dully responsible for more than she knew how to accept. She had to swallow it all and move on. Looking up into the night sky, she slowly fell asleep. She slept, and she dreamed.

It was a dream of Armenia, muddled together from so many impressions that it could never have happened like this, but the dream felt real none the less. It was the city of Erzurum, war-torn and smouldering, with the sound of battle only miles away. The normal practices of city life had been replaced by processions of military hardware and soldiers. It was the logistical side of war, the only way she ever experienced it in Armenia. Despite the brimstone and gunpowder atmosphere, there was Elias grinning as he always did. She felt the certain comfort her partners grin always fed to her in the field. There was a feeling of urgency, a mission that needed doing, but it melted away. The dream shifted them back to the gardens of Yerevan, and then a showhouse in Sevan. Armenia didn't seem like a nation in the dream. It was like an amusement park, where each door led to something else. She followed Elias through it all; wars, parties, government meetings. At the end they were on the shore, a boat full of baby goats, and the feeling that something was missing. This was their mission. But what was it? 

"FATHER"

She woke up suddenly from the scream. The sun had hardly started to rise, and the stars were still out. 

"HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME!" 

The voice shouting was Junedin's. The awful priest was shouting the Lord's Prayer into the morning air. He did not sound like a priest, beseeching God. Rather, The words were spat out like curses, like a man screaming hatefully at children in the streets. 

"YOUR KINGDOM COME!" 

"Shut him up!" she saw Heruy walk up, visibly irritated.

"Did you see any ghosts?" she asked him. 

"YOUR WILL BE DONE!"

The young Heruy looked down at her and frowned. "That isn't appropriate. We should shut the priest up. We don't know how far he can be heard."

"ON EARTH! ON EARTH AS IT IS IN FUCKING HEAVEN!" 

"He might wake the dead." she teased. Heruy made sure she knew he didn't appreciate that. She stood herself up and stretched. Sand and gravel fell from her blanket and clacked onto the ground. "Gag the prisoner." she commanded. Her voice flowed freely and she realized she was used to command somehow by now. 

"GIVE US SOME SHIT BREAD! GIVE US DAILY.." he went quiet at that moment. She wondered what cloth they had used to quiet the prisoner today.

Things seemed to flow smoothly after that. The land-rovers were prepared before the completion of dawn. Leyla looked at the entry-ways into the tombs and, for a moment, she fancied to spend the morning playing the tourist. She thought better of it and it was not long before they were on the move.

They went through a tunnel that had been blasted to the south of the valley. It was painted on the inside to look like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but there was a softness to the style that differed from truly ancient art. In the center of the tunnel there was no light except for the two ends. They exited into another valley, the bluffs and lower ground all the same uniform color of sand. The valley ended at an ancient mortuary temple complex, where the columns and the statues and the colonnades shared the same dull sand coloring of everything around them. They descended into the valley at a careful speed. Leyla rolled down the window and felt the last of the cool desert air pass over her before the sun came high enough to scorch everything. 

Thin lines of grey smoke started to stream from the engine of the landrover in front of them. It was too early for this. Once they were in the valley, she motioned them to the side and hopped out of the vehicle to talk.

"We checked the fluid levels before we left." Heruy explained from the drivers seat. He had with him the others, who's names Leyla had failed to commit to memory. 

"That temple looks like it has a courtyard, and look." she pointed. "I think we can drive into it. Pull into there."

Perhaps it was inappropriate to use the ancient mud-brick ramp to enter a sacred temple in a couple of landrovers, but she couldn't help but use the protection its walls provided. She wondered what the ramp had been for. Perhaps its easy incline had been for transporting the mummified dead all those eons ago? It would take time for them to fix the engine, giving her the chance to explore. 

The entrance to the temple was guarded by standing figures, crowned with the two crowns of ancient Egypt and standing firm against the columns. They stopped inside the walls and she wasted no time starting her personal tour.

'[i]Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut[/i]' a sign read, posted in Turkish. She skimmed the rest of the text, but the temple itself interested her more than the history, and she wandered the courtyard. The columns were carved with hieroglyphs, and the last flaking bits of painted scenes hung on the walls. There were scenes of birds and animals along the Nile, peasants and royal processions, and animal-headed gods reigning on their thrones. It all seemed so alive... and peaceful. She felt as if Egypt had degraded since those times. What would the ancients paint of the modern state of their beloved land? Rifles, blood, and dust. That was the impression her time in Egypt had left her with.

Under the colonnade, the paint was better kept. Here, the dust and sun had only slightly faded the colors. Strong blues and reds contrasted where red men worked along the river. [i]Red land, black land.[/i] She recalled that conversation with Heruy, and had to smile. These people didn't share the color Heruy supposed them to.

She looked across her shoulders to see Barentu plodding across the courtyard toward her. "We have a problem." he whispered. She noted the whisper immediately, and knew exactly the kind of problem he must be talking about. She led him to the entry-way they had entered through.

"There." he pointed to four dots on the horizon. "On camels. I used the binoculars, and I saw guns."

She grabbed the binoculars. They were leaning behind a column, hiding in the shade of the temple. "How did you see the guns? I can't see them." she whispered. 

"I saw a flash." he said. She assumed he meant a glint of light.

The two of them watched the men approach on camel back. There were five of them. They were still watching the men make their slow approach when Heruy came up and told them the landrover was fixed.

"Tell everyone to be quiet, and don't move unless you have to." she whispered to him. "There is not much sand to kick up, but caution is how we survive."

And so they watched in silence. The desert was an especially silent place, where wind made the only sound. Soon enough she could hear the conversations of the camel-riders echoing between the cliff-faces, but she could not make out there words. Their camels also snorted from time to time.

The watch was grueling. Her heart was in her chest. The sun had taken well into the sky, and beads of sweat were now pouring down her skin. When the camel-riders reached the road they had driven across just minutes before, she thought they were discovered. Surely the tracks would tell. But to her luck, they seemed not to pay attention. They started up toward the tunnel, seemingly unaware of the Ethiopians' traces.

"FATHER! HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME!"

That voice... that hateful man. It rang through the valley like a bell. How had Junedin spit his gag? There was no time to think about that.

"YOUR KINGDOM COME!" 

The camel-riders looked straight at the temple. They were moving quickly now, and they [i]knew[/i]. For Leyla and her soldiers, there was one option. It would be a fight. The Ethiopians took their places behind the Pharaonic columns. There were four Egyptians against seven armed Ethiopians. Those odds were good, but they were in enemy country, and with Luxor just over the ridge there was no promise the odds would stay good.

There was a silent moment, like the desert took a breath. Nobody would fire a shot until the Egyptians were in range. Heruy had disappeared for long enough to gather rifles and the rest of the African party. They were all together now, each with his own column.

When the enemy reached the foot of the ramp, the Ethiopians opened fire in one staggering volley. Camels dropped, and an Egyptian fell dead. The surviving enemued took cover behind the corpses of their animals. They returned fire. Mudbrick walls, which had lay still for thousands of years, shattered into flying shards and a haze of dust.

Combat became one thing. A single event, where no other thoughts or emotions existed. Yank the bolt, feed a round, aim, fire. Soon enough, gunfire made the angry shouting of the priest a forgotten detail.  

Crack. Crack. Thud. Crack-crack-crack. Leyla couldn't hear anything but guns. The sound made her ears buzz. In the valley below, camel corpses swallowed the rounds in bloody spouts until the blood was all poured out. The sand went red, and shifting walls and the animals became walls of shredded meat and fur.

She couldn't feel her body. Adrenaline. Bullets punched into the walls and columns around them. One hit so near to her, almost just behind her, and it was so close that it made her arm go numb with a sort of empathetic fear. 

The gunfire slowed to a trickle as one by one the Ethiopians realized the enemy response had ceased. The silence that came afterwards was fearful. Her ears rang, but moment by moment she started to hear the gentle wind again. A thin cloud of dust filled their part of the temple, and everything between them and the butchered meat at the foot of the ramp.

"Leyla." she heard a startled voice call to her, and she looked to see Barentu looking down at her strangely. 

"We need to get away." she said to him, and she realized she was woozy. When she looked down, she saw that her hand and the stock beneath the barrel was stained in blood. The last thing she noticed was how the world smelled like gunpowder, and then her world went black.