News of Attack
AKHENATON STROKED THE rabbit fur and then hung it on a stuffed deer head. It was rainy outside and Thutmose was looking after the puppies, Akhenaton, Straitjacket, Nefertiti, baby LaTa, and baby Kutsankhamon, destined to become the future king of Egypt. No one knew this yet because there were more important things to be dealt with.
First, there was the war. It might have been a rumor but news of attacks on cities in Upper Egypt sounded real enough. Then, there was food. Would there be famine or would the Nile flood as usual? This was a problem that the residents of Egypt had to face every year. It was like the persistant [sic] nagging of locusts in the fields. It wasn't the kind of question that could be pushed out of your mind and ignored. It was always there, like the sky above your head and the ground beneath your feet.
So the Egyptians had to make sacrifices to the gods. Most sacrifices went well. But there were only two reasons of why some didn't work. 1. The gods were angry 2. Set Set was a donkey headed rat with wings and a spade-tipped tail, as well as the god of evil--in short, he was trouble spelled with a capital S-E-T. [Note--this is how I pictured Set back then--an anthropomorphic rat body, with wings, a donkey's head, and the spade-tipped tail. He officially changed into his "current" form of a human with the head of the "Typhonic animal" only in my rewrite of Horus, 1997.]
Straitjacket's long ears pricked up. "I hear something," she said.
"Me too," Akhenaton said. "It sounds like--"
"Thunder," Nefertiti put in.
"No, too creaky," Straitjacket argued. "It's--it's--"
"Wagon wheels!" they all said. [Note--the Egyptians of this time period did not possess the wheel. What's more, they didn't possess horses or camels, either. Or buses. But I'm sure you knew that.]
"Shh," Thutmose said, "I'm trying to do my homework."
"You're always trying to do your homework," Akhenaton said. "The only thing you do is homework. Why don'tcha ever do anything fun?"
Thutmose III looked up. "Like what? Nothing's fun these days. To get fun, you have to buy it."
"Artificial fun," Straitjacket giggled.
"There's a camel in the driveway!" Nefertiti said.
There was a knock on the door.
Thutmose got up to answer it. A peasant was there.
[Illustration: An anthropomorphic dog dressed in rags, wearing sandals and a heavy backpack. He's standing in a doorway and looking anxiously toward the viewer.]
"Please, your Highness, may I talk to you?" he said. [Note--"Your" should be capitalized. Ditto with any other such occurrences.]
Flattered to be called by such a title, Thutmose asked him in. [Note--Thutmose's reaction, feeling flattered, is out of character for the way I imagine him now. Then again, just about EVERYTHING he does in any of the King Kuts stories is out of character for him now...]
The slave shook his head. [Note--I apparently saw no difference between "peasant" and "slave."] "No time. I've come to tell you that the Syrians are coming from the north, and the Upper Egyptians are going to fight them."
"A raid from both sides?" Thutmose said, shocked. [Note--more explaining! In ancient Egypt, the "Upper Kingdom" was in the SOUTH, whereas the "Lower Kingdom" was in the NORTH--yes, you got it--they had things backwards. I didn't know this when I first started my Egyptian writing, and even after I found out, I didn't want to change my stories--so in my writing, Upper Egypt is in the north, and Lower Egypt is in the south. HOWEVER--for some reason, this seems oddly reversed in this particular story--like I put the Two Kingdoms back in their proper places. I think I had some sort of convoluted reasoning that the Upper Egyptians had somehow moved south of the Lower Egyptians, and were going to attack from there. Confused yet? So am I. I'll shut up now.]
The slave nodded. "Not yet, but we know it. I've seen the soldiers with my own eyes. Dressed in black, with a golden ankh. That's the Egyptians. And the Syrians are even blacker. They are panthers in the night; you can't see or hear them or know of their presence until they are upon you. Like panthers, they are." With that he ran off to his camel and cart, whipped his whip in the air, and galloped off.
He dropped a tiny statue into a mud muddle [sic].
A tiny silver wolf. [Note--I seem to recall basing this wolf on a figurine my brother left behind from his Dungeons & Dragons days--but as for its significance in this story, I've long forgotten. The only association I can think of is the god Upuat, but I don't believe I was writing about him yet back then.]
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