“Now you begin to realize what we are up against,” Anya said, reading my thoughts.
“The Golden One sent us here to hunt down this thing called Set and destroy him?” I asked. “Alone? Just the two of us? Without weapons?”
“Not the Golden One, Orion. The entire council of the Creators. The whole assemblage of them.”
The ones whom the ancient Greeks had called gods, who lived in their own Olympian world in the distant future of this time.
“The entire assemblage,” I repeated, “That means you agreed to the task.”
“To be with you,” Anya said. “They were going to send you alone, but I insisted that I come with you.”
“I am expendable,” I said.
“Not to me.” And I loved her all the more for it.
“You said this creature called Set—”
“He is not a creature of ours, Orion,” Anya swiftly corrected. “The Creators did not bring him into being, as we did the human race. He comes from another world and he seeks to destroy the Creators.”
“Destroy… even you?”
She smiled at me, and it was if another sun had risen. “Even me, my love.”
“You said he can cause final death, without hope of revival.”
Anya’s smile disappeared. “He and his kind have vast powers. If they can alter the continuum deeply enough to destroy the Creators, then our deaths will be final and irrevocable.”
Many times over the eons I had thought that the release of death would be preferable to the suffering toil of a life spent in pain and danger. But each time the thought of Anya, of this goddess whom I loved and who loved me, made me strive for life. Now we were together at last, but the threat of ultimate oblivion hung over us like a cloud blotting out the sun.
We walked on until the lines of trees abruptly ended. Standing in the shade of the last wide-branched chestnut, we looked out on a sea of grass. Wild uncut grass as far as the limestone cliffs that jutted into the bright summer sky, marking the edge of the Nile-cut valley. Windblown waves curled through the waving fronds of grass like green surges of surf rushing toward us.
Silhouetted against the distant cliffs I saw a few dark specks moving slowly. I pointed toward them and Anya followed my outstretched arm with her eyes.
“Humans,” she muttered. “A crew of slaves.”
“Slaves?”
“Yes. Look at what’s guarding them.”
Chapter 2
I focused my eyes intently on the distant figures. I have always been able to control consciously all the functions of my body, direct my will along the chain of neural synapses instantly to make any part of my body do exactly what I wished it to do.
Now I concentrated on the line of human beings trudging across the grassy landscape. They were being led by something not human.
At first it reminded me of a dinosaur, but I knew that the great reptilians had become extinct millions of years before this time. Or had they? If the Creators could twist time to their whim, and this alien called Set had comparable powers, why not a dinosaur here in the Neolithic era?
It walked on four slim legs and had a long whiplike tail twitching behind it. Its neck was long, too, so that its total length was nearly twenty feet, about the size of a full-grown African bull elephant. But it was much less bulky, slimmer, more graceful. I got the impression that it could run faster than a man.
Its scales were brightly colored in bands of red, blue, yellow, and brown. Horny projections of bone studded its back like rows of buttons. The head at the end of that elongated neck was small, with a short stubby snout and eyes set wide apart on either side of a rounded skull. Its eyes were slitted, unblinking.
It strode up at the front of the little column of humans, and every few moments turned its long neck back to look at the slaves it led.
And they were slaves, that was obvious. Fourteen men and women, wearing nothing but tattered loincloths, emaciated ribs showing clearly even at the distance from which we watched. They seemed exhausted, laboring for breath as they struggled to keep up to the pace set by their reptilian guard. One of the women carried a baby in a sling on her back. Two of the men looked like teenagers to me. There was only one gray head among them. I got the impression they rarely lived long enough to become gray.
Hiding behind the bole of the chestnut tree at the edge of the garden, we watched the pitiful little parade for several silent moments.
Then I asked, “Why slaves?”
Anya whispered, “To tend this garden, of course. And the other desires of Set and his minions.”
The woman with the baby stumbled and fell to her knees. The giant reptile instantly wheeled around and trotted up to her, looming over her. Even from this distance I could hear the faint wailing of the baby.
The woman struggled to her feet, or tried to. Not fast enough for the guard. Its slim tail whipped viciously across her back, striking the baby as well. She screamed and the baby shrieked with pain and terror.
Again the tail flicked back and struck at her. She fell facedown on the grass.
I strained forward, but Anya grasped ray arm and held me back.
“No,” she whispered urgently. “There’s nothing you can do.”
The huge lizard was standing over the prostrate mother, bending its neck to sniff at her unmoving form. The baby still wailed. The other men and women stood unmoving, mute as statues.
“Why don’t they fight?” I seethed.
Anya replied, “With their bare hands against that monster?”
“They could at least run away while its attention is diverted. Scatter—”
“They know better, Orion. They would be hunted down like animals and killed very slowly.”
The lizard was squatting on its two rear legs and tail now, nudging the woman’s body with one of its clawed forepaws. She did not move.
Then the beast pulled the infant out of the sling and lifted it high, swinging its head upward as it did so. I realized it was going to crunch the baby in its jaws.
Nothing could hold me back now. I bolted out from the protection of the trees and raced pell-mell toward the monster, bellowing loudly as I could while I ran. All my bodily senses went into hyperdrive, as they always do when I face danger. The world around me seemed to slow down, everything moved with an almost dreamlike languor.
I saw the lizard holding the squalling baby aloft, saw its head turning toward me on the end of that long snaky neck, saw its narrow slit eyes register on me, its head bobbing back and forth as if it were saying no. In reality it was merely trying to get a fix with both eyes on what was making the noise.
I saw the baby still clutched in the lizard’s claws, its tiny legs churning in the empty air, its blubbering face contorted and red with crying. And the mother, her naked back livid with the welts from the beast’s tail, was pushing herself up on one elbow in a futile effort to reach her baby.
The lizard dropped the baby and turned to face me, hissing. Its tongue darted out of its tiny mouth as its head bobbed left and right. The tail flicked as it dropped to all fours.
I had my dagger in my right hand. It seemed pitifully small against the talons on the monster’s paws, but it was the only weapon I possessed. As I closed the distance between us I saw the other humans standing behind the lizard. My brain registered that they were totally cowed, unmoving, not even trying to get away or distract the beast in any manner. I would get no help from them.
The lizard took a few trotting steps toward me, then reared up on its hind legs like an enraged bear. It towered over me, advancing on those monstrous clawed hind legs while its neck bent down between its wide-spread forelegs, hissing at me. Its teeth were small and flat, I saw. Not a flesh-eater. Just a killing machine.