The Age of Ra

took them and threw them. He got a 1, meaning he was playing black and went first.

And the game commenced.

And David lost.

It happened so fast he could barely believe it. He'd succeeded in getting just one of his counters to Square 30 and off the board. He'd had a hard time even manoeuvring them onto the last row.

The Lightbringer gave a grunt of satisfaction, then made a gesture: perhaps David would like a second chance.

David certainly did.

The game began again, and again David lost. He made a better fist of it this time, installing counters on both the House of Beauty and the House of Three Truths, but it wasn't enough to foil the Lightbringer's efforts. He won while David still had three counters left to remove.

The Lightbringer might have been pleased to have had two victories on the trot. He might have been annoyed that David wasn't proving to be much competition after all. It was impossible to know.

They knuckled down to a third game, David now more determined than ever to beat the other man.

It was a close-fought contest. Luck was definitely on David's side this time, in as much as luck meant anything. The sticks kept giving him fours and sixes, allowing him turn after turn after turn. He built up a commanding lead. He removed one counter from the board.

Then the Lightbringer came from behind, gained the upper hand, and in fewer than ten moves had all his counters off and yet another victory under his belt.

David looked at the board aghast, as if somehow it had betrayed him. Three games. He had lost three whole games. And badly too. They'd not even been marginal defeats. They'd been crushing ones.

He hadn't had such a poor run at senet since… he couldn't remember when. He could think of only two people who'd ever been able to best him at the game quite so convincingly. One was his father, and the other was dead.

He debated whether to agree to a fourth game. He wasn't sure his ego could handle it. However, when the Lightbringer held out the sticks to him, he took them, and shook them, and threw them, and once again board-game battle was joined.

Now David began to notice something. He hadn't realised it before, but the Lightbringer's playing strategies were very familiar. They mirrored his own. Every move the other man made was the move he too would have made had he been in that position. The Lightbringer followed game patterns he himself favoured. It was as though he was up against another David Westwynter, and that was why he was losing. The same skills he used to beat others were being used to beat him.

Accordingly he changed tactics. He abandoned formal play. All the permutations he knew by rote, he avoided. He went for wild-card moves instead, doing what he least expected of himself and therefore what his opponent would least expect too. Given a choice between safe and unpredictable, he chose the latter every time. His only rule was recklessness. Chaos was the order of the day.

He didn't care that this probably meant he would lose. It was also the only hope he had of winning. If he continued to play as before, he would simply be handing the Lightbringer a fourth victory.

To his surprise, the gamble paid off. As he plucked his fifth and final counter off the board, David could barely suppress a grin of glee.

The Lightbringer nodded, perhaps in appreciation, perhaps in bemusement, perhaps both.

Then, in perfect English, with no trace of an accent, he said: ''Well done.''

David's jaw dropped.

''You figured it out,'' the Lightbringer went on. ''Took you long enough, but you got there. Go mad. Take absurd risks. It's the only defence against tightly structured play.''

''You're… you're British.''

''Yes, but you can do better than that.''

''What do you mean?''

''What do you think I mean? Dave.''

David didn't understand.

Then he did.

All at once the chamber seemed tiny, constrictingly small. David felt as though the world were telescoping down, zeroing in on this point in space and time, this moment, this impossible event. Nothing else was happening anywhere, just this. There was just this stone room, these two chairs, the two people sitting on them. Everything outside the immediate vicinity had ceased to matter, ceased to be.

He stared at the Lightbringer. And stared and stared.

The features behind the mask remained hidden. Unknowable.

But the voice…

Oh gods. Oh Osiris of Djed-pillar. Oh Isis of the Blood Knot.

That voice.

Huskily, querulously, not even in a whisper, more an exhalation, David spoke the name.

''Steven?''

12. Aegean

Let me tell you this, Dave. All the advance planning in the world, all the preparation, all the well-formulated tactics, it doesn't amount to a bucket of shit once the fighting starts. That's true of any battle and it's truer than true of naval battles. The moment you and the enemy engage, everything goes to pieces. All you can do is hang in there, keep hammering away at the other guy, and hope there are more of your ships left afloat at the end than there are of his. That's while contending with sea conditions, tides, weather, all of that as well. It's a wonder the admirals even bother with strategy meetings. They might as well sit in a circle wanking each other off for all the difference it makes. They probably do that anyway.

So there we were, three days out of Marseilles, steaming up through the Dodecanese to take on the Nephs, who were harrying merchant shipping all along the east coast of Greece from Thessaloniki to Athens. It was a classic piece of sabre-rattling from them. Things had been pretty quiet on the Mediterranean front for a couple of years and someone high up at Neph Fleet HQ must've got bored and fancied some action. You can bet the Setics were egging them on from the sidelines, too. Moscow in particular had been itching to reopen hostilities in the Med arena. All those battleships docked at Odessa and Sevastopol — couldn't have them sitting there gathering barnacles, now could we? Besides, there's nothing worse than sailors in port with nothing to do. They drink the bars dry, wear out the whores, and start fights. So it was in the Setics' interest if the Nephs stirred it up with us. Then they could come whizzing to the rescue from the Black Sea, bingo, everyone happy.

On the day of the battle itself, I was on Forenoon Watch and eight bells were about to toll. Which means, landlubber, my shift was nearly over and it was coming up to midday. It had been a beautiful morning. I remember telling myself to try and take it all in, how the sky looked, how the sea looked, the smell of the air, because I knew we were likely to encounter the Nephs that day and I mightn't have the chance to enjoy another morning ever again. The sky was sapphire. The sea was purple, choppy, frenetic. We were sailing with a strong southerly bumping us along from behind, so I was inhaling plenty of fumes from the funnel but I didn't mind. Barely noticed. Everywhere on a warship smells of diesel. Your clothes stink of it, your hair. It's a sailor's perfume.

Lovely morning, like I say, and it felt good to be part of a fleet heading towards a battle zone. From my starboard watch post I could see at least half a dozen other ships — a couple of frigates, a destroyer, our fellow dreadnought the Indomitable, and the corvettes that were escorting her and us. Our corvette was the Serapis, and personally I blame her imbecile of a captain for what happened to the Immortal. I mean, his one and only job was to stop a submarine getting a shot off at us, and did he do that? Did he arse!

But until he let us down so grievously, it was comforting to see his ship and the others, all forging along on the same heading at a rate of knots. It really gave me a feeling of invincibility. His Pharaonic Majesty's Mediterranean Fleet in full force, backed up by some French and German cruisers, with a Spaniard or two