But it was obvious that he did it because it was the exact opposite of what everyone expected him to do and wished him to do.
Six months later, following the Battle of the Aegean, Steven was listed as missing in action.
Just as David would be. Probably was already.
He sat on a rocky outcrop overlooking a valley that was wide and brown, shot with pink by the rays of the setting sun. A bird wheeled above, wings outstretched, riding the evening thermals. At first David had taken it for a Saqqara Bird and had felt a faint stab of hope. Even now, some priest back in Cyprus was coming round from a fever-trance and informing David's superiors that he had found him. The army hadn't written him off after all. The government might have ordered Petra to be bombed but the Second Paratroop Regiment had refused to give up on its men.
But the bird was in fact a real bird, a vulture, and it was here for only one reason.
David felt empty. There was nothing left inside him. He was a shell, a brittle man-shaped crust enclosing a vast, exhausted void. He had gone as far as he was able to. There was no more distance to go.
He knew it. The vulture knew it too.
The Horusite ba lance lay across his lap. He was trying to summon up his last dregs of strength in order to pick up the weapon and place it against his head.
Gibbs had been right. There was no other way out. Death was inevitable. But at least, like this, you had some control over it. You could decide the when and the where and the snap-of-the-fingers how.
The life beyond awaited. In Iaru, the Field of Reeds, David would plough, sow, and harvest for all eternity. He would toil happily, with Steven beside him. There would be no more turmoil and dispute between the two of them. They would be as they were always meant to be, brothers who loved one another and forgave one another.
David tried to anoint himself from his phial but his hands were weak; his fingers couldn't grip the top to unscrew it. He gave up, thinking that simply saying the Prayer would suffice. But he couldn't manage that either. His lips were rigid, too cracked and flaked for speech, his throat too dry.
An unceremonised death, then. His ka would still make its way to Iaru, but perhaps not as swiftly as he'd have liked. There would be a time in limbo, before he at last found his way to the land of the dead.
He checked the ba meter on the lance. After Gibbs had used it, there was now just enough charge left for a single shot.
It would do.
The lance seemed to weigh as much as a bar of solid iron. David braced it beneath his chin and groped for the trigger.
There was light, golden light, and a spray of blood.
David lay on his back, feeling the blood cooling and congealing on his skin.
He could hear a babble of voices and knew they belonged to the souls of the dead in the Field of Reeds. The sound grew louder as his ka leapt free of his body.
Leapt free into the purpling sky.
Into the fading sun.
Dawn, as always, brings new hope.
As Ra steps from Mandet, the night-time Barque, to Mesektet, the Solar Barque, he feels a surge of reinvigoration. He stretches out his aching spine and works his stiff joints, and the cold of the night just gone by eases from his muscles, and the pains and woes of age recede. He does not feel young again — he never will — but neither does he feel so old any more.
Aker, at the helm of Mandet, bids him farewell. ''Till this evening, my lord,'' he says with a toss of his leonine mane of hair.
Ra smiles. ''Till then.''
The Solar Barque sets sail. The voyage of day begins again.
Aboard the gleaming golden boat are Ra's regular diurnal companions. Maat, at the helm, gives her father a curt nod. Her expression is seldom anything less than grave, although Ra knows his daughter to have a wry sense of humour, which she reveals in unguarded moments. Her doglike companion Ammut squats at her heels, tongue lolling.
Meanwhile sly-eyed Bast is seated amidships on a divan, her upper body vertical, her legs stretched out sideways. Her shape is a languorous L. She purrs softly as Ra approaches and her eyelids close and open in greeting. He loves this daughter too. He loves her most of any of his family, for Bast is beautiful and untalkative and has never caused him any grief. He strokes her head and the cat-goddess preens pleasurably.
Proceeding to the bows, Ra finds Set, who is limbering up for the trials ahead. Set flexes his powerful physique, muscles snaking beneath his startlingly pale skin. He glances round at his great-great-uncle. He puffs a lock of red hair out of his eyes. He returns to his warm-up exercises.
The Solar Barque, the Boat of a Million Years, leaves the eastern gate of heaven, passing between the twin sycamores of turquoise. The river of day runs calm and smooth. The god of the primeval waters, Nun, can be felt beneath the keel, wafting the barque gently on its way.
Then, ahead, a disturbance on the surface. A patch of boiling turbidity from which, all at once, arises the terrible serpent Apophis. It rears from the water, towering above the barque, seething with evil. Its coils thrash and churn. It would swallow the boat. It would destroy the sun and snuff out all life.
But Set is here. Set is ready. His punishment, his penance, is to battle Apophis twice a day, every day. He launches himself at the creature, springing high to grapple with it. Arms around its neck, he strains every sinew to throttle it. Apophis hisses like a whirlwind and snaps its head from side to side in the hope of dislodging its assailant. Set clings on, digging his fingers into its sinuously glittering scales. He claws the serpent's throat open with his bare hands. Blood gushes out in cataracts. Apophis howls and plunges into the river, disappearing into the depths. Pink foam swirls on red water, and on earth the sky is stained with these colours.
Set swims back to the Solar Barque and his great-great-uncle reaches down to helps him aboard. Their gazes meet. Set's eyes are bright red, even brighter and redder than the blood he has just spilled. Ra's eyes are mismatched. The right is a lambent amber yellow, the left a pale pearly grey. This is a distinctive coloration he shares with many of his descendants — Osiris, Isis, Hathor, Horus, the ones he trusts most, the ones he is inclined to favour.
When Set looks into his great-great-uncle's eyes, it is a tangible reminder of his outcast status. He knows he will never be well loved by the senior god of the pantheon. He knows he will always be apart and different.
Ra knows it too, and is saddened. The first saddening of today. The first of many.
''Well fought,'' says Ra.
Set shrugs. ''How much longer must this farce continue? How many more times do I have to slay that thing before you decide I've made amends?''
''For what you did to your brother? Your sentence is not nearly served, Set.''
The two gods go their separate ways, and the barque sails on.
Soon a group of elder gods appear on deck: Sobek, Khnum, Ptah, Neith. Of these, only Neith has any vigour and vitality. She marches forward to hail her son.
''Ra,'' she says, her bows, arrows, and shield clanking. ''How goes it?''
''You are strong in the world, mother,'' says Ra. ''So am I.''
''As long as those great-great-nephews and nieces of yours bicker, I will prosper,'' says the goddess of war. Her jaw has a mannish jut to it. Her hair is tightly braided and tied back so that there is no chance it will ever distract her by flapping in her face.
