It was a fitful night for everyone. Hawk was awake early the next morning before the sun even rose. Tori was up as well, with dark circles under her eyes that even the kohl did not hide.
“The Professor is packing up everything he can, and taking it into town,” Hawk said.
“I know,” Tori said. “I sent Lissa to take Nili back to Crocodilopolis, to the temple of Sakhmit there to have her wound treated.”
“Why are you still here?” Hawk asked.
“I’m guessing for the same reason you are,” she said. “You want to know what attacked us last night.”
“Rebecca Birch calls them brass mummies,” he said, poking at the damp sand on the ground in front of them.
“She saw them best,” Tori said as she watched Hawk crouch down. “What are you looking for?”
“Tracks,” Hawk said as he looked down at the ground. Mr. Crocodile’s water attack may have saved them from whatever those monsters were, but it also obliterated any tracks they may have left. While the water had not risen high, it churned up the sand a good thirty yards from the lake. On the hill in the distance, Hawk saw what looked a lot like an entrance to a cave. It aroused his curiosity, but it would wait for another time.
“Mr. Hawk! Miss Tori!” Hawk and Tori turned to see Rebecca and Shishank walking up to them. “My Uncle says everything is nearly packed and they are going to find an inn in the town.
“He managed to get every artifact…?” Tori started to ask.
“No,” Shishank said. “The storehouses will remain here, but the most valuable artifacts are being taken away. My people are camping a short distance from here. Enough to watch out for things, but not so close to draw attention from those mechanical monsters.”
“How many died last night?” Hawk said.
Shishank shook his head. “Amazingly few. One of my people and about six of the workmen that the Professor brought from the city.”
“Oddly low numbers.” Hawk wanted to ask Shishank if he had counted correctly, but knew better. “They had quite the advantage over us.”
“Indeed…” Shishank said.
The look in his eyes told Hawk there was more. He decided to press a little bit. “What is it?”
The amenokal shook his head. “That one of my people that died. He was a man who… I cannot say really. He was of low credit, I guess you could say. As the amenokal, I often questioned his loyalty.”
“That monster had told Nili it had no quarrel with her,” Rebecca said.
“Then I wonder who were they were coming for?” Tori asked.
“I’d wondered about my uncle. They ought to have seized him many times, but they didn’t. I— Oh bother!” Rebecca stumbled then looked down at the silt on her shoes.
“Mr. Crocodile’s attack was certainly effective,” Hawk said, surveying at the scene around them. As he looked, the early morning sun caught something in the distance. Ignoring the others, Hawk started towards it, tomahawk in hand.
“What do you see?” Tori asked, falling into step behind him. Hawk said nothing, until he stopped over a single figure laying half-buried in the sand. At first he thought it was a person, perhaps a victim of the brass mummies, but as he looked closer, this was no man. The legs and right arm were covered in sand, but the head was visible. A man made of brass, wearing the blue war crown of the pharaoh. The face plate looked like the statues of Ramesses XVIII that Hawk had seen even down to the long beard that Egyptian Pharaohs wore. The uncovered arm was minimal, even machinelike, with two set of gears in the shoulder and another at the elbow. The fingers ended in metal claws.
“Rebecca! Shishank! Go get the Professor and Mr. Crocodile!” he shouted. Rebecca ran off, but Shishank gave them another look before walking off after Rebecca.
“This is what I think it is, isn’t it?” Tori said.
“Whatever attacked us last night,” Hawk said. Tori looked down at the brass creature with a mix of awe and fear. She leaned in as Hawk tapped it with the tomahawk and was rewarded with a metallic clank.
“Is it…dead?” Tori refused to take her eyes off of the thing and the dread was in her voice.
“If it was ever alive…” Hawk said, glancing from her to the brass mummy, still fearful that it should suddenly start moving.
“Mr. Ramsey! What have you found?” Shishank came running back while the Professor and Mr. Crocodile followed after. Mr. Crocodile was unreadable, but the Professor seemed to be huffing a little bit.
“I say, what is this news that is so important? Rebecca was so animated and…” the Professor puffed, trying to catch his breath. “I…Oh….” He crouched down to look on the face of the brass creature. Rebecca came following after them.
“What is it, Uncle?” Rebecca asked. At the sight of the metal monster, she froze and her eyes grew big.
“It looks like a shabti.” The Professor did not even wait for anyone to ask before he went into his explanation. “The shabtis evolved from the ka statures of Antiquity. The tradition was revived under the Neo-Ramessids but it was during the Forty-First Dynasty that they started making them out of brass. They were articulated and grew ever more complex.”
“What had set these things against us?” Rebecca asked.
“It was revived by the magics of the Pharaoh,” Mr. Crocodile said.
“Impossible,” the Professor said. “None of us have been inside the tomb yet. We have not even securely located it. This was probably an ancient one taken by bandits long ago who dropped it here, you see. Perhaps Mr. Crocodile’s spell last night uncovered it.”
“No, this is definitely what attacked us last night,” Mr. Crocodile said.
Shishank Ma turned to him. “But without setting foot inside the tomb to activate the curses, why would they come after us now?”
“Someone is directing it,” Mr. Crocodile said. “Someone with some powerful hika on their side.”
“Like whoever created the crocodile on the airship from Sais?” Rebecca asked. Everyone stopped and looked at her. Hawk felt a shiver go up his spine as he realized that something may have been stalking them all along. The looks on everyone else’s faces told him they all had the same idea as well.
“What do we do with this?” he asked, pointing at the shabti, desperate to change the subject.
“Dig it out. We’ll take it with us,” the Professor said.
“Is that wise?” Tori asked.
Shishank crouched down and examined the shabti. “Looking at the sand and silt within the gearings, I don’t think this thing will be moving at all any time soon.” He looked back up at the Professor. “But I would still disassemble it.”
“It would give us an idea of what we are dealing with,” Mr. Crocodile said.
Hawk and Shishank started pushing sand off the creature. After a few minutes, they had moved enough sand to move it, giving them their first look at the whole thing. It reminded Hawk of the finely crafted Constructs the European tourists brought with them.
“I have never seen a shabti this elaborate before,” the Professor said. “The pharaohs of the Forty-Fourth dynasty, of which Ramesses XVIII was a member, you see, brought in Persian mechanicians. The texts say one of the things they did was create highly complex clockwork shabtis.” The Professor leaned in close, tapping the shabti with his finger. “But I have never imagined anything like this,
“There it is,” Shishank said, pointing to a rock sticking out of the ground. “It fell on that when the water hit it.”
“Is water that powerful?” Rebecca asked.
“Six inches of fast water is enough to knock a man off his feet,” Mr. Crocodile said. The rolled the shabti over and Hawk noted the huge dent in the back. Any gearing or mechanics inside were smashed when it hit the rock.
“Do be careful with that,” the Professor said as Hawk, Tori and Shishank hefted up the shabti.
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