Anomus was glad of that part of him that was now inhuman. He was glad of his ability to think coldly and rationally even as the greater part of him raged.

He had expected three months. He was not going to get them. Of that, he was now almost completely certain. The only reason for the Eternal Guard to return in such numbers was to secure the Tomb’s site for the Concubine’s interment. The emperor was coming, two months early. He couldn’t guess why. Nor did it matter. He had to make his final preparations now, as best he could.

Even more importantly, he had to make sure no danger was suspected. If the Eternal Guard sensed anything amiss, they might well warn Irobus off. And that was unacceptable. The very thought of his killer not entering the Tomb stoked his fury. But still he analyzed the situation with an inhuman calm.

The tongueless killers had discovered the main ghoul camp, and had discovered it was abandoned. They seemed puzzled that the burrows had been filled with human corpses. It made them more cautious. He wished that Krrsh had not been quite so clever, in that. He would have preferred the Eternal Guard to see only what they expected and could easily understand. An abandoned ghoul site would have made far more sense.

There was nothing to be done about that.

The soldiers would soon cross the river to investigate the tunnel he had made. He did not doubt they had accurate information about the Tomb and its surroundings, and that information would have made no mention of any tunnel or cave on the desert-side of the Tomb. Another deeply suspicious mystery.

He could do nothing about the false burrows Krrsh had made. But he could and must do something about the tunnel. It would mean cutting himself off from much of his mana, but that could not be helped. There was no point in growing in strength if the emperor escaped him.

There would be no point in simply closing the tunnel’s entrance, either. It had already been seen. For it to suddenly disappear would mark the third unexplainable occurrence, and increase the odds of Irobus not entering his trap. No. Completely unacceptable.

The tunnel’s entrance must be left open, then. There was no help for that. Then the Eternal Guard would enter, explore, to see if it were connected to the Tomb.

He was tempted to let them. They were the emperor’s killers, and seeing an Eternal Guardsman dead would be… satisfying. A partial repayment for what they had done to ten thousand loyal laborers. But the cold, rational, remorseless part of him saw many problems with killing them now. First, there was no guarantee the entire group would enter the Tomb. And if even one survived to bring word of danger at the Tomb to the emperor, then all Anomus’s plans would crumble to dust.

Now he understood the Faceless One’s cryptic warning.

Couldn’t he, though? Now that he had the ghouls, he had some power to affect events outside himself. But as soon as he thought it, he knew it wouldn’t work. The ghouls were no match for the Eternal Guard, not on open ground, not on the desert sands. Only underground, he felt, and only from ambush would they stand a chance against the empire’s elite. If they had had months to train, to learn even the basics of combat, then perhaps they might have stood some chance of defeating the tongueless monsters. Now? They would only die.

Anomus could not keep the Eternal Guard from entering the tunnel without alerting Irobus to potential danger. He could not be certain of killing them all, and the result of failure would be the same What was left?

To deceive them. To show them something they could accept, and find little or no danger in. As much as he wished to destroy these envoys of his enemy, he was far too intelligent, far too driven to risk his ultimate retribution.

Anomus set to work altering the tunnel.

~ ~ ~

“Found the ghoul, Greatest,” Hummingbird told Nighteyes. “Sort of.”

“Show me.”

Hummingbird led him to the mass grave, to the part of it that had been most disturbed. Amongst the human corpses, the severed head of a ghoul lay, eyes open and swollen tongue lolling. It was obviously much fresher than the rest of the dead.

“So. Something killed and decapitated a ghoul across the river, then brought the head here. Does that make any sense to you?” Nighteyes asked.

“Not even a little,” Hummingbird cheerfully admitted.

Nighteyes grunted. “Useless. Any tracks?”

Hummingbird made a dissatisfied face. “Old tracks, by the river. Looks like they tangled with a herd of water horses. Nothing fresh. But then ghouls have been known to cover their tracks, sometimes. That and other sign tell us ghouls were definitely here at some point, and not long ago.”

“Gnawed corpses are an indication, yes.”

Hummingbird smiled. “That was very nearly a joke, Greatest! We can widen the search, and search again more thoroughly come the dawn. But I think we’ve learned all we are likely to, here.”

“Well, the head tells us this is likely connected to the cave. Somehow. We will cross and see what there is to be seen.”

Hummingbird nodded and pulled out a pair of signal blocks. The Eternal Guard did not speak, of course, and communicated by hand sign when close. But over distance they used blocks of wood clapped together in code to communicate, or horns, depending on the situation.

Hummingbird sent out the recall signal. Within a few minutes, they were crossing the river. In a few minutes more, they were approaching the body of the decapitated ghoul.

Nighteyes bent down to inspect the corpse while the rest of the Fifty paused, alert.

There was little to learn, but little was not nothing. The only wounds on the corpse, besides the fact of its headlessness, were on the arms. They had been pierced, and not by sword or arrow, but by claws. The dead ghoul also sported blood on its claws, both hand and claw. It had been a deadly struggle.

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Nighteyes drew the conclusion that the ghoul had perished at the claws of another of its kind. From the wounds, it seemed likeliest. There was no telling why ghoul had killed ghoul – he was no expert on ghoul behavior, except in how it affected their fighting.

Shaking his head, Nighteyes rose from the sand and regarded the cave entrance a little distance away.

The ground here rose slightly towards the river, the incline growing sharper as it approached the cliff. The cave entrance was essentially a hole in the ground, rather than a more traditional cave. Given time, such a hole should have filled with sand, considering the desert wind, even in the ground so close to the cliff was far rockier than the open desert.

Nighteyes signaled two men to cover him, and then approached hole for a better look.

Yes. The entrance was partially choked by sand. It looked as though it were the entrance to a tunnel, rather than a natural cave Nighteyes saw tumbled stone blocks, the size of bricks, partially buried in the sand. He called for a torch to be lit. When it had been, he took it in one hand and unsheathed his khopesh, then jumped down into the hole.

It was steeply sloped at first, but the torch showed him that the tunnel quickly corrected into a much gentler decline, and that it extended further than his torch could illuminate. He waited for a time, silent and listening. There was no sound in the tunnel at all, that he could hear.

He studied the entrance and saw that it had, at some point been closed by mortared blocks of stone. He bent down to peer more closely at the ones that had fallen. He scraped at one with his khopesh. The mortar was crumbling, weak. Poor quality. Perhaps old. He was not an expert.

He did see the partial footprints of a ghoul in the sand that littered the tunnel floor. Sheltered from the wind to a great extent, they had been preserved.

Nighteyes raised the hand that held the khopesh and advanced slowly into the tunnel. Two of his men joined him, both holding their khopesh and daggers. The tunnel was too tight for bows, and in any case they had to advance at a crouch and single file.

After about thirty feet, Nighteyes saw, the tunnel opened up. He advanced, and soon enough had come to a roughly squared-off room carved from the rock. The ceiling was low. Here the ghoul’s tracks ended.

The only thing in the room was a human skeleton, clutching a crude, stone-headed axe.

Nighteyes gave the skeleton a quick inspection, paying attention to its axe, and then did the same for what apparently was a burial chamber.

Nighteyes ordered a return to the surface. When he had climbed up to the desert floor once more, Hummingbird was waiting for him.

“Well?”

“It looks like an ancient burial chamber, maybe for some chieftain.”

“Then why does your face look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you just tried to shit, but could only manage a fart.”

Nighteyes grunted. “Impertinent.”

“I am what I am. And your face is what it is.”

“First, the tunnel showed no tool marks. Second, the tomb room had no dust. Third, the skeleton had not been disturbed, even though the ghoul’s tracks led right to it.”

“And?”

“And I don’t like things I cannot explain.”

“No wonder you’re always in a dour mood, then.”

“I’ll cheer myself up by watching you dig latrines.”

Hummingbird gave a soundless laugh.

“Joking aside, there is something wrong about this.”

“But is there anything about this old tomb that the Greatest considers a threat?”

Nighteyes considered, then shook his head. “No danger that I can see.”

“Then his second humbly suggests he reports it when the procession arrives, and leaves it at that.”

~ ~ ~

Honest fishermen, law-abiding fishermen, would have seen the lighter approaching in the dark and worried they were about to be attacked by river pirates. They would have, being honest and law-abiding, have run their boats up onto the bank of the river as soon as they saw the emperor’s golden barge, and might now be frantically trying to get their boats back into the water, or perhaps preparing whatever meagre weapons they had – scaling knives or the small, curved blades they used for gutting fish. And then they would have seen the armor worn by those who approached, and realized they were Eternal Guard, and while the fear would not have lessened – in fact if anything it would likely have grown – they would have dropped their makeshift arms and waited for whatever was to come.

What was to come would be the raising of bows, and blood. Then the disembarking of the Tongueless, and more blood. And then silence.

One Thumb and his men were neither honest nor law abiding. And though they loved their beer and their wine, they also preferred to not be dead, and out on the river one of their number was always alert. The Great River was full of dangers for the unwary, after all. Especially after dark.

One Thumb had ordered both the boats to drop their anchors in the weak current near the bank – both boats were double-anchored, to keep them pointing towards the far bank instead of downstream, to give the appearance of being grounded, from a distance at least.

Torchlit, the imperial procession continued its slow advance upriver. Sulking, Tumi sat perched on the raised stern of the boat, near the tiller, keeping watch instead of drinking.

He noticed the lighter not long after it separated from the procession, but didn’t make much of it until it became clear that it was heading directly for them. It was no easy feat for the rowers to defy the Great River’s current; there could be no mistake as to their destination. Tumi gave the signal, and all the banter in both boats stopped at once. Immediately One Thumb climbed up next to him.

“Where?” was all One Thumb asked, and Tumi pointed. One Thumb studied the approaching boat for a moment, squinting in the dark.

“Now what’s that glinting?” he wondered aloud, and then his eyes widened. “They’ve got armor on,” One-Thumb murmured. Then, loud enough to be heard by everyone in both boats, he said “Cut anchors, raise sail, and row like your wives’ll be glad to see you.”

Tumi immediately pulled out his belt knife and bent down. He sawed partway through the stern anchor line, paused until he felt the current take the prow, and then finished the job. It was the work of a few seconds. He rose up from his task and then turned to go down and take an oar.

The arrow took him in the throat. The tip lodged in the bones of his neck, and he fell back into the boat, choking on iron and blood.

The last thing his saw was the stranger they had taken to calling Friend hovering over him, staring at him in horror.

~ ~ ~

Orthus watched the lad die. There was nothing he could do. Arrows were falling, speeding down from the dark, but all he could see was Tumi’s eyes and Tumi’s blood, black in the night, pumping out from his throat in an ever-spreading pool in the bottom of the boat.

He saw the light fade from Tumi’s eyes. Time seemed to stand still. Then One Thumb grabbed his shoulder.

“Need you to take the tiller, Friend. If I don’t row, we’re all dead.”

“I- I don’t know what to do,” Orthus replied, voice trembling.

“It’s so easy even a drunkard can do it. Push left, we go left. Push right, we go right. But don’t push too hard, eh? You get us to the middle of the river where the current is strongest, then keep us there. And keep low.” Then One Thumb was gone, taking up the oar that had been Tumi’s. It was only then that Orthus saw the arrow sticking out of the burly man’s back. It was only then that Orthus registered the screams coming from the trailing boat.

He scrambled to the boat’s stern and, trying to keep as low as he could, he took the wooden tiller in one hand and pushed it to the right, surprised at how much the water resisted.

~ ~ ~

Acacia dipped his khopesh into the river to cleanse it of blood, then wiped it dry on a cloth while his men dumped the bodies of the trailing boat’s crew into the water. He’d hoped to disable the lead boat’s crew sufficiently in the initial attack to keep them from fleeing. It would have made everything much easier. Now it would be a chase.

The lighter had no sail, and their remaining target was swiftly pulling out of effective arrow range. Acacia ordered the men in the lighter to cease fire and board the fishing vessel, abandoning the lighter to the current. His men were not expert sailors, it was true, but their training provided a basic proficiency, and they had at least double the number to pull oars as their target. He assigned Blue Egg to the sail, and took the tiller himself. In less than a minute the boat was live in the water once more, and pulling towards their prey.