Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [163]
“Useful,” Moroney admitted, gripping the scissors blade. “When they feed us tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow be damned. I’ve got to get out of here today or all hell will break loose. Led by my father,” he added. “I know what Merasen’s got in mind, and Father won’t stand for it. He has a frightful temper.”
“We can’t cut through that door with a pair of scissors,” Moroney exclaimed.
“So we’ll have to get the guards to open it.”
“How?”
“There are several possibilities—as my mother would say.” Ramses stretched out on the floor, his hands under his head. “I expect she’s started working on some of them. We’ll give her an hour or two, and if nothing develops you can bang on the door and demand food. They haven’t fed us yet.”
“Then what?” Moroney demanded.
“You mean what do we do when they open the door? That depends on the circumstances, and I will make that determination. If you don’t give me your word to wait for my orders before you act, I’ll knock you over the head.”
“You have my word. It’s the least I can do to atone.”
“Fine,” Ramses said heartily. “Excellent. Keep that thought in mind.”
He might have known it wouldn’t take his mother as long as an hour. Not when she had help from other quarters. All the same, his breath went out in a long expiration of relief when he heard the voice he had hoped to hear—high-pitched, unnecessarily loud, and authoritative.
“Don’t move,” Ramses said urgently. “Cringe.”
“What?”
“Cringe, dammit!”
The first man to enter the room was the answer to his prayers. He bent over Ramses, who groaned obligingly.
“Lift him,” said Amenislo. “You two. Take him to a sleeping chamber. Put down your spears, fools, you cannot carry him one-handed. No, do not put them down, give them to one of the others.”
Moroney sat hunched in the center of the small room, his head bowed. One of the guards made a token gesture, waving a spear at him, but the others were preoccupied with carrying out Amenislo’s orders, which were, to say the least, confusing. “No, not like that! Put your weapons on the floor. Pick them up. Not you! You! Put the torches in the bracket.”
He backed out into the corridor. Two of the men followed, carrying Ramses, who waited until he was outside the cell, with the remaining guards filling the doorway, before he moved, twisting free of the hands that held him and calling Moroney’s name. He landed on his feet, stumbled forward as a stab of pain shot up his ankle, lowered his head, and slammed it into the face of the man who had held his legs. Five left. He turned on the man behind him, and then there were four. No—three. A body lay at his feet in a spreading pool of blood. Amenislo’s face was a mask of terror, but his sword was red to the hilt. Ramses ran to the door of the cell. Moroney was grappling with one soldier; before Ramses could go to his aid the soldier fell, clutching at the scissor handle protruding from his side. Another of the soldiers was sprawled on the floor with a spear in his chest. The man who held the spear backed away from Ramses.
“Do not strike me, Great One, I am Tarek’s man!”
“So I see. All right, Moroney?”
“Yes.” The Englishman surveyed the fallen bodies and puddles of blood. His unshaven face was blank with disbelief. “How the hell did you do that?”
“Amenislo. His name was on the list of supporters Tarek made me memorize. I told Mother…”
“No time for talk,” the count exclaimed. He was shaking violently and streaming with sweat, from his forehead to his round belly. “Hurry, hurry!”
They shoved the bodies, dead and alive, into the cell and replaced the bar. Ramses’s inconvenient conscience protested at leaving the wounded, but urgency prevailed. His parents needed him.
“That went well,” said Moroney. He looked like a new