Pyramids - Terry Pratchett [102]
He stared at the crowd. Every person was watching him expectantly, convinced that he would know what to do next.
He turned back to the river, extended his hands in front of him, pressed them together and then opened them gently.
There was a damp sucking noise, and the waters of the Djel parted in front of him. There was a sigh, from the crowd, but their astonishment was nothing to the surprise of a dozen or so crocodiles, who were left trying to swim in ten feet of air.
Teppic ran down the bank and over the heavy mud, dodging to avoid the tails that slashed wildly at him as the reptiles dropped heavily onto the riverbed.
The Djel loomed up as two khaki walls, so that he was running along a damp and shadowy alley. Here and there were fragments of bones, old shields, bits of spear, the ribs of boats. He leapt and jinked around the debris of centuries.
Ahead of him a big bull crocodile propelled itself dreamily out of the wall of water, flailed madly in mid-air, and flopped into the ooze. Teppic trod heavily on its snout and plunged on.
Behind him a few of the quicker citizens, seeing the dazed creatures below them, began to look for stones. The crocodiles had been undisputed masters of the river since primordial times, but if it was possible to do a little catching-up in the space of a few minutes, it was certainly worth a try.
The sound of the monsters of the river beginning the long journey to handbaghood broke out behind Teppic as he sloshed up the far bank.
A line of ancestors stretched across the chamber, down the dark passageway, and out into the sand. It was filled with whispers going in both directions, a dry sound, like the wind blowing through old paper.
Dil lay on the sand, with Gern flapping a cloth in his face.
“Wha’ they doing?” he murmured.
“Reading the inscription,” said Gern. “You ought to see it, master! The one doing the reading, he’s practically a—”
“Yes, yes, all right,” said Dil, struggling up.
“He’s more than six thousand years old! And his grandson’s listening to him, and telling his grandson, and he’s telling his gra—”
“Yes, yes, all—”
“‘And Khuft-too-said-Unto-the-First, What-may-We-Give-Unto-You, Who-Has-Taught-Us-the-Right-Ways,’” said Teppicymon,* who was at the end of the line. “‘And-the-First-Spake, and-This-He-Spake, Build-for-Me-a-Pyramid, That-I-May-Rest, and-Build-it-of-These-Dimensions, That-it-Be-Proper. And-Thus-It-Was-Done, and-The-Name-of-the-First-was…’”
But there was no name. It was just a babble of raised voices, arguments, ancient cursewords, spreading along the line of desiccated ancestors like a spark along a powder trail. Until it reached Teppicymon, who exploded.
The Ephebian sergeant, quietly perspiring in the shade, saw what he had been half expecting and wholly dreading. There was a column of dust on the opposite horizon.
The Tsorteans’ main force was getting there first.
He stood up, nodded professionally to his counterpart across the way, and looked at the double handful of men under his command.
“I need a messenger to take, er, a message back to the city,” he said. A forest of hands shot up. The sergeant sighed, and selected young Autocue, who he knew was missing his mum.
“Run like the wind,” he said. “Although I expect you won’t need telling, will you? And then…and then…”
He stood with his lips moving silently, while the sun scoured the rocks of the hot, narrow pass and a few insects buzzed in the scrub bushes. His education hadn’t included a course in Famous Last Words.
He raised his eyes in the direction of home.
“Go, tell the Ephebians—” he began.
The soldiers waited.
“What?” said Autocue after a while. “Go and tell them what?”
The sergeant relaxed, like air being let out of a balloon.
“Go and tell them, what kept you?” he said. On the near horizon another column of dust was advancing.
This was more like it. If there was going to be a massacre, then it ought to be shared by both sides.
The city of the dead lay before Teppic. After Ankh-Morpork, which was almost its direct opposite (in Ankh, even