The Trinket Box
an excerpt

Egypt, 1798

. . . The passage turned back toward another hall. It was at the meeting of these two passages that Michel saw the huddle of a shape on the ground.

It was one of Napoleon's soldiers. Michel recognized the man as he neared the still shape. It was one of the soldiers who had so tormented the old egyptian in the village. Michel drew back in horror when he saw how the soldier had been gutted. Pale coils of intestines spilled out over the stone ground, blood turning the stone to rust. The stench choked him, and he smothered his nose with the sleeve of his free arm.

A smaller shape had fallen from the doomed soldier's grip. Michel recoiled when he realized what it was.

One of the statue men from the drawing of the king's tomb. The builder, as tall as Michel's arm was long. His small tools lay scattered beside him.

Michel didn't dare touch the statue. He had too much of the image of that impossible creation tearing down huts and building them, razing villages to the ground. The opposite of what a builder should do.

He couldn't bring himself to touch it, lest it come alive at his fingertips. Had it killed the soldier?

No, impossible. There was no weapon among its tools.

Michel glanced down the passage and saw another shape. He knew what he would find there. Another soldier, probably this fellow's partner in plundering. And another statue.

Two of the three soldiers dead. Two of the three statues found.

Michel hurried along the passage, sidestepping around the fallen man. He had to find the third soldier, to warn him of the doom that might come for him. If it hadn't found him already.

The passage intersected a third, as Michel had guessed. And with relief, he saw a third man standing there.

Michel opened his mouth to call out, rushing forward, but the call died on his lips and horror froze him in place.

It was not the soldier. It was the warrior, drawn guarding the king's tomb. He stood bare of all clothing save a loin cloth pleated in the old egyptian style. The light glistened off of the sweat trinkling down his muscled back and reflected off twin gold bands around the warrior's upper arms. Over his head, extended ready for a striking blow, was the sickle shaped sword, wet with blood.

At the warriors feet knelt the third soldier. He wasn't beggin for his life. He wasn't crying out in horror, as surely Michel would have done. He knelt as though awaiting absolution from his priest, head bowed, hands clasped before him. The arm-length statue of the farmer stood against the wall beside him, his little tools laid out as though waiting to be taken up in labor.

The warrior's arm flex, and Michel knew, without doubt, that he would watch the soldier die, his skull split open by that wicked blade, his brains spilled out onto the pale stone.

"No!"