Nazhotep Pov
Zaliki is looking at me with adoring eyes. She follows me wherever I go. "As your slave," she says, "there is no distance between us." She massages me and pampers me. She bundles her hair above her head and sits on my lap whenever I ask her to. She has a slave collar on her delicate neck. I sometimes catch her watching me while caressing her collar. I don't know what that's about.
I keep her a slave to be able to use the military devices to carry her to the capital. She could use the flying vessel if she is my property. If she is a free civilian woman, she couldn't. She would have to pay a premium to ride on the vessel.
"Master, how is the capital like?"
I caressed her cheek and answered.
Pharoah's palace towers over the city. Temple outside the town, and the pyramids glisten every dawn. The streets are orderly and straight. Lately, there has been a rise in crime due to all the priest wannabes flooding the capital but I have full confidance the pharoh's forces could keep it under control. All and all its a great place to live."
She blushed. I've told her that I intend to take her to the capital with me, and she has been excited ever since. As a slave with no freedom of movement, this was a great opurtunity for her to see the world for herself.
Her eyes were glistening with excitement. She couldn't wait.
"Master's going to give me the best life. He is going to have me live in the city; he is going to give me a terrific sexual life. I'm so happy."
This woman might be so far gone. I have to be careful about freeing her. It's better she meets Aisha first. She might be able talk Zaliki out of this slavery business.
The next day, Commander Kahir told me that the locals were having some problems with the undead. They had been haunting the sand near the road for the last week. I've been ordered to bodyguard the priest of Anubis until he can lay them to rest. Sometimes, during wars, the souls of the dead refuse Anubis's help to go to the underworld and roam the surface in complete agony. These people are often unbelievers who don't recognize Anubis or fear the judgment scale. They accomplish nothing except bothering the priests and regular people. They are to be dispatched by the priesthood lest they evolve into something way more dangerous.
I'm in the spearman position. When we arrived at the place, it was nighttime. Vaugely human shapes made of sand arose from the ground to meet us. I unceremoniously stirred its form with my spear. The form crumbled easily. It has no power. Other soldiers hurried and started to shovel the sand onto the wooden panel we had prepared beforehand. The wooden panel allowed the sand to pass, and the undead soul pearls were too large for its holes.
These pearls were then given to the Anubis priest. The Anubis priest spoke his funeral rites and pacified the soul pearl.
"Well, we got a nice haul today."
I was a bit confused.
"These things were really weak. How come they are a problem for the people here?"
The anubis priest started talking to me while cleansing the pearl.
"While dwelling underground, they loosen the sand. After loosening the sand for a while, they are then able to pull people in. Eventually, the sand becomes a corpse pit that spawns higher ranking undead. They are far more powerful. We act proactively when an undead monster shows up to prevent that from happening."
Anubis Priest released his energy to energize the sands to make sure we don't miss any undead. Three undead sandmen, with their pearls energized by the priest, reformed and resumed attacking. We harvested them too. We returned with the satisfaction of a job well done. Commander Kahir visited our team after the job was done.
"Hey, how did undead work go?"
The Anubis pries tanswered truthfully.
"Not much happened. We did the job and came back."
Commander Kahir smiled.
"Did Nazhotep do anything unprofessional? Did he grumble at all?"
Anubis priest shook his head.
"No, nothing of the sort happened.
Commander Kahir, as it turns out, was afraid all that pampering was going to change me as a person. He wanted to make me do grunt work to see if I would throw a tantrum as a result. He was mistaken about me. I'm diligent about my work. This work is my ticket to both immortality and a good life. Why would I risk it for a bit of comfort? I'd rather do as I was told, unless I'm told to do is some heinous act.
The next few weeks went by with such work. A lost sheep here, a crocodile sighting there—there was no end to the work we were doing since we temporarily took over the work of the guard. We also crushed small, dissenting voices. Some Manat worshipers had decided to rebel after the fact. They have been swiftly dealt with.
Some gangs were not happy that we were here. It made their "protection money" racket go awry. One tried to bribe our commander away. We are going to leave soon after regular guards arrive, yet Commander Kahir didn't take the bribe and instead decided to kill these gangs. The dirty work fell on us.
There were two things we were looking for in the suspects. First, they must have some people acusing them of extortion. Second, they must have money without an explainable means to procure it.
One such case was in Tumen village, a two hour ride away. The fat man in the big house tried to reason with us by making use of a bribe. Something snapped in me. I threw the man over my shoulder and into the street. His body got scratched by the stones on the ground and he started bleeding on the floor.
"How dare yo! You bastard! Do you know who I am?"
I slapped him on the face. I knew who he was. He was another Quraysh in the making.
"We can handle this. Why are you doing this to me?"
Ignoring the man, I yelled to the crowd.
"Is this the man who extorted you?"
I know for a fact that this man is earning money through unsavory means. He had a lot of money and no farming equipment, no merchant ledger, and no tools for artisans. He just had a mace. I know for a fact that he isn't a mercanary. He lacks the proper technique and expertise, as evident by the fact that he got manhandled so easily by me. We had several villagers accusing him of extortion.
The people looked upon the man with a mixture of fear and anger.
"This bastard extorted us out of our feed money. Our calf has died. The bastard!"
The fat man, humbled on the ground, started sneering at the crowd. Don't lie! When did I ever extort you? What's your proof?"
The villagers all started to yell. A lynch mob was forming. A lynch mob isn't ideal. The right to brutalize belongs to the state. Civilians have no right to mob justice. Mob justice belongs to the state.
"Who are your accomplices? Surely, you didn't extort all this money all by yourself. If you sell out every one of them, I might not take your little life."
He immediately sold his men out.
Three unsavory characters have been thrown near the boss who sold them out. They looked a tad more wealthy than the surrounding villagers by virtue of their fancy attire. The other soldiers went into their houses and found damning evidence. There were addictive substances; there were witness accounts from hookers and vilaggers.
"That guy kept visiting me. I don't know where he got all that money from, but he spent a load of money on me."
"That man robbed our house and slapped my woman in front of me. The guards did nothing. Their bosses were paying off the guards, no doubt."
After hearing that, I punched the man in the back of the head. He fell to the ground and started snoring. I winked at the woman who had been slapped according to their witness testimony. She blushed at me in front of her man. Cute.
Once it became clear that these were the men who extorted the villagers, we executed the men in front of their eyes. They were praising us and crying tears of joy when it was finally time to leave.
I don't know if this was fair or not. The man might have just been a creditor to a debtor village. He didn't have the ledger for that, but the amount of investigation we did certainly wasn't enough for a fair trial. We did what we had to do to gain love for government among the villages.
May Pharoh Osiris be praised.