Distantly Falling Stars (GRAND WINNER * ONC 2019)

9. Hounds and Jackals

During the next several days, Seti found and delivered five stars to the beach camp. 

The soldiers no longer pushed him forward like a prisoner, but kept a certain respectful distance, waiting for him to get going on his own. He guessed from their actions and reactions that word had got around about the strange things that happened every time he found a new star and they weren't taking any chances.  

He still had no idea how he was doing it. He simply walked around until bizarre things began to happen. 

The first time it had been the little gods, but then he'd talked backwards and another time the ground around the star had appeared to be on fire, but he hadn't felt anything as he'd walked through the flames. It had seemed like nothing more than a false picture in his mind to him, but the soldiers, superstitious as they were, obviously thought differently. 

Only the first -- and the last-- star had spoken to him. 

Through the last one, Seti knew just how far beyond his limited horizons the plot -- and counterplot -- reached. Like in a game of Hounds and Jackals, he could see how they had been biting and growling at each others' heels for decades, unable to leverage more than a temporary advantage in all that time. Both sides were becoming frustrated.  Frustrated and desperate.

The new stars were to change all that, reshuffle the figures on the playing board. The question was: which side would get their hands on them first?  That, he had no answer for. 

"Why tell me all this?" he'd whispered into the shiny, bubbled surface of the last star as he knelt next to it on the jungle floor. "What do you want me of all people to do?"

Do what you do. Watch. Listen. Coordinate. The Sky Goddess has raised you in rank. You are now free to know what you will.  

"And if I don't want to know about any of it?"

Watch. Listen. Coordinate. You were selected by the Sky Goddess for her plan.

Neb-ka had greeted the delivery of the first star with a look of dumbfounded astonishment as the scavenging party broke from the tree line and onto the beach, a star the size of a one-year- old child swinging in the transportation net. 

The white scar running up the side of his face had taken on a pinkish hue and he'd almost tripped the soldiers carrying the poles in his eagerness to finally lay eyes on the gift from the heavens. But that eagerness had quickly melted into suspicion. He'd pointed his fly whip at Seti and threatened him with yet another picturesque death if he was attempting a trick.

"No fake, your Majesty," the leader of the soldiers said after the prince's tirade had calmed. "We made sure. Very sure. It's a star all right."

After that, Neb-ka had kept his threats to a minimum, simply nodding as each star emerged from the jungle. 

All that didn't surprise Seti in the least. According to the whisperings, Neb-ka believed himself to be one of the ring leaders of the counterplot, when in fact, he was little more than a peg on their game board. He was blind to the ropes and cogs moving his mouth and feet, entirely focused as he was on the thin threads of power bundled in his own fists. He was exactly as incapable of independent action as the stone statues of the gods the priests manipulated for the peasants on high holy days. 

And just as useful. 

Neb-ka was of minor importance. But that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous. 

The fire-blackened Babylonian ships, the skeletal hulls of which jutted up out of the ocean water a little ways from the shore were a silent testimony to that. As were the occasional screams and cheers that carried over the tops of the strange forests to where Seti wandered in the hills, waiting to stumble over a star.