CHAPTER 2
The man wearing a veil jumps as you hack away at him senselessly. Another one tries to stab you but you punch him away. Sent flying, he is replaced by one of the last men in the crowd. He stabs at you with steel claws, and he rips the skin and scores away the flesh. You reel in pain and fall to your hands.
"Now, grab it!"
"No, idiot, we need him alive!" shouts the man with the face of a dog. "They will not accept him dead! Don't shoot, just stash the gun away!"
Your head is forced backwards by a tight rope. You try to rise, and you do drive them away, but you are pummeled by the man with a dog's head. You fall limp.
"Is he dead? I mean, that thing back then?" says the nubian, now unmasked
"That animal? Maybe not. I don't care now. We'll just have to see if luck is on our side, then, and hole ourselves up somewhere." says the dog
"Is it enough?" the man sharpens his claws back behind the rock.
"If it is not enough..." says the nubian
"It is enough! We'll live"
"He's awake!"
Your hands are tied; the rope crosses then to your neck and all the way over to some hard object that pins your back high over.
The dog walks over to you and kneels: "You remember the seventh crusade upon the far east? Yes, farther from here, but closer to your home. Still, it was far. But I remember: I remember your face and the sting of your blade. You think I'd forget? But I will not bury you here, like you buried my brothers."
"What are you talking about, cur?"
"You don't remember, do you? You were half mad drunk after all..."
"Enough, just untie him and let us go back the way through Metamor"
He bares his fangs "You will listen to me. For all in the world's idiots and all the world's wiseman are not immune to this charade."
He lifts a claw and pins your throat "I do not care for law, for it is a sham. No, you see, I feel like a God now. For I have usurped it, insofar as to trick. But I am not foolish enough to ignore the true law of this world. That is of blood, the everpresent hunger. You see the slaves, they love their masters; but I am no slave and I am no master. I am an anubisguard of egyptia; and with me are fools. They will eat with me out of necessity but they will not see my true colors for they are blind. You, however, and I say this truthfully: are like me. A dog in a man's world. Between two worlds you are cleaved in half by both of them yet you will aim to set yourself ever free. This is all I will say to you now. But remember, always, the pact of the people of navarre and of egypti, of the Pact of Mesametasem!."
He slashes the ropes that bind you.
"Go!"