goddess of war
. . .
"I will NEVER let your people go!" Shouted Pharaoh. "Neither blood nor boils nor disease nor darkness nor the death of my firstborn son shall ever loosen my hand upon the whip that causes the Israelites to cry out in anguish!"
"If it is God's will," said Moses. "So be it."
…
Chapter 1: First Meetings and Rumors of War
"A message for you from the royal guard, Moses," said Nile, entering the room with a papyrus scroll. Moses was lounging on the cushioned benches surrounding this wing of the Palace, and didn't notice Nile coming in, absorbed as he was in a papyrus scroll he was already reading.
Smiling in spite of herself, and knowing she shouldn't, Nile carefully and quietly set down the scroll she had been sent to bring the prince and tip-toed over to the dusty-skinned young man.
Leaning down so that her lips were right next to the adopted prince of Egypt's ears and her silky, ink-black hair was in danger of tickling his shoulder, she whispered "What are you reading, Moses?"
Moses jumped in the air, startled by the break from the world of symbols and glyphs he was oft to bury himself in.
When Moses realized who had so rudely broken him out of his studious focus, he laughed "How many times do I have to tell you, don't do that when I'm reading!"
Nile laughed herself. "Maybe that would be possible if you ever stopped!"
Spotting the scroll Nile had just brought in, Moses chuckled even more. "It seems the one who brings coals to the fire is complaining about its heat. What have you brought for me this time?"
"An alert from the royal guard," Nile replied, picking up the scroll again and handing it to Moses. "I wasn't informed of the contents, but the head guard wouldn't shut up about how important it was that you and all the royal family receive a copy immediately."
"You better watch your tongue, Nile," Moses said jokingly, unfurling the scroll. "The head guard has beheaded servants for less slights than that."
"That he has," Nile agreed, thankful that Moses, the one human being in the whole of the Palace she felt she could truly trust, would never turn her in. All these years, he had been like a guardian angel to her, even though she had only recently learned what a guardian angel was from the faith of the foreign slaves—a faith Moses was seeming increasingly interested in. "So what does it say? Are the rumors of an army advancing from the east true?"
"You and I both know no army would ever be foolish enough to attack Egypt," Moses replied, scanning the hastily-painted hieroglyphics of the papyrus. As Moses neared the end of the message, his brow furrowed. "Then again, stranger things have happened."
"What is it?" Nile asked almost giddily, always happy to learn a Palace secret only the royal family and their most trusted officials were supposed to know. She jumped up and down ever-so-slightly in excitement as she did so. "Are we really under attack? I've never seen a war before—the Pharaoh always goes off to foreign lands to fight those; nothing exciting ever actually happens here."
"War is something I have read about, Nile," Moses said heavily, rolling the scroll back up. "And it is not something to be yearned for, but avoided."
"Yes, my liege," Nile said with a mock-bow, having learned long ago that Moses would not accept the demeaning demeanor servants were required under penalty of death to show to the other members of the royal family. Nile still had to act this way in public, of course—but there was no danger of anyone seeing their secret relationship in Moses' private quarters. If the Pharaoh ever did learn of a friendship between his son the prince (adopted or otherwise) and a servant girl, Nile had no doubt that her neck would feel a lot lighter the next morning. Nile mentally sighed as she thought of that—not that death was always a snitch away, but that there really did seem to be nothing more than friendship between her and Moses. He had always treated her like a beloved little sister—but as Nile got older, she had wanted something a little more from the handsome young man who was definitely not a blood relative, like relationship each generation of pharaohs was forced to partake in.
Breaking out of her reverie, Nile realized that Moses was packing up a few of his much-thumbed papyrus scrolls into a cloth satchel. Many of the more obscure texts at the fringes of Moses' reading preferences, things his adopted father forced him to read like war tactics and intimidation strategies, were being thrown together in a large cloth sack.
"What is it, Moses?" Nile inquired, suddenly worried. "Where are you going, and why are you bringing those?"
Nile indicated the papyrus war scrolls Moses often moaned about reading. Nile herself often wished that she could read in order to make sense of the various hieroglyphics that held their hidden meanings, but of course nobody in the Palace had ever bothered to teach a servant girl. Moses was trying to, but Nile wasn't the most avid learner, her mind often wandering to the very scenes of battle she was trying to learn to read about.
"Father has called a meeting of his family and the head officials," Moses replied, heading for the door. "There are rumors that Kratos, scourge of Greece, has been spotted within Egypt's borders."
…