'Wha' they doing?' he murmured.
'Reading the inscription,' said Gern. 'You ought to see it, master! The one doing the reading, he's practically a-'
'Yes, yes, all right,' said Dil, struggling up.
'He's more than six thousand years old! And his grandson's listening to him, and telling his grandson, and he's telling his gra-'
'Yes, yes, all-'
'“And Khuft-too-said-Unto-the-First, What-may-We-Give-Unto-You, Who-Has-Taught-Us-the-Right-Ways”,' said Teppicymon[31], who was at the end of the line. '“And-the-First-Spake, and-This-He-Spake, Build-for-Me-a-Pyramid, That-I-May-Rest, and-Build-it-of-These-Dimensions, That-it-Be-Proper. And-Thus-It-Was-Done, and-The-Name-of-the-First-was . . .”'
But there was no name. It was just a babble of raised voices, arguments, ancient cursewords, spreading along the line of desiccated ancestors like a spark along a powder trail. Until it reached Teppicymon, who exploded.
The Ephebian sergeant, quietly perspiring in the shade, saw what he had been half expecting and wholly dreading. There was a column of dust on the opposite horizon. The Tsorteans' main force was getting there first.
He stood up, nodded professionally to his counterpart across the way, and looked at the double handful of men under his command.
'I need a messenger to take, er, a message back to the city,' he said. A forest of hands shot up. The sergeant sighed, and selected young Autocue, who he knew was missing his mum.
'Run like the wind,' he said. 'Although I expect you won't need telling, will you? And then . . . and then . .
He stood with his lips moving silently, while the sun scoured the rocks of the hot, narrow pass and a few insects buzzed in the scrub bushes. His education hadn't included a course in Famous Last Words.
He raised his eyes in the direction of home.
'Go, tell the Ephebians-' he began.
The soldiers waited.
'What?' said Autocue after a while. 'Go and tell them what?'
The sergeant relaxed, like air being let out of a balloon.
'Go and tell them, what kept you?' he said. On the near horizon another column of dust was advancing.
This was more like it. If there was going to be a massacre, then it ought to be shared by both sides.
The city of the dead lay before Teppic. After Ankh-Morpork, which was almost its direct opposite (in Ankh, even the bedding was alive) it was probably the biggest city on the Disc; its streets were the finest, its architecture the most majestic and awe-inspiring.
In population terms the necropolis outstripped the other cities of the Old Kingdom, but its people didn't get out much and there was nothing to do on Saturday nights.
Until now.
Now it thronged:
Teppic watched from the top of a wind-etched obelisk as the grey and brown, and here and there somewhat greenish, armies of the departed passed beneath him. The kings had been democratic. After the pyramids had been emptied gangs of them had turned their attention to the lesser tombs, and now the necropolis really did have its tradesmen, its nobles and even its artisans. Not that there was, by and large, any way of telling the difference.
They were, to a corpse, heading for the Great Pyramid. It loomed like a carbuncle over the lesser, older buildings. And they all seemed very angry about something.
Teppic dropped lightly on to the wide flat roof of a mastaba, jogged to its far end, cleared the gap on to an ornamental sphinx - not without a moment's worry, but this one seemed inert enough - and from there it was but the throw of a grapnel to one of the lower storeys of a step pyramid. The long light of the contentious sun lanced across the spent landscape as he leapt from monument to monument, zig-zagging high above the shuffling army.
Behind him shoots appeared briefly in the ancient stone, cracking it a little, and then withered and died.
This, said his blood as it tingled around his body, is what you trained for. Even Mericet couldn't mark you down for this. Speeding in the shadows above a silent city, running like a cat, finding handholds that would have perplexed a gecko - and, at the destination, a victim.
True, it was a billion tons of pyramid, and hitherto the largest client of an inhumation had been Patricio, the 23-stone Despot of Quirm.
A monumental needle recording in bas-relief the achievements of a king four thousand years ago, and which would have been more pertinent if the wind-driven sand hadn't long ago eroded his name, provided a handy ladder which needed only an expertly thrown grapnel from its top, lodging in the outstretched fingers of a forgotten monarch, to allow him a long, gentle arc on to the roof of a tomb.