Death Comes on Swift Wings

Sample

Prologue

 One Rope, Two Scouts

“GO—GO—GO!”

Steve Evans ran like the woods had finally picked a side—and it wasn’t theirs.

Boots pounded dirt and root. Branches whipped his sleeves. His pack tried to peel him backward. And behind them—behind the frantic slap of two boys fleeing—something moved with a different rhythm.

Quiet. Heavy. Fast.

Les Shores was a half-step back, breathing like a heavy kid on a full stomach. “Steve—I can hear it!”

Steve heard it too: brush parting with purpose, the low huff of breath that didn’t belong to anything human.

Steve kept the map out anyway.

Ridiculous. Impossible. Necessary.

The paper snapped and bucked in the wind of their sprint. Steve flicked his eyes down, then up, then down again—trees, trail, map, trees—trying to pin the world to ink.

Les wheezed, “This better count toward—toward stupor Eagle Scout awards!”

Steve nearly ate dirt. “What?”

“Stupor—stupid—EAGLE—” Les choked, then shouted, “Eagle Scout! Survival! Something!”

“Not likely!” Steve barked.

“This has to count for something!” Les snapped. “I want a medal!”

Steve jabbed at the map while his legs kept moving. “Trail hooks right—then creek—then bikes!”

Les sucked in air like there wasn't much left. “Should?!”

“It just wants our food!” Steve threw over his shoulder.

Les looked at him like Steve was the idiot here. “WE are its food, stupid!”

Something cracked behind them—wood under weight. Steve didn’t look back. Looking back was how you lost speed, and speed was the only thing keeping them alive.

The trail narrowed into a thin brown promise. It kinked around a fallen log. Steve cut right because the map said right, because paper didn’t panic.

Les stumbled and hissed, “Steve—!”

“I’m—reading—” Steve panted, and hated how close it sounded to pleading.

The map flapped, folding over the part he needed. Steve swore, yanked it flat with both hands, and ran blind for two steps.

Two steps was long enough for the woods to punish you.

His boot caught a root. He pitched forward, saved himself with a slap to a tree trunk, and lurched back into motion. Les slammed his shoulder and kept going.

Behind them, the sound got closer—not frantic, not sloppy. Closing.

Steve forced his eyes down again. The trail line angled—here—then dipped—there—then—

“Steve!” Les croaked. “It’s right there!”

“Don’t say that!” Steve snarled.

“I’m not guessing!”

Steve made himself glance back—

A flash of tawny movement low between trunks. Leaves shivered where it passed.

That was enough.

They burst through thinner trees and sunlight punched through the branches—

—and the ground vanished.

Steve’s next step found air.

He skidded to a stop, knees screaming. Dirt sprayed. Les crashed into him from behind, hands grabbing Steve’s shirt, momentum shoving both of them toward nothing.

Steve hooked one arm around Les’s chest, the other onto a branch. He yanked back with everything he had. They tumbled away from the edge in a heap, the cliff yawning inches from their boots.

For a second, neither of them moved. They stared at the drop: river far below, rocks like teeth. The kind of fall that would have ended their story.

Steve’s voice came out flat. “This… shouldn’t be here.”

Les swallowed hard. “I don’t think there’s a falling-to-your-doom badge.”

Steve yanked the map up, shaking so badly the lines blurred. Printed trail. Neat symbols. Promises.

Nothing matched.

Nothing.

He blinked once, hard, then rotated the map upright like he was righting a picture frame.

“Oh,” Steve said.

Les stared at him, horror turning into fury. “You had it upside down?!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve lied.

“IT MATTERS TO ME!” Les exploded—too loud, too late.

A low growl rolled out of the trees behind them, close enough to feel.

Both boys went still.

Steve turned, inch by inch.

A mountain lion stepped out of the brush as if it owned the forest and they were the trespassers. Liquid muscle. Unhurried certainty. Eyes locked on them—steady, curious, deadly.

Les made a thin sound. “Steve…”

The lion took a step.

Then another.

It didn’t rush. It didn’t need to.

Steve’s mind snapped to inventory: cliff. No trail back. River far below.

Rope.

“Tree,” Steve hissed. “Les—tie it around the tree. NOW.”

Les blinked like language had left him. “What?”

Steve shoved the rope into his hands. “AROUND. THE TREE.”

Les wrapped it once, twice—too loose. Steve shoved him aside and yanked it tight, hands flying through a knot he’d practiced on safer days.

The lion dipped its head.

Then it lunged—

Three fast steps.

A snap of jaws.

And it stopped short, kicking dirt, like it was testing how they’d break.

Les yelped.

Steve snatched a rock and hurled it. It struck near the lion’s paws. The lion flinched, tail twitching, irritation replacing curiosity.

“Finish it,” Steve said through his teeth.

Les’s hands worked like they belonged to someone else. “I—I’m trying—”

Another false charge—closer—then a stop, head low, eyes locked.

Steve threw again. The rock clipped the lion’s shoulder. The lion snapped its head and took one real step closer.

Steve’s heart punched his ribs.

The knot finally cinched. Steve tested it with a brutal pull. It held—or felt like it held.

He looked down. The river didn’t look real from here.

Les followed his gaze. “We are not doing this,” he whispered.

Steve measured rope length and felt his gut drop. “It’s short.”

Les’s voice jumped. “It’s short?!”

“It’ll get us most of the way,” Steve forced out. “Then we drop.”

“Drop,” Les echoed, like the word was poison.

Behind them, the lion made a sound that wasn’t a warning anymore.

Impatience.

Its shoulders rolled. Weight shifted forward.

This time it wasn’t practicing.

Steve grabbed Les’s sleeve. “Look at me.”

Les’s eyes were huge. Wet. Still there.

“We’ve only got one rope,” Les whispered.

Steve nodded once. “One rope.”

“But there’s two of us.”

Steve’s voice held anyway. “Two scouts.”

The words landed like a pact.

Steve swung a leg over the edge, then the other. Empty space pulled at his boots.

“On me,” Steve said. “Don’t let go.”

Les latched on like Steve was the last solid thing on earth. “If we die—”

“We’re not dying,” Steve snapped.

“That’s what people say right before they die!” Les yelped.

Steve started down.

The rope burned his palms—hot pain, real and immediate. Boots scraped rock, searching for holds that barely existed. Les’s weight pressed into him, heavy and absolute.

Don’t slip.

They slid lower.

Lower.

Then the rope jerked.

Hard.

They stopped moving down.

And started moving up.

Les went shrill. “STEVE, WHY ARE WE GOING UP?!”

Steve craned his head toward the cliff edge—

The lion stood there, paws planted, jaw clamped on the rope.

Tugging.

Not attacking.

Playing.

Like it had found the world’s best game.

“IT THINKS WE’RE A TOY!” Steve cracked.

"IT THINKS WE’RE LUNCH!" Les replied. 

The rope jerked again. They rose another foot. Steve’s grip slipped a fraction. His arms screamed.

The lion tugged—curious, entertained.

Steve’s brain did the simplest math it had ever done.

If it pulled them back up, it wouldn’t have to chase anymore.

Steve looked down at the river, then up at the lion.

“LET GO!” he shouted.

“WHAT?!” Les screamed.

“NOW!”

They let go.

They dropped like stones.

Les’s scream became a siren. Steve’s stomach climbed into his throat. The river widened beneath them, rushing up too fast, too final.

They hit the water like it punched them.

Cold slammed Steve’s chest. They went under—noise, bubbles, spinning.

Steve kicked hard, found Les by feel, and yanked.

They broke the surface choking, gasping like they’d been born again and hated it.

Les clung to him, eyes wild. “WHY—WHY DID WE DO THAT?!”

Steve coughed, half laughing, half dying. “Because—it was pulling us back up!”

“IT WAS CHEWING OUR ROPE!”

They clawed their way to the bank and collapsed on wet stones, shaking, soaked, alive.

Above them, the cliff looked impossibly high.

Les swallowed, voice small now. “That was a long way down.”

Steve’s laugh came out rough. “Yeah.”

Silence.

Then Les, still staring upward, asked with the exhausted seriousness of a boy trying to solve the world’s biggest problem:

“How do we get our rope back?”

They never could have known the true cost of getting it back.

Not yet.

1 

The Big Egyptian Sky

Luxor Station, 1917

Steam boiled past the carriage windows of the British built, colonial era, locomotive as it pulled into Luxor station. The world outside turning into bright white and shadow as the train came to a halt. Immediately heat rushed in—dry and heavy, carrying dust, coal smoke, and a faint, sweet tang that might have been the Nile.

Steve Evans pressed his palm to the glass.

Palm trees. Real ones. Not the sad, drooping things rich people tried to grow in pots in London. Whitewashed buildings. Minarets. A sky so big it didn’t look like it should fit over the same planet he’d grown up on.

“Bloody hell,” Lester breathed behind him. “We’re not in Surrey anymore.”

Steve grinned without taking his eyes off the platform. “Astute observation, Mr. Shores.”

The brakes squealed. The train lurched, shuddered, and finally clanked to a stop. People were already on their feet, reaching for bags, arguing good-naturedly in at least three languages.

Les bumped into Steve’s shoulder as he wrestled his suitcase down from the rack. “You sure he meant both of us?” he asked for the third time since Cairo. “Carter. You’re not just dragging along your useless mate to carry your books?”

“If I wanted someone to carry books, I’d have brought your mother,” Steve said. “She’s at least literate.”

Les snorted. “You’re very funny for someone who can’t throw a punch.”

“Ah, but I can run faster than you,” Steve said. “That’s what matters.”

He slung his worn satchel over his shoulder and grabbed his own case—smaller, scuffed, the corners dark with old mud. As he stepped into the corridor, the carriage rocked under the shuffle of people disembarking.

Les practically vibrated behind him. “This is it,” he said. “Evans, do you understand? Carter’s dig. The Valley. Actual pharaohs. Actual tombs—with actual dead kings in them.”

“So I’ve heard,” Steve said dryly. His heart was pounding.

He’d seen photographs. He’d traced maps in his father’s books until the paper nearly wore through. He’d memorized the layout of the Valley, the lines of cliffs, the numbered tombs like other boys memorized football scores.

None of that had really prepared him for stepping down onto the platform and feeling Egypt under his boots.

The heat hit him like a wall. The light was brutal, everything thrown into sharp relief—the red of the fez on a porter’s head, the brilliant white of a robe, the deep brown of the wooden trunks being hauled from the baggage car. Men shouted in Arabic and French and English.

Les, a step behind, nearly missed the last stair and had to grab his shoulder to keep from pitching onto the platform.

“Graceful,” Steve said.

“Shut up,” Les muttered, but he was grinning like an idiot, eyes wide and shining. “Look at this place. It’s like… like being dropped into the past.”

“The past is everywhere here,” Steve said quietly.

He turned in a slow circle, trying to take everything in—then remembered they were supposed to be professionals, not tourists. He straightened, lifted his chin a little, and scanned the crowd instead of gawking at it.

“Alright,” Les said. “What does he look like, this Carter fellow?”

“Tall. Thin. Hat,” Steve said. “Probably scowling.”

“That’s half the men on this platform.”

“He’ll be the one who looks like the desert chewed him up and spit him out out of spite.”

“That narrows it down to—”

Steve spotted him.

Near the far end of the platform, a man in a sun-bleached khaki jacket stood with his hands behind his back, weight on his heels like he’d been waiting long enough to get annoyed and then past it. His hat shadowed his face, but the set of his shoulders said tired and stubborn in equal measure.

Beside him stood a girl.

She had a plait halfway coming undone, a dress that had probably been neat at breakfast and then lost a fight with the day, and a pair of boots that had seen better years. Long limbs, elbows and knees slightly too sharp, like she’d grown faster than her body could keep up. A satchel hung against her hip, bulging oddly at the bottom as if there was a contraband rock inside.

She was trying to look bored and adult. It wasn’t working. Her eyes were everywhere.

“That’s him,” Steve said. “Carter.”

“And that’s…” Les started.

“His daughter,” Steve finished. “Saundra.”

“How do you know?” Les asked.

“Because she looks like she wants to be anywhere but standing still,” Steve said. “Come on.”

They wove through the press of passengers and porters. Steve felt the familiar tug of nerves and forced his shoulders down, his stride steady. Don’t bounce. Don’t gawk. You’re not on holiday. You’re here to work.

He still had to stop himself from smiling like a kid.

As they approached, Carter turned. Up close, he looked exactly as Steve had imagined—lean face tanned and lined, eyes that missed nothing, mustache a bit uneven as if he’d trimmed it himself with a pocketknife and no mirror.

“Evans?” he asked.

Steve shifted his case to his left hand and held out his right. “Yes, sir. Stephen Evans.”

Carter’s grip was dry and strong. He held on a fraction of a second longer than politeness demanded, eyeing Steve with a measuring look that took in the scars on his knuckles, the faint chalk on his cuff, the fact that his boots were good leather but patched.

“You’re younger than I expected,” Carter said.

“Sorry, sir,” Steve said before he could stop himself.

Carter’s mouth twitched. “Don’t be sorry. Just be useful.”

He let go and turned to Les. “And you must be Lester Shores.”

Les nearly dropped his case getting his hand free. “Yes, sir. Thank you for—uh—having me. Sir.”

“Evans speaks highly of you,” Carter said. “For now, I will assume he wasn’t lying.”

Les shot Steve a startled look and straightened. “No, sir. I mean—yes, sir. I mean… he wasn’t.”

“Good,” Carter said. “I haven’t the budget for liars.”

He stepped back a half pace and nodded toward the girl. “This is my daughter. Saundra.”

She shifted her satchel strap, then stuck out her hand in a gesture that was mostly brave and only a little shy. “Papa, I like Sandy,” she said under her breath.

Carter’s mouth twitched. “Very well. This is my daughter, Sandy.”

She cleared her throat. “How do you do,” she said, in the careful, precise accent of someone who’d practiced in front of a mirror.

Steve took her hand, solemn. “Very well, thank you,” he said. “And you, Miss Carter?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said, then glanced up at her father. “Do I have to ‘Miss’ anything, Papa? It sounds like I’m forty.”

“You’ll say it when you’re forty too,” Carter said. “It’s a useful word.”

Saundra made a face, then looked back at Steve and Les, curious. “Have you dug here before?” she asked. “Daddy says most people turn tail after the first season. The ones who stay either love it or are mad in the head.”

“Bit of both, probably,” Les said.

Steve shot him a warning look, but Saundra grinned, quick and sudden.

“I haven’t dug here yet,” Steve said. “But I’ve worked other sites. With my father. And for some of the men who fund your father’s work.” He hesitated. “It’s an honor to be invited.”

Carter snorted softly. “We’ll see if you still feel honored after a week,” he said. “Come along. We’ll get your bags loaded and you can see the house before it gets dark.”

He turned and whistled sharply. A boy in a ragged galabeya jogged over, and Carter rattled off a string of Arabic. The boy bobbed his head and began grabbing cases.

Les blinked. “What did he say?”

“Probably ‘charge the foreigners double and steal their shoes,’” Steve murmured.

Saundra hid a laugh behind her hand.

Carter was already threading his way through the station toward the exit, trusting them to keep up. Steve and Les fell in step behind him. Saundra trotted alongside, satchel bouncing.

As they stepped out into the street, the light hit them full in the face—late afternoon sun gilding the dust, the white walls, the domes and minarets of Luxor. Donkeys brayed. Children played. Somewhere, a muezzin’s call rose and fell through the city.

Les whistled under his breath. “I swear,” he said. “Look at this. Doesn’t feel real.”

“It is real,” Carter said without looking back. “It’s work. Hard work. If you’re here for romance, you’re on the wrong continent.”

Les shut his mouth. Steve felt his ears burn.

But Saundra glanced sideways at her father’s back and leaned toward them just enough to whisper, “I think the word you were looking for is surreal.”

Then she darted ahead before Carter could catch her saying it.

Steve caught Les’s eye. They both grinned, stupid and young and thrilled to be exactly where they were.

For the moment, before the years and the sand and the things that go wrong, they were just two boys following a stubborn man and his oddly intelligent, daughter into the heart of a land they’d only ever seen in ink and photographs.

Their first steps into the Valley’s orbit.

Five years from now, they’d stand in the same town, older and more tired, with gold dust on their hands and something broken between them.

But for now, the sun was warm, the future was vast, and the road to the dig house lay ahead, waiting.

Quarters – Tent & “Princess Sandy’s” Bathroom

As the last of the bowls were stacked and the chairs scraped back, Carter pushed away from the table.

“Right,” he said. “Before you fall asleep where you sit, better show you where you’re sleeping.”

Steve and Les followed him up the stairs. Sandy’s bedroom door was half-open; a stripe of lamplight cut across the floor. They heard Papa’s low voice and Sandy’s higher protest about not being tired, followed by a yawn that made a liar of her.

Carter paused beside another door and knocked lightly with his knuckles. “This,” he said, “is the bathroom. Sandy’s,” he added before either of them could get their hopes up. “You’ll leave it that way unless the building’s on fire or someone’s lost an arm.”

Les peered at the closed door with blatant longing. “There’s a bath in there?” he asked.

“A tub,” Carter said. “Old pipes. Finicky. It took me three seasons to get the landlord to agree to put it in, and I’m not having it torn out by two over-enthusiastic boys from England. You’ll wash up at the basin and bathe from a bucket like everyone else.”

“Everyone else?” Les echoed.

“Everyone who doesn’t answer to ‘Princess,’” Carter said.

As if summoned, the door cracked open just enough for a brown eye to appear. “Papa,” Sandy complained through the gap, “I told you, I don’t like ‘Princess.’”

“You didn’t object when the tub went in,” Carter said mildly.

“That’s because you nearly broke your back carrying it,” she said. “It seemed ungrateful.”

She opened the door a bit more. Steve caught a glimpse of white enamel, a chipped rim, a line of hooks with towels, and a shelf with a row of neat bottles and soaps. It looked like heaven.

Sandy looked past her Papa’s shoulder at Steve and Les. “Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t look particularly sorry. “House rules. I had to bargain hard for that tub.”

“How hard?” Les asked.

“Latin verbs,” she said darkly. “Hundreds of them.” She brightened. “But if you’re very nice to me, I might let you use my mirror.”

Les put a hand over his heart. “We are honored by Your Highness’s mercy.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she was smiling now. “Careful, Mr. Shores,” she said. “Papa knows where the shovels are kept.”

“Bed,” Carter said firmly.

“Goodnight, Sandy,” Steve said.

“Goodnight,” she answered, and then, pointedly, “Goodnight, Papa.”

She closed the door with exaggerated gentleness.

Carter shook his head, but there was a softness at the edges of his mouth as he turned away. “Come along,” he said. “Now it's your turn.”

He led them down the stairs and out into the courtyard. The night felt even cooler now, the stars thicker overhead. At the far end of the packed earth yard, a large canvas tent had been pitched, guy ropes taut, flaps tied back.

Next to it, a little distance away for dignity’s sake, stood a whitewashed brick structure with a door and no windows.

Carter pointed. “Gentlemen’s facilities,” he said. “Bucket of water and soap just inside. Try not to fall into anything.”

Les squinted. “That’s it?”

“What were you expecting?” Carter asked. “Marble?”

“I like marble,” Les muttered.

“You’ll live,” Carter said. “Most people do.”

He gestured toward the tent. “Your quarters. Cots, blankets, trunks. You can argue over who snores and who doesn’t. If the wind picks up, check the ropes. If it rattles, it’s just the desert. If it hisses, come get me.”

He gave them both another once-over, as if checking for cracks, then nodded. “You did well enough today,” he said. “Don’t be late in the morning. We start before the sun breaks the horizon.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve said.

Carter grunted something that might have been “Goodnight” and left them there, his footsteps fading back toward the house.

Les stared from the tent to the bathroom door and back again. “Princess Sandy gets a tub,” he said. “We get a tent and a haunted outhouse.”

“She also has to live with Carter full-time,” Steve said. “Call it even.”

Les huffed. “You realize,” he said, “my mum is going to think I’m living in some grand house with servants.”

“You are,” Steve said. “You’re just not one of the people being served.”

Les made a face, but his eyes were bright. “Still beats Surrey,” he said.

They ducked into the tent, the canvas walls breathing softly in the faint breeze. It smelled of dust, old canvas, and whoever had slept here last season.

Les flopped onto his cot and stared up at the low, dim ceiling. “Feels wrong,” he said.

“What does?” Steve asked, sitting on his own.

“Being inside,” Les said. “With that sky out there.”

Steve lay back, looked up at the sagging canvas, and felt the same itch. “It is a bit of a waste,” he admitted.

There was a pause.

“Help me with this,” he said suddenly.

Between the two of them, grunting and laughing under their breath, they wrestled the cots back out through the tent flap and into the courtyard, dragging them until they had a clear view of the galaxy, stars close enough to touch. They collapsed onto them, side by side, boots still on, the stars pouring down on them like someone had kicked over a bucket of fireflies.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“You and me,” Steve said quietly.

“You and me,” Les agreed. “And hey—”

“Yeah?”

“Even if it sucks in the Valley…”

Steve huffed a laugh. “Yeah?”

“We get to do this every night.”

Steve smiled up at the sky. “Amen to that, my friend.”

Les was quiet a second, then said, almost casually, “Steve… you remember that first camp trip? Scouts.”

Steve turned his head, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “The one where the mountain lion almost had us for lunch?”

Les huffed a laugh. “Yeah, that's the one. Could we ever have dreamed we be here five years later.”

Steve stared back up at the stars, and his voice sobered just a notch. “No way. I bet there's some kind of badge for this though.”

"We never got our rope back." Les laughed.

"I think we just did." Steve replied.

A meteor streaked across the sky.

"We sure did." Les said, and he held his hand out into the dark between their cots—palm up.

“One rope, two scouts”

Steve didn’t even hesitate. He clasped Les's hand hard, the way you do when you mean it.

“All the way down.” Steve said, smiling.

The night pressed in, comfortable and vast around them. Somewhere a dog barked, far off. A lantern inside the house went dark. Two boys lay on borrowed cots in a dusty courtyard, under a foreign sky, with sand in their boots and the future opening up in front of them like a map.

In five years, this yard would see them older and dustier, and that map would have tears in it they couldn’t imagine yet.

For now, though, it was enough just to lie there and feel the Valley waiting.

Upstairs, in a darkened room overlooking the courtyard, a curtain shifted.

Sandy knelt on her bed, chin propped on the windowsill, watching the boys below. Papa knelt beside her, one hand braced on the mattress, the other resting lightly between her shoulders.

“They’re funny, Papa,” she whispered. “I like their stories.”

Howard smiled. “They’re boys, sweetie,” he murmured back.

She thought about that for a moment, then smiled. “I like ’em.”

Carter’s mouth twitched. “Me too,” he said. “But don’t ever tell them that, okay?”

“Okay, Papa. I won’t.”

They watched in silence for another heartbeat, two small shapes on cots under a sky full of stars.

Outside, Steve narrowed his eyes. “Les, you see that?”

Les shifted, following his gaze. “Yeah. Another shooting star.”

Then another, and another, streaking across the bowl of the sky.

“Meteor shower,” Steve said, grinning now. “Yeah… this is definitely going to be worth it.”