Hawk saw the look on Rebecca’s face and felt bad, but the girl should know there was more to Simonetta Belzoni than met the eye. Her eyes grew wide at the sound of gunshots. Hawk glanced around and saw everyone else had stopped in their tracks.

“What was that?” Rebecca asked, fear in her voice.

“Ain’t nothing good,” Hawk replied. He tapped her on the arm and covertly gestured toward the three Ladies of Flame. They had moved together and taken up a defensive position. Decked out in uniforms of the Egyptian army, pants and jackets, with insignia identifying their ranks and position, they also wore sashes embroidered with hieroglyphs, and from their belts hung sabers and pistols. Priestesses of lion goddess Sakhmit, and if anyone here was prepared to deal with armed attackers, it would be the Ladies of Flame.

He started his way over toward them and Rebecca followed. He noted the insignia on one of the the women’s jacket identified her as a djoeis, a captain.

“What are you doing?” the lead priestess said at seeing him. “I need no help, Yankee.”

“Yankee?” Hawk muttered to himself and then looked at his blue jacket. “Oh, the coat. Djoeis…”

“Captain Torinre Mowi,” the woman replied.

“Captain Mowi, I assure you I ain’t no American. But I can help you fight off the intruders.”

“You have combat experience?” she said, with disdain in her voice. I counted three coups at the Battle of the Greasy Grass, Hawk thought to himself, but he had no time to explain any of that to Torinre. He turned to Rebecca as he pulled out the mare's laig pistol.

“Rebecca, stay behind us,” he said. Scanning the room, he saw no sign of Simonetta, but did see her Very Large Gun, wrapped in burlap sitting on the floor near her seat. Panic was already washing through the other passengers, so Hawk knew he had no chance to get to it.

Before anyone could do anything, three masked men burst through the door with pistols in each hand. “We have seized this airship in the name of God and Jesus Christ his son! Hôs e efnouti!” the lead man shouted. Holding several hostages in front of themselves, they had their guns trained on the Ladies of Flame.

“The Martyrs of St. Mark.” Torinre grumbled, which trailed off into several Egyptian swear words. She had her gun at the ready and her other hand was in position to cast a spell.

“Drop your guns!” one of the Martyrs shouted, placing his gun to the head of the sobbing hostage. The Ladies of Flame hesitated when the gun went off, spraying blood all over the crowd. As the body dropped the crowd shouted and Torinre lowered her gun. Her companions did the same as Hawk set his gun down on the floor in front of him and raised his hands.

“We’ll do what you say, just don’t hurt anyone else,” Torinre said.

“Over to the window, you pagan whores!” the leader said. “And if I see so much as a spark on your fingertips, I’ll send you to the Devil himself!”

“A fire spell on the airship ain’t the best idea anyway,” Hawk said, only to have the guns leveled at his face as well. Hawk simply glared back at the gunmen. As long as they didn’t search him, they would not find the tomahawk.

“Why are you doing this?” Rebecca said. She was looking around, probably for Simonetta, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“We want to let it be known we will no longer tolerate the idolatrous festival and its celebration of false gods!”

“The Feast of Isis, is it?” Rebecca said. “I am a Christian myself but—” she was cut off by the gun in her face. The gunman looked her over. Hawk could see him noting her pale complexion and crudely applied kohl.

“Western heretic,” he muttered. “I should kill you as an apostate!”

“Christians…” Torinre grumbled barely loud enough for Hawk to hear.

“Leave the girl alone,” Hawk said. The gunman cocked the gun at Rebecca’s head as he turned back to Hawk, but they were interrupted by more screams and gunshots from the next room. These screams were different, more primal, terrified.

“What is going on in there?” Hawk asked.

“Go find out!” the leader shouted at one of his henchmen.

From his vantage, Hawk saw what looked like someone leap out the window, dropping hundreds of feet to the ground below. What really was going on over there?

Once the henchman was gone, Torinre struck. She spun around and drove the palm of her hand up into the terrorist’s nose. Then a quick muttered spell of which the only words Hawk could make out were ‘blood’ and ‘fire.’ The Martyr dropped to the floor screaming in pain as Torinre delivered a well placed kick to his stomach. The other two Ladies of Flame attacked the other gunman and bore him to the ground.

The man on the floor shouted some Christian benediction and kicked back at Torinre just enough to throw her off balance as he ran for the other compartment.

In a flash, Hawk pulled the tomahawk out. With a practiced throw, he buried it in the man’s back. The Martyr of St. Mark dropped to the floor.

“Impressive aim,” Torinre said. Hawk noted her dispassionate tone. She looked to her fellow priestesses who had subdued the Martyr. “Still alive I see. Keep him. There will be lots of questions.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Torinre turned to Hawk. “May I ask your help to survey the scene, Mr….”

“Yellowhawk Ramsey. Call me Hawk.”

“Hawk,” Torinre said, testing the name. “Then you may call me Tori.” She gestured for him to follow.

“Rebecca, stay here with the Ladies of Flame. Be right back.” He picked up the mare's laig pistol as they walked to the door. Hawk looked to Tori who nodded as they pushed open the doors. Inside was a mess. There was blood everywhere and people were pressed up against the sides. In the middle were several dead bodies, or at least what remained of them. The unfortunate hostages had been shot, while four of the Martyrs lay on the floor and looked like they had been ripped apart.

“What in the name of the Lioness happened here?” Tori said.

“Hawk!” He looked up to see Simonetta making her way toward him, deftly hopping around to miss the gore. Tori gave Simonetta a long look.

“Simonetta, you see what happened?” he asked.

“It was a crocodile. A large one too, a good five meters long.”

“Impossible,” Tori said. “Who could even get an animal that big onto an airship without anyone noticing. And to get it from the cargo bay up to the passenger compartment…”

Hawk glanced around the room, but saw no sign of any crocodile. “The crocodile, where is it now?”

“It’s gone,” Simonetta said. “Once the last terrorist was dead, the crocodile vanished.”

“Vanished?” Hawk said. Simonetta nodded. “We dealing with magic here?”

“I don’t know of any spells that powerful,” Tori said. “To conjure up a crocodile from nowhere and then banish it just as quickly?” She looked at the scene around her. “Either way, we need to get these people out of here. We are probably less than an hour from Cairo, so the Cairo Medjai can deal with this.” She addressed the crowd. “Everyone, we need to get into the other compartment. If you cannot walk, someone will help you.”

***

Hawk looked around once the compartment was nearly empty. It was still a horrid scene even after they found some blankets to cover up the bodies. Hawk was just about to walk out when he saw it. On the floor just under a table, was a small statuette. Curious, he stepped over and picked it up.

“What did you find?” Tori asked.

“Ain’t sure,” Hawk said. It was about seven inches long, a brass effigy of a crocodile.

“That may be where it came from,” Tori said. Hawk gently set it on the table and took a step back.

“You sure?”

“There are stories of spellcasters being able to turn small effigies of animals into full sized creatures,” Tori said shaking her head. “But that’s long ago, from the time of Sneferu.”

“There are stories that Ramesses XVIII collected the most powerful magicians from the land,” Simonetta said absently as she looked around at the carnage.

“That was still almost a thousand years ago,” Tori said. “Most of the old magic texts were destroyed by the Christian Pharaohs. There has not been any magician that powerful in centuries.”

“Yet here we are,” Hawk said. Looking out the window, he saw pyramids of Giza across the river from Cairo straight ahead. He had hoped he could leave the whole matter behind once he stepped off the airship, but he knew it would not be that simple.