Pharaoh hardened his heart
XVIII – You cannot give meaningful consent when under mind control by an eldritch entity bent on world domination
Africa, 1821 or something
The recruit's pretty uniforms did not remain pretty long. Fox Force Five started marching North from the Niger delta, by way of marsh and jungle, traipsing through mud and undergrowth and under torrential downpours and in the sweltering heat and between monstrous, ancient, mossy trunks. The tracks were bad, poorly maintained, and never meant for a whole army to use. The rear invariably found them churned into mud by eighty thousand boots; the front, blocked by vines and fallen trees. In-between, the body of the army lagged and accumulated at chokepoints. No amount of planning and shouting by the officers could make a difference, and they shuddered to think of what would happen if an enemy army had impossibly fallen on them at any time.
A hundred mile inland the jungle became sparser and the ground firmer. At around the same point the jungle ended, so did Fox territory, and Egypt began. The border was unguarded, but marked by a line of small, crude obelisks, each within sight of the previous. They could not claim ignorance, but they had their orders. They crossed the borders.
The country north of the border, apparently, was more developed than ten-year-old reports had suggested. They found small, untended gardens in the shade of acacia, logging sites on the edge of the rainforest, and it was not long before two black hunters dropped their quarry (a small antelope) at the sight of their scouts and ran toward a small walled village North-east of their column.
Well, they may as well get it over with, the General thought. He did not doubt by now messages were rushing toward Sennar at dromedary speed about Fox Force Five entering Egyptian territory. The best he could hope for was his only version of the events to follow not far behind.
The village was well fortified, not enough of course to stop the Force, but enough to mark this region was still a rather lawless frontier, and raids between tribes and settlers a fact of life. When he reached the door on horseback (his poor Storm Wrath had badly suffered in the rainforest) with a few elite guards, two of his officers and a translator, the doors opened.
The village square was right behind them, and the whole population had seemingly amassed there to watch them, but there was a clear space for them to advance, and at the end, by the village well and under the shade of two old acacias, sat a black chief in tribal regalia. Two rather paler men stood on either side of him. One was outright pale and pudgy, and clearly a vulture priest of the Druze Creed; he constantly muttered something with swollen, painted lips: a prayer? Or a curse? The other stood military straight, and even had the bearing of an officer, but he was plainly too old to serve and wore no uniform, only a plain, clean tunic. Some sort of envoy or advisor? The Genral was only left a few heartbeats to wonder.
"I am Macoudou bin Durat, the chief of these parts, the sitting man said. And these are my advisors, Priest Sethi and Veteran Officer Muhammad, who served in the Great European War. Priest Sethi will now speak in the name of the Empire."
The small man gave them a timid, indifferent look, still mumbling, then put his little finger in the loop of an ankh he wore around his neck. Instantly his mumbling ceased, his slouched body jerked upright and his face deformed into a mocking, ferocious grimace. The general himself, his officers and guards, the black throng around them, even chief Macoudou twitched at the violence of the transformation. Only the veteran seemed to have seen such a spectacle before.
"TELL ME, RED MAN, the priest said a wendigo voice. IN WHAT SENSE ARE YOU LOST?" Mocking, threatening, dominating. The general had heard of the witch-priests of Egypt, but this... This!
"I have orders," he defended himself. A heartbeat too late, he realized he felt mortal and imminent danger, even with the guards around him and his army just behind the gate. "But we have no quarrel with Egypt."
"I WILL BE THE JUDGE OF THAT."
"You granted military access to our Venetian enemies. It is only fair we, too, get to walk through your lands to strike at the loathsome Aiellos." It had made sense on the other side of the ocean.
"IT WOULD BE FAIR, YOU SAY. YOU THINK. DID YOU ASK WHAT WE THOUGHT OF IT? NO. YOU ASSUMED OUR CONSENT, AND WALKED ACROSS OUR LAND BY SURPRISE, WITHOUT ASKING FOR PERMISSION."
"I am asking now. But the Fox Empire does not take no for an answer."
"IS YOUR HEAD A NO? MAYBE THEY'LL TAKE IT FOR AN ANSWER."
"You are in no position to threaten me." The General had seen fire before, he had galloped up a slope with a thousand dead cannonballs reaped from him. Some Egyptian shouty priest could not scare him durably. "I will walk through your land, while respecting your people's life and property, and there is nothing you can do about it. Might makes right."
"SO IT DOES, RED MAN. BUT WHAT MAKES MIGHT?"
"Fourty regiments."
"FOURTY REGIMENTS SHALL WALK THROUGH OUR LAND."
"One hundred and twenty. I only command the first of three armies."
"YES. IT IS A GREAT RULE OF JOKES. THE RULE OF THREE. VERY FUNNY. YOU WILL WALK NORTH UNIMPEACHED. DO NOT… Stop…"
The pudgy priest had started shivering violently and suddenly collapsed on the ground. Big men immediately lifted his body and carried him away.
"The Faith has spoken, Foreigner. We will let you through," The chief said. He looked at the veteran who nodded. "We have provisions to sell you, if you want them. Not much."
"It will do. You have my words Fox Force Five will not harm you."
He held his word during the next month. Every man who stole from the locals he would flog half to death, and compensate them well beyond their loss. Every man who struck an Egyptian or laid with a woman he would hang, publicly; accusation was proof.
Even when had followed the Niger to its northernmost bend and started the grueling trek across Sahara, he would not allow taking from the oasis more water than their inhabitants could spare. His own men died for his sense of justice, and worst of all his poor Storm Wrath, but he would not give Egypt an excuse to claim hostility on the part of Fox Empire. The sight of the vulture priest lying immobile in the dust, his face again pudgy and inoffensive, still unsettled him. The other two armies, he learned, followed unimpeded too. As it happened the first one was soon on his heels, as he was often stumbling for the right way and then marking it for the following troops.
When they reached the Mediterranean his men bathed with tears of joy. On the way East the heat was not quite so hard on the men, and they started preparing the fight in the Sinai. It was strange, after months of campaigning, to think of them as unbloodied troops. Certainly they had lost many to thirst and disease and exhaustion, and their uniforms looked rather shabby now. As they entered the dried Fayum depression he looked at the cyclopean fortress of Dimeh on its rocky spur and rejoiced he did not have to take it. The garrison just leaned lazily on the battlements, watching them pass. But on the other side the gates of El-Lahun were closed. On either side of them heavy bastions stood ominously, their parapets brimming with cannons.
One officer and his escort rode toward them. No priest this time.
"I am sorry," the officer explained, "but you cannot pass."
"We have been given access through Egypt." AT this point it was basically tacitly true.
"I know about that. But it does not apply to the Dam Fort of El-Lahun. No foreign army is allowed through the gate. It's tradition, for the protection of the capital. We apologize for the inconvenience, but military access has never meant unlimited access to every part of the host country"
The general's first reaction was of annoyance.
"So you want me to go back," he said (just turning the army around was a several hour task, " exit the depression through the Dimeh pass and go around north."
"Well, there's another problem. The Dimeh fort will not let you through either."
"They let us through yesterday."
"East. But you are not allowed to march West again. That's not the direction of your purported enemy, after all, is it?"
No. No! It suddenly dawned on the General.
"There is no other way out of the Fayum."
"That is correct."
"And no water left in the depression, because, presumably, you closed the dam from the Nile."
"Also yes."
"You are trapping us between two fortresses to die of heat and thirst."
"Well, that's your interpretation. The simple facts are that you are not allowed through these particular fortresses, for safety reasons, and for an undetermined time. The rest is your concern. Be assured we are not to attack you, not at all, unless of course you engage hostility with our forts first. Then we will defend ourselves and condemn Fox aggression."
"That's…"
"Remember, technically not a declaration of war. I'd start saving my saliva now if I were you.
Also anyway, small talk, did you now that the Greeks took advantage of our small disagreement here to attack and annex our allies in Adal, whom we had left undefended?"
"What a bunch of treacherous kafirs!"
"I know, right? Ever since Homeric times their villainy and deviousness has known no bounds."
"Fucking Greeks."
"Truly every stereotype associated to them has a sound factual basis in their actual anatomy and behavior."
"Right."
"Anyway, enjoy dying of thirst and heatstroke in the Fayum depression. Or of gunshot as you launch an unprovoked attack on our forts. I'm heading back for a cool juice, a bath and a nap in the shade."
Fox and Venice went to war, and because I had given access to my main man King of Men all of a sudden Fox started matching his lame-ass armies uninvited all over my place, ignoring my angry noises about it. Well when he got the fortified North-East I declared and trapped him with my forts. Then something funny happened: when I beat his stacks they had nowhere to run (because of the forts control zone) and were wiped lol.
Well KoM and I thought it was funny.