The Centaur by Brendan Carroll

Ark. The two Knights could hear the lowing of the sad beast from where they sat. When everything had seemed ready, Simon had climbed back up the trail alone to inspect the sight once more.  To his shock and horror a great, gaping hole had opened in the midst of the ruins behind the Temple. Smoke, ash and a horrible moaning noise emanated from the depths of the mountains as if the stone, itself, were weeping and wailing for what they were about to do. “You don’t understand.”
    “I think I do. Here,” Lucio pushed him off the cot to the floor on his knees. “Repeat after me. No, no. Look up there. Toward Heaven. In this way you will know you are well and whole and things are not nearly so bad as you might imagine. Not all has fallen, Brother. The fat lady has not sung.”
    Simon fixed his gaze on the roof of the tent.
    “Now I want you to relax as best you can, Brother, and repeat after me.” Lucio got on his knees beside the mystic healer and crossed himself before fixing his own sight near the top of the tent flap. He closed his eyes and began the negative confession in a soft sing-song voice. “Hail, Usek-nemmt, who comest forth from Anu, I have not committed sin.”
    Simon glanced at him briefly and hesitated.
    “Trust me, Brother, the dead listen better than the living.” Lucio opened one eye and looked at the healer.
    “Hail, Usek-nemmt, who comest forth from Anu, I have not committed sin.” Simon’s voice excelled even the Italian’s in his soothing recitation of the ancient words.
    “Hail, Fenti, who comest forth from Khemenu, I have done no violence.” Lucio took up as soon as Simon finished. Simon began the next line and Lucio’s voice overlapped his with the next line. Simon caught up the rhythm and soon the sounds of their combined voices drifted across the emptiness of the desert like a beautiful song from ages past. The confession would go on in this manner for a half hour or more.
     
     
    ((((((((((((()))))))))))))
     
     
    “This makes no sense.” Michael said as he pushed up the dust-encrusted goggles and squinted at the looming shapes of the three pyramids adorning the western horizon. “We should be able to see the Sphinx from here. I distinctly remember hearing a great deal of talk about returning to the Sphinx.” Michael scratched his chin under his beard.
    Galen stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes against the glare of the sinking sun.
    “I don’t see it. Maybe it’s on the other side of the Great Pyramid. That would block it, wouldn’t it?”
    “I suppose, but I always thought that the Sphinx was east of the other monuments on Giza.” Michael shook his head and glanced behind them. They had only three of the horses left. The trip had taken nine of the horses that had belonged to the angelic warriors. Three had stampeded over a bluff, three had been killed and eaten by a horrid, toothy monstrosity and three more had run away into the desert and the two wanderers had been forced to flee for their lives when a pack of wild wolf-like creatures the size of ponies had ambushed them near a dry wash. But those animals had been the only creatures of demonic origins they had encountered on their hard ride west.
    The sun was sinking almost visibly now and a long, low wail behind them set their nerves on edge. The animal or whatever it was sounded vaguely human and was answered by another howl away to the north.
    “Are those on this side of the river or the other?” Galen asked nervously.
    “I can’t tell.” Michael pulled the goggles off his head and hung them on his saddle. “We’d best move on. I have a feeling we either beat them here or we made a serious miscalculation. I see no signs of anyone passing this way recently.”
    They wasted no more time before putting some distance between themselves and the unknown creatures behind them. Michael had come here long ago with Galen and Lucio on one of the only field trips they had ever managed in the troubled times in