Which, in the hourglass, it was.
But in the halls where the bags of powder had been set, the fire was out. No rush at all.
Cassandra and her blade could not seem to get behind the the hated Memnon, but Mathayus likely would make her efforts immaterial. The Akkadian had the upper hand now, his mighty scimitar forcing Memnon back against a massive golden six-foot-tall statue of a ram, which regarded the contest with disinterest from the periphery.
Then something crashed against the doors to the throne room, a resounding whump, as men beyond tried to knock them open, possibly with a battering ram.
As they traded blows, Memnon—despite his inferior position at the moment, hearing his men at the door—grinned wolfishly at his opponent. "A noble effort, Akkadian... but my palace guards are the fiercest warriors alive."
"Oh I know," Mathayus grunted, over the clang of his blade against the warlord's. "I soaked the desert with your best soldiers' blood."
"Ah," Memnon said, parrying both words and swords, "but how will you fight them all?"
At that, the throne-room doors crashed open, and the battering ram revealed itself as Balthazar, locked in hand-to-hand combat with four guards who were hanging on to him, as if for dear life, when in reality they were doing their best to bring the mountain down. His sword was still in hand, but the guards had grabbed onto him, pinning his arms, and the Nubian was, if not helpless, severely hampered.
The big man yelled in rage and flung the four men off him, and they scattered around the throne-room floor, like toy soldiers discarded by a jaded child.
Balthazar—his sword in hand unencumbered now—moved into the throne room, getting his bearings, wheeling around, waiting for the next assault.
He did not have long to wait: more guards poured in from the corridor, and the ones he'd cast off were getting to their feet again, their own swords at the ready. The Nubian smiled, as if in welcome, and charged them with his sword, cutting them down like weeds.
One of the guards who'd just entered moved past the Nubian battling his fellows, and marched menacingly toward Cassandra.
"You!" the guard said to her, his voice commanding, rising above the metallic clank of swords. "Sorceress! Get out of here, now! This is no place for a woman—it is not safe."
"I believe you're right, kind friend," Cassandra said, and in a fluid movement that hypnotized the guard with its swift grace, the sword came from behind her back, and made two silent swipes.
The guard, surprised, slipped to the floor, as if for a nap—albeit a permanent one.
The entrance of the huge Nubian—a one-man army cutting a swath of death through his best guards—shook Memnon's confidence—Mathayus had not come alone! How many invaders would there be... ?
Mathayus drove forward, hacking at Memnon, like he was a stubborn tree in his path, pressing him back again, as that golden ram looked on, diffident in the midst of so much mayhem.
And in front of the palace, where the reinforcements awaited an explosion, none had taken place.. . though the sand had indeed run out in the hourglass.
The thief regarded the device in the scientist's hand, asking him, "Doesn't that mean that our powder should have gone off?"
"I had to allow for the time we spent, moving through the passage, but..."
Queen Isis was looking on, disapprovingly.
Philos shook his head. "How can this be?"
"Could it be that you're a crazy old muttonhead?" Arpid asked, his patience worn thin playing second fiddle to this fraud. "A fool who doesn't know the first thing about magic powder?"
But the scientist seemed not to have heard, and only repeated, louder, "How can this be?"
Isis frowned. "What can be done?"
"We must go back," the scientist said, "and inspect the explosives."
Arpid's eyes grew huge. "What? And have them go off in our faces?"
Philos didn't seem to hear that, either. In fact, the thief had barely gotten his question out—much less had it answered—when Philos went running back up the steps, into the palace, through the front doors this time, weaving in and around the positioned warrior women.
Arpid looked at Isis and shook his head. "Well, this is going well."
"Go in with him," the queen said.
"What? I don't want to get killed!"
Isis gestured with a dagger. "Exactly my ... point."
Arpid swallowed. "The old boy may need help, at that."
And the thief scurried up after him.
Isis sighed. "Men," she said, and her warriors rolled their eyes and nodded.
Within moments, Arpid had caught up with Philos, and—using a different route, but a more direct one, thanks to the scientist's knowledge of the palace—they were soon back in the lower recesses of the grand structure. It did not take long for Philos to locate where a footprint marked the spot where the line of fuse powder had been disrupted.
Quickly the scientist repaired the damage, and relighted it with a torch borrowed from the wall. The powder burst into flame and obediently raced away, toward its final destination.
"That was easy," Arpid said, relieved not to have been blown to smithereens.
"It was your stupid feet that did it!" Philos snapped.
"Look," the thief said, "casting blame won't solve—"
"Neither will talking. Unless you would like to wait to hear the explosion, from this closer vantage point."
"No!"
"Then go, fool—go!"
They went—Arpid running on ahead, the older man trailing after.
"Come on, old man!" Arpid yelled back. "If you don't want to get hurt, hurry up!"
At which point the thief ran headlong into a low-hanging rafter, knocking himself out.
The scientist jogged up and looked down at his sprawled cohort. "Unbelievable," he said, sighed, and bent down, to hoist the little thief up onto his own scrawny shoulders.
Truly, he thought, lugging his unconscious cargo down the passageway, the camel would have been a better choice.
In the throne room, the battle raged on, the sword fight between the Akkadian and the warlord continuing past a point where lesser men would have collapsed and likely died from such a colossal physical effort.
Theirs was not the only superhuman campaign undertaken in this room: Balthazar continued his solo slaughter of the palace guard, skilled red-turbaned swordsman falling in bloody shreds as the Nubian's deft skill, powered by superior strength, took down one after another.
Then, lost in his killing frenzy, Balthazar bumped into someone, a foe coming up behind him he surmised, and he whirled, ready to kill yet another guard. The Nubian was already swinging his sword when he realized the blade was slicing down toward the spine of the Akkadian, who had been driven back into Balthazar by Memnon.
But Mathayus—without even looking—raised his sword over his head, to swiftly block the blow; then returned to parry another of the warlord's thrusts.
Over the clang of blades, the assassin called out to the Nubian, "Try to just kill them, please!"
And now the two men were fighting, back-to-back, as several guards pressed forward, as Balthazar dueled two of them at once, and Memnon continued his attack.
"You bumped into me, Akkadian!" the Nubian said, between blows. "You are the clumsiest assassin I ever saw. ..."
Mathayus flicked a look at Balthazar, whose face clenched with something unusual for him: fear.
Then the Nubian blurted, "Look out!"
A guard was swinging a sword at the Akkadian's face, coming in to aid his lord, and Mathayus jumped back a step, at which time he heard the hissing, and realized what Balthazar had really been warning him about....