"Sir, sir!"
The young Algerian sounded very excited. The commander of the 16th Brigade turned around slowly.
"Here it is."
The Algerian handed the colonel a plate. He looked at it, but it was written in hieroglyphics. The colonel turned it around and upside down, as if that would somehow change the language of the plate.
"What's it say?" he asked.
"It mentions the Sword of the Sun, just like the Greek said it would, and right where he said it would be, too."
The Algerian sounded excited, but the colonel could hardly get excited over the find. Finding it only left a bitter taste in his mouth. This phantom sword was costing him a chance to distinguish himself on the front, actually to fight, maybe earn a generalship.
"Where does it say the weapon is?"
"It's directions sir. It says 'enter the pyramid, turn right, continue past the first turn, turn left at the next'...it goes on. It also says it was the Pharaoh's sword, whoever the pharaoh was who was buried here. The mummy and most of the worthwhile artifacts were stolen long ago by grave robbers, so we don't know."
The colonel nodded. Well, that ended that. He grudgingly admitted that it had taken his whole brigade to accomplish the task, but he still couldn't abide it.
"Find it and pack it up. Ship it to the Greek, since he seems to think it's so important. We're going to try to make haste back to Morocco. The war's starting without us."
The 16th began to gather for the journey across all of North Africa that they would have to make once again to be reunited with their comrades.
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