by Wilbur Smith
So they worked in a frenzy in the short time that was left to them. They could not even think about saving the statues and the murals, the furniture and the weapons, the banqueting utensils and the wardrobes of costumes. The great golden chariot must stand where it had stood for four thousand years.
They removed the golden death-mask from over Tanus’s head, but they left his mummy in the innermost of the golden coffins. Then Nicholas sent for Mai Metemma. The old abbot came with twenty of his monks to receive the holy relic of the ancient saint that he had been promised as his reward. Reverentially, chanting deep and slow, they bore Tanus’s coffin away to its new resting place in the maqdas of the monastery.
“At least the old hero will be treated with respect,” Royan said softly. Then she looked around the tomb. “We cannot leave the site like this, with the coffins thrown about and the lids discarded,” Royan protested. “It looks as though grave-robbers have been at work here.”
“Grave-robbers is exactly what we are.” Nicholas smiled at her.
“No, we are archaeologists,” she denied hotly, “and we must try to act like it.”
So they replaced the six remaining coffins one within the other, laid them back in the great sarcophagus, and finally replaced the massive stone lid. Only then did Royan allow them to begin selecting and packing the treasures they would take with them.
The death-mask was without any doubt the premier item in the entire tomb. It fitted neatly into one of the crates, with the wooden ushabti of Taita laid alongside it, packed with Styrofoam until it was firmly secured. Royan scribbled on the lid in waterproof wax crayon: “Mask & Taita Ushabti.”
Their final selection was, perforce, hurried and superficial. They could not rip open every one of the cedarwood chests that were piled high in the alcoves of the arcade. The painted and gilded chests themselves were priceless artifacts, and should be treated with respect. So they allowed themselves to be guided by the illustrations on the lid of each. They discovered immediately that these were indeed an accurate inventory and catalogue of the contents. In the chest which showed Pharaoh decked in the blue war crown, they found the actual crown laid on gilded leather pillows that had been moulded to fit it exactly and to protect it.
Even in the short time left to them they became almost surfeited by the magnificence of the items they uncovered as they selected and opened the cedarwood chests. Not only the blue crown, but the red and white crown of the kingdoms united was there, and the splendid Nemes crown, all three in such a miraculous state of preservation that they might have been lifted from Pharaoh’s brow that morning.
From the very outset it had to be a prerequisite that any artefact must be small enough to fit into one of the ammunition crates. If it were too large, no matter what its value or historical significance, then it had to be rejected and left in the tomb. Fortunately, many of the cedarwood chests containing the royal jewellery fitted snugly into the metal crates, so that not only the contents but also the chests themselves could be saved. However, the larger items, the crowns and the huge jewelled gold pectoral medallions, had to be repacked.
As the ammunition crates were filled, they carried them down and stacked them on the landing outside the sealed doorway, ready to be carried out. Including the crates that contained the eight statuettes of the gods from the long gallery, they had packed and catalogued forty-eight crates when they heard Sapper’s unmistakable accents floating up the staircase.
“Major, where the hell are you? You can’t bugger about in here any longer. Come on, man! Get your hairy arse out of here. The river is in full spate, and the dam is going to burst at any minute.”
Sapper came bounding up the staircase, but even he stopped in wonder and awe as he looked for the first time upon the splendours of the funeral arcade of Pharaoh Mamose. It took some minutes for him to recover from the shock and to revert to his old prosaic self again.
“I mean it, major! It’s a matter of minutes, not hours. That ruddy dam is going to go. Apart from that, Mek is fighting in the hills at the head of the chasm. You can hear the gunfire even at the bottom of the cliff in Taita’s pool. You and Royan have to get out and fast, I kid you not!”
“Okay, Sapper. We are on our way. Get back to the chamber at the bottom of those stairs. You saw those ammunition crates down there?” Sapper nodded, and Nicholas went on quickly, “Have the men lug those crates out of here. Get them down to the monastery. I want you to supervise that part of it. We will follow you down the trail with the rest of them.”
“Don’t mess around, major. Your life isn’t worth a pile of old junk like this. Get moving now.”
“Get on with it, Sapper. But don’t let Royan hear you call it a pile of old junk. You could be in really serious trouble.”
Sapper shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He turned and started back down the staircase.
“You know where the boats are stashed,” Nicholas shouted after him. “If you get there before me, get them inflated and the crates lashed down. We will be right behind you.”
The moment Sapper was gone, Nicholas raced back down the arcade to where Royan was still at work in the treasury.
“That’s it!” he shouted at her. “No more time. Let’s get out.”
“Nicky, we can’t leave this—”
“Out!” He grabbed her arm. “We are getting out now. Unless you want to share Tanus’s tomb with him on a permanent basis.”
“Can’t I just—”
“No, you crazy woman! Now! The dam will go at any moment.”
She broke away from him, snatched up some handfuls of left-over jewellery from the open chest at her feet, and began stuffing them into her pockets.
“I can’t leave these.”
He seized her around the waist and swung her over his shoulder. “I told you I meant it,” he said grimly, and ran with her down the arcade.
“Nicky! Put me down.” She kicked with outrage, but he continued running down into the chamber at the foot of the staircase.
Hansith and his men were carrying the last few packed ammunition crates up the staircase on the far side of the chamber. They balanced the crates easily on their heads and went up the steps with alacrity.
Here Nicholas set Royan down on her own two feet again. “Will you promise to behave now? We aren’t playing games. This is deadly serious—I mean deadly, if we get trapped down here.”
“I know.” She looked contrite. “I just couldn’t bear to leave the rest of it.”
“Enough of that. Let’s go.” Nicholas grabbed her hand and dragged her after him. After the first few steps she shook her hand free and started to run in earnest, outstripping him and reaching the top of the staircase a few paces ahead of him.
Even under their burdens the porters were making good time. Caught up in the long hurrying column, Nicholas and Royan wound their way back through the maze, grateful for the signposts at each corner, and made it down the central staircase into the ruined long gallery without taking a wrong turning. Sapper was waiting for them at the ruins of the sealed doorway, and grunted with relief when he saw them amongst the porters.
“I thought I told you to go on ahead and get the boats ready,” Nicholas shouted at him.
“Couldn’t trust you not to be bloody stupid.” Sapper looked miserable. “Wanted to make sure you didn’t hang about in there.”
“I am touched, Sapper.” Nicholas punched his shoulder, and then they ran down the approach tunnel and clattered over the bridge across the sink-hole.
“Where is Mek?” Nicholas panted at Sapper’s back as he jogged in front of him. “Have you seen Tessay?”
“Tessay is back. She had a nasty experience. She was in a terrible mess. Seems she got badly knocked about.”
“What has happened to her?” Nicholas was appalled. “Where is she?”
“It looks like she fell into the hands of von Schiller’s gorillas and they beat the hell out of her. Mek’s men are taking her down to the monastery. She will
wait for us at the boats.”
“Thank God for that,” Nicholas muttered, and then louder, “What about Mek?”
“He is trying to hold off Nogo’s attack. I have been hearing rifle fire and grenades and mortar shells all morning. He too is going to fall back and wait for us at the boats.”
They ran the last few yards down the tunnel ankle-deep in slush and water, and at last crawled over the wall of the coffer dam on to the rocky ledge around Taita’s pool. Nicholas looked up to see Hansith’s porters scrambling up the bamboo scaffolding ladder towards the top of the cliff, each of them hauling up one of the ammunition crates.
At that moment he caught a sound that he recognized instantly. He cocked his head to listen and then told Royan grimly, “Gunfire! Mek is fighting it out, but it’s pretty darned close.”
“My bag!” Royan started towards her thatched shelter at the foot of the cliff. “I must get my kit.”
“You won’t need your make-up or your pyjamas, and I’ve got your passport.” He seized her arm and turned her back towards the foot of the ladder. “In fact the only thing you need now is plenty of space between you and Colonel Nogo. Come along, Royan!”
They swarmed up the bamboo scaffolding and when they reached the cliff top Royan was surprised to discover that, although the earth was wet underfoot from the recent rain squalls, the sun was high and hot. She had lost all sense of time in the cold, gloomy passages of the tomb, and now she held up her face to the sunlight and drank it in gratefully for a moment while Nicholas checked the porters and made certain that they were all out of the chasm.
Sapper set off at the head of the column along the trail through the thorn forest, with the file of porters strung out behind him. Nicholas and Royan waited until all the men were on the pathway before they themselves brought up the rear of the column. The sound of the fighting was frighteningly close now. It seemed to be almost at the brink of the chasm close behind them, less than half a mile away. The crackle of automatic fire gave a spring and a lift to the feet of the porters, and the entire party raced back through the forest to reach the main trail down to the monastery before they were cut off by Nogo’s advance.
Before they reached the junction of the paths, they ran into a party of stretcher-bearers carrying a litter. They too were headed down towards the monastery. Nicholas thought the person they were carrying was one of the wounded guerrillas of Mek’s force. But even when he caught up with them it took a moment for him to recognize Tessay’s swollen and burned face.
“Tessay!” He stooped over her. “Who did this to you?”
She looked up at him with the huge dark eyes of a wounded child, and told him in halting, broken words.
“Helm!” Nicholas blurted. “I’d love to get my hands on that bastard.” At that moment Royan caught up with them, and she let out a small cry of horror as she saw Tessay’s face. Then immediately she took charge of her.
Nicholas spoke quickly to one of the stretcher-bearers whom he recognized.
“Mezra, what is happening out there?”
“Nogo moved a force in from the east of the gorge. They outflanked us, and we are pulling out. This is not our kind of fighting.”
“I know,” Nicholas remarked grimly. “Guerrillas must keep moving. Where is Mek Nimmur?”
“He is retreating down the eastern bank of the chasm.” As Mezra replied, they heard a renewed outburst of firing behind them. “That is him!” Mezra nodded. “Nogo is pushing him hard.”
“What are your orders?”
“To take Lady Sun to the boats and wait for Mek Nimmur there.”
“Good!” Nicholas told him. “We will go with you.”
* * *
The Jet Ranger was flying low, hugging the contours of the land, never cresting the high ground. Helm knew that Mek Nimmur’s shufta were armed with RPGs, rocket-launchers. In the hands of a trained man, these were deadly weapons against a slow-flying, unarmoured aircraft such as the Jet Ranger. The pilot’s defence was to use the terrain as cover, weaving and twisting up the valleys so as to deny the rocketeers a clear shot.
Although the rain clouds were slumping down the escarpment into the Abbay gorge, the helicopter was keeping well below them. However, the sudden squalls of wind rocked the machine-dangerously and splatterings of heavy raindrops rattled against the windshield. The pilot sat forward in the seat, leaning against his shoulder-straps as he concentrated on this dangerous low flying in these unpleasant conditions. Helm sat in the right-hand seat, beside the pilot. Von Schiller and Nahoot Guddabi were together in the rear passenger seat, both of them craning nervously to peer out of the side windows as the heavily wooded slopes of the valley streamed past, seemingly close enough to touch.
Every few minutes the radio crackled into life, and they could hear the terse transmissions of Nogo’s men on the ground calling for mortar support or reporting objectives attained. The pilot translated the radio gabble for them, twisting round in his seat to tell von Schiller, “There is a sharp fire-fight going on along the top of the chasm, but the shufta are on the run. Nogo is handling his force well. They have just dislodged a strong force from the hillside to the east of us,” he pointed out of the left-hand port, “and they are hammering the shufta with mortars as they run.”
“Have they reached the spot in the chasm where Quenton-Harper was working?”
“It isn’t clear. All a bit confused.” The pilot listened to the next burst of Arabic on the radio. “I think that was Nogo himself speaking just then.”
“Call him up!” von Schiller ordered Helm, leaning over the back of his seat. “Ask him if they have secured the tomb site yet.”
Helm reached across and lifted the microphone off its hook below the instrument panel. “Rose Petal, this is Bismarck. Do you copy?”
There was a pause filled with static, and then Nogo’s voice speaking English. “Go ahead, Bismarck.”
“Have you secured the primary objective? Over.”
“Affirmative, Bismarck. All secured. All opposition suppressed. I am sending men down the ladder to clear the workings.”
Helm swivelled in his seat to look back at von Schiller. “Nogo has men in the chasm already. We can go in and land.”
“Tell him not to let any of his men into the workings before I arrive,” von Schiller ordered sternly, but his expression was triumphant. “I must be the first in there. Make him understand that.”
While Helm relayed his orders to Nogo, von Schiller tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “How long to the objective?”
“About five minutes’ flying time, sir.”
“Circle the site when you arrive. Don’t land until we are sure Nogo has it under his control.”
The pilot lifted the collective and the sound of the rotors altered as they changed pitch. The helicopter slowed and then hovered in mid-air, while the pilot pointed down.
“What is it?” von Schiller followed his gesture. “What do you see?”
“The dam,” Helm answered. “Quenton-Harper’s dam. He did a load of work down there.”
The wide body of trapped water gleamed grey and sullen under the rain clouds, tainted with the run-off from the highlands. The water diverted into the side canal boiled white and angrily down into the long valley.
“Deserted!” Helm commented. “All Harper’s men have pulled out.”
“What is that yellow object on the bank?” von Schiller wanted to know.
“That’s the earth-moving machine. You remember? My informer told us about it.”
“Don’t waste any more time,” von Schiller ordered. “Nothing more to see here. Let’s get on!”
Helm tapped the pilot’s shoulder, and gestured downstream.
* * *
Sapper was waiting for them to catch up at the junction of the trail, where the diverted river was roaring down the valley in a torrent and had washed out a long section of the original track. The porters, strung out in a long line down the valley, each with an ammunition crate balanced on h
is head, were picking their way along the higher ground above the water.
Tessay’s litter was near the rear of the column, with Royan and Nicholas trotting on each side of it and steadying it over the rough and uneven sections of the path.
“Where is Hansith?” Nicholas shouted at Sapper, shading his eyes to check the men ahead of him, and trying to pick out the big monk’s distinctive form from amongst the others in the caravan.
“I thought he was with you,” Sapper shouted back. “I haven’t seen him since we left the chasm.”
Nicholas turned and stared back the way they had come, along the footpath through the thorn forest.
“Damn the man,” he grunted. “We can’t go back to look for him. He will have to make his own way down to the monastery.”
At that moment they heard the faint but familiar flutter of rotors in the hot, humid air below the lowering cloud masses.
“The Pegasus chopper! Sounds as though von Schiller is heading directly for Taita’s pool. He must have known all along exactly where we were working,” said Nicholas bitterly. “Not wasting any time. Like a vulture coming in to a fresh carcass.”
Royan was also looking up at the sound, trying to pick out the shape of the aircraft against the dark clouds. Her face was flushed from the run, the tendrils of sweat-damp hair dangled down her cheeks. “If those swine are allowed to enter our tomb it will be a dreadful desecration of a sacred place,” she said angrily.
Suddenly Nicholas reached across the litter and took her arm. His expression was stern and determined. “You are right. Go on down to the monastery with Tessay. I will follow you later.” Before she could protest or question him, he strode across to Sapper.
“I am putting the two women in your care, Sapper. Look after them.”
“Where are you going, Nicky?” Royan had come up behind him, and overheard his orders to Sapper. “What are you going to do?”
“One little chore. Won’t take me long.”