The Lost Army Of Cambyses

by Paul Sussman

  'What?' said Tara.

  'I thought I heard . . . Listen!'

  She tilted her head but could hear nothing but the gusting of the breeze.

  'What?' she repeated.

  'There was a . . . there, again! Listen!'

  Now she could hear it too. Away to their left, towards the cliffs. A faint clanking of stones, as if a hammer was being tapped lightly on an anvil. Someone was coming towards them. She strained her eyes, trying to make them out, but it was too dark.

  'Probably an army patrol,' said Daniel, dropping his voice. 'We'd better make ourselves scarce.'

  He pulled her across the watercourse and round behind a huge boulder on its far side, where they crouched down in the shadows.

  'What's the problem?' she whispered.

  'They get suspicious if anyone's up here after dark. Think they're up to no good. We're Westerners, so the chances are there wouldn't be any problems, but in our current situation I think it's best if we avoid any brushes with the authorities.'

  They peered over the top of the boulder.

  'What if they see us?' she asked.

  'Stay where you are and make sure they know you're a tourist. These guys are just young conscripts and from what I've heard they're more than a little trigger happy.'

  The sound of footsteps was unmistakable now. There were muffled voices too, and the low, dirgelike sound of someone singing. Tara bit her lip. Sod's law, she thought, after all they'd been through, to end up getting shot by accident. She could feel Daniel's hand on her arm. His grip was tense.

  It took another minute for the patrol to come into sight. One moment the landscape was empty, a confused mesh of shadow and half-light, then, suddenly, figures began to emerge, moving along the bed of the dried-up water channel. Initially they all seemed to merge together, a single silhouette swaying against the background gloom. Gradually, however, their outlines grew sharper until eventually Tara could see them clearly in the moonlight: nine men, walking in single file, the ones at the rear carrying what looked like a coffin. Striding at the head of the line, slightly in front of the others, was a huge figure in a pale suit. Tara's insides lurched violently.

  'Oh God,' she hissed. 'It's him!'

  She leaned out to get a better view, her foot dislodging a small shower of pebbly gravel down into the watercourse. The clatter seemed to fill the night. Daniel grabbed her arm and pulled her around the back of the rock out of sight, clamping his hand over her mouth.

  The two of them remained completely still, hardly daring to breathe. The footsteps came nearer and nearer, clumping up the rocky channel until they were so close that Tara could make out the individual voices of the men. It seemed inevitable she and Daniel would be found and her leg muscles tightened, ready to run. At the last moment, however, when the men were practically on top of them and she could actually smell the odour of Dravic's cigar, they suddenly turned aside onto the path and moved off at right angles to the watercourse, away from the Nile valley, the sound of their feet gradually receding as they trudged deeper into the hills.

  For several minutes Tara and Daniel remained where they were. Then slowly, cautiously, Daniel came to his feet and peered over the top of the rock. She came up beside him, watching as the column slowly dissolved into the shadows.

  'What were they doing up here?' she whispered.

  'They've been in the tomb.'

  She looked at him questioningly.

  'Well, what the hell else would they be doing up here? Having a quiet evening stroll? With a coffin?'

  He stepped out from behind the rock and gazed after the men.

  'They must know a different way down,' he said. 'One that avoids going past the guards' huts around the Valley of the Kings. Like I said, these hills are full of paths if you know where to look.'

  He stood staring into the darkness for a moment, then, drawing a deep breath, thrust his arms through the straps of the knapsack and swung it onto his back.

  'I want you to go back to Omar's,' he said, taking her arm and steering her back onto the path. 'Just follow the track back to the top of the Qurn and then down the way we came. Don't stray off it. When you get to the bottom, go to Omar's house and stay there.'

  'What are you going to do?'

  'Don't worry about me. Just go.'

  She shook herself free. 'You're going to look for the tomb, aren't you?'

  'Of course I'm going to look for the bloody tomb! It's what we came here for, isn't it? Now go. I'll follow you down.'

  He tried to grab her again, but she swiped his hand away.

  'I'm going with you.'

  'Tara, I know these hills. It's better if I go alone.'

  'We go together. I want to know what's in there as much as you.'

  'For Christ's sake, Tara, I haven't got time to argue! They might come back again!'

  'Then we'd better get a move on.'

  She stepped past him and started down the watercourse. He came after her and, seizing her shoulder, swung her roughly round.

  'Please, Tara! You don't understand. These hills . . . they're dangerous. I've worked out here, I know my way around. You'll be . . .'

  'What, Daniel?' she snapped, eyes flashing. 'An encumbrance? Is that what I'll be?'

  'No, not an encumbrance, I just . . . I don't want you to get hurt.'

  There was an edge of desperation to his voice. Despite the wind his forehead was peppered with beads of sweat. She could feel his body shaking beside her.

  'I don't want you to get hurt,' he repeated. 'Can't you understand that? This isn't a game.'

  For a brief moment they stood in silence, eyes burning into each other. Then she shook her arm free.

  'You don't owe me anything, Daniel. You have no debts to pay. Nothing to prove. We're in this together. If you go, I go. OK?'

  He opened his mouth to argue, but her eyes told him it would be useless.

  'You don't know what you're getting into,' he mumbled.

  'Whatever it is I'm already in it,' she replied. 'So there's not much point being careful now. I think we should get a move on.'

  She came up on tiptoe and kissed his chin.

  'I just don't want you to get hurt,' he said again, impotently.

  'Did it ever occur to you that I don't want you to get hurt either?'

  They followed the bed of the dried-up water channel, tracing the route they had seen Dravic and his men following. The night air was cold and shreds of mist had started to appear, floating just above the ground, glowing in the moonlight like will-o'-the-wisps. A wild dog began howling in the distance.

  For two hundred metres the channel wound across the flat plateau. Then the land began to dip away and the watercourse sloped with it, down towards the southern edge of the massif.

  'The hills on this side end in a series of cliffs,' said Daniel, peering ahead through the darkness. 'The tomb's probably cut into one of those, somewhere near the line of this watercourse. Where, though, is anyone's guess. It could be completely inaccessible without proper climbing equipment.'

  They continued downwards, the water channel gradually turning into a steep, narrow gully, its sides rising like walls to the left and right of them. Its floor became choked with boulders and loose shale and they had to pick their way carefully, dislodging flurries of biscuit-like scree with every step. Daniel pulled a mini Maglite from his pocket and turned it on, playing the beam down the gully.

  'If this lot starts sliding, we're dead,' he muttered. 'It'll sweep us down and over the cliff like a waterfall. If it gets much steeper, we'll have to go back. Christ knows how they got that coffin up here.'

  Further and further they went, the gully dropping ever more precipitously, its floor becoming increasingly treacherous underfoot. Its walls were now so close together they could touch either side with their outstretched arms. Twice Daniel urged Tara to go back and let him continue alone, twice she insisted on staying with him.

  'I've come this far,' she said. 'I'm not giving up now.'


  Eventually they came to a point where the gully bottom suddenly stepped vertically downwards, dropping six metres onto a slope of shale, steep and slippery as a playground slide. The slope ran down for another twenty metres, and then, suddenly, as if a door had been thrown open, the walls of the gully disappeared and there was nothing, just a column of sky and, far beneath, the distant glimmer of a flat, silvery plain.

  'That's the cliff edge,' said Daniel, pointing with the torch beam. 'Beyond that it's a hundred-metre drop straight down. We can't go any further.'

  He gripped a crack in the gully wall, tested it to make sure it could take his weight, and leaned out over the edge of the step, shining his torch downwards.

  'Is there anything down there?' asked Tara.

  'There's some sort of opening,' he said. 'It cuts back into the rock underneath where we're standing.'

  He leaned out further.

  'I can't see much. It's choked with scree. It's definitely an entrance of some sort, though.' He pulled himself back and handed her the torch. 'Hold this for me. And keep it pointing downwards.'

  He turned and, using the gully walls for support, swung himself over the edge of the step and down towards the shale slide below. He moved fast, as though used to this sort of terrain, and within thirty seconds was at the bottom. Tara followed more slowly, testing each foothold before she put her weight on it, fingers clasping at the rock.

  At the bottom she found Daniel squatting in front of a small rectangular entrance cut back into the face of the step.

  'Is this it?' she whispered.

  'Well, it's definitely a tomb,' he said, taking the torch from her. 'See, the rock's been deliberately cut back to create a doorway. You can see the ancient chisel marks.'

  Half of the entrance was blocked with shale and rubble, leaving a metre-wide opening at the top. Daniel put his head through and flashed the torch around in the pitch blackness. There was a sudden flurry and something shot out into the night.

  'What the fuck?' gasped Tara.

  'Bats.' He smiled. 'They love tombs. Nothing to worry about.'

  He took another look around with the torch and then clambered through the opening. Tara came to her feet, ready to follow. As she did so she trod on a slab of loose shale which slid from beneath her foot, causing her to lose her balance. She swayed for a moment, clawing desperately at the sides of the gully, and then the entire shale bed gave way and she was on her back and sliding downwards towards the edge of the cliff, scree rushing beneath her like water down a chute.

  'Tara!' cried Daniel.

  Her arms flailed wildly as she grappled for a handhold. In the narrow funnel of the cleft the hiss of slipping stone was magnified tenfold so that it seemed as if she was caught up in a raging torrent. Dislodged scree vomited out of the mouth of the gully beneath her and disappeared into nothingness. Daniel stood helplessly in the tomb doorway, watching as she slid further and further down. Only when she was almost at the cliff edge, and it seemed certain that she would be dragged over it by the force of sliding rubble, did she finally manage to jam her foot against an outcrop of rock and stop her descent. There was a long silence and then the distant clatter of stones as they hit the ground far below.

  'Shit,' she gasped.

  She lay still for a moment, breathing heavily, and then, very carefully, stood up, keeping both feet planted firmly against the walls of the gully, where the rock was solid.

  'Are you OK?' he called.

  'Just about.'

  'Stay there. Don't move.'

  He clambered out of the tomb, shone the torch beam across the shale, then edged his way carefully down towards her, grasping her outstretched hand and half leading, half pulling her back up to the top of the slope again. Her clothes and face were grey with dust, her shirt torn at the elbow and stained with blood.

  'You're hurt,' he said.

  'It's fine,' she replied, shaking the dust out of her hair. 'Come on, let's see what's in the tomb.'

  He smiled, despite himself. 'And I thought I was obsessed. You should have been an archaeologist, Tara.'

  She grinned at him. 'Not enough excitement,' she said.

  Inside the entrance they found themselves in a narrow sloping corridor. From this side, by the light of the torch, they could see that the bottom half of the doorway was blocked with a wall of mud bricks, against which the scree had become piled. For a long while Daniel stood in silence gazing around him.

  'Originally the whole doorway would have been bricked up,' he said eventually. 'Over the years more and more rubble would have got piled up against it, until only the top part was left clear. Whoever found the tomb knocked that in and left the bottom half of the blocking intact.'

  He flicked the torch to the side.

  'See, there are the bricks.'

  Swept up against the wall of the corridor was a pile of whole and broken mud bricks. He poked among them and lifted one up. On its face was imprinted a design of nine kneeling men, their hands tied behind their backs, with a seated jackal above them.

  'What's that?' she asked.

  'The seal of the royal necropolis,' he said, smiling to himself. 'Nine bound captives surmounted by Anubis the jackal. If the door blocking was still in place, with the necropolis seal on it, that means the tomb was intact when it was found. Untouched since antiquity. About as rare as they get.'

  He stared down at the brick for a moment longer, then laid it gently back on the floor and shone the torch down the corridor, its beam punching a narrow hole through the enveloping blackness. By its light they could see that the shaft sloped gently downwards for thirty metres before opening out into what looked like a chamber of some sort. Beyond the margins of the torchlight the darkness was thicker and more tangible than any darkness Tara had ever known. They began to move forwards, Daniel flashing the torch over the neatly chiselled walls, ceiling and floor. After a few paces, however, he stopped.

  'What?' asked Tara.

  'There's something moving down there.'

  'Bats?'

  'No, on the floor. There.'

  He dropped the beam. Something was coming towards them, fast.

  'Daniel,' she said, trying to sound calm, 'stand very still and don't make any sudden movements.'

  BETWEEN CAIRO AND LUXOR

  The night train to Luxor was less crowded than it had been coming in the opposite direction and Khalifa had almost an entire carriage to himself. He removed his shoes, lit a cigarette and began going through the files on Dravic, which Tauba had had photocopied for him. Behind him, at the far end of the carriage, two backpackers, a boy and a girl, were playing cards. The files didn't make pleasant reading. Born in 1951, in the former East Germany, Dravic was the son of an SS officer who had subsequently joined the Communist Party and risen through the ranks to a position of some prominence.

  As a boy he had excelled at school, especially in languages, and, aged only seventeen, had won a place at the University of Rostock, where he had gained a doctorate in Near Eastern Archaeology. He had published his first book at the age of twenty – an analysis of Minoan Linear A script – and had thereafter produced a stream of other works, one of which, on Late Period Greek settlements in the Nile Delta, was still regarded as a standard text on the subject.