The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel

by Matthew Reilly

  ‘Otherwise known as the Ten Commandments,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘We’re aware of this.’ He threw a look across the room at the Twin Tablets of Thuthmosis.

  ‘Oh, yes, right,’ Diane said.

  Jack asked, ‘So how did you figure that Moses was the first warrior in the rhyme?’

  ‘The rhyme is not the only ancient text mentioning five fabled warriors,’ Diane said. ‘There are two others, one from the Wu Gorge in China, which is generally attributed to the philosopher Laozi; and a second from the ruins of Karakorum in Mongolia. This is the first one.’

  She turned to a very old sepia toned photograph stapled into her notebook. It showed a stone pedestal engraved with ancient Chinese calligraphy. She’d translated it:

  The Five

  1. A humble priest, son of the great god of wisdom, will flee his home, and a great king’s hatred.

  2. A seer, a healer, a man all would be, will die atop a hideous tree.

  3. A lord of war but a ruler most wise, from the barren plateau his kingdom will rise.

  4. He shall seek empire but find only tears, his empire shall last not one score of years.

  5. A mortal battle, between father and son, one fights for all, and the other for one.

  Wizard said, ‘I saw this pedestal when I was at the Wu Gorge. It’s still there, only it’s ten feet underwater now.’

  Diane turned to a second photograph, this one showing a large cast-iron door covered with studs and symbols that looked like a variety of ancient Chinese writing.

  ‘The language is Mongolian,’ she explained. ‘This door is one of the gates of Karakorum, the Black City, the capital of the Khanate. This is from the time of Genghis Khan.’

  Everyone read Cassidy’s translation of it:

  The Five Greatest Warriors

  The First, the Warrior-Priest, will bring the treasure out of the ancient land and found the great lineage.

  The Second, the Warrior-King, will join two royal lines and thus continue the God King line. He will break the treasure in two and leave his mark on the world forever.

  The Third, the Horse-Warrior, will loyally guard the treasure in his halls of iron and pass it to those he deems worthy.

  The Fourth, the Emperor-Warrior, will pursue the treasure for his own glory and succeed only in scattering it further. It shall forever remain out of his reach.

  The Fifth, the Brilliant Warrior, will be there at the Second Coming and will decide the fate of all.

  Diane said, ‘This is how I settled on Moses, Jesus, Genghis and Napoleon. When you cross-reference all three sources—and numerous other historical clues—you can see how they all fit. I don’t yet know the last warrior, the fifth one—the Black City text says the fifth warrior will be at the “Second Coming”, which is the return of the Dark Star in March.’

  Lachlan Adamson turned to Jack. ‘A mortal battle between a father and son, Jack. Could be you and your asshole dad, fighting it out to the end.’

  Jack gave Lachlan a sideways look. ‘I seriously doubt that I am the subject of an ancient prophecy. Besides, these texts don’t specify whether the fifth warrior is actually the father or the son. The warrior could be my father or Pooh Bear’s father or even someone we haven’t encountered yet.’

  Zoe still looked unconvinced. ‘Jesus Christ is not commonly called a warrior. He was a man of peace.’

  ‘He carried a sword,’ Wizard countered, ‘and at one famous point in the Gospel of Luke, he urged his followers to go and buy swords.’

  ‘And many of those followers were revolutionaries urging insurrection against Rome,’ Julius said.

  ‘And Napoleon?’ Zoe said. ‘The emperor—warrior? The guy failed more than he succeeded.’

  Jack answered that. ‘True, but he did have himself proclaimed Emperor of France. He was also an Egypt nut. It’s because of him that we have the Rosetta Stone and deciphered hieroglyphics. And he was famously initiated into Freemasonry inside the Great Pyramid. There’s no Western leader in history with closer links to Egypt.’

  Jack turned back to Diane Cassidy.

  ‘This is very helpful, you might he on to something here. Let’s assume for the moment that you’re right and chase up these four historical figures a hit further: Moses, Jesus, Genghis and Napoleon.

  ‘Everybody, it’s time to hit the books. I want you to cross- reference these four warriors with everything we know about the Machine, the Pillars and the Vertices.

  ‘Cover everything, from astronomy and Egyptology to ancient mythology; from the sites of Vertices we’ve been to—Abu Simbel and Cape Town—to Aristotle, Rameses, Khufu, Hieronymus, the Neetha and the Great Houses of Europe. Anything and everything. Look for connections, crossed-paths, any kind of common denominator that will lead us to the remaining Pillars and Vertices.

  ‘And just for you, Zoe, look for any other contenders for the title of “Great Warrior”, in case Dr Cassidy here has got it wrong.

  ‘All right, folks, let’s move.’

  ZANZIBAR

  FEBRUARY 2008

  THE MONTH BEFORE THE 3RD DEADLINE

  Over the next few weeks, the team immersed themselves in research, reading anything and everything they could about the lour known ‘Greatest Warriors’—Moses, Jesus, Genghis Khan and Napoleon—noting journeys they had taken, texts they had written or books that had been written about them.

  They read the Bible, plus the other known gospels; they read The Secret History of the Mongols, the great work recording the achievements of Genghis Khan, searching for any mention of ancient knowledge, ‘wisdom’ or ‘treasure’.

  Every two days they would convene for a meeting, at which Jack would write up key points on the whiteboard at the front of the room.

  Sure enough, over the course of their research, curious connections came up.

  The Great Houses of Europe, for instance, called themselves the ‘Deus Rex’—the God Kings—the name used in the Mongolian Black City text to describe the line of Jesus Christ.

  It went up on the whiteboard.

  Likewise, it was found that Napoleon had shown an inordinate amount of interest in Rameses II. During his famous expeditions to Egypt, Napoleon had given explicit orders that all discoveries connected to Rameses the Great he brought directly to him.

  One historical inscription inside Rameses’s palace ruins at Luxor had consumed him. It had read:

  A LONE BEKHEN SENTINEL STANDS GUARD

  OVER THE ENTRANCE TO THE GREATEST SHRINE.

  The Greatest Shrine was a reference, of course, to the Sixth and last Vertex. And ‘bekhen’ was a rare variety of brownish-black basalt.

  And so Napoleon had ordered his scientists to scour Egypt for monuments made of bekhen stone. Their most famous discovery was the Rosetta Stone, but beyond that only a few small obelisks were found and none of them stood over the entrance to any underground shrine.

  In addition to his obsession with Egypt, it was discovered that Napoleon also had an unusual fascination with astronomy—including a particular interest in Saturn and Jupiter.

  The French emperor was intrigued as to why the orbits of these two planets sometimes lagged behind their predicted positions. It was as if, he observed, some outside force were acting on their celestial movements.

  ‘In artillery school, Napoleon was taught by the scholar Pierre Simon de Laplace—’ Zoe reported to the group at one of their meetings.

  ‘Laplace?’ Wizard looked up. ‘He was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. He came up with the concept of the metre. He was also a leading figure in astronomy, some say superior even to Isaac Newton in the field of celestial mechanics.’

  Zoe said, ‘Well, when Napoleon became emperor of France, he brought Laplace to his court to consult on matters astronomical, in particular, to investigate the cause of the lag in Saturn’s and Jupiter’s orbits.’

  Jack said, ‘So Napoleon knew a lot about Egypt and about the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter. We can probably assume then that he knew about
the Dark Sun.’

  That too went up on the whiteboard.

  At the mention of Isaac Newton, Stretch chimed in.

  ‘I’ve been following up on Wizard’s reference to Newton’s alchemical work. Newton was a fanatic about alchemy, the “science” of turning lead into gold. It was his obsession. He wrote more about it than on any other subject.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s very dense and complicated and a lot of the time it just doesn’t make sense at all. Call me crazy, but sometimes I felt Newton was using the term “alchemy” as a codeword for something else.’

  Wizard said, ‘Isaac Newton was notoriously secretive, and even in his time alchemy was a debunked notion. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Newton’s “alchemy” was actually a cipher for some other kind of transformation.’

  ‘Does any of his work refer to the Dark Sun?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Not that I’ve found,’ Stretch said. ‘No direct references, anyway.’

  Jack said, ‘So is he relevant?’

  Wizard answered for Stretch: ‘Oh, most assuredly. Even today, Sir Isaac Newton remains one of the world’s greatest experts on planetary motion. He was, after all, the first person to accurately predict the Titanic Rising. Given Newton’s proclivities toward the esoteric and the vast amount of work that he didn’t publish, it’s possible he discovered the Dark Sun and kept it to himself. We ignore Newton at our peril.’

  It went on the whiteboard.

  One quiet afternoon, Jack took Wizard into an office to chat privately. He wanted to discuss something that had been troubling him.

  ‘Max, the reward for laying the First Pillar, knowledge, was highly advanced knowledge. The second reward, heat, was the secret of perpetual motion. Do you have any idea what the last four rewards are?’

  Wizard shrugged. ‘Guesses mostly. Information on the nature of the rewards is fragmentary at best. Take the third reward: sight. Is it seeing the future? The past? Or the ability to see into the hearts of men? I once read about an Egyptian blood ritual in which a priest slashed his own palm and then gripped a sacred gem in his bloody hand—it was said that he would then have visions.’

  ‘Why, our Chinese philosopher friend, Laozi, once postulated that the greatest thing of all to see would be the time of one’s own death, so one could be prepared for it. Considering Laozi’s connection with our quest, this might be an allusion to the reward known as sight.’

  ‘What about the others?’ Jack read from Wizard’s summary sheet: ‘Life, death and power?’

  Wizard said, ‘Remember what Stretch said about Isaac Newton the other day? That he might have used the word “alchemy” as a code for something other than the transformation of lead into gold? I’ve often wondered if Newton’s alchemical quest was actually an attempt to transform the ordinary human lifespan into a longer one.’

  ‘You think the reward, life, is long life . .

  ‘I like Newton’s metaphor,’ Wizard said. ‘That our ordinary lifespan is lead, while an extended one would be golden.’

  ‘What about the fifth reward then, death?’

  ‘Piecing together some Egyptian references—the Pyramid Texts, the Book of the Dead—my guess is this reward is a weapon of some kind. The ability to deal out death to one’s enemies.’

  Jack thought for a moment. ‘Is it possible that the two rewards life and death are somehow connected? Death might be some kind of power to kill, but life might be an antidote to death? After all, those two Pillars are the only two that have to be laid at the same time.’

  ‘Mmmm, I hadn’t thought of that,’ Wizard mused. ‘That could definitely be a possibility.’

  ‘And what about the last reward?’ Jack asked. ‘Power?’

  Wizard spread his hands wide. ‘It’s the reward of rewards: absolute Earthly power to the one who repels the Dark Star. But what form that power takes, no one knows—’

  There was a knock at the door.

  Zoe poked her head in. ‘Hey. Lily just called from Australia. She says she’s got something big to report.’

  The group gathered in the meeting room, facing a projector screen and the whiteboard.

  Wizard stood at the front of the room. Lily’s face was on a computer monitor, coming in via videolink from Perth.

  Wizard projected a digital photo onto the screen. It depicted the golden plaque he and Zoe had photographed at the First Vertex at Abu Simbel, the one containing the descriptions of all six of the Vertices:

  ‘So what’s up?’ Zoe asked.

  Lily said, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Look closely at the left-hand side of this plaque and you will see the Thoth numerals for each Vertex listed as horizontal lines. Underneath each Thoth numeral, however, you will see a V-shaped marking. This is the Thoth symbol for cleansing.’

  Zoe shrugged. ‘Sure. The cleansing of each Pillar by the Philosopher’s Stone.’

  ‘Partly,’ Lily said. ‘Look more closely. The numerals for the last three Vertices have two Vs underneath them.’

  ‘Oh yeah. . . ’ Lachlan said.

  ‘Huh. . . ’ Julius said, seeing it for the first time.

  Jack frowned. ‘What does that mean? Some sort of double cleansing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lily said.

  Wizard said, ‘I’ve just been checking my database for references to a second form of cleansing. It seems that because the Dark Sun will be a lot closer to Earth in late March and thus emitting more power, the Machine requires an extra form of cleansing for the last three Pillars. The key source I’ve found is this.’

  He projected another image onto the screen, one of an ancient Egyptian wall, filled with hieroglyphs.

  ‘This is from a chamber at Saqqara south of Giza,’ Wizard said. ‘The hieroglyphs read:

  Cleanse the last three also in my basin,

  In the pure waters of the Spring of the Black Poplar.

  Do this and Ra’s Twin will be satisfied and

  Upon you he will confer their bounties.

  ‘Their bounties?’ Stretch said. ‘The last three rewards?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Wizard said.

  ‘So to stop the Dark Sun at the last three Vertices,’ Jack said, ‘we need to cleanse the last three Pillars not only in the Philosopher’s Stone, but also in the waters of this “Spring of the Black Poplar”. . . ’

  ‘. . . and this must be done “in my basin”, in Rameses II’s Basin, the last of the Six Sacred Stones,’ Wizard said.

  ‘And the only one we’ve been completely unable to locate,’ Jack said. ‘This is going to be a problem. Lily, Alby, Wizard: I want you guys to stick solely with this from now on. Find out what happened to that Basin and figure out where this poplar spring is.’

  The research continued.

  In between group meetings and reading sessions, Jack and the other soldiers in the team would go outside to exercise or maintain their weapons skills.

  Jack and Zoe would go for morning runs along the remote coast. Pooh Bear created a man-sized mannequin out of sandbags into which he threw knives, and Stretch, now almost back to full fitness, fired long-distance sniper rounds.

  One day, at Lily’s urging on the videophone, he drew a smiling, bespectacled face on it. Lily then christened the mannequin ‘George’. After that, when anyone went out to train, they’d leave with the words: ‘I’m just going outside to kill George a few times.’ When the battered mannequin was brought back in—leaking sand, sometimes decapitated, usually missing a limb—someone would invariably say, ‘Poor George.’

  The research went on.

  More links between the great warriors were discovered and the whiteboard filled up. But it soon became apparent that some of the most startling—and most important—connections revolved around one particular warrior.

  Jesus the Nazarene.

  ‘No single individual has had a greater impact on the world than Jesus Christ.’ Lachlan was giving the group a presentation with his brother, Julius. (As they often did, today the twi
ns were wearing competing T-shirts—Lachlan’s read ‘Stewie Griffin for President’ while Julius’s countered ‘Stewie Griffin is an Evil Genius’.)