The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel

by Matthew Reilly

  question is how?’

  ‘Lily said the golden plaque from the First Vertex called this place “The City of Waterfalls”,’ Lachlan said. ‘I don’t see any waterfalls.’

  ‘The plaque!’ Julius said. ‘That’s where the answer is. Jack said the frame of that plaque contains clues to getting safely through each of the last four Vertices.’

  While the other three hurried to check Julius’s laptop for an image of the golden plaque, Pooh Bear stood on his own, gazing far to the left of their position, looking out at another odd feature of this already very odd place.

  An ultra-narrow path led around two walls of the square-sided abyss, a quarter of the way around the pyramid itself, before arriving at a terrifying wall-ladder that led down to a tiny stone platform.

  ‘What about that?’ he said.

  The twins looked up from the computer.

  ‘Looks like an observation platform of some kind . . . ’ Julius offered absently.

  ‘But to observe what?’ Pooh Bear asked.

  ‘Here’s the plaque.’ Julius brought it up on his screen:

  ‘Jack said the bottom edge of the frame solved the maze protecting the Third Vertex,’ Julius said.

  ‘So which edge solves this one?’ Lachlan asked.

  ‘Don’t know—’ Julius said.

  ‘It’s the left side,’ Stretch said. Taking the laptop from Julius, he walked a short way out onto the ultra-narrow path and pointed back at the wall of their tower, just below the gap cut into its rail.

  ‘There’s a symbol cut into the wall beneath the gap,’ he said. ‘Three diagonal lines. Just like the symbol here, at the top of the left side of the plaque’s frame.’

  Pooh Bear joined him on the path and saw the carving. ‘You’re absolutely right, that must be the—’

  A deep rumbling noise cut him off.

  Everybody spun.

  It had come from the tunnel through which they had entered the Vertex.

  A sudden blast of wind hit them, rustling their clothes. It was closely followed by a fast-moving trickle of seawater that came sweeping around the final bend in the tunnel, bouncing against its outer wall.

  ‘Something’s coming down that tunnel . . . ’ Julius said softly.

  ‘Run!’ Pooh Bear called. ‘Now!’

  But the group was standing in three clearly defined sub-groups:

  Pooh Bear and Stretch out on the narrow path; the twins on the rooftop, near the gap in its rail, and the two Royal Marine guards a short distance further away.

  ‘Which wa—’ Lachlan began, but then he saw it.

  A huge foaming body of seawater came rampaging around the bend in the tunnel. It roared as it moved—violent, charging, blasting. It would be on them in seconds. Not enough time for the twins to get to the safety of the path.

  Lachlan froze.

  ‘Lachie! This way!’ Julius yanked his brother to the left side of the rooftop and pushed him over the gap on that side, where they found another wall-ladder cut into the tower’s flank.

  Following behind Lachlan, Julius ducked below the rim of the gap just as the surging torrent of seawater hit the rooftop, picked up the two Royal Marines within its surging mass and flung them like a pair of ragdolls into the stone rail ringing the rooftop.

  The rest of the great body of water swirled on the summit rooftop, as if it were a living, thinking creature searching for a way down.

  It found it in the other two gaps on the towertop, which were marginally lower than the left-hand one, and a moment later the two Royal Marines were swept over one of those gaps—looking like two small objects disappearing down a kitchen sink—dropping from view with matching horrified looks on their faces, doomed to die somewhere down below.

  From his position on the narrow path, Pooh Bear saw it all happen. He also realised that he could never cross the fast-flowing stream of seawater now gushing out onto the rooftop.

  Below him, the twins were clambering down their wall-ladder. In moments, the water would flow over the gap above them. . . and pour down on them hard.

  Pooh Bear’s eyes searched the space for an answer—and he found it in the form of the tiny platform over to the side.

  ‘It’s an observation platform . . . ’ he breathed. ‘What does it observe? It observes the correct path through this maze.’

  He snapped up.

  ‘Boys!’ he called into his radio. ‘Wait on the next rooftop down! I understand this place now! We have to guide you through this maze from over there!’ He pointed to the faraway platform.

  ‘What!’ Julius looked up at him from the rooftop fifty feet below.

  Pooh Bear just threw him the Pillar, underhand.

  Julius caught the priceless diamond brick on a reflex, surprised and shocked. He looked up. ‘You want us to do this?’

  ‘You have to do this! Now go!’

  As they hustled down the narrow path, Stretch called to Pooh Bear: ‘You can’t be serious? The fate of the world depends on those two geekboys successfully navigating a rapidly flooding maze and planting that Pillar? Lachlan loses his breath walking to the cupboard to get a donut.’

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ Pooh Bear said grimly, ‘and the fate of the world depends on us helping them!’

  A minute later, Pooh Bear and Stretch were out on the section of the narrow path that ran along the adjoining wall of the great abyss.

  From here they could see more symbols carved into the walk of the towers—each symbol was positioned a short way below the gaps in each tower’s waist-high stone guardrail. Wall-ladders were carved everywhere, giving anyone brave enough to challenge the maze a dizzying array of choices.

  Pooh Bear raised some night-vision binoculars to his eyes. ‘Stretch! What’s the second symbol on the plaque?’

  ‘Three horizontal lines, if you read it upward. A box with a single diagonal line if you read it downward.’

  ‘I see two ladders that the boys can take, and the choices are three horizontal lines or three vertical lines. It reads upward.’ Then into his radio he yelled: ‘Boys! Take the gap to the left, that’s the safe one!’

  On the exposed rooftop below the summit, the twins were awaiting instructions when a thick torrent of water came surging through the gap above them and gushed down on top of them with tremendous force.

  Both of them were thrown off their feet, the water now pouring over the lip of the summit in a thick unbroken stream.

  Instantly drenched, they struggled to their feet, sloshing in ankle-deep water. Now this rooftop was rapidly filling up.

  Pooh Bear’s voice called in their earpieces: ‘Take the gap to the left, that’s the safe one!’

  Julius plunged toward that gap, pushing his way through the churning seawater.

  A quick glance behind him revealed that at least two spectacular waterfalls were now launching themselves off the summit of the vertical city. He assumed a third one was flowing off the other side, but it was out of his sight.

  ‘See any waterfalls now?’ he yelled to Lachlan.

  ‘Mother of Mercy!’ Lachlan shouted hack. ‘This is not the kind of study that I’m used to!’

  ‘Move!’

  Through the next gap they went, climbing down the wall-ladder below it, while the incoming seawater behind them rose and rose . . . until it flowed out through the other gaps in the stone guardrail as magnificent cascading waterfalls.

  After a hasty dash, Pooh Bear and Stretch reached the observation platform.

  From here they had a clear view of the entire collection of towers. It was a stunning sight—an enormous miniature city attached to the sheer cliff, suspended above the abyss; and now, adding to the spectacle, it featured some glittering waterfalls tumbling over its uppermost levels.

  More importantly, however, from here they could make out series of symbols cut into the towers’ sides that showed the path down through the maze.

  From this angle Pooh and Stretch could only see two of the three sides of each tower, but that
was enough. If they didn’t see the symbol they were looking for, they assumed it was on the unsighted side and sent the twins that way.

  It was 1:50 a.m.

  They had forty-one minutes to get to the bottom of the maze.

  DIEGO GARCIA (5TH VERTEX)

  It was like standing in the back row of a football stadium, Jack thought.

  The Fifth Vertex lay before him, and it was completely different from any of the Vertices he’d seen so far. Indeed, the only familiar thing about it was the immense bronze pyramid hanging over the gigantic underground space.

  A huge bowl-shaped cavern dropped away from the archway in which Jack and the others now stood. The cavern was perhaps a thousand feet across and roughly circular in shape. A broad curving roadway—it was the width of a city street and guarded on the inner side with a seven-foot-high stone barrier—swept around the cavern in a smooth descending spiral that converged on the peak of the pyramid.

  ‘It’s shaped like a big seashell,’ Lily gasped.

  She was right, Jack thought. The great spiralling road began with a long straight section, like the horn of a seashell. Then ii wound in on itself, plunging downward as it spiralled inward, the roadway gradually diminishing in size as it did so, until it reached the epicentre of the cavern, the peak of the pyramid, as a thin path.

  The final feature of the cavern that caught Jack’s eye was not part of the Vertex: over the years, the various owners of this island had been busy.

  The spiralling roadway was strewn with vehicles and odd constructions.

  Jeeps and motorcycles lay on their sides, rusted over; several large tracked bridging vehicles had been upturned near the entrance; and bizarrely, some horse-drawn cannons lay overturned further down the curving road.

  The most prominent man-made additions to the space, however, were two very modern hammerhead construction cranes, enormous T-shaped cranes that had been erected at strategic points along the road: one near the entrance archway, another halfway down the spiralling road.

  Both cranes were fitted with steel baskets that could hold several people. The baskets could then be drawn out along each crane’s arm and lowered vertically to a lower level of the spiral.

  The two cranes stood on solid concrete bases that were themselves guarded on the high side of the road by thick A-shaped concrete barriers.

  The presence of the cranes and their curiously shaped protective barriers told Jack a lot.

  ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘Every time you venture down that roadway, you trip some unseen mechanism and a gush of—I don’t know—seawater floods down the roadway, sweeping away any person or vehicle in its path, until the water ultimately flows down into the abyss at the bottom.’

  Bonaventura was surprised. ‘How could you know—?’

  ‘The overturned bridging vehicles are the first clue—only a big wave of water could knock over one of those brutes—but the concrete barriers protecting your cranes are a bigger clue. The A-shape of the barriers sends any oncoming wave around the crane. I just guessed it was seawater, since we’re on an atoll in the middle of a fucking ocean, you dolt.’

  ‘Swear jar,’ Lily whispered.

  Bonaventura took the insult in his stride. ‘Those cranes have allowed us to make detailed observations of this site. Scans of the pyramid, of the ancient glyphs cut into its sides and the road. I myself have spent countless hours in the basket of the lower inspecting the pyramid at close range. It’s given us crucial information about the locations of the other Vertices and the nature of some of the rewards.’

  ‘But it all counts for nothing without the Pillar,’ Jack said. ‘As the French and British found out before you.’

  ‘The knowledge we found here enabled us to find a few things before you,’ Bonaventura shot back.

  Jack checked his watch.

  It was 4:50 a.m.

  They had forty-one minutes.

  He keyed his radio. ‘Pooh Bear? How’re you doing up there?’

  His earpiece crackled sharply before a hashing roar came through it, followed by Pooh Bear’s shouting voice.

  ‘It’s all happening here, Huntsman! Sorry! Can’t talk! Gotta guide the twins through the maze! Will call you back!’

  The signal cut off.

  Jack looked at Lily, then turned to General Dyer.

  ‘I’m gonna need a motorbike.’

  A military motorcycle was brought down the entry tunnel and handed over to Jack.

  Jack straddled the bike. Lily jumped on behind him, gripping the double-cleansed Pillar.

  Bonaventura was shocked. You’re not going to use the cranes?’ He looked to Iolanthe for support. ‘But they’re the safest way down. . .’

  The first hammerhead crane was indeed level with them, its counterbalanced rear arm only a few feet away.

  Jack shook his head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? In a place like this, you can’t cheat, you can’t bypass the traps. Did it ever occur to you that the Vertex might reward the person who can figure out its trap system?’

  ‘Wellw. . .’

  Jack said, ‘These trap systems are just like those of the Egyptians, the Chinese and the Maya: they’re designed to keep the unknowledgeable out. Which means they’re designed to allow the right people in. If you have the Pillar in your hands, this system will let you pass through it safely. But if you try to cheat it, it’ll attack von.’

  Bonaventura and General Dyer turned to Iolanthe, as if she were the ultimate judge.

  She just shrugged. ‘Let him do it his way. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Jack said drily.

  ‘You’ll be dead before you reach the second ring,’ Bonaventura snorted. ‘And then we’ll have to clean up what’s left of you and plant the Pillar ourselves.’

  ‘Then it’s been nice knowing you,’ Jack said, gunning the motor bike and bouncing it down the short set of stairs that gave access to the roadway.

  Then he hit the bottom of the stairway near the base of the crane, and swung left, zooming down the outermost ring of the deadly spiralling roadway.

  A hundred yards into their journey, Jack and Lily came to a jagged chasm that sliced across the roadway.

  Three stone bridges spanned it.

  Two red crosses had been crudely spray-painted across the two outer bridges, while a green arrow indicated that the middle bridge was the safe one.

  Jack, however, ignored the painted markings. Instead, he gazed at a smaller and far more ancient marking carved neatly into the stone bridge beneath the green-painted arrow:

  ‘Plaque?’ he asked Lily.

  ‘Plaque.’ Lily pulled out her digital camera and brought up the photo of the golden plaque from the First Vertex.

  They both saw that along the top edge of the frame, the same symbol appeared as the first in a sequence:

  Looking out over the stadium-like space, Jack counted several more chasms cutting across the spiralling road. Over each of the chasms were two or sometimes three bridges. As at Hokkaido, you had to choose the correct bridge or else you set off the trap mechanism.

  He turned to Lily. ‘What do you say, kiddo?’

  ‘Let’s kick some ass.’

  ‘Couldn’t have said it better myself.’

  And so guided by the symbols depicted on their camera, they took off down the wide spiralling avenue, speeding toward the heart of the Fifth Vertex.

  LUNDY ISLAND (4TH VERTEX)

  The silence at the Fifth Vertex could not have been more unlike the chaos at the Fourth.

  From his position on the observation platform, Pooh Bear looked out at the miniature city mounted on the wall of the abyss.

  By now, the entire upper half of the city was overflowing with waterfalls—dozens of them, all cascading in glorious vertical streams down the many levels of the structure, before they hit the next rooftop and separated, left or right or straight ahead, ever forced by gravity to search for the path of least resistance downward.

  Pooh Bear was amaze
d. It looked like the world’s biggest water feature.

  And there, clambering down the wall-ladders cut into the towers of the mini-city, running across rooftops, sloshing through knee-deep water, microscopic specks against the grandeur of the structure, were the two tiny figures of Lachlan and Julius Adamson, running for their lives in a desperate race against the ravenous streams of water tumbling down the system above and behind them.