The Five Greatest Warriors

by Matthew Reilly

  MOMENTS LATER, Jack hung in front of the wall of the salt shaft, staring at the translucent section of it ten feet below Vulture’s cross shaft.

  He raised a small handheld pickaxe, then abruptly, for some reason, Jack West Jr. paused.

  He’d uncovered many ancient things in his time: the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria, most of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the tombs of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.

  But this was something else.

  This was something more.

  This was the most famous person to ever walk the Earth. A man who inspired religions, whose acts and words were still repeated two thousand years after he had lived, and most of all, this was a man who many believed had risen bodily to heaven after he had been crucified.

  “Daddy?” Lily said from twenty feet above him. “You okay?”

  Jack blinked. “Yeah . . . yeah, I’m okay.”

  Then he took a deep breath and hit the false salt wall with his little pickaxe.

  It wasn’t very thick—barely a centimeter—and it came away easily as Jack chipped at it.

  Soon, a round gap the size of a manhole appeared and Jack climbed through it, guided by a fresh glowstick.

  After a short crawl down a tight tunnel, he came to a small wooden door, encrusted around the edges with salt crystals.

  He paused again. If the chamber beyond that door really was oxygen-sealed, and if it really contained—well, he didn’t want to be the one who contaminated it with fresh oxygen.

  He extracted the inflatable air-seal unit from his bag. Made of clear plastic, it was designed to inflate across the width of a larger passageway, sealing it. But it would work in this small space just as well. Two Ziploc zippered doors in its middle acted like an air lock.

  Jack inflated the air-seal unit behind him and it expanded quickly to fill the tight tunnel. Once it was safely in place, he turned his attention back to the small salt-encrusted wooden door.

  It opened with a sharp crack, the salt seal breaking free.

  Jack passed through it.

  He emerged inside a small salt-walled chamber in which he was only just able to stand. The walls were pure white. The air was musty and stale.

  A coffin-sized recess was cut into the salt wall at the far end. Nailed to the wall above the recess was a square of faded wood on which four letters had been crudely carved:

  “INRI.”

  Jack swallowed at the sight of it. It was the sign. The actual sign . . .

  It stood for: IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM.

  Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews.

  Jack lowered his eyes to behold the recess itself.

  Lying on it was a man-sized figure, wrapped entirely in loose white cloth, arms folded across its chest in eternal rest.

  Where the arms met, Jack could discern a rectangular bulge.

  The Pillar.

  With a slowness that betrayed the awe he felt, Jack West Jr. approached the cloth-wrapped figure.

  He stood before it.

  He could hear his heart pounding inside his head.

  To get the Pillar, he would have to remove the loose cloth over the figure’s face.

  Slowly, Jack pulled back the cloth.

  For some reason that he could not explain, Jack couldn’t bring himself to look directly upon the figure’s face—in some corner of his mind, he felt that he was unworthy to look upon the face of so great an individual.

  Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, they were one thing, but this was different.

  This man was different.

  He was not a warrior in the usual sense, the military sense. His war had been one of ideas, ideas that had swept the world. His victories had been far more long-lasting than anything Genghis or Alexander or Napoleon had achieved. Their victories had barely outlived them. This man’s victories were still going.

  Jack gulped.

  Taking Jesus Christ’s Pillar was sacrilegious enough. He would not look upon the man himself.

  And so, keeping his eyes firmly focused on the figure’s chest, Jack saw the Pillar clasped in perfectly preserved hands.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see a bearded face—the beard was brown, the eyes were closed, the face serene.

  He couldn’t look at it directly.

  Gently, slowly, reverently, Jack lifted the Pillar from the perfectly preserved hands, for a moment brushing his fingers against those of the Pillar’s former owner.

  Electricity flowed through him—an electricity unlike anything he had ever felt in his life—an incredible feeling of clarity and lightness. It shot through his body like a lightning bolt of pure—

  Jack replaced the cloth over the bearded figure’s face, and the feeling immediately went away. He still did not look directly at the face.

  He released the breath he’d been holding. In his shaking hand was the Pillar.

  Then he backed out of the salt-walled chamber in silence and closed its small wooden door behind him, knowing that the salt crystals at the door’s edges would reseal in time.

  Then he left, passing through his plastic air lock, not quite believing what he had just seen and done.

  JACK REJOINED Lily at the top of the salt shaft.

  “Got it?” she asked.

  “Got it.”

  “Was He . . . in there?”

  “He was, and it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced,” Jack said softly. “Come on, let’s go.”

  They crossed the brine lake and started climbing the scaffold structure that led back to the gallery. Iolanthe was still waiting for them at the top of the scaffold.

  Lily climbed in the lead, with Jack climbing behind her in case she slipped or fell, so she reached the top first.

  He heard her scream before he saw why.

  The short plank bridge between the scaffold and the lip of the pit fell away, past Jack’s disbelieving eyes, leaving a nine-foot gap between them and the lip.

  They were stranded out on the scaffold.

  Jack joined Lily and Iolanthe on the top of the scaffold and looked out across the gap.

  Two men brandishing crossbows stood on the other side.

  Vulture and Scimitar.

  They’d come back.

  “You knew the other Pillar was a fake,” Jack said from his position out on the scaffold.

  Vulture smiled. “Of course. This place has long been known to our people, so too its secrets. Our Chinese colleague is now taking that other Pillar back to the Russian, completely unaware that it is worthless. Deeming us to be of no more use, our guards left us here, which happens to be just fine with us.”

  “I thought you and China were in this together,” Jack said.

  “As the end approaches, partnerships of convenience will naturally dissolve,” Scimitar said.

  “I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘There’s no honor among thieves,’ ” Jack retorted.

  “Throw the Pillar over to me and I might spare the girl. Rest assured, I will not be sparing you or the royal bitch.”

  Jack gripped the Pillar, biting his lip.

  He was screwed. He couldn’t fire a gun in this methane-filled environment. And he, Lily, and Iolanthe couldn’t possibly jump across the gap. They were trapped, totally out of options.

  Vulture sneered, raised his crossbow. “You’ve played well, Huntsman, very well. But here your adventure ends.”

  Jack closed his eyes . . .

  . . . just as another voice echoed out from somewhere else in the cavern. “Not yet!”

  Vulture spun. So did Scimitar and Iolanthe and Lily.

  Jack didn’t need to. He’d know that voice anywhere. Deep and gruff, it belonged to the one man in the world who wanted to stop Vulture and Scimitar more than Jack did.

  It belonged to Pooh Bear.

  POOH BEAR stood with Stretch at the northern end of the gallery, in between the salt mounds. Jack guessed that they must have entered the mine through the same tunnels he had and followed his trail
of glowsticks here.

  Pooh and Stretch stood opposite Vulture and Scimitar like gunslingers on a Wild West street.

  Vulture grinned. “Well, well, well, Fat Zahir returns.”

  Pooh Bear ignored the Saudi, jerked his chin at Scimitar. “Brother. A simple question. Do you still side with this snake?”

  Scimitar hesitated for a second, then raised his nose. “My way is the right way, Zahir, for our country and for our faith.”

  “What about our father in his watery tomb in Russia?” Pooh Bear asked.

  “His death is a sacrifice I am prepared to endure,” Scimitar replied evenly.

  “You are truly lost, then, aren’t you . . .”

  “You do not have to die here, Zahir. But if you stand in my way, you most certainly will.”

  “I do not wish to fight you, brother,” Pooh Bear said. “But I will if I must. I cannot let you pass. I am sorry that it has to come to this.”

  Pooh Bear drew a long-bladed knife from his weapons belt. Stretch did the same.

  An incredulous grin broke out across Scimitar’s face. “You intend to fight me, Zahir? Me! Never even in our childhood wrestling matches could you beat me. And your sickly Jew friend is no match for a blade-handler of Vulture’s skill.”

  Pooh Bear was unmoved. “That may be so, brother. But you hold our friends at your mercy, so we will fight you anyway. Only one of us can leave this place alive.”

  “So be it,” Scimitar said. “Fight we shall.”

  Quick as a whip, he raised his crossbow and fired it. The bolt thudded directly into Pooh Bear’s chest. At the same time, Vulture fired at Stretch, but Stretch was ready—he swerved and the bolt went wide.

  Pooh Bear shuddered as Scimitar’s crossbow bolt struck him, but he remained standing, the bolt protruding from his chest.

  He looked up at Scimitar in apparent disbelief.

  Scimitar said, “I never said I would fight fair.”

  Pooh Bear didn’t move. Perhaps he was in shock, perhaps he was—

  Then he calmly reached down and wrenched the bolt from his chest, revealing a Kevlar vest. He threw the bolt to the ground.

  “Neither did I,” he said.

  Their crossbows expended, Scimitar and Vulture discarded them and drew their own curving blades. Pooh noticed that Scimitar’s knife was the beautiful gold-hilted bejeweled dagger their father had given to Scimitar on his thirteenth birthday—a prized gift from a father to his firstborn son.

  Pooh and Stretch raised their own more humble KA-BAR knives.

  Scimitar and Vulture gripped theirs backhanded, special forces style, and suddenly it was on.

  And in the darkness of the ancient Roman salt mine, the two pairs engaged.

  Jack watched in horror as Pooh Bear and Stretch took on Vulture and Scimitar in hand-to-hand combat—in a battle that was not only for their lives but for his as well.

  If Pooh and Stretch lost, Jack would be killed and Lily taken captive.

  Their fates were entirely in Pooh and Stretch’s hands.

  Blades flashed and clashed as two separate knife fights began near the brink: Pooh Bear vs Scimitar and Stretch vs Vulture.

  Scimitar roared as he slashed at his younger brother with great sweeping swipes, and at first Pooh Bear successfully parried each blow away, holding his ground, sparks flying with each impact of their knives.

  But then, gradually, Scimitar forced him backward, and started drawing blood—slashes to the hand, then taunting gashes to the face. Still, Pooh Bear kept fighting, grimly, determinedly.

  As for Stretch, he was in trouble from the moment Vulture unsheathed his cutlass. Vulture was indeed a skilled bladesman, extremely skilled. His knife moved with blurring speed and it was all Stretch could do to defend himself.

  It soon became apparent that while Stretch was fighting with every ounce of concentration and energy he had, Vulture was toying with him, barely even perspiring.

  Vulture was pushing him toward the edge of the pit, forcing him back. Stretch tripped, stumbled, raised his knife again. Then Vulture punched him and he fell against the big wooden slave wheel, his back momentarily turned to his opponent—

  —and to his utter horror he felt the cold blade of Vulture’s knife plunge into his lower back.

  Stretch froze. Bullets of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Vulture pressed himself close to him, hissed in his ear: “Feel that, Jew? Feel my blade inside you?”

  Vulture twisted the knife. Fiery pain shot through Stretch’s body. He clenched his teeth in agony, slumped to the ground. His own knife fell from his hand.

  “No!” Lily screamed from the scaffold.

  Stretch turned and saw her, his eyes pleading, but he was spent. Despite his exhaustion, he reached pathetically for the knife, his bloody hand shaking.

  Clink!

  He frowned. Looked around.

  And saw that Vulture had clasped one of the slave wheel’s manacles to his left wrist.

  Stretch looked up in horror. He was now bound to the slave wheel.

  “Come, watch the death of your friend,” Vulture said. “Then I shall come back and hack off your fucking head in front of the girl.”

  Vulture stood and headed over toward Scimitar and Pooh Bear’s fight.

  Stretch yanked on the manacle, but it was no use. His strength was gone and the manacle was too strong.

  At that same moment, Pooh Bear was struggling in his own battle with Scimitar—he was backed up against a salt mound, desperately deflecting Scimitar’s vicious thrusts.

  Then he saw Vulture approaching—glimpsed Stretch, slumped and beaten, manacled to the slave wheel—and he realized that this was quickly becoming a disaster—

  —when suddenly Scimitar broke through Pooh Bear’s defenses and slashed him horrifically across the left side of his face.

  Pooh roared, his face exploding blood. His whole left eye had been slashed clean in two.

  Pooh slumped to the ground, clutching his eye socket with his free hand, blood pouring down his face.

  Scimitar stood triumphantly over him as Vulture arrived at his side.

  Jack and Lily watched in horror from the scaffold, only fifteen meters away, but helpless to intervene.

  The end was coming for Pooh Bear and Jack clutched Lily to his chest, shielding her eyes, not wanting her to see this.

  Pooh sat dumbly against the salt mound, legs outstretched, head bowed, blood running out of the grisly maroon hole that was his eye socket, down his beard and onto his lap. He clutched weakly at his beard as if trying to stem the flow of blood down it, still gripping his knife with one hand.

  Scimitar crouched before him, shook his head sadly.

  “I will never understand you, Zahir. But understand me when I say that you have brought this upon yourself. You have forced this upon me . . .”

  Scimitar raised his cutlass—just as Pooh Bear made one last desperate lunge at his throat!

  Only for Scimitar to jerk his head expertly away, just far enough for the tip of Pooh’s extended blade to fall an inch short of Scimitar’s Adam’s apple.

  Scimitar smiled. “An impressive final lunge, my brother, but like I said, you can’t beat me. You never could. And nothing can save you now.”

  His face covered in gashes, salt, and sweat, his left eye socket a dark hole of bloody blackness, Pooh Bear glared at his duplicitous brother with his one remaining eye. His knife arm was still fully extended so that its blade tip was directly underneath his brother’s chin.

  When he spoke, his voice was a husky whisper.

  “Just one thing . . .”

  “Oh fuck—” Vulture saw it.

  Scimitar didn’t. “Wha—?”

  The compact blast of the small wad of C2 plastique explosive that Pooh had slipped out of his beard ring and attached to the tip of his knife blade completely engulfed the lower half of Scimitar’s face. A pocket of stale methane in the surrounding air made the blast flash brightly, scorching Pooh Bear’s outstretche
d knife hand.

  A hideous inhuman scream filled the air—a wailing, primal, bloodcurdling shriek—and as the smoke from the short sharp blast dissipated, it revealed a horrific version of the once-handsome Scimitar: he now had only half a face, and he was screaming despite his lack of a jaw.

  The entire bottom half of his face had been blown away by the blast, and now it was the picture of gore: a foul mix of bone, blood, exposed teeth, and dangling flesh. His scream was one of horror, disbelief, and total agony.

  Scimitar wobbled on his feet, dropping his gold-hilted knife, clutching at Vulture who recoiled from him in disgust—

  —but then Vulture regathered himself and turned toward Pooh Bear—

  —in time to see Pooh Bear’s arm blur with movement—

  —and suddenly something lodged deep in Vulture’s throat.

  He staggered with the impact, reached for his throat, and found Scimitar’s gold-hilted knife embedded in it. Pooh Bear had caught it by the blade when Scimitar had dropped it and in one quick movement had flung it directly into Vulture’s throat, piercing the windpipe.

  Vulture gasped for air, but his windpipe could no longer facilitate breathing. His eyes bulged. He staggered backward, his face going purple, then he dropped to his knees and toppled face-first to the hard salt floor, driving the knife fully through the back of his neck. His body went still.

  Scimitar was still screaming his shrill mouthless scream when he tripped off the edge of the pit and sailed down into it, landing in the milk-colored brine where he flopped and thrashed for a minute before the water pouring directly into his lungs was too much and his body floated on the surface, limp, unmoving, dead.

  And suddenly the salt cave was still.

  In the silence, Pooh Bear slumped back against the salt mound behind him, bloodied, broken, half-blinded, and exhausted.

  “Stretch!” he called. “You still alive?”

  “Yeah . . . just . . .” Stretch groaned, still manacled to the slave wheel.

  “Jack?” Pooh Bear called, his eyes shut.

  Jack was staring in speechless disbelief at Pooh Bear—he had just single-handedly killed both Scimitar and Vulture in perhaps the bloodiest fucking fight Jack had ever witnessed. He released Lily from his grip, and she squealed when she peered out and saw that Pooh Bear was alive and the bad guys were dead.