The Seventh Scroll tes-2

by Wilbur Smith

  "The way you treat her, that comes as no stunning surprise. Now go away

  and leave me to sleep."

  "The whore has run off with that black bastard, Mek Nimmur. I know all

  about them. Don't try and protect her, English. I know everything that

  goes on around here. You are trying to cover for her - admit it!'

  "Get out of here, Boris. Don't try an involve me in your sordid private

  life." saw you and that shufta bastard talking in the skinning hut the

  other night. Don't try to deny it, English.

  You are in this thing with them."

  Nicholas flung back the mosquito net and jumped out of his bed. "Kindly

  moderate your language when you talk to me, you great oaf'

  Boris backed off towards the door. "I know that she has run away with

  him. I searched for them all last night at the river. They have gone,

  and most of his men with them."

  "Good for Tessay.- She is showing some taste in men for a change."

  "You think I will let the whore get away with this? You are wrong, very

  wrong. I am going to follow them and kill them both. I know which way

  they are headed. You think I am a fool. I know all about Mek Nimmur. I

  was head of intelligence-' He broke off as he realized what he had said.

  "I will shoot him in the belly and let that whore Tessay watch him die."

  "If you are going after Mek Nimmur,.then my bet is that you won't be

  coming back."

  "You don't know me, English. You beat me up one night when I had a

  bottle of vodka in my belly, so you think I am easy, da? Well, Mek

  Nimmur will see now how easy I am."

  Boris dung out of the hut. Nicholas pulled on a shirt over his shorts

  and followed him.

  Back in his own hut, Boris had flung a few essential items into a light

  pack. Now he was stuffing cartridges into the magazine of his 30/06

  hunting rifle.

  "Let them go, Boris," Nicholas advised him in a more reasonable tone of

  voice "Mek is a tough lad - they don't come tougher - and he has a war

  party of fifty men with him. You are old enough to know that you can

  never hold on to a woman by force. Let her go!

  "I do not want to hold on to her. I want to kill her.

  The safari is over, English." He flung a pair of keys on a. leather tag

  on the floor at Nicholas's feet. "There are the keys of the Land

  Cruiser. You can make your own way back to Addis from here. I will leave

  four of my best men to look after you, and hold your hand. Leave the big

  truck for me to use. When you get to Addis, leave the keys of the Land

  Cruiser with my tracker, Aly. I will know where to find him later. I

  will send you the money I owe you for cancellation. Don't worry - I am a

  man of principles."

  "How could I ever doubt it?" Nicholas smiled. "Good bye, old chum. I

  wish you luck. You'll need plenty of that if you are going up against

  Mek Nimmur."

  Boris was several hours behind his quarry, and as soon as he had left

  the camp he broke into a jog trot that carried him down the pathway to

  join the main track to the west, towards the Sudanese border. He ran

  like a scout, with an easy swinging gait that ate up the ground.

  "Looks as though he is still in good shape, even with the vodka."

  Despite himself Nicholas was impressed as he watched him go. "But I

  wonder how long he will be able to keep up that pace?"

  He turned back to'his own quarters to get a little more sleep, but as he

  passed her hut Royan popped her head out.

  "What was all the shouting about? I thought that you and Boris were

  having another little difference of opinion."

  "Tessay has done a bunk. Boris has guessed that she has gone off with

  Mek, and he is chasing after them."

  "Oh, icky! Can't we warn them?

  "No chance of that, but unless Mek has gone soft he will be expecting

  Boris to come after him. In fact, now that I come to think of it, he is

  probably hoping for just that chance to even the score. No, Mek doesn't

  need any more help from us. Go back to sleep!

  "I can't possibly sleep now. I am so worked up. I have been looking at

  the Polaroids that we took last night. Taita has given us an overflowing

  cup. Come and have a look at this."

  "Just one hour's sleep moreP He made a mock plea.

  "Immediately, if not sooner."She laughed at him.

  In her hut she had the Polaroids and the rubbings spread out on the camp

  table, and she beckoned him to take the seat beside her.

  "While you were snoring your head off, I made some progress." She laid

  four Polaroids side by side, and placed her large magnifying glass over

  them. It was a professional land surveyor's model on folding legs, and

  under it every detail of the photographs was revealed. "Taita has headed

  each of the sides of the stele with the name of one of the seasons of

  the year - spring, summer, autumn and winter.

  What do you think he was getting at?"

  "Page numbers?"

  "Exactly my own thought," she agreed. "The Egyptians considered spring

  as the beginning of all new life. He is telling us in which order to

  read the panels. This one is spring." She selected one of the

  photographs.

  "It starts with four standard quotations from the Book of the Dead." She

  quoted the first few lines of the opening section: "'I am the first

  breeze blowing softly over the dark ocean of eternity. I am the first

  sunrise. The first glimmer of light. A white feather blowing in the dawn

  wind. I am Ra. I am the beginning of all things. I will live for ever. I

  shall never perish."' Still holding the glass poised, she looked up at

  him. "As far as I can see, they do not differ "Substantially from the

  original. My instinct is to set these aside for the time being. We can

  always come back to them later."

  "Let's go with your instinct," he suggested. "Read the next section."

  She held the glass to the Polaroid. "I am not going to look at you while

  I read this. Taita. can be as earthy as Rabelais when he is in the mood.

  Anyway, here goes. "The daughter of the goddess pines for her dam. She

  roars like a lioness as she hurries to meet her. She leaps from the

  mountain, and her fangs are white. She is the harlot of all the world.

  Her vagina pisseth out great torrents. Her vagina has swallowed an army

  of men. Her sex eateth up the masons and the workers of stone. Her

  vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king."'

  "Whoa there!" Nicholas chuckled. "Pretty fruity stuff, don't you think?"

  He leaned forward to study her face, for it was still turned away from

  him. "Och, lassie, you have roses in your bonny cheeks. Not a blush,

  surely not?"

  "Your Scots accent is not in the least convincing," she told him coldly,

  still not looking at him. "When you have finished being clever at my

  expense, what do you think of what I have just read?"

  "Apart from the obvious, I have't any idea."

  "I want to show you something." She stood up and packed the photographs

  and the rolls of art paper back into the haversack. "You'll need to get

  your boots on. I am taking you on a little walk."

  An hour later they stood in the centre of the suspension bridge, sway
ing

  gently high above the swift waters of the Dandera river.

  "Hapi is the goddess of the Nile. Is this river not then her daughter,

  pining to meet her, leaping from the mountain top, roaring like a

  lioness, her fangs white with spume?" she asked him.

  They stared in silence at the archway of pink stone through which the

  river poured, and suddenly Nicholas grinned lasciviously. "I think that

  I know what you are going to say next. That's what I first thought of

  when I looked at that cleft. You said it was like a gargoyle's mouth,

  but I had another image."

  "All I can say is that you must have some extraordinary lady friends,'

  she said, and then covered her mouth. "Ooops!

  I didn't mean to say that. I am being as disgusting as either you or

  Taita."

  "The workmen swallowed up in there!" His voice became more excite& "The

  masons and the workers in stone!'

  "Pharaoh Mamose was a god. The river has swallowed up a god with her -

  with her stone archway." She was equally excited. "I must admit that I

  would not have made the association if you hadn't explored the interior

  of the cavern, and found those niches in the wall." She shook his arm.

  "Nicky, we have to get in there again. We have to get a clearer look at

  that has-relief you found on the cavern wall."

  "It will take some preparation," he said dubiously. "I will have to

  splice the ropes and make some sort of pulley system, and I will have to

  drill Aly and the other men to avoid a repetition of my last little

  fiasco. We won't be ready to make the attempt until tomorrow morning at

  the very earliest."

  "You get on with it. I will have plenty to keep me occupied with the

  translation of the stele." Then she stopped and looked up at the sky.

  "Listen!" she whispered.

  He cocked his head and above the sound of the river, heard the whining

  flutter of rotors in the air.

  "Dammit!" he snapped. "I thought we had lost the Pegasus presence. Come

  on!" He grabbed her arm and hustled her off the bridge. When they

  reached the land he jumped down on to the beach, and she followed him.

  The two of them crept under the hanging eaves of the bridge.

  They sat quietly on the white sandy beach and listened to the Jet Ranger

  helicopter approaching swiftly, and then circling back over the hills

  beyond the pink cliffs. This time the pilot had not spotted them, for he

  turned away and began to patrol up and down the line of the chasm.

  Suddenly the engine-beat changed dramatically as the pitch altered and

  the pilot pulled up the collective.

  "Sounds as if he is going in for a landing up there in the hills,,

  Nicholas said as he crawled out from under the bridge. "I would feel a

  lot easier without them snooping around."

  "I don't think we have too much to worry about," Royan disagreed. "Even

  if they are connected with Duraid's killers, we are still way out ahead

  of them. Obviously they have not tumbled to the importance of the

  monastery, and the stele."

  "I hope you are right. Let's get back to camp. We must not let them see

  us in the vicinity of the chasm again. It will be too much of a

  coincidence for them to find us hanging around here every time they come

  this way."

  while Royan went to her hut and pored over her photographs and etchings,

  Nicholas worked with the trackers and skinners. He spliced the

  unravelled end of the nylon rope to the second Thank, to make a single

  length five hundred feet long. Then he cannibalized the canvas fly of

  the cooking hut, cutting it up and whipping the raw edges to make a

  sling seat. He fashioned the ends of the rope into a harness which he

  spliced into the four corners of the canvas seat.

  He had no block and tackle, so he put together a crude gantry of poles

  which could be extended out over the cliff edge to keep the rope clear

  of the rock. The rope would run through the groove that he drilled in

  the end of the central beam with a red-hot iron. He lubricated it with

  cooking lard.

  It was the middle of the afternoon by the time he had completed his

  preparations. Then, leaving Royan in camp, he led his men, burdened with

  the coils of rope and the pole sections of the gantry, back up the

  pathway to the spot where he had abseiled down into the ravine to

  retrieve the carcass of the dik-dik. From there they worked their way

  downstream, following the rim of the cliff. It was heavy going for Thorn

  scrub grew right up to the edge, and in many places they were forced to

  use their-machetes to hack their way through.

  The sound of the waterfall guided him. As they moved down river it grew

  louder, until the rock seemed to quiver under his feet with the roar of

  falling waters. Finally, by leaning out over the edge and peering

  downwards, Nicholas could make out the flash of spray in the depths

  below.

  This is the spot." He grunted with satisfaction, and explained to Aly in

  Arabic what he wanted done.

  In order to determine the exact position in which to set up the gantry,

  Nicholas climbed into the canvas sling seat and had them lower him

  twenty feet down the cliff face, just as far as the beginning of the

  overhang. Up to that point he was able to keep the nylon rope from

  abrading on the rock, but he was also able to see around the bulge of

  the face.

  Hanging backwards over the falls and the rocky bowl of the river one

  hundred and fifty feet below him, he was able at last to see the double

  row of niches in the rock face.

  However, the has-relief engraving was still hidden from view by the

  tumblehome of the cliff. He gave Aly the signal and they hauled him up.

  "We must set up the gantry a little further down," he told him, and

  directed them as they hacked away the dense shrubbery that choked the

  rim. Then suddenly he exclaimed, "I'll be damned!" He went down on one

  knee to examine the rim rock that the thorns had concealed.

  "There are more excavations here."

  Exposed to the elements, unlike those works further down that had been

  protected by the overhang, these were badly eroded. There were just

  vague traces remaining in the rim rock, but he was certain that these

  indentations were the upper anchor points for the ancient scaffoldin

  9They set up their own gantry on the same levelled area, and extended

  the long pole out over the drop. Then they rigged and secured it with a

  crude cantilever system of ropes and lighter poles.

  When they were finished, Nicholas crawled out to the end to test the

  structure and to run the end of the rope through the slot he had

  prepared for it. The whole structure seemed solid and firm.

  Nevertheless, it was with relief that he crawled back to solid ground.

  He stood up and looked over the tops of the thorn scrub to where the

  lowering sun was fuming red and angry on the horizon.

  "Enough for one day," he decided. "The rest can wait for-tomorrow."

  The next morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at

  the campfire while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at

  their own fire near
by, talking quietly and coughing over the first

  cigarettes of the day. The project seemed to have caught their

  imagination. They had no inkling of the reason for this second descent

  into the chasm, but the enthusiasm of the two ferengi was infectious.

  As soon as it was light enough to see the path, Nicholas led them back

  up into the hills. The men chatted cheerfully amongst themselves in

  Amharic as they hurried through the thorn scrub, and they came out on

  the rim rock just as the sun broke out over the eastern escarpment of

  the valley. Nicholas had drilled the men the previous day, and he and

  Royan had sat half the night going over the plans, so each of them knew

  their part and they lost little time in setting themselves up for the

  descent.

  Nicholas had stripped to shorts and tennis shoes, but this time he had

  brought along an old Barbarians rugby jersey for warmth. While he pulled

  this over his head he pointed out to Royan the platform that had been

  dug out from the solid rock.

  She examined it carefully. "It's very hard to be sure, but I think you

  are right. This probably is man-made."

  "When you get further down you will have no doubts.

  There is very little weathering of the face under the overhang, and the

  niches are almost perfectly preserved until they reach the high-water

  mark, that is," he told her, as he took his seat in the sling and swung

  out over the cliff.

  Dangling from the end of the gantry he gave Aly the sign, and the men

  lowered him down into the gorge. The rope ran smoothly through the

  lubricated slot.

  He saw at once that he had judged it correctly, and that he was

  descending in line with the double row of -niches. He came level with

  the enigmatic circle on the cliff face, but it was fifty feet from him,

  and a growth of gaudy Coloured lichens had streaked and discotoured the

  rock, partially obscuring the details, so that he still could not be

  certain that. it was not a natural flaw. He passed it and went on down

  as Aly and his team paid out the rope from above.

  When he reached the surface of the water he slipped out of the sling and

  dropped in. The water was very cold.

  He trod water, gasping, until his body became acclimatized.

  Then he gave Aly three tugs on the signal rope. While the canvas seat

  was hauled up he swam to the side of the pool and held on to one of the