by Wilbur Smith
Beyond the treasury there was another alcove lined with shelves on which
stood the ushabti figures: dolls made of green glazed porcelain or
carved from cedarwood. They were an army of tiny figures, men and women
from all the trades and professions. There were priests and scribes and
lawyers and physicians, gardeners and farmers, bakers and brewers,
handmaidens and dancing girls, seamstresses and laundrymaids, soldiers
and barbers, and common labourers.
Each of them carried the tools and accoutrements of his or her trade.
They would accompany the king to the after world and there would work
for Pharaoh, and would go forward in his place if he were ever called
upon to perform a service for the other gods.
At last Nicholas and Royan came to the end of this fabulous arcade, and
found their way closed off by a series of tall, free-standing screens,
tabernacles that had been once fine white linen mesh but were now
decayed and rotted into ribbons and streamers, dirty and shabby as old
cobwebs, And yet the stars and rosettes of shining gold Now, still
hanging in the that decorated these curtains were mesh like fish in a
fisherman's net. Through this ethereal web of silken wisps and golden
stars they could make out the shape of another gateway beyond.
actual tomb," Royan
"That must be the entrance to the thin veil between us and the
whispered. "There is only a king now.
tated at the threshold, gripped by a strange They hesi the final step
reluctance, to take an old warrior, Mek Nimmur had seen and treated most
of the injuries that a man might sus in on the battlefield. His little
guerrilla group did not have a doctor, or even a medical orderly.
Mek himself treated most of his casualties, and he always had a medical
kit close at hand.
He had the men carry Tessay to one of the huts near the quarry, where,
screened by the grass walls, he stripped her of her tattered clothing
and treated her injuries. He abrasions with disinfectant, and cleaned
her burns and clean field dressings- Then covered the worst of them with
he rolled her gently on to her stomach and snapped the which glass phial
off the needle'of the disposable syringe wh was preloaded with a
broad'spectrum antibiotic. -and he said, "I She winced at the sting of
the needle, am not a very good doctor."
other. Oh, Mek! I thought I would would have no ared never see you
again. I did not fear death as much as I fe that."
He helped her dress in the spare clothing from his pack, a sweatshirt
and fatigues that were many sizes too large for her. He rolled up the
cuffs for her, and his touch soldier.
was gentle. His hands were those of a lover, not a she whispered through
her must look so ugly," swollen, black-scabbed lips.
"You are beautiful he denied it- "To me you will always be beautiful."
He touched her cheek carefully, so as not to harm the raw burns that
covered it.
At that moment they heard the gunfire. It was still faint with distance,
borne down from the north on the rain winds.
Mek stood up immediately. "It has begun. Nogo is attacking at last it's
all my fault. I told him-'
"No," he told her firmly. "It is not your fault. You did what you had to
do. If you had not, they would have hurt you even worse than this. They
would have attacked us, even if you had told them nothing."
He picked up his webbing belt and strapped it around his waist. From far
off they heard the crumping detonation of exploding mortar shells.
"I have to go now," he told her.
"I know. Do not worry about me."
"I will always worry about you. These men will carry you down to the
monastery. That is the assembly point.
Wait for me there. I cannot hope to hold Nogo for long.
He is too strong. I will come to you soon."
"I love you," she whispered. "I will wait for you for ever."
"You are my woman," he told her in his deep, soft voice, and then he
ducked through the doorway of the hut and was gone.
hen Nicholas touched the frame of the screen, fragments of the mesh veil
tore free with even that tiny movement and fell to the tiles of the
floor. The golden rosettes trapped in their folds tinkled on the stones.
Now there was an opening in the curtain large enough for them to step
through, They found themselves before the inner doorway. It was -guarded
eat god Osiris on one side by a massive statue of the gr with his hands
crossed over his chest, clutching the crook and the flail. Opposite
stood his wife Isis, with the lunar crown and horns on her head. Their
blank eyes stared out into eternity, and their expressions were serene.
Nicholas and Royan passed between these twelve-foot-high statues and
found themselves at last in the veritable tomb of Mamose.
The roof was vaulted, and the quality of the murals that covered it and
the walls was different - formal and classical. The colours were of a
deeper, more sombre hue, and the patterns more intricate. The chamber
was smaller han they had anticipated; just large enough to accommodate
the huge granite sarcophagus of the divine Pharaoh Mamose.
The sarcophagus stood chest-high. Its side panels were engraved in
has-relief with scenes of Pharaoh and the other gods. The stone lid was
in the shape of a full'length effigy of the supine figure of the king.
They saw at once that it was still in its original position, and that
the clay seals of the priests of Osiris which secured the lid were
intact. The tomb had never been violated. The mummy had lain within it
undisturbed through the millennia.
But this was not what amazed them. There were two extraneous items
within the otherwise classically correct tomb. On the lid of the
sarcophagus lay a magnificent war bow. Almost as long as Nicholas was
tall, the entire length of its stock was bound with coils of shining
electrum wire, that alloy of gold and silver whose formula has been lost
in antiquity.
The other item that should never have been placed in a royal tomb stood
at the foot of the sarcophagus. It was a small human figure, one of the
ushabti dolls. A glance of this effigy, confirmed the superior quality
of the carving and both of them recognized the features instantly. Only
minutes before, they had seen that face painted upon the walls of the
arcade, outside the tomb.
The words of Taita, from the scrolls, seemed to reverberate within the
confines of the tomb, and hang like fireflies in the air above the
sarcophagus:
When I stood for the very last time beside the royal sarcophagus, I sent
all the workmen away.
I would be the very last to leave the tomb, and after me the entrance
would be sealed.
When I was alone I opened the bundle I carried. From it I took the long
bow, Lanata.
Tanus had named it after my mistress, for Lanata had been her baby name.
I had made the bow for him. It was the last gift from the two of us. I
placed it upon the sealed stone lid of his coffin.
There was one other item in my bundle. It was the wooden ushabti figure
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that I had carved.
I placed it at the foot of the sarcophagus. While I carved it, I had set
up three copper mirrors so that I could study my own features from every
angle and reproduce them faithfully. The doll was a miniature Taita.
Upon the base I had inscribed the words Royan knelt at the foot of the
coffin and pick up the ushabd figure. Reverently she turned it in her
hands and studied the hieroglyphics carved into the base of the figure.
Nicholas knelt beside her. "Read it to me," he said.
Softly she obeyed. "'My natne is Taita. I am a physician and a poet. I
am an architect and a philosopher. I am your friend. I will answer for
you - "'
so it's all true,'Nicholas whispered, Royan replaced the ushabti exactly
as she had found it and, still on her knees, turned her face to his.
this," she
"I have never known another moment like whispered. "I want it never to
end."
"It will never end, my darling," he answered her. "You and I are only
just beginning."
ek Nimmur watched them coming, skirtin 9 the bottom slope of the hill,
It took the trained eye of a bush-fighter to pick them ut as they moved
through the thick scrub and thorn. As 0 he evaluated them he felt a
twinge of dismay. These were crack troopsi seasoned during long years of
war. He had once fought with them against the Mengistu. tyranny, an he
had probably trained many of those men down there.
Now they were coming against him. Such was the cycle of violence in this
racked continent, where the war and endless struggles were fuelled and
nurtured by the age-old tribal enmities and the greed and corruption of
the newage politicians and their outmoded ideologies.
But this was not the moment for dialectics, he thought bitterly, and
focused his mind on the tactics Of the battlefield beneath him. Yes!
These men were good. He could see it in the way they advanced, like
wraiths through the scrub. For every one of them he picked out, he knew
there were a dozen others that remained unseen.
"Company strength," he thought, and glanced around at his own small
force. Fourteen men amongst the rocks, they could only hope to hit their
adversary hard while they still had the advantage of surprise, and then
pull back before Nogo ranged his mortars in on the hilltop where they
lay.
He looked up at the sky and wondered whether Nogo would call in an air
strike. Thirty'five minutes' flying time viet'built Tupolevs from the
air base for a stick of those So at Addis, and he could almost smell the
sweet stench of wind, and see the rolling cloud of napalm on the humid
flame sweeping to wards them. That was the only thing his men really
feared. But there would be no air strike - not this time, he decided.
Nogo and his paymaster, the German von Schiller, wanted the spoils from
the tomb that Nicholas Quenton-Harper had discovered in the gorge. They
did not want to share any of it with those political fat cats in Addis.
They would not want to draw any government attention to themselves and
this little private campaign of theirs in the Abbay gorge.
He looked back down the slope. The enemy was moving in nicely, swinging
around the hillside to intersect the trail along the Dandera river. Soon
they must send a patrol up here to secure their flank before they could
sweep on. Yes, there they were. Eight, no, ten men detaching from the
main advance, and moving cautiously up the slope beneath him.
"I will let them get in close," he decided. "I would like to get them
all, but that is too much to hope for. I would settle for four or five
of them, and it would be good to leave a few squealers in the scrub." He
grinned cruelly. "Nothing like a man screaming with a belly wound to
take the fire out of his comrades, and make them keep their heads down."
He looked across the rock-strewn slope, and saw that his RPD light
machine gun was perfectly sited to enfilade their advance up the slope.
Salim, his machine gunner, was an artist with that weapon. Perhaps,
after all, he could hope to put down more than five of them.
"We will see," thought Mek, "but I must time it right." He saw that
there was a gap in the ridge of rock just below him.
"They will not want to expose themselves by crossing the open ridge," he
judged. "They will tend to bunch up and sneak through the gap. That will
be the moment."
He looked back at the RPD. Salim was watching him, waiting for his
signal. Mek looked back down the slope.
ly "he thought. "Their line is bunching. "The big one es, on the left is
already out of position. Those two inside him are angling across towards
the gap." Nogo's men's camouflage blended perfectly with the of their
weapons were wrapped with scrub, and the barrels rags and scraps of
camouflage netting so that they threw no sunlight reflections. They were
almost invisible in the bush;
it was only their movements and the skin tones that se now that Mek
caught betrayed them. They were soCIO
of one of their eyeballs but he still the occasional gleam could not
pick out their machine gunner.
He must silence the gun with his first burst. "Ah, Yes," he thought with
relief. "There he is. On the right flank. I nearly missed him."
eavy shoulders The man was short and thick-set, with ily on his hip.
carrying the gun eas and long arms, simian, from it was a Soviet-made
7.62mm RPD. The wink of brass ed over those the cartridges in the
ammunition belts festoor, great shoulders had given him away.
Mek eased himself down and inched around the base He slipped the
rate-of-fire ered him.
of the rock that cov cheek on the selector on his AKM to rapid, and laid
hi wooden butt. it was his personal weapon. A gunsmith in barrel for
him, action and lapped the Addis had trued the stock. All this as well
as glass-bedding the barrel into the rove the accuracy of this
notoriously had been done to imp inaccurate assault rifle- It was still
no sniper's weapon, but ct to place all his with these modifications he
could expe shots within a two-inch circle at a hundred metres.
The man carrying the RPD up the slope was now only fifty metres below
where he lay. Mek glanced to his right to the to make sure that the
three others were moving in gap where Salim could take them out with a
single burst;
sight in the entre of the then he settled the pip of his fore
using his belt buckle as an RPD machine gunner's belly, aiming mark, and
fired a tap of three The AKM rode up viciously and the triple detonation
stung his eardrums, but Mek saw his bullets strike, stitching a row up
the man's torso. One hit low in the belly, the second in the diaphragm
and the third at the base of his throat. He spun around, his arms
flinging out and jerking, and then crashed over backwards, out of sight
in the underbrush.
All around Mek his men were firing. He wondered, how many of them Salim
had taken with that first burst, but there was no longer anything to
see. The enemy were all down in cover. A faint haze of gunsmoke blued
&
nbsp; the air as they returned fire, and the scrub trembled and shook to the
recoil and the muzzle blast of their weapons.
Then, in the uproar of fire, in the whine and wail of ricochets off the
rocks, one of them began to scream.
"I am hit. In Allah's name, help me." His cries rang eerily across the
hillside, and the enemy fire slackened perceptibly. Mek clipped a fresh
magazine on to the AKM.
"Sing, little bird. Sing!the muttered grimly.
t required the combined strength of Nicholas, Hansith and eight other
men to lift the lid off the stone sarcophagus. Staggering under its
weight, they laid it carefully against the wall of the tomb. Then Royan
and Nicholas stood on the plinth of the sarcophagus to look down into
the interior.
Fitted neatly into the stone receptacle was an enormous wooden coffin.
Its lid too was in the form of the reclining Pharaoh. He was in the
posture of death with his hands crossed at his breast, clutching the
flail and the crook. The coffin was gilded and encrusted with
semiprecious stones. The expression on the face of the king's effigy was
serene.
They lifted the coffin out of the sarcophagus, and its weight was less
than that of the stone lid, Carefully Nicholas split the golden seals
and the layer of hard dried
01 . Within it they resin that held the lid of the coffin in plac ctly,
and when the found another coffin, fitted perfe as revealed. It was
like a ened that yet another coffin wOP
nest of Russian dolls, one within the other, becoming smaller with each
revelation. coffins, each of them'
In the end there were seven mate and richly decorated than the
progressively more previous one. The seventh coffin was only slightly
larger I than a man, and it was made of gold. The polished metal caught
the light of the lamps like a thousand mirrors and the tomb.
threw bright arrows and darts into every recess coffin they When at
last they opened the golden inner found that it was filled with flowers.
The blooms had dried and faded, so their colour was sepia. Their scent
had long ago evaporated, so that only the musky aroma of great age
wafted up from the coffin. The petals were so dry and apery that they
crumbled at the first touch. Beneath the faded blooms was a layer of
the finest linen; once it must have been snowy white, but now it was