The Seventh Scroll (75 page)

"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 rateof-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 glassbedding 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 twoinch 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 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 brown with age the flowers. Through the and the stain of the juices from soft folds they saw once again the gleam of gold.

standing on either side of the coffin, Nicholas and Royan peeled back the linen mesh. It crackled softly and but as it came tore like tissue paper und their fingers, away they both involuntarily gasped with wonder as the as only fraction ask of Pharaoh was revealed. It death-man, but it was a perfect ally larger than the head of a it. Pharaoh's features had been pre, image in every deta ty in this extraordinary work of art.

served for all eterni ed in silent wonder into the obsidian and rock They star crystal eyes of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh gazed back at them sadly, almost accusingly it was a long time before either of them could summon the head thecourag6 and presumption to lift it away from did so, they found further of the mummy. But when the

evidence that in antiquity the body of the king and that of his general, Tanus, had been changed. The mummy that lay before them was

obviously too large for the coffin that contained it. It had been partially unwrapped, and cramped into the interior.

"A royal mummy would have had hundreds of charrns and amulets placed beneath the wrappings," Royan whispered . "This is the plainly dressed corpse of a nobleman and not that of the king."

Nicholas gently lifted the inner layer of bandage away from the dead head and a thick coil-of braided hair was revealed.

"The portraits of Pharaoh Mamose on the walls of the arcade show that his head hair was dyed with henna," Nicholas murmured. "Look at this." The braid was the colour of the winter grasses of the African savannah, gold and silver.

"There can be no doubt now. This is the body of Tanus. The friend of Taita and the lover of the queen."

"Yes," Royan agreed, her eyes soft with tears. "He is the true father of Lostris's son, who became in his time the Pharaoh Tamose and the forefather of a great line of kings.

So this is the man whose blood runs through the history of ancient Egypt."

"In his way he was as great as any Pharaoh," Nicholas said quietly. t was Royan who roused herself first. "The river!'

aT

she cried, with a razor edge to her voice. "We cannot let all this go again, when the river rises."

"Neither can we hope to save all of it. There is too much. A great mass of treasure. Our time here has almost run out, so we must pick out the most beautiful and important pieces and pack them into the crates. Lord alo'the knows if we even have time for that."

So they worked in a frenzy in the short time that was left to them. They could not even think about saving the eapons, the statues and the murals, the furniture and the banqueting. utensils and the wardrobes of costumes. The great golden chariot must stand where it had stood for four thousand years, They removed the golden death'mask from over Tanus's head, but they left his mummy in the innermost of the golden coffins. Then Nicholas sent for Mai Metemma. The old abbot came with twenty of his monks to receive the lie of the ancient saint that he had been promised holy re as his reward. Reverentially, chanting deep and slow, they bore Tanus's coffin away to its new resting place in the maqdas of the monastery. ect,"

"At least the old hero will be treated with resP Royan said softly. Then she looked around the tomb. "We cannot leave the site like this, with the coffins thrown Royan protested. "it looks as about and the lids discarded, though grave-robbers have been at work here."

"Grave-robbers is exactly what we are." Nicholas smiled at her. tly, "and we

"No, we are archaeologists," she denied ho must try to act like it." ing coffins one within So they replaced the six remain the other, laid them back in the great sarcophagus, and finally replaced the massive stone lid. Only then did Royan allow them to begin selecting and packing the treasures they would take with them.

The death'mask was without any doubt the premier item in the entire tomb. it fitted neatly into one of the the wooden ushabd of Taita laid alongside it, crates, with until it was firmly secured, Royan packed with Styrofoarn waterproof wax crayon: "Mask & scribbled on the lid in Taita Ushabti'. Their final selection was, perforce, hurried and superof the cedarwood official. They could not rip open every one chests that were piled high in the alcoves of the arcade.

The painted and gilded chests themselves were priceless artefacts, and should be treated with respect. So they allowed themselves to be guided by the illustrations on the lid of each. They discovered immediately that these were indeed an accurate inventory and catalogue of the contents. In the chest which showed Pharaoh decked in the blue war crown, they found the actual crown laid on gilded leather pillows that had been moulded to fit it exactly and to protect it.

Even in the short time left to them they became almost surfeited by the magnificence of the items they uncovered as they selected and opened the cedarwood chests. Not only the blue crown, but the red and white crown of the kingdoms united was there, and the splendid Nemes crown, all three in such a miraculous state of preservation that they might have been lifted from Pharaoh's brow that morning.

From the very outset it had to be a prerequisite that any artefact must be small enough to fit into one of the ammunition crates. If it were too large, no matter what its value or historical significance, then it had to be rejected and left in the tomb. Fortunately, many of the cedarwood chests containing the royal jewellery fitted snugly into the metal crates, so that not only the contents but also the chests themselves could be saved. However, the larger items, the crowns and the huge jewelled gold pectoral medallions, had to be repacked.

As the ammunition crates were filled, they carried them down and stacked them on the landing outside the sealed doorway, ready to be carried out. Including the.

crates that contained the eight statuettes of the gods from the long gallery, they had packed and catalogued forty-eight crates when they heard Sapper's unmistakable accents floating up the staircase.

"Major, where the hell are yOU7 YOU can't bugger about hairy arse out in here any longer. Come on, man! Get you of here. The river is in full spate, and the dam is going to burst at any minute."

Sapper came bounding up the staircase, but even he stopped in wonder and awe as he looked for the first time pon the splendours of the funeral arcade of Pharaoh Mamose. It took some minutes for him to recover from the shock and to revert to his old prosaic self again.

"I mean it, major! It's a matter of minutes, not hours.

That ruddy dam is going to go. Apart from that, Mek is fighting in the hills at the head of the chasm. You can hear the gunfire even at the bottom of the cliff in Taita's pool.

4 Al You and Royan have to get out and fast, I kid you nod'

"Okay, Sapper. We are on our way. Get back to the chamber at the bottom of those stairs. You saw those ammunition crates down there?" Sapper nodded, and Nicholas went on quickly, "Have the men lug those crates out of here. Get them down to the monastery. I want you to supervise that part of it. We will follow you down the trail with the rest of them."