The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные полные книги .TXT) 📗

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

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.