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.
"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