Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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the first drop he will go back to your base at Roseires and pick up the

second load. With luck, both loads should all be dropped before noon

tomorrow.

"If the fat man comes at all," Mek remarked.

Jannie is a pro," Nicholas grunted. "He will come." He held the

microphone to his lips, "Big Dolly. Do you read?

Over."

Every ten minutes he called -out into the empty echoing silence. Each

time his call went unanswered he had visions of Sudanese MiG

interceptors racing in with their missiles cocked and locked, and the

old Hercules plunging earthwards in flames.

"Come in, Big Dolly!" he pleaded, and at last a thin, scratchy voice

floated into his headset. "Pharaoh. This is Big Dolly. ETA forty-five

minutes. Standing by." Jannie's transmission was terse. He was too much

of an old hand at the smuggling game to give a hostile listener time to

fix his position.

"Big Dolly. Understand four five. Pharaoh standing by." Nicholas grinned

at Mek. "Looks like we are in business after all."

Mek heard it first. His ear was battle-tuned. In this i  land, if you

wanted to go on living it paid to pick up any aircraft long before it

arrived. Nicholas was out of training, so it was almost five minutes

later that he picked up the distinctive drone of the multi-props echoing

weirdly off the Cliffs of the gorge. It was impossible to be certain of

the direction, but they shaded their eyes and stared into the west.

"There she is." Nicholas redeemed himself as he spotted the tiny dark

speck, so low as almost to blend into the background of the escarpment

wall. He nodded at Sapper.

Sapper ran out to his flares and fussed over them briefly. When he

backed away they bloomed into clouds of dense marigold-yellow smoke that

drifted out sluggishly on the light breeze. The smoke would give Jannie

the strength and direction of the wind, as well as his orientation for

the drop zone.

Nicholas lifted his binoculars and gazed towards the other end of the

narrow valley. He saw that Royan and Tessay were busy with their flares.

Suddenly crimson smoke billowed from them, and the women ran back to

their original position and stood staring up at the sky.

Nicholas called softly into the microphone. "Big Dolly.

Smoke is up. Do you have it visual?"

"Affirmative. You are visual. For what you are about to receive may you

be truly thankful." Jannie's South African accent was unmistakable as he

uttered the cheerful blasphemy.

They watched the aircraft grow in size until its wings seemed to fill

half the sky, and then its profile altered as the great wing flaps

dropped and the ramp below its belly drooped open. Big Dolly slowed her

flight so dramatically that she seemed to hang suspended on an invisible

thread from the high African sun. Slowly she came around, banking

steeply as Jannie tined her up on the smoke flares, dropping lower and

still lower, headed directly at where they stood.

With a savage roar that made all three of them duck, she passed so low

over their heads that it seemed she would wipe them off the crest.

Nicholas had a glimpse of Jannie upwarliov peering down at him from the

cockpit, a fat smile on his face and one hand raised in a laconic wave,

and then he was past.

Nicholas straightened up and watched Big Dolly sweep majestica Ily down

the centre of the valley. The first pallet dropped out of her and

plunged earthwards, until at the last moment its parachutes burst open

like a bride's bouuet. The fall of the heavy container was arrested

abruptly.

 It. dangled and swung, and seconds later struck the floor of the valley

in a cloud of yellow dust and with a crash they could hear up on the

ridge. Then two more loads dropped from her, and they too hung for a

moment on their chutes before they slammed in.

Big Dolly's engines howled under full throttle and her nose lifted as

she bored for height while she passed over the crimson smoke clouds, and

then climbed out of the deadly trap of the valley. She came round in

another wide turn and lined up for the second run. Once again the

pallets dropped out of her as she roared over the quartz markers and

then climbed out over the end wall of the valley, skimming the rocky

spikes that would have clawed her down.

Six times Jannie repeated the dangerous manoeuvre, and each time he

dropped three of the heavy rectangular loads. They lay strewn down the

length of the valley, shrouded by the tumbled white silk of their own

parachutes.

As Jannie climbed away from the last pass, his voice echoed in

Nicholas's earphones. "Don't go away, Pharaoh!

I will be back." Then Big Dolly lifted her belly ramp like an old lady

hoisting her knickers and headed away westwards.

Nicholas and Mek ran down into the valley, where the monks were already

jabbering and laughing. around the pallets. Quickly the two of them took

control, sorting the men into gangs and directing them as they broke

down the loads and carried them away.

Nicholas and Sapper had planned that the pallets should be dropped in

the order that their contents would be needed. The first pallet

contained canned and dried food, all their personal effects and camping

equipment, along with those other little creature comforts that Nicholas

had allowed, including mosquito nets and a case of malt whisky. He was

relieved to see that there was no leakage from the precious case: not

one of the bottles had been broken in the drop.

Sapper took charge of the building material and heavy equipment. With

Tessay relaying his orders, it was dragged and manhandled away to the

ancient quarry where it would be packed and stored until needed on site.

Darkness fell with More than half the pallets still not unpacked, lying

where they had fallen. Mek placed an armed guard over them, and they all

traipsed wearily back up the valley to the camp.

That night, with a dram of whisky and a decent meal warming his belly, a

mosquito net over his head and a thick foam mattress under him, Nicholas

drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. They were off to a good

start.

The chanting of the monks at their matins woke him, "We won't need an

alarm clock here," he groaned, and staggered down to the river to wash

and shave.

As the sun gilded the battlements of the escarpment, he and Mek were

already at their post on the heights, searching the western sky. The

plan had been for Jannie to spend the night at Roseires, while Mek's men

assisted him with the loading of the cargo they had stored-there on

their first flight out from Malta. This was one of the vulnerable stages

of the operation. Although Mek had assured them that there was little

military presence in the area at the moment, it needed only a stray

Sudanese government patrol to stumble on Big, Dolly while she was on the

ground to plunge them all into disaster. So it was with a leap of the

heart that they heard the familiar drone of the turbo-props

reverberating off the cliffs.

Big Dolly lined up again for her first pass down the valley, and as she

flew over the quartz crosses the huge yellow front'end loader tumbled

out of her hold. Instinctively Nicholas held his breath as he watched it

come the parachute hurtling down and then jerk up short on shrouds. it

swayed wildly all over the sky, yoyoing on the nylon ropes, and the

monks howled with amazement and excitement as they watched it drop in.

it struck in a cloud of dust.

Sapper was standing next to Nicholas, groaning and covering his eyes so

that he did not have to watch the "Shit!' he said in a hollow cloud of

dust rising into the air.

voice.

"Is that a command, or merely a request?" Nicholas asked, but he wasn't

really amused.

As the last pallet dropped, and the aircraft climbed away under full

power, Nicholas called Jannie on the radio.

"Many thanks, Big Dolly. Safe flight home."

"Inshallahl If God wills!'Jannie called back.

"I will call you when I need a lift back."

"I'll be waiting." Big Dolly trundled away. "Break a leg!'

"Well now." Nicholas slapped Sapper's back. "Let's go down and see if

you still have a front'ender."

The battered yellow machine lay on its side with oil pouring out of her,

like blood from a heart-shot dinosaur.

"You can push off. just leave me a dozen of these black guys to help

me," Sapper told them as sorrowfully as if he was standing at the

graveside of his beloved, Sapper did not return to camp for dinner, so

Tessay sent a bowl of wat and some injera bread down to him to

1i eat while he worked. Nicholas considered going down to offer his help

with repairing the damaged tractor, but thought better of it. From

bitter experience he knew that at certain times Sapper wanted to be left

alone, and that this was one of those times.

in the small dark hours of the morning the camp was lit up by the blaze

of headlights and the hills reverberated to the roar of a diesel engine.

With, even his bald head covered with grease and dust, hollow-eyed but

triumphant, Sapper drove the yellow tractor into the camp and shouted at

them from the high driver's seat.

okay, knaves and nymphs! Drop your cocks and grab your socks. Let's go

build a dam."

t took them another two full days to gather in all the pallets that lay

strewn down the valley and to carry the stores into the ancient quarry.

There they stacked them carefully in accordance with the manifest that

Nicholas and Sapper had drawn up in England. it was essential that they

knew where every item was stored, and that they had immediate access to

it when needed. In the meantime Sapper was at work on the dam site,

laying out his foundations, driving numbered wooden pegs into the banks

of the river, and taking his final measurements with the long steel

surveyor's tape.

During this preliminary work Nicholas was watching the performance of

the monks, and getting to know them individually. He was able to pick

out the natural leaders and the most intelligent and willing men amongst

them.

He was also able to identify those who spoke Arabic or a little English.

The most promising of these was a monk named Hansith Sherif, whom

Nicholas made his personal assistant and interpreter.

Once they were settled into the camp, and had worked out a relationship

with the monks, Mek Nimmur took of Nicholas aside out of earshot the two

women.

"From now on, my work will be the security of the site.

MOS Maa's :rllar WV.

We will have to be ready to prevent another raid like the one on your

camp, and the slaughter at St. Frumentius.

Nogo and his thugs are still out there. It won't take long for him to

hear that you are back in the gorge. When he comes, I will be waiting

for him."

"You are better with an AK-47 than with a pickaxes' Nicholas agreed.

"Just leave Tessay here with me.. I need her."

"So do I' Mek smiled and shook his head ruefully, "I am only just

learning how much. Look after her for me. I will be back every night to

check on her."

Mek took his men into the bush and deployed them in defensive positions

along the trail and around the campWhen Nicholas looked up from his own

work he could often make out the figure of one of Mek's sentries on the

high ground above the camp. It was reassuring to know that they were

there.

However, as he had promised, Mek was back in camp most evenings, and

often in the night Nicholas heard, coming from the shelter he shared

with Tessay, his deep rumbling laughter blending with her sweet silvery

tones.

Then Nicholas lay awake and thought about Royan in the hut so close, but

yet so far away from where he lay.

On the fifth day the second draft of three hundred labourers that Mai

Metemma had conscripted for them arrived, and Nicholas was astonished,

Things seldom worked that way in Africa.

Nothing ever happened ahead of the promised time. He

wondered what exactly they decided

that he didn't really want to know, for now main construction work could

begin.

These men were not monks, for St. Frumentius had already given its all

to the sacred labour, but villagers who lived up on the highlands of the

escarpment. Mai Metemma had coerced them with promises of religious

indulgences and threats of hellfire.

Nicholas and Sapper divided this work force into gangs of thirty men

each, and set one of the picked monks as foreman over each gang. They

were careful to grade the men by their physical appearance, so that the

big strapping specimens were all grouped together as the project

storm.troopers, while the smaller, more wiry men could be reserved for

the tasks in which brute strength was not a necessity.

Nicholas dreamed up a name for each gang – the Buffaloes, the Lions, the

Axes and so on. It taxed his powers of invention, but he wanted to

inspire in them a sense of pride and, to his own particular advantage,

to encourage the gangs to compete with one another. He paraded them in

the quarry, each group headed by its newly appointed ecclesiastical

foreman. Using one of the ancient stone blocks as a platform, and with

Tessay interpreting for him, he harangued them heartily and then told

them that they would be paid in silver Maria Theresa dollars. He set

their wages at three times the going rate.

Up to this stage the men had listened to him with a sullen air of

resignation, but now a remarkable transformation came over them. None of

them had expected to be paid for the work, and most of them were

wondering how soon they could desert and go home. Now Nicholas was

promising them not only money, but silver dollars. In Ethiopia for the

past two hundred years the Maria Theresa dollar had been regarded as the

only true coinage. For this reason they were still minted with the

original date of 1780 and the portrait of the old Empress, with her

double chin and her decolletage exposing half her great bust. One of

these coins was more prized than a sackful of the worthless paper birr

issued by the regime in Addis. To pay his labour bills, Nicholas had

included a chest of these silver coins in the first pallet load that

Jannie had dropped.

Celestial grins bloomed as they listened, and white teeth sparkled in

their ebony faces. Someone began to sing, and they all stamped and

danced and cheered Nicholas as they trooped off to queue for their

tools. With mattocks and shovels at the slope they filed off up the

valley to the dam site, still singing and prancing.

"St. Nicholas," Tessay laughed. "Father Christmas. They will never

forget you now."

"They may even enshrine you and build a monastery over you" Royan

suggested sweetly.

"What they don't know is that they are going to earn every single dollar

, the hard way."

From then onwards the work began as soon as it was light enough to see,

and stopped only when it was too dark to continue. The men came back to-

their temporary compound each night by the light of grass torches, too

weary to sing. However, Nicholas had contracted with the headmen from

the highland villages to supply a slaughter beast every day. Each

morning the women came down the trail driving the animal before them,

and with huge pots of tej balanced on their heads.

Over the days that followed, there were no deserters from Nicholas's

little army of workers.

ounted on the high seat of the front-ender, Sapper lifted the first

filled mesh gabion in the hydraulic arms. The mesh'bound parcel of

boulders weighed several tons, and all work on the site came to a halt

as the men crowded the banks of the Dandera river to watch. A hum of

astonishment went up as Sapper eased the yellow tractor down the steep

bank and, with the gabion held high, drove the vehicle in to the water.

The current, affronted by this invasion, swirled angrily around the high

rear wheels, but Sapper pushed in deeper.

The crowds lining the bank began to chant and clap encouragement as the

water reached as high as the belly of the machine, and  louds of steam

hissed from the hot steel of the sump. Sapper locked the brakes, and

then lowered the heavy gabion into the flood before reversing back up

the bank. The men cheered him wildly, even though the first gabion was

instantly submerged and only a whirlpool on the river's surface marked

its position. Another filled gabion lay ready. The Contender waddled up

to it, lowered its– steel arms and picked it up as tenderly as a mother

gathering up her infant.

Nicholas shouted at the foremen to get their gangs back to work. The

long lines of men came up the valley, naked except for their brief white

loincloths. Sweating heavily in the heat of the gorge, their skin

glistened like anthracite freshly cut from the coal face. Each of them

carried on his head a basket of stone aggregate, which he dumped into

the mouth of the waiting gabion. Then he returned with his empty basket

down the hill to the quary.

As each gabion was filled, another team fitted the mesh lid and laced it

closed with heavy eight-gauge wire.

"Twenty dollars bonus to the team with the most baskets filled

today!'Nicholas bellowed. They shouted with glee and redoubled their

efforts, but they were unable to keep up with Sapper on the Contender.

He laid his stone piers artfully, working out from the shallow water

alongside the bank so that each gabion lay against its neighbour, keying

into the wall to give mutual support.

At first there was little evident progress, but as a solid reef was

built up beneath the surface the river began to react savagely. The

voice of the water changed from a low rustle to a dull roar as it tore

at Sapper's wall.

Soon the top of the wall of gabions thrust its head above the surface,

and the river was constricted to half its former width. Now its mood was

truculent. It poured through the gap in a solid green torrent, and crept

almost imperceptibly up the banks as it was forced to back up behind the

barriers The rive  worried the foundations of the dam, clawing at it to

find its weak spots, and the progress of the work slowed down as the

waters rose higher.

Up in the river in forests along the banks the axemen were at work, and

Nicholas winced each time one of the great trees toppled, groaning and

shrieking like a living creature. He liked to think of himself as a

conservationist, and some of these trees had taken centuries to reach

this girth.

"Do you want your bleeding dam, or your pretty trees?" Sapper demanded

ferociously, when Nicholas lamented in his hearing. Nicholas turned away

without replying.

They were all becoming tired with the unremitting labour. Their nerves

were stretching towards snapping point, and tempers were mercurial.

Already there had been a number of murderous fights amongst the workmen,

and each time Nicholas had been forced to duck in under the swinging

steel mattocks to break it up and separate the combatants.

lowly they squeezed the' river in its bed as the pier crept out from the

bank, and the time came when they had to transfer their efforts to the

far bank. It required the combined efforts of their entire labour force

to build a new road along the bank as far as the ford.

There they manhandled the front-ender into the water, and, with a

hundred men hauling on the tow ropes and her tall lugged rear wheels

spinning and churning the surface to a froth they. dragged her across.

Then they had to build another road back along the far bank to reach the

dam site. They cut out the treetrunks that obstructed them and levered

the boulders out of the way to get the tractor through, Once they had

her back at the dam site they could begin the same process of laying out

gabions from the far bank.

Gradually, a few metres each day, the two walls crept closer to each

other, and as the gap between them narrowed the water rose higher and

became more raucous, making the work more difficult.

In the meanwhile, two hundred metres upstream of the dam site, the

Falcons and the Scorpions were at work.

These two teams were building the raft of treetrunks that they had

hacked from the forest. The timbers were lashed together to form a

grating. Over this was laid heavy PVC sheeting to make it waterproof,

then a second grating of treetrunks went over this to form a gigantic

sandwich. It was all lashed together with heavy baling wire. Finally,

one end of the grating was ballasted with boulders.

Sapper arranged the ballast of boulders to make the raft one-side heavy,

so that it would float almost vertically in the water, with one end of

it scraping the bottom of the river and the other sticking up above the

surface. The dimensions of the completed raft were carefully related to

the gap between the two buttresses of the dam. And while the work on the

raft and the wall continued Sapper built up a stockpile of filled

gabions, which he stacked on both banks below the dam.

Three other full work teams, the Elephants, the Buffaloes and the

Rhinos,,comprising the biggest and strongest men in the force, laboured.

at the head of the valley. They were digging out a deep canal into which

the river could be diverted.

"Your hot-shot engineer, Taita, never thought of that little

refinement," Sapper gloated to Royan as they stood on the lip of the

trench. "What it means is that we only have to raise the level of the

river another six feet before it will start flowing down the canal and

into the valley.

Without it we would have had to lift the water almost twenty feet to

divert it."

"Perhaps the river levels were different four thousand years ago." Royan

felt a strange loyalty to the long-dead Egyptian, and she defended him.

"Or perhaps he dug a canal but all traces of it have been obliterated."

"Not bleeding likely," Sapper grunted. "The little perisher just plain

didn't think of it." His expression was smug and self-satisfied, "One up

on Mr Taita, I think."

Royan smiled to herself. It was strange how even the  practical and

down-to-earth Sapper felt that this was a direct personal challenge from

down the ages. He too had been caught up in Taita's game.

 dint of neither threat nor heavenly reward could the monks be inveigled

into working on Sundays. Each Saturday evening they knocked off an hour

earlier and trooped away down the valley on the trail to the monastery,

so as to be in time for Holy Communion the next day. Although Nicholas

grumbled and scowled at their desertion, secretly he was as relieved as

any of them for the chance to rest. They were all exhausted, and for

once there would be no chanting of lock the next morning.

matins to wake them at four ' So on Saturday night they all swore to

each other that

they would sleep late the next morning, but from force of habit Nicholas

found himself awake and fully alert at that same iniquitous hour. He

could not stay in his camp bed, and when he came back from his ablutions

at the riverside he found that Royan was also awake and dressed.

"Coffee?" She lifted the pot off the fire and poured a mugful for him.

"I slept terribly badly last night," she admitted. "I had the most

ridiculous dreams. I found myself in Mamose's tomb lost in a labyrinth

of passages-. I was searching for the burial chamber, opening doors, but

there were always people in the rooms that I looked into. Duraid was

working in one room and he looked up and said, "Remember the protocol of

the four bulls. Start at the beginning." He was so real and alive. I

wanted to go to him but the door closed in my face, and I knew I would

never see him again." Tears filled her eyes and glistened in the light

of the campfire.

Nicholas sought to distract her from the painful memory. "Who were in

the other rooms?" he asked.

"In the next room was Nahoot Guddabi. He laughed spitefully and said,

The jackal chases the sun," and his head changed into the head of

Anubis, the jackal god of the cemetery, and he yelped and barked. I was

so frightened that I ran."

She sipped her coffee. "It was all meaningless and silly, but von

Schiller was in the next room, and he rose in the air and flapped his

wings and said, "The vulture rises, and the stone falls." I hated him so

much I wanted to strike him, but then he was gone."

"And then you woke up?"Nicholas suggested.

"No. There was one other room."

Who was in it?"

She dropped her eyes, and her voice was small, "You were," she said.

"Me? What did I say?" He smiled.

"You didn't say anything," she whispered, and blushed so suddenly and

fiercely that he was instantly intrigued.

"What did I do then?" He was still smiling.

"Nothing. I mean, I can't tell you." The dream returned to her, vivid

and real as life, every detail of his naked body, even the smell and the

feel of him. She forced herself to stop thinking about it. She felt

vulnerable as she had been in the dream.

"Tell me about it he insisted.

"No! She stood up quickly, confused and still blushing, trying to thrust

the images from her.

Last night had been the first time in her life that she first time she

had ever dreamed of a man in that way, the had ever experienced a full

orgasm in her sleep. This morning, when she awoke, she found that she

had soaked right through her pyjamas bottoms.

"We have a full day ahead of us with no work to do," she blurted – the

first thought that came into her mind.

have On the contrary." He stood up with her. "We still to make the

arrangements for getting out of here. When the time comes, we will

probably be in something of a hurry."

"Mind if I tag along?" she asked.

wo teams, the Buffaloes and the Elephants, with only their foremen

missingi were waiting, for them at the quarry. They comprised sixty of

the strongest men in the Tabour force. Nicholas unrill from one of the

pallets.

packed the inflatable Avon rafts neat pack, with Each raft was deflated

and folded into a ese craft had been the paddles strapped along the

sides. It is specifically designed for river'running in turbulent water,

and each was capable of carrying sixteen crew and a ton of cargo.

strap the heavy packs on to Nicholas directed them to they had cut for

that purpose. Five the carrying poles that men on each end of the long

poles, with the bundle of the boat stung in the centre, made light of

the load They se off at a cracking pace down the trail, and as soon as

one was ready to take over. They made the team tired the nex exchange

without even stopping, the new porters slipping their shoulders under

the pole on the run while the exhausted team dropped out.

proof and water Nicholas carried the radio in its shock uch a precious

reglass case. He would not trust proof fib He and Royan trotted

instrument to one of the porters.

behind the caravan, joining in the chorus of the along work chant that

the porters sang as they carried their loads down to the monastery.

Mai Metemma was waiting on the terrace outside the church of St.

Frumentius to welcome them. He led them down the staircase hewn out of

the rock of the cliff, two hundred feet to the very water's edge. There

was a narrow rocky ledge against which the Nile waters dashed, and the

spray from the high waterfalls drifted over them like a perpetual

drizzle of rain. After the heat and the bright sunlight above, it was

cold and gloomy and dank down here in the depths of the gorge. The black

cliffs ran with water, and the ledge on which they stood was wet and

slippery underfoot.

Royan shivered as she watched the river racing by, forming a great

spinning vortex as it swirled around the deep rock bowl and then raced

out through the narrow throat of the gorge on its long hectic journey

towards Egypt and the north.

"If only I had known that this was the road you were planning on taking

home-' she eyed the river dubiously.

"If you would prefer to walk, it's okay by me,'Nicholas told her. "With

luck we will be carrying some extra baggage.

The river is the logical escape route."

"I suppose it makes sense, but still it's not terribly inviting." She

broke off a piece of driftwood from a stranded tangle that lay trapped

upon the ledge and tossed it into the river. It was whipped away, and

raced over the standing wave where some submerged obstacle forced the

surface to bulge up.

What speed is that current? she asked in a subdued voice as the splinter

of driftwood was sucked below the surface.

"Oh, not much more than eight or nine knots," he told her off handedly,

'but that's nothing. The river is still very low. just wait until it

starts raining up in the Mountains, then you will really see some water

passing through here.

it will be great fun. Lots of people would pay good money for the chance

to run a river like this. You are going to love it."

Thanks," she said drily. "I can't wait."

Fifty feet above the ledge, out of reach of the Nile's highest water

level, was a small cavern – the Epiphany shrine. Long ago the monks had

cut this passage deeply into the rock face, and it ended in a spacious,

candle-lit chamber that housed a life'sized statue of the Virgin,

dressed in faded velvet robes, with the infant in her arms.

Mai Metemma gave them his sanction to store the rafts in the shrine, and

they stacked them against a side wall.

When the porters had left, Nicholas showed Royan how to operate the

quick-release handles on the packs, and the CO, cylinders which would

inflate the rafts within minutes.

He wrapped the radio case and his small emergency pack in a sheet of

plastic and stowed them in one of the boat packs, where he could lay his

hands on them again in a hurry.

"You do intend coming along on this joy ride?" she asked anxiously. "You

aren't planning on sending me down on my ownsome?"

"It is best that you know how it all works," he told her.

if things start to get a little hairy when the time comes to leave here,

I may need your help in launching the rafts." When they climbed back up

the staircase into the warmth and the sunlight, Royan's uncertain mood

had changed. "It's not yet noon, and we have the rest of the day to

ourselves. Let's go back to Taita pool again," she suggested, and he

shrugged indulgently.

the Elephants accompanied them as The Buffaloes and far as the branch in

the trail. Here the teams headed back towards the dam, and shouted and

hallooed their farewells after Nicholas and Royan.

their last visit, the path Even in the short time since through the

undergrowth had become overgrown. Nicholas was forced to use his machete

to hack a way through, and they ducked uqder the trailing thorn