Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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branches. It was midafternoon when they eventually crossed the high

ridge and stood once again on the cliff directly above Taita's pool.

"It looks as though we were the last ones here., Nicholas's tone was

relieved. "No signs of any other visitors since us."

"Were you expecting any?"

"You never know. Von Schiller is a formidable character, and he has some

charming lads working for him. Helm is one that worries me, and I had a

nasty feeling that he might have been snooping around here. I am going

to take a closer look."

He worked quickly around the entire area, casting widely for any sign of

intruders. Then came back to where she sat on the lip of the abyss and

dropped down beside her.

"Nothing," he admitted. "We have still got the running to ourselves."

"Once Sapper stops the river upstream, this is going to be our main area

of operations, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, but even before Sapper closes the dam I want to open a fly camp

here, and move all the gear and equipment we will need from the quarry

to have it handy when we start the exploration of the pool."

"How are we going to get down into the pool? Down the river bed, once it

is dry?"

"I suppose we could use the dry river bed as a road, and come down it

from below the dam or up from the monastery end, through the pink

cliffs."

"But that is not the way you are planning to get in, is it?" she

guessed.

"Even with no water in it, the river bed will be a long way round. It's

a three– or four-mile haul from either end of the abyss, added to which

it will be a pretty rough road to travel." He grinned ruefully. "You are

speaking to an expert on the subject. I went down it the hard way, and I

wouldn't want to do it again. There are at least five chutes and rock

jams that I can remember being thrown over."

"What is your better idea, then?" she asked.

"It's not my idea," he contradicted her. "It's Taita's idea really."

She peered over the edge. "You mean to build a scaffold down the cliff,

just the way he did it?

"What's good enough for Taita is good enough for me," he acknowledged.

"The old boy probably had a good look at the alternative of using the

river bed as an access road, and abandoned the idea."

"When will you start work on the scaffold, then?"

"One of our teams is already cutting bamboo poles higher up the gorge.

Tomorrow we will begin carrying them up here, and stacking them. We

can't waste a day.

Once the darn is closed we have to get into the dry pool as soon as

possible."

As if to add weight to his words there came a far-off mutter of thunder,

and they both craned their heads to peer up with trepidation at the

escarpment. Probably a hundred miles to the north, faintly washed as a

sepia print superimposed upon the razor-edged blue silhouette of the

loescarpment wall rose high tumbled towers of cumu nimbus clouds.

Neither of them spoke about it, but both "were aware of how ominously

the torm clouds were settling on the distant mountains.

Nicholas glanced at his wrist-watch and stood up.

"Time to start back if we are to get into camp before dark."

He gave her his hand and lifted her to her feet. She dusted off her

clothes and then stepped right to the very lip of the canyon.

ks," she called I "Wake up, Taita. We are hot on your trac down into the

shadows.

"Don't challenge him." Nicholas took her arm and drew VI, her back. "The

old ruffian has given us enough trouble already."

The axemen had left the stumps of several great trees standing on the

banks of the Dandera upstream from the dam– Sapper used these as anchor

points for the heavy cables that he strung across the river. Through the

cables he had rigged a cunning series of pulley blocks. The main cable

was run back and connected to the tow hitch on the front-ender.

Two other cables were laid out, one to each bank, where the Buffaloes

and the Elephants stood ready to handle them– One team was under the

direction of Nicholas, and the other under Mek Nimmur. For this crucial

part of the construction, Mek had come down from the hills to lend a

hand.

The grating of massive treetrunks lay on the river verge, already half

in the water. Heavily weighted with boulders, it was an unwieldy

structure that would require all their combined efforts to manoeuvre

into position.

Sapper slitted his eyes as he studied the layout, and then looked

downstream to the partially completed dam. The two walls of gabions

stretched out from either bank, but the gap in the middle of the river

was twenty feet across and the whole volume of the river roared through

it.

"The one thing we don't want is to let the bleeding plug run away from

us and slam into the ruddy wall," he warned Nicholas and Mek. "Otherwise

we are going to lose a big chunk of what we have done so far. I want to

cuddle her in there, nice and softly, and let her sit snug in the gap.

Any questions? This is your last chance to ask. You all know the

signals."

Sapper took one last drag on his cigarette, and flicked the stub into

the river. Then, looking lugubrious, he said, "Okay, gents. The last one

in the water is a sissy,'

Compared to their men, Nicholas and Mek were overdressed in their khaki

shorts. The others were all stark naked. When the order was given they

trooped waist-deep into the river and took up their stations along the

cables.

Before he followed them into the river, Nicholas took one last look

round. At breakfast that morning Royan had innocently asked to borrow

his binoculars. Now he knew why. She and Tessay were perched up on top

of the slope high above the gorge. Even as Nicholas watched, he saw

Royan pass the binoculars to Tessay. They were not missing a moment of

this fateful operation.

Nicholas looked back from the ridge to the rows of big naked men, pulled

a face and muttered, "My oath, there are some prize specimens around

here. I just hope that Royan isn't making comparisons."

Sapper climbed up on to the yellow tractor, and with a roar and a cloud

of diesel smoke the engine burst into life. He raised one hand above his

head with the fist ji clenched, and Nicholas relayed the order to his

team, "Take the strain."

The foremen repeated it in Amharic, and the men leaned back against the

cables. Sapper threw the tractor into extra low, and eased her forward.

The belly straightened in the lines, the sheave wheels squealed, and the

timber grating slid ponderously down the bank into the river. The

weighted end of the grating sank immediately and bumped along the

bottom, while the lighter end floated ut into midstream, until it was

high. Slowly they hauled it  hanging vertically in the water.

The current seized it and began to bear it away, straight at the wall of

gabions. It picked up speed alarmingly. The tractor bellowed and– blew

out clouds of black smoke as Sapper threw her into reverse and backed up

on the cables.

The teams of naked black men heaved and chanted – some of them had

already been dragged in neck-deep as they hauled on the lines.

The grating steadied across the current, and they let it fall away at a

more sedate pace, down towards the open gap in the wall. As it began to

slew towards one bank, Sapper lifted his right arm and windmilled it.

Obediently, Mek's team on the far bank paid out rope and Nicholas's team

on the near bank picked it up. Once again the grating was lined up on

the gap.

"Rock and roll. Close the hole," bellowed Sapper, and now the full

current was too powerful to resist. It dragged both teams into the river

until some of them were in over their heads, losing their hold on the

lines and floundering and swimming. However, those men who still had

their footing managed to slow the rush of the grating just enough to

prevent it smashing out of control into the dam. It settled firmly

across the gap, like a mammoth plug in the outlet of a giant's bathtub,

and instantly the current was cut off.

While the men in the water struggled ashore, their bodies wet and

gleaming in the sunlight, Sapper threw off the cables from his tow hitch

and roared along the bank with the front-ender in its highest gear. As

it passed him, Nicholas grabbed a handhold and swung himself up on to

the footplate behind Sapper's seat.

"Got to shore up now, before the grating bursts," Sapper yelled.

From his vantage point, clinging to the rear of the tall machine,

Nicholas had a moment to assess the Position.

The dam was holding, but only just. Numerous jets of water spurted

through every gap between the grating and the gabions. The pressure of

water against the sheets of PVc in the grating was enormous. It was

taking the full thrust of the river, flexing and bowing before it like a

castle Portcullis attacked with a battering ram.

Sapper picked up one of the gabions that were standing ready on the bank

and drove down into the river bed below the dam. The flow of the water

had shrivelled to a mere knee-deep trickle. jets of water squirted

through every chink in the wall, and the gabions were not impermeable;

ay through the tightly packed stones.

water was finding its was the front-ender churned and lurched over the

rough bed at the back of the wall, Nicholas and Sapper were drenched by

the jets spurting over them. It was like working rove in close behind

the under a cold shower. Sapper  straining grating and placed the heavy

gabion against it.

He threw the tractor into reverse and climbed up the bank to pick up

another gabion, Slowly he built up a retaining  the gabions in sloping

wall behind the grating, placin s, until this revetment was as strong as

the side piers.

rank Nicholas jumped down from the tractor and left Sapper to it while

he ran back upstream to the canal that the teams had dug at the head of

the valley. Most of the banks of this cutting workers had gathered along

the  Nicholas saw both Royan and Tessay in the already, an front row of

the excited crowd.

is way -through to Royan's side, and Nicholas pushed  she grabbed his

hand. it's working, Nicky. The dam wall is holding."

Even as they watched they could see the level of the trapped waters

rising up the wall of grating and gabions.

While the men chattered and laughed and urged it on, the river lapped at

the entrance of the canal.

 the Fifty men seized their tools and jumped down int bottom of the

canal. Dust flew in clouds as they shovelled the broken earth aside to

lead the first trickle of water into the mouth of the canal. The men on

the banks above them and a thin snake whooped and chanted to encourage

them, of river water found its way into the mouth of the canalTan ahead

of it, The men with the mattocks and shovels it on down the cutting.

Every time it met any enticing obstruction and faltered, they fell upon

the blockage and tore it away.

the gradient fall At last the thin trickle of water felt away as the

valley opened before it. The trickle increased to a freshet, and then to

a torrent. With its new strength it gouged out the canal and burst

through with the full flow of the river behind it.

The men in the bottom of the cutting yelled with fright at the

suddenness and ferocity of it, and scrambled up the sides of the canal.

But some of them were not quick enough and were swept away, struggling

and screaming for help. The men on the banks ran alongside them,

throwing ropes and dragging them sodden and muddy from the flood.

Now the river roared through the canal and tore on down the valley,

rediscovering the ancient course that it had not followed for thousands

of years. For almost an hour they stood upon the bank watching it, for

it exercised over them the particular spell that turbulent waters always

have over men. They were forced to retreat step by step as the river cut

the banks out from under their feet.

At last Nicholas roused himself, and went back to where Sapper was still

shoring up the dam wall. By now he had erected a sloping revetment on

the downstream side of the dam wall, with four rows of gabions on the

bottom course gradually narrowing as it reached the top of the retaining

wall. For the time being the dam was secure, the vulnerable grating had

been shored up with the heavy, stone-filled mesh baskets, and the

overflow through the canal into the valley had relieved much of the

pressure upon it.

"Do you think it will hold?" Royan eyed the structure with suspicion.

"Until the rains come, we hope." Nicholas drew her away. "We don't want

to waste any more time here. Time to go on downstream to begin work at

Taita's pool."

  hey followed the banks of the new river that they had created, down

the length of the long 6– valley. At places they were forced to detour

higher up the slope because the overflow from the dam had cut away and

submerged the old trail. Eventually they reached the confluence of the

stream that had as its source the butterfly fountain that they had

explored with Tamre.

They paused on the bank, and Nicholas and Royan looked at each other

wordlessly. The stream had dried up.

Turning aside, they followed the empty stream bed up the hills and at

last scrambled out on to the ledge from which the butterfly fountain had

poured. The cave was still surrounded by lush green ferris, but it was

like the eye socket in a skull, dark and empty.

"The spring has dried up!" Royan . "The dam  -Iispere has shrivelled it.

That's the proof that the fountain was fed from Taita's pool, Now we

have diverted the river we have killed the fountain." Her eyes were

bright and sparkling with excitement. "Come on. Let's waste no more time

here.

Let's get on up to Taita's pool."

'Nicholas was the first one down into Taita's pool. This time, he had a

bosun's chair to sit in and a properly rigged block and tackle to lower

him over the cliff. As he swung down around the overhang of the cliff,

the chair swung awkwardly against the rock and the thumb of his right

hand was trapped between the wooden seat of the chair and the wall. He

exclaimed with the pain and, when he wrenched it free, he found that the

skin had been torn from the knuckle and that blood was oozing up and

dripping down his legs. It was painful -but not serious, and he sucked

the wound clean. It was still weeping drops of blood but he had, no time

to attend to the injury now.

He was around the overhang, and the abyss opened under him, sombre and

repellent. His eye was drawn irresistibly to the engraving on the wall,

etched between the vertical rows of niches. Now that he knew what to

look for, he could make out the outline of the maimed hawk. It cheered

and encouraged him. Since their flight from the gorge over a month

previously he had often been haunted by the feeling that they had

imagined it all, that the cartouche of Taita was a hallucination, and

that when they returned they would find the cliff wall smooth and

unblemished. But there it was, the signpost and the promise.

He peered down past his own feet to the bottom of the gorge, and saw at

once that the waterfall above the pool had been reduced to a trickle.

The water still coming down the smooth black chute of polished rock was

that which was filtering through the gaps and chinks in the dam wall

upstream and the last drainage from the sandbanks and the pools higher

up the gorge.

The level of the great Pool under him had fallen drastically. He could.

make out the highwater level by the wet markings on the rock cliff.

Fifty feet of the wall that had previously been submerged was now

exposed. Another eight pairs of chiselled niches were visible in the

face Where once he had been forced to swim down to them, they were now

high and dry.

However, the pool was not completely drained. It was dished below the

level of the downstream outlet, so that it was unable to empty itself by

gravitational flow. There was still a puddle of black water trapped in

the centre, with a narrow ledge surrounding it. Nicholas landed on this

ledge and stepped out of the bosun's chair. It was strange to stand on

firm rock down here where last he had struggled for his life and very

nearly been sucked under and drowned.

He looked up to where beams of sunlight penetrated the upper levels of

the chasm. It was like being in the bottom of a mineshaft, and he

shuddered at the feel of the clammy air on his bare arms and the eerie

sensation in the pit of his stomach. He tugged on the line to send the

rope chair back to the surface, and then edged his way along the

slippery rock ledge towards the cliff face where the rows of dark niches

stood out clearly against the lighter stone.

Now he could make out the shape of the opening in the wall that had so

nearly sucked him down into its dark and slimy throat. It was almost

completely submerged in a deeper corner where the pool flowed back

against the cliff.

All that was visible above the surface was the top arch of an irregular

entrance at the foot of the descending rows of niches. The rest of it

was still submerged.

The ledge narrowed as he worked his way along the foot of the cliff

until he had his back to the rock and was moving sideways with his toes

in the water. Eventually he could go no further without actually

stepping down into the water. He had no way of judging the depth of the

waters, which were turbid and uninviting.

Still trying to keep his feet dry, he squatted down on the narrow ledge

and leaned out so far that his balance as threatened. He steadied

himself with one hand against the wall, and with the other reached out

towards the partially submerged opening.

The lip of the hole was smooth, as he had remembered it, and once again

it seemed to him that it was too square and straight to be anything

other than man-made. As he rolled up his sleeve he noticed that his

injured thumb was still bleeding, but he ignored it and thrust his arm

down below the surface of the pool. He groped downwards, trying to trace

the sill of the opening, He felt what seemed to be blocks of roughly

dressed masonry, and reached down further until the water reached

halfway up his biceps.

Suddenly some living creature, swift and weighty, swirled in the dark

waters right in front of his face, and as an immediate reflex he jerked

his arm out of the water.

The thing followed his arm up to the surface, slashing at his bare flesh

with long, needle'sharp fangs, and he had a glimpse of a head as evil

and villainous as that of a barracuda' He realized instinctively that it

must have been attracted by the smell of the blood from his injured

thumb.

He leaped to his feet and teetered on the narrow ledge, clutching his

arm. Only one of the creature's frontal fangs had touched him, but it

had opened the skin like a razor cut, a long shallow wound across the

back of his right hand from which fresh blood dribbled and splattered

into the pool at his feet.

Instantly the black waters seemed to come alive, roiling and seething

with frenzied writhing aquatic shapes.

Nicholas, his back flattened against the rock wall, stared down at them

with loathing and horror. He could vaguely make out the shape of them,

sinuous and ribbonlike, some of them as thick as his calf, black and

gleaming.

One of them thrust its head out on to the ledge and snapped its jaws.

Its eyes were huge and glistening and its snout was elongated, the long

jaws lined with fangs that overlapped its thin lips. The body behind the

head was six feet long, and lashed like a whip as it drove itself high

up on to the ledge, reaching out for Nicholas's bare legs. He shouted

with revulsion and leaped back, stumbling and splashing on to safer

footing. Clutching his bleeding hand, stare aC Ae evi . aead had

disappeared, but the surface of the pool was still agitated by the lithe

ophidian shapes.

"Eels!the realized. "Giant tropical eels."

Of course the blood had excited them. The fall in the water-level had

trapped them in the pool, congregated them in such numbers that they had

probably already devoured the fish that they depended upon for food. Now

they were ravenous. Probably all the pools of water that remained in the

abyss were infested with these fearsome creatures. He was thankful that

during his last swim in this pool he had not bled into the water.

He unwound the cotton kerchief from his neck and wrapped it round his

wounded hand. The eels were a deadly threat to any attempt to explore

the opening in the cliff.

A, il " the pool of 1V But already he was considering ways of ridding

them and of gaining access to the underwater opening.

Slowly the frenzy in the pool quietened and its surface grew still

again, Nicholas looked up to see the bosun's chair descending, with

Royan's slim, shapely legs dangling below the wooden seat.

"What have you found?" she called down to him excitedly. "Is there a

tunnel-' then she broke off suddenly as she saw the blood on his

clothing, and the bandage wathing his hand.

"Oh dear God," she exclaimed. "What have you done?

You are hurt. How badly?" Her feet touched the ledge beside him and she

slid from the chair and took his injured hand gently. "What have you

done to yourself?"

"It's not as bad as it looks, he assured her. "Lots of blood but not

deep."

"How did you do it?" she insisted.

For an answer he tore a corner off the bloodstained kerchief. "Watch!"

he instructed her, wadding it into a ball and tossing it out into the

pool.

Royan screamed with horror as the waters boiled with the long fleeting

shapes. One of them wriggled half its monstrous length out on to the

ledge, before flopping back.

It left a shining trail of silver slime across the black stones.

"Taita has left his guard dogs to see us A' Nicholas remarked. "We are

going to have to take care of those beauties before we can explore the

entrance below the surface."

/4P– -I he bamboo scaffolding that Sapper and Nicholas had built down

the cliff was L*, – anchored in the niches that had been cut into the

rock nearly four thousand years before. Taita had probably lashed his

framework together with bark rope, but Sapper had used heavy-gauge

galvanized wire, and the structure was strong enough to bear the weight

of many men. The Buffaloes formed a living chain and passed all the

material and equipment down the scaffolding from hand to hand.

The very first piece of equipment to reach the floor Of the cavern was

the portable Honda EM500 generator.

Sapper connected it up to the lights that he had rigged along the foot

of the cliff. The small petrol engine ran smoothly and quietly, but the

amount of power it put out was impressive. The floodlights chased the

shadows from the furthest corners of the cavern, and lit the deep rock

bowl like a stage.

Immediately the mood changed. Everybody became more cheerful and

confident. There was laughter and excited chatter from the chain of men

on the scaffolding as Royan climbed down to join Sapper and Nicholas at

the side of the pool.

"Now that we know that they are working, switch off those lights,'

Nicholas ordered.

"It's so dark and gloomy without them," Royan protested.

"Saving fuel," Nicholas explained. "No filling station on the corner. We

only have two hundred litres in reserve, and although the little Honda

is pretty economical we have to be careful We don't know how long we are

going to need it in the tunnel."

Royan shrugged with resignation, and when Sapper cut the generator the

cavern was plunged once more into gloom and shadow. She looked at the

dark pool and pulled a face.

"What are you going to do about those horrid pets of yours?" she

demanded, glancing at Nicholas's bandaged right hand.

"Sapper and I have worked out a plan. We thought of trying to empty the

pool completely, using a bucket chain.

But the amount of water still coming down the river bed makes that a

poor choice."

"We would be lucky to hold our own against that flow, even working

around the clock with buckets," Sapper grunted. "If only the major had

thought to bring along a high-speed water pump-'

"Even I can't think of everything, Sapper. What we are going to do is to

build a small coffer dam around the riderwater opening, and bale that

out with buckets."

Royan stood back and watched the preparations. Half a dozen of the empty

mesh gabions were carried down the scaffolding and placed at the edge of

the pool. Here they were partially filled with boulders that the men

gathered up from the river bed. However the gabions were not filled so

full that they became too heavy to handle. There was no front-ender down

here to move them around, and they would be forced to rely on

old-fashioned manpower. There was just sufficient of the yellow PVC

sheeting left over to wrap around each gabion and render it waterproof.

"What about your eels?" Royan was fascinated by these loathsome

creatures, and she hung well back from the edge of the pool. "You can't

send any of your men in there!

"Watch and learn." Nicholas grinned at her. "I have a little treat in

store for your favourite fish."

Once all the preparations for the construction of the coffer were

complete, Nicholas cleared the cavern, sending Royan and Sapper and all

of the men up the scaffolding.

He alone remained at the edge of the pool, with the bag of fragmentation

grenades that he had begged from Mek Nimmur slung over his shoulder.

With a grenade in each hand, he hesitated. "Seven second delay," he

reminded himself "Quenton-Harper dry flies. More effective than the

Royal Coachman!'

He pulled the pins from each of the grenades and then lobbed them out

into the middle of the pool. Quickly he turned away and hurried to the

furthest corner of the cavern. He knelt with his face to the rock wall

and covered his ears with both hands.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced himself. The rock floor jumped under

him and the double shock waves from the explosions swept over him in

quick succession, with a savage power that drove in his chest and

stopped his breath. In the confines of the chasm the detonations were

thunderous, but his ears were protected and the deep water of the pool

absorbed much of the blast. A twin fountain of water shot high into the

air and splashed against the cliff above his head. It poured down in a

sheet over him, soaking his clothing.

As the echoes died away, he stood up, His hearing had not been adversely

affected, and he had suffered no injury other than the shower of cold

water. Back at the edge of the pool the water shimmered with movement.

Scores of the great eels flopped and writhed on the surface, flashing

their white bellies as they twisted. Many of them were dead, their

bellies burst open, floating inert, while others were merely stunned by

the blast. Knowing how tenaciously they clung to life he suspected that

they would soon recover, but for the time being they were no longer a

danger.

He bellowed up toward the top of the cliff. "All clear, Sapper. Send

them down."

The men came swarming down the scaffolding, amazed by the carnage that

the grenades had wreaked in the pool.

They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.

"You eat them?" Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.

"Very good!" The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.

"Enough of that, you greedy perishers." SappeT drove them back to work.

"Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating

you."

With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered

the entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of

a man's head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and

complete the filling once they were in position. It was difficult and

taxing work, and took almost two days to complete, but at last they had

built a half-moon-shaped weir around the under, water entrance, walling

it off from the main body of water in the pool.

Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out

the coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool.

Nicholas and Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the

coffer fell and the opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.

Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about

three metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been

eroded by the rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell

lower they could see the remains of shaped stone blocks that had

probably once sealed the opening. Four courses of them I still stood

where the ancient masons had placed them across the threshold of the

opening, but the others had been torn out by thousands of years of flood

seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind, partially blocking it.

 Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but

he could not control his impatience.

The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with

his bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.

"It's definitely some sort of shaft," he shouted back, and Royan could

not restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into

the offer, and pushed into the opening beside him.

"There's an obstruction," she cried in disappointment.

"Did Taita do that deliberately?"

might have," Nicholas gave his opinion. "Hard to tell.

A lot of this rubble and flotsam has been sucked in from the main flow

of the river, but he might have filled the tunnel behind him as he

pulled out."

"It's going to take a tremendous amount of work just to clear it enough

to find out where this passage leads to." Royan's voice had lost its

ring of excitement.

"I am afraid it is," Nicholas agreed. "We are going to have to clear

every bit of this rubbish by hand, and there won It be time for the

niceties of formal archaeological excavation. We are just going to rip

it out." He clambered back out of the coffer, and reached back to hand

her up the bank. "Well, at least we have the-floodlights he added, "We

can keep the men working in shifts, night and day, until we get

through."

hey have dammed the Dandera river," said Nahoot Ouddabi, and Gotthold

von Schiller stared at him in astonishment.

"Dammed the river? Are you certain?"he demanded.

"Yes, Herr von Schiller. We have a report from our spy in Harper's camp.

He has over three hundred men working in the gorge. That is not all. He

has air-dropped huge amounts of equipment and supplies. It is like