Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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the side panels.

cartouche of Mamose significant vehicle were war bows Piled beside this

of electrum and bronze whose stocks were bound with wir ays of daggers

with ivory handles and gold. There were arr and swords with blades of

glistening bronze. There were racks of spears and pikes. There were

shields of bronze, the targets decorated with scenes of war and the name

of the se. There were helmets and breastplates made divine Mamo from the

skin of the crocodile, and the uniforms and regalia of the famous

regiments of Egypt dressed the life-sized the wooden statues of the king

that stood in rows against walls of the alcoves.

 a They walked on down the isle, between more paint, death of the icting

the life and the ings and murals dep ters and danking. They saw him

playing with his daugh nt son. They saw him fishing and hunting and

dling his infa isn'omarches, hawking, in council with his ministers and

dallying with his wives and concubines, and feasting with the priests of

the temple.

What a chronicle of life in ancient times," Royan breathed with awe.

"There has never been a discovery remotely like this before." Each of

the persons in the panels had obviously been drawn from life. They were

real breathing living men and women, every face and every expression

different, captured with the keen eye, the humour and he great humanity

of the artist.

"That must be Taita himself." Royan pointed out the self-portrait of the

eunuch in one of the central panels. "I wonder if he took poetic

licence, or was he truly so noble and beautiful?"

They paused to admire the face of Taita, their adversary, and looked

into his searching, intelligent eyes. Such was the skill of the artist

that he watched them as keenly as they studied him. A small, enigmatic

smile played on Taita's lips. The painting had been varnished, so that

it was perfectly preserved, as if it had been painted the day before.

Taita's lips seemed moist and his eyes gleamed softly with life.

"His complexion is fair and his eyes are blue!" Royan exclaimed.

"Although that red hair is almost certainly dyed with henna."

"It is weird to think that, although he lived so long ago, he almost

succeeded in killing us,'Nicholas said softly.

"In what land was he born? He never tells us that in the scrolls. Was it

Greeceor Italy? Was he from one of the Germanic tribes, or was he of

Viking stock? We will never know, for he himself probably did not know

his own origins."

"There he, is again in the next panel." Nicholas pointed down the arcade

to where the unmistakable face of the eunuch appeared in the throng that

knelt in homage before the throne on which sat Pharaoh and his queen.

"Like Hitchcock, he seems to like to appear in his own creations."

They went on past the treasure stalls in which were stored plates and

goblets and bowls of alabaster and bronze chased with silver and gold,

polished bronze mirrors and rolls of precious silk and linen and woollen

cloth that had long ago rotted to shaggy black amorphous heaps. On the

walls that divided these from the next set of stalls they saw reenacted

the battle with the Hyksos in which Pharaoh had been struck down, the

arrow shot by the Hyksos king lodged in his breast. Then in the next

panel Taita, the surgeon, bent Over him with the surgical instruments in

his ed barb from deep in his hands, removing the blood-smear flesh.

Now they came to alcoves in which were stacked hundreds of cedarwood

chests. The boxes were painted with the royal cartouche of Mamose, and

with scenes of the king at his toilet: lining his eyes with kohl,

painting his face with white antimony and scarlet rouge, being shaved by

his barbers and dressed by his valets.

"Some of those chests will contain the royal cosmetics," Royan murmured,

'and some of them will be Pharaoh's wardrobes of clothing. There will be

costumes in them for ack every occasion in his after-life. I long to be

able to unp and examine them."

all panels showed the mart iage of the The next set of  king to the

young virgin, Taita's mistress. The face of Queen LostTis was tendered

with loving detail. The artist gloated on her beauty and exaggerated it,

his brush strokes caressing her naked breasts and lingering on all her

virtues until they epitomized feminine perfection.

"How much Taita loved her," Royan murmured, and there was envy in her

voice. "You can see it in every line he drew."

Nicholas smiled softly and put his arms around her shoulders.

There were hundreds more wooden chests stacked in  the next alcoves.

Painted on the lids were miniatures of the king decked in all his

jewellery: his fingers and toes were thick with rings and his chest was

covered with pectoral medallions, while bangles of gold adorned his arms

and bracelets his wrists. In one portrait he wore the double crown of

the two kingdoms of Egypt united, the red crown and the white with the

heads of the vulture and the cobra on his brow. In another he wore the

blue war crown, and on a third the Nemes crown with gold and lapis wings

that covered his ears.

"If each of those chests contains the treasures depicted on its lid-'

Nicholas broke off, unable to continue the thought. The possibility of

such riches was daunting, and the imagination balked at the magnitude of

it.

"Do you remember what Taita wrote in the scrolls? "I cannot believe that

such a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one times'T

Royan asked him. "It seeffLs that it is all still here, every single gem

and grain of gold. The treasure of Mamose is intact."

Beyond the treasury there was another alcove lined with shelves on which

stood the ushabti figures: dolls made of green glazed porcelain or

carved from cedarwood. They were an army of tiny figures, men and women

from all the trades and professions. There were priests and scribes and

lawyers and physicians, gardeners and farmers, bakers and brewers,

handmaidens and dancing girls, seamstresses and laundrymaids, soldiers

and barbers, and common labourers.

Each of them carried the tools and accoutrements of his or her trade.

They would accompany the king to the after world and there would work

for Pharaoh, and would go forward in his place if he were ever called

upon to perform a service for the other gods.

At last Nicholas and Royan came to the end of this fabulous arcade, and

found their way closed off by a series of tall, free-standing screens,

tabernacles that had been once fine white linen mesh but were now

decayed and rotted into ribbons and streamers, dirty and shabby as old

cobwebs, And yet the stars and rosettes of shining gold Now, still

hanging in the that decorated these curtains were mesh like fish in a

fisherman's net. Through this ethereal web of silken wisps and golden

stars they could make out the shape of another gateway beyond.

actual tomb," Royan

"That must be the entrance to the thin veil between us and the

whispered. "There is only a king now.

tated at the threshold, gripped by a strange They hesi the final step

reluctance, to take an old warrior, Mek Nimmur had seen and treated most

of the injuries that a man might sus in on the battlefield. His little

guerrilla group did not have a doctor, or even a medical orderly.

Mek himself treated most of his casualties, and he always  had a medical

kit close at hand.

He had the men carry Tessay to one of the huts near the quarry, where,

screened by the grass walls, he stripped her of her tattered clothing

and treated her injuries. He abrasions with disinfectant, and cleaned

her burns and clean field dressings– Then covered the worst of them with

he rolled her gently on to her stomach and snapped the which glass phial

off the needle'of the disposable syringe wh was preloaded with a

broad'spectrum antibiotic. -and he said, "I She winced at the sting of

the needle, am not a very good doctor."

other. Oh, Mek! I thought I would would have no ared never see you

again. I did not fear death as much as I fe that."

He helped her dress in the spare clothing from his pack, a sweatshirt

and fatigues that were many sizes too large for her. He rolled up the

cuffs for her, and his touch soldier.

was gentle. His hands were those of a lover, not a she whispered through

her must look so ugly," swollen, black-scabbed lips.

"You are beautiful he denied it– "To me you will always be beautiful."

He touched her cheek carefully, so as not to harm the raw burns that

covered it.

At that moment they heard the gunfire. It was still faint with distance,

borne down from the north on the rain winds.

Mek stood up immediately. "It has begun. Nogo is attacking at last it's

all my fault. I told him-'

"No," he told her firmly. "It is not your fault. You did what you had to

do. If you had not, they would have hurt you even worse than this. They

would have attacked us, even if you had told them nothing."

He picked up his webbing belt and strapped it around his waist. From far

off they heard the crumping detonation of exploding mortar shells.

"I have to go now," he told her.

"I know. Do not worry about me."

"I will always worry about you. These men will carry you down to the

monastery. That is the assembly point.

Wait for me there. I cannot hope to hold Nogo for long.

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.

"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

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."

"Don't mess around, major. Your life isn't worth a pile of old junk like

this. Get moving now."

"Get on with it, Sapper. But don't let Royan hear you call it a pile of

old junk. You could be in really serious trouble."

Sapper shrugged. "Don't say I didn't warn. you." He turned and started

back down the staircase.

"You know where the boats are stashed, Nicholas shouted after him. "If

you get there before me, get them inflated and the crates lashed down.

We will be right behind you."

The moment Sapper was gone, Nicholas raced back

down the arcade to where Royan was still at work in the treasury.

"That's it!" he shouted at her. "No more time. Let's get out."

"Nicky, we can't leave this-'

"Oud' He grabbed her arm. "We are getting out now.

Unless you want to share Tanus's tomb with him on a permanent basis."

"Can't I just-'

"No, you crazy woman! Now! The dam will go at any moment."

She'broke away from him, snatched up some handfuls of left-over

jewellery from the open chest at her feet, and began stuffing them into

her pockets.

"I can't leave these."

He seized her around the waist and swung her over his shoulder. "I told

you I meant it," he said grimly, and ran with her down the arcade.