The Flames of Time (Flames of Time Series Book 1) (16 page)

‘Sha nagba imuru… The one who saw all… who knew all and who still walks amongst men I will tell about… He has seen the great mysteries, and knows the hidden, and tasted the fruit of the earth before the great flood…

‘Ah yes,’ continued Androus completely absorbed, ‘here, here this looks like it could be more detail describing Gilgamesh’s journey or route to the African temple from this very place. This seems to continue for three full tablets, and then there is some kind of break. The fourth tablet then starts with what looks like a description of Ziusudra and the ordeals Gilgamesh had to endure, presumably before being granted the breath eternal. That takes up a further four tablets, at which point there is another break and… this seems to be Ziusudra speaking… of his first great temple and the story of how he travelled from there to Africa. I need to study this section in more detail, but it does look like there are place names and descriptions in the text…’

‘A chronicle of the journey?’ broke in Harry enthusiastically, ‘descriptions of the places and route taken to get here.’

‘Yes… yes possibly.’ responded Androus, obviously only half hearing Harry’s question.

It was going to take some time for Androus to get to grips with the translation, so after another few minutes of unsuccessful questioning we reluctantly decided to leave them to it. The first stage; as we all knew after seeing Androus working on the translation of the scroll; was to accurately transcribe the endless lines of lettering from the tablets to paper. This would allow the text to be more conveniently studied and broken down into individual words, phrases and sentence-like sections.

Being familiar with the text and the technique would enable Harry to help with the first part of the work, and remove a laborious step in the process. But the segmentation of the words and subsequent translation was still the most skilled and difficult task, and that was something Androus would have to do by himself. At best it would probably be several days in not a few weeks effort, which we couldn’t really expect even Androus to complete from a camp site.

It was too late in the day to be thinking about packing up and starting the journey back to Jerusalem, so with the intention of making an early start in the morning we busied ourselves as best we could preparing, packing and making arrangements.

It was a slightly surreal time, I don’t think I’d quite come around to thinking about what we would do next, once we’d successfully located the map we were looking for. In truth I don’t think I’d quite gotten to the stage of thinking we’d actually find anything, yet here we were with the tablets literally ‘in the bag’.

There was still a good hour of daylight left by the time we’d finished our preparations, and the evening air was beginning to cool down again to a more comfortable level, so I decided to try and find someone interested in an evening stroll. There was no point even asking Harry or Androus, and it seemed that several of the others had had enough exertion for one day. But Jean with just a hint of that theatrical exuberance, which seemed to occasionally possess him, readily agreed.

We decided to set off in the opposite direction to the gate, toward the great Ziggurat that lay just outside the city on its western edge, on the off chance there might be a better perspective of the city.

We’d been walking for a few minutes, and I was just about to try and draw out Jean’s thoughts on how long it might take Harry and Androus to come up with a first draft of the translation, when Jean pre-empted me with a comment of his own.

‘It has been an interesting day, has it not George?’

There was something about his tone, that made me look at him, and I could immediately see something was amusing him. But Jean being Jean I could tell he wouldn’t answer a straight question, especially when he thought it more entertaining to make his audience guess. So with a good-humoured sigh, I played along in the hope that his revelation wouldn’t be too far off.

‘Such a fascinating city, is it not,’ he continued tormentingly, his smile almost consuming his entire face, ‘and so nice to be able to spend some time with one’s friends.’

I couldn’t imagine where he was going with this, but just as I was beginning to concede, it occurred to me that he’d paired up with Luke in the morning.

‘You asked Luke about the young lady we saw him with in the park didn’t you?’

His exasperation couldn’t have been more perfect, he veritably exploded with disappointment at being thwarted.

‘How could you possibly have guessed so easily,’ he blustered, before continuing to give me the details.

‘But yes, as it happens George, you are correct… After failing to get him alone while we were in Jerusalem, I had been attempting to pin him down on the journey, but with all the changes in our transportation, he managed to elude my grasp. But we Gascons do not give up easily in our hunting, especially when we know our quarry will not stray far. When we entered the city to begin our search, I saw my opportunity…

‘What I had not considered was how I was going to broach the subject once the moment presented itself. But I was determined to get him this time, so I eventually decided to pursue a ‘conversational’ approach, as though I were not so very interested at all...

‘By the way Luke, I said, while pretending to be interested in some half collapsed doorway, I did not know you had friends in Jerusalem. Almost as though the thought had just occurred to me. Quite naturally he walks into my not so clever trap and claims to not understand my meaning.

‘In the park at the bottom of the Armenian quarter, I was walking with George on the morning that Androushan awoke us all so early, I’m sure it was you we saw walking and talking with a young lady.

‘Well, that stopped him, I do not think poor Luke could have been more shocked, had I taken my revolver out and fired a shot over his head.’

‘Yes, but what did he say Jean, why did he greet her so formally?’ I couldn’t help but interject.

‘Now that is the interesting thing. After a moment or two of desperately trying to escape me by pretending not to recall the occasion, he eventually claimed not to have known the young lady at all, she had simply approached him after getting slightly lost, to ask for directions. As it turns out she was also a fellow countrywoman of his, so he had offered to guide her as best he could, which according to Luke must have been the point at which we saw him.’

We both had to admire Luke’s quick thinking, while at the same time being disappointed not to find out who the young lady really was. We walked and talked for a while longer, before turning around to make our way back to the camp. But just was we did so, Jean stopped suddenly and stooped to examine the ground.

‘Hoof marks! It must be at least a dozen riders going into the city.’ he said moving back and forth to try and get a better look at the prints in the fading light. ‘But I cannot tell how recently they were made.’

We quickly examined the tracks to either side of where our paths had intersected, to see if we could get a better idea of how old the marks were and how many riders there were, but the ground was far too dry and hard. So much so, that if we hadn’t crossed their path at a slightly sandier point, I don’t think we’d have even noticed them.

We quickened our pace on the way back, both to warn the others, but also to make sure we didn’t get caught in the open in the now deepening gloom.

It didn’t take long to explain the situation to the others, and although we were probably too large a group to be in any real danger from local bandits, we decided it would be wise to take a few extra precautions just on the off chance. This meant keeping the fire low, and surreptitiously making our camp a little more defensible.

We were all rather tired out by the heat and exertion of the day, and I was struggling to stay alert by the time the attack finally came in the small hours of the night. But in addition to our two obvious lookouts, we’d also taken the precaution of deploying two extra people covertly inside the darkened tents to keep watch out of the rear, with one person sleeping and the other on watch. Harry had just relieved me in our tent, and I was just beginning to doze when suddenly he called my name and then started shooting through the hole we’d made at the back of the tent.

I was stunned for a moment, caught half way between sleep and wakefulness, and then I was grabbing my rifle and following Harry out of the front of the tent. It seemed like there were hundreds of them at first, galloping at full speed straight through the centre of our camp. Whooping and screaming as they came and firing rifles at anything and everything, before disappearing out of the firelight and back into the darkness.

I came to my senses though as a bullet hit the ground a few inches in front of where I was kneeling, spraying my legs and chest with grit. But the attacker had already fallen from his horse with a bullet from Harry in his chest. It was then I realised our assailants weren’t quite as numerous as I’d first thought, and that my friends were effectively picking them off. I’d known Harry, Jean and Luke had all served in the army, but what I hadn’t realised was the degree to which the years of hunting had refined their skills and efficiency with their rifles.

Our attackers had just begun to understand their mistake as half a dozen of them lay dead or dying in the firelight, and probably twice that number had fallen amongst the shadows outside our camp, when I noticed three riders streaming through the camp and converging on Marlow and Jean.

Marlow had just managed to put a bullet in the back of one rider who’d tried to decapitate him with a great curved sword. But in dodging round the edge of the tent to get his shot off, he’d turned away from the centre of the camp and so couldn’t see the sudden approach of the other three. He turned back at a shout from Jean, but hadn’t had time to reload his rifle.

I could see Jean get a shot off, but it must’ve gone wild, because his man just kept coming, I quickly tried to put him down myself, but rushed it, and only managed to clip his shoulder. Fortunately it caused him to drop the rifle he’d levelled at Jean’s head. Unfortunately, not being able to shoot didn’t seem to bother the man too much and instead he just rode at Jean and delivered a savage kick to his head as he went past, knocking poor Jean spinning back onto his tent.

At the same time I saw Marlow heave his empty rifle at the two horses bearing down on him, and grab for his revolver, before being obscured from my view. The rifle must have connected well, for the next instant both horses were rearing up onto their back legs. Not that it seemed to disconcert either of the riders, who I swear were still trying to aim their rifles one handed at Marlow past their rearing steeds.

What did disconcert them considerably though, was the head of the first rider’s horse exploding backwards in a shower of blood and bone into its owners face and chest. I could see both men nearly lose their seats with shock. Marlow was completely obscured behind them, but it was clear he’d fired his revolver, which I knew was a large calibre Webley, at point blank range, destroying the animal’s head. There was no mistaking the effect, as the poor beast’s hind legs simply collapsed, and an agonising moment later it fell backward trapping it’s rider. At the plight of its companion the second animal tried to rear again, while simultaneously twisting to the side to try and get away from both Marlow and the collapsing horse beside it. But that only served to open the line for Marlow’s second shot square in the chest of the second rider, who was flung back onto the animals haunches before it bolted into the night.

Checking to see there were no other attackers coming his way, Marlow quickly moved around the dead horse, to dispatch its former rider, who even with a leg still trapped beneath his dead mount was shouting and trying to free his rifle for another shot.

And then, as suddenly as it had started, the mayhem and noise ceased. Marlow regained his position in front of his tent, collecting and reloading his rifle, before checking on the unconscious Jean. Peter and Luke moved to take up their lookout positions re-stacking the saddles and other equipment they’d piled around them for extra protection. Androus, after spending a moment trying to free his jammed rifle, drew his revolver and filled his other hand with a big curved sword from one of the attackers who’d fallen nearby.

We sat amongst the carnage that had become our camp, alert and ready for them to return. It seemed an age before the sky gradually started to lighten and we were able to safely give up our defensive positions. It was amazing no-one from our camp had been seriously injured, though one of the guides we’d employed had also been ridden down like Jean and knocked out. Having said that it seemed some of us had been quite lucky, including Androus who’d been saved by his rifle which had caught a bullet right in the mechanism, missing his hand and face by inches.

As the light improved though it became clear our assailants had not been so lucky, and we counted a further nine dead men outside our camp in addition to the eight which we already knew about within. It was a tragic scene made all the worse by the dead horse that accompanied them. But I only needed to remind myself that if we hadn’t stumbled across their tracks as they entered the city then the story could have been very different.

We did our best to bury the men, but as we were preparing the holes I noticed Marlow and Jean talking and moving over to re-examine each of the bodies before they were interred.

On seeing my approach they turned and asked for my opinion. It seemed that while searching the bodies, both Jean and Marlow had noticed something odd. All the men seemed to be carrying a similar amount of silver coin.

‘The three men I’ve examined,’ said Jean, ‘all have slightly different amounts of money with them, but amongst the other coins, they all have six identical silver coins, not European, could be Turkish.’

Marlow had found the same on the two men he’d examined. We decided to ask Androus if he could shed any light on the matter, but just as we were about to go and find him, we saw him coming out of his tent looking completely aghast and ashen faced.