‘Do it where you are standing,’ he ordered, brandishing the heavy whip. In his other hand he held the heavy golden crook. Nahoot realized that a blow from that weapon could crack his skull.
Standing knee-deep at the water’s edge, Nahoot hopped on one foot as he pulled off his shoes. Then, slowly and reluctantly, he stripped to his underpants. His shoulders were deeply scored by the lash of the flail, fresh blood welling up and slithering like scarlet serpents down his back.
He knew that he had to placate this crazy old madman. He would duck under the surface and swim a short way down the tunnel, hold on to the side wall down there for as long as his breath lasted, and then swim back again.
‘Go!’ von Schiller shouted at him. ‘You are wasting time. Don’t think that I will let you get out of this.’
Nahoot waded deeper into the shaft until the water covered his chest. He paused there for a few minutes as he drew a series of deep breaths. Then at last he held his breath and ducked below the surface. Von Schiller stood waiting at the edge of the pool, staring down into it but unable to see anything beneath the black and ominous surface. In the lamplight Nahoot’s blood stained the surface.
A minute passed slowly, and then suddenly there was a heavy swirl beneath the waters, and a human arm rose through the dark surface, hand and fingers extended as though in supplication. Then slowly it sank out of sight again.
Von Schiller craned forward, ‘Guddabi!’ he called angrily. ‘What are you playing at?’
There was another swirl below the water, and something flashed like a mirror in the depths.
‘Guddabi!’ von Schiller’s voice rose petulantly.
Almost as if in response to the summons, Nahoot’s head broke out through the surface. His skin was waxen yellow, drained of all blood, and his mouth gaped open in a dreadful, silent scream. The water around him boiled as though a shoal of great fish were feeding below. As von Schiller stared in incomprehension, a dark tide rose up around Nahoot’s head and stained the surface a rose-petal red. For a moment von Schiller did not realize that it was Nahoot’s blood.
Then he saw the long, sinuous shapes darting and twisting beneath the surface, surrounding Nahoot, feeding upon his flesh. Nahoot lifted his hand again and extended it towards von Schiller, pleadingly. The arm was half-devoured, mutilated by deep half-moon wounds where the flesh had been bitten away in chunks.
Von Schiller screamed in horror, backing away from the pool. Nahoot’s eyes were huge and dark and accusing. He stared at von Schiller and a wild cawing sound that was not human issued from his straining throat.
Even as von Schiller watched, one of the giant tropical eels thrust its head through the surface and its teeth gleamed like broken glass as it gaped wide, and then locked its jaws on to Nahoot’s throat. Nahoot made no effort to tear the creature away. He was too far gone. He stared at von Schiller all the while that the eel, twisting and rolling into a gleaming ball of slimy coils, still hung from his throat.
Slowly Nahoot’s head sank below the surface again. For long minutes the pool was agitated by the movements in its depth and the occasional gleam of one of the serpentine fish. Then gradually the surface settled as still and serene as a sheet of black glass.
Von Schiller turned and ran, back up the incline shaft, past the landing on which the generator still puttered quietly, blindly trying to get as far away as he could from that dreadful pool. He did not know where he was going, but followed any passageway that opened in front of him. At the foot of the central stairway he ran into the corner of the wall and stunned himself, falling to the agate tiles and lying there blubbering as a large purple lump rose on his forehead.
After a while he dragged himself to his feet and lurched up the stairs. He was confused and disorientated, his mind starting to break up in delirium, driven over the edge of sanity by horror and fear. He fell again, and crawled along the tunnel on his hands and knees to the next corner of the maze. Only then was he able to regain his feet to stagger onwards.
The steep shaft leading down into Taita’s gas trap opened under his feet without him seeing it. He fell down the steps, jarring and bruising his legs and chest. Then he was on his feet again, reeling across the store room past the ranks of amphorae, up the far staircase and into the painted arcade that led to the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.
He had tottered down half the length of it, dishevelled and wild-eyed and demented, when suddenly the lights dimmed for a moment, fading to a yellow glow. Then they brightened again as the generator sucked the last drops of fuel from the bottom of the tank. Von Schiller stopped in the centre of the arcade and looked up at the lights with despair. He knew what was coming. For another few minutes the bulbs burned on, bright and cheerfully, and then again they dimmed and faded.
The darkness settled over him like the heavy velvet folds of a funeral pall. It was so intense and complete that it seemed to have a physical weight and texture. He could taste the darkness in his mouth as it seemed to force its way into his body and suffocate him.
He ran again, wildly and blindly, losing all sense of direction in the blackness. He crashed headlong into stone and fell again, stunned. He could feel the warm tickle of blood running down his face, and he could not breathe. He whimpered and gasped and slowly, lying on his side, he curled himself into a ball like a foetus in the womb.
He wondered how long it would take him to die, and his soul quailed as he knew that it might take days and even weeks. He moved slightly, cuddling in closer to the stone object with which he had collided. In the darkness he had no way of telling that it was the great sarcophagus of Mamose that sheltered him. Thus he lay in the darkness of the tomb, surrounded by the funeral treasures of an emperor, and waited for his own slow but inexorable death.
The monastery of St Frumentius was deserted. The monks had heard the gunfire and the sounds of battle echoing down the gorge, and had gathered up their treasures and fled.
Nicholas ran down the long, empty cloister, pausing to catch his breath at the head of the staircase that led down to the level of the Nile and the Epiphany shrine where he had stored the boats. Panting, he searched the gloom of the deep basin below him into which the sunlight seldom reached, but the moving clouds of silver spray from the twin waterfalls screened the depths. He had no way of telling if Sapper and Royan were down there waiting for him, or if they had run into trouble on the trail.
He adjusted the tattered and bloodstained bandage around his chin, and then started down. Then he heard her voice in the silver mist below him, calling his name, and she came pelting up the slippery, slime-covered stairs towards him.
‘Nicholas! Oh, thank God! I thought you weren’t coming.’ She would have rushed into his embrace, but then she saw his bandaged and blood-smeared face, and she stopped and stared at him, appalled.
‘Sweet Mary!’ she whispered. ‘What happened to you, Nicky?’
‘A little tiff with Jake Helm. Just a scratch, but I am not much good at kissing right now,’ he mumbled, trying to grin around the bandage. ‘You will have to wait for later.’
He put one arm around her shoulders, almost swinging her off her feet, as he turned her to face down the stairs again.
‘Where are the others?’ He hurried her down.
‘They are all here,’ she told him. ‘Sapper and Mek are pumping the boats and loading.’
‘Tessay?’
‘She’s safe.’
They scrambled down the last flight of steps on to the jetty below the Epiphany shrine. The Nile had risen ten feet since Nicholas had last stood there. The river was full and angry, muddy and swift. He could barely make out the cliffs on the far bank through the drifting clouds of spray.
The five Avon boats were drawn up at the edge. Four of them were already fully inflated, and the last one was billowing and swelling as the air was released into it from the compressed air cylinder. Mek and Sapper were packing the ammunition crates into the ready boats and strapping them down under green nylon cargo nets.
/> Sapper looked up at Nicholas and a comical expression of astonishment spread over his bluff features, ‘What the blue bleeding blazes happened to your face?’
‘Tell you about it one day,’ Nicholas promised, and turned to embrace Mek.
‘Thank you, old friend,’ he said sincerely. ‘Your men fought well, and you waited for me.’ Nicholas glanced at the row of wounded guerrillas that lay against the foot of the cliff. ‘How many casualties?’
‘Three dead, and these six wounded. It could have been much worse if Nogo’s men had pushed us harder.’
‘Still, it’s too many,’ said Nicholas.
‘Even one is too many,’ Mek agreed gruffly.
‘Where are the rest of your men?’
‘On the run for the border. Kept just enough of them with me to handle the boats.’ Mek stripped the filthy bandage from Nicholas’s chin. Royan gasped when she saw the injury, but Mek grinned.
‘Looks as though you were chewed by a shark.’
‘That’s right, I was,’ Nicholas agreed.
Mek shrugged. ‘It needs at least a dozen stitches.’ He shouted for one of his men to bring his pack.
‘Sorry, no anaesthetic,’ he warned Nicholas as he forced him to sit on the transom of one of the boats and poured antiseptic straight from the bottle.
Nicholas let out a gasp of pain. ‘Burns, doesn’t it?’ Mek agreed complacently. ‘But just wait until I start sewing.’
‘This kindness will be written down against your name in the golden book,’ Nicholas told him, and with an evil leer Mek broke the seal on a suture pack.
As Mek worked on the wound, pulling the edges together and tugging the thread tight, he spoke quietly so that Nicholas alone could hear. ‘Nogo has at least a full company of men guarding the river downstream. My scouts tell me that he has placed them to cover the trails on both banks.’
‘He doesn’t know that we have boats to run the river, does he?’ Nicholas asked through gritted teeth.
‘I think it is unlikely, but he knows a great deal about our movements. Perhaps he had an informer amongst your workmen.’ Mek paused as he pricked the needle into Nicholas’s flesh, and then went on, ‘And Nogo still has the helicopter. He will spot us on the river as soon as this cloud breaks.’
‘The river is our only escape route. Let’s pray that the weather stays socked in, like this.’
By the time Mek had tied off the last knot and covered Nicholas’s chin with a Steri-Strip plaster, Sapper had finished inflating and loading the last boat.
Four of Mek’s men carried Tessay’s litter to one of the boats. Mek helped her aboard and settled her on the deck, making sure that she had one of the safety straps close at hand. Then he left her and hurried to where his wounded men lay in order to help them into the boats too. Most of them could walk, but two had to be carried.
After that he came back to Nicholas. ‘I see you have found your radio,’ he said, as he glanced at the fibreglass case that Nicholas had slung over his shoulder on its carrying strap.
‘Without it we would be in big trouble.’ Nicholas patted the case affectionately.
‘I will take command of that boat, with Tessay.’
‘Good!’ Nicholas agreed. ‘Royan will go with me in the lead boat.’
‘You had better let me lead,’ Mek said.
‘What do you know about river running?’ Nicholas asked him. ‘I am the only one of us who has ever shot this river before.’
‘That was twenty years ago,’ Mek pointed out.
‘I am an even better man now than I was then,’ Nicholas grinned. ‘Don’t argue, Mek. You come next, and Sapper in the one behind you. Are there any of your men who know the river to command the other two boats?’
‘All my men know the river,’ Mek told him, and shouted his orders. Each of them hurried to the Avon he had been allocated. Nicholas gave Royan a boost over the gunwale of their boat, and then helped his men launch her down the rocky bank. As soon as the hull floated free they scrambled aboard and each man grabbed a paddle.
As they bent to their paddles, Nicholas saw at once that every man of his crew was indeed a riverman, as Mek had boasted. They pulled strongly but smoothly, and the light inflatable craft shot out into the main stream of the Nile.
The Avons were designed to accommodate sixteen, and were lightly loaded. The ammunition cases that held the grave goods from the tomb were bulky but weighed little, and there were not more than a dozen people in any one boat. They all floated high and handled well.
‘Bad water ahead,’ Nicholas told Royan grimly. ‘All the way to the Sudanese border.’ He stood at the steering sweep in the stern, from where he had a good forward view. Royan crouched at his feet, clinging to one of the safety straps and trying to keep out of the way of the oarsmen.
They cut across the current that was scouring the great stone basin below the falls, and Nicholas lined up for the narrow heads through which the river was escaping to the west. He looked up at the sky and saw through the spray that the rain clouds were low and purple. They seemed to sag down upon the tops of the tall cliffs.
‘Luck starting to run our way,’ he told Royan. ‘Even with the helicopter they won’t be able to find us in this weather.’
He glanced at his Rolex and the spray was beading the glass. ‘Couple of hours until nightfall. We should be able to put a few miles of river behind us before we are forced to stop for the night.’
He looked back over his stern and saw the rest of the little flotilla bobbing along behind him. The Avons were reflective yellow in colour and stood out brilliantly even in the mist and murk of the gorge. He lifted his clenched fist high in the signal to advance, and from the following boat Mek repeated the gesture and grinned at him through his beard.
The river grabbed them and they shot through its portals into the narrow, twisted gut of the Nile. The men at the oars stopped paddling, and let the river take them. All they could do now was to help Nicholas to steer her through any desperate moments, and they crouched ready along the gunwales.
The high water in the gorge had covered many of the reefs of rock, but their presence below the surface was clearly marked by the waters that humped up in standing waves or foamed white in the narrows between them. The flood reached up high on either bank, dashing against the cliffs of the sub-gorge. If an Avon overturned, or even if a crew member were thrown overboard, there would be no place on this river to heave-to and pick up survivors.
Nicholas stood high and craned ahead. He had to pick his route well in advance, and once committed he had to steer her through. It all depended on his ability to read the river and judge her moods. He was out of practice, and he had that tight, hard cannonball of fear in the pit of his belly as he put the long sweep over and steered for the first run of fast green water. They went swooping down it, Nicholas holding their bows into it with delicate touches of the sweep, and came out into the bottom of it with all the other boats following them down in sequence.
‘Nothing to it!’ Royan laughed up at him.
‘Don’t say it!’ Nicholas pleaded with her. ‘The bad angel is listening.’ And he lined up for the head of the next set of rapids that raced towards them with terrifying speed.
Nicholas steered through the gap between two outcrops of rock and they shot the barrel, gaining speed down the chute. It was only when they were halfway down that he saw the tall standing wave below them over which the river leaped. He put the sweep across and tried to steer round it, but the river had them firmly in its grip.
Like a hunter taking a fence they shot up the front of the standing wave, and then with a sickening lurch plummeted down the far side into the deep trough. The Avon folded across the middle, the bows almost touching the stern as she tried to pull through the hole in the river surface.
The crew were tumbled over each other and Nicholas would have been catapulted overside if it had not been for his body line and his grip on the steering sweep. Royan flung herself flat on the deck and hung o
n to the safety strap with all her strength as the Avon’s buoyancy exerted itself and the boat bounded high in the air, whipping back elastically into its original shape, then hovered a moment and almost capsized before it crashed back, right side up.
One of the crew had been hurled overboard and was floundering alongside, carried along at the same speed as the flying Avon, so his comrades were able to lean out and haul him back on board. The cargo of ammunition crates had tumbled and shifted, but the nets had prevented any of them from being lost over the side.
‘What did you do that for?’ Royan yelled at him. ‘Just when I was beginning to trust you.’
‘Just testing,’ he yelled back. ‘Wanted to see how tough you really are.’
‘I admit it, I am a sissy,’ she assured him. ‘You really don’t need to do it again.’
Looking back, Nicholas saw Mek’s boat crash through the trough just as they had, but the following craft had enough warning to steer clear and slip through the sides of the run.
He looked ahead again, and his whole existence became the wild waters of the river. His universe was contained within the tall cliffs of the sub-gorge as he battled to bring the racing Avon through. He did not know whether it was spray or rain that stung his cheeks and his wounded chin, and that flew horizontally into his eyes and half-blinded him. At times it was a mixture of the two.
An hour later Nicholas misjudged the rapids again, and they went in sideways and almost capsized. Two of his crew were hurled overboard. Steering fine and leaning outboard they managed to pull one of them from the river, but the other man struck a rock before they could reach him. He went under and did not rise again. None of them spoke or mourned him, for they were all too busy staying alive themselves.
Once Royan shouted up at Nicholas through the rattling spray and the thunder of the river all around them, ‘Helicopter! Can you hear it?’
Half-deafened, he looked up at the lowering grey belly of the clouds that hung at the level of the cliffs, and faintly made out the whistle and flutter of the rotors.
‘Above the cloud!’ he shouted back, wiping the rain and the spray from his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘They will never spot us in this.’