The Tiger Warrior (39 page)

“My uncle was being secretive, but for good reason. He knew that once he’d been targeted, so would all his immediate family. It has always been the way. If one of the twelve deviated, his entire clan would pay the price. That was the way the First Emperor had meted out his version of justice. And since there’s nobody else left in my uncle’s family, that means me.”

“Okay, Katya,” Costas said. “I take it you’re on about those tattooed guys whose bodies we found near the shrine.”

“Jack told me,” Katya said quietly. “How many of them were there?”

“We counted six bodies. Apparently, seven had gone into the jungle, arriving by helicopter. They were all Chinese, wearing shirts with the logo of a mining corporation, INTACON. Bids have been put in to strip-mine the Rampa hills for bauxite, and the local Kóya people are used to seeing prospectors. All it does is drive them further into the hands of the Maoist terrorists who use the jungle as their hideaway. The Maoists occasionally attack the mining parties because it solidifies their support among the tribals, and as a result the police turn a blind eye when the mining groups go in armed to the teeth. What we saw at the shrine suggests that the Chinese got inside the cave, found and murdered your uncle, then were ambushed on the way out. Their bodies had been partly stripped and mutilated by the Maoists, and we could see the skin. They all had the same black tattoo on the upper left arm.”

Katya scribbled on her notepad. “Like this?”

Costas nodded. “Exactly like that. Like a tiger head.”

“Tiger warriors?” Jack said.

Katya shook her head. “Only one of the twelve is called that. He goes out to do the dirty work, the newest of them, as a rite of initiation. The others call themselves the Brotherhood. And the Chinese you saw were mere foot soldiers, lesser clan members bound by birth to serve the Brotherhood.”

“We encountered three Maoists, and one of them wasn’t quite dead.” Costas pointed at his bandaged shoulder. “I’m supposed to be on holiday, not nursing a gunshot wound. You need to come clean on this whole thing, Katya.”

“Only six bodies,” she said. “So one escaped?”

“Apparently, he made his way back through the jungle to the riverbank where the helicopter had landed. The Kóya we spoke to couldn’t distinguish him from the other Chinese. But they did say the man was carrying a scoped bolt-action rifle in an old leather wrapping, an odd weapon for the jungle.”

“Not odd at all,” Katya murmured. “Not for him.”

“You know this guy?”

Katya looked hard at Jack. “Do you think he saw what you saw? What was in the shrine? The carvings, the inscription?”

“It’s possible,” Jack replied quietly. “And your uncle could have told them. It’s possible he was tortured.”

“It’s certain, you mean,” Katya said.

“When Licinius carved that inscription on his own tomb, he was probably living in a twilight world of his own. In his mind, the jewel may have become part of the imagery of his devotion to Fabius, the comrade he had virtually deified on that battle scene carving. Whether or not he was consciously leaving clues for some future treasure hunter, he chose to use that word
sappheiros
, for lapis lazuli. For anyone already on the trail, that would have had instant meaning.”

“Is this guy somewhere here now?” Costas peered at the shadowy ridge to the west, where the sun had nearly set. “The seventh one, who survived the Maoists? Are we in someone’s crosshairs?”

Katya pursed her lips. “INTACON has mining concessions in Kyrgyzstan, in the Tien Shan Mountains.” She pointed at the snowy peaks in the distance. “Those men whose bodies you found were employees of the company, but all of them have clan connections with the Brotherhood. They have helicopters, and tough horses they use for prospecting expeditions, a famous breed originating in Mongolia. If he’s here, he’s watching us now. They need to see what I’ve found, and where we’re going next. The killing comes later.”

“Great,” Costas said. “That’s just great. So we’re dealing with a mining company? Is that the modern-day face of these warriors?”

“INTACON’s their most profitable operation.” She turned to Jack. “How much time do we have?”

“A U.S. Marine Apache helicopter is due here in thirty minutes.” He checked his watch. “The Embraer should be fueled up and waiting on the runway at Bishkek. The supplies we need are already stowed.”

“Okay.” Katya looked at Costas. “Those horses I just mentioned. They’re the blood-sweating heavenly horses of Chinese mythology. According to legend, whoever rode them could never fail in battle. The horses were highly prized by the First Emperor, and helped to convince his subjects of his invincibility.”

“Blood-sweating?” Costas said dubiously.

“They’re called the
akhal-teke
, and they’re incredibly rare, one of the purest breeds to survive from antiquity. They’re renowned for their speed and stamina. It’s thought the appearance of sweating blood is caused by a parasitic disease endemic to the breed, but nobody knows for sure.”

“You ever seen one?” Costas asked.

Katya gave him a scornful look. “I’m the daughter of a Kazakh warlord, remember? My father made me learn to ride them when I was a girl. The
akhal-teke
lived in a few isolated valleys, in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, bred in secrecy by families who maintained the purity of the breed. My father’s horse-breeder said his lineage went back to the time of the First Emperor, who sent out emissaries to the valleys to swear the breeders to eternal vigilance, to ensure that the heavenly horses were waiting for his bodyguard when he once again entered the mortal world. In China today there’s excitement about the breed, a symbol of national unity and strength from before the communist era.”

“So did your riding master pass on any other wisdom?” Costas asked.

“He said that those with the blood of the tiger in their veins can sense the
akhal-teke
, and that the horses sense them too. He said that when the warriors prepared for battle they came up here, past the Tien Shan Mountains to Issyk-Kul, and summoned them with their war drums. The
akhal-teke
came galloping through the mountain passes and along the shores of the lake, foaming and sweating and spraying the air with a mist of blood.”

“This gets better every second,” Costas said. “Is this in your genes too?”

Katya looked pensively at the lake. “I feel things up here. Maybe it’s the thin air. I never sleep well, and that’s when dreamworld and reality intertwine. I’ve woken thinking my heartbeat was the ground shaking with the pounding of hooves and thudding drums. As if the warriors were coming for me too.”

“Don’t go all Genghis Khan on us, Katya.”

She gave him a tired smile, then looked out over the lake again. “Lying half-awake at night, I’ve been seeing images of my father again, of him when I was a girl, when he was still an art history professor in Bishkek. I’d hardly thought of him since I left the Black Sea almost two years ago. My mind had shut him out.”

Jack glanced at Katya, wondering at the complex emotions she had felt since her father’s death: grief, release, anger with her father, with herself, with him. The best thing for him to do was to say nothing, to let the process take its course. Costas saw Jack’s reticence, and looked at Katya as he spoke. “Your father, what he’d become, was sitting on a sunken Russian submarine full of ICBMs,” he said. “He’d have sold a few to al-Qaeda, and that’s just for starters. A lot of innocent people are alive today because of what we did.” He got up, stretched, wiped the dust off the back of his shorts and turned toward a hollow in the hill behind them. “Time for me to disappear behind some rocks.” He gave Jack a ghoulish look. “Must be all that sheep grease.”

“Be careful.” Katya waved him off, and turned back. Jack saw that Altamaty had stopped the tractor beside the yurt, and the smoke from his cooking fire had gone out. Two rucksacks were stacked outside the tent. “It seems a long time since we sat together by the shore of the Black Sea,” he said quietly. Katya nodded, but said nothing. Jack was silent for a moment, then pointed at the yurt. “Are you still sure about coming along with us?”

She nodded. “Altamaty too. He respects your military experience, but he said Afghanistan’s a different story. He was in the valley we’re going to, as a marine conscript during the Soviet war in the 1980s. His helicopter was shot down and he was the only survivor. He fought off repeated attacks but ran out of ammunition. The mujahideen spared him because he was Kyrgyz. He lived with them in the mountains for more than a year.”

Jack nodded. “Good. Someone else is coming with us, a guy called Pradesh. He’s in charge of the underwater excavations at Arikamedu, and flew with us to Bishkek. He’s a captain in the Indian Army Engineers, with combat experience in Kashmir. He’s also an expert on ancient mining technology. He was with us in the jungle. I really want IMU activities to expand out here. If Altamaty’s serious about taking on the underwater survey at the eastern end of the lake, then he and Pradesh might be just the people we need to get things moving here. Pradesh speaks Russian. I’d like to see how they get on.”

There was a commotion from the rocks behind them. “Hey, guys,” Costas shouted. “Come and check this out.”

Jack stood up and turned around. “Do we really want to?”

“Just avoid the gully on your left. I’m a bit farther down.”

Katya got up, and the two of them picked their way over the rocks toward Costas. Jack had his compact diving flashlight with him, and played it into the gloom. He saw Costas hunched over a cleft in the rock, and they slid down a small scree slope toward him. They were in a hollow in the side of the hill, with the lake just visible to the north, the ridges of the ravine behind them to the west and the snowcapped peaks of the mountains to the south.

“Well?” Jack said, squatting cautiously beside Costas.

“I was walking back from washing my hands in the stream, and I saw this,” Costas said. He pointed at two jagged rocks embedded in the side of the ridge, a crack between them. “There’s something metal stuck in there. It’s probably modern, but I’ve got ancient swords on the brain after seeing that Chinese halberd.”

Katya knelt down beside him, and Jack shone the flashlight. It was a length of metal, embedded in the crack, just like a snapped-off blade. Katya put her finger out and touched it. She grasped and pulled it, but it would not budge. “Look at that silvery stuff on my fingers. That’s chromium,” she said excitedly. “The metal beneath is oxidized, but it was once high-grade steel, hand-forged. The Chinese plated their best blades with chromium to stop them rusting. This is an ancient Chinese sword blade. A fantastic find, Costas.”

“Just give me a bowl of sheep grease, then send me out into the hills,” Costas murmured. He peered closely. “It looks like someone jammed it into the rock, to break it off Maybe they needed a shorter blade.”

Jack was thinking hard. “Any idea what kind of sword?”

Katya felt along the blade. “I know exactly what kind,” she replied quietly. “A long, straight cavalry sword, a type favored by the Mongols. A type that was only really practicable on horseback, so if you were on foot and desperate for a weapon you might want to break it to make a more useful thrusting sword.”

Jack gasped. He remembered the tomb from the jungle. The warrior in the carving, the adversary of the Romans in the battle scene.
The warrior with the tiger headdress
. He turned to Katya. “You don’t mean a gauntlet sword, do you? A
pata?”

She nodded. “I grew up with images of these swords all around me. The gauntlet was always gleaming golden, in the shape of a tiger. That’s what’s missing here. That’s why I was so stunned when you told me you had one. I knew your
pata
must be the sword of a tiger warrior, but I couldn’t be sure of the connection. Well, here it is in front of us. I’m certain of it. The gauntlet from this blade is the one John Howard found inside that shrine in the jungle.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Jack said.

Katya touched the blade again, and breathed out slowly. “So the legend
is
true,” she whispered.

“What is?” Costas said.

“Another part of the legend.” She looked up and around. Jack sensed her apprehension. “We should move away from here.” She picked up a flat stone and put it over the crack between the rocks, concealing the blade. She led them back up the hill to the ledge where they had been sitting, where she had left the book. “The legend of those who were dispatched to destroy the guardian of the tomb, the one who had transgressed,” she said. “The one who followed his prey relentlessly over mountain and through jungle, whose successors maintained the watch over the centuries, seeking that which had been taken from the tomb of their emperor. The tiger warrior.”

“And the sword?” Jack asked.

“The
pata
sword of the first tiger warrior was taken in battle by the
raumanas
, the Romans. The legend tells that when it is recovered, the tiger warrior will once again surge forward and defeat all, and find what he has been seeking.”

“Before you ask, it’s secure, locked in my cabin on
Seaquest II,”
Jack said.

“I can feel it again now,” Katya murmured. “What you once said to me, Jack, about walking into the past, seeing it in your mind’s eye. I felt it when I was searching among those boulders with Altamaty, looking at those rock carvings made by my ancestors. But touching that blade has done something else for me. It feels exhilarating.”

“That’s when I get frightened,” Costas murmured.

Jack turned toward the lake. Starlight speckled across its surface, like phosphorescence left by a boat’s wake, a ghostly trail from the past. He felt the tingle on his skin again. Once, an Innu hunter in the Arctic had told him that the tingle you feel in these places is the divine wind, a wind of stupendous speed that you hardly feel because the air is so thin. Another Innu had laughed, and said it was just the cold. Jack had often thought about that when he had been in high mountains. Maybe it was just dizziness, oxygen deprivation. And this time it was an uneasy feeling, something that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He looked toward the mountains to the south, a forbidding wall of rock and snow. That was where Licinius must have gone. He sensed the Roman stumbling away from this ravine, glancing at his companions as they disappeared across the lake to the east, then turning to the mountain passes, running hard, every sinew in his body straining to a breaking point. Jack turned back toward the dark ridge behind them, and looked hard. A distant throbbing became a roar, and the landing lights of a helicopter swept over the ridge as it headed down to the shoreline.