Darren Craske - The Eleventh Plague

'Perfectly,' said Quaint. 'But you see I have a little tradition of my own.' Beckoning the Scarab towards him, he grabbed the back of Sebul's head and slammed it into the bar, breaking his nose. He reeled as Quaint followed with a powerful open-handed punch to his jaw. For good measure, the conjuror kicked his legs out from underneath him and slammed his elbow onto the back of the Scarab's neck.

Sebul slumped onto the sawdust-covered floor – very bloodied and quite extremely unconscious.

A low growl from many throats sounded behind him, and Quaint was conscious of being surrounded by Scarabs. He turned to face the mob, all armed with threatening glares – as well as hooks, metal spikes and daggers. Dirty and dishevelled, and stinking like a pack of wild dogs, the men closed upon him.

A mental checklist of his options blazed across Quaint's mind – fleetingly, for he had none to consider. He measured the crowd gathering around him as an uneasy silence quickly settled. The air held the scent of violence and he was fully aware that it was at his expense.

'Don't tell me you all want the time,' he said. 'Don't any of you have a watch?'

There came no reply.

Staring down the crowd, Quaint held his ground, continuing his charade of confidence as best as his spent nerves could manage.

Eventually, the Clan Scarabs' anger subsided. They could not quite measure the stranger in their midst, and none of them were too eager to get a helping of what Sebul had just had. They soon returned to their business as if nothing had happened.

'You enjoy chancing your luck, stranger,' noted the bartender.

'Every day,' Quaint smirked.

'Well, I would not push it…luck does not last long in Bara Mephista.'

'I'll bear that in mind,' said Quaint. 'So…I presume you are the proprietor of this establishment?'

The bartender's double chin wobbled as he nodded. 'And I must say, you speak Arabic very well for an Englishman.'

'How do you know I'm English?' asked Quaint.

The bartender measured the conjuror from top to toe. 'Just a wild guess.'

The tavern full of Scarabs was still in shock after seeing Sebul so deftly quashed, and they listened intently to the unfolding conversation as the bartender slid a stained glass across the bar.

'The last of our red wine. Drink it and go,' he said. 'You are not welcome here.'

Quaint grinned shamelessly. 'Clearly. But I'm not here for trouble. I only want to see your leader.'

'Aksak!' snapped a Scarab behind him.

'Yes, that's the chap,' said Quaint, with misplaced cheer. 'Mr Aksak.'

'We call our leader Aksak!' yelled another.

'Aksak Faroud!' said yet another, with a defiant stomp of his foot on the floor – causing his friends to mirror him.

'That's what I said,' Quaint answered. 'We're old pals, you see. I was in the neighbourhood and just thought I'd pop in and see him. Good old Aksak Faroud…what a champ!'

'Friend of the Aksak's?' mumbled a chorus of Scarabs.

'How would someone like you know the Aksak, stranger?' asked a pockmarked, scab-infested man as he spat upon the floor – causing his friends to mirror him.

'Why…from our old robbing days in Cairo, of course,' answered Quaint, lies trickling from his tongue – a talent he held in great esteem. 'I'll bet he's not changed a bit. Still a grumpy old sourpuss, is he? The look of the Devil about him and rarely a smile unless a woman is in the room?'

The pack of Scarabs went silent. Strangely, this description of their leader seemed perfectly acceptable, and they required no further validation of Quaint's identity.

Cornelius Quaint was not one of the most beguiling conjurors in Europe for nothing. His bravado had talked him out of (and into) a lot of trouble over the years, and if there was one thing that he was supremely gifted at, it was being able to fool an audience. And bloody spectacular at it he was too.

'Aksak Faroud is not here,' the bartender said. 'He is away on urgent Scarab business in Umkaza.'

'I'll wait,' said Quaint, throwing a dried date into his mouth from a bowl at the bar. Finally he would have someone to ask questions of. This man, Aksak Faroud, surely he was a reasonable sort of chap. Quaint pulled out his deck of cards. 'Why don't we pass the time with a little illusion I like to call the Equivoque Principle?'

The Footsteps of History

PROFESSOR POLLYANNA NORTH was an educated woman.

In her late thirties, she had already made a name for herself as one of only a handful of female archaeologists working in service to Queen Victoria, and this fact alone made her the object of much attention. 'A rare gem of a woman' and 'One of the Empire's finest exported treasures' were just two of the niceties that her peers had bestowed upon her. Polly was under a great deal of pressure not to come back to England empty handed on this dig, especially as the Queen herself had seen fit to honour her at a forthcoming gala dinner. That would normally have sent tingles of excitement up and down the woman's spine, but she currently had nothing of worth to present.

The abandoned district of Umkaza was some miles away from Bara Mephista on the outskirts of the low-lying flatlands to the west of the River Nile. Abandoned years before, it had become home to a small group of archaeologists and historians. Polly's benefactor was convinced that Umkaza held a glorious treasure and he had invested a great deal of money in this venture to discover it. Polly was desperate not to let him down, but after digging with her small crew for some time yet finding little of value, she was rapidly running out of both hope and luck – in equal measure. Rebuilding, reconstructing and retracing History's footsteps were not tasks for the impatient, but even Polly's vaunted endurance was sorely waning of late.

The Professor was up to her armpits in sand and dust when she became distracted by several of her young crew running up to her, gathering her up in their excited swarm as they led her to one of the many deep pits dug at the far end of the marked site. She placed her hands on her hips and scowled at the two excited men in the pit, their filthy faces smudged with dust and dirt.

'What on earth is all the fuss about, Mal? Have you found something?' she asked.

'Yes, ma'am!' said the smaller of the two Egyptians. 'Something quite odd.'

'I'm sufficiently intrigued, Mal,' said Polly. A small crowd gathered around her, all eager to hear her assessment. She squatted down onto her knees and leaned into the pit, as Mal handed her what he had discovered in it. It was unmistakably a bone. Removing a magnifying glass from the top pocket of her blouse, Polly lifted the bone closer to her eyes and blew the remaining dust from it. 'Approximate length eighteen inches…width: just less than an inch.'

'There are lots of them down here, ma'am. The deeper we dig, the more we find. Perhaps as many as fifteen, maybe more,' said Mal. 'What animal do you think it might be? Horse? Camel?'

Polly North clenched her jaw. 'Human.' The word was like a crash of thunder to those crewmembers within earshot. 'It's a femur – a thigh bone, to those unfamiliar with anatomy. How many of these things did you say were down there?'

'At least fifteen, ma'am,' replied Mal. 'But there are lots of other bones too of all shapes and sized, piled one of top of the other. We will have to dig a little deeper to know how many for certain.'

'Don't,' said Polly. 'Leave them where they are, Mal. Fifteen bodies in a pit, piled on top of each other can only mean one thing. This is a mass grave, and it's never good news to go excavating a mass grave, trust me.'

'Why not, Professor? These bones…might they not be ancient Nubian in origin? There are so many in one place; if this is a sacrificial site…perhaps they might be a clue. Perhaps they might eventually help us find "The Pharaoh's Cradle?"'