Darren Craske - The Eleventh Plague

In that room, Professor Pollyanna North was bound to a wooden chair, her face covered with a rough sack. As Faroud strode over to her and ripped it off, Polly gasped for air, her eyes squinting madly. She looked around the room in a daze.

'Welcome to my camp, Professor,' said Faroud.

Polly spat in his face.

'I see you are not yet house-broken,' he said, wiping the spit from his cheek.

'You Scarab bastard! You wrecked my dig site! Your thieves have set my project back by six months!' Polly screamed, malice dripping from every word like hot candle wax. 'And you didn't even take anything!'

'On the contrary, Professor,' said Faroud. 'We took you.'

Listening as best he could on the other side of the wall, Quaint's attention was ensnared by this newcomer. So she was a professor – and a feisty one at that. But a professor of what? What could the Clan Scarabs possibly want with a professor?

'You're filth!' Polly snarled, her anger just about keeping her tears at bay. 'You scared off my entire crew! Do you know how long it took me to recruit that damn team?'

'The show of force was necessary to maintain your compliance,' said Aksak Faroud. 'My employer told me of your commitment, Professor…how you fight with honour to preserve the secrets of my country's past. For that you have my respect, but I know that you are an intelligent woman…and not to mention tenacious. No woman would come to Egypt without spirit, and no woman would dig so tirelessly in a place such as Umkaza unless they held a strong love for the land and its history. Your mother was Egyptian, was she not?'

'Did you bring me out here to discuss my family tree?' stormed Polly. 'What are we going to do next, swap embarrassing childhood stories? What could a group of thieving murderers like you want from an archaeological site? We weren't causing any harm, and we've got the permission of the Egyptian government to dig there!'

'Permission is not my employer's concern, Professor…you are,' Faroud said. 'He wishes you to pack up your equipment from Umkaza and move on. The city of Anuk-Suresh has many treasures yet to be uncovered.'

'Anuk-Suresh is old news! Its people were smart. They made their treasures easy to find to keep the lazy diggers busy, distracting them from other more plentiful sites hidden elsewhere,' Polly said. 'That might work for the rest of my colleagues, but I don't follow the pack, and when someone tells me not to dig in Umkaza, it only makes me wonder why. My guess is that there is something worth finding there, after all…something I've yet to uncover, and I'll bet your "employer" is just trying to scare me off so he can get his hands on it! Who is it? Alberto San Marco, that slimy little snake? Or is it that hairy old bear Horace Arlow? He's been after the Pharaoh's Cradle almost as long as I have!'

'Those names mean nothing to me,' replied Faroud. 'You need not concern yourself with the whys and wherefores of your capture, Professor North.'

On the other side of the wall, Quaint's eyes widened. Professor North? Polly North? Quaint retained a healthy interest in Egyptology from his youth, and Pollyanna North's name was known to him. Her reputation was impressive, but not as impressive as her present display of bravery.

'If this is the part where you expect me to plead for my life, then you'll have a long wait! Just do what you have to do…kill me or let me go – either way, just get on with it,' yelled Polly.

'I have no wish to kill you, Professor. My services were hired merely to relay a warning – stay away from Umkaza. For good. Or next time I will not ask you so politely,' said Aksak Faroud.

'You could have warned me off in Umkaza. Why am I here?' asked Polly of her captor. 'Not that I even know where "here' is because some idiot stuck a bag on my head!'

'You are in Bara Mephista, Professor,' confirmed Faroud.

'The old Nubian settlement?' Polly asked. 'That's quite a trek from Umkaza. I must have been unconscious for some time.'

'For the sake of my eardrums, thankfully so,' said Faroud.

Polly replied with a sarcastic smile. 'So this employer you mentioned…I didn't realise you lot loaned your services out for hire. Since when did the Clan Scarabs become someone else's lapdogs?'

'The Scarabs are nobody's lapdogs, woman!' shouted Faroud. The back of his hand came from nowhere, striking Polly's left cheek. She crashed to the floor, still bound to the chair. Multicoloured flashes burst before her eyes. Faroud clenched his shaking fists tight, as if he held the entirety of his rage within them and he was desperate for it not to escape. He glared with furious venom at Polly, but then noticed a thin crease of blood at the corner of her mouth.

'No! I did not mean-'

He rushed over and righted the chair back onto its four legs. Grabbing the hem of his ragged robes, he dabbed at her mouth, wiping the blood as Polly struggled against him. 'Professor…I am truly sorry, I…I lost control of myself. Please forgive me.'

Quaint looked around quizzically. Was he hearing things? Had the Clan Scarab leader really just apologised? But that made no sense at all. It seemed that the rules of this game were changing by the second.

'Faroud, what the hell's going on in there?' he yelled.

'This is none of your concern, Cornelius Quaint,' snapped Faroud.

In an exact mirror of Quaint's expression, Professor North frowned deep grooves in her forehead as she tried to measure the voice of the newcomer next door. Who was he? Cornelius Quaint, the Scarab had said. It was certainly an odd name – ancient Roman in origin, if she was not mistaken. But was he to be a help or a hindrance? An enemy or an ally? Perhaps he was the Scarab's mysterious "employer", and the man that sought to steal the Pharaoh's Cradle out from under her nose?

'Sounds like the Professor touched a nerve, Faroud,' continued Quaint. 'Someone is pulling your strings! That Mr Joyce you mentioned? The Hades Consortium, perhaps?'

'You do not know of what you speak, Englishman – so silence your tongue before I rip it out!' yelled Faroud through the wall.

'What has the Consortium promised you, Aksak?' asked Quaint, with no intention of silencing his tongue. 'Do your lot get the spoils of war once the Nile is done with? Or perhaps they just appealed to your sense of fear. Is that it? They scared you into doing their dirty work for them?' Quaint knew that he was risking a beating by provoking the Egyptian's temper – but that was exactly his intent. If Faroud concentrated his anger upon him, it meant that he was no longer aiming it in Polly North's direction. 'Don't take it personally; the Hades Consortium has a thousand little thugs like you on their payroll. To them you are nothing!'

Faroud's displeasure exploded at Quaint's interjection, and he aimed his rage at the stone wall separating them. 'I am warning you for the last time, Mr Quaint! Shut your mouth or one of my guards will do it for you!'

'It's perfectly acceptable to hurt me then?' rattled Quaint unabated. 'But that isn't so for the Professor, is it? You've got orders not to damage the merchandise, am I right? So what do you think will happen when the Consortium discovers that you've been a bad boy? They won't be best pleased, you know.'

'I told you to shut up, Quaint! This does not concern you,' yelled Faroud, dusting down his vest to occupy his temper. 'Nasbek! Arus!'

Immediately, the two Scarabs guarding Quaint entered the room.

Faroud boomed with all his might, his eyes bulging in their sockets. 'Bring that loose-lipped Englishman in here. I want him where I can see him…and if he gives you any trouble, please hurt him.'

'Yes, Aksak,' agreed the first hulking Scarab.

'At once, Aksak,' agreed the other, a dour sort with a nasty scar bisecting his face.