Volodimir Vladko - Descendants of the Scythians

The archeologist adjusted his eyeglasses, looked round again and began:

“’The one who wants… to find the treasure will do it… if he keeps going further and deeper into the cave… until he gets all the way to the spot shown on the map. He’ll find four heads and three horses to guide him… Beyond the torches pointing upwards and… torches pointing downwards he will find the fifth head and a boar. May the gods help him. He will find the treasure there. He will find there a lot of gold and… will dig it up… as I, Pronis, did. I found that gold and left it in its place. The one who reads this is a lucky man. He’ll take the map… and will find the gold in the walls as it was discovered by me, Pronis.’ That’s all, friends.”

In the deep silence that fell, one could hear the loud breathing of the dog.

Dmitro Borisovich wiped his eyeglasses again, looking at the listeners inquiringly with his myopic eyes.

“What do you make out of it?” he asked at last.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s not just a joke. It appears to be quite a serious document… a sort of testament,” said Ivan Semenovich.

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean that it has some very important information. It speaks about ‘a lot of gold in the walls,’ for example,” Dmitro Borisovich said as though thinking aloud.

“As long as it says something about gold in the walls, then we geologists must be all ears,” replied Ivan Semenovich. “Incidentally, the clues the parchment gives us shed light on some other things, too.”

“Like what?”

“I told you once that in the past attempts had been made to dig for gold in the Sharp Mount, remember?”

“Yes, we do,” affirmed Lida.

“It came to nothing then as negligible amount of gold had been found. The poor veins disappeared as close to the surface as the copper ones did… But if this parchment is accurate, and it is not just gold artifacts but real deposits, then…”

“Then what?”

“Then, apparently the gold veins must reappear exactly like the copper ones somewhere inside our naughty mount. Anyway, it opens some new vistas we didn’t expect…”

Ivan Semenovich grew pensive, reflecting upon his own supposition.

“But, Dmitro Borisovich, is Pronis really a Scythian name? It seems to have… I don’t pretend to know anything about it, but nevertheless… it seems to have a Greek ring to it…” Lida hazarded a guess.

“It does, beyond any doubt, sound Greek,” the archeologist supported Lida’s guess.

“And isn’t the language of the text Greek as well, even though there are foreign words in it?”

“So what of it?”

“What about the Scythians then? Where do they come in here? You said it was a Scythian document, didn’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, what I had in mind was that it has come down to us from the time the Scythians lived here in the vicinity of the Sharp Mount. In other words, I was referring to its age. That’s one thing. Second, proceeding from this fact, I assumed that…”

“All right, if it comes from the Scythians, why is it written in Greek and why is there a Greek name in it?” persisted the tenacious girl.

“As a matter of fact, some ancient Greeks could have found their way to this area too… say, some merchants. The ancient Greeks travelled very widely in general… But why should you pick on me, Lida, pestering me with all these questions? I’ve just hazarded a guess, quite plausible to my mind. Of course, I can’t prove it now with hard fact. But you keep battering me like a tiresome opponent in a scholarly debate.”

“Oh no, Dmitro Borisovich! The reason I’m asking all these questions is because I just don’t understand.”

“Besides,” said the archeologist, “there are some incomprehensible passages in this text.”

“Like where?” asked Ivan Semenovich.

“Well, for example here. What can it mean: ‘torches pointing upwards’ and ‘torches pointing downwards’? What are these ‘four heads’ and ‘three horses’? And further on — ‘the fifth head and a boar’? What did the writer mean by this?”

“Maybe it’s some kind of a code…” the girl hazarded another guess.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Then suddenly Artem’s voice rang out triumphantly:

“I know what kind of heads he means! The heads carved into the walls of the cave, some of which we’ve already found. And when we go deeper into it, we’re sure to find the rest the text mentions.”

“What about horses and a boar then?” Lida voiced her doubts.

“If we make a point of looking for them, we’re sure to find them too,” Artem replied with conviction. “Do you have anything else to suggest by way of explanation?”

“No, I don’t,” the girl admitted in all frankness.

Dmitro Borisovich began fingering his beard pensively, a sure indication of concentration when he was thinking over a problem.

“You may be right,” he uttered. “In any case, in our exploration of the cave, we’ll have to keep your interesting idea in mind. At this moment, Artem’s hypothesis is the only workable suggestion as to how the mystery of those heads and boars could be solved… An ingenious thought, my young friend!”

Artem could not help smiling contentedly.

“Nevertheless it does not offer a comprehensive solution,” the archeologist went on. “How should we interpret these torches for instance?”

“I don’t know,” honestly admitted Artem. “I can’t figure it out.”

“I don’t think the main problem lies here,” Ivan Semenovich cut in. “The heads, horses and boars might really be a reference to the pictures on the walls. Such a solution can be easily accepted. But the main thing — the enigmatic map mentioned in the text — where is it? The text itself doesn’t suffice to arrive at the final solution. The writer himself continually insists on the necessity of using some map. One gets the impression that those who will read the text will necessarily have the map as well. It is this map that is so conspicuously lacking. Could it have been put into the chest too?”

“Impossible. We examined it so thoroughly,” said Lida.

“Let’s have another look.”

But the new meticulous search did not yield anything. The chest was, beyond any doubt, absolutely empty except for a thin layer of fine dust at the bottom. Unfortunately this very dust led them to disheartening conclusion. What if the map had been drawn on another piece of parchment? What if that other piece of parchment had already decayed in the chest? This thin layer of dust could very well be its remnants… That could never be determined now…

“And what if we go reconnoitering without any map?” Artem asked hesitantly, for he was eager to find a way-out of this dead end.

“Nothing will come of it,” Dmitro Borisovich replied gloomily. “There are innumerable passages and corridors there. How will we know which way to go? The exploration of the cave without a map will take too much time…”

They were sitting around the table now. Dmitro Borisovich would not let the notebook out of his hands: it was as though he were afraid of losing it the way he had lost the parchment. Lida was staring pensively out the window.

There, beyond the hillock where she had been playing with Diana earlier in the day, the slopes of the Sharp Mount with its remarkable unexplored cave rose high. There, in the cave, if one were to believe Pronis, gold deposits were to be found… How fascinating! All these developments were more like an adventure story than real life.

Ivan Semenovich’s train of thought was of a different kind. As a sober, experienced geologist, he realized that the unexpected find made by Artem and Dmitro Borisovich necessitated the introduction of certain changes into their prospecting activities. Since the ancient manuscript really did speak of gold deposits, it would be foolish or even criminal not to try to locate them. Of course, Ivan Semenovich viewed things from a different point of view than the two young people or even Dmitro Borisovich, who was prone to be over-eager. The young people were seeking romance. Artem and Lida, after hearing stories about the Scythians, and learning of the enigmatic Pronis, all those heads, horses, boars and torches, were immediately thrilled by the suspense of the undertaking. As for Dmitro Borisovich, he was perfectly content with just the bronze chest and whatever other archeological finds they came across.