David Gibbins - The Tiger warrior

“It’s all about the monsoon, isn’t it?” Costas said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, why a legionary looking for fellow Romans might not go to this place at the mouth of the Indus, Barygaza,” he said, pointing at the map. “It’s a lot closer to Egypt. But ships can sail there from the Red Sea pretty well year round, hugging the coast, sometimes taking a direct open-sea route during the monsoon season. There was no need for a permanent western presence at Barygaza, to maintain the port during the off-season. The native traders could do that. But the south of India was a different story. I take it the Egyptian shippers only got there and back during the monsoon season, taking the open-sea route across the Indian Ocean?”

Jack nodded. “The coastal route down western India was too treacherous. The author of the Periplus makes that pretty clear. It was like the Skeleton Coast of west Africa, beset with reefs and infested with pirates.”

“So for half the year Arikamedu and the other south Indian ports are empty of business. But it’s crucial that they operate during the sailing season. You need people there during the off-season, your own people, people you trust. That’s my point. If you’re going to search for fellow Romans in India, you go south, not west. That’s what our traveler would have been told. And that’s what this is all leading to, isn’t it? We’re talking about a grizzled old legionary who wants to make contact. Maybe he’s too ashamed to go home, but something drives him to try, some hope, a dream.”

“Maybe he had a family, all those years ago in Rome before he marched off to war,” Aysha said. “They were citizen-soldiers. They had a life before joining up.”

“We can only speculate,” Jack said. “Maybe he had a dream, cherished over all those years of captivity. Going to Barygaza might have put him on a ship to Egypt, yet with little foreknowledge of what to expect, committing him to discovering a truth he may never have wanted. But going to the south of India, to Arikamedu, would have put him directly in contact with other Romans. They would have told him of the civil wars, of the new order, the sweeping away of all that had been before, the passing of the Rome he had known. Maybe he would have had some hint of this from traders they’d encountered on the Silk Route, but he needed to know for certain. Maybe he knew all along that a return voyage could never be more than a fantasy, laden with disappointment and grief. But he still had to make contact, a yearning that could only be satisfied by talking to those who had come from the world he had left.”

Hiebermeyer peered at Jack. “It sounds as if Katya’s colleague might have been following this trail. Did he go farther south?”

Jack pursed his lips. “He was planning an expedition to the tribal peoples of eastern India. Katya said he’d had a revelation about some character in Hindu mythology, a Roman connection. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, but he was secretive about it, didn’t want her to get involved. Katya thinks it was here, just in from the Godavari River Delta.” Jack pointed to a spot north of Arikamedu, in from the east coast of India. “He was going to reveal everything to Katya when he got back. He was due at the Transoxiana Conference, but never made it. That was almost four months ago.”

“Is any of his research published?” Hiebermeyer asked.

“No. He was always secretive. Katya said he always seemed to regret anything he revealed. He was suspicious of everyone around him. And it wasn’t just a scholar with unorthodox ideas battling against the academic establishment. She said it was as if he had some great secret. He thought he was being followed. He always seemed to be putting people off the scent. Katya said he’d been like that as long as she could remember.”

“So how can we trust what he told Katya?” Hiebermeyer asked.

“Because he’s her uncle,” Jack replied.

“Her uncle!” Costas exclaimed. “Good God. This gets more mysterious by the minute. Uncles tell their nieces things, don’t they? And they’re both archaeologists, linguists. He must have let her in on a bit more of the secret. Didn’t she say anything to you?”

“She said he was like one of the Silk Route explorers of a hundred years ago, searching for an elusive treasure he could never seem to find.”

“What treasure, Jack?”

Jack paused. “You’re right. Katya knew more than she was letting on, but I wasn’t going to press her. One thing did happen, though. In the hotel at the conference she showed me her uncle’s work on Chitral. It was his doctoral thesis, one of the few times he wrote anything down. She hadn’t read the section before about the legend of the god-king called Haljit Singh, Tiger Hand. When she read that, she visibly paled. I told her about an artifact I had and where it came from, and she nearly fainted. After that she said nothing. End of topic. But she was more troubled than usual. I think there are dark forces at play. Someone who wants her uncle stopped. And that was when she began to get seriously worried about his whereabouts.”

“So is that really why we’re going to the jungle, Jack? To find Katya’s uncle? To find what he was after? The elusive treasure?”

Jack stared at the map for a moment, then looked out of the lab at the open door of his day cabin. “There’s more to it than that. A lot more.” He glanced at the clock. “We’re due at Arikamedu early tomorrow morning. Before that, there’s something I want you all to see. A little treasure trove of my own.”

The great bronze doors of the chamber swung shut, and the heat and smell of the desert were instantly gone. The man inside pressed the remote control, and a thin shaft of light lit up the long black slab of the table and the high recesses of the ceiling above. Then it was gone, and darkness enveloped him, a darkness so complete it seemed to suppress his very being, to make him at one with the elemental force around him. He was sitting cross-legged on the cool marble floor, his palms turned upward in the lotus position, the silk of his robe sliding against his skin when he reached down to the control pad. For years he had played, created, in front of a screen, always yearning to be within, and now he was here, controlling a world of imagery and sensation that seemed one step from the celestial existence that would soon be his.

He had already set the sequence in motion. It would prepare him for what was ahead, cleanse him, focus him, as it had done countless times before when he had come to this place. From somewhere in the darkness came a trickling sound, then the noise of a small waterfall, just enough to conceal the sound of his own breathing, to remove all sense of himself He felt the strength course through him, shuide, the power of water. He closed his eyes, and sensed them all, wu de, the five powers, earth, wood, metal, fire, water, each one overcoming the last, just as the dynasty of Qin had overcome the reviled Zhou, the power of water extinguishing the power of fire. And with the power of water had come darkness, a time of inchoate forms, of endless winter, of death, a sweeping away of all that had been. And into this emptiness had come Shihuangdi, the First Emperor, the Celestial One, who had remade the universe in his own image, a universe where his will was felt in every corner of existence, a will that none could escape. And now the Brotherhood, in the sixty-sixth generation since the tomb had been closed, prepared for the moment when the celestial universe of Shihuangdi would fold out into reality, when his earthly warriors would ride once again. But before then they had one final task. That was why he had summoned the others here today.

The man opened his eyes. A cool alpine breeze had come upon him, bringing with it the sweet fragrance of mountain flowers. The darkness was gone, replaced by a thin, crepuscular light, and he had the sensation of being raised high into the sky, of levitating. The image of a mountainous landscape appeared, projected as if wrapping around him, gnarled turrets of rock jutting out of a sea of cloud below, serried peaks visible in the distance, olive-green and pastel-brown, surmounted by leafy groves of emerald-green, coursed through with a fantastic architecture of villas and courtyards and pagodas, structures that blended in as if they were natural protrusions of the rock. This was what the First Emperor had seen. Shihuangdi, who went to the highest peaks in his realm, who claimed this space between heaven and earth as his own, who inscribed the rock with the record of his accomplishments, who proclaimed his power over earth and cosmos. The image receded into the background, and an inscription took its place, lines of white Chinese symbols against a dark background. The man began to whisper the words, sacred expressions of power: