Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)

by Gregory House

  That was a mystery for later. Now he wanted to figure out why this combination tomb and storehouse had been missed. Peter walked back to the front and probed under rocks close to the buried skeleton. Hmm, lots of charcoal fragments, maybe an inch deep. Keeping in with the cave du Sueth theme, they would have had a two stage staircase up to here and a protruding gallery. In any siege that would have been set alight and without a ready water supply, burned merrily. This was just instant speculation mind you. The heat could have fractured the cliff face, bringing down the rocks above, crushing defender and attacker alike. Simple and possible, though a deeper understanding of this cavern needed an excavation, which they didn’t have time for.

  Oh flipping hell, he’d forgotten about the sands of time! Tempis bloody fugit! Peter returned to the darker recesses of the cavern. Lampie was still entranced by the boxes. He grabbed her shoulder and shook it. “Lampie, we’ve got to get shots of this, as much as possible – now!”

  Slowly comprehension broke through the pleasure of treasure and she dropped a cascade of silver coins back into a small metal strapped strongbox. “Oh shit. Yeah, I forgot! Look Pete, pass me your camera then go and stand next to each section you want shot – you’ll do as a scale!”

  Whether it took twenty minutes or longer was difficult to tell – it went in such a flurry of action. In the end Peter did the area shots and d’Alene’s tomb, acting as the scale, while he got Lampie to hold a rapid selection of items from each box while he snapped away. By the time they’d finished the last glimmer of the afternoon light was gone and the Kimberleys night approached close on its heels.

  They grabbed their packs and moved towards the cavern mouth. Peter felt close to despair at leaving all this and grasped Lampie’s arm before she stepped over the rubble onto the ledge. “How the flipping hell are we going to keep Wallace from stripping this place when we go?”

  Lampie turned to face him. Her eyes glowed with an almost feral intensity and if he’d seen a grin like that at this time of the evening in a London street, he’d bolt the other way. “Yeah, reckon we’re going to leave all this unguarded? Not a chance! I’ve got a few tricks that’ll keep ’em busy and get us some attention.”

  Prudence warned him not to ask. Lampie was in a ‘no prisoners’ kind of mood. However it was his hide as well. “All right Mistress Crocodile Dundee, how?”

  “Simple. Once we get down, give me ten minutes and I’ll set a few bushfires. That’ll keep the bastards busy and pull in coastal surveillance and the tour operators!”

  Peter blanched at the suggestion … a bushfire, didn’t they like incinerate everything? Wasn’t that the great bogey man of the bush? “Lampie, you are certifiably crazy! You’ll barbeque us, or turn us into crispy critters!”

  “Naw, not if we’re careful!” Lampie pulled away and checked the rope. “Freckin’ hell, I’m goin’ to have to retie this. We don’t want to leave it here as a…”

  A sudden sound shattered the Kimberley evening. BLAM, BLAM, BLAM, BLAM!

  The rocks in front of them splintered in a shower of fragments. Peter grabbed Lampie’s back pack and pulled her deeper into the cavern, away from the ricochet of bullets.

  “WE KNOW YER UP THERE. CUMMON OUT AN EVERYTHIN ’LL BE FINE!”

  Flip flipper and flipping heck! Peter kissed the cavern floor as another fusillade chewed into the rocks above, breaking off large chunks that fell like heavy hail. Lampie, head down, crawled over next to him and put her mouth close to his ear. “I reckon Pete, it’s your turn to come up with a brilliant plan to get us outa here!”

  Ohh that was real good! Flipping brilliant! Because right now the only plan he had was to find better cover than crumbly friable sandstone!

  Chapter 38 Besieged!

  Peter edged closer to the cave mouth and tried to cautiously peer over the lip.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you Pete.”

  He pulled his head back suddenly and spun around to face the dark blur of Lampie. “Why not, it’s fully dark now – they can’t see us.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that. Your Mr Wallace seems to be a pretty resourceful type. I wouldn’t put it past him to have a good supply of night vision stuff. I know a couple of blokes in Derby use them for stalking salties and pigs in the dark.”

  Peter frowned at the suggestion and shuddered at the reminder of his scaly encounter. “Damn it, Wallace isn’t mine! Sid’s the one who brought him in. I still believe there is something really strange about all that. Anyway that’s irrelevant now. How can we tell what gear they have?”

  Lampie shifted from her relaxed position below the tomb niche and rummaged around the scattered debris on the floor pulling, together a dimly perceived collection of items, then lent across to him and whispered. “Here whack your hat on this and carefully poke it out the entrance.”

  Peter looked at the rig Lampie had passed him in mounting shock. It was one of the old crusader helms mounted onto a broken spear shaft. “You can’t use this – it’s an archaeological relic!”

  “Yeah, well you can use your head if you like. Cos if we don’t find a way out of here, we’ll end up like those mummies!”

  Peter glanced towards the back of the cave where the dozen or so desiccated carcasses were laid out. Whatever happened to the rest of the garrison wasn’t something he was prepared to speculate about at this particular moment. This cave was the last refuge from the assault on the nearby castle where the survivors obviously holed up, waiting for rescue. Had Friar Joachim made it this far? If he had, what happened to the rest of them? No matter, he really didn’t want to be discovered here by some future archaeologist, so steeling himself against the sacrilege, a hat was provided for the manikin and slowly it rose above the sheltering rock…

  …only to be instantly knocked out of his hands by a smatter of bullets.

  “Ahhh Shit.” Peter pushed himself back from the entrance in a flutter of shredded feathers. He’d really liked that hat. The eagle’s feather had come from Ben Nevis and he’d always thought it brought him luck. Right now he was lucky he hadn’t been wearing it.

  “Yeah thought so, night vision it is. Any ideas from your weekend warrior training, Pete?”

  He dusted off his battered hat and tried not to look at the shattered helmet lying a few yards away. “Well not really. As a territorial unit, we did night training exercises like every one else and a couple of times our instructors let us use older night vision rigs. They’re good enough for a hundred metres. How many do you think are down there?”

  He couldn’t see Lampie’s’ shrug in the darkness of the cave but he could hear the speculation in her answer. “Wallace’s cruiser takes about a dozen and I can’t recall seeing more than that at the site. Take off the two who played chicken with the saltie, Wallace’s own personal goons, a couple with Sid and the three needed to run the boat. That leaves two or three to watch us, more than enough.”

  She was right. Even if they watched in shifts, the darkness didn’t provide sufficient advantage. “So like these poor souls we’re besieged.”

  He tried not to look towards the rear of the cave. That was too unsettling, then he had an inspiration. “Hey Lampie, can we use that two way radio Wally gave us?”

  “Naw, tried that earlier when you searched the back of the cave. Wally and the girls are out of range.”

  “Oh flipping hell, still besieged.” So much for modern communications.

  “If that’s what you want to call it Pete. Yeah, any lessons we can use from your medieval history studies?”

  He didn’t know whether Lampie’s question was serious or mocking. The accounts of sieges had taken up a lot of space in the histories of the Crusades. They had provided the troubadours with an endless source of dramatic events to weave into tales: the bloody storming of Jerusalem by the First Crusade, wading through blood, ankle deep, according to one report; the fierce competition between King Richard Coeur d’Lion and Philip Augustus of France, at the siege of Acre during the Third Crusa
de; all the way through to the last stand of the Militant Orders at the Tower of Flies against the assault of the Mamluke sultan Baybars in 1291. Rich evocative images all of them, huge catapults flinging bombs of Greek fire, blood, flames and broken walls, just like that film with Orlando Bloom as Ballan d’Ibelin, the Outremer lord. Though wildly inaccurate in storyline, it had been a pretty good rendition of the desperate work of siege and defence if somewhat compressed.

  “Well, we have a few problems with looking back. We may be in a ‘castle’ but usually in case of siege they lay in supplies for a few months. How much have we got left?”

  Lampie rummaged through her backpack – it didn’t take long. “Well we’ve still got those three energy bars, and four packets of sultanas.”

  Oh God, no! Peter didn’t want to face them again. He’d lived on them for days now.

  “And your favourite, taipan biltong – at least a kilo left of that.” Then again, an energy bar for breakfast wasn’t so bad, once you acquired the right motivation.

  “Great, that means we don’t have to slaughter the horses, or start an exclusive rat diet.”

  “Pity! Bush rat baked in clay with pepperberries is one of my grand-mère’s best recipes, so succulent the meat just falls off the bones – better than chicken any day.”

  He would have glared at her, but what was the point? Lampie, as he’d seen, travelled on another set of tracks, well apart from us mere mortals. For one thing, right now she was continuing her description of the taste sensation of baked rodent, including a description of its preparation and winding through the assorted flora that would compliment the meal.

  “I reckon Pete, we don’t have to worry too much about food.”

  “What, why not?”

  “We’ll run out of water first.”

  He was about to say something sarcastic then stopped. She was right, damn but she was definitely right. They’d filled up at Regents River after the tinnie crash incident, and once more from a pool before the castle site. Lampie, on the first day’s trek, had hammered home the survival rule about water. His old sergeant from training would have fallen for her in a shot. Colour Sergeant Graeme was a great one for iron hard resolve and long shapely legs. The painful lesson still rang in his memory. “Laddie, you lardarses can do withoot beef an’ gravy an’ tatties for a week or more but nay water for a couple o’days an’ a kitten could ripp oot your throat.” Then they had to run four miles on only a mouthful of water just to prove his point. That led him back to that very bizarre discussion they’d had a few days ago – drinking urine as a water substitute in desperation.

  “Ahh Lampie, you recall the other day when I told you that the Mongols used to drink their horse’s blood if they were thirsty?”

  “Yeah, got a spare horse?”

  “Ahh well no, but you know this land really well. Anything large enough for us to, ahh eat, or ahh perhaps drink around here?” Peter had actually meant it as a serious question. Lampie knew this rugged landscape better than he knew the path between his flat and the ‘Duck and Hound’ back home. Their survival so far had been in a large part thanks to her abilities and experience. He just seemed to provide the Sarah Jane companion to her ‘Doctor’, though he hadn’t sprained his ankle, even after falling into that cave.

  “No worries there Pete. Plenty of tucker.”

  “Yes.” That sounded promising. “What kind of tucker?”

  “Snakes.”

  “Arrghh.”

  “Lizards?”

  “No!”

  “Beetles?”

  “Yuckkk!’

  “Bats?”

  “Ahh Christ, I’d rather die of thirst!”

  “Suit yourself. You’ll be begging me for a scrumptious, juicy, worm in a few days.”

  Oh flipping heck she was impossible! Lampie almost sounded cheerfully happy to have the chance to munch on the lesser wildlife – this was one weird country! All of a sudden her suggestion of fire as a weapon made sense. “Ahh Lampie, any chance of you setting off that promised bushfire?”

  “Naw, it’d be too difficult from up here. No telling where the fire’ll take hold. Apart from that, you’d need a really good distraction to keep our friend below busy.”

  He assumed she’d shaken her head in the darkness of the cavern. Pity, that plan had sounded hopeful, a glimmer in the dark as it where. Now his thoughts came back to time. “You think those goons down below will wait around longer than a few days.” That was a depressing thought. Maybe he could steel himself to eat a couple of worms, you know, just to keep thirst at bay.

  “Pete, they could camp here for weeks and no one would be the wiser. This isn’t exactly on the daily tourist route from Broome.”

  “Weeks! Oh no, not flipping weeks!” Peter didn’t think he could last that long. He’d have to resort to dining at Chez Lampie. Whoa, his taste buds clenched in panic – a generous serving of escargot tartare or the ever popular dishe d’jour non amphibian frogs legs in a creamless sauce. Panic prompted his next outburst. “Why the hell are they sticking around?”

  Lampie gave an amused chuckle, perfect for any guillotine like occasion. “Well Pete, this may just be a hunch. But, I do believe they think we’ve found the treasure.”

  He slumped back against the rock in defeat. Yeah, treasure was a great incentive, after all it had got them here, through the ‘Camden Harbour Death March’.

  “Got anything more useful from your bountiful knowledge of sieges? Perhaps a recipe for something with more bat and less horse?” Peter took that as a hint of meals to come – time to pillage the past for inspiration.

  “Cicero the Roman politician, who opposed Caesar, once said there is no fortress so strong that cannot be overthrown by gold!”

  “What are you saying? Offer those guys down there a share of the treasure?”

  In the dark it was Peter’s turn to shrug unseen. “Why not? They’re just like any mercenaries – in it for the brass.”

  “Well Mr Lecturer, for a start, they only have to wait and they’ll get it all anyway.”

  He twitched uncomfortably. It may have been a very sarcastic reply but it was still correct. Many armies waited for Captain Starvation or Corporal Pestilence to do their work on the besieged. “Look they’re just muscle, not rocket scientists. Beer, bonking and regular gilt packs the column in their mental spreadsheet. You don’t hire them to think, just to do the walloping stuff.”

  “You know Peter Wilks, yer not near as stupid as y’ look.”

  “Why thank you.” At last Lampie was giving him credit for his real ability.

  “Naw, no one can be that dumb and still be breathing!” Lampie was being very damn unfair. After all she hadn’t come up with any suggestions not involving dining on the lesser fauna or lighting up the countryside.

  “That was a good idea!”

  “Yeah right, we still can’t contact anyone or are you going to suggest smoke signals or messenger pigeons?”

  “Oh well done Mlle Yvette Ginevre du Chesney Lampierre, any other blindly obvious facts you want to share?” He could hear the indrawn breath of Lampie as she wound up for her next serve, when it came to him in sudden flash of inspiration “AWWWHHH flipping heck! I’m an idiot!”

  “That’s what I’ve just been saying!”

  “No, no shut it Lampie. Smoke signals, we’ve got one! Well I hope we have!” Peter pulled the battered aluminium case out of his pack and cracked the seal, pulling out the rugged laptop. It looked all right after its immersion and battering during the chase down Prince Regent River. Freddie reckoned it had its own portable satellite. They could with luck, sit in the comfort and safety of the cave and call the cavalry.

  “I thought you said that laptop needed to use the commuications system we had on the boat?”

  “I lied. Sid had pulled a few tricks before, so I wanted a back up.”

  That’s when Lampie lent across and punched him. “Y’ brain dead English git! We could’ve got Trussie to pick us up north of Camden
Harbour and not had to slog through all that shitty country!”

  Peter shook his head to clear the ringing. “You said you grew up around here and loved this God forsaken place, with all its nasty spiders and snakes and bloody great crocodiles!” He could tell she was still thinking of giving him another wallop so edged closer to cover.

  “That’s true, but I didn’t want to trek though it with a whining Pom who’s so dim he can’t recognise the difference between a western taipan and a wombat!”

  He’d prefer not to be reminded of that mistake – it could have happened to anyone in the dark. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s not dwell on past errors. The important thing is that we can now call for help!”

  “Okay, well do it already!”

  Peter kept a wary eye on Lampie. He could tell she was just itching to take up the argument with renewed vigour. As he fervently prayed to the guardian spirits of electronic devices, the laptop gave an encouraging whir and then rapidly clicked through it start up process. Yes they had Windows, it hadn’t crashed!!!!

  Very carefully he removed the small satellite dish from its foam cradle in the case and plugged it into a USB port and waited a moment while the happy little machine went through its new hardware recognition procedure. Yes still all good, and Lampie, dropping her prior hostility, lent over to watch the dimly lit screen. Peter clicked onto the internet button and waited, and waited, and waited.

  The no connection screen flashed into view and Lampie growled into his ear. “Great work genius!”

  He rapidly went through all the procedures again just to be sure. Still no luck. Lampie had taken to muttering about pushing spare useless Englishmen out of the cave as a distraction. Peter ignored the threats and continued checking through every diagnostic tool he could think of, then finally success! The computer reckoned it couldn’t establish a successful link to a satellite from this location.

  “Okay, ahh Lampie, we need to move the dish outside. It needs a clear patch of sky to work.”