The Flames of Time (Flames of Time Series Book 1)

by Peter Knyte

  Our attackers had just begun to understand their mistake as half a dozen of them lay dead or dying in the firelight, and probably twice that number had fallen amongst the shadows outside our camp, when I noticed three riders streaming through the camp and converging on Marlow and Jean.

  Marlow had just managed to put a bullet in the back of one rider who’d tried to decapitate him with a great curved sword. But in dodging round the edge of the tent to get his shot off, he’d turned away from the centre of the camp and so couldn’t see the sudden approach of the other three. He turned back at a shout from Jean, but hadn’t had time to reload his rifle.

  I could see Jean get a shot off, but it must’ve gone wild, because his man just kept coming, I quickly tried to put him down myself, but rushed it, and only managed to clip his shoulder. Fortunately it caused him to drop the rifle he’d levelled at Jean’s head. Unfortunately, not being able to shoot didn’t seem to bother the man too much and instead he just rode at Jean and delivered a savage kick to his head as he went past, knocking poor Jean spinning back onto his tent.

  At the same time I saw Marlow heave his empty rifle at the two horses bearing down on him, and grab for his revolver, before being obscured from my view. The rifle must have connected well, for the next instant both horses were rearing up onto their back legs. Not that it seemed to disconcert either of the riders, who I swear were still trying to aim their rifles one handed at Marlow past their rearing steeds.

  What did disconcert them considerably though, was the head of the first rider’s horse exploding backwards in a shower of blood and bone into its owners face and chest. I could see both men nearly lose their seats with shock. Marlow was completely obscured behind them, but it was clear he’d fired his revolver, which I knew was a large calibre Webley, at point blank range, destroying the animal’s head. There was no mistaking the effect, as the poor beast’s hind legs simply collapsed, and an agonising moment later it fell backward trapping it’s rider. At the plight of its companion the second animal tried to rear again, while simultaneously twisting to the side to try and get away from both Marlow and the collapsing horse beside it. But that only served to open the line for Marlow’s second shot square in the chest of the second rider, who was flung back onto the animals haunches before it bolted into the night.

  Checking to see there were no other attackers coming his way, Marlow quickly moved around the dead horse, to dispatch its former rider, who even with a leg still trapped beneath his dead mount was shouting and trying to free his rifle for another shot.

  And then, as suddenly as it had started, the mayhem and noise ceased. Marlow regained his position in front of his tent, collecting and reloading his rifle, before checking on the unconscious Jean. Peter and Luke moved to take up their lookout positions re-stacking the saddles and other equipment they’d piled around them for extra protection. Androus, after spending a moment trying to free his jammed rifle, drew his revolver and filled his other hand with a big curved sword from one of the attackers who’d fallen nearby.

  We sat amongst the carnage that had become our camp, alert and ready for them to return. It seemed an age before the sky gradually started to lighten and we were able to safely give up our defensive positions. It was amazing no-one from our camp had been seriously injured, though one of the guides we’d employed had also been ridden down like Jean and knocked out. Having said that it seemed some of us had been quite lucky, including Androus who’d been saved by his rifle which had caught a bullet right in the mechanism, missing his hand and face by inches.

  As the light improved though it became clear our assailants had not been so lucky, and we counted a further nine dead men outside our camp in addition to the eight which we already knew about within. It was a tragic scene made all the worse by the dead horse that accompanied them. But I only needed to remind myself that if we hadn’t stumbled across their tracks as they entered the city then the story could have been very different.

  We did our best to bury the men, but as we were preparing the holes I noticed Marlow and Jean talking and moving over to re-examine each of the bodies before they were interred.

  On seeing my approach they turned and asked for my opinion. It seemed that while searching the bodies, both Jean and Marlow had noticed something odd. All the men seemed to be carrying a similar amount of silver coin.

  ‘The three men I’ve examined,’ said Jean, ‘all have slightly different amounts of money with them, but amongst the other coins, they all have six identical silver coins, not European, could be Turkish.’

  Marlow had found the same on the two men he’d examined. We decided to ask Androus if he could shed any light on the matter, but just as we were about to go and find him, we saw him coming out of his tent looking completely aghast and ashen faced.

  CHAPTER 12 – FRAGMENTS

  During the raid a bullet had found its mark in the bag of stone tablets we’d unearthed only hours before. Fortunately it hadn’t destroyed them entirely, but at least two of the tablets had been severely damaged, and from what the distraught Androus could tell, the two worst damaged were those describing the route to the lost temple.

  It was a massive blow to moral, both because the damage had likely robbed us of the very information we sought, and the fact that a priceless and beautiful piece of antiquity had been destroyed while in our keeping. And on top of all that we still had to deal with the dead from the previous night before we could pack up and get out of there.

  Amongst all the bad news about the tablets, we almost forgot about the oddly consistent coinage we’d found upon the bandits, but eventually we managed to distract Androus long enough to confirm our suspicions.

  ‘I could not suggest why these men have been paid so much,’ Androus commented distractedly, ‘but it is clear to me they have recently been hired or paid for their banditry, and quite handsomely at that. They have all been paid in Turkish Lira, a coin which contains a large proportion of silver, and is therefore acceptable almost anywhere in this region… ideal for those who are intent upon doing no good, but have the ability to quickly move on.’

  None of us could believe it might be us these men had been paid to attack. There were few people even knew where we would be, let alone who might have an objection or grudge about what we were intending to do once we got here. As such, we could only conclude it must’ve just been ill luck that had placed us in the bandits path after they were flushed with success from some other exploit or criminal activity.

  With the burials and other work out of the way we finally managed to get underway. Strangely the journey back was a lot smoother than it had been on the way out, and three days after leaving Uruk, we were thankfully checking back into our hotel in a sunset tinged Jerusalem amongst the mournful sounds of Muslims being called to prayer.

  We spent the next few days regularly visiting Androus in the Armenian library, as he painstakingly tried to piece back together the damaged lazuli. Once he had the space in which to work the damage was clear for us all to see.

  Two small calibre bullets had hit the bag of tablets square on the end, seriously damaging the last two tablets and less seriously damaging a further two. Of the nine pristine tablets we’d removed from beneath the city gate, that left five that were still perfect, two more that could still be read, and the last two which could now only offer fragmentary sections of text at best.

  Now that we were back in Jerusalem though, and Androus could work uninterrupted with all the resources of the library around him we were hopeful of some rapid progress on the translation.

  In the meantime Harry did his best to help with the transcribing and to give us regular updates on Androus’ progress. It was still the best part of a month before the major pieces began to fall into place.

  At Androus’ suggestion, he began by completing his work on the scroll. As it had already been transcribed and had after all lead us to Uruk and the tablets, it would also give the expert restorers within the library time to work on the damaged ta
blets and therefore the text in which we were most interested.

  Within a week he’d translated enough of the scroll to give us an outline of its contents, and we were summoned to the library one Friday afternoon, to hear of apparently ten individuals who were listed on the scroll as having succeeded in claiming the ‘breath eternal’. Coming from quite diverse areas these early adventurers had apparently found their way to the African temple by often quite different routes, some of which included landmarks and locations Androus could identify, others he’d had more difficulty with.

  ‘The problem, as I hope you will all appreciate,’ he began, slipping unconsciously into his professorial manner, ‘is that through time so many things can change about a place. Not only its name, but also its prominence in the locality, its major industries, culture and even geography. Now, with such things in mind I have translated the words and phrases which lie within the scroll, and placed them before you as best I am able. But I fear the map which you seek is still far from clear.’

  With that warning, Androus began to detail what he’d translated within the scroll, along with all its likely inaccuracies and ambiguities, and as he spoke, I began to appreciate just how different the distant past must have been.

  He illustrated the point further by working again through the account of Gilgamesh, the earliest entry on the scroll, and his circuitous journey from the city gate in Uruk, to his arrival at Ziusudra’s temple. Which we attempted to plot upon our maps as Androus detailed the different steps, but it was immensely difficult to identify the features listed and the route Gilgamesh must have taken, and that was with us already knowing where the journey started and ended.

  After the account of Gilgamesh, Androus outlined each of the other accounts. It was an amazing and somehow humbling moment, to hear those accounts, each preceded with a list of the individuals great deeds or titles, and then to realise these once remarkable people had now been so completely forgotten.

  There was one account from antique Anatolia, or modern day northern Turkey. Another from the shores of the Black sea, at least a couple from different islands in the Mediterranean, mainland Greece, Egypt, Sub-Saharan Africa, and one that seemed from much further to the East, beyond the ancient city of Samarkand on the old Silk route, possibly from China or India. But most remarkably there was the account of a woman. One Agina, amazingly both a warrior and a chieftain, who it seemed had travelled the length of the Mediterranean, possibly from the fiercely independent and mountainous Basque area of northern Spain. She was in all probability from one of the great Celt-Iberian tribes, but like all the other accounts, the description of her exact home was just too dependent on details now changed and lost to history.

  One interesting thing, which slightly surprised me, was the repeated reference to the tablets describing the achievements of these adventurers. Like Gilgamesh, each successful seeker was described as carrying a set of the tablets back to their homelands. In some cases this despite the fact they came from cultures who had yet to develop any kind of advanced writing system, let alone possess an understanding of cuneiform! More interesting still were the details of what these individuals did with the tablets once they reached their homelands, for they all seemed to be buried or hidden, but in such diverse locations. Beneath city gates, within sacred groves, behind revered waterfalls, under temples, upon mountaintops or in burial grounds. The more I thought about it, the more I began to think the scroll and the tablets must’ve been intended to be found and used together. The scroll lead to the tablets, the tablets lead to the scroll.

  Within the scholarly comfort of Androus’ office the conversation was beginning to move toward what we should do next. How we might track these places down, and where we would be best to start, and so on. But the more we talked, the more the thought that we were following a deliberate trail laid down for us, kept going through my head. I was sure I must’ve misunderstood something along the way, but couldn’t for the life of me see what it was. So as much to dispel it from my mind as to make a serious suggestion I voiced my thoughts to the rest of the group.

  ‘Sorry to change the subject,’ I began somewhat hesitantly, ‘but, well, this thought has just occurred to me, and I can’t help but think I must’ve gotten something slightly wrong… Why did these people do this?

  ‘I mean, they travel for months, if not years in some cases to find this place, enduring all manner of hardships along the way. Then when they achieve their goal and decide to return to their own homes, they first carve their story carefully into a set of semi-precious stones, just so they can then bury them, or in some other way hide them away when they get there?

  ‘I’m right in thinking, that none of these accounts describes the tablets being used to help others achieve the same as the seekers. In fact if Gilgamesh’s account is any indication, then he returns with the tools to fake his own death, before he goes on to take up his new true life.

  ‘Now to my mind,’ I continued, still waiting for someone to interrupt or stop me, ‘I can’t help but wonder. If these remarkable individuals didn’t take these tablets back to their homelands to help their own people, then why did they take them back at all?’

  I could see everyone thinking about what I’d said, and I was sure Harry or Androus or someone was going to say I’d missed something, but they all just sat there. Finally it was Harry who tried to respond.

  ‘Well George, that’s a good question,’ he began, still obviously thinking. ‘We know that in the case of Gilgamesh, he returned to Uruk and placed the tablets on display which described his journey, but… we now know they were different to the tablets we found beneath the city gate, because they told a different story… There doesn’t seem to be any religious element to it, in fact if anything the references to the sacred and divine which we would normally expect to see are suspicious in their complete absence…’

  ‘I ask the question,’ I interjected, cutting Harry off mid thought, ‘because it seems to me that the entries on the scroll are pointing us toward the ten sets of tablets, buried across the ancient world. But from what Androus was able to tell us about the tablets on the way back from Uruk. The information on them points back to the African temple and either Ziusudra himself or the scroll.

  ‘I mean have I missed something, or are these adventurers not taking these tablets back to their homes to provide a trail back to the African temple and from there, onto this other temple.’

  ‘You’re suggesting,’ responded Marlow, ‘that this was always intended to be a map rather than just a historic record. Not something for their contemporaries: Family, friends or countrymen to follow. This is a map laid down for future generations to find and follow?’

  ‘And you are also perhaps conjecturing,’ continued Jean, waving his half-full coffee cup dangerously, ‘That these people intended this trail to be intelligible perhaps even to us so many years later…

  ‘To conceive of such a plan would be… incredible!’

  ‘That would change things dramatically,’ replied Harry, clearly still weighing the consequences. ‘If these directions were created with a view to standing the test of time… Then it might be possible for us to follow them, provided we travelled as these adventurers travelled, and saw the landscape in the way they would have seen it… But we could only do that if we first identified the right starting point, a landmark or place we could be sure was the same as that mentioned in the scroll.’

  I was keen to try and find out more about the Iberian woman, who’d travelled all that way from Spain to the unknown interior of Africa in her quest. But it seemed the accounts from northern Turkey, the Black Sea, Greek mainland and possibly one of the Mediterranean islands were likely to be our best starting points.

  We just needed that starting point, from which we could attempt to back track our adventurers’ routes. We decided to divide our efforts and pair up to research the four accounts we’d thought likely to be the easiest. Androus would help out as much as possible to get us all started, but wo
uld then turn his attention back to the tablets we’d found in Uruk. Harry and Marlow would start with the account from Anatolia, as it was geographically closest and probably our best bet. Jean and me would take the account from the Greek mainland while Luke and Peter would focus on the account we thought was going to be from Crete or one of the other big Mediterranean islands. Then if one of us finished or got stuck, we’d move on to the account from the Black Sea.

  It was a daunting task, but Androus was able to recommend colleagues for us to talk to, and provide all the reference material we could want, as well as a bit of help here and there from some local undergraduate volunteers who helped out at the library.

  It was stimulating work, and a week later we had the first breakthrough. Harry and Marlow figured out a reference in the account from that area of northern Turkey once known as Anatolia. It referred to what they thought might be the ancient city of Byblos, modern day Gubayl, just a day’s drive up the coast into the Lebanese Republic. From there they managed to trace a likely route through the mountains and cedar forests of northern Lebanon and across the broad plains of Syria into Turkey, and back into the mountains.

  Here the description within the scroll focused on features that became more difficult to identify accurately on the maps.

  ‘It’s a guess, I have to admit,’ confessed Harry, as he presented the details to us in one of the map rooms of the library. ‘There are a number of features along the way we just haven’t been able to place. Including another city that should be somewhere in northern Syria if we’ve interpreted right, but of which we can find no trace. In any event, if we’re right, then we should be able to tell fairly quickly once we get going. Either the terrain and distances will seem right or they won’t. At least until we get to the border with northern Turkey that is. Here the mountain passes are so difficult to tell apart on a map, we’d really need to see the route first hand.