The Tiger Warrior

by David Gibbins

  An engine coughed to life and settled into the chugging rumble of a diesel four-cylinder. Katya crested a rise and saw Altamaty ahead, his cholpak felt hat bobbing above the boulders. He was sitting astride their sole piece of mechanical equipment, a venerable British Nuffield tractor that had somehow found its way up from India into central Asia, part of a reinvigorated Silk Route trade that had come with the fall of the Soviet Union. Katya had become quite fond of it, despite the roar and the belches of black smoke. It was their warhorse, and as long as it fired up there was still hope. She jumped from rock to rock and came down in the small open space in front of the tractor, holding up her hand to Altamaty as she cast an eye over the chain and protective leather strap that extended from the tractor’s bucket around a half-buried boulder. It had become their end-of-day ritual: Altamaty would maneuver the tractor to a promising boulder they had flagged earlier, near one of the rough tracks that ran up from the lake. She eyed today’s candidate. In this case, the boulder that needed moving had fallen against a promising stone, and the space between had filled with hard earth which Altamaty had spent most of the afternoon digging out to get the chain around the rock.

  Katya squatted down, inspecting the chain and the horsehide wrapped around it to protect the surface of the rock. The horsehide was getting frayed, but would be fine for today. Providing the chain held. She looked at the slack line of links leading to the tractor. Altamaty had salvaged the chain from an old patrol boat rusting in the shallows nearby, a legacy from the time when the Soviets had used the lake as a secret naval testing base. He had trained here himself as a marine conscript in the 1980s before being sent to the Soviet war in Afghanistan. He said he trusted old Soviet technology more than he did new Russian, even if it was rusty. Katya had to take his word for it. She stood, gave him a thumbs-up then retreated a safe distance over the boulders. She crouched behind one. Altamaty crouched too, behind a barrier of salvaged metal plates he had rigged in front of the steering wheel as protection if the chain should break. Katya put up her hand as a signal, then let it drop. She ducked her head and crossed her fingers. It was like scratching a lottery card each time, and usually about as successful. But this could be the one. They were close to the western defile, the eroded canyon that led up to the lake. If they were ever going to find an inscription from a traveler this would be the place, where the caravans would rest and recuperate, not up the slope where most of the Scythian petroglyphs had been found.

  She shut her eyes tight. She heard Altamaty put the tractor in reverse gear, slowly lower the throttle lever until the engine was a roaring crescendo and then gently release the clutch. The entire surface of the ground seemed to throb. She opened her eyes and watched the tractor inch backward, a meter, then two. It came to a halt, and reared upward until the front wheels were off the ground, and then the noise abated and it lurched back down. Altamaty stood up and waved. Katya got to her feet, and saw that the boulder had been pulled upright, jamming against another rock to its rear. There was no way of pulling it out farther. But the rock they were trying to uncover looked accessible, covered only by a layer of loose dirt. Altamaty pulled on the hand brake, leaving the engine in idle, and jumped down with a trowel and brush in his hands. By the time Katya came over he was already in the hole cleaning the rock. It had clearly once been upright, and been pushed over by the boulder they had just moved, probably dislodged in a flash flood. She saw that the exposed surface was flat, at least a meter across in both directions. She held her camera at the ready. It looked perfect. But she steeled herself for disappointment. Her colleagues at the Institute had told her it was a wild-goose chase. Bactrians and Sogdians, the traders who passed through here, did not even carve stone inscriptions. But then she remembered Jack. He said you had a feeling, impossible to describe. She crossed her fingers tight.

  Altamaty stood up, his back to her, blocking her view. She put her right hand on his faded old combat jacket. She realized she was bunching it up, holding it tight in her fist. For a moment they were still. Then she realized he was trembling, shaking. She had held him before, but never felt this. He was laughing. She relaxed completely, all the tension gone, let her hand drop, grinned insanely and began to shake with laughter herself, the first time since she could remember. Something had let go inside her, and she had not even seen the rock yet. Altamaty turned, and she saw his craggy, handsome face beaming at her. “I’m not a scholar of Latin,” he said in Kyrgyz. “And I’ve never been west of Afghanistan, but when I was a boy I read all the books I could find on the Romans. I recognize that.”

  She followed his finger, then gasped and put her hand back on his shoulder, steadying herself She knelt down, and looked hard. She remembered Jack again. Those first few moments are crucial. You might never see it again. Forget the euphoria. Be a scientist. With the sun low in the sky the contrast was perfect, and even the slightest undulation on the surface of the rock was visible. She quickly took a dozen photographs, using three different settings. She remained stock-still, fearful that the image would disappear. It was an eagle. She pulled a clipboard out of her bag, and flipped through the pages until she found the right one. She was looking at a drawing made by her uncle in a cave in Uzbekistan, more than four hundred kilometers to the west of here. Beside the drawing was Jack’s handwriting, notes made when they had pored over the drawing at the conference three months ago. She looked at the stone again, and back at the clipboard. There was no doubt about it. It was the same. Carved by the same hand. She stood up, staggering slightly. “I’ve got to go back to the yurt,” she said, her voice shaking. “I need to get to the satellite phone.”

  “What is it?” Altamaty said. “What have we found?” She looked at his weatherworn features, the beguiling blue eyes. She hugged him tight for a moment. She could smell his sheepskin jerkin, the tang of sweat, feel his stubble against her cheek. She felt extraordinarily good. She let go, and shouldered her bag. She also felt extraordinarily tired. She needed to make that call before she collapsed. But she wanted Altamaty to hear it first. “In all of your reading about the Romans,” she said, “did you ever come across the story of Crassus’ lost legionaries?”

  JACK GLANCED BACK ONE LAST TIME THROUGH THE entrance of the cave into the jungle clearing, and then flashed his torch over the wall of the tunnel. There was just enough room for him to stand upright behind Costas and Pradesh. He saw the dark green of algae, and maroon streaks that could have been some other form of growth. There was a strong smell of damp and decay, mixed in with odors that had crept in from the jungle outside. Pradesh aimed his flashlight along the wall ahead of them, then drew back, gasping. A garish shape had come into view, carved into the side of the boulder on their left, its head at their level. It was a fearsome demon, with popping eyes, a hooked beak and deadly fangs. Jack stepped up, panning his flashlight. “Incredible,” he murmured. “It’s got wings, like a griffin. I’d have said this was Persian, or carved by someone who’d spent a lot of time staring at images like this. Pradesh, I know ancient Indian sculpture is a passion of yours. Got any ideas?”

  Pradesh touched the stone. “I persuaded my engineering tutors it was a good way of studying lithics technology, but really I was just as interested in the art.” He stared at the demon. “It’s a generic form. There’s a lot in common between Persian and Indian art. But there’s something distinctive about this, confident, not quite like anything I’ve seen before. You may be right. It could have been done by someone familiar with Persian monumental sculpture, maybe from the Parthian period.”

  Costas put his hand cautiously on the bulbous eye, then quickly removed it. “No wonder the Kóya never came in here,” he murmured.

  “Now look at the scene behind it,” Pradesh said.

  Jack peered at the wall beyond the demon’s tail, angling his light. He saw more carving. It was shallow, but the image was clear. He drew in his breath sharply. It was some kind of narrative scene, with many human figures. He saw heads on poles, decapitated, with kniv
es suspended beneath them. People were tied in front. Below them was a mottled strip of dull red, speckled with pyrites, evidently a mineral extrusion in the rock. It was as if the sculptor had positioned his image above the mineral to take advantage of it, to make it appear like a pool of blood. Human blood. There was no doubt about it. “A sacrificial scene,” he murmured. “A meriah sacrifice.”

  Pradesh nodded. “Yet not carved by a native. There was never any tradition of stone carving among the Kóya. And look. There are older carvings underneath.”

  Beneath the image, faintly, Jack could see another carving, much older, only discernible as he angled the flashlight to and fro. It was a cluster of concentric circles, about a meter across. In the center were four small parallel lines extending from a line like the head of a garden rake. It looked as if it should be symmetrical, with the same rake shape on the other side, but the superimposed carving of the sacrificial scene had obscured it. Pradesh looked closely. “The symbol of the labyrinth,” he murmured. “They’re found elsewhere in India and in central Asia, some in caves like this. The oldest ones are Neolithic, at least five thousand years old. Most of them have a stylized rectilinear shape in the middle, but I’ve never seen one as complex as this.”

  Costas reached out and touched the carving. He looked intently at Jack. “Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “Incredible,” Jack whispered. “The Atlantis symbol.” He had been staring at it the day before, on the front cover of the monograph in his cabin on Seaquest II. He panned the light to and fro. It created a bizarre image, almost holographic, with the labyrinth appearing and disappearing beneath the shocking images of sacrifice. He wondered whether those who had carved the age-old symbol of a founder civilization were themselves interlopers, witness to primeval scenes of horror that some later artist would one day carve over their sacred symbol, half-obliterating it. The superimposition seemed to draw the ancient image closer, make it real. A labyrinth, hot with human blood.

  “There’s more. Lots more.” Pradesh advanced cautiously down the passageway, his shoulders stooped, and then squatted down about five meters ahead of them. Jack and Costas joined him, and watched as he panned his light over the walls. “It’s the same style as those sacrificial images, but we’re not looking at a narrative here,” he said. “There’s a lingam, a phallus, the symbol of Shiva. And on the opposite wall you can see a coiled cobra, its head facing the entrance, its tongue flickering out. That could be a Hindu symbol too, but snake-gods are also relics of pre-Aryan cults. Remember back at Bebbie’s monument, the fear the Kóya had of the giringar, the cobra spirit of the jungle? This carving would have put the fear of the gods in them. I think these two carvings were gateway guardians, to keep people out.”

  They advanced a few meters beyond the carvings, and Pradesh stopped again, moving his light over the ceiling. It was painted deep blue, in places thick like lacquer, elsewhere patchy where the pigment had crumbled away. “The color of Shiva,” Pradesh murmured. “In Hindu imagery, blue signifies eternity.” He reached up and touched the rock, and then rubbed his fingers where some of the pigment had come away. “It’s lapis lazuli. That’s what they used to make blue pigment. They ground it up to make a paste. You’d never have seen anything as precious as lapis from Afghanistan traded up here in the jungle, so the artist must have brought it with him.”

  Jack reached up and put his palm on the ceiling, on a patch where the blue was still as thick as enamel. He remembered what his grandfather had told him about the little carved elephant in his chest of family artifacts. Pradesh had said it too. Lapis lazuli, the color of immortality.

  They moved on. The passageway opened up into a chamber, about eight meters across. It was covered with carvings, an extraordinary jumble of human and animal forms, strange symbols and monstrous beings. Pradesh panned his flashlight around. “I recognize some of these. There’s Vishnu, striding across a wall, vanquishing a demon. And Parvati, wife of Shiva, with her enraptured gaze, picked out in red. And Padmapani, bearer of the lotus, with her swaying torso. She’s supposed to radiate serenity, tranquility.”

  “And an elephant,” Costas interrupted excitedly, pointing at a pillar carved as a trunk, with bulbous eyes and flapping ears at the top. “Odd though,” he said. “With those ears, I’d swear that was an African elephant, not Indian. The type more familiar to someone in the ancient world of the Mediterranean, who’d maybe seen them in the amphitheater in Rome.”

  Pradesh nodded, then pointed at two other pillar carvings alongside. “Those are Buddhist stupas, with bulls on top. And there’s another one, with a spoked wheel. And look at the wall behind us. Crowded figures, bodhisattvas, enlightened beings, turbaned, be-jeweled, moustached. And check out the grotesque dwarflike creatures. They’re male yakśas and female yakśīs figures, nature deities of the ancient religions, much older than Hinduism. The large one that looks like a Buddha is Kubera, a yakśa who was venerated as the god of wealth, the guardian spirit of treasure.”

  “It’s all carved by the same hand,” Jack said, looking around. “The same style, the same techniques.”

  “The figures are familiar to me, but the style isn’t,” Pradesh murmured. “I haven’t seen anything like this in southern India.”

  “It’s reminiscent of Gandharan art,” Jack said. “The art of ancient Bactria, the kingdom founded by Alexander the Great’s successors in Afghanistan. A fusion of Indian and Greek styles.”

  “But here, it’s not so much a fusion of styles,” Pradesh added. “It’s a fusion of Indian images with a foreign style. It’s as if someone from a completely different artistic tradition is trying to copy what he’s seen in India, maybe in Persia too, but using his own techniques and conventions.”

  Jack traced his fingers over the elephant trunk. “This is technically skilled work, but not distinguished. If I were to make a comparison with the Graeco-Roman world, I’d say it was done by a jobbing sculptor, the kind who did sarcophagi, household altars, inscriptions, routine architectural decoration. An artisan more than an artist.”

  “There’s something not right in all this,” Pradesh said, looking around.

  “You mean the whole place is out of sync with the jungle?” Costas said. “I was thinking that. What you were saying earlier. The spirits, the gods of the jungle. The Kóya have no need to represent their gods. They see them already.”

  “That’s one problem. But even if you buy into the idea that all this Hindu and Buddhist and animist worship did happen here, it’s still not right.”

  “Go on,” Jack said.

  “When I was seconded to the Survey of India two years ago, my first posting was to Badami, a cave complex about two hundred miles west of here. I’d studied ancient mining technology for my engineering dissertation, and we were assessing the safety of the caves. They’re famous for the painting and sculpture, mainly sixth century AD. There are familiar mythological scenes, like this one, Vishnu striding across the universe. But at Badami they’re part of a coherent whole, flowing into other scenes, a fluid, confident iconography. Here they’re fragmented, like unmixed ingredients. The Badami sculptor knew his mythology and believed in it. Here they’re like a collection of tourist snapshots. There’s no soul to them, no depth. Hinduism is inclusive. Voraciously inclusive. It accepts all manner of different gods. But there’s just too much here. It’s too disjointed. I’m a practicing Hindu, and I can tell you, it doesn’t feel right.”

  “It’s as if someone wanted to keep people out of here, but was hedging his bets, using all the deities he thought the locals might fear,” Costas said.

  “Even including the odd Parthian one,” Jack murmured.

  “Maybe there was something to hide,” Pradesh said.

  Costas pointed at the gloom of the far wall, where dark cracks were visible between the shapes of the boulders. “Another chamber, maybe? That Kubera god, the god of treasure, could be the ultimate protector. If he’s a god of the older religion, maybe the sculptor did understand t
hat the people here would fear the ancient gods more than anything from Hinduism and Buddhism. Whoever did this must have had some contact with the local people. He saw them carry out human sacrifice. And he must have been fed, somehow.”

  Pradesh nodded. “Traditionally, the Kóya from Rampa village left food offerings outside here every day. They thought the god Rama was inside, cornered by the spirits of the jungle. As long as he was fed, he would stay there. Every night, the food offerings would disappear. The muttadar probably came at night and took away anything left over by the animals to keep up the pretense. And the rats used to grow to a huge size here. The legend was that if an offering was missed, Rama would break free and wreak his vengeance on the jungle people, taking on the guise of the konda devata, the tiger spirit, and cleaving them with his great broken sword.”

  “Broken sword?” Costas murmured. “That rings a bell, Jack.”

  “If we’re going to seek history behind the mythology, the ritual makes sense,” Pradesh continued. “In ancient times, Rama comes into the jungle, the prince who is later deified. But the jungle people resist the intrusion of Hinduism into their spiritual world. The shrine becomes a focus of their cultural strength. They put Rama inside, the intruder. Their gods imprison him. So for the rebel leaders in 1879, this place was a rallying point, a focus of defiance against outsiders. They murder the police constables here, in the guise of sacrifice. But in the minds of the Kóya, Rama was then sealed inside by the earthquake, and the food offerings gradually ceased. And something had gone, the vélpu that disappeared in 1879. It was not Rama in the guise of the konda devata they now feared, but the konda devata itself, the tiger spirit of the jungle.”