The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 98

• Предыдущая
• 98/177
• Следующая

but on the lid too. Clearly the artist was the same as the one who had

executed the murals. The upper portrait was in excellent condition. It

depicted a man in the prime of life with a strong, proud face, that of a

farmer or a soldier with a calm and unruffled gaze. He was a handsome

man, with thick blond tresses, skilfully painted as if by someone who

had known him'well and loved him.

The artist seemed to have captured his character, and then eulogized his

salient virtues.

Nahoot looked up from the portrait to the inscription on the wall of the

tomb above it. He read it aloud, and then, with tears still backing up

behind his eyelids, he looked down again at the coffin and read the

cartouche that was painted below the portrait of the blond general.

Tanus, Lord Harrab." His voice choked up with emotion, and he swallowed

noisily and cleared his throat.

This follows exactly the description in the seventh scroll.

We have the stele and the coffin. They are , great and priceless

treasures. Herr von Schiller will be delighted."

"I wish I could believe what you say," Nogo told him dubiously. "Herr

von Schiller is a dangerous man."

"You have done well so far," Nahoot assured him. "It remains only for

you to move the stele and the coffin out of this monastery to where the

helicopter can fly them to the Pegasus camp. If you can do that, you

will be a very rich man. Richer than you ever believed was possible."

This spur was enough for Nogo. He stood over his men as they laboured

around the base of the stele, digging in clouds of dust, levering the

paving slabs out of their mooring. Finally they freed the foundation of

the stele and between them lifted the stone out of the position in which

it had stood for nearly four thousand years.

Only once it was free did they realize the weight of the stone. Although

slender, it was a solid half-ton weight.

Nahoot went back into the qiddist and, ignoring the rows of squatting

monks, pulled down a dozen of the thick woollen tapestries from the

walls and had the troopers carry them back into the maqdas.

He wrapped both the stele and the coffin in the heavy folds of

coarse-spun wool. It was tough as canvas, and afforded the men who were

to carry it a secure handhold.

Ten of the burly troopers were able to lift and carry the stele, while

three men were able to handle the wooden coffin and its desiccated

contents. This left seven armed men free to provide an escort. Then the

heavily burdened procession moved out through the ruined doorway of the

Holy of Holies into the crowded central qiddist, As soon as the

assembled monks realized what they were carrying away with them, a

shocked babble Of voices, of lamentations and exhortations, rose from

the squatting ranks of holy men.

"Quied' Nogo roared. "Silence! Keep these fools quiet."

The guards waded forward into the mass of humanity, clearing a passage

for the treasures they were plundering, laying about them with boot and

rifle butt, shouting at the monks to give way and to let the staggering

porters through.

The hubbub rose louder, the monks encouraging each other with their

howls of protest, whipping themselves into a frenzy of religious

outrage. Some of them leaped to their feet, defying the commands

bellowed at them to remain seated. They crowded closer and closer to the

armed troopers, clutching at their uniforms, chanting and whirling about

them in a challenging display of mounting hostility.

In the midst of this uproar, suddenly the spectral figure of Jali Hora

reappeared. His beard and robes were stained with blood, his eyes were

crazy, bloodshot and staring.

>From his battered lips and ruined mouth issued a long, sustained

shriek. The ranks of dancing monks opened to let him through, and he

rushed like an animated scarecrow with his skirts flapping around his

thin legs straight at Colonel Nogo.

"Get back, you old maniac!" Nogo warned him, and lifted the muzzle of

his assault rifle to fend him away.

Jali Hora was far past any earthly restraint. He did not even check, but

ran straight on to the point of the bayonet that Nogo was aiming at his

belly.

The needle'pointed steel stabbed through his gaudy robes and ran into

the flesh beneath them as easily as a gaff into the body of a struggling

fish. The point of the bayonet emerged from the middle of his back,

pricking through the velvet cloak, all pinkly smeared with the old man's

blood.

Spitted upon the steel, Jali Hora wriggled and contorted, a dreadful

squeal bursting from his bloody lips.

Nogo tried to pull the bayonet free, but the wet clinging suction of the

abbot's guts held the steel fast, and when Nogo jerked harder, Jah Hora

was tossed about like a puppet, his arms flapping and his legs kicking

and. dancing comically.

There was only one way to free the blade of a bayonet that was trapped

like this., Nogo slipped the rate-of-fire selector on the AK-47 to

"Single Shot'. He fired once.

The detonation of the shot was muffled by Jali Hora's body, but was yet

so thunderous that for a moment it stilled the outcry of the monks. The

high-velocity bullet tore down the entry track of the blade. It was

moving at three times the speed of sound, creating a wave of hydrostatic

shock behind it that turned the old man's bowels to jelly and liquidized

his flesh. The suction that had held the bayonet was broken, and the

blast of shot hurled Jah Hora's carcass off the point of the blade,

flinging it into the arms of the monks who were crowding close behind

him."

For a moment longer the strained, unnatural silence persisted, and then

it was shattered by a higher, more angry chorus of horror from the

monks. It was as though they were compelled by a single mind, a single

instinct. Like a flock of white birds they flew at the band of armed men

in their midst and descended upon them, intent on retribution for

murder. They counted no cost to themselves, but with their bare hands

they tore at them, hooked fingers clawing for their eyes, seizing the

barrels of the levelled rifles. Some of them even grasped the blades of

the bayonets with their naked hands, and the razor steel sliced through

-flesh and tendons.

For a short while it seemed that the soldiers would be overwhelmed and

smothered by the sheer weight of numbers, but then those troopers

carrying the stele and the coffin dropped their loads and unslung their

weapons, The monks crowded them too closely for them to swing the

rifles, and they were forced to hack and stab with the bayonets to clear

a space around them in which to do their work. They did not need much

room, for the AK47 has a short barrel and compact action. Their first

burst of fully automatic fire, aimed into the monks at belly height and

point-blank range, scythed a windrow- through them.

Every bullet told, and the full metal jacket ball whipped through one

man's torso with almost no check, going on to kill the man behind him.

By now all the troopers were firing from the hip, traversing back and

forth, spraying the packed ranks of monks like gardeners hosing a bed of

white pansies. As one magazine of twenty-eight rounds emptied they

snapped it off and replaced it with another, fully loaded.

Nahoot cowered behind the fallen pillar, using it as a shield. The roar

• Предыдущая
• 98/177
• Следующая