The Tiger Warrior Part 12

"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 a.s.sessing 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 G.o.ds. 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 G.o.d, the G.o.d of treasure, could be the ultimate protector. If he's a G.o.d of the older religion, maybe the sculptor did understand that the people here would fear the ancient G.o.ds 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 Koya from Rampa village left food offerings outside here every day. They thought the G.o.d 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 G.o.ds 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 Koya, Rama was then sealed inside by the earthquake, and the food offerings gradually ceased. And something had gone, the velpu 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."

"So where's the image of Rama in all this?" Costas said, looking around. "I mean, isn't this supposed to be his shrine?"

Pradesh paused. "In Hindu belief, Rama was the descendent of an ancient solar dynasty. He could be represented by that image of Vishnu, or by a sun carving. Maybe we just need to look more closely."

Jack was staring at the chisel work on the neck of the Kubera G.o.d, seeing techniques that seemed remarkably familiar. He stepped back, sweeping his flashlight around the room, finding details, lingering on them, seeing what all his education made him want to deny, yet which years of incredible discoveries as an archaeologist made him know lay within the realm of possibility. His mind raced back to Egypt, to Hiebermeyer's discovery of the Periplus, to the first glimmerings of this trail they were on. An extraordinary discovery was beginning to take shape before his eyes, an imprint from the past that was becoming more real with every second.

"What's the date of all this?" Costas said.

"The yaksas and yaksis, like the naga, the serpent, are idols to earth spirits, survivors of the early religion in India before Hinduism and Buddhism took over," Pradesh replied. "The earliest yaksas sculptures date from the third century BC, but these ones here could be first century BC, possibly first century AD. That was when the G.o.ds of early Hinduism, the ones you see here, started to make an appearance. After that, the Hindu G.o.ds rule supreme over the native cults, absorbing or extinguishing them. And there are no images of Buddha here, but there are Buddhist symbols, the bull on the pillar, the spoked wheel. It's a little like early Christianity, where symbols were used before Christ was represented anthropomorphically."

"So this could be, say, late first century BC," Costas said.

"That would fit with the sculptural style, if we were looking at Graeco-Roman influence," Jack said. "There are stylistic and technical details I'd put in the late Republican period, if this were Rome."

"We've got to eliminate the obvious," Pradesh said. "The Roman site at Arikamedu's only four hundred miles south of here. No Roman from Arikamedu would ever have come into the jungle without a very good reason, but we have to consider the possibility."

Jack shook his head. "I don't see a sculptor at Arikamedu. Mud-brick buildings, wooden, purely utilitarian. Even at Berenike on the Red Sea there was hardly anything made of stone. There was nothing for a sculptor to do."

"Maybe someone who'd been a sculptor, but changed careers, became a sailor or a trader," Costas said. "Maybe he came to India and then went native, found a bolthole in the jungle, rediscovered an old pa.s.sion for carving. You always say it, Jack. Anything's possible."

Jack hesitated, thinking hard. "Sculpting, stonemasonry, was a hereditary profession, and you didn't move between trades that easily in the ancient world. And if we're talking Rome about the time of Augustus, it would have been madness to leave. Augustus rebuilt the city in stone. It was one of the biggest building programs in history." He paused, then voiced a suspicion that had dawned on him only moments before. "But you may have hit on something. There was one walk of Roman life that took men with all manner of skills, from every profession."

"The army," Pradesh said.

"Citizen-soldiers," Jack murmured. "But we need to think carefully about the date. At the time of Augustus, the army was becoming professional, recruiting eighteen-year-olds for twenty years' service. For the real citizen-soldier, we need to look back to the time of the civil wars, and before that to the Roman Republic, when fit men of any age would volunteer for a shorter period, usually no more than six years. I'm talking mid-first century BC or earlier. That's several decades before the main Roman period at Arikamedu. And there's another problem. There's no evidence whatsoever that the Romans ever sent legionaries to India."

"Maybe a mercenary?" Costas said. "Or a deserter? You told me about those maverick British and French officers in eighteenth century India, running native armies and setting themselves up as princes. Maybe the same thing happened in the Roman period?"

Jack panned the light over the walls. "It's possible. The Periplus mentions armed guards on ships, as defense against pirates." But Jack already knew what they were looking at, with utter certainty. His voice was tight with excitement. "Or something else. An escaped prisoner of war."

Costas edged around the far side of the chamber, inspecting the deep shadows around the boulders beside the sculpture of Kubera. He peered into one, his hand remaining on the belly of the G.o.d. "I was right. There's another tunnel here. It looks like another chamber beyond."

A m.u.f.fled shout came down the entrance pa.s.sageway in the opposite direction, a few urgent words in Hindi. Pradesh barked something back and then looked beyond Costas. He glanced at his watch, and shook his head in frustration. "I've got to go. Sergeant Amratavalli's returned from his recce. I need to confer with him. I'll leave you in here as long as I can, but we've got no more than an hour. The chopper pilot won't linger. He's an ex-army friend, but he's not going to want his machine to get shot up again. We'll need to leave before any more of the Maoists arrive. Good luck." Pradesh un-holstered his revolver and disappeared back toward the entrance. Jack went ahead of Costas into the crack between the boulders, and Costas wedged himself in behind. The slick of damp on the rock acted as a lubricant, and he forced his ample frame through. Jack shone the flashlight back for him, illuminating the thick brown smear on what was left of his shirt. "Ruined," Costas muttered mournfully. "Completely ruined."

Jack swung the light around. The chamber was about the same size as the first, but the walls were different. Someone had gone to huge efforts to chip away and smooth the boulders to create flat surfaces, like sculptural canvases. Jack was aware of shapes behind him, but kept his light focused on the wall he had seen when he first entered the chamber. His mind was still attuned to the images they had seen before, Indian G.o.ds and demons, bold sculptures almost in the round. The wall ahead was the side of one ma.s.sive boulder at least five meters long and three meters high. He stared in astonishment. The images were utterly unlike those of the previous chamber. Subtle relief carving covered almost the entire wall. He could see soldiers, weapons. It was a continuous scene, a narrative. And these images had nothing to do with Indian mythology. It was as if they had walked into a museum of Roman art. Into a room created in the heart of Rome itself. "My G.o.d," he whispered. "It looks just like the Battle of Issus. One of Alexander the Great's most famous battles, against the Persians."

Costas came alongside. "That's fourth century BC, right? You mentioned prisoners of war, Jack. I'm thinking Battle of Carrhae, first century BC. Is that where all this is leading us?"

Jack's mind was racing. "Alexander would have been much on the mind of the legionaries as they marched to Carrhae: Cra.s.sus probably saw himself as a born-again Alexander, and may have used Issus as a rallying cry. And when the Romans lost at Carrhae, Alexander's victory against the Persians would have attained mystical status. Add to that the evidence of Alexander's eastern expedition seen by the escaped Roman prisoners, the altars described in that fragment of the Periplus. Alexander would have been a constant backdrop to what might have happened. An adventure that might have taken a citizen-soldier, a sculptor by trade, from Rome to Carrhae, then to imprisonment at Merv and then east into central Asia, on the route taken by Alexander and his Macedonians three centuries before. And then down here to the jungle of southern India."

"So how do you know this image is Alexander's battle?"

"The Battle of Issus is on the Alexander mosaic, from Pompeii," Jack said. "It was probably the way the battle was usually depicted. On the left is Alexander, with wavy hair, sweeping into battle on his horse, Bucephalus, wearing a breastplate depicting Medusa. He's placed lower than his opponent, Darius, who towers above his Persian soldiers, looking down on Alexander. There are lots of Persian troops, fewer Macedonians. It's a way of emphasizing the greatness of Alexander's victory, showing him riding against the seemingly invincible army of the G.o.d-king himself And Darius is on the run, ordering his charioteer to whip his horses as he tries to escape, looking around at Alexander with fear in his eyes. His right arm is extended toward Alexander as if he's just thrown a spear, or maybe as a gesture of obeisance. He's acknowledging the victor."

"So how come a mosaic from Pompeii gets copied by a sculptor in the heart of darkness in central India?"

"Here's my theory," Jack murmured. "The guy who carved this was a soldier who'd been a sculptor in his former life. There's a lot of technique here that comes straight out of the school of Roman funerary sculpture of the first century BC. I'm talking about stock sculpture for clients of modest means, relief slabs to put in front of cremation urns, the occasional larger scene on a sarcophagus. But even a small-time sculptor would have been familiar with the great works of art. Rome was awash with art looted after the conquest of Greece in the second century BC. The Alexander mosaic was made about that time for a wealthy client in Pompeii. But even that was a copy of a famous painting, by the Greek artist Apelles or Philoxenos of Eretria. Pliny the Elder mentions it in his Natural History. The painting must have been on public display in Rome, and whoever sculpted this must have studied it during his apprenticeship."

Costas traced his hand over the sculpture. "But these soldiers don't look like Greeks to me. Or Persians."

Jack swept the torch over the wall. "You're right. The soldiers to the left are Roman, not Greek. They've got chain mail, and early style helmets. They're carrying the pilum, the Roman spear, and the gladius, the thrusting sword. They're Roman legionaries of the first century BC, the time of Cra.s.sus."

"I can see Roman numerals." Costas peered closely at a standard carried above the soldiers. "The symbols XV, and the letters AP."

"Fifteenth Apollinaris," Jack exclaimed. "That's the legion mentioned on the cave inscription from Uzbekistan, the one Katya's uncle identified. The sculptor has replicated the Battle of Issus scene, but has subst.i.tuted Romans for Greeks. This must be the Roman army marching into battle at Carrhae."

"And the tall guy in the center? Where Alexander should be? Is that Cra.s.sus, the Roman general?"

Jack shook his head. "No way. The legionaries who survived Carrhae, who survived imprisonment, who escaped east, would have been the toughest of the tough, probably including veterans of Caesar's campaigns in Gaul and Britain a few years before. But Cra.s.sus was an incompetent leader by comparison with the revered Caesar, and the soldiers would have been contemptuous of him. A veteran of Carrhae would never put Cra.s.sus in the position of Alexander. And I doubt whether it's a self-portrait, the sculptor himself That wasn't the way of a Roman legionary. Your ident.i.ty was with your section, your contubernium. But because of that bonding, close friends could be revered. That's what I think this is. The members of a contubernium called themselves brother, frater. That character's not dressed as a general. Maybe he's an optio, a section leader, or a centurion, but no more. He's shown as primus inter pares, a leader certainly, but definitely one of the men."

"But he's larger than life," Costas said.

Jack put the torch close to the carving. "No. Look again. Not larger than life, just tall. The anatomical proportions are the same as the others, he's just longer-limbed. And look at his face. Roman funerary sculptors churned out stock images, but when it came to the face they always carved actual portraits. Look at these soldiers. I can see faces from central Italy, men from Campania, Latium, Etruria, hard men, grizzled mountain men, farmers, fishermen. These are portraits, real individuals known to the sculptor. You can see it in the quirky features, the humanity. Then look at the taller man. His face is longer, leaner, with higher cheekbones. His hair's tied back under his helmet in a ponytail, and he's got a beard. You don't see that in any of the other legionaries. He's a Gaul, maybe from the Alps, maybe one of the former enemies recruited by Caesar. And look at his expression, the toughness, the fort.i.tude, even the hint of humor in those eyes, the black humor of the soldier. There's a lot to admire in that face. He must have been a close friend of the sculptor, his frater."

"It looks as if the sculptor knew something about perspective, anyway," Costas said. "I count a dozen legionaries down here around the tall man, but above them it looks like a whole legion in low relief, a separate body of men in midair."

"That's what clinched it for me," Jack said. "Even before I looked at their enemy to the right."

"Explain."

"That crowd of soldiers above. It isn't a distant scene, a crude way of showing perspective. It's a scene in another dimension. It's a ghost legion."

"A ghost legion?"

"That standard you spotted, the Fifteenth Legion? It's not being carried by the soldiers below, the real-life soldiers. It's being carried by the ghost legion. And look at the carving at the top of the standard. It's the aquila, the sacred eagle. Then look again at the real-life soldiers below, the dozen. They don't have a standard at all. Now that's bizarre. A Roman sculptor brought up with all the rules and conventions of iconography would never have done it. A legion in battle always has its eagle. For a sculptor who'd also been a soldier, not depicting it is almost unimaginable."

"These were the legionaries who lost their eagles at Carrhae," Costas murmured.

"Precisely. And that's why this isn't a depiction of Carrhae. It's another battle. A later battle. The iconography is perfect. The soldiers above, the ghost legion, are the men who fell at Carrhae, with their eagle. The men below are the survivors. Here's what I think. These are the escaped prisoners from Merv, fighting another battle of their own, far to the east, in a place where the legend of Alexander's conquests must have been on their minds, something that persuaded the sculptor to use the Battle of Issus as his template."

"But they're dressed in full legionary gear," Costas pointed out. "How on earth could they have retained all that from Carrhae, after years of imprisonment?"

"After escaping, they would have had to arm themselves on the way, pick up whatever they could find. But in their minds, they were still Roman legionaries. When they went into battle, they saw themselves this way. So that's how the sculptor depicted them."

"Okay. Now for the other warriors. The enemy."

Jack swung the flashlight to the right. It was an image that seemed impossibly at odds with Roman legionaries. Jack had a sudden flashback to standing with Rebecca in front of nearly identical images in the British Museum, the traveling exhibit he had taken her to see shortly after they had first met in New York. He trailed the beam over the entire image, coming back to linger on the central character, the one opposing the tall legionary. He stared hard. There was no doubt about it.

"I may be wrong about this," Costas murmured. "But are we looking at the terracotta warriors?"

Jack took a deep breath, his heart pounding with excitement. "Look at the armor. It's segmented, like fish scales. And look at the weapons. Long, straight blades, elaborate halberds, distinctive bows and arrows. In the ancient world, only one army wore armor like that. And this isn't just generic Chinese armor. The details here are very specific, exactingly observed. The sculptor had been a soldier himself and knew what he was looking at. What we've got here is a depiction of first-century-BC Roman soldiers confronting warriors dressed in the armor of the third-century-BC Qin dynasty, the First Emperor of China, a full two centuries before the time of Cra.s.sus' legionaries."

"How could Romans have seen the terracotta warriors?"

"Not terracotta warriors. Real warriors. Remember our Roman sculptor, the portrait tradition. If he can, he'll show real people as individuals. I saw the terracotta warriors with Rebecca. There are a number of facial types, but they only give the illusion of being individuals. They're like a CGI army for a film, with enough individuality to give the authenticity needed but not bearing close scrutiny. And the faces are of a fairly uniform central Chinese type, rounded, without much ethnic distinctiveness. Now get a load of these guys." Jack flashed the light along the row of figures who seemed to be jostling for position in the foreground, their legs wide apart, weapons at the ready, staring out at them. The faces were hard, scowling, with intense eyes and long moustaches, their hair braided high in topknots.

"They look like Katya's father did. A face that's burned into my memory," Costas murmured. "Like Genghis Khan."

"Exactly," Jack said. "These are steppe people, nomads, from the northern fringes of China. These are the First Emperor's own people. This is what the warriors who accompanied him to victory in China would have looked like. And these are real individuals. But they're not like the Romans opposite, where you can see affection, humanity. These are faces the sculptor has met in battle. You remember the faces of people who have tried to kill you."

"Check out the central figure," Costas murmured.

Jack shone the light again at the figure with its head twisted back toward the tall legionary. The figure was riding a horse, a sinewy charger with wide eyes that seemed to stare upward to the heavens. The sculptor had tried to show the horse twisting sideways, just as Darius' chariot was shown turning away from the Macedonians in the Issus mosaic. The perspective here was clumsy, but the sense of movement was arresting. The horse and the surrounding warriors were speckled in dull red, as if someone had flicked paint over the rock. Costas rubbed a finger against it, then sniffed the moist smudge that came off "A ferrous base, like ochre."

Jack looked back at the wall. "The sculptor could have made up other pigments from mineral outcrops in the jungle, just as the Koya do for body paint. And we know he had lapis lazuli for the ceiling. But it looks as if red was the only color he used here. It gives a powerful impression, like looking at a black and white projection through a red filter. This was a scene reduced to its essentials, seared into his consciousness. The individuality of the faces, the detail of the weapons, the armor. And the color of blood."

"A memory of battle."

"And of that warrior on the horse," Jack said. "Look at his headgear. In the Alexander mosaic, Darius wears a Persian hood, rising up around his chin and high above his head. It was probably made of felt, protection against the sun and cold on the steppe. That's what this headdress looks like too, until you inspect it closely." He handed the flashlight to Costas, who held it above his head with the beam angled down on the wall, enhancing the shadows. "I can see eyes," he murmured. "And fangs, big ones. It's the head of an animal. A lion."

Jack shook his head. "No. A tiger."

"A tiger"

"The south China tiger," Jack said. Today there are only a few dozen left in the wild. At the time of the First Emperor, they were probably widespread."

Costas raised the light higher to the left, to the level of the ghost legion, near the ceiling of the cavern. There was another relief sculpture above the soldiers, a roundel about a meter across containing two sculpted faces. Costas stared at it. "What you were saying earlier, on the way to Arikamedu," he murmured. "About the arrival of Christianity in this region. That looks awfully like a mother and a child."

"I saw that when we first came in here," Jack said. "I wanted to work this whole scene through, but now I'm sure of it. It's too early for Christianity. I think this place was sculpted some time in the final decades BC, and that roundel's by the same hand, not some later addition. Those two portraits inside are real people too. You can see they were carved with special care. The woman's not exactly pretty, is she? A bit heavy round the jowls, a crooked nose. The little boy has protuberant ears, and his eyes are close together. But these details are carved with loving care. This was a mother and child he adored, real people in his memory."

"His wife and child," Costas murmured.

"The roundel's another Roman sculptural type, often funerary," Jack said. "Look how the sculptor's put it up there on the same plane as the ghost legion, as if the woman and child are in heaven. It's as if he's acknowledged the truth. Maybe his yearning for them brought him here, a trek across a continent to seek out his own kind. Maybe he met Romans at Arikamedu, and maybe they told him, a weather-beaten old tramp who arrived from the north, what he knew to be true, that the life he had left behind years before on the other side of the world was gone for good, that there was only one route left for him to join his loved ones."

"You really do believe this was one of Cra.s.sus' legionaries."

Jack nodded. "Decades beyond the time when he last saw his wife and child, when he marched off from Rome to Carrhae. Thirty, perhaps forty years have pa.s.sed. Rome has been devastated by civil war. He'd heard about that at Arikamedu, before retreating to this place. He hopes that his son followed in his footsteps as a sculptor, or lived and died a legionary." Jack stared at the roundel. He would have known that the image was of loved ones long gone, who survived only in his memory. Standing here, chisel in hand, two thousand years ago, he knew he was never going back. It was easier for him to think of them in Elysium. And for the soldier who had left his family to go to war, there was a catharsis in this scene. Jack turned to Costas. "He and his comrades have fought for each other, for the honor of the legion. But they've also fought for their families. Putting the roundel there, above the battle scene, tells him that he did not abandon them. It rea.s.sures him, in his crushing moments of doubt." Jack wondered whether John Howard had seen this too, on that day in 1879 when he and Wauchope had stumbled into this place. His own child, his little boy, left behind with his mother, an image that would only ever live on in his memory. Had Howard felt it? Had he seen an image of a death foretold? Was that what he had feared most of all, a fear for his own child, so far away from him, when he turned from this place to leave, to escape from this darkness?

Costas panned the light down from the roundel and along the Chinese warrior's arm, showing where it extended toward the tall legionary. Between the two figures the stone was blackened and furrowed where water had dripped down the rock from an opening somewhere above, eroding the sculpture. He moved the flashlight to and fro. "His hand, where it looks as if he's raising a fist to the Romans. He's actually wearing some kind of glove. If I angle the light, you can see he's holding a sword."

Jack followed the beam. He stared at the hand, his mind racing. "It's a gauntlet," he said, his voice taut. "A gauntlet sword. A pata"

"You mean like the one you inherited?"

Jack took the flashlight from Costas, and angled the light in different directions. Suddenly he saw it, the distinctive ears, the mouth, the fangs bared. His voice was barely a whisper. "It's identical. The Roman must have taken it from the warrior, in this battle. He must have brought it here. And then Howard took it, that day in 1879." He reached out and touched the sculpted fist, just as he had touched the real pata in his cabin on Seaquest II the day before, tracing his fingers over the features so familiar to him since his grandfather had given it to him as a boy. History suddenly seemed to contract, so that he was there, standing with the ghostly form of the man who had sculpted this image, an old man scarcely recognizable as a Roman, chipping and rubbing, living out his final days in here, finishing the image of his loved ones before he went to join them in Elysium. Jack remembered the Periplus fragments, the first glimmerings of the incredible story that was playing out in the shadows on this wall. It was all true.

There was a clatter and a curse and Pradesh was beside them, revolver in hand. He stood rooted to the spot, staring, swaying slightly. "Good G.o.d," he whispered.

"Want a rundown?" Costas said.

"We don't have time. My sapper says there's a party of Maoists coming this way. He counted fifteen of them. They're only twenty, twenty-five minutes away. I've called in the chopper. We've got to get out of here. I've set some C-4 explosives at the entrance of the shrine. It'll blow it in, and keep this place safe until we can make it back here again."

"Five minutes," Jack said urgently, taking out his camera.

"No more." Pradesh stared at the sculpture again, a look of blank astonishment on his face, and then ducked back through the entrance tunnel. Jack pa.s.sed Costas the flashlight. "Shut your eyes. I'm using flash." He began methodically photographing the wall, waiting a few seconds between each shot for the flash to recharge. Costas stumbled and slipped backward, swearing under his breath as he righted himself "Keep the beam on the sculpture," Jack said urgently. "I need to see what I'm photographing."

"I think you might want to look at what I've just b.u.mped into."

Jack turned, and caught his breath. He had sensed some shapes behind them as they entered the chamber, and had a.s.sumed it was the boulders. But this was man-made. It was a large, rectilinear shape, about two and a half meters long and a meter and a half high, carved from the natural rock. Jack's eyes darted over it, measuring, estimating. He began to smile, shaking his head. It was the right size, the right dimensions. He could see that the upper surface was a stone lid. "It's a sarcophagus," he exclaimed. "You've found his sarcophagus. This place wasn't a shrine. It was a tomb."

Costas traced his fingers along the join below the lid. "So our sculptor carves out his own coffin, then sculpts the funerary scene on that wall. He takes one last look at the image of his loved ones, then gets inside and pulls the lid over himself."

"The last act of strength by the toughest of the tough, a legionary who had survived the Persian quarries at Merv."

"He blows out his candle, lies down and shuts his eyes, that final image seared in his mind."

"He's back in Rome, with his wife and child," Jack murmured. "Forgetting he was on the other side of the world, slowly dying in a h.e.l.lhole in the jungle of southern India."

"And he'll still be in there."

Jack stared at the lid. There was something odd about it. He leaned over. The sandstone was encrusted with a layer of hard translucent material, like resin, evidently a calcite deposit that had formed over the centuries as condensation had dripped onto the tomb. In the center was a depression in the accretion layer, as if something had been removed. Jack shone the light closely. There was another thin accretion layer covering the depression and the thicker formation surrounding it, showing that whatever had been removed was taken decades ago, perhaps a century or more. He stood back and looked at the shape. Of course. Twentieth August 1879. "This is where the gauntlet was lying," he whispered. "You can see the shape of the fist, and the sword blade, broken off below the hilt."

Costas felt the dampness of the stone. "Amazing any of the blade survived from antiquity."

"If it was first-grade Chinese steel, chromium-plated, then it's possible."

"Chinese," Costas murmured. "You really think so?"

"My grandfather said that the pata did once have a blade, but that it was already broken when Howard found it. Howard removed and discarded the broken section in the G.o.davari River after they got out of the jungle. All he kept was the gauntlet."

"It seems strange that he took it," Costas said. "This was a shrine of the Koya, and maybe the gauntlet had become one of their sacred objects, one of those velpus."

"He and Wauchope were soldiers, remember? Soldiers first, engineers second, anthropologists a distant third. They'd been trained to fight with the sword. They'd have had their own weapons, but Howard reaches for another blade, even a broken one. If it came to a fight, they might have no time to reload their revolvers and two blades were better than one. It was little short of a miracle they'd made it this far without being cut down, and they'd have been pretty apprehensive. Howard had his own survival to think of, his own wife and child. Respecting the local culture would not have been high on their list at that point. They probably only had a short time in here, and the war drums would have been beating outside."

"Like they are now, Jack."

"Okay. Time's up."

"I spoke too soon. I should never do that."

"What is it?"

"There's an inscription. Where my hand was. I thought the rock felt pitted."