Monsters in the Sand Read online

  To Sam and Ali,

  who keep walking off the maps

  Contents

  Cover

  An unseemly scramble for relics

  Warning to users of this product

  URGENT: 20 JUNE 1842

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Praise for Time Raiders #1 Blood of the Incas

  Copyright

  An unseemly scramble for relics

  The author and publisher hereby assert their moral right to dismay at barbarous, plundering, blundering archaeological destruction and theft by people in this series.

  We further assert our indignation at the nineteenth century archaeological method of Dig, Grab and Run. The battering ram, explosives and teams of sweaty workers wielding crowbars have thankfully given way to the enlightened archaeology of harmless noncontact electromagnetic devices, computer graphics, lots of string, forensic scalpels and those cute little make-up brushes.

  No archaeological site will be hurt in the making of this series … we hope.

  Warning to users of this product

  BEWARE

  These stories are a portal into an alternative reality, an amazing world where fiction tells the truth. People and events are shape-shifters, with a rage for a life of their own. Time and space collapse and expand. Memories distort, explode and fade away. Stories hurtle through white-water rapids and we hang on for our lives.

  Our crew is a mad bunch of desperados. Every twist and turn of our imaginary journey is inspired by their true-to-life adventures. Well, as true to life as this lot allowed their writing to be.

  The author has the dirt on things these archaeologists revised, made up, or left out of their official versions. Historical ‘truth’ may lie. Historical fiction reveals all kinds of truths.

  Those who wish to compare these cliffhanger tales with other versions of What Really Happened can find recommended websites at the author’s website (davidharris.com.au).

  URGENT

  20 JUNE 1842

  TO THE BRITISH EMBASSY, CONSTANTINOPLE

  Layard alive. Found crawling among beggars near gates of Baghdad. More dead than alive. Walked barefoot out of desert. Raving about Nineveh, night battle, hostages. Has vital information from Persian wars. Sending him to you.

  Colonel Taylor, Baghdad.

  Chapter 1

  Zagros Mountains, Persia.

  Austen sensed a movement behind him. He glanced down at his musket, which was out of reach beside his left boot.

  Don’t turn around, he told himself.

  On the other side of the river, a stone clinked and the back of his neck prickled. Slowly, he primed both the pistols tucked in his belt and hoped his cloak hid the movements.

  About ten paces away on the sandy edge of the river, his horse whinnied nervously.

  In one smooth action, Austen knelt, lifted his musket and swung it around. From boulders across the river, a puff of white smoke twisted up like a curl of hair. The shot cracked and a musket ball buzzed past his cheek, so close he felt the vibration. He fired at the shadow beneath the smoke and then ran for his horse. No more guns fired. There was only one man, but how long would he take to pour gunpowder, slide in a lead ball and take aim?

  He leapt into the saddle and fired both pistols at a glint of light between the boulders. The figure screamed, slumped against one of them and slid from sight. When the echoes faded from the cliffs, there was a moment’s silence, but then a dull thunder rolled along the valley. Austen’s skin went cold. His guns were empty and there was no time to reload them. Anyway, what use were his guns against so many?

  A mob of horsemen burst into sight around a bend of the river and galloped towards him. He saw the striped turbans and cloaks of Persians, heavily armed with spears and swords. He swung his horse around, its hooves plunging in sand, but more horsemen appeared further up the river. Trapped, Austen reined in his horse and rested his hands in his lap.

  One horseman, his cloak flapping in the wind, charged ahead of the others. He shouted his war cry and held his spear like a lance aimed directly at Austen’s heart. A red flag fluttered near the point of the spear and Austen imagined the flag sliding back along the shaft, slippery with blood, as the spear struck through his chest. There was no time to prepare for death, so he straightened his back and gazed defiantly into the eyes of his executioner. The horseman raced in for the kill, the spear point steadied and Austen took one last breath.

  Chapter 2

  The spear jerked, skimmed past his throat and the horseman galloped away, laughing.

  Austen swayed with dizziness and struggled against falling from the saddle. More horsemen rode close around him, tightening the circle while they yelled war cries into his face. Were they going to test his courage again, or torture and then kill him?

  ‘Brown-beard! Spy.’ Guns fired above his head, spears jabbed harder and harder against his chest and swords slashed past his face. If he showed the slightest fear, they would run him through again and again.

  A sudden storm of rage rushed through him. He knocked spear shafts aside, jumped down from his horse and flung off his cloak. Then, wrapping the cloak around his left hand and arm as a shield, he unsheathed his curved dagger. He backed against his horse and called out, ‘In the name of Allah, the protector, I’ll take one, or all of you!’

  There was a moment of shocked silence. This brown-beard called upon the true god in their language and dared to draw his dagger against them? The horsemen closest to him recovered their wits, leapt to the ground and carved the air with their weapons. Crowded together, they advanced on Austen, eager for the kill.

  A gun fired and they turned towards the sound.

  ‘Nobody kills until I say so.’ A man trotted his horse through the mob and it moved aside for him. His face had been horribly mangled, perhaps by a steel mace that had smashed his nose and shattered his left cheek bone. ‘Lower your weapons.’

  His men hesitated, but then obeyed, muttering resentfully.

  The leader examined Austen, his eyes lingering on the pistols, sword, and the bag tied near the sword. He pointed to the bag. ‘Show me.’

  What choice did he have? To hand over that sketchbook would be to hand over his life. Austen slid the dagger back into its sheath, then passed the book, and his fate, to the battle-scarred leader.

  Page after innocent page revealed sketches of ruins, rock sculptures, wall inscriptions.

  Austen stumbled as men shoved him aside and tore open his saddlebags. They snatched his sextant, compass and medicine box. Others unbuckled his saddle and had a tug of war with the saddle blanket. A dead man needed no possessions.

  The leader paused and held one page, then another, closer to his face. Austen guessed
that he’d found the maps showing the heights of mountain passes, coordinates of bridges and rivers. Only a spy planning an invasion would make maps like these. Who’d believe he was charting sites more than two thousand years old?

  ‘Look at this.’ A young tribesman held up a medicine bottle of yellow powder and pointed to the label, Sulphur, written in English. ‘A sorcerer’s writing. Kill him before he casts a spell on us!’

  ‘Not yet.’ The leader closed the sketchbook and smoothed his hands over the leather covers. ‘You’re a long way from Nineveh, Austen Layard.’

  They exchanged a look of understanding and Austen nodded. ‘I’m a long way from Nineveh, yes. But the rock-carvings in this valley show that Nineveh’s rule stretched into these mountains of your ancestors.’

  The leader grunted. ‘Perhaps my ancestors were from the palaces of Nineveh.’ He stood up in the stirrups and spoke to his horsemen. ‘You have heard of this man. He is called the Lion.’

  ‘The Lion? Is it really him?’ This was the man who had walked with lions on Mount Saira, who’d held a knife to the throat of the tyrant Makush and taken him prisoner. The Lion had stood alone, spear in hand, and faced the great bear of Kerkhan.

  ‘My name is Au Kerim.’ He gave the sketchbook back to Austen, then turned away and shouted orders. ‘Put the Lion’s possessions back. You two, go across the river and find Salim.’

  ‘Au Kerim. I’ve heard of your exploits.’ Austen stowed the sketchbook deep in its bag. ‘I’m sorry for shooting one of your men.’

  ‘He was a fool. My ambush was set for the eunuch’s soldiers, not an Englishman.’

  Austen’s stomach lurched at the mention of the eunuch. He had met the vile governor of Teheran, who’d proudly shown him his new garden wall made of living prisoners layered together by mortar, their faces pleading and arms moving. Three prisoners, whose heads were tied inside bags of chaff, suffocated slowly while the eunuch ate breakfast in the garden and considered the possibility of their innocence.

  ‘I have a favour to ask you.’ Au Kerim narrowed his eyes. ‘If you succeed, you will be rewarded.’

  ‘And if I fail?’

  Au Kerim reloaded his pistol.

  Chapter 3

  When Austen rode through the gates of Castle Tul, he couldn’t help looking up at the turrets. Crows squawked and fluttered as they tore flesh from the heads impaled there on spikes.

  ‘The eunuch’s men.’ Au Kerim’s face was grim. ‘Except for those two on the end – the doctors.’

  Inside the courtyard, Austen barely had time to notice the men hurrying past with armfuls of muskets and small kegs of gunpowder. ‘This way, quickly.’ Au Kerim dismounted and strode through an arched doorway into a corridor. Austen lifted the small box from his saddlebag and hurried inside the castle. Smooth hollows had been worn into the stone floor by centuries of treading feet. The sound of sobbing came from an open door. Au Kerim had told him what to expect while they were riding to the castle, but he hadn’t expected such heartbroken weeping. Was it already too late?

  ‘Leave your weapons here.’ Au Kerim went in and Austen could just see his back bend when he bowed. ‘The Lion is here and he has medicines for the prince.’

  A woman’s voice burst into the shrill song of the tongue, ‘Lululu,’ a zhagrita to welcome good fortune.

  Austen stacked his weapons near the door and shuddered at the thought of the doctors’ heads hanging on spikes.

  ‘Now,’ Au Kerim commanded.

  Austen took a deep breath, picked up his wooden box and went in. A boy about ten years old, with a face as pale as death, lay there on soft pillows. His fingers shook while they twisted the front of his white tunic into a soggy knot.

  The prince’s mother and a young woman knelt beside him. Austen didn’t dare look directly at them, but from the corner of his eye he saw that the women had purple scarves over long curls of black hair.

  ‘Prince Hussein, in the name of Allah, the source and bringer of life.’ Austen bowed.

  The mother shuffled aside to give Austen room and as he sat down he glimpsed the women’s wide sleeves and Persian trousers of red silk. ‘What can you tell me about the illness?’

  ‘See how he sweats and then he has sudden attacks of shivering.’ Stroking her son’s thin ankles and feet, she stifled her tears. ‘He has pains in his stomach and his knees and shoulders ache.’

  Was it dysentery, a parasitic worm, or liver disease? Cholera had broken out in southern Persia – maybe that was it – but aching limbs could mean malaria. He unclipped the lid of his box and tried to look confident as he read the labels on bottles and tins. The boy’s life, and his own, depended on his choice. Sulphur, tincture of mercury, magnesium sulphate? Austen wished he’d spent more than two hours in medical training before leaving London.

  ‘When the doctors said they had no cure and committed the prince’s spirit into the hands of Allah, they died,’ Au Kerim had warned him while they rode towards the castle gates.

  ‘Hussein, I have suffered your illness.’ Austen grinned. ‘Twice.’

  The women gasped and Au Kerim put his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  ‘And look at me – I’m as strong as a bull!’ Austen punched his chest.

  The fear in Hussein’s eyes retreated.

  ‘In the language of the Romans, the illness is called Mal Aria, Bad Air. That’s all it is. Bad air to be blown away, as easily as this.’ Austen puffed his cheeks out and blew a long, slow breath.

  Then he lifted out a square tin container. ‘I need two cups of water.’

  A servant sitting in the corner of the room filled gold cups from a large silver jug, then placed them beside Austen. When the servant moved away, Austen flicked his eyes at the women. Their faces were haggard with grief, but he was shocked by their beauty.

  He concentrated on his medicine and poured some powder into the palm of his hand. ‘Ophir, the grandson of the prophet Noah, brought this medicine from faraway Peru. It is made from the sacred cinchona tree and Ophir, may Allah feast him in paradise, taught us its secret.’

  He poured the powder into a cup and swirled it around, then drank it himself to prove the medicine was not poison. Then he prepared a dose for Hussein. ‘It tastes as bitter as the urine of an old camel that has drunk only at salt lakes.’ The corners of Hussein’s lips curled with the hint of a smile and Austen held the cup to his lips. ‘But if medicine is to do you good, it must taste bad.’

  Hussein gulped quickly, his nose wrinkling at the smell.

  ‘All of it.’

  He gagged and spluttered, but finished the cup and his mother burst into tears of relief.

  As he took the cup away, Austen looked at the younger woman and a glance flashed between them.

  Voices shouted in the corridor, metal clashed and one deep voice boomed above the others. ‘Au Kerim!’

  ‘Here, My Lord.’

  Austen stood up to meet Mohammed Taki Khan, the paramount chief who could call on twelve thousand foot soldiers and three thousand cavalry. His name was revered across Persia as the only leader who had not bowed his head to the eunuch governor of Teheran.

  With metal clinking and rattling, Mohammed Taki Khan marched into the room. To Austen’s amazement, the chief wore the chain mail of a crusader killed more than six hundred years ago, perhaps when Saladin and Richard the Lionheart fought for the Holy City of Jerusalem.

  The chief’s rugged face had been hardened by years of warfare, but when he looked at his son tears came to his eyes. That moment of tenderness touched Austen’s heart. He remembered his own father’s final hours of laboured breathing. A faint breath out. No breath in. The silence of death. Then the mad onrush of his grief.

  ‘How is my son?’ There was no hiding the fear in the chief’s voice.

  ‘The prince has taken his first dose of sulphate of quinine, for malaria.’

  ‘Allah be praised for sending us the Lion.’ Then, no longer the father, but the chief again, he turned to Au Kerim. ‘
We are betrayed. Traitors have led the eunuch’s army by a secret way through the mountains and they will be within gunshot before dark. The eunuch has a regiment of Russian-trained artillery with twenty cannons.’

  Everybody in the room knew that the castle of Tul could not withstand cannons. It would fall and they would all be at the mercy of the eunuch.

  Chapter 4

  ‘How long have we got?’ Austen was the first to speak.

  ‘One hour,’ said the chief. ‘Then my son must be taken to safety.’ He and Au Kerim strode from the room, yelling orders to men in the corridor.

  Weapons first. Austen went into the corridor, loaded his pistols and picked up his dagger and sword. Then he returned to the room. ‘We’d better get you ready to move.’

  He rummaged in his medicine box and unscrewed a jar of thick black paste. ‘It’s like fungus mixed with bitumen.’ He dipped the tip of his finger into it, tasted it and grimaced. ‘Ugh. But, Hussein, this medicine saved my life when I was near death crossing the Syrian Desert. I hadn’t eaten for twelve days, I was weak with dysentery and had to ride two more days and nights.’

  He felt the young woman’s eyes seeking out the slightest sign that he was lying.

  ‘It kept my horse alive, too.’

  Hussein’s eyes sparkled, but he broke out alarmingly in another sweat.

  Austen remembered the face of a ten-year-old Arabian boy, who had led a hundred exhausted men back to battle in the Sinai Desert. Only a hundred men – out of two thousand. The boy took them into the battleground where his father, the sheik, lay dead. Austen could do nothing to save the life of that Arabian boy, but he wasn’t going to let this boy die, or be taken captive by the eunuch. He had seen the eunuch fly into a rage when a servant dropped a plate. The servant’s teeth were smashed out and hammered into his skull.

  Did Hussein suspect that his father would stand and fight to the death while he, the next chief, got away? What must that feel like?

  ‘One spoonful now.’ Austen dug a small spoon into the black sludge. ‘Open wide.’