before. It was the sound of faraway automatic gunfire, almost certainly
an AK-47 assault rifle firing, not long ragged bursts, but short taps of
three rounds, an art that took expertise and practice.
He was sure that the person doing the shooting was a trained
professional.
He tilted his wrist so that the luminescent dial of his watch caught the
starlight, and he saw that it was a few minutes after three 'clock in
the morning.
He stood listening for a long time, but the firing was not repeated. At
last he returned to where Royan lay and settled down beside her again.
However, he slept only shallowly and intermittently, and kept starting
awake listening for more gunfire in the night.
Royan began to stir at the first lemon and orange flush of dawn in the
eastern sky, and while they ate the remains of the survival rations for
their breakfast he told her about the noise that had woken him during
the night.
'Do you think it could have been Boris?' she asked.
'He May have caught up with Mek and Tessay.'
'I doubt that very much. Boris has already been gone several days. He
should be well out of earshot by now, even beyond the sound range of the
heaviest weapons.'
'Who do you suppose it was, then?'
'I have no idea. But I don't like it. We should start back to camp as
soon as we have had another look around the quarry. After that there is
nothing further that we can do at this stage. We should make tracks for
home and mother.'
As soon as the light was strong enough, Nicholas shot a spool of film to
make a record of the quarry. For ison of scale, Royan posed beside
compar the wall in which the embryonic blocks still lay. As she warmed
to her role as a model she started to clown for him. She climbed on to
the biggest of the slabs and hammed it up for the camera, pouting with
one hand behind her head in the style of Marilyn Monroe.
When, finally, they went off down the valley towards the monastery they
were both exultant and garrulous after their success. Their discussion
was animated as they bounced ideas back and forth, and laid their plans
for the further exploitation of these wonderful discoveries.
By the time they reached the pink cliffs at the lower end of the chasm
it was late morning. There they met a small party of monks from the
monastery coming up the trail.
Even from a distance it was obvious that something dreadful had happened
during their absence: the sorrowful ululations of the monks sent chills
down Royan's spine.
It was the universal African sound of mourning, the harbinger of death
and disaster. As they approached they saw that the monks were picking up
handfuls of dust from the track and pouring it over their heads as they
wailed and lamented.
'What is it, Tamre?' Royan asked the boy. 'Go and find out for usP Tamre
ran ahead to meet his brother monks.
They stopped in the middle of the path and fell into a high-pitched
