blocks of the walls at each fork. 'This is it!' Nicholas told her, and
they stood together and looked about them.
'There is nothing outstanding about this spot.' Disappointment was
bitter in Royan's tone. 'We have passed over it fifty times before. It
is just like any of the other turns.'
'That is exactly what Taita would have wanted. Hell!
He wouldn't have put up a signpost saying ' marks the spot', would he
now?'
'So what do we do?' She looked at him, for once at a loss.
'Read the last epigram from the stele.'
S he had her notebook in her hand. ''From the black and holy earth of
dus very Egypt the harvest is abundant. I whip the flanks of my donkey,
and the wooden spike of the plough breaks new ground. I plant the seed,
and reap the grape and the ears of corn. In time I drink the wine and
eat the loaf. I follow the rhythm of the seasons, and tend the earth.''
She looked up at him. 'The rhythm of the seasons? Is he referring us to
the four faces of the stele? The earth?'
she asked and looked down at the slabs beneath their feet, 'The promise
of reward from the earth? Under our feet, perhaps?' she asked.
He stamped his foot on the slabs, but the sound was dull and solid.
'Only one way to find out.' He raised his voice and it echoed weirdly
through the labyrinth. 'Hansith! Come down here!'
apper sat on the high seat of his yellow frontend loader in the rain and
cheerfully cursed his gang of Buffaloes, secure in the knowledge that
they understood not a word of his insults. The rain swept over them in
intermittent gusts off the high mountains. It was not yet the solid,
drenching downpour of the true wet season. However, the river was rising
sullenly, turning dirty blue'grey with the mud and sediment that it was
bringing down.
He knew that the flood had not yet begun in earnest.
The thunder that growled ominously along the mountain peaks like a pride
of hunting lions was only the prelude to the vast celestial onslaught
which would soon follow.
Although the river was lapping the top course of gabions 's dam, and was
roaring through the bypass that of Sapper he had cut into the side
valley, he was still holding it at bay. His Buffaloes were packing more
baskets with aggregate, using up the last of the steel mesh from the
stores in the quarry. As soon as each of these was filled and wired
closed, Sapper picked it up in the front bucket of the tractor and drove
it down the bank of the Dandera. He reinforced all the weak spots in the
dam wall, and then he began raising it another course. Sapper was fully
aware of the overturning effect that the river would exert once it began
to pour over the top of the wall. Nothing would be able to withstand its
power once this happened. It would carry away a rock-filled gabion as if
it were the branch of a baobab tree. it needed only a single breach in
the wall to bring the entire structure tumbling and rolling down. He had
no illusions as to just how swiftly the river could do its fatal work.
He knew that he dared not wait for the first breach to develop in the
wall before he warned Nicholas and Royan in the chasm downstream. The
