“Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
Chapter 20 - Nomad’s Land
The dispirited quartet of relic hunters climbed out of their Jeep and dragged themselves wearily into the hotel lobby. The search of the calendar stones had proven fruitless. They needed time to regroup and formulate a new strategy, but before they could cross to the elevator, they were intercepted. A compact middle-aged man launched himself out of an arm chair near the entrance and hurtled toward them.
He was dressed in a camp shirt, khaki pants, and hiking boots. Looking eagerly from one face to the next, the newcomer exclaimed, “I am so very glad you have arrived! I did not know how to reach you.” He spoke with a heavy Slavic accent. Doffing his straw hat, he revealed a thinning patch of blond hair.
“Stefan?” Griffin asked in a puzzled tone.
“What are you doing here?” Erik mirrored his team mate’s surprise.
Hurriedly dropping his duffle bag to the floor, the visitor energetically shook hands with the two men. “I have been trying to catch up with you for many days now. It has been very difficult. First, you are one place, then you are another. I am always, how you say, one step behind.” He stopped abruptly and whirled to face Cassie. Clicking his heels, he gave a stiff bow from the waist. “You are Cassie Forsythe, no?” He peered intently into her face.
“No. I mean y… y... yes,” the pythia stammered, bowled over by his energy.
“Allow me to introduce you,” Griffin intervened. “This is Stefan Kasprzyk.”
To Cassie’s ears, the last name sounded as if it rhymed with wasp chick.
“He’s the Kurgan trove keeper.”
“Oh, how do you do,” she held out her hand.
Stefan took it, bowed over it and clicked his heels again. “I am so very, very glad to meet you.”
“And this is Fred,” Erik added. “He works with Aydin Ozgur.”
“Yes, of course, the Anatolian trove keeper,” Stefan remarked, pumping Fred’s hand. “I have met Pan Ozgur many times.”
“Pan?” Cassie asked.
“I believe that’s Polish for Mister,” Griffin confided.
The introductions having been concluded, the five stood uncertainly in the middle of the lobby, eyeing one another.
“Perhaps we should go somewhere to talk,” Griffin suggested.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Stefan agreed readily. “I have much to discuss with you.”
“How about over there.” Erik gestured toward a deserted parlor adjoining the lobby.
The group followed him to the farthest corner where a couch, several chairs, and a coffee table were arranged before a large picture window. The seating afforded a panoramic view of the upper slopes of Ida.
Once they had settled themselves, Erik began. “Last I heard, you were in Kazakhstan.”
“Yes, that is so,” Stefan bobbed his head in agreement. “My team is still there. We are excavating a large burial mound. Here, I have brought some photos to show you.” He opened his duffle bag and pulled out a thick album. Leafing through it, he selected a page in the middle and spread the book flat on the table in front of them. The first picture showed a grinning Stefan surrounded by a dozen other individuals standing in front of a sand hill in the middle of a treeless landscape.
“Kazakhstan, that’s a plum assignment,” Erik commented sarcastically. “Who did you tick off to get sent there?”
“I go where the kurgans are.” Stefan shrugged philosophically. “Who knows? Maybe someday I find a burial mound on the Riviera.”
“My friend, you are quite the optimist.” Griffin chuckled wryly.
“Kurgans,” Cassie piped up. “I remember Faye telling me about them. Overlord types, right? Liked to bury their leaders in big funeral mounds called kurgans?”
The scrivener looked at her in amazement. “Twice in one day, Cassie? First the Trojan War and now this. I may die of shock.”
Erik tried to keep a straight face.
“That’s right. Hell has officially frozen over,” the pythia countered defensively. “I actually do remember what you people tell me.”
Stefan looked from one to the next with a perplexed expression.
“Don’t mind them,” Fred explained. “They like to tease each other.”
The trove keeper nodded politely and directed his next comment to Cassie. “The word kurgan is Russian. It means in English something like ‘mound.’ The name is used for all the tribes who buried their leaders in this way. The people who came before, the old Europeans, their funerals were different. They would burn the bodies or expose them for birds to pick the bones.”
“Excarnation,” Griffin added helpfully.
“Da, tochno.” Noticing Cassie’s confusion, the trove keeper corrected himself. “I am sorry. I spend too many months in Kazakhstan where everybody is speaking Russian. Sometimes I forget. In Russian, I say da, tochno. In English, I say yes, precisely. Excarnation. That is the word.”
“I think Stefan may hold the record among us for foreign language skills,” Griffin commented. “How many do you speak?”
Stefan paused to tally up the number in his head. “I believe it is fifteen, but I am learning Hindi now.”
“Why so many?” Cassie asked.
“Wherever I find a mound, it is better if I can talk to the people who live there in their own language. These Kurgan tribes.” Stefan shook his head. “They move around too much. I find graves everywhere.”
His listeners laughed.
The trove keeper flipped to another page in the album. “Look here. This is a better photo. It shows what is inside the kurgan.”
Cassie leaned over the table to study the picture. A skeleton of a man with weapons arranged around his body. There were several other snapshots of grave goods. A gold lion brooch. A stone scepter carved into the shape of a horse’s head. “Who were these people exactly?” she asked.
“They were tribes who inhabited the Eurasian steppes,” Griffin said. “Pastoral nomads originally.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying they raised cattle, sheep, and goats,” Fred interjected. “They also domesticated the horse.”
“We don’t know much about their original lifestyle,” the scrivener added. “They remain something of a mystery until around 4500 BCE.”
“What’s so important about that date?”
“That’s when they started moving out of their homeland,” Erik said. “They
