“What lovely people,” Griffin remarked caustically.
“After that, the tribe thought the dagger was defiled. It had been used against them by someone they conquered—one of the so-called inferior tribes—so that’s why it got buried.” Cassie yawned wearily. “And that’s where its story ends.”
Fred handed her a fresh glass of water. “Which brings us back to Stefan’s original question. How did that tribe get the dagger in the first place?”
Cassie took several sips before replying. “I think the guy who had it first was the founder of that tribe though he would have lived a couple of thousand years before its last owner. He was bad news, that one. Somebody should have forced him to take an anger management class. Except maybe ‘angry’ isn’t the right word. It felt more like rage. The same kind of rage I could feel in the dagger itself.”
“What was he enraged about?” Griffin asked.
The pythia paused to consider. “Everything. Everybody. It was almost as if he had a grudge against life itself for being the way it was. He didn’t like being told no.” She stopped speaking, trying to reach out into the atmosphere and pluck out the right phrase to describe what was wrong with him. “It’s almost as if he thought he was God. And every time reality smacked him down to prove he wasn’t, he got even madder.” She paused again and closed her eyes, trying to recall the details. “He was traveling with a bunch of people who were all running away from a giant flood.”
Griffin laid a hand on her arm to interrupt her. “Cassie, where were they? Could you see the surroundings?”
She nodded. “They were in some mountains. There was snow on the trail.”
“Good heavens, do you know what you may be describing?” Griffin asked in wonderment.
Cassie stared at him. “No, what?”
“This young man and the people who were with him may have all been fleeing from the Black Sea deluge.”
“But that would mean this knife goes back about seven thousand years,” Erik speculated.
“Precisely,” Griffin concurred. “Stefan, is there any way you could get this carbon-dated?”
The trove keeper nodded. “Yes, I think that is possible.”
“Amazing,” Griffin exclaimed. “This artifact may provide a direct link between refugees of the flood and the origins of Kurgan culture.
“How do you figure?” Fred asked.
“If these people were climbing into the mountains to escape a great flood, there’s a very good chance they were fleeing directly into the Russian steppes. This may help broaden our understanding of the Kurgan tribes. Their warlike tendencies may have predated the dessication of the grasslands by thousands of years. Those refugees would have already been hungry and desperate when they arrived in their new homeland. Quite possibly they might have started preying on the indigenous peoples in the area. Remember what happened to the area around Catal Huyuk after the flood? Cities with fortifications. It stands to reason that these starving, predatory newcomers to the steppes might have entirely changed the cultural balance in that part of the world. This aggressive young man that Cassie has described would have been proto-Kurgan.”
“He sure was brutal enough to be a Kurgan,” Cassie observed. “He cut her throat like it was nothing.”
“Who?” Erik asked.
“Sorry, I forgot. I’m getting ahead of myself. In my vision, this guy was ornery at the best of times, but he’d linked up with a tribe that was trying to get away from the flood. He was mad at the direction they were going. I think that was what set him off. He wanted to be in charge. But there was this woman. I guess she was the tribe’s shaman, and she kept insisting that they go in a different direction. So, he took out his knife and cut her throat. That was the beginning for him. He saw that catastrophe with the flood as…” She paused to summon the right word. “As an opportunity. That’s it. An opportunity for him to take over. He was a different kind of human from the rest. Maybe he was born different. The tribe he was traveling with—their leaders acted for the good of everybody. They all felt bound to each other. But this guy, he was disconnected. He really didn’t care about the rest of the people or what was good for them. Only what was good for him. He wanted to be giving the orders. Wanted to be worshipped and obeyed. Some of the tribe followed him because they didn’t know what to do and he acted like he knew where he was going. So, they went off with him and left the others behind.” She shook her head ruefully. “What a psycho.”
“Not psycho,” Griffin corrected. “The personality you’re describing sounds very much like a sociopath to me.”
“It all fits,” Erik added. “That kind of leader usually manages to show up whenever there’s a culture in crisis. People get scared stupid, and they listen to anybody who sounds like he has a plan to get them out of the jam they’re in. Overlord history books are full of his kind.”
Cassie wasn’t paying attention to their conversation. “There should be something else here.” She was puzzled.
“Pardon?” Griffin stared at her.
She transferred her attention to the trove keeper. “Stefan, didn’t you find something else with this knife? Something shiny buried right next to it?”
The trove keeper looked perplexed. “There was the sheath which you have already seen.”
“No, not that. Can somebody get me something to write with?”
Fred walked over to the desk to retrieve some hotel stationary and a pen. He handed them wordlessly to Cassie.
She traced an outline on the paper. A five-sided geometric shape. Inscribed inside it was a five-pointed star. She held the picture out for Stefan to see. “It would have looked like this. An amulet made of metal, copper maybe. It had a star carved into the middle of
