Jabez had radioed his men and ordered them to the location where Adriana landed the helicopter. They had proceeded in the land vehicles to cause less of a fuss with the locals because Jabez had said they would likely need ground transport to investigate anything in the mountains to the north.
They zoomed along the bumpy, dirty street headed for the middle of town. On one of the sidewalks, they passed an elderly woman walking with the assistance of a cane. She had a white and blue shawl pulled over her head that draped halfway down her back. Many of the buildings were dilapidated or in ill repair. Some of the structures seemed to be abandoned.
Jabez answered the unspoken questions that lingered in the vehicle. “This town was officially founded in 1927. The cement factory here has kept people working for many decades. Unfortunately, between the dust from that factory and the poisonous gases from the gold factory, the quality of life here is very low.”
“That’s fairly young for a town,” Sean commented. “Are you sure there is a connection to what we’re looking for?”
“While the town was officially founded in 1927, there have been inhabitants here much longer. The village itself actually dates back several thousand years. From what I understand, the statue we are looking for could be that old, dating back to a time before the Bronze Age.”
The convoy turned sharply down a side street, then made a left, heading back to into the direction they were going a few moments before. Sean peered ahead through the windshield, impatiently searching through the run down city. Up ahead, the street came to a point where they could only turn right. It was a small town square. Across the street in the center of the square a black iron fence wrapped around a small area no larger than two thousand square feet. There were a few small trees and benches giving it the look of a miniature park. In the center of the little area was what they had come to find, though the object wasn’t at all what Sean had expected.
“Stop the car,” he ordered. Jabez did so immediately and pulled off to the side of the street. The car with the four men behind them did the same.
A piece of granite shaped like a sword stood seven feet tall. The tip of it was melded into the rock from which it had been cut. The weapon was designed in a style from ancient times with a broad blade and a small, flat hand guard just above the hilt.
Sean and the others got out of the vehicles and checked both ways before crossing the street, though he wasn’t sure why. They hadn’t seen another moving vehicle since arriving save for a donkey pulling a cart. A few shoddily clad children were sitting on the sidewalk a hundred feet away, busily playing with what looked like homemade dolls. The kids had a grimy appearance as if they hadn’t bathed in several days, maybe longer.
The group trotted towards the black fencing, scanning it for an entrance. Off to the right, a small gate hung slightly open. Jabez’s men looked up into the vacant windows of the surrounding buildings, checking for any potential danger. They basically had to push Firth along to keep the older man moving, something that he clearly didn’t appreciate, but took with a small amount of dignity.
They arrived at the base of the huge sculpture and stared up at it. Years of vandalism and neglect had left graffiti on most of the surface. Only at the very top, near the hilt of the carved sword, did the stone remain clean albeit weathered by the centuries.
The sidewalk circled around a small patch of dirt where the base of the statue anchored into the ground. The westward sun cast a long shadow along the ground in the shape of the stone weapon.
“What are we looking for?” Adriana asked as she examined the piece closely.
Sean shook his head. “I don’t know. Look for anything that may look like words or symbols,” he suggested as he bent over and tried to scan the surface of the stone for any clues.
Firth took the approach of standing back with his arms crossed as he gazed at the piece, while Jabez copied what the other two were doing. The men from the brethren had formed a perimeter and were keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.
Suddenly, Sean perked up and looked around, a paranoid expression on his face. “Do you hear that?”
Adriana looked up into the sky. “It sounds like the other helicopter.”
Jabez’s eyes shot upward as well, scanning the partly cloudy sky. His men did the same, cautiously looking about the rooftops of the town. For a few moments, the tension was as thick as mud. Everyone around the odd statue could feel it.
Then, as quickly as it had arisen, the choppy sound of the helicopter faded away into the distance. Jabez’s men continued to search the skies suspiciously for another thirty seconds, just in case.
“They’re gone,” Firth announced with a level of certainty. “I wonder where they went.”
Sean’s eyebrows tightened slightly. “Yeah,” he said in a disconcerted tone. “I wonder that too.”
“Do you think they found something we may have missed?” Adriana asked.
It was a possibility Sean had considered. But he didn’t think so. They had been thorough, despite their rush at the ancient fortress. “Doubtful. It’s probably more likely that they went the wrong way. Still, I don’t want to be around if they turn back and come this direction.”
“Agreed,” Jabez chimed in, and immediately began scouring the stone sword again.
Several minutes passed without any revelation or discovery. Jabez, Sean, and Adriana had all done circles around the ancient object without finding so much as a scratch that seemed out of place. Firth had never moved, simply resting his chin on one hand with the one arm tucked underneath the other.
“Got anything?” Sean sounded exasperated.
The others shook their heads and joined him on one side of the monument. Firth stayed put, still staring at the object the same way he had been for the last several minutes.
“What are we missing?” Sean asked the group. “Is there anything else at this site?”
Jabez looked around the fenced in area but didn’t see anything of note. “It does not appear so.”
Sean noticed the professor hadn’t moved since they got there. Something had gotten Firth’s attention, but what it could be was still a mystery.
“What is it, Professor?”
The older man remained still a few more seconds before responding. Finally, he let his hand down from his chin and pointed at the long shadow running along the ground towards the east.
“It’s a sun dial,” he said matter-of-factly. “If I had to guess, I would say the shadow points to the area in the mountains you are looking for. Of course, you would need to know the time of day. That could be a problem.”
A grin crept across Sean’s face. He put his hands on his hips for a moment, impressed with the professor’s assessment.
“Well, Doc. There you go. Welcome back to doing some field work.”
Firth scoffed. “This is hardly real field work,” he emphasized the word real with a sarcastic beat. “And like I said, you have the problem of not knowing the time of day required.”
“Yes,” Adriana interrupted. “But we know the general direction from the map in the prison pit. Sean, pull up the picture you took in the dungeon.”
He had already begun fishing the device out of his pocket before she’d finished her sentence. A few seconds later he was tapping the screen and spreading his fingers, zooming in on the image Saint Gregory had left so many centuries before. Adriana and Jabez peeked over Sean’s shoulder as he analyzed the picture on the screen.
The line extended out at an angle, leading into the mountains. Those mountains ran from the northwest to the southeast for hundreds of miles, which presented a problem. If they guess wrong, Sean and his companions would end up out in the middle of the wilderness mountains.