James Becker
The Messiah Secret
Prologue
AD 72 Ldumra
The nine men had made slow progress ever since they’d left the last village and started the final stage of their long climb. Now, the simple stone houses were a distant ghostly monochrome in the grey light of pre-dawn.
There was no road, barely even a track, leading to where they were going, though they knew exactly the route they needed to follow, a route that would take them high into the mountains and finish in a blind-ended valley. Each of them — bar one — also knew that they were making the last journey of their lives. Only one man in the group would ever leave the valley, or would want to. That journey or, to be exact, the reason for that journey, was the culmination of everything they’d worked for throughout their adult lives.
They were well-armed, each man carrying a dagger and a sword, and all but two of them also had a bow and a quiver of arrows over their shoulders. The whole area, and especially Ldumra, was a well-known haunt of bandits and thieves. Their principal prey were the laden caravans travelling along what would later become known as the Silk Road, but they would show no compunction in attacking any group of travellers, especially if they believed those people were carrying valuables. And the nine men were accompanying a treasure that every member of the armed escort was fully prepared to die to protect. Only when they reached their destination would they be able to relax, when the treasure would at last be safe, safe — they hoped — for all eternity.
Two of the men rode slowly at the head of the group, each mounted on a woolly two-humped Bactrian camel, an animal surprisingly well-adapted to the harsh terrain. Following them, two yaks were hitched to a small and sturdy wooden cart, one man sitting on the bench at the front, whip in hand. Two other yaks followed, tied with short ropes to the rear of the cart, then half a dozen donkeys, each bearing a single rider and with heavy packs on their rumps.
In the flat loading area of the cart was a heavy wooden box, perhaps eight feet in length, four feet wide and two feet high. The box was hidden from view, covered in piles of furs and other garments, baskets of food and pitchers of water and wine. The men hoped they looked like a group of simple travellers, transporting nothing of value, and would be of no interest to bandits.
And their appearance was unremarkable. With one exception, they all looked — and indeed were — indigenous to the area. Their skin was brown and heavily wrinkled from a lifetime’s exposure to the sun in the thin air at high altitude, their eyes Mongoloid, their faces broad and flat, their hair black and worn long.
The youngest man was the odd one out, riding one of the donkeys near the centre of the group. Perhaps twenty years old, less than half the age of the youngest of his companions, he had fair skin and almost a ruddy complexion. His eyes were a bright and startling blue and his hair — hidden under his hooded cloak — was reddish-brown. He was known to his companions as ‘Sonam’, the word translating as ‘the fortunate one’, though that was not his given name.
The track from the village ran for less than a mile, and then crossed a mountain stream. The small caravan stopped by the bank and the travellers took the opportunity to drink and refill all their water containers. It would be the last stream they would cross before the steepest part of the ascent began and, although the valley was cold, with blankets of snow covering the peaks that surrounded them, an adequate supply of drinking water was essential.
The two men riding the camels remained mounted, alert for any signs of danger lurking behind the hills and within the scrubby vegetation that bordered the tumbling waters, but saw nothing. In a few minutes all the members of the caravan had remounted and resumed their journey, fording the stream and climbing the bank on the opposite side.
The going became rougher the higher they ascended, the track — such as it was — barely wide enough to accommodate the wooden cart, and their progress was reduced to little more than a slow walking pace.
It was mid-morning before they saw the first sign of anyone else on the mountainside. The leading camel walked around a bend in the track, and as the animal stepped forward, a shadowy figure dressed in grey melted back into the rocks fifty yards in front.
Immediately, Je-tsun, the leading rider, reined in his mount and raised his hand to stop the caravan. He glanced behind him, checking that his companions had seen his signal, and at the same time grabbed his bow, drew an arrow from the quiver on his back and notched it, ready to fire.
‘What is it?’ the man riding the second camel asked, stopping beside him and readying his own bow. His name was Ketu, and their language was a local dialect that would, in time, become known as Old Tibetan.
‘A man,’ Je-tsun said shortly. ‘In the rocks on the left.’
The two men scanned the track that meandered along the side of the mountain in front of them. If the figure was a bandit, he and his fellow thieves hadn’t picked a particularly good place for an ambush. The caravan — apart from the cart, obviously, which was unable to leave the track — could move well over to the right, away from the rock-strewn mountainside, which would give the riders space to manoeuvre, and to fire their arrows.
‘Not where I’d have chosen to mount an attack,’ Ketu muttered.
As if in answer to his remark, a figure wearing a grey cloak appeared some distance away from the track and, behind him, a handful of goats could be seen, moving erratically across the rough and rocky terrain towards a small level area studded with patches of green.
The two men sighed in relief.
‘Was that the man you saw?’
Je-tsun nodded. ‘I think so. It looks like him, anyway.’
After a few minutes, the caravan resumed its slow but steady progress along the track and the increasingly uneven ground. Fallen rocks and trees frequently blocked their route, and several times three or four of the men had to dismount to drag and lever the obstacles to one side to create sufficient space for the cart to continue on its way.
Just after the sun reached its highest point in the sky, Je-tsun ordered the caravan to stop on a small level plateau that offered good visibility in all directions. They dismounted and clustered around the cart where their supplies were stored. They chewed hunks of heavy unleavened bread and strips of dried meat, washed down with water — they wouldn’t touch the wine until they reached their destination.
Less than fifteen minutes later they were on the move again, and about half an hour after that the bandits hit them.
They rounded another bend to see a tree trunk completely blocking the track. In itself, that wasn’t a cause for concern — they’d had to shift half a dozen already — but when they reined in their mounts the silence of the mountains was shattered by a sudden shouted command, and then a volley of arrows erupted from the rocks over to their left.
Most of them missed, but two hit Je-tsun squarely in the chest, knocking him backwards in his saddle. He grunted with the double impact, but didn’t fall.
Beside him, Ketu swiftly notched an arrow on his own bow and fired at one of the attackers who they could now see clearly. A gang of about a dozen bandits, clothed in grey and brown cloaks, were standing among the rocks to the left of the ambush site, all armed with bows and arrows or throwing spears.
Behind the two men on camels, the rest of the group surged forward, yelling defiance as they dismounted. They used the bodies of their animals for cover, unslung their bows and fired at the bandits. The exception was the blue-eyed younger man, who was quickly dragged behind the yak-drawn cart by one of his companions.
‘Sonam, stay down!’ the man hissed, seizing his own bow and pulling an arrow out of his quiver.