Colony by Benjamin Cross (best way to read books .TXT) 📕

“The very best carpenters made him a strong wooden sleigh. The Twelve Clans gave him their strongest sleigh dogs. The very best craftsmen made him a pair of whalebone skis and they made him two ski-pole spears from the tusks of a double-tusk narwhal. The shamans made him a very powerful talisman with a carved tooth from the wolf and the ice tiger and the white bear that he had killed and hung it around his neck. Then he said goodbye to his family and to his friends and left for the Land of White Death.”

Lungkaju reopened his eyes, reached into his pocket and withdrew his flask once more. He unscrewed the cap and took another draught.

“So what happened to him?” Callum asked.

“Nobody knows this for sure,” Lungkaju replied. “Some say that he let the dogs go and threw away the weapons and went to find his real mother. Others have said that he asked a killer whale to carry him across the sea, but that the whale was jealous of such a great hunter and so he still swims around and around with Ngana’bta on his back, pretending not to know the way. I do not believe this one, Doctor Ross.” He peered into the torchlight. “But my grandfather, he used to tell me that Ngana’bta did reach the Land of White Death, but that Tansu Taibaa caught him there and ate his flesh.” After a few seconds he added, “I believe my grandfather.”

With the end of the tale, the cave was plunged into silence. Could it be true? Callum had no idea. There was no reason why Lungkaju would make up such a story and there was no reason to distrust him. All he knew was that, if it was true, and if this turned out to be one of those rarest of instances when history, archaeology and legend held hands, then he was staring at one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century.

“Say I believe the story,” he said. “I still have a couple of questions.”

Lungkaju met his gaze and waited.

“What makes you so sure that this is Ngana’bta?”

Without speaking, Lungkaju leant forward and grasped at the mummy.

Ordinarily Callum would have had a heart attack at the thought of even touching such a find, let alone manhandling it like this. But, not for the first time that afternoon, his curiosity had the better of him.

Carefully, sensing his friend’s anxiety, Lungkaju rolled the mummy over onto its back. The face that had been pressed into the stone floor for so many years crept into the torchlight. It bore an expression of pure horror. The skin was pale. The eyes had receded back into the skull, leaving wide-open sockets. The tip of the nose had been creased upwards and to one side, and the lips were bent open in an unnatural grimace, revealing the front teeth.

Callum had excavated many dead bodies over the years. But this was different. This was death in a very loose sense, and it was a fearsome sight. If Lungkaju was at all moved by the spectacle, then he hid it well. As the face had rolled into the light, Callum had half-expected him to drop the mummy in disgust and flee the tunnel. But instead he had kept calm, his own expression unchanged.

Callum’s eye was drawn lower, to where the parka fabric appeared to be pierced through. The cavity, slightly smaller than a fist, continued on into the stomach, and around the edges a rust-coloured halo was dyed into the garment.

“It’s a stab wound,” Callum said. Whoever this was, it looked as if they’d been impaled as well as having their legs hacked off. But what could’ve… His mind moved back to the carved bone object, the possible ski-tip, salvaged from Fenris. The splintered end was similarly discoloured, and the dog must have tugged it free from the mummy’s gut.

Lungkaju said nothing but began feeling around the top of the mummy’s chest. Callum watched as he undid the drawstrings at the base of the hood, loosened the neckline and reached inside. A second later he withdrew his hand, two strands of a hide thong now trailing from it. Slowly, he unfurled his fingers.

Callum could hardly believe his eyes. In the centre of Lungkaju’s palm were three strung canine teeth, ascending in size. The teeth were separated by two silver spacers, and a series of symbols was carved around their roots. Surely it could only be the amulet that he had described just moments earlier; the amulet that the shamans of the twelve clans had made for Ngana’bta before sending him to his death. Single teeth from a wolf, a tiger and a polar bear.

“You had a second question, Doctor Ross?” Lungkaju asked.

Callum’s gaze remained glued to the amulet, the shock of this latest revelation still reverberating inside his brain. “Tansu Taibaa,” he whispered at last. “What was it?”

At this, Lungkaju shifted uneasily. “I do not know. I thought that it was not real also.” He draped the amulet across the mummy’s chest. “But I know what it means.”

Callum looked up.

“Tansu Taibaa,” Lungkaju continued. “It is strange. A very strange name. It means lizard bird.”

Chapter 4 Tusking

1

The centre of Callum’s laboratory on board the Albanov was taken up with surfaces and storage units, map tables and field plan digitising palettes. Computer terminals were positioned around the edges. Sinks with attached gas extraction chambers stood at either end and a large, glass-door specimen refrigeration unit hummed away in the far corner.

Having mooched around it as part of the initial tour and returned only once in the fortnight since, this was only the third evening that he had been there. Until yesterday, there had been no reason for him to be there. His field survey had identified precisely nothing of archaeological interest. Not so much as a flint flake. His only regular task had been to keep his field diary updated, which he had done