“Maybe not,” Remi murmured, then started toward the right-hand wall, her headlamp pointing at what looked like a horizontal slash of darker rock where the wall met the ceiling. As they drew closer, the slash seemed to grow taller, rising into the ceiling, until they realized they were looking at a slot-like tunnel.
Standing side by side, Sam and Remi peered into the opening, which rose away from them at a forty-five-degree angle for twenty feet before rounding over a jagged bump in the floor.
“Sam, do you see what—”
“I think I do.”
Jutting over the ridge in the floor was what appeared to be the sole of a boot.
9
CHOBAR GORGE, NEPAL
The lack of treads on the boot’s sole told Sam and Remi they weren’t looking at a modern piece of footwear, and the skeletal toe poking through a rotted patch in the boot told them the owner had long since departed the earthly plane.
“Is it strange that this sort of thing doesn’t shock me anymore?” Remi said, staring at the foot.
“We’ve stumbled across our fair share of skeletons,” Sam agreed. Such surprises were part and parcel of their avocation. “See any trip wires?”
“No.”
“Let’s take a look around.”
Sam braced his legs against one wall, his back against the other, and let Remi use his arm to pull herself up. He made his way up the slope and over the hump in the floor. After panning his headlamp around the space, he called, “All clear. You’re going to want to see this, Remi.”
She was beside him in an instant. Kneeling together, they examined the skeleton.
Protected from the elements and predators, and entombed in the relative dryness of the cave, the remains had partially mummified. The clothes, which appeared to be made mostly of laminated and layered leather, remained largely intact.
“I don’t see any obvious signs of trauma,” Remi said.
“How old?”
“Just speculating . . . at least four hundred years.”
“In the same range as the spear.”
“Right.”
“This looks like a uniform,” said Sam, touching a sleeve.
“Then that makes more sense,” replied Remi, pointing. Jutting from what had once been a belt sheath was the hilt of a dagger. She panned her headlamp around the space, then murmured, “Home sweet home.”
“Home, perhaps,” Sam replied, “but sweet? . . . I suppose everything’s relative.”
A few paces from the flat area on which the skeleton lay, the tunnel widened into an alcove of roughly a hundred square feet. In several hand-carved niches in the rock walls were the stubs of crude candles. At the base of one wall, nestled in a natural hollow, were the remains of a fire; beside it, a pile of small animal bones. At the far end of the alcove were the remains of what looked like a bedroll, and, beside it, a sheathed sword, half a dozen crudely honed spears, a compound bow, and a quiver containing eight arrows. A scattering of miscellaneous items occupied the remainder of the floor: a pail, a coil of half-rotted rope, a leather pack, a round wood-and-leather shield, a wooden chest . . .
Remi stood up and began walking around the space.
“He was definitely expecting unfriendly company,” Sam observed. “This has all the signs of a last stand. But to what end?”
“Maybe it has something to do with this,” Remi said, and knelt down beside the wooden chest. Sam walked over. About the size of a small ottoman, the chest was a perfect cube made of a dark, heavily lacquered hardwood, with leather carrying straps on three sides and double shoulder straps on the fourth. Sam and Remi could find no hinges, no locking mechanisms. The seams were so well formed, they were nearly invisible. Engraved into the top of the chest were four intricate Asian characters in a two-by-two grid pattern.
“Do you recognize the language?” Sam asked.
“No.”
“This is remarkable,” Sam said. “Even with modern woodworking tools it takes incredible skill to create something like this.”