Monsters in the Sand by David Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

and Sir Stratford Canning. He’d never risk the wrath of two empires.
    While the boatman and Hormuzd hammered spikes into the riverbank to anchor the raft, Austen ran for sheer delight up to the top of the bank. A putrid smell like burnt rubbish drifted on the eveningair. Why were no camels or horses drinking at the river?
    Dreading what he’d see, Austen ran along the riverbank. High reeds hid his view, until he rounded a bend and saw the village. The roofs had fallen in, walls were blackened by fire and no sound of life came from the ruins. Branches of dead fruit trees like skeleton fingers scratched at the darkening glass of the sky. There was no human movement.
    Where were the men who would be his workers? He and Hormuzd could never dig through thousands of tons of rubble. Nimrud was five miles around the base. He was here at last, but how could he unearth Nineveh?

Chapter 17
    Austen had not waited this long and come this far for nothing. Nimrud was so close he couldn’t just turn his back on it and go away.
    He scrambled down into the ancient riverbed that was now just dry sand. How strange to walk where fish had swum and boats had sailed two thousand five hundred years ago! The last of the sunset faded and he stumbled over the uneven ground. But he forged ahead, guided by Saturn shining above the high pyramid that loomed against the Milky Way. The pyramid was probably the ruins of some ziggurat like the Tower of Babylon that had challenged heaven.
    Was this a trick of the eye, or an after-image of Saturn? There was a light twinkling at the base ofNimrud. His boots crunched and squeaked on the sand as he walked towards it. When he drew closer, the flickering became bars of light between the shabby timbers of a hovel.
    Austen went to the open door, looked in and screams of terror burst out into the night. Three women and two small children in rags cringed away from him and huddled in a corner. A man with ragged turban and grey beard struggled to his feet and stood between the stranger and his family. Two thin greyhounds, tails curled between their legs, limped towards Austen, but were too weak to attack. He held his hands down for them to sniff his skin and one dog licked his fingers. Behind the dog’s ears and around its neck, fleas clustered like spilt pepper.
    The man, about sixty years old, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
    Austen placed his palms together. ‘Glory be to him who guides us by night.’
    ‘Welcome to my home, stranger.’ The old man clutched his tattered cloak around his body.
    A woman, probably a wife, knelt and spread a mat on the dirt floor. Another woman dropped a sheep’s foot into a pot hanging over a fire in the centre of the room. Austen noticed grass seeds floating on the surface of the thin soup.
    The little boy, who was about six years old, crept close to his mother and pressed hard against her, like a foal demanding milk. She slipped her finger into the soup and held it behind her back so he could lick it. That was all he would eat. The girl, who was a year or two younger, gazed with large sad eyes at the food she would not taste.
    Austen sat cross-legged on a mat and the man sat facing him. A scar ran down one cheek and into his beard. His hands were gnarled, and tiny quarter-moons of nail grew from the raw quick of each fingertip.
    ‘My name is Awad, sheik of the Jehesh. My lands have been plundered by the pasha, many of my people killed and the rest are hiding in the mountains.’
    ‘Truly these are dark times. The pasha brings nothing but suffering to this land. My people live in a place called England, far from here, and my name is Austen Layard.’
    ‘You are English? Yet you dress as a Bedouin.’
    ‘I prefer the life of a nomad.’
    ‘It was the Bedouin who attacked our village.’
    ‘I did not wish to bring fear to your door.’
    His wife scooped out the sheep’s foot, slid it into a bowl and then spooned watery soup over it. The children sniffed the air and