Path of the Tiger

By J.M. Hemmings

When the world was still young and civilisation was but a dream, they walked among us, alternately revered as living gods and feared as powerful demons. Beastwalkers: nearly immortal men and women who could wear the living bodies of animals.

As the empires of humankind grew, the existence of these beings passed from incontrovertible truth to hazy memory, fading in time to legend and eventually crumbling into myth. But the beastwalkers endured, living hundreds of secret lives, drifting surreptitiously through countless centuries and the rise and fall of civilisations, like fireflies travelling through a night forest. Only a few still draw breath, hunted relentlessly by a global cabal bent both on their final extermination and unchallenged dominion over our entire planet.

Now, in the 21st century, the remaining beastwalkers will make their final stand ... but unbeknown to us, their struggle is our struggle, and the vicious campaign of extermination directed against them is, ultimately, a war of attrition waged on all living things.

Will the beastwalkers prevail in their last battle and survive the coming storm ... or will they, along with humankind and the rest of the living world, face total destruction in a cataclysm of final doom?

The Tooth, Claw and Steel epic is a saga of wonder, violence, magic, tragedy, inspiration, brutality, love and hope, set against the awestriking backdrop of twelve thousand years of history and featuring an enormous cast of characters, ranging from gladiators of ancient Rome to Knights Templar to CEOs of multinational corporations, and many more. Dive headlong J.M. Hemmings’ richly woven tapestry of genre-bending historical fantasy in Path of the Tiger, the first volume of this grandiose and spellbinding story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.M. Hemmings
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990930287

J.M. Hemmings

J.M. Hemmings is the author of the Tooth, Claw and Steel epic. He has been composing stories since early childhood and has lived in different countries on three continents. While he currently earns his living as a ghostwriter, he has also been an English teacher, a drummer in a rock band, a volunteer for various animal charities and an artist. He has a deep love for nature, animals and ecology, and a keen interest in history and the human condition, all of which feature prominently in his stories. He currently lives in England with his wife and a feisty cockatiel.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

21st June 1908. Remote Ewenki camp, Tunguska Region, 600km North-East of Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia.

‘Turn back,’ the old woman croaked, every syllable wrung from her turkey-neck throat like a reluctant droplet from a damp rag. ‘You have reached the end of the world. There is nothing for you beyond here but death.’

A gust of biting Arctic wind howled through the camp, rippling the Ewenki’s furs and whipping a few strands of her ice-white hair across her tattooed visage. The wind battered the grey greatcoats of the men standing before her, but they stood like stones, each in his assigned place, their weapons gleaming and their gaze steely and unwavering against the surreal, endless twilight of the Siberian summer evening. The old woman’s eyes, two pearls of bright onyx buried in piled folds of skin, glinted as she turned her face to the midnight sun.

‘Death will take you,’ she rasped, ‘as surely it has taken all the others who have come before you. Turn around, go back to your towns and cities and forget this place. Stay there, in your vast grey settlements in your houses of stone, your castles and palaces. Warm yourselves in your great halls by the fires of your hearths, where you burn all the forests of the world, tree by uprooted tree, and tell your grandchildren one day of the time you journeyed to the very end of the earth. Tell them that you stepped into the land of the Old Gods and Goddesses, but that you had enough humility to know that you did not belong there, and that, having peered through the veil that separates your world from Theirs, you realised that this place was not for you. You have come a long way, and you have reached the edge of the known; is this not enough for you? I say again to you, do not venture further, for if you do you will not return.’

Captain Vasilesvky’s blue-grey eyes, almost unsettlingly large, set deep between a prominent aquiline nose and nestled beneath bushy blonde eyebrows, transfixed the old Ewenki’s with a ruthless glare while the interpreter translated.

‘Tell the stubborn old hag,’ Vasilevsky growled in Russian, addressing the interpreter, but staring unflinchingly into the windows to the elderly woman’s soul, ‘that I’ll double my offer if she provides us with a guide. Cold hard roubles in her wrinkled claws, right now. More cash than she’s likely ever seen.’

The interpreter relayed this offer to the Ewenki, who, like her far younger adversary in this set of negotiations, did not once break eye contact. Sinkholes, however, slowly appeared in the corners of her gash of a mouth as she listened, deepening the gouges and scored hollows of her visage, which was tattooed all over with arcane patterns.

‘You want to pay us that much to lead you to your own death?’ she squawked, and the strangled chuckles that erupted from her throat echoed in mocking waves across the camp. ‘You are mad,’ she continued, shaking her head and sighing. ‘You are all mad, like the others who came before you, and the others before them when I was but a girl. And as surely as they perished out there, punished for their arrogance by the Old Gods and Goddesses, so too will you perish.’

Vasilevsky’s face hardened as the crone’s wheezing laughter rang in his ears. His gloved right hand, meaty and strong, slid instinctively – and subtly – across his hips, and his fingers curled around the ornate hilt of his sabre. Before he could unsheathe the weapon, however, the officer next to him gripped his forearm with quick, quiet urgency.

‘Please let her know,’ Captain Higgins instructed as he took over, his Russian smoothly fluent but coloured with the unmistakable tinge of an English accent, ‘that she can, with all due respect, keep her opinions about our mission to herself.’ The twinkle that glimmered in his small brown eyes, and the deepening of the crinkled crow’s feet next to them straddled, with a smidgen of discomfort, the smeared divide between gentle compassion and veiled condescension. ‘All we are asking for is a guide to take us to the place we discussed, a request not by any means unreasonable. We swear on our honour, as oath-bound members of an ancient organisation of a most prestigious and noble pedigree, that we will not desecrate the site; we understand well its religious significance to her people. We simply wish to conduct some scientific research in the region, you see. Now, we have presented a most generous offer to this woman, as chief elder and medicine woman of this band, and all that we ask is that she discuss it with the young men of her clan. And perhaps instead of money, which her people have little use for out here, we will promise them our rifles and ammunition on our return. They will make for far more efficient hunting than spears and bows.’

While he spoke, Higgins maintained his firm, cautionary grip on his counterpart’s forearm, preventing him from drawing his weapon and unnecessarily escalating this situation. At the age of forty-three he was Vasilevsky’s elder by a mere decade, but their personalities marked them as being men of different generations. Higgins, by far the more conservative of the two, had been assigned command by his superiors precisely because of his even temperament and his diplomatic ability to defuse conflict, notwithstanding his martial abilities and extensive military experience. With so much hanging in the balance in terms of this mission’s goals, there could be no room for failure. Vasilevsky was tough as nails, a fearless if impulsive leader, and a ferocious fighter who had participated in the 1905 Revolution; a man of his time, of this epoch of rapid change, of the overturning of old ways and the uprooting of antiquated traditions and outdated customs. However, in spite of, or perhaps because of the revolutionary ideals he clasped with such fervent devotion to his breast, he lacked finesse when it came to negotiating more delicate situations.

Vasilevsky grunted and jerked his arm from Higgins’ grasp. At six foot two, he was a good few inches taller than his compatriot, and in addition was broader of shoulder and stouter of limb, but what the older, thinner man lacked in brute strength he made up for in speed and dexterity; he could move his sabre with astonishing rapidity and deadly precision, and he was well-versed in the art of combat. Higgins glared briefly at Vasilevsky, but in an instant he wiped the sourness from his long face. His pinched, angular features softened into a more amicable expression, a cordial smile sparkling with equal sincerity in his deep-set eyes and on his wide mouth, of which only his lower lip was visible. The rest of it was concealed behind an impressive walrus moustache, which, like what little hair remained on his balding pate, was mousy brown, streaked liberally with grey.

The interpreter, a middle-aged Ewenki man from a band who lived far closer to civilisation than this one, evidently had a way with words, for he managed to persuade the old woman to at least allow the outsiders to make camp here for the night. However, despite the offer of the rifles and ammunition, which would be a great boon to this band of pastoralist hunter-gatherers, the elder seemed no more willing to assist them than she had been prior to the upgrading of reward.

‘You have travelled long and far,’ she announced after the interpreter had finished his spiel, with words of welcome on her lips if not in her eyes. ‘Stay with us and rest for the night,’ she continued, opening her arms and sweeping them across the breadth of the camp in a grandiose gesture of hospitality, ‘before you turn and go back to where you came from.’

This response elicited only an aggressive, wordless snarl from Vasilevsky, but Higgins clasped his hands together and gave the old woman a subtle bow and a gracious smile.

‘Thank you for your hospitality, madame,’ he said, his tone imbued with expertly feigned warmth.

He then turned to address the men, a group of heavily-armed soldiers of various ethnicities and nationalities, along with two scientists and a mysterious prisoner who wore a long black cloak, baggy with many folds, which made it impossible to tell whether they were a man or woman. The large hood of the cloak veiled his or her entire face, shrouding it wholly in shadow. Shackling the prisoner’s ankles and wrists were a pair of extraordinarily thick chains, almost as stout and weighty as those used for boat anchors. He or she, strangely, did not seem too encumbered by what had to be a ponderous weight of steel, and moved as if the links were of constructed of a far lighter material.

‘Gentlemen!’ Higgins barked in English, the lingua franca of this diverse group of men. ‘We make camp here for the night. I will remind you that you are all to be on your best behaviour; treat the natives, their homes, their reindeer and other belongings with respect, and for God’s sake do not harass their women! I mean that; I’ll see any man who disobeys these orders flogged within an inch of his life! It is of the utmost importance that we win the trust of these people, that they may decide to provide us with a guide who will lead us through the great wilderness ahead. We’ve come this far, and I’ll not have anyone jeopardising our chance to make this mission a success. Is that understood?’

‘Aye sir!’ the soldiers all roared in unison.

‘Good, good,’ Higgins commented, nodding with approval. ‘Go on lads, set up your tents, then.’

Ao Maliya squatted between two of the Ewenki’s bark-covered tepees, keenly observing the outsiders as they erected their compact canvas tents in the spaces between the tall spruce, fir and pine trees of the endless taiga, while the band’s herd of domesticated reindeer grazed around them without any apparent interest in the newcomers. The young hunter had heard what the outsiders’ interpreter had told the medicine woman, and he thought her a fool to turn down such a generous offer. Granted, ancient tradition mandated that it was forbidden for outsiders to enter the land of the Old Gods … but the world was changing, and the old ways were dying. Ao’s band were one of the very last groups of Ewenki in whose collective memory and oral lore the Old Gods and Goddesses still drew breath, and most of what his distant ancestors had once known about these beings had been forgotten anyway; Ao, certainly, knew very little about them, save for the fact that they were said to walk the wilds in the living skins of beasts, although they could readily shed these and assume the forms of men and women if they so wished. In addition, they were thought to be immortal, and to possess immense powers, with which the strongest of them could flatten forests or crush mountains to dust. But the foreign missionaries, who had come even to these most remote Ewenki outposts, either from the west to preach of the lone Christian God, or from the south, to tell them of the godless wisdom of Buddhism, had all dismissed the Ewenkis’ belief in the Old Gods and Goddesses of the wilds as primitive superstition, and had urged them to abandon this supposedly misplaced faith.

The outsiders interested Ao as much as their weapons did. It was not as if he had been confined to this particular forest camp his entire life; indeed, by the very nature of his people’s existence – trekking across the taiga with their reindeer and setting up temporary camps according to the seasons – he had travelled hundreds, if not thousands of miles over the course of his twenty-three years. However, none of these journeys had ever taken him close to civilisation, and the only other people he had met along the way had all been of other Ewenki clans.

With his keen eyes – dark slits in shallow sockets set wide apart on his flat, tawny-skinned face – he studied the nearby soldiers. They were powerfully-built and hard-faced, all of them, with some standing a full head taller than himself – and Ao was considered tall for an Ewenki. The sharply-cut grey greatcoats and brilliantly glossy black boots that constituted their uniforms looked so starkly different from the furs and skins in which he and his people dressed themselves, and he could not deny that he found the bold and almost aggressive cut of these clothes quite attractive. In addition, the variety in terms of the outsiders’ physical features was astonishing to him; never before had he seen people like these. Their skin tones ranged from alabaster pale to near jet black, and their hair and beards seemed to come just as broad a variety of hues and textures, in contrast to the simple straight black hair of his people. The foreigners were at once exotic, intriguing, fascinating … and a little frightening. There was a flinty, menacing hardness in the men’s eyes, which seemed a uniform characteristic among them, whether their irises were green, blue, grey, brown or black – a hardness that Ao both feared and envied.

Of particular interest to him was the prisoner in the black robe, draped with massive chains. Not a single sliver of the person’s skin was visible anywhere; their hands were gloved, their feet clad in the same polished boots the soldiers wore, and from what he could make out of the shadow-shrouded face inside the hood, only their eyes were partially visible, glinting briefly in the light as the prisoner turned to face him. From the size of the person’s hands and feet, and the fact that they seemed a little smaller in build than the soldiers, Ao guessed that he was looking at a woman rather than a man. He only caught a fleeting glimpse of her eyes in the shadows of her hood, but in that flicker of a second a strange sensation coursed through his veins, and an eerie chill slithered down the length of his spine. There was something very unsettling about the prisoner, and Ao wasn’t entirely sure that he actually did want to discover anything more about who – or what – she was.

He stared for some time at their baggage too. There were the usual barrels, sacks and crates packed with supplies, which they had pulled into the camp on sleds, but what caught his eye were two small wicker cages among the baggage, each of which contained a homing pigeon: one white, one black. While staring at the birds, an eerie sensation tickled the nape of his neck with wispy feathers, and he looked up and saw the eyes of the prisoner fixed on him, uncannily bright within the heavy shadows of her hood. An unsettling feeling of discomfort rumbled deep within his guts, and for a second he felt almost like turning and fleeing into the forest.

Still, his curiosity about the outsiders proved to be stronger than his unease, and he got up from his squatting position and traipsed gingerly across the grass, approaching the nearest soldier, a tall, heavily-built Russian with nearly corpse-pale skin and a severe-looking face dominated by a bushy red beard. Ao swallowed slowly, his mouth suddenly dry as he stepped up to the man, who towered intimidatingly over him. Forcing himself to flash a meek, gap-toothed grin at the soldier while avoiding direct eye contact, Ao reached out to touch the man’s gleaming rifle, which was slung over his shoulder via a strap.

The soldier spun around, rage flashing like ignited gunpowder in his green irises, his right hand darting straight for the hilt of the cutlass bayonet sheathed on his hip, but a sharp word from Higgins froze his hand in mid-air before he could draw the weapon.

‘Easy there, Boreyev!’ the Englishman barked in flawless Russian. ‘Allow the lad to inspect your rifle, please. These tribesmen do not share our views on private property, and, after all, these weapons are the carrot with which we intend to tempt the mule.’

Boreyev scowled at Ao but nonetheless obeyed his superior, and he unslung his rifle and handed it to the young hunter, after removing both the magazine and the bullet that was in the chamber. Higgins strode briskly over to the pair of them, eager to make some headway in terms of procuring a guide.

‘The latest, most advanced technology,’ Higgins said in Russian with a congenial smile to Ao, who was turning the weapon over in his hands, a look of quiet awe glowing on his coarse-featured face. ‘Winchester 1907 model, with a fifteen-shot magazine,’ Higgins continued, not bothered by the fact that Ao could not understand a word he was saying. ‘Semi-automatic, .351 calibre bullet. You could drop a deer from nearly a mile away with one of these, and should a bear or tiger ambush you in the wilderness, you’d likely walk away with its pelt slung over your shoulder instead of ending up in its belly.’

The interpreter hurried over to them and breathlessly translated what he had picked up of Higgins’ words. Ao nodded, stroking the polished wooden stock of the weapon with appreciative fingertips.

‘As I said to the elder of your clan,’ Higgins continued, the broadness of his smile half-concealed beneath his walrus moustache, but nonetheless shining brightly in his eyes, ‘if she changes her mind and allows one of you to guide us to the sacred site out there, all of these weapons will be yours when we have completed our mission.’

‘All of this?’ Ao murmured, his awestruck eyes fixed as if by cables to the rifle in his hands.

Higgins did not need to comprehend Ao’s words to understand the young man’s question.

‘All of this,’ he replied in Russian before the interpreter could say anything.

‘Forget what the old crone says,’ Ao hissed. The contempt flavouring his dismissal was biting, and his tone dropped to a conspiratorial whisper as he continued, while his eyes darted from left to right, as if checking to see if they were being watched. ‘She’s a senile fool, blinded by superstition and hamstrung by outdated customs. I’ll take you out there myself before the camp rises tomorrow.’

30th June

‘This damned savage better know where we are,’ Captain Vasilevsky growled, the low sun sparking a flare in his eyes as its rays bled through the endless vertical labyrinth of trees. ‘If he’s leading us in circles through this forest, I’ll rip his blasted entrails out with my bare hands! We’ve been traipsing along behind him like lost sheep in a winter night for nearly ten days now!’

‘Calm down, Vasilevsky,’ Higgins muttered. ‘He knows where he’s going. Haven’t you noticed him making a note of the landmarks and trees we’ve passed? You must understand, my good sir, that these people view the world through an entirely different lens to that which serves as a pair of unseen spectacles to us, who come from civilised places. To these people every tree in the taiga is an individual, its features as distinguishable to them as the faces of people in a crowd are to us. He knows the way, yes, this young man knows the way, of this I am assured. Besides, we’re close … by Jove we’re close, I can feel it in the air! Can you not feel it, my good man? That sensation of … of static electricity all around us, almost. I can feel it, Vasilevsky, in my blood, in my very bones.’

Vasilevsky turned away from the scattered shafts of sunlight that had managed to penetrate the tight-packed canopy of leaves and boughs, and stared ahead, looking past Ao – who was leading the expeditionary force – at the ominous, all-encompassing wall of shadow that seemed to be swallowing up the entirety of the forest ahead, turning day into night and creating an unsettling sensation of an inversion of time itself.

‘Bah!’ Vasilevsky snarled. ‘It feels like we’re lost, lost in this cursed wilderness! How long since we last saw a sign of any other people, huh? I’ll tell you when: when we left the savages’ filthy camp, that’s when! Nothing but trees and animals, trees and blasted animals out here! It was good sport to shoot bear, wolves, elk and deer for the first few days, but now I’m even sick of that.’ Vasilevsky’s voice then dropped in register, and his eyes narrowed and darted from side to side. ‘And what’s more,’ he continued, ‘the last day or two, I’ve felt like we’ve been … watched. I can’t shake the damn feeling, Higgins. It’s like this bloody forest has eyes. A million of them, observing our every move.’

‘We haven’t seen any signs of beastwalkers out here, and we have been looking,’ Higgins said calmly. ‘You know that every man in this unit has been selected from the ranks of the Huntsmen because of his skill and experience … and, of course, because that man is extremely effective at exterminating beastwalker scum. And have you not forgotten about the one in our midst?’ He jerked his head towards the woman in the black robe and chains, who was standing, as ever, apart from everyone else. ‘If the abominations were out there, she would have sensed their presence.’

‘You’re calling it a she now, are you?’ Vasilevsky scoffed icily, a sneer of contempt smeared across his visage. ‘Be careful, Higgins, be very careful. You know what the official policy is on those things.’ His voice dropped to a low register as he continued, and he flashed a suspicious glance at the woman. ‘Don’t get too close to it,’ he cautioned, and there was a threat as well as a warning in that utterance. ‘Remember what our orders are. Once it has served its purpose, we exterminate it. Immediately.’

Higgins smiled sourly at his compatriot, but his eyes were granite-hard in their sockets.

‘Do not presume to make assumptions about my feelings regarding the beastwalker, Vasilevsky,’ he replied coolly. ‘Do not. And do not question my loyalty to our Huntsmen masters either.’

The officers stared coldly at each other for a few tense moments before Higgins’ lips curved into a tight smile.

‘Come, Vasilevsky, let us break this foolish impasse,’ he said. ‘We must be united in our purpose, must we not? I implore you, shake off your worries and paranoia. Such sentiments serve only to divide us, and God help us if such things infect the ranks of our men. Let me make this as clear to you as I possibly can: this forest does not have eyes, and we are not being watched." He paused here to chuckle and broaden his grin before continuing. ‘Relax, my friend! We are on one of the most important missions in the long history of our esteemed organisation, and when we return, triumphantly, with the creature imprisoned and bound in chains, great will be our glory. Great and vast will our glory indeed be, and the echoes of our splendid victory will ring through the hallowed chambers of every Huntsmen stronghold in every nation on the planet! We are about to change the course of history, Vasilevsky. We are about to change the course of history itself, man! Do not allow doubt to worm its way into your head. No, keep your eyes fixed on the prize – only on the prize – and we shall overcome any obstacles that may stand in our way.’

Before Vasilevsky could respond, the interpreter jogged over to them.

‘He says we’re almost here,’ the man announced to the officers, nearly breathless from both excitement and the exertion of the trek. ‘Just over this ridge.’

‘In the thick of those cursed shadows ahead,’ Vasilevsky muttered.

Higgins gave the interpreter a curt nod and then called a halt. When everyone had stopped moving, he beckoned to one of the scientists to come over to him. The man, a rail-thin old Arab with a shock of white hair, and an emaciated-looking face that was dominated by two protruding eyes and a hooked beak of a nose, hobbled up the slope from the back of the group, while the powerfully-built Central African soldier who was carrying the scientist’s equipment in his rucksack followed him, scowling and grumbling about the weight of the pack.

‘Do a reading here, Dr Khan,’ Higgins ordered.

The willowy Dr Khan – who, in his oversized military greatcoat and combat boots, resembled an adolescent boy dressed up for a pantomime, wearing an adult’s clothes and a mask of an old man’s face – eagerly snatched his rucksack from the soldier. With frantic, liver-spotted hands that were trembling with anticipation he retrieved a wooden box and flipped it open. He then rummaged around in the pack and took out a number of different antennae, which he attached to the wooden apparatus, inside which there were clocks and dials. With breathless keenness he wound up the device via a crank on the side, but soon as the instrument began to run the needles on the dials started spinning madly. A sharp crack resounded through the chilly air as one of the dials broke.

‘Unbelievable,’ Dr Khan gasped, his large eyes growing even wider with astonishment and awe. ‘I’ve, I’ve never seen anything like this! This is impossible, this is amazing, this is, it’s, it’s unbelievable! This is, this is … this is simply unearthly. It seems that all the laws of physics, of the universe are, are being overturned here!’

Higgins seized this opportunity to flash a smug grin at Vasilevsky.

‘What did I just say to you, my good sir?’

Vasilevsky simply growled wordlessly as he unslung and readied his rifle, his expression stony as he ordered the troops to do the same. Ao, meanwhile, watched all of this unfolding with a rapidly increasing sense of alarm. He did not understand what the leaders of the expedition and the scientists were doing or saying, but their body language and facial expressions were easy enough to decipher, as were the actions of the soldiers as they readied their rifles with grim scowls on their faces.

In addition to all of this, an eerie sensation was rippling across his skin, scuttling beneath his furs and burrowing like a swarm of ten thousand microscopic beetles with carnivorous intent. Indeed, so intense was this uncanny feeling that his flesh and bones themselves felt as if they were absorbing the invisible energy, humming like charged transistors within the deepest core of his being. An unseen hand gripped his skull and swivelled his head upon his neck, until he found himself staring at the prisoner – whose face he had still not seen – and it suddenly seemed that her eyes, like bright jewels, were refracting focused light within the shadowy cavern of her hood. And, what was more, those shining eyes did not look any longer like those of a human being. Rather, they had taken on the ominous radiance of the eyes of a wild beast.

‘The Old Gods…’ Ao murmured to himself, his eyes widening with awe … and fear, as an epiphany hit him with abruptly brutal force. ‘They’re … they’re real! The legends are true! The stories are true, they’re real!’

He had never been this close to the ancient shrine; to get so near to it was strictly forbidden to anyone but medicine men and women, and while the elders of his band knew of the location of this place, on the rare occasions on which their migrations through the taiga took them this far north, they would usually skirt it by miles.

The glow of the prisoner’s eyes in the darkness grew even brighter, and in a moment of inexplicable yet near-dazzling clarity, Ao Maliya understood precisely why the elders forbade anyone to approach this sacred site. It was a feeling that he could not put into words, that he could not comprehend in any sort of linear, logical fashion, but the potency of its message gushed at once through every cell of his being.

Skipping the interlocutory link of the interpreter, he rushed over to Higgins and grabbed at the officer’s arm.

‘You cannot go there! I made a mistake, we shouldn’t have come here, we, we have to go, we have to turn around and, and leave!’ he babbled, flecks of spittle flying haphazardly from his flapping crimson lips, his eyes wild in the eerie gloom.

Higgins jerked his arm out of the Ewenki’s grasp.

‘Unhand me, blast you!’ he snapped in English, his usually unflappable composure rattled by Ao’s near-rabid outburst.

‘Turn around, turn around!’ Ao yelled hysterically, lunging again for Higgins’ greatcoat. ‘We have to leave, we have to, we have to go!’

This time, however, the officer was ready for him, and moving with agile speed, he swivelled his hips and twisted his torso, deftly dodging the young man’s clumsy flailing, and with a perfectly executed judo throw he hurled Ao to the ground. The impact drove all of the air out of the young man’s lungs, and he lay gasping futilely for breath, like a fish pulled from water, drowning in air. Higgins, meanwhile, kept him pinned down while the interpreter hurried over.

‘What’s gotten into this damned fool?!’ Higgins demanded. ‘What’s he blabbering on about?!’

‘He was saying,’ the interpreter answered, his own features contorted with unease, ‘that we have to leave. We have to turn around and go. We should not have come here.’

‘What?! After leading us here, all this way, to the very doorstep of this place … he now wants us to now abandon the mission and turn around?! The fool has gone insane, he’s lost his bloody mind, he has! Well, you can inform him that we’re proceeding as planned, and that we no longer require his services, not until we come out of the place at least.’ Higgins then looked up, his fury-filled eyes seeking out a particular soldier. ‘Boreyev!’ he barked as soon as his gaze settled on the big man. ‘Come over here and truss this madman up! Stuff a gag in his damned mouth as well, I’d say! Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere until we come back!’

‘Yes sir!’ Boreyev growled as he jogged over with a length of rope.

Boreyev tied Ao up and stuffed a rag into his mouth, and there the expedition left him, lying tied up on the ground.

‘Fix bayonets!’ Vasilevsky ordered.

The soldiers all complied, attaching their cutlass bayonets to their rifles, while the two officers loosened their sabres in their scabbards and drew their revolvers from their holsters. Vasilevsky glanced at the assembled soldiers, who were all now in formation, and he then looked at Higgins, who gave him a nod of affirmation.

‘The company will advance!’ Vasilevsky barked.

He and Higgins led the soldiers from the front, weapons at the ready, while the scientists followed a short distance behind, marvelling at the otherworldly readings they were observing on their equipment. Two people brought up the very rear of the group: the chained-up prisoner and a burly Japanese soldier, whose job it was to keep a close eye on her.

As they neared the top of the ridge, Higgins held up a hand to call a halt to the advance, not wanting to silhouette himself and his men against the sky. He beckoned to one of the lead troopers, a bow-legged, bald-headed Malay, and the man hurried over.

‘Scout around the perimeter, Razif,’ Higgins murmured, his eyes darting left and right, peering through the endless, shadow-drenched ocean of trees, trying to pick out any signs of movement among the tens of thousands of vertical bars, slashes and stripes that extended as far as the eye could see into a greenish-brown blur in every direction. ‘Make sure we really are alone here.’

‘Yes sir!’ Razif answered, giving Higgins a stiff salute before speeding off, flitting like a woodland spright from shadow to shadow.

‘How long has our order searched for this place?’ Higgins said to Vasilevsky as they waited for their scout to return. ‘Centuries? Millennia, even? And here we finally are, at the centre of it all, at our El Dorado … but unlike the fabled city of gold, this, what lies ahead of us, just over the top of the next rise, is no myth. And our names – yours and mine, Vasilevsky – will be remembered for all of future history for what we are about to accomplish. Relish this moment, my friend … relish it.’

Vasilevky’s mask of sullenness remained unmoved at Higgins’ impromptu speech.

‘You want to be praised, talked about and remembered, Englishman, that much is obvious. Me? I just want to see every one of those disgusting things,’ he snarled, turning to jerk his thumb at the prisoner, ‘wiped forever from the face of the earth. I still think we should have just brought a few wagons loaded up with dynamite with us, and simply blown this place and the foul thing inside it to hell. It would have been a lot less risky than what we’re about to attempt.’

‘We have everything we need to make this mission a success,’ Higgins said coolly. ‘This site and the being inside—’

‘The hellspawn inside it,’ Vasilevsky growled.

‘Indeed, yes,’ Higgins muttered, one eyebrow subtly raised as he continued, ‘will provide us with answers to questions our forebears have been asking for centuries, for millennia. We cannot simply destroy such potential. And even with a few wagons of dynamite, I’m not sure if we even could. There are things we do not yet understand about the nature of this place, of the creature within … You heard what Dr Khan was saying earlier, my good sir. The readings on his instruments were unworldly. To attempt something as, as crudely forceful as blowing this place up may set in motion a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. Even if we had the requisite explosives at hand, I would not permit it.’

‘You have your opinion on the matter, I have mine,’ Vasilevsky grunted gruffly, unmoved by his compatriot’s words.

The officers allowed their conversation to trail off into a combative silence, the tension drawn ever tauter by the intensifying suspense of the wait for the scout’s return. He eventually did, and assured the officers that it was safe to proceed.

‘Well then,’ Higgins said as he stood up, ‘let’s see what lies in the valley beyond, shall we?’

Vasilevsky, as thorny as ever, scowled and barked an order to the troops, who all stood up in perfectly synchronised unison, and then began to advance. Every step Higgins took up the slope magnified his sense of excited anticipation, and it took no small effort of will to stop himself from running ahead, with the top of the slope so tantalisingly close.

He reached it soon enough though, and in the small valley beyond his gaze fell upon the object of his desire, the locus of his every ounce of toil and labour and research over the past few decades … and it was not quite what he expected. The valley itself was strange enough, looking like something that was almost man-made rather than a natural geological formation; from atop the rise on which the men were standing, the land fell sharply away in a near-vertical drop, flattening out after twenty-five or thirty metres into an enormous concave depression. The top of the ridge – the lip of this odd, bowl-shaped valley – extended in a sweeping curve to either side of the men, disappearing into the wall of trees.

‘Looks like a giant bloody cannonball dropped from the heavens and landed right here,’ one of the soldiers muttered as the men surveyed the landscape before them.

In addition to the oddness of the terrain, the trees in the valley were also far from normal. They were of the same few species that populated the rest of the taiga, but the sheer size of the valley trees was beyond incredible; the freakishly enormous spruces, firs and pines in here positively dwarfed their brethren, making them look like mere saplings in comparison. Indeed, even the gargantuan redwoods and sequoias of California, which Higgins had seen with his own eyes, looked like adolescent specimens compared to these titans.

‘No wonder it’s seemed for the past few hours like night has fallen in the middle of the day,’ he whispered, half to himself, as he stared in wonder at the enormous trees that blotted out the sky.

‘I thought it might have been an eclipse,’ said Vasilevsky, who had overheard him. ‘And I was half right, eh Englishman? But it’s not the moon blocking the sun, we can now see…’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ Higgins murmured in response. ‘These trees must be what, one hundred and fifty metres tall? Taller, perchance? There may be some in this valley that exceed two hundred metres! By Jove, they’re positively, utterly enormous! And the girth of those trunks … they have to be at least ten metres in diameter, maybe more!’

‘We’ll be filthy rich from the lumber when we cut them all down,’ Vasilevsky murmured. ‘Even if it takes years to drag them to a river deep enough to float them away.’

‘Quite, my good sir, quite!’ Higgins responded with gleeful enthusiasm. ‘But before we begin laying out business plans and calculating costs and expenses, we do have the matter of the being that is somewhere in the middle of all of this to take care of.’

The muscles of Vasilevsky’s jutting jaw tightened, and a guttural growl of hatred and loathing – tempered with fierce determination – rumbled in his throat.

‘Let us waste no more time then,’ he gnarled. ‘Into the valley, men! We begin our assault!’

The men picked a path down the near-vertical descent, clambering down via a series of rocks that were jutting out of the moss-covered walls. The soldiers, all strong and agile, got down easily enough, but they had to assist the two scientists, who were not quite as nimble as the younger men. The interpreter, whose services were not needed for the time being, was told to wait at the top. Finally, when everyone else had climbed down, the last soldier forced the robed prisoner to descend. Despite the heavy chains on her wrists and ankles, she managed to hop with catlike grace from rock to rock, getting to the bottom far faster than the soldier who came down after her. When the prisoner had completed her descent, Higgins strolled over to her. Beneath his thick moustache he wore a smile, but he had about him the look of a coiled viper, poised to strike.

‘It’s almost time for you play your part in this mission,’ he said to her in Arabic, a language in which he was fluent. ‘Remember what will happen to you if you don’t cooperate … and what my masters will do to your imprisoned friends when word reaches my superiors of your betrayal.’ He pointed at the two homing pigeons, which, unlike the rest of the baggage, had been brought down into the valley. ‘Your actions will determine which of those birds we release, and which message subsequently reaches my superiors.’

For the first time in many weeks the woman spoke. Her face remained hidden behind the cloths wrapped around it, but her eyes shone like twin jewels against the inky darkness of her hood.

‘Don’t worry Higgins,’ she said, her tone of voice calm and neutral, her accent coloured with a distinctly foreign lilt of North African origin. ‘I’ll do what you want me to.’

‘You’d better,’ he muttered, before turning and striding stiffly to the front of the company as they got back into formation.

‘The whore is going to cooperate, yes?’ Vasilevsky asked Higgins as he took his place in the vanguard of the small force, while looking askance at the woman in black.

‘She is,’ Higgins answered. ‘You don’t need to worry about that. She knows full well what’s at stake; if she even shows a hint that she’ll fail to follow our orders, I’ll release the black pigeon. But she won’t be that stupid, mark my words. She’ll do what we need her to.’

‘And as soon as it’s played its part,’ Vasilevsky hissed, his cold eyes taking on even more of a flinty hardness, ‘I’ll shove my sabre through its throat.’

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, my good sir,’ Higgins said calmly. ‘We’ll deal with her when the time comes. Are you ready to advance?’

‘Ready.’

‘Then I’ll allow you to give the order.’

Vasilevsky nodded curtly to Higgins and then barked out the command to advance. The troops moved at a steady pace into the strange artificial night created by the titanic trees, looking like mere toy soldiers, abandoned in a forest and come uncannily to life.

For all his bravado and bluster, Higgins could not help but feel somewhat nervous as he and his fellow officer led the company into the gloom. This place had an utterly unearthly feel to it, and the sensation of static electricity pricking its million unseen needles through his skin, penetrating the very marrow of his bones, intensified with every step he took. Indeed, it seemed almost as if a deeply sonorous, humming resonance, increasing steadily in potency, was vibrating through the air, the soil, the trees … through every molecule, in fact, of this place.

‘What’s that sound?’ he heard one of the troops mutter behind him. ‘Is it just me, or can anybody else hear that?’

‘There will be silence as we advance!’ Higgins snapped.

‘These trees must be thousands of years old,’ Vasilevsky murmured, awed, as they skirted around the vast trunk of one of the titans. ‘How on earth could it be possible that any tree could grow this massive? I feel like … like a blasted insect next to this thing!’

‘There must be something in the soil,’ Higgins answered, ‘or, rather, beneath the soil. It may not only be the timber from these giants that makes us rich beyond our wildest dreams, Vasilevsky … there could be some sort of incredible energy source buried in this valley, something that could displace both coal and oil as fuels to power the future growth and expansion of human civilisation.’

A rare smiled brightened Vasilevsky’s stone-hewn features.

‘Two birds with one stone, eh Higgins? We strike a crippling blow against the foul beastwalkers, and we discover resources that will make us wealthier than fucking emperors.’

They continued to move through the eerie half-light, striding with focused purpose between the tower-like trees. Although they were advancing blindly, without a map or a guide to lead them on, they pressed on with unwavering intent, pulled ever on towards some invisible centre, like insects drawn to a single flame in the blackness of night, unable to resist its deathly light.

‘Oh my, look at these!’ Dr Khan exclaimed with delight, breaking abruptly away from the group and scurrying behind one of the lighthouse-like trees.

‘Blast the fool!’ Vasilevsky snarled, before he shouted out an order to halt the advance. ‘Go see what he’s doing,’ he muttered to Higgins, ‘and get him back in line.’

‘Dr Khan went that way, sir,’ one of the troops said as Higgins passed him. The soldier pointed to a narrow gap between two of the trees.

Higgins strode briskly through the shadows, and he found the elderly scientist squatting in front of a huge clump of luminescent fungi and mushrooms. They were coloured in hues of red, blue, violet, yellow, green and pink, and were glowing softly in the dark, emitting a gentle effulgence.

‘Quite fascinating, Dr Khan,’ Higgins remarked dryly as he stared at the enchanting display of bioluminescence, ‘but we cannot stop now.’

‘I, I must take samples!’ the awestruck scientist spluttered. ‘This is, why, it’s an entirely new species! They may even contain, or, um, yes, perhaps they are reacting to some sort of, of, radioactive isotope in the soil, or, um, maybe, or—’

‘Come Dr,’ Higgins said, taking the elderly man’s arm with gentle fingers but a firm grip, and leading him away from the glowing fungi. ‘I assure you that you will be given all the time you need to examine the many wonders of this valley – after we have completed our primary mission objective.’

He led the scientist back to the group, and they continued to advance, drawn inexorably toward the heart of this otherworldly valley, where the greatest prize was ripe for the taking … or so they thought.

They pressed on through the dreamlike forest, and the closer they got to whatever it was that was tugging them towards it, the stronger the seemingly magnetic force appeared to become. The ground beneath their feet was more broken and uneven here, shifting from a relatively flat topography to earth that seemed to have been torn up by some freak seismic event, with huge ruts, ridges, ravines and pits scarring the land. In some places massive rocks jutted at strange angles out of the ground, like the crumbling tombstones of a long-lost race of giants. This made for difficult progress, but the men did not slow their advance, and they simply tackled whatever obstacles Nature threw their way in grim, determined silence.

Finally, they came to the edge of what appeared to be a deep rift in the earth; the ground dropped abruptly and unexpectedly away here, with sheer rocky cliffs plunging at least a mile, possibly even a mile and a half down to the distant valley floor below, which was dense with huge trees and lush vegetation. Owing to the sudden lack of a tightly woven forest canopy above them, sunlight illuminated this space and brought an abrupt end to the false night through which they had just trekked, and once again the open, cloudless sky was visible in a rich hue of azure. At the far end of the ravine, opposite the men, perhaps two miles distant in a straight line, a tall waterfall churned its narrow but voluminous stream of white water over a sharp cliff face, and its dull roar echoed like rumbling thunder. Other, smaller waterfalls also poured their issue into the valley from all sides, while flocks of birds swooped and soared in asymmetrical flight patterns through the air of this surreal place, some of them seeming as proportionately gigantic as the trees. An eagle of some sort – by far the largest bird of prey any of these men had ever seen – let out a piercing cry as it circled in a majestic gyre high above the tops of the trees but below the soldiers, who stared in wonder at the unusual spectacle of beholding from above an eagle in flight. One soldier raised his rifle to his shoulder, lining the bird up in his sights, his finger eager on the trigger, but Higgins quickly stepped over and pushed the firearm down.

‘You can shoot as many of them as you wish after we have captured the creature,’ he said sternly, ‘but for now, stealth is our most potent ally.’ He then turned to the rest of the troops. ‘Ropes out!’ he ordered. ‘We rappel down into the beast’s lair … we are almost there, gentlemen, we are almost there!’

As the men uncoiled their ropes and sought out suitable anchor points, Higgins marched over to the prisoner.

‘Tie her up,’ he said to the man guarding her. ‘We’re not taking any chances at all with this thing now. We’ll lower her down into the valley like a sack of grain.’ Without waiting for a response from either the soldier or the prisoner, Higgins strode briskly back to the edge of the cliff. ‘We stand on the brink of our destiny, Vasilevsky,’ he said to his compatriot, with a subtle smile of triumph brightening his craggy features. ‘We are on the very cusp of success, a mere step away from winning one of the greatest Huntsmen victories against the beastwalkers in all of recorded history.’

‘Don’t celebrate yet, Englishman, don’t celebrate just yet,’ Vasilevsky muttered. ‘We still have to take the creature alive – or kill it if we can’t … and that will be no easy task, even with the firepower we have at hand.’

Higgins clapped his hand on Vasilevsky’s shoulder and gave this muscular protuberance a cheerful, reassuring squeeze.

‘We have science and technology on our side, and the most wondrously advanced weaponry in all of human history, my good man. I am quite confident that success will be ours, yes, quite confident indeed.’

Rappelling down the sheer cliffs took the best part of an hour, and the sun was high in the rich blue sky by the time everyone had made it safely to the valley floor, including the scientists and the prisoner, who had all been lowered down like baggage. The men noticed that the vegetation here was a little different; there seemed to be a greater range of species of trees and plants populating this valley than were to be seen elsewhere across the vast Siberian taiga. Indeed, it was as if this ravine had its own microclimate. The air was humid, owing to the mist generated by the thundering waterfall, the droning roar of which boomed with muted ceaselessness through the valley, providing a deep baritone rumble, over which the trills and whistles of thousands of birds soared. Insects too shrieked and buzzed and screeched in their millions here, the sound waves woven together like an array of multicoloured thread, creating a rich aural tapestry that spanned the entirety of the valley.

Higgins and Vasilevsky led the men into the forest, using their sabres to hack a path through the dense foliage. A steady backdrop to the near-deafening symphony of bird and insect song, the constant thrum of some sort of incomprehensibly immense energy source was at its most potent here, and even the steel blades of the officers’ swords seemed to be vibrating with it now. A buzzing of collective unease rippled through the ranks as the realisation of just how vastly powerful a being they were approaching began to dawn on them.

‘Steady, gentlemen, steady,’ Higgins said, sensing the mood of apprehension. ‘We carry the mighty torch of technology with us; its bright, blazing light will burn away all of this primordial darkness and crude superstition, and the denizens of shadow will shrink in helpless terror and confusion before its unrelenting illumination! Do not fear them, men, do not fear what lies ahead! We are the standard-bearers of civilisation itself, and we will not fail!’

They crossed a knee-deep stream that spanned a mere five or six yards across. The icy, gurgling water was as clear as the finest crystalware, and was filled with darting fish that zipped and drifted alternately in shimmering, silvery schools, their sides flashing in dazzling flares as they turned and spun in haphazard patterns.

After crossing the stream, the men trekked uphill for a while, and then headed down a slope, the gradient of which grew increasingly steep. Here a cool mist thickened steadily between the trees, its density linked to the loudening roar of the valley’s main waterfall, which they were evidently approaching. Finally, they emerged from the dense forest into a large clearing, where they came across a spectacular and unexpected sight: an ancient building, which appeared to be a ruined temple of sorts. The structure itself was not enormous, but it certainly was large and imposing enough, and constructed of what appeared to be massive stone blocks, like those used at Stonehenge in Higgins’ native Britain. These stones, though, had been worked into smoother, more geometric shapes, and into them had been carved many animal forms, done in a primitive style that had an almost childlike element to it. What was more, the stone itself had a curious sparkle to it, indicating that it was rich in metal ore.

Dr Khan and the other scientist, a chubby middle-aged Brazilian researcher, charged headlong into the water, dashing around the outskirts of the sinkhole and releasing exuberant exclamations of awe and wonder, for this type of stone, they immediately deduced, was to be found nowhere else on earth. The large, square building had once supported a heavy stone roof, but this had long ago collapsed, as had the entire front of the temple, which had once sealed its interior off from the outside world by means of a pair of gigantic stone doors, which had also crumbled.

All of this had, at some stage over the last few centuries or even millennia, tumbled into the gaping maw of the huge sinkhole that had opened up in the ground beneath it. Now the streams that ran through this valley, all of which converged at this place, flowed into the roughly circular sinkhole, which was perhaps forty or forty-five metres in diameter. What was truly impressive about it, though, was not simply its depth – it was easily a hundred and fifty metres down to the bottom, where a pool of iridescent blue water, infused with high concentrations of rare minerals, glowed dazzlingly – but also the fact that the opening widened out into a vast underground cavern.

The interior of the grotto brought to mind images of some of the most glorious cathedrals, temples and mosques crafted by the hands of artistic and architectural geniuses throughout the various ages of humankind, but in terms of sheer, awe-striking beauty it outshone any of the aforementioned structures. The walls of this place, thick with stalactites and stalagmites in a near-infinite array of shapes, sizes and textures, were aglow with hues of every colour. The rainbow-coloured light was generated by bioluminescent fungi and mushrooms, which seemed to grow in proliferous abundance all over the cavern, and they illuminated it as brightly as if the entire place had been rigged with a thousand electric bulbs. Bats and birds and insects swooped and dived and soared in chaotic patterns of flight throughout the underground sky, their chirps and hoots and shrieks bouncing madly off the walls in a million echoing ricochets.

‘We’ve found it,’ Higgins murmured, overwhelmed with wonder as he walked cautiously up to the lip of the sinkhole and stared down into it. ‘My God, we’ve actually found it!’

Vasilevsky pulled a small telescope from his belt, stepped up to the edge alongside Higgins, and peered through the lens into the depths of the cavern. At the very far end of it, he saw a sight that sent a thrill coursing through his veins – the same thrill that any hunter of the most dangerous game on the planet knew well. Coming out of the edge of the bright blue pool onto the earth floor of the cavern were two parallel rows of statues, all carved from the same stone as that of the outer shell of the temple. Each statue, perhaps a metre tall, was of a different type of animal; fairly crudely carved but recognisable enough. A few hundred of these statues formed an avenue along the grotto floor, leading to a huge, throne-like chair hewn of stone at the very back of the cavern. Seated in the lotus position on this throne was the one for whom they had come all this way.

Only her face was visible: an impossibly old, heavily-weathered visage, near skull-like, with only the most paper-thin, translucent skin draped over the bone; the rest of her was completely covered in a living cloak made up of tree roots, wound tight around her limbs and torso like interwoven fibres. Indeed, their tips pierced her ancient skin in a thousand places and burrowed deep into her veins and internal organs – but they were not feeding on her body, they were feeding her body with pure life energy, photosynthesised from the rays of the sun. Her hair was immensely long; her snow-white strands snaked between the gnarled mesh of roots, giving the whole tangle a silvery glow until the hair emerged onto the floor below the root-cloak and covered the floor around her for many metres, like a fine carpet of spider silk.

The root-cloak that encapsulated her form was alive not merely in the long sense of tree life, with its imperceptibly slow movements, but also in the sense that it was actually moving; hundreds of insects, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals crawled and scuttled and slithered all over the root-cloak that covered her, each bringing a droplet of water, or a seed, or small nut, or a morsel of fruit or tuber or edible vegetation, chewed and regurgitated, as an offering to the being nestled beneath.

Up at the top of the sinkhole, Shanakdakhete – the prisoner – felt a jolt of electrical energy sizzling its prickly, invisible fire all along the surface of her skin. It was a sensation she knew well, for she felt it when she was close to any member of her kind. But this, feeling it here and now, with the being down there in that holy cavern, was by far the most intense she had ever experienced it. Indeed, it was so overwhelming in its relentless ferocity that it was nearly debilitating, but not in a manner that was crushing at all; no, indeed, it was like the most potent orgasm she had ever had, multiplied by a factor of ten and purified from that base experience, and imbued with an element she could only think to call supremely sacred.

Inside the darkness of her hood, Shanakdakhete’s bright eyes darted across to Higgins and Vasilevsky. She watched them passing the telescope between them and discussing their plan. Straining her ears – which could hear things that human beings could not, for she was not quite human; no, like the being down there in the root-cloak, she was beyond human – she did her best to pick up the words passing between the two men.

‘The foul temple is already destroyed,’ Higgins whispered to Vasilevsky. ‘So we do not need her to get us inside. The forces of time and geology have already done for us what the beastwalker would have.’

‘I’ll give my man the signal to end its miserable life then,’ Vasilevsky murmured. ‘And then we’ll release the black pigeon. After that we send the men into the sinkhole to capture the thing down there.’

‘Throttle the life out of the prisoner, quietly,’ Higgins suggested. ‘We cannot risk spilling her blood here, lest it awakes what sleeps.’

‘But just in case that vile thing does open its eyes … then we go with Plan B,’ Vasilevsky said. ‘Get our sharpshooter over here and get him to line the thing’s ugly face up in his sights. Any hint of it awakening, and we blow its brains all over the back of that cave wall.’

Higgins nodded grimly and called one of the troops, a thin young American man who carried a different rifle to all the others: it had a longer barrel, and there was a telescopic sight mounted on it. Higgins then whispered some instructions into the young man’s ear. The soldier saluted crisply and then got into position on a flat rock just above the stream and got the ancient woman’s forehead lined up in his crosshairs.

Shanakdakhete realised that she had to act, and she had to act immediately. Her life would end in a matter of seconds; this was an inevitability that could not be changed. The only choice she had now was what to do with these final moments.

She had never planned, of course, to