The God's Eye (Lancaster's Luck Book 3) by Anna Butler

Author:Anna Butler [Butler, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-01-20T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The discussion became more speculative. We didn’t have enough hard information to allow us to draw any real conclusions. That George had heard something the previous night, and that particular something had sparked off the pyramid’s defences, that Altenfeld was the Kaiser’s agent and was coming with a military force—they were the facts. Putting them all together was suggestive, but not conclusive.

“We have no way of knowing if it was Altenfeld last night—”

“It beggars belief anyone else would be searching around here.” Theo didn’t hesitate to interrupt me.

“Quite.” I kept my tone on the coolish side. “Our working assumption has to be it was him and his men. Agreed?”

A circle of heads nodding like so many of those peculiar porcelain figurines so beloved of old maids—the ones with their heads on a pivot making them bob at every slight vibration.

“They went north. If they too made a hard landing, we must assume some survived.” Damn it, I shouldn’t have left the maps in the Brunel. “We’re on the edge of the Ch’ok’ē Mountains. From what I saw on the way in, the area to the north is broken up into a mishmash of ridges and hills rising towards Mount Ch’ok’ē Terara itself.”

“An inhospitable place, this Roof of Africa.” Günter tapped his pipe against the sole of his shoe to remove the dottle and started refilling it with tobacco ribbons and, I suspected, a touch of the Chinese mafeisan powder. “We were lucky.”

“Not forgetting Rafe is a skilled pilot.” Nell had rather a martial light in her eye.

How touching to be championed by one’s family like that. “Thank you, Nell. But however skilled I may be, I wouldn’t want to land in the broken terrain to the north, particularly in the dark. I wouldn’t want to try it here on the plateau, either, if I couldn’t see what I was doing. A forced landing is dire enough without doing it by touch and feel. They must have been desperate to be in the air that late in the day.”

Ned had his eyes on me throughout the discussion, a queer expression on his face. “If it is Altenfeld, then we might expect a visitation.”

I nodded. “We’d better assign some guards to the northern edge of the plateau to keep watch.”

“I’ll sort that out, sir. The Brunel has a backup store of listening posts. We’ll set them out in a wide cordon around the pyramid.” George looked glumly at Sam. “Not much else we can do with a place this size. Too big an area, too few of us.”

Sam was tight-lipped, his jaw set. Frustration, most likely, that he couldn’t oversee Ned’s safety himself. “With ravines all round it, this plateau’s cut off from the rest of the mountains. George tells me the rivers run fast, form a barrier. The terrain’s against them.”

I didn’t put my trust in geography. “But not impassable. One strong swimmer could get a rope across. Set a guard, and let’s give some thought about what’s going on with this pyramid.

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