Sensing something was wrong, Ben paused and looked back over his shoulder. ‘Madison, what is it?’

In a tremulous voice she said, ‘Ben, would you pass me your torch, please? This one’s on its way out.’

He handed her his own, which was only slightly brighter, and she pointed the beam into the deep recess in the rock wall where she’d been staring. Suddenly he was able to see what had caught her attention.

Madison was transfixed. ‘Scratch what I said about a million years. More like twenty-three hundred, to be precise.’

Chapter 42

The skeleton was little more than a heap of spindly dry bones, gnawed at in places by rats. Ben had seen plenty of human skeletal remains before. But he’d never seen any that were still clad in the bronze armour their owner had been wearing when he met his death millennia ago, three centuries before the birth of Christ.

In life he must have been a mighty warrior, standing well over six foot tall in all his splendour. The great bronze helm, still sporting some of its bright red plumes, had its visor open so that the bare skull peered out from inside, appearing to be grinning at them. The soldier’s heroic muscled cuirass was still attached to his ribcage by ancient decayed leather straps, the ones the rats hadn’t eaten. The fingers of one bony hand still clutched the hilt of his leaf-bladed bronze sword, and from his other arm, dragged down to the cave floor by its weight, hung a magnificent circular battle shield embossed with the motif of a bull’s head. The ornate greaves that had protected his legs from ankle to knee had collapsed the gnawed remains of his fibulas and tibias. There was nothing much left of the leather sandals the soldier would have worn on his long, weary march through these mountains of ancient Bactria.

‘Oh, him,’ Safiya said nonchalantly, close to Ben’s ear. ‘We have to walk past him all the time. He’s horrible, but you get used to it. Tell your friend she shouldn’t be afraid. He won’t do anything.’

‘It’s unbelievable,’ Madison gasped. ‘So the legend’s true. Alexander’s men really did take shelter in the caves of Gurghazar. Oh, if only Dad could have been here to see this.’

She took a step closer to the skeleton, shining the torch as she reached out with the other hand to gently stroke the bronze cuirass. But the remains were so fragile that even a slight disturbance was enough to make the skull sag from its bony shoulders. The helmet visor snapped shut and an enormous bristly spider that had been nesting there came darting out and ran across Madison’s hand before she snatched it away with a yelp. ‘Yikes!’

‘Dude’s seen better days,’ said Baldacci, chortling.