“Sit,” he said, indicating a spot next to him.
David obeyed. He too set weapons to hand—the dolabra Telamon had given him and a dagger of his own possession—and faced back, like the mercenary, out over the plain.
“What are we doing?” David asked.
“Watch.”
“Watch what?”
Telamon offered no answer.
An hour later the man-at-arms had not moved. He had not risen or even stretched. The sun had vanished; night’s chill was coming down hard.
The boy shivered. His teeth chattered. His mind balked like an unruly colt. He chafed; he scratched; his joints screamed. At two hours he shifted as if to rise. Telamon’s hand caught his thigh. The man pressed the boy back into his sitting posture.
“I have to piss!”
“Then piss.”
Again the boy sought to stand. Again the man held him down.
“Make water where you are.”
The moon crawled across the frozen sky. David counted silently to a thousand. When he glanced again, the moon had barely budged. Twice he checked and was sure the orb was moving backward.
Six hours in, the youth was certain he was losing his mind. Thoughts of terror and dislocation ricocheted inside his skull. He saw jackals. He saw wolves. Scorpions tiptoed across his ankles. He saw the devil. He saw God. He saw his mother and his sisters.
He realized at one point that he was urinating through his tunic into the dirt.
“Sir, I’m freezing.”
Hour eight. The youth again shifted to rise. The man’s hand held him down. He would not let the boy move.
Twice in the night the boy dozed. Both times he awoke with a start, feeling the sharpened apex of the man-at-arms’ sword, tucked under the flesh of his tottering chin.
Dawn approached. The boy’s knees felt as if they had turned to stone. Rigor mortis seemed to have set into his jaw. He could not feel his extremities.
His solitary vow was to terminate this self-imposed indenture.
He had been a fool to undertake this enterprise.
Hell itself could not be more excruciating.
The boy blinked and rubbed his eyes.
The five-mile pan beneath him had turned a pallid pink with the first glimmer of dawn. The air yet crackled with the night’s chill.
Telamon’s posture remained upright. He had neither risen nor spoken nor moved all night.
“Still here?” the man-at-arms said.
The boy was struggling in his mind to frame the words that would emancipate him from this folly.
“Tell me what you saw,” said the man.
“You mean in my head?”
“I mean out there.”
Telamon indicated the five-mile pan beneath them.
“Did you see that column of horse? Do you see it now?”
The boy blinked and strained.
“There,” said the man. “See the dawn light reflecting off their armor?”
David’s eyes refused to focus. Both cheeks reddened. His bones rattled inside their sheaths.
Telamon pointed again across the plain.
David saw the column now.
“Romans,” said Telamon. “They’ve been visible for the past hour, tracking along the exact course they expect us to be taking.”
The boy felt his whole body flush with shame.
Sit.
Watch.
How would he ever become a warrior if he could not accomplish even these?
Telamon indicated the equites legionis advancing in column of twos, at a walk, across the basin below.
“Why,” he said, “do you think those cavalrymen have come out here?”
The youth hesitated. “The garrison commander sent them.”
For the first time, the man-at-arms’ expression indicated approval.
“When we have got the Nazarene Michael and the letter,” he said, “these troopers will run us down and kill us.”
− 11 −
THE PASTEL CANYON
BY MIDMORNING MAN AND BOY had passed on to a broad, stony plain with limestone ridges ascending on each side. They crossed this briskly, afoot beside their mules. Nearing noon Telamon inclined the train toward a spiny patch of tamarisk that appeared to offer shade. The man had not spoken all morning.
David was thinking, Soon he will stop to off-load the mules and let them rest. The boy anticipated this with pleasure, as it meant, for him, a gulp or two from the water skin.
Instead Telamon slowed and permitted David to pull up beside him. “What do you make,” the mercenary said, “of the solitary rider trailing us?”
David again experienced a flush of mortification. He was too ashamed even to turn and look.
“You mean the Romans, sir?”
A stern glance answered this.
“Whoever he is, he’s been tracking us since the Lavender Valley. Should we let him overhaul us?”
“Let me kill him, sir!” These words sprang with passion from David’s lips, seemingly unbidden.
Telamon smiled.
“I will!” said the boy. “Lead us to a straitened place. By heaven, I’ll show you!”
Man and boy continued across the stony pan. David peered again and again into the desert behind them. He could see nothing.
Kites and ravens soared overhead.
Had you flown among them, high above the wilderness floor, you would have seen the man-at-arms halt the train within a copse of terebinth and acacia, at the foot of a granite ridge.
A well.
From your vantage soaring above, your gaze would have taken in a practiced drill performed in silence by the man and boy. The mules were halted first and hobbled at a distance from the water. Youth and man off-loaded the panniers from the beasts’ backs, then the pack frames. Next they rubbed and dried the animals’ chafed and sweated hides. The beasts bawled now, smelling the water.
At a sign from the man, the boy crossed to the well and, plunging the water skin by its plaited leather thong, awaited the splash at the bottom and the feeling of the skin filling through its open mouth. He hauled this vessel hand over hand back up into the sun. By then the man had rigged the three-pole stand with its basin of oiled calfskin that made a drinking trough for the mules. The man spoke quietly to the animals as the boy crossed back, bearing the glistening, dripping skin.
The boy filled the basin.
The animals were permitted to water.
The boy trotted now to the eastern edge of the oasis. He peered back into the noon haze, seeking sign of the rider following. He could spy nothing.
The boy returned, feeling Telamon’s eyes upon him.
This next you would have witnessed, had you been sailing overhead with the ravens and kites.
The man now stripped his robe and strode to a patch of shade within the grove. There he commenced his exercises at arms.
First he faced the bole of a stout acacia. Using this in the stead of a Roman-style “post,” he moved through a series of evolutions, first hurling the pilum from a distance, then working the gladius from close range. The man-at-arms moved without haste and without sound. Thrust, parry, turn, strike. Advance to a pass, wheel about, thrust, withdraw, thrust again. The boy heeded with fierce attention.
The man offered no instruction. He did not speak a word. Finishing his exercises at the post, he stepped to an open space upon the hardpan. Planting his feet wide and at an acute angle one to the other, the warrior moved with exquisite intention and concentration through a second series of evolutions, first freehand, then with the gladius. These calisthenics rehearsed actions prescribed for combat—certain thrusts and parries, advances and retreats, turns and wheel-abouts.