She tugged upon his arm.
Telamon ignored her. He continued hauling in the heavy line.
The girl prodded him again, harder. This time he looked.
The girl held out a lighter rope. She gestured emphatically.
“No use,” Telamon said. “It won’t hold my weight.”
He continued reeling in the original line.
The girl poked him again.
She pointed to herself.
Again the child held out the lighter rope.
For the second time she indicated herself.
“You?”
The girl struck her chest, hard, with the flat of her palm.
For the first time, the man’s eyes and the child’s truly met.
“All right,” he said. “Make yourself ready.”
− 19 −
THE CHASM
TELAMON UNSTRUNG THE HEAVY ROPE. The girl handed him the lighter line. The mercenary fashioned a noose. He rigged it as he had the other—to the tail of his arrow, the final inch before the vanes.
“This is how you aim to save us?” the witch wailed. “Sending that monkey across?”
Telamon glanced briefly to Michael, as if for permission. The child’s father seemed to nod.
Telamon drew the bow to full stretch.
He shot.
The arrow, tugging the lighter line, sailed with easy power. Its loop opened wide. It caught the chimney!
Telamon reset his feet to a secure purchase. With his right arm he whipped the line to send a wave along its length. Across the chasm, the loop settled round the outcrop, like a sailor’s bowline over a bollard.
“Five hundred yards!” cried David from above.
Telamon hauled the line taut.
The girl was already lashing the length of heavy line about her waist.
The mercenary strung the near end of the light rope round a strong outcrop, looped the excess about his own waist, and tugged the line tight.
The girl stepped to Telamon at the brink. The mercenary checked and rechecked the line until he had satisfied himself it was secure. He reached to his right boot and tugged a throwing dagger from its sheath. He tucked this into the girl’s waistband.
“If the Arabs get to us on this side, cut the rope and run.”
The girl glanced down at the dagger. David stared curiously too. Into the butt end of the haft was carved an X—apparently representing the Tenth Legion. The child secured the knife. She stood now directly before Telamon.
“Your hands,” said the man-at-arms. “You’ll need something to—”
The child held out her palms.
Both were thick with calluses.
“This will be our finish,” declared the witch. She turned away, as if unable to watch.
The girl was already gone.
On the rope.
Over the chasm.
Telamon clutched the near line, steadying it with all his strength.
Michael glanced from the girl to the chasm below.
The child, nimble as an acrobat, crossed hand over hand along the line.
“Four hundred yards!” David shouted. Telamon called him to return. The boy scampered back down the trail to the shelf.
Telamon: “Pull two iron rings off the mules’ harness.”
David obeyed.
“Bring me the packs.”
The sorceress cried in distress. “You think to send the rest of us? How? Swinging like apes upon this laundry line?”
The child was three-quarters of the way across now.
One of her hands slipped.
Michael gasped.
Telamon hauled harder on the rope to steady it.
The girl recovered.
“Swing a leg up!” Telamon shouted. “Get a knee over the rope!”
The girl did.
Fist over fist, she pulled herself the last few feet.
The child alighted in the dust on the far side. Immediately she untied the heavier line from around her waist. This she rigged into a loop. She bound it around the chimney outcrop.
The sorceress stared. “Does she know how to tie a knot?”
Telamon: “We’re about to find out.”
Over the near, loose end of the heavy line, Telamon slipped two iron O-rings from the mules’ harnesses. To these he secured a pack containing a cut-down version of the party’s indispensables—weapons, water, medical kit. He hauled the light line back from the far side of the chasm. He lashed one end of this to the pack and wrapped the other around his waist. Then he looped the near end of the heavy rope about the same stout outcrop to which he had originally lashed the lighter line.
Telamon tugged David forward.
“You’re next.”
He himself readied his bow and a brace of arrows. He glanced above, to the summit track upon which the raiders would likely appear.
David grasped the heavy line. It gave—one foot, two—under his weight, even before he had stepped off over the void. “Work down the rock face,” commanded Telamon.
The youth, teetering on toeholds, lowered himself below the shelf as far as he could before swinging out over the chasm. “Go!” Telamon cried.
David stepped off. His weight made him plummet violently the length of his own height before the rope stretched taut and, after several wild rebounds, began, swing by swing, to stabilize.
Across the chasm, the girl was hopping and pointing excitedly at the summit above the party.
David heard men’s voices. He looked back toward the shelf. The sorceress was assailing Telamon. “You’re not sending the rest of us over? The sick man too? How will I cross?”
“You’re a witch,” said the mercenary. “Fly.”
David worked himself, hand over hand toward the far side.
Across the chasm, the girl tugged with all her strength on the rope, trying to stabilize it from swinging.
Telamon called Michael to him. He lashed the Nazarene to his own back. “This is madness!” cried the sorceress.
Telamon turned for the briefest moment toward the mules, who looked on forlornly. “Sorry, girls. I’d take you if I could.”
With Michael hanging off his back, the mercenary lowered himself as David had done before him—down the face of the precipice, one hand clinging to the rope, the other, along with the foremost hobnails of his caligas, clutching the last hand- and toeholds upon the rock. David himself clung to his own portion of the line, yet swinging over empty air. “Hang on!”
The mercenary, with the Nazarene on his back, swung out over the void.
On the far side, the girl jigged with alarm as the rope began to swing violently and to plunge from the sudden addition of the weight of Telamon and Michael.
The raiders had now appeared in force on the summit—Romans and Nabateans intermingled, mounted and afoot. For moments, all peered blankly across the void. They had not yet discovered Telamon and the others below them.
David dangled still, five feet that seemed to him like five hundred from the safety of the far side, on the wildly swaying and rebounding rope. He could see the immediate shelf of rock, so close it seemed he could touch it, on whose slippery surface the girl braced her unshod feet and hauled with all her strength against the swaying, swinging rope. Her eyes frantically urged the youth to keep going. David had hooked both legs over the rope, first by the knees, then, as his strength began to fail, by the ankles.
Telamon, carrying Michael, had reached the one-third point of the crossing now. Lashed about his waist was the light line, which he had fastened to the pack that held the party’s gear and weapons. This parcel, linked to the heavy line by straps and the pair of iron rings, squatted now on the shelf at the feet of the sorceress.