Later David would remember peering back from a point nine-tenths of the way across the chasm. He could see Michael, lashed to Telamon’s back and clinging to the mercenary’s neck with both arms while his feet dangled wildly beneath him. Beyond Telamon and the Nazarene, David could see the witch, hopping with fright and fury upon the final outcrop. The boy could hear her curses, even over the hammering of his own heart and the pounding of his blood in his ears. “You would abandon me, you blackguard!” she was shouting at Telamon, appending curses of eternal damnation in Latin, Arabic, and Aramaic.
Telamon was shouting to David to get clear, so he could haul the gear bag from the outcrop. The youth summoned his spirit. His feet touched the far cliff. The girl caught him. Somehow the boy managed to claw aboard the shelf.
“I’m over!” he shouted to Telamon.
David saw the mercenary tug the second rope, the one yoked to the baggage. The sack dragged heavily across the last foot of the shelf, then swung clear and plunged into the void. The iron rings caught. The rope stretched like a bowstring, shooting violently down, up, then down and up again. David heard himself cry out. For moments it seemed that the initial rope, stout as it was, could not possibly stand the shock of the fall, that the ties would come undone or the line itself snap. But the apparatus held. Telamon clung to the rope with impossible strength. He resumed inching across the cleft.
At this moment the raiders spotted their prey. David could see them pointing down the cliff face. He could hear their cries to one another.
The marauders grasped now what lay before them. David could see them loosing their bows, snatching fistfuls of arrows, and scampering on foot down the rock face to the final outcrop.
At this moment the sorceress leapt full-out onto the swinging pack.
The rope sang. David watched with horror as the line strained so taut he could hear fibers snap along its entire length. The witch had flung herself like a diver from the brink of the outcrop onto the now-bounding pack. She clung to this with both hands and both feet.
David saw Telamon’s left hand tear loose of the rope. Michael’s weight jerked the mercenary down. Meanwhile the heft of the packs, doubled by the witch’s weight, pulled the rope into an acute angle like the Roman numeral V.
David now joined the girl, hauling on their end of the line, trying to stay its unrestrained swinging.
The raiders scrambled down the narrow, precipitous track, seeking the final shelf. David could hear them crying in their tongues, “Cut the rope!”
It seemed nothing could prevent them from achieving this. Then the mules bolted. In terror of the shouting, down-scrambling brigands, the pair of jennies, one behind the other, stampeded up the path toward the summit. As Telamon had said earlier, no beast short of a mountain goat can tread steep slopes as nimbly as a mule.
Past the raiders the beasts charged. Boulders and great stones bounded everywhere. The pursuers clung in terror to the cliff face.
Telamon had somehow found the strength to re-grasp the rope. He had two hands on it.
Now the raiders’ arrows flew.
David saw two drill the rear of the gear pack and a third slice through the sorceress’s skirts. Now she was cursing them.
The Roman lieutenant had reached the shelf. He was crying to the Nabateans in pidgin, “Stop shooting!” and slapping with both hands at the raiders’ bows.
The Arabs jeered and rebelled.
Telamon reached the far side.
David and the girl hauled him and Michael aboard. In moments Telamon had pulled in the sorceress and the baggage.
“Peregrine!” the lieutenant shouted across. The distance from one side of the chasm to the other was slender enough that a stone could be cast with ease from one face to its opposite. The young officer could be heard clearly, despite the jibbering and hooting of the brigands about him.
In a mad pileup, Telamon’s party plunged for cover behind the boulders of the outcrop. Across the cleft, the lieutenant at last succeeded in quelling the Nabateans’ volley after volley upon them.
The lieutenant stood at the very brink of the far shelf. He removed his helmet and called with firm purpose across the chasm:
“Peregrine! I am Quintus Flavius Publicus. You know me. I am the officer who took you captive at the Narrows. I stood present when you met with my superior, Marcus Severus Pertinax, in the carpentry shop at the Antonia Fortress in Jerusalem. And it was I with whom you clashed hand-to-hand three days ago on the strand at Cut-off Noses.”
Telamon stepped forth from shelter back onto the outcrop.
“How may I be of service to you, Quintus Flavius Publicus?”
Indeed the mercenary possessed acquaintance of this officer. The ambitious sons of the noble families of Rome must by law serve in the legions. This was how they made their names and acquired experience of command. Quintus Flavius was one of these. If he proved of stout mettle and noble ambition he would advance from his current command as a junior “thin-stripe” tribune to that of senior “broad-striper,” then legate, commanding a legion, and finally to senatorial rank.
“We are men of reason, you and I,” declared the lieutenant. He proffered apologies for the melee on the strand at Cut-Off Noses. It was a misunderstanding, he swore, compounded by the dark and the jumble of languages. He intended here and now to set this aright. “Give us the letter. I will triple your bounty and guarantee safe passage for you anywhere in the empire.”
“Where is Severus?”
“Coming by sea. I have sent for him.”
“I will deal with him and him only,” declared the mercenary.
“If you so wish,” the lieutenant responded. “But place yourself beneath my protection now. Only I can preserve you from these savages . . .”
The raiders catcalled and jeered at this. Arabic is a language rich in invective and imprecation, and no dialect possesses a more abundant lexicon of this than the Nabatean. Salvos of insult flew across the canyon. The lieutenant sought to contain this. The marauders ignored him. Their oaths and execrations redoubled.
“Hear me, peregrine! You see these barbarians. Can you imagine what they will do to you, should they take you captive?
“You cannot escape,” the officer called across. “You are on foot. We and these Arabs are mounted. Word of you and your captive has been published abroad from Gaza to Alexandria. I know of three parties of tribesmen who pursue you now out of the east, each more ungovernable than the next, and have heard rumor of four more, advancing from the west, from Egypt, to intercept you from the direction in which you flee. See sense, brother. Give up the letter!”
“I do not have it, Quintus Flavius. I have not found it. You will not get it from this man,” said Telamon, indicating Michael. “So far, I have failed as well.”
“Leave him to us, then. I will deliver your full emolument. I give you my word as an officer.”
Telamon seemed to consider this. The girl-child, reckoning this, burst from behind the outcrop and dashed to his side. With both hands she seized the mercenary at the wrist and tugged upon him violently.
“By our bond as soldiers,” called the lieutenant, “and by the gods of my ancestors, I swear no harm will come to you or to those, other than the Nazarene, whom you protect.”
Telamon gave no answer. The girl, clearly in distress for her father, heaved yet more fervently upon the mercenary’s arm.