The soldier worked his way to one side of Telamon, using the man-at-arms’ racked limbs to steady himself. From this angle, he tugged the sack over the prisoner’s head and cinched it tight.
“Thank me, brother,” the soldier addressed Telamon as he performed this. “I’m doing you a favor.”
− 30 −
A SEPULCHER OF STONE
THE FIRST NIGHT PASSED, AND the following day.
The Romans and Nabateans scoured the site and the surrounding desert in every direction. Their exertions concentrated upon the great mounds of building stones. These they probed in sequence, advancing from the nearest extremity of the line to the farthest. At their commander’s direction, the legionaries and their allies dispatched the slightest and slenderest of their number to wriggle into the interstices between the blocks. When this technique failed to discover the children, the searchers compressed great bundles of brush and tinder between the stones and tamped these with long rods deep into the cores of the mounds. They set these alight, adjoining fascines of resinous elah and sumac and ramming these likewise into the bowels of the rock piles. Their object was to produce the densest smoke and most noxious fumes possible, to drive the children forth, if indeed they had hidden themselves in these spaces.
David and Ruth burrowed to the bottom of their pyramid, fleeing the smoke and the dripping, flaming oil. Each sheathed the other’s shoulders and back beneath double- and triple-folds of their robes. They covered their noses, mouths, and eyes with head wraps. Still the fumes scorched their lungs to such poisonous effect that each, at moments, lost the will to endure and had to be silenced and held down by the other.
The expedient the children found was to fill their mouths with sand and, sealing the airway of their noses between two fingers, breathe only through this medium.
So they lay, David and Ruth, clinging to each other with their eyes squeezed shut against the choking, toxic vapors that suffused their sanctuary.
For thirty-six hours the girl and boy remained immured within their sepulcher of stone. The weight of sand and the mass of ash above them deadened all sound, filling both with dread that those who hunted them could be close but that they, the children, had no means of hearing or feeling their approach.
The sensation of being entombed, of being blinded and straitened within their narrow berths, added to the terror and made the hours pass with interminable slowness. At last, when they could endure their interment no longer, the children, despite the continuing presence of the Romans and Arabs, wriggled their way upward through the voids between the stones and, reaching the surface of the mound, dared to peek about.
The hour was noon. The boy and the girl had grown desperate with thirst. Several times David made signs that he wanted to try for the cistern, from which the Arabs and Romans drew water for themselves and their horses throughout the day and night. Each time Ruth gripped him hard. She would not let him.
All day the Romans continued dispatching mounted parties of their own and their Arab and Bedouin confederates to the north and east, apparently to account for the possibility that the boy and girl had made good their escape somehow and were hastening toward the sea. Other search parties, mounted and afoot, continued to scour the area immediately around the camp and in the dunes to the south and west.
For hours the girl and boy remained motionless within their covert. They could see the tents, the impedimenta wagons, and the rope hitching lines of the Roman, Arab, and Bedouin camps. They could see Michael’s body, on its back, unburied yet. And they could see Telamon.
The sack of scorpions remained in place over the mercenary’s head. Could the creatures still be alive? Could Telamon? The man-at-arms’ head hung slack at the neck. His jaw had fallen flush against his chest.
He did not move.
Search parties continued to be sent out by Severus. The boy and girl could see the Roman commander pacing between the canvas fly that provided a triangle of shade over his bedding site and the stone drinking pool at the base of the cistern. They could see him conferring impatiently with the chieftains of the Nabateans and the tribal brigands. Altercations broke out. Three hours into the postnoon the main party of Bedouins, twenty in all, mounted in a fit and spurred off.
From time to time Severus crossed to the crucified figure of Telamon and spoke alone to him. The mercenary’s head made no motion. His face did not turn toward Severus, nor did any part of his body respond. He hung, inert. The boy and girl were too far away to hear what the Roman was saying.
Did the fact of such “conversations” mean Telamon was still alive? Or was the tribune speaking, as if upon some perverse impulse, with his corpse? Was Severus’s speech intended to torment his former legion-mate? It seemed to the girl and boy more like the commander was conferring with, even confiding in the mercenary. He addressed the motionless figure in such a manner as he employed with no other among the camp, including his nephew the lieutenant.
That night, in the second watch, wolves came.
The Romans drove the beasts off initially with stones and curses, then again, and a third time after that. But hours later, David and Ruth could see the pack’s yellow eyes glittering in the dark.
Sometime during the third watch the creatures infiltrated in earnest. The Roman and Arab pickets faced the leaders back with firebrands and leveled lances. But the pack was not after the living men.
The wolves went after Telamon.
The boy and girl watched helplessly as the beasts circled the mercenary’s suspended form—at a distance first, in skimming rushes, with their ears flat and the fur up on their backs; then closer, in darting-and-withdrawing approaches, growing bolder with each advance. The wolves neither growled nor barked. The pads of their paws made no sound on the sand. The Roman and Nabatean sentries had withdrawn from the crucified man. Their lowered their lances. They were summoning their comrades to watch the show.
Telamon’s bound feet moved.
Ruth’s hand clutched David’s.
He was alive!
The mercenary’s soles swung beneath his suspended torso. His toes found the rock cairn below him. He pushed up from the stone, straightening and lengthening to keep his flesh as high off the ground as he could get it.
The wolves began making passes.
The bolder ones went first, rushing at speed, then leaping with a capering, twisting motion, snapping in midair with their jaws. The cannier creatures followed. They began using the face of the rock pile as a surface from which to launch themselves. A wolf would trot toward the cairn, gaining speed as she approached, then vault onto the vertical face, propelling herself upward with first her fore, then her hind legs.
To the Romans and Arabs this was a grand spectacle. They were placing bets on which wolf would draw first blood. “Cut him down!” one soldier cried. “Let the dogs get at him!”
The fellow was shouted down by the others.
This sport was more fun.
A wolf’s jaws reached Telamon’s feet. They snapped together with a sound like a catapult stone smashing into a city wall. Blood sprayed. The smell made the beasts frantic. One after another took wild, snapping leaps at Telamon’s dangling feet. So many came at once that the creatures began brawling with one another.
The soldiers and Arabs cheered them on.
At length the beasts wearied.