Even the Romans grew bored.
The wolves retired.
Telamon’s form hung again, lifeless and unmoving.
Finally with the morning the Romans and Arabs packed up and left.
− 31 −
SCORPIONS
DAVID AND RUTH WATCHED THE last rider vanish around the terminal dune west of the aqueduct. The children waited for the count of a hundred. They held in place for a second hundred, and a third. At last they scrambled from their hiding hole and dashed toward Telamon.
The girl ran ahead, barefoot. David found himself holding back. His heart hammered. The youth glanced in the direction that the departing Romans and Arabs had taken. He peered again, and a third time after that.
“What,” David called to the girl, “do you mean to do?”
The child stood now at the base of the cairn. The stones were piled higher than her head. Atop these, Telamon’s bare feet, which to David’s eyes appeared unrecognizable as extremities, swung, yet suspended, with only their toes, or those gorged appendages that had once been toes, grazing the surface. The girl set her fingers into cracks above her on the rock pile. She began to pull herself up.
“What are you doing? You can’t take him down!”
David knew he should approach. The man-at-arms had been his mentor. He, the youth, had worshipped him. He must help the girl. He must assist her in rendering succor.
But he could not.
“He’s dead!” David called. “Leave him.”
The girl stamped her foot. She motioned to David to hurry.
David pointed in the direction the Romans and Nabateans had taken. “They’ll be back! They know we’ll come out of hiding. We can’t stay here!”
The boy darted forward, seeking to catch the child’s arm and drag her away. She evaded his grasp and stamped again, more impatiently.
David refused to come forward. Backing away, he tripped over something.
Michael’s body.
The Nazarene’s remains lay in a tangled heap, unburied. The Romans had left him where he had fallen. David recoiled at this sight as well.
He glanced again toward Telamon. The scorpion sack remained in place over the mercenary’s head.
“He’s dead! Leave him! We have to get out of here!”
Three times David threatened to leave the child.
Three times he commanded her to come away.
She would not.
Telamon’s weight hung from a pair of ropes, each lapped three times about his upper limbs. The first binding secured his wrists to the extremities of the beam from which he hung. The second bound his arms at a point above the elbows. Each line was anchored to projecting spurs in the facing of the aqueduct.
“Come away!” David called. “Help me bury Michael!”
The girl signed that that chore must wait. We must save this living man!
She set stones and brush to make a heap against the base of the wall from which Telamon hung. Mounting upon this, she sought purchase for her bare toes within the crannies between the stones of the facing. Hauling herself up by finger-holds, she climbed first to the height of the man-at-arms’ feet, then to his knees. She held her X dagger clamped between her teeth.
“Stop!” David paced below in agitation. “He’ll plunge deadweight!”
The youth at last was compelled to come forward. He averted his eyes from the sight of the bag over Telamon’s face and head.
He climbed too, with his own dagger.
“The Romans will crucify us too. Or worse.”
The girl signed to him, Cut through your rope when I cut through mine.
“He’s going to plunge. We can’t handle his weight.”
The girl cut.
David had to as well.
The man-at-arms did plunge, reeling free first on the girl’s side as her blade severed the line, swinging violently toward David and in fact onto him as he clung to his own toe- and finger-holds. The boy cried out in horror as the sack of scorpions swung into his own face. He sawed desperately at the rope from which Telamon’s left wrist hung.
The mercenary’s body folded from the top, knees and ankles collapsing beneath the weight of the torso as it fell. His arms dropped like a puppet’s when the strings are cut. The man-at-arms crashed onto his breast and face, which was still bagged inside the scorpion sack, at the base of the pile of stones.
The girl leapt from her perch and sprang to the mercenary’s side.
“He’s gone!” cried David. “Scoop sand over him and let’s go!”
The child would not listen.
Seizing Telamon by both wrists, she tugged and hauled until she had straightened his torso upon the sand. She took hold of his ankles and did the same.
David lowered himself tentatively from the aqueduct face. He kept peering about for any sight of returning riders. He strained to hear voices or hoof strikes approaching.
The girl wrestled Telamon’s body into a posture face-up on the sand.
“Leave the bag! Don’t touch it.”
The child tugged at the tie that held the sack in place.
“Watch out! Those little bastards are still in there!”
The child jerked the sack off in one violent tug.
The bag came away empty.
David saw Telamon’s face.
“Oh God!”
His knees gave way beneath him. He felt his palms strike the sand. He could hear himself retching and feel the convulsive heaving of his belly.
Telamon’s face was purple and swollen to half again its size. Where his eyes had been appeared now only a surface of glossy, distended tissue. He looked like a bladder, the type that children paint faces upon for the festival of the Dionysia and inflate by blowing into one end. Only there was no face on Telamon’s face.
The girl never looked away.
She knelt over Telamon, pressing her ear to the center of his chest.
David continued to puke up the meager contents of his belly.
The girl was dragging Telamon by the heels, with monumental effort, toward the rim of the cistern. David could hear her drawing water, first with her cupped palms, then with the weave of her own garment, which she plunged like a sponge into the pool and wrung over Telamon’s face.
The child crossed to David, kicking sand at him. David felt her seize him under one arm. She pulled him upright, gesturing urgently to the circle of stones that held the ashes of one of the Romans’ fires.
“What? What do you want?”
She wanted him to make a fire.
“Is he alive?”
The girl kicked David in the ribs. She pulled him hard toward the circle of stones.
David resisted. “A flame gives us away!” The girl kicked him harder. She punched at his face with her fists.
“All right! Stop, damn you!”
David scraped together brush and camel thorn. He struck a spark into a nest of tinder. The girl came over and kicked him again. She thrust a cracked clay basin into his fist.
When he had the blaze going and had heated water for the girl, David withdrew. For minutes he struggled to gouge out a pit in which to bury Michael’s remains. But the ground was so hard and stony that without tools he could scrape only a shallow trench. David dragged the Nazarene’s corpse into this depression and piled stones upon it. He thought, This at least will keep the wolves from Michael’s bones.
David retreated up the carved steps in the facing of the aqueduct to the sanctuary of the summit channel. From this height the youth peered in all directions, listening intently into the deep distance.