stumbling steps, he met the new dawn and looked to his objective.
It was still, to his eyes, as far away as it had been on the previous day. As he had earlier noticed, distance was often deceptive in this land of shimmering waves of heat. His water was gone. He still carried the empty bag with him in the hope that he might find a spring among the rocks or in the sand and would be able to refill it. He would not be able to rest much this day. If he stayed in one place too long, the heat would take what remained of his strength and he might not reach the walls of granite ahead. This day, heat or not, he must continue as long as he was able.
By midday, it felt as if Vulcan himself was pounding at his temples, trying to forge some strange weapon in his eternally burning furnace. The glare of the sun was a piercing, fiery dagger that lanced Casca's eyes. Every step was heavier than the last, but to stop was perhaps to never be able to go on. He stumbled blindly toward the mountains. A rock caught his dragging feet. It tore one sandal off and he fell to the earth, mouth open and panting, gulping in breaths of oven-baked air. He lay there for some time, trying to gather his inner resources together for the tremendous effort it would take to rise to his feet again. He lay still, mouth open and panting, eyes focused on a small gray stone, inches from his nose. A shadow moved over the stone. His eyes flicked up to meet another pair of goggle-wide eyes watching him. A large gray-and-brown-mottled lizard, the length of his foot, lay on its belly, mouth opening and closing like a fish. It was attracted by the flies beginning to gather around the form of the fallen man. Once and again, a long tongue flicked out and snared a victim faster than an eye could blink. It moved closer to his face and lay still, watching, one eye moving independently of the other. Casca's right hand, near his face, moved before he even thought of it and he held the lizard in his hand. He could feel the sinuous strength of its body squirming in his hand. Through silent lips he apologized for what he was about to do, then tore the beast's head off and placed the neck of the bleeding carcass between his cracked lips and sucked. He sucked the thin blood until the body of the lizard was drained, then tore it into pieces and chewed the meat slowly, squeezing every drop of moisture from the small cadaver. It wasn't much, but it was enough to give him the strength to rise once more to his feet.
He tossed what was left of the drained body of the lizard away and forced his mind on the hazy mountains.
He had to draw on every bit of his inner strength to take the first stumbling step. Fear aided him, too-the fear of what he would go through if he fell once more and was unable to rise. What would happen to him? He wouldn't be permitted to die; the Jew had seen to that. Would he just lie there and become a dried, desiccated husk that refused to die, condemned to a never-ending thirst and suffering?
That fear gave him a degree of increased fortitude and determination to go on. One dragging step after another, forcing his mind to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, he drifted into a semidrugged state that helped to ease the pain of his cut and blistered feet. He tried to lick his lips but found he couldn't force his tongue out of his mouth. It had swollen to twice its normal size and threatened to cut off his gasping and labored breathing.
His eyes were swollen almost completely shut and he thought for a time he was going blind when the day became darker and what little he could see began to fade from sight. He stumbled into a nearby bush and fell over onto his back. The bush was in a dry riverbed. Feebly, he reached up to its branches and felt them. They were hard to see. A chill rushed over him from the evening breeze. At least, he thought, I'm not blind. It's just the night coming on. He touched the leaves, feeling their soft green suppleness under his torn fingers.
Soft..? Up till now, everything in this pit of fire that he had seen or touched had been dry and rough! He tried to force his mind to work. It was difficult! His mind kept wanting to slide off into distant disjointed thoughts. With a tremendous effort he forced his concentration back to the bush. It's green; the leaves are soft. It must be getting moisture. Rolling over onto his belly, he began to push the sand away from the roots of the bush.
Slowly, with an almost impossible effort, the hole deepened. Casca put his face down into the bottom of it and breathed deeply, ignoring the bits of sand that were sucked up into his nostrils. He could smell moisture. No! Smell wasn't quite right; he could taste it with his mind. He tore a limb from the bush to help him dig. Hours passed as he worked in slow motion, but the hole deepened, and soon he could feel the moisture with his fingers. The rains that came so seldom to this region would turn this dry bed into a raging torrent, and then would disappear as fast as they had come. But some of the water remained for this plant to feed on and a few others.
The darkness was on him now, and still he scooped out the sand until at last he could feel real wetness. Sandy mud slid between his raw ringers. He scooped up a handful of it and placed it in his mouth, letting the wetness ease the pain and soak into his gums and tongue. He fought back an impulse to swallow the mud and sand. It helped, but it wasn't enough: he needed to drink. The hole wasn't filling with water; it was just wet sand muck.
Tearing off a patch of his tunic, he filled it with the sand and mud. Tying it into a bundle, he strained his neck, held the cloth to his mouth, and squeezed, forcing every ounce of strength remaining into his right hand and finally, through the cloth, came… water! A slow, sweet wetness that increased as he gained strength from the moisture. Again and again he refilled his rag and drank, nursing the wetness. As a child feeds at its mother's breasts, he sucked and was eventually filled.
He lay back then and slept, as his stomach dispersed the life-giving wetness throughout his body, feeding the cells and bringing back suppleness to dried tissue that had shrunk under the hammer of the sun. Two days he stayed by his miniature oasis, gathering his strength. At night, he found that if he stayed away from the hole for a while, other creatures would come to it, drawn by the smell of moisture in the night air. Rodents, lizards, snakes, and other vermin appeared. All were food and he wasted nothing. What he didn't eat was sliced into strips and put into the sun to dry. There wasn't much, but it was a great deal more than he had eaten for some time and would be enough, he hoped, to see him through.
He used much of his time squeezing his rag to fill his water skin, controlling the urge to drink it dry, and contenting himself with his damp rag. The water skin would be needed when he left, for he didn't know how long he would have to go before finding more. The mountains rose over him. They were stark, craggy, uneven piles of raw rock that reached to the clear desert heavens. They seemed like Hercules, carrying the weight of the world on their granite shoulders.
Four days he stayed by his hole until he knew it was time to leave. He was as strong as he would ever be with the lack of real food. If he waited too long the hole might run dry and the few animals that came would disappear, and then he would be back right where he started.
He waited for the dusk and once more began his trek across the wastelands of the Persian desert. But now, the mountains were his travel companions, and the wind that came from them in the night talked to him of lost caravans and vanished armies that had once followed this path. Some had made it, but most lay forgotten under the shifting, whispering dunes behind him. Their stories were covered by the ever-changing sands that each year claimed a little more of the arable lands, until one day they would reach clear to the sea.
Several days passed as he made his way along the boundary of the mountains heading west. He knew he would have to come out of the desert at some point; it could not be much further. He found small springs in the shelters of the crags, which kept his water skins filled. And… where he found water, he found food.
At one such lonely watering hole he found two horses grazing on the brush. A man, who Casca presumed had been their owner, lay facedown near the waterhole. Rolling the body over, the cause of death was evident. The man's face was swollen to half again its normal size, and there was a purple color from the poison that had been injected into his face through the two puncture marks on his cheek. Probably a desert snake, lying near the hole, had struck him while he'd been drinking. And, Casca figured, it hadn't been too long ago. The body showed no signs of decay yet and the horses looked to be in fair shape.
He dug a shallow grave and covered the body with stones. He said a general prayer for the man's sake to whatever gods there were in this place, and thanked him for the gift of the horses.
He rode out from the spot that night after checking the packs. There was little in them but the things a lonely traveler would need on the trail. There were new clothes for him, though, and packets of food to insure his reaching civilization with at least a minimum of comfort. He followed the trail back the way the man had come, moving easily, letting the swaying of the horse rock him into a light sleep as the miles were covered.
He felt a tingling up his spine on several occasions after the first two days. It was a tingle that says one is not alone, that eyes are watching.
But he never spotted anybody and put it down to nerves. But the feeling still lingered, and from time to time he thought that if he could just turn around fast enough, he would be able to catch sight of the watchers.
