But the situation had changed. Although there were now distinct shafts of light streaking the burrow, that sense of weight had not departed with the noise.
The men looked at each other.
“Let’s go,” Tullus croaked.
The dwarf watched as Tullus, then Otson left. Nicostratus gestured to him to go next, but the dwarf only stared. Finally, Nicostratus pulled him down and thrust him through the burrow mouth, shoving him ahead. They would go together. He would bring this miserable creature with him back to town.
Once outside, he took the dwarf in his arms and, carrying him, followed the other men. The woods around him were as still as a painting. The sense of weight seemed to be centered on the pit above them, or to depend from the kite, and they hastened down the off the mound through the trees. Otson looked all about him as he went, looking for Teuser. The dog was nowhere to be seen. They were leaving, but they had no real idea what they were doing.
There was a greyish movement off the path. Tullus made an abrupt rasping sound in his throat. He flashed into the gloom the next instant, something grey, narrow and murmuring was descending, or stretching out, from the treetops…
Then, as if he’d blundered against some unseen obstacle, Nicostratus fell, and slid on one side along the ground. He was dragged all the way down to the base of the mound in a cascade of dead leaves, grating to a halt nearly where the trees gave out. There was no sound at all and the air was still when he rose, and he was not ready to call Tullus or Otson. He was not alone, because he had not released his grip on the dwarf. The rags had come loose and fallen away from its legs. The dwarf had neither feet, nor knees. The dwarf, Nicostratus realized, had not been born a dwarf. Unmistakably, both legs had been amputated well above the knee. Sandals stuffed with rags were imperfectly bound to the stumps, and he had been trying to keep up with them on those “feet.”
The dwarf was crawling, with its one arm, back toward the trees, helpless to prevent the rags from being dragged off his body. Nicostratus tried to gather him up again. The dwarf resisted, then his eyes suddenly went wide, staring. His eyebrows lifted, and then Nicostratus could feel the little body begin to heave in his hands. It convulsed. Soft, voiceless huffs came from the hidden mouth. The dwarf was laughing, silently, at him. He looked up into Nicostratus’ eyes then, reached out with the stub that was all that remained of his index finger and tapped the talisman from Emesa that Nicostratus was wearing around his neck.
Nicostratus set the dwarf down and snatched away the shredded remains of a quaestor’s toga that had concealed the face that now laughed at him, with sheared, toothless gums and the stub of a tongue, still pointing at the talisman he had brought west with him from Syria.
Somehow, he had hold of Nicostratus’ knife, and, still coughing voiceless laughter and staring at Nicostratus, he threw aside his rags and plunged the knife wildly into his own body again and again and again. Nicostratus shouted and lunged forward to prevent him, then froze when he saw the exposed body honeycombed with slippery pockets. Each one sprouted a wet black filament. The dwarf drove the knife urgently into his pulpy body, eyes popping, sweat running down his face, desperately probing with the blade for the spring of his own life. Then at last came a rill of thin, stinking blood, and he slumped forward, spasming.
The spasms did not cease. The ruin of that familiar face turned toward him again and the lips moved in a futile attempt to speak. At once with a strangled cry Nicostratus sprang up with a heavy stone between his hands and pounded with it wildly at the skull. It was like ramming at a stone with another stone. The body fluttered against the ground. It did not stop suffering. Nicostratus stared until something gave way inside himself. Then he ran from the thing he knew was somehow still Caelius Rufus.
Otson caught up with him on the path, not far from the first heap of stones.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
Nicostratus turned to look at him, puzzled. He gestured toward the west.
“Back,” he said. “Back to town.”
“I didn’t find Tullus,” Otson said. “We were separated on the mound. He attacked something. I didn’t see it. You — you were gone.”
“Tullus?”
His tone threw Otson off. There was no sense of emergency.
“Tullus,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know whether or not he’s still alive… Aren’t you coming back with me?”
“I was waiting for you,” Nicostratus said. “Now, what is this about a mound? What mound?”
Otson’s brow clouded.
“You coward!” he snarled.
Open-mouthed, Nicostratus stared at Otson. His dumbstruck expression only made Otson angrier.
“You’re coming back with me!”
He seized Nicostratus. They struggled, then Nicostratus pivoted, throwing Otson heavily to the ground.
“Have you gone mad?” Nicostratus shouted.
Otson sprang to his feet and seized him by his clothes.
“You’re coming back with me!”
“Of course I am!” Nicostratus cried. “I’ve been waiting for you!”
“Not back to town, back to the mound! To find Tullus!”
“What Tullus?! I don’t know any Tullus! You’ve gone mad!”
Again Nicostratus broke free. The two men stood facing each other on the mountainside.
“You ran!” Otson said with contempt. “You left him.”
Nicostratus began to speak.
“— Don’t deny it!” Otson cried.
“You know I would not do a thing like that. I…”
“Don’t talk to me like a sober man reasoning with his drunk friend! I was there.”
“Where?”
“On the mound!”
“What mound? I’ve seen no mound!”
“We were there, we saw it, we all saw it. We just came from there. You saw the thing, Tullus attacked it. You called it Asellius. The dog held you back but you saw it.”
Otson snatched Nicostratus’ cloak and held it up before him.
“Teuser held you back and tore your —”
The cloak had no tear in it. Otson stared at the cloak. He stared at Nicostratus, who returned his gaze levelly, even coolly. Then he noticed that the talisman from Emesa was no longer around Nicostratus’ neck, and took a few steps back.
“Where is the talisman?”
Nicostratus opened and closed his mouth. He seemed genuinely at a loss.
“So you threw it away,” Otson said. “What will you tell them when you get back?”
“That we found nothing,” Nicostratus said, sounding genuinely perplexed.
Otson flung away from him then. His mind a blank, he made his way back toward the mound on his own, ignoring Nicostratus’ voice calling, falling away behind him. The mountains seemed to fold and refold themselves around him. The path quivered and swam back and forth through frothy turf and went on too far, but he couldn’t find the next stone marker. There was a sort of bare place where the stones might have been. He kept checking to see where the sun was in the sky, but it didn’t seem to draw any closer to the high mountain horizon. He couldn’t spot the black kite anymore.
Eventually he moved out into wide open plains of grass so green it looked black beneath a sun that was still no closer to the horizon, but which seemed to have drawn nearer to him, as if he were steadily walking into the image on the talisman. He had this feeling even as he crossed wide valleys, and forded broad, flat streams he didn’t know, and whose banks were lined with trees whose branches were adorned with flat stone chimes. Birds called with new voices. New tracks scored the muddy banks of the streams. The current plucked his bow off his back and swept it out of sight before he knew what was happening.