The change in temperature brought Casca back from his dull, half-drugged sleep. He forced his eyes to open. The lids, dried and caked with grit and sweat, stung as he blinked to clear them. Rising from his shelter, he stood and faced the mountains, trying to lock the direction in his mind. If there was no moonlight tonight, and if there were no stars, there was certainly nothing else in the wasteland that he would be able to get a fix on to help guide him.
Long shadows were reaching across the plain of stones from the gentle rises and hillocks. The sole boulder became a sundial as its shadow reached out to twice its own length.
Casca shook his water skin. There was precious little left. He took one full, long swallow and held it in his mouth to let it soak into the gums and the membranes of his throat, cutting some of the buildup of phlegm and foul taste away. The bag would be empty this night. He rewrapped his burnoose about him and tied it at his waist.
The cooling of the evening was a balm to his heat-reddened and flushed skin. It even helped to ease the sore spots under his armpits and groins where the grime and sand wore against his skin. The dark closed around him like a soft, silent blanket. He walked, the cool air giving him a sense of renewed strength. The heat soon passed and there were a few miles of stumbling over smooth, slippery stones. Once, this must have been a lake or an ocean bed. Several times he walked over shining paths of salt that had collected into the low areas where the waters must have evaporated or receded back into the earth.
A few times he almost stepped on snakes, which hissed and stuck out their tongues to taste the air, then pulled back into sinuous twisting tendrils ready to strike.
All that night, under dear but moonless skies, he trekked toward the hoped-for shelter in the mountains. With 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.