The insurgents halted to discuss a plan of attack. The shehne, prepared for defence, was a good fortress, and its capture would occupy considerable time. The insurgents raised a tremendous noise to awaken the slaves in the shehne and encourage them to attack the guards on the wall from within.
Cavius, who was already hoarse, shouted at the top of his voice to the other leaders, trying to persuade them to abandon the attack. They would not agree; the easily obtained victory had given them confidence, and it seemed to them that it would be possible to liberate all the slaves in Quemt and conquer the country.
Suddenly the Libyan, Akhmi, let out a penetrating howl and hundreds of heads turned in his direction. The Libyan waved his arms, pointing in the direction of the river. From the high bank that rose steeply towards the cliffs, the river that washed the numerous landing places of the capital could be seen over a long distance. Everywhere the lights of torches flared up, merging into a dully flickering line; flickering points of light appeared in the middle of the river and were gathering in two places on the bank on the side of the insurgents.
There could be no doubt — large detachments of soldiers were crossing the river, hurrying to surround the place where there were fires and where the escaped slaves were concentrated.
And here the insurgents were still dashing from place to place seeking a means of attacking the shehne; some of them had tried to approach the enemy by following the bed of an irrigation canal, others were expending valuable arrows.
A glance cast over the indefinite outlines of the dark mass of people told Cavius that there were not more than three hundred men in the column capable of giving battle; of these less than a half had knives or spears, while only about thirty bows had been captured.
But a short time would elapse before hundreds of ‘the terrible archers of the Black Land would send clouds of long arrows into them from a great distance and thousands of well-trained troops would draw a tight ring around slaves who had only just tasted liberty.
Akhmi, his eyes flashing in anger, shouted that it was already past midnight and that if they did not start immediately it would be too late.
It cost the Akhmi, Cavius and Pandion many precious minutes to explain to the crowd, inflamed and eager for battle, the uselessness of any attempt to stand up against the troops of the capital. The leaders insisted on an immediate march into the desert and, in case of necessity, were prepared to start out themselves, leaving behind those who were distracted by the search for weapons, by plunder and revenge. A number of slaves who did not agree left the column and set off along the river towards the rich estate of some aristocrat whence came loud noises and the light of torches. The remainder, a little more than two hundred men, agreed to go.
Soon the long dark column, winding like a snake through a narrow canyon between steep cliffs still hot from the daytime sun, made their way to the level edge of the valley. The runaways were confronted with an endless plain of sand and stones. Pandion looked back for the last time at the huge river gleaming faintly below them. How many days of sorrow, despair, hope and wrath he had spent beside that calmly flowing waterway! Joy and infinite gratitude to his trusty comrades filled the heart of the young Hellene. In triumph he turned his back on the land of slavery and increased his already fast pace.
The band of insurgents had marched some twenty thousand cubits from the rim of the valley when the Libyan halted the column. Behind them, in the east, the sky had begun to grow light.
The contours of the rounded sand-dunes, some of them as much as a hundred and fifty cubits high, stretching far away to the vague, scarcely visible line of the horizon, were but faintly perceptible in the dull leaden light of early morning. At the hour of dawn the desert was silent, the air was motionless, the jackals and hyenas had ceased their howls.
“You’ve been hurrying us all the time, why do you linger now? What do you want?” impatient slaves in the back rows asked the Libyan.
He explained that the most difficult part of the journey was about to begin — endless ridges of sand-dunes, one after the other, each ridge higher than the last until they reached a height of three hundred cubits. The slaves were reformed into a column two deep and were told that they would have to keep going without halt, without dropping back, paying no attention to fatigue; those who fell behind would never reach their destination. The Libyan would go ahead and seek a path between the dunes.
It turned out that hardly anybody had found an opportunity to drink before leaving and many of them were already tormented by thirst after the heat of battle. Not everybody had a mantle, cloth or even rags with which to cover his head and shoulders from the sun, but there was nothing they could do about it.
Strung out in a column two hundred cubits long, the slaves moved on in silence, their eyes fixed on their feet dragging through the soft sand. The leading files zigzagged right and left winding their way through the dunes to avoid slopes of shifting sand.
A wide purple strip glowed in the sky to the east.
The crescent-shaped and sharply serrated ridges of the sand-hills turned to gold. In the sunlight the desert appeared before Pandion’s eyes like a sea with high frozen waves whose smooth slopes reflected an orange-yellow light. The excitement of the night gradually died down and the men grew calmer. Liberty, the expanse of the desert, the gold of the distant dawn — all served to revive men weary of captivity. Joy filled their hearts in place of malice and fear, sorrow and despair.
The morning light grew brighter and the sky seemed to recede into its bottomless blue depths. As the sun rose higher its rays at first gave them friendly warmth but soon began to burn and sear them. The slow, dragging, toilsome path through the labyrinth of deep gullies between high sand-hills became more and more difficult. The shadows of the hills grew shorter; it became painful to walk over the burning hot sand, but the men went on, never stopping, never looking back. Ahead of them lay endless ridges of sand-hills, all exactly the same, that cut off all view of their surroundings.
As time went on the air, sunlight and sand merged into one huge sea of flame, that blinded, asphyxiated and burned like molten metal.
The journey was especially difficult for those who came from the northern countries like Pandion and the two Etruscans.
Pandion felt that his head was squeezed in an iron band, the blood throbbing furiously at the temples, causing him great pain.
He was almost blinded; before his eyes floated patches and stripes of the most astoundingly brilliant colours that flowed and whirled, changing their combinations in wonderful kaleidoscopic patterns. The unbearable strength of the sun turned the sand into golden dust permeated with light.
Pandion was in a delirium, hallucinations grew out of his maddened brain. The colossal statues of Aigyptos moved through flashes of crimson fire and sank into the waves of a purple sea. Then the sea fell back and packs of strange creatures, half-beast and half-bird, flew down from the steep cliffs at amazing speed. And once more the granite Pharaohs of the Black Land formed into battle order and advanced towards Pandion.
Staggering on, he rubbed his eyes and slapped his cheeks in an effort to see what was really there — the heat-breathing slopes of the sand-dunes that piled one on the other in the blinding, grey-gold light. But again the whirling vortices of coloured fire appeared and Pandion was lost in a heavy delirium. Nothing but the fervent desire for freedom could have made him keep moving in step with Kidogo, leaving thousands of sand-dunes behind. Fresh chains of hills confronted the runaways and between them were huge, smooth-sided craters at the bottom of which could be seen coal-black patches of soil.