The camels began to mill around, off to my left, and I was almost too late in realizing what that meant. I whipped my head around to watch them and was just in time to see a black shadow rise up from the ground at their feet and move to stand motionless among them, sheltered by their huge bodies. I sighted carefully at the part of him that I could see beneath the belly of the beast that was shielding him and released my arrow, hearing a shocked scream of pain and outrage as the black shapeless shadow I had pierced went flying. Three down. One left. I knew what to do now.
"Roman," I called, pitching my voice low. "I'm directly to your left as you stand now. Start walking towards me, slowly. I'll cover you. There's still one of your hosts alive out there. If he moves towards you, or if you hear anything at all, drop flat and leave him to me.'
His head snapped towards the sound of my voice as soon as I started to speak, and he began to walk slowly towards me, as though he were taking an evening stroll. I stood up and kept my head moving, scrutinizing every shadow in sight, waiting for the fourth man to make a move, but nothing happened. When Eagle Face reached me, I let go of my bowstring with my right hand, holding the strung arrow in place between the shaft of the bow and the index and middle fingers of my left.
"Turn around." I drew my sword with my right hand, still looking around me for any signs of movement. "Stretch out your wrists." He did as I bade him, and I began sawing at his bonds, but it was impossible to keep watch and cut the ropes at the same time.
"Blast this," I said. "How's your eyesight?"
"Perfect." His voice was calm and cool.
"Good, then use it, while I cut these ropes properly, otherwise you're likely to lose at least one hand."
I laid my bow at my feet and stuck the arrow into the ground beside the other three, then cut through his bindings quickly, guiding my blade with the edge of my left index finger. He was tightly bound. "That's going to hurt like nothing on earth in a minute, once the blood starts to flow back," I told him. "Duck your head and let's get your collars off." I don't know what it was that alerted me, but my military instinct took over. I pushed him off balance, yelling "Down!" as an arrow sliced through the tiny space separating our bodies. Even before the word was out of my mouth, I was on my knees, grabbing my bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. Then I rolled and kept on rolling, arms extended above my head as another arrow and then a third came looking for me. I saw the black shape silhouetted against the moonlit sky just as I rolled into a slight depression that deepened as I moved into it. Then, hoping that I was safe for a few seconds, I shrugged out of the cloak that was threatening to choke me, nocked the arrow carefully, pivoted my hips and came to my feet in a rolling lunge, drawing the bowstring to my chin as I did so. I was lucky again. I caught him in the act of aiming at Eagle Face, and by the time he had swung back to try a shot at me, my arrow was already travelling. It took him high in the right shoulder, and he staggered back and fell to one knee, his arrow flying off somewhere into the moonlight. I was running towards him flat out, fumbling with my dagger, when my foot came down on a piece of ground that wasn't where I had thought it was; I hit it with an impact that drove every vestige of wind from my body and sent me flying end over end. I was still trying to pull myself together when I heard Eagle Face's voice above me.
"Relax. Our friend has gone off into the desert. He won't be back. You are only badly winded and will recover. He's badly wounded and will not." I looked up at him. He was massaging his right wrist and wiggling his fingers.
"You're right. This hurts like nothing else on earth." I saw then that he was talking through clenched teeth, as he nodded backwards over his shoulder and continued.
"I can't hold your sword yet, otherwise I'd go over there and put that poor swine out of his misery."
Only then did I identify the horrible sound that had been assailing my ears. It was the sustained screaming that had to be coming from the man I had gut shot beneath the camel's legs. I lay there for a few more minutes, collecting my breath, and then I got to my feet and crossed to where the screaming man squirmed on the ground. I could see, without looking too closely, that I had shot him clean through the centre of his pubic bone. This was the part I dreaded. All my ghosts came to haunt me as I dispatched him quickly, trying vainly not to get any of his warm, unthreatening, painfully personal blood on my hands. I straightened up slowly, my eyes full of the look on his face and my hands covered in his blood. Scooping up a double handful of sand, I used it to try to clean the sticky gore away, but the blood was congealing between my fingers already and I fell to my hands and knees, retching up my guilt in painful spasms. After a while, I was able to get up and go back to Eagle Face, who was still rubbing his wrists and watching me with a strange expression on his face.
"Who are you?" he asked me. "How did you come to be here? And why in the name of all the ancient gods would you be foolhardy enough to risk your life against such odds for a total stranger?"
I grinned at him, shakily. "Not such a total stranger as you think," I said. "My name is Varrus. Publius Varrus. A ghost from your past, returned to pay a debt."
A tiny flicker of apprehension appeared on his face as he thought for an instant that I might be telling the literal truth, and then his face broke into a great smile and he held out his hand to me. I was aware of the strength in his fingers as they gripped my forearm. His right eyebrow climbed high on his brow in an expression I was to become very familiar with.
"Well, Publius Varrus," he said. "We are well met this night, although I know I have never laid eyes on you before. You mistake me for someone else, I'm sure, but I am glad of your mistake."
"No mistake, Tribune. You have laid eyes on me before tonight. And hands."
"When? What do you mean?"
"Just what I say. It was a long time ago, and there's no reason why you should remember it. It's enough that I do."
"If it caused you to save my life, then I thank God for your memory. Tell me about it."
I glanced over my shoulder at the shadows surrounding us. "I'll be glad to, but I think this is not the place. We had better move away from here. The water attracts too many visitors."
He looked around him. "You may be right, my friend, but I would dearly love to sleep for an hour before we move. I haven't had much rest in the past few days, and none at all since our friends took me, yesterday."
"Could you stay awake for another hour? I left my horse among some rocks on a hill about half a league from here. It's safer than this place. You can sleep all you want when we get back there."
"Half a league?"
"No more than that."
"Can you ride a camel?"
I grimaced. It was as close as I could come to smiling. "Can anyone? I've been up on one. Can't say I enjoyed the experience too much."
"It's better than walking."
"Tribune, in this country, anything's better than walking!" During the ride back to my hill of rocks my stomach settled down again, finally, and along the way I told him about where we had first met. It pleased me when he remembered the occasion and proved it by recalling that he had noticed my tears first, and the fact that I had been a beardless boy.
"Beardless is right. And that's not all I was lacking," I told him. "That was my first campaign and my first battle. If you hadn't noticed me there, it would have been my last one, too." I told him of my search for him and my failure to trace him. "Where did you go? Why couldn't I find you?" He shrugged his shoulders. ''I moved on. I wasn't with your lot in the first place —just passing by on my way to join my own legion. Your skirmish was over when we happened along. My men handed you over to your own medics. But you were completely paralyzed,, I thought. We didn't expect you to live."