Seeing the boy sitting out here alone, I signaled for Xenophon to stop, and we pulled our horses up alongside, looking at him curiously. He ignored us completely, or feigned unawareness of our presence. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and I wondered how he had come to be here, for I saw no signs of any Pisidian encampment nearby. His cheeks were drawn in hunger, and his eyes hollow. The skin around his mouth was filthy, as if he had gorged on honey some time before and neglected to wash afterwards, allowing the dirt to collect around his lips and mingle with the steady stream of snot from his nose that he seemed to have no inclination to wipe off.
Xenophon and I looked at each other. "Is the boy right in the head?" I asked. He shrugged, and called over Cleon to help us communicate.
Cleon was a tall, rangy fellow with weak eyes and odd, bushy hair, a Pisidian who had been captured in a Persian raid years ago, but had become thoroughly Persianized since. He looked at the child disdainfully and barked a question at him. The boy showed no inkling of understanding, neglecting to even blink or glance at him; he merely continued to stolidly chew and pop the glistening white larvae. The interpreter asked something else, to equal effect, then shrugged his shoulders.
"He is an imbecile," Cleon said. "Either that or deaf and mute."
"It would be useful if we could get him to talk," said Xenophon, thoughtfully gazing at the urchin. "He clearly knows the country, or he would not be sitting here so comfortably. He must know if there are any crossings close at hand."
He swung off his horse and I did the same, welcoming the chance to stretch my legs. Xenophon sat down on the boulder beside the boy, rummaging through the pack he carried slung across the horse's haunches. Removing a chunk of roast boar left over from a hunting expedition two days before, he held it out to the famished child.
The boy's eyes flickered as he caught the scent of the meat, and he turned his head slowly to look into Xenophon's face. Almost faster than I could see, his hand shot out, and without even looking at the meat, he snatched it and in one swift motion stuffed it into his leather pouch. He intended it for later consumption, I suppose, because he then turned his gaze back to its previous target over the river, and resumed his slow chewing of the grubs.
"I'm not sure what that tells us," said Xenophon, puzzled. He motioned Cleon down from his horse too, and he looped the reins of all three over the twisted branches of a small shrub. The two Boeotians waited patiently fifty yards behind us along the trail, making their own snack and chatting quietly with each other.
"Speak to him more kindly," Xenophon said. "Don't demand to know where the crossing is. Just ask him what he is waiting for."
Cleon scowled, then with great effort softened his expression to a resigned grimace. He squatted beside the boy and questioned him for several minutes, but again to no avail. Just as he was standing up, however, the boy said something briefly in his language, only two or three words. Cleon stood looking at him motionless, as if waiting for more, but the boy had evidently said his piece and would speak no further. He shrugged.
"The boy says he is waiting for Death."
Xenophon looked more closely at the boy's face. "That's strange," he said. "He looks hungry, maybe, but nowhere near death. I wonder what he meant."
Just then, another trickle of gravel slid down and landed at our feet. We had learned to ignore these small slides, but the boy glanced down nervously at the rocks that had fallen before us. The small quantity of gravel was followed by a more substantial fall, this time involving several rocks of a size that could bruise a leg if they were to make a direct hit. I looked up to the top of the ridge, but saw nothing. The boy, however, had hopped down from his perch on the boulder and stood facing us, shifting from foot to foot.
"He looks as if he's about to say something now," I said, for he had opened his mouth and begun to speak, but his words were suddenly drowned by a crash and a deafening, sickening roar. When I looked up I saw that the entire shale cliff-face had split from its underlying structure, like bark sloughing off a rotten tree, had broken into enormous chunks, and was hurtling down upon us.
There was no time to seize our weapons, or to even think-one could only move. Xenophon and I leaped to the trail and raced forward, unthinking, seeking only to beat the crashing rocks we could hear tumbling down from the precipice above us, tearing out shrubs, boulders, everything in their path. Showers of dust, gravel and small rocks were falling about our heads and shoulders, and we seemed to be running impossibly slow, as one does in a nightmare. Within seconds we had skidded around a sharp bend, where the path clung closely to a corner of the cliff, and we realized that barring a collapse of the entire mountain, we were out of the course of the slide and were safe. We pressed our faces and chests against the rock wall, digging in with our fingernails, panting and gasping not from exhaustion, for the run had only been a few yards, but from the soul-purging effect of sheer terror.
For several minutes we listened as the rocks roared down the wall around the corner beyond our vision, slamming into the trail with a deafening crash. Hitting the flat ledge of the trail, the boulders paused briefly, as if to consider their position, then continued their frantic journey, crashing over the side of the lower wall and tumbling into the river below with a great splash of yellowish spray and foam. After a moment the roaring stopped as quickly as it had begun, and we stepped gingerly around our protective corner to witness the destruction.
The trail had been completely obliterated. No sign of life or human activity was evident, and the place where Cleon and our horses had been standing a moment before was piled twenty feet high with huge boulders. Dust hung heavily in the air, making it difficult to see and even to breathe, and the cliff face, which had before been a steep, almost vertical angle, now exhibited a great depression or cave, the depth of which could still not be clearly seen through the dust.
Over the steady throbbing of the river, however, we heard voices-not those of our own party, as we thought at first, but rather young voices-and looking up to the top of the ridge, we saw a line of perhaps fifty figures standing on the crest. The angle of the sun silhouetted them, so we were unable to identify their clothing or appearance, but from their build they looked to be boys-some as young as the one to whom we had spoken, others slightly older. Peering down from the ridge top, they cheered and waved at the destruction, which we now saw had been their own device. Several of the bigger youths were still holding the stout poles they had used as levers to force down boulders from the top and start the slide. The effect must have been even greater than they had originally hoped.
"Pisidians," Xenophon spat. "They ambushed us. We should have listened to the boy. He was waiting for death, he said. Ours. Look!"-and pointing halfway up the hill we saw the same boy energetically leaping and pulling himself from rock to rock up the side of the face, apparently having taken shelter from the slide under his boulder and emerged no worse for wear. How, I wondered, does a boy practice for something like that?
By now, the ruffians on the ridge had seen us, and were howling in outrage at their failure to destroy us with their onslaught. Half the band immediately disappeared, no doubt to take one of their secret trails down the side to finish us off where we stood, while the others began probing frantically with their levers, loosening more rocks and gravel and threatening to send another shower of boulders raining down on us.