Casca slept again, this time quietly.
When he next awoke, the glow of a small smokeless fire warmed his face. Jugotai sat quietly watching, squatting on his heels as he had seen the sage, Shiu Lao Tze do many times.
"How do you feel?" The boy's voice was beginning to deepen and become a man's, Casca noted.
Groaning, Casca raised himself on his good arm. "How the Hades do you think I feel? I feel like shit, that's how."
Nodding, the boy smiled showing strong white teeth.
"Good, if you feel that way, then you're not too bad off."
Reaching into his travel bag, the boy took out Casca's hand and laid it on the saddle blanket which he squatted on. "What do you want me to do with this?"
The sight of his own hand lying there, fingers like claws reaching up, looking out of place and much too small to be his hand, as if the blood that had drained, left the member shrunken and undersized, gave rise to a feeling of nausea in Casca. He cleared his throat before speaking, "Give me a drink first."
Taking a long pull at the skin waterbag, the water tasted flat and warm, but good and eased the fire in his throat. Reaching over, he held the hand, the feeling of his own limp tissue sending chills racing over him. The hand was warm… warm to the touch.
Jugotai took a drink from the bag watching Casca. "I noticed that too. Do you want to tell me about it? Why is the hand warm when it should be cold and dead?"
Casca shook his head, "Later. Right now I have to think." I need my hand, I wonder… like the boy said, it's still alive. I have heard about some people having their ears sewn back after being cut off… perhaps…
"Sew it back on."
Jugotai stared for a moment and then went to the saddle bags to take out the bronze needle and threads of sinew he carried. Under the direction of the Roman, Jugotai lined up the severed piece making sure the bones matched. As the severed pieces rested on a flat stone on the blanket, he quickly ran a neat line of sutures around the entire wound, more often than not the needle would stick in the tough skin and he would have to twist and push to get it through, but the pain was nothing to the man he worked on. It was done. The stitches stuck out in knots where they were tied, but the hand was attached, though as yet gave no indication of wanting to return to work.
Tearing a piece from his cloak, Casca made a sling and put his hand to rest in it, out of sight. Another swallow of tepid water. Casca sighed, the burning was easing and the pain fading; back again but not beating at him. Lying down he looked up at the stars that were beginning to make their appearance in the night sky.
Finally he spoke. "It's a long story Jugotai. Let's just say that those men and I have had a bit of a difference over a religious matter and they took of-fense. As to my hand, we will just have to wait and see."
Casca told Jugotai about the ears he had seen sewn back on. His explanation seemed to satisfy the boy-for now anyway. Jugotai placed some brush on the small blaze, curled up in his blanket and slept. Dawn would come soon enough and the land of his fathers was still a long way off.
The next days they spent slowly climbing to higher ground. Water became more abundant as did game. It was seldom that Jugotai missed bringing back some game; small or large, antelope or hares, so long as it was meat, it made no difference at all to the two. High above them they could see snow on the peaks.
Several times every day, Casca looked at his hand arrd tried to will the fingers to move. Nothing. But the hand had not shown any sign of decay. They rode on.
On several occasions they saw large caravans in the distance with strange two-humped camels. They rode and marched through an unending labyrinth of valleys and gorges, climbed mountain passes where the icy wind tried to cut them as though with cold knives. Climbing one icy overhang, Casca's horse stumbled and threw him to the ground. Slipping and sliding on the ice to the edge of a precipice, he reached out and caught at a twisted tree root and held on, pulling himself to a safe footing.
"I used my hand," he realized excitedly. His left hand had gone out involuntarily and grasped the twisted root of the tree, but now the hand would not let go. He pried the fingers open with his right hand and sat down, letting the wind whip at him, unmindful of the ice forming in his growing beard.
Crossing his legs, he squatted on the ice and stared at the hand, willing the fingers to move again. The forefinger gave one slight, almost un-noticeable twitch. Casca concentrated even harder, brows furrowed, unmindful of the cold sweat forming on his forehead turning to frozen crystals before it could run down his face.
The whole hand clenched, then opened again and clenched once more. Jugotai arrived on the scene in time to witness the act; saying nothing he pointed to the skies. Heavy dark clouds were racing overhead. A storm was coming. They must find shelter before the night.
Jugotai wasted nothing. He would gather the horses' droppings and save them, putting them into a bag to dry. When dried, they made an excellent fire in these high altitudes where there was a shortage of wood. Only the twisted dwarf trees stubbornly tried to find sustenance among the rocks, some sinking their roots twice and even three times their surface height into the ground, searching and seeking nourishment in the thin soil.
The storm hit with the force of a hurricane, seeking every inch of the cave they had taken for shelter. The horses in the rear whinnied and stomped their hooves as if they could feel the elemental forces that tried to rip off the skin coverings of the entrance. Four days the winds raged and screamed like mad women as the two sat in their rocky shelter. The remains of old fires told them this small haven had been a sanctuary more than once to the few travelers who ventured over the range.
"How much further?" Casca grumbled through his beard, while gnawing on a piece of mountain sheep Jugotai had nailed with a well-placed arrow six days earlier.
"Damn that's tough. You would think falling four hundred feet down on the rocks would have tenderized this sucker a little bit."
"How much further?" Casca repeated a little irritably, Jugotai merely smiled and drew a rough map on the floor of the cave using his forefinger for a marker. "We are here. When we come off the mountain it will be but one day's ride to the boundaries of my tribe. From that time on, we will be watched and met when they decide to check us out. Perhaps five more days. Then beyond the next range of mountains lies the lands of the Han, or Chin. The land takes the name from whatever dynasty rules. Who sits now in the throne I do not know."
The storm left, leaving the bright clear sky and air that only the highlands of the world ever know. Sharp and crystal-clear, the sun cast sparkles of myriad diamond-like beams from the ice and snow left behind by the Father of Winds, as Jugotai said the storm was called.
The trail to the valleys below was uneventful. When they gained the lower elevations, the horses ' found plenty of fodder on which to feed and stuffed themselves after the short rations on the heights above. Green fields of grass and full-sized trees greeted them. The smell of the rich earth and warm breezes was welcome and they removed their heavy blankets and skins.
Casca headed for the nearest pond, stripped and dived in, coming out just as quickly from the pond fed by the ice lakes of the heights. Steeling himself, he went in again, but more slowly this time, cursing with each step. He used sand to rub the grime of the weeks on the trail from his body. Taking his dagger, he honed it against his boot leather and scraped the beard from his face accompanied by an occasional grunt of pain and a curse. The job completed, he rinsed his clothes and set them to dry on nearby tree branches.