The Bronze Bow - Elizabeth George Speare [33]
Daniel noticed that the men were getting accustomed to Samson and treated him with better humor, though none of them ever disputed him. As for himself, Daniel had acquired new status. By the unfailing grapevine, word of his exploit in the town had reached the cave days before. They had all given him up, believing him dead or captured. Some of the men admired his nerve; others were relieved to have him in charge of Samson again. For a day or so they made a hero of him, and then they forgot the matter and ignored him, and life in the cave went on exactly as before.
For Daniel nothing could ever be the same. He had never admitted to himself that he was lonely here on the mountain. He had worshiped and feared Rosh. He had fought and eaten and slept side by side with the hard-eyed men who made up Rosh's band. But the few days in Joel's passageway had shown him a new world. He had found someone to talk to, someone who had shared his own thoughts, and who had instantly taken Daniel's burden his own. The memory of the pact they had made glowed like a warm coal in the heart of the forge.
Lying in the sunlight, his back against the baked gray rock, Daniel repeated to himself the chronicles that Joel had read aloud, the glorious deeds of Joshua, of Phinehas, Saul, and David. Most of all he thought of Judas Maccabeus, who had given them a watchword. The other mighty ones had lived and fought in distant ages. But Judas had lived in a time like his own, not two hundred years ago, when Israel was helpless, as it was now, under the foot of the heathen. Judas, with his heroic father and brothers, had dared to rise up and defy the oppressor, and for a time Israel had breathed the free air again. Here in these very mountains Judas, young and daring and cunning as a panther, had hidden from his enemies and taken them by surprise. Many brave men had joyfully laid down their lives for Judas. But never enough—never quite enough. This time—! There were young men everywhere who longed for such a chance again. Together, he and Joel would find them.
The third member of the pact? He was not sure about Thacia. In all his life he had known only two girls, and he did not understand them. Compared to his own sister, Thacia was like a brilliant scarlet lily, glowing and proud. He could count on her loyalty to Joel; in all else she was unpredictable. The very 'thought of her was disturbing. He tried to shut her out of his mind, as he tried to shut out the thought of Leah. Both girls, so utterly unlike, seemed in some way to threaten his plans.
The prospect of seeing Joel again occupied all his thoughts, and the opportunity came unexpectedly soon. A week after he was back at the forge, doing the light work that Samson allowed him, Rosh brought him a dagger to mend. It was a special dagger that Rosh had carried for years as a talisman, and some mischance had sent it hurtling down a chasm. Five men had been sent to retrieve it. Four had come back empty-handed, but hours later the fifth, exhausted and bleeding, had brought the thing back. Rosh received it with scant gratitude. It was bent askew, twisted out of the shaft, and useless.
"Fix it," he demanded of Daniel.
Daniel took the blade in his hand. He thought that it might be mended, but he knew that he could not do the job.
"I don't have the right tools," he explained. "It needs a new collar and rivet. My forge doesn't give heat enough."
"Then get a rivet."
Daniel looked back at the man. He would think a new dagger would be easier to come by, but he knew that Rosh had attached some sort of luck to this particular blade. "In the city?" he asked.
"Wherever you can find them. This friend of yours—Simon. He said he was an ironsmith. Get them from him."
Daniel remembered that Simon and Rosh did not see eye to eye. "You mean I should