The Bronze Bow - Elizabeth George Speare [76]
Daniel's hand groped for his head. It had an unfamiliar shape.
"My irons hit you," Joel said, his voice sounding weak and dull.
"Good thing," Kemuel spoke to Joel. "How could I have got him up here?"
Daniel pulled himself up. "The soldiers—?"
"Gone. But there may be a guard."
"They didn't come up the bank?"
"No. I think the leader went down with that rock. They never got organized again."
The rock! "Samson!" Daniel cried out, remembering. "I saw him up there!"
Joel and Kemuel looked at each other.
Daniel tried to shake his mind clear. "How did we get up here? We were on the road—"
Neither boy spoke for a moment. "You didn't see?" Joel asked finally.
"Not after they jumped on me."
"Not the soldiers," Joel said. "It was Samson. I thought at first it was another slide coming down, and then he was there. He threw you onto the rock. Right over his head. Then he got hold of my chain and twisted it open with his bare hands, and he pulled me free and threw me up on top of you. Nathan and Kemuel pulled us down inside."
It was Samson who had lifted him. And Samson who had been following all night, not knowing what they were going to do, but knowing that they could not do it alone. And Samson—the stupid one—who had hidden on the other bank and routed the soldiers. Daniel stared sickly back at Joel. He made himself ask, "Where is he?"
Joel's eyes met his squarely. "They took him. He was wounded. A spear hit him even before he had the chain open."
"He might be still—"
"No," said Kemuel. "They dragged him with them. He didn't even fight them. He was—you don't need to worry about the galleys, Daniel. He won't live to reach the coast."
Daniel turned his head away. Then he saw Nathan, sprawled with his face against the rock, the blood gathered in a blackened pool beneath him.
"He leaned too far out to pull you down," said Kemuel.
Nathan, whose bride of a few weeks waited in his new house!
A sob suddenly twisted Joel. "Why did you do it?" he choked. "I'd rather—you should have let me—"
"How many others?" Daniel asked.
"We couldn't see the others. Can you walk, do you think? We can climb back to where we planned to meet."
"I can walk," said Daniel.
Crawling, wriggling along the crevice, pulling themselves by fingers and toes, they finally reached the top of the cliff. Daniel lay panting, almost blinded again by pain. When he was able to look about him, he saw that five gray-faced boys lay flat on the cliff's top.
During the next endless hour, twelve more slowly wriggled their way to the meeting place. Finally they were all together, all but Nathan. They lay in hiding till sundown, not talking much. After the darkness fell, four of them went down to the crevice for Nathan's body. They could not hope to take him home with them, so they made a grave on the cliff and left him there. Then slowly, wearily, one at a time, they crept down to the road and made their way north like ordinary travelers. They shared a deep thankfulness that Joel was with them. But the might of Rome, seen close at hand, had shaken them. They knew that without Samson they would have failed, and the eager confidence of the night before would never be regained.
20
THE MONTH OF TISHRI brought the first autumn rains. The parched brown fields drank in the moisture. The soil fell back, dark red behind the plow, rich for the fall sowing. In the roads, after a sudden shower, the puddles shone like pools of melted lead.
There were no meetings in the watchtower now. The boys of the band moved cautiously, not daring to be seen too frequently with each other. Soon, they whispered as they passed, they would begin again. They would build up once more their store of weapons. They would make ready for the dav to come. But there was no eagerness in the whispers. They knew in their hearts that the day would not be soon. They had lost faith in the mountain.
In the steaming dimness of his shop, Daniel labored to the limits of each day's strength. Unable to lift the hammer, he filled his time with light tasks, filing, smoothing and polishing,