Chapter 1

Chapter 1     Death birds circled. To the east, towards the Little Salt Sea, the birds swooped, black against the cloudless sky. An animal, I told my little gods, An animal lies dying among the boulders. *****     When the moon rose new, Minani left me. His brother’s signal fires called. “Until full moon,” Minani said. “I won’t return till then.”     My eastern lover read signal fires as well as I read receipts scrawled on leather scraps. He told me what the signal meant. At the Dead Sea fort they needed their spymaster, so he had to leave our waterfall. We watched the fire from the cliff next to the stream that hurried from our paradise. Then Minani gathered food and water. He climbed down a wadi north of the streambed, a shorter route to the fort but waterless now. I watched until steep and twisting walls hid him.     Without my lover I grew impatient with paradise. When the moon waxed fat and yellow, I thought, His duty keeps him from me. No duty kept me by the waterfall where I had danced for him the dance my late husband taught me when I was first old enough to marry, all those years ago. No duty held me back from following him. I had made no promise to wait for Minani.     At sunrise after the full moon I pounded the last of the wheat into flour. I laughed to remember Minani offering salt to trade for grain at my trading rug when I lived in the hills and he pretended to be a salt trader. I kneaded flour with water, pressed rounds flat, and baked them on the oven stones, but the aroma of roasting grain could not summon Minani. During the day I packed my satchel. Around my waist I cinched my belt. My store of silver and gold, got for my trade goods at the market outside the fort, hung from this belt in small sacks.     When the day’s heat followed Lord Sun over the western hill. I filled two waterskins at the swirling pool and whispered farewell to the spirit of the spring far above. With longing I would remember her bounty. I lifted my sack of food and trade goods and set out.     Near dusk, while I could still see what lay beneath my feet, I started the climb down the bleak wadi whispering, “Gods grant me a safe journey.” I touched the images hung round my neck to beg my little gods’ intercession with the great gods who control heaven and earth.     At one turn I caught sight of the hills across the sea, changed from rain-cloud grey to soft red, as if the gods had dried cyclamen petals last spring and cast them now on the slopes. Another turn closed the sides of the ravine. Here and there a tough bush, scarcely green, clung to a cleft in the rock. Higher up a small creature scampered.     Through light and shadow I climbed downward. In moonlight my feet slowed. Shadows held me back. I slept. Sunrise caught me still high above the plain. The stars blinked out. Cloudless, the sky formed, first grey. I was almost to the floor of the wadi where water pushed a wall of boulders after rain fell in the hills. So Minani had told me. “A wall of water and boulders comes down like a frightened flock of sheep.” Not yet this year.     High above the rocks death birds circled. Even a sure-footed ibex can fall to provide meat for the dark flyers. One bird dove down and others followed cawing. The flock swept back up and soared. Then one bird led the way back towards Mother Earth. Once more, the others followed, then swooped back to the sky. Round and round they wheeled in the morning sky. “They wait,” I whispered. “They wait for death.”     Farther along I saw the object of their desire, a body fallen from the mountain. A man. Definitely a man. Sprawled at the base of a cliff. He lay still, but the birds knew he lived. They swooped down but never landed. I broke into a stumbling run. “O gods, not Minani,“ I shouted. But the great gods hear only priests and kings. “Not Minani,” I gasped to my own little goddess. “Please! Beg the great gods for me. Not surefooted Minani. Not my lover! No!”     Overhead the death birds waited. I ran, leaping over rocks, scarcely feeling them beneath my feet, breathing hard. I dropped my pack and one waterskin. Over gravel and rocks I stumbled towards the fallen figure. My Minani was sure-footed but he was also a spy. A spy has enemies, enemies with knives and arrows.     The man lay partly on his back but twisted to one side. His hair was dark and curly, tinged with grey. Like Minani’s. His beard was full and wavy. Like Minani’s. He sprawled on the dry wadi floor, one leg at a strange angle, his face turned from me. He wore a robe such as Minani had donned when he left. “O my gods,” I whispered breathless, “please not Minani.” No. I was sure. This man was larger, not like my sinewy beloved. Younger. The grey in his hair was dust. Not Minani. But my heart was unsure.     Black and eager the death birds circled. Small movements from this man had scared them off before. Now shouts from me chased them far away, back to the sky to play among the winds. We fear the unburied dead, but the death birds fear only the living.     I fell to my knees beside the still figure, stared at his blood-covered face. Trust your eyes, my little gods told me. Not Minani. I felt his brow, his shoulder. “Not Minani,” I gasped out loud. “Thank the gods,” I told my little godlets on the thong around my neck. “Thank the gods. Send my thanks to the greater gods. Tell the great gods I thank them.”     Without help this stranger would feed the death birds soon. He lay in full range of Lord Sun’s rays. One leg looked broken. He lived, but he could not walk. In this bleak and waterless spot he would die in the sun.     A cave would protect him from implacable sun and birds, but even if I could drag him to shelter, what then? I carried but two waterskins, and one was only three quarters full. My pack held four days worth of food for one person, though I had expected to reach the oasis in about a day.     Well, I could not leave any man to die alone of his wounds and thirst until those birds swooped down to peck out his eyes.     His blood, not yet dried, attracted flies. The man had no strength to brush them from his wounds or from his mouth where they sought rare moisture. I knelt beside him with my back to Lord Sun, protecting the man from the god's sharp arrows. I shooed flies from his wounds and from his lips. The imp-born creatures returned.     I took the waterskin from my shoulder and poured a little water on my scarf. This I put to his lips. When I felt him suck, I put an arm under his shoulders and raised him against me so I could put the mouth of the waterskin to his mouth. I tilted the container to pour a few precious drops into his mouth. He could not manage to swallow even so small a quantity. As soon as water began to dribble from his mouth, I laid him back down and put the stopper in the waterskin, with great care that no drop would spill even if the bottle tipped. For as long as he lived, the water I carried would have to serve two, unless I found a spring. Water sources hide in the desert. I knew of no springs closer than the oasis by the sea, and we were far away from that inhabited place.     The stranger’s legs were scratched. They bled, but only a little. His garment, made of soft leather, was torn at the neck. His arms were scraped as if he had protected his head. Indeed, I could see no wound on his head, which half rested on a leather pouch gripped in one bleeding hand.     I spoke to him with the tongue of the hill people. My mother's tribe lived in the hills. I learned my first words at her knee. My father and his father had lived among the hill people since my grandfather first came there from Damascus. Whether this stranger was near his home or a traveler I expected him to know the local language. If not, I would try others.     A groan crept from his mouth. He moved his lips as if to shape the sound into words. His eyes stayed shut. The sounds he made had no meaning except pain.     With the edge of my scarf, I washed his face. He opened his eyes and looked at me. He doesn't see me, I said in my heart. His eyes closed. I sat back on my heels and looked around, seeking shelter. At a small distance, about four times the man’s length, was an enormous boulder. I turned my gaze once more at the wounded stranger. “He can't walk,” I whispered to my godlings. “Dragging him will be difficult. First I'll get him to the north side of that boulder.” There a pool of shade promised protection from Lord Sun if not from the circling death birds.     I reached under the stranger’s shoulders to turn him flat on his back. Then I noticed the wound. Just below where his shoulder joined his neck, dark blood yet oozed. I looked more closely. No mountainside stone caused that tear in his skin. I felt the wound. Hard and sharp in the center was an arrowhead. “The arrow broke when he rolled down the mountain,” I whispered.     I left the broken arrow in place. I have seen a man stick a knife in a goat and watched the blood gush when he pulls out the blade. Then the goat dies. So too for a man, his blood is his life. I left the arrowhead in his shoulder as a plug to close up the hole and keep the red blood inside.     Pulling him into the shade was no easy task. I dragged his weight along the pale, dry ground, over rocks and stones. He groaned, then fell into sleep near death. His hand loosened from his leather pouch. The clink within was not the sound of metal but of pottery, yet he valued that pouch.     Blood oozed from fresh scrapes. He still lived. I went back for my pack and second water bottle. When I was once more in the small pool of shade, I sat and drank. Then I took a pot of salve from my pack. I spread a small amount where the broken weapon stuck in his shoulder, and I sang the incantation to keep demons from entering his body through the wound’s opening.     From time to time I moistened the stranger's lips. Near noon, our pool of shade shrunken to a puddle, he awoke. I bent my ear to his mouth. For the first time, the sounds from his lips were words. “Where is this place?” he whispered in a language close to my own. He turned his head a little to look up the wadi walls.     “No place,” I said. There was no town nearby. Grandfather’s tales had told of cities in the plain below, but nothing remained of them now. No tribe claimed these dry rocks. Kings sent soldiers into this barren land, but they stayed near the springs. “Nowhere.”     An ibex appeared and a rock, dislodged by the animal’s foot, clattered down.     “You fell,” I said.     “Fell?” He closed his eyes as from the sun’s glare though we were in shade.     “Did you fight?”     Instead of answering he began to feel around him and to turn his head, though I could see that movement hurt him. I moved the leather pouch to his right hand. At once he quieted.     I moved his left hand to his shoulder. “A broken weapon still pierces you,” I said, “I think you fought. Then you fell or you were pushed, but you held tight to the satchel the thief sought.”     “Thief?” he whispered. He pulled the pouch close to him.     I smiled. Here he lay, one leg broken, his head battered, his shoulder pierced and bleeding, but he thought to protect his belongings. All he had with him was safe from me. I hoped to keep him as safe from the death birds.     I put two hands on his bad leg. Dragging had straightened the limb, but from the way the man winced, I knew the bone within was not well. I took two scarves from my sack and tied the one leg to the other, pulling knots tight, looking all the while at the leg and not at his face. He gritted his teeth, but he did not call out in pain.     He gasped but spoke lightly. “You needn’t bind me,” he said. “I can’t run.”     “True, you can’t. But if you’re to walk again in time, the bad leg had to lie still, and I have no sticks. One leg will have to serve as splint to the other.”     “And you must drag me where you will.”     “In a month or so you’ll limp,” I said, though he might not live that long. He gave no answer. He lay, and I sat, in a puddle of shade at the bottom of a boulder-strewn wadi. He could not lie here for more than the afternoon. Alert enough to wave off the death birds, he was easy prey to those who like their meat alive.     I thought about the sound of his words. Surely he came from the cities of the east. Like Minani.     On the sides of the wadi, black spaces promised cave mouths. I reckoned only one offered refuge. If I loosed his good leg from the bad, he might crawl with my help. I had no hope of finding wood from which I might whittle a splint and thus free the good leg.     I pointed to the north side of the wadi. Not too far up was the cave that seemed most suitable. “That cave might shelter you,” I said. “Keep this waterskin.” I gave him one of the two that I carried. He had held on to that clinking leather pouch in his fall, but his own water supply was lost. As was at least one knife. A sheath on his belt was empty. I thought for a moment, then handed him one of my knives. He seemed too weak to defend himself, but he would fret less with a weapon at hand.     “I’ll search out a way up to that cave and return for you. Try to keep your head in the shade,” I admonished him.     The stranger gave no answer. I left him without knowing his name or what sort of man he was. I took my pack. If the cave proved to be a good one, I’d leave the satchel there and have more freedom to drag the stranger upward.     I began the climb up the north side of the wadi. A hot breeze from the east stirred up brown dust. The skirt of my robe whipped around my legs. Without pausing I kilted the cloth up through my belt and walked on with greater ease.     The cave entrance was no higher above the wadi floor than the height of two men, but I could not climb there directly. At first the way was not difficult. For most of the distance I could walk upright, stretching my legs to reach one boulder, catching my balance when dirt crumbled beneath me. Then I had to edge my way along a ledge, facing the cliff to keep my pack clear of jutting rocks. At last the cave was to my right and at about the level of my head. Crawling, and feeling upward for handholds, I pulled myself over the lip of the cave entrance and inside.     Outside glare. Inside gloom. I waited for the dark to fade, slowed my breath, heard no trickle of water. Just as well, my little gods reminded. Water attracts beasts. Now I could see the cave walls. Farther back the ceiling was broken as the roofs of such caves often are. Sunlight pooled on the floor as shade had pooled behind the boulder where the wounded stranger waited.     The hole in the roof was high, high above. The sky seemed dark, but Lord Sun aimed his arrows surely. Light splashed at the end of the cave floor. At the edge of the light, I saw bones. Not human. Skulls pointed and small. Even sure-footed animals fall into hidden pits. Here were two whole and strong leg bones, from the weight and thickness wild ass bones. I hefted, felt the strength and balance. These would be useful.     I found no sign that dangerous beasts slept here. The placement of the entrance in the sheer wall kept them away. “This is a safe place,” I whispered. “Safe but barren.” I would bring water. My pack held food for three or four days if a man ate sparingly. Here the stranger could be safe while I went for help. I could go to the soldiers at the oasis or to Minani’s brother at the larger outpost. Like the injured stranger, those soldiers came from the cities of the east.     Thieves and bandits might be closer, but I would not ask those for help.