The Lion Hunters Novels by Elizabeth Wein

The Lion Hunters Novels by Elizabeth Wein

Author:Elizabeth Wein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00


IX

TELEMAKOS ALONE

“So with Telemachus now. His father’s gone. No men at home will shield him from the worst.”

4:183–84

IT WAS FOUR DAYS’ journey before they found water again. Telemakos, unseen, slept with the camels. They were warm, if bad-tempered; they all lay with their knees bound together, hobbled so they could not wander off during the night. Telemakos could smell that one of them was in milk, and he sought her out. He was sorry to discover that she was nearly dry.

“Ah, bless you, sweet lady,” he whispered almost soundlessly in her ear, gentling and coaxing her so she would not make a noise. She saved him one night’s water. Even so, his small half-skin was empty by the time they made the next well. It worried him a little, but not much, because he knew the first reach was the longest.

He found the caravan’s pace wearing. His legs were not as long as a man’s, or a camel’s. The Salt Desert was below sea level; it seemed airless, until wind like a furnace raised a dust storm, and then you could not breathe at all. Telemakos thought it must be the hottest place in the world. Even his sweat evaporated without a trace.

The heat took away his appetite. He was not fond of raw meat in any case and ate very little. He knew he should eat more. But he could not force himself to do it when it choked him.

He felt as though he could never drink enough. He drank as sparingly as he could, and yet by the third well his water skin was dry again.

A day out from the well, he realized the skin was leaking.

It had happened so slowly at first that he had not noticed it. He had felt nothing, and the seeping water dried before it dampened anything around it. His camel had gone dry as well, suddenly but not unexpectedly; perhaps she minded the heat, too. I could go back, Telemakos thought, back to the third well, where there is water. But then he would be stuck at a well in the middle of the Salt Desert, with very little to eat and no water to travel with. If he went on, at least he was in company.

He decided to go on.

Thirst, killing thirst, crept up on him with the slow, relentless patience of a hunting cat, and took him all unprepared for its merciless grip. Soon Telemakos was pressing himself forward only because there was no alternative but to lie down and perish. One night and one day after his decision to keep going, he was barely able to stay close enough to the train of camels that he could keep them in sight. It was worse than that: he labored under the illusion that they were behind him. If he lost them beneath a rise, or behind an outcrop, he would turn around and actually see another caravan on the road at his back. When night fell, he sat shivering with his head in his hands, at a little distance from the camp, and tried to think.



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