But the dwellers of that little huddle of huts had nothing to do but
to sit in their doorways and suspect. Whatever came their way from the
sea for many months had brought them disaster and long since they had
learned to defend themselves. So now, when a party riding at breakneck
speed, bearing with them an old man on whom the inertia of death was
plain, came across the frontiers of their little town, they met them
with the convenient stones of their rocky streets, with their savage,
stark-ribbed dogs, with offal from kitchen heap and donkey stall and
with insults and curses.
"Away, ye bringers of plague! Out, lepers; be gone, ye unclean!"
Laodice and Aquila who rode in the open were fair targets for half the
hail that fell about them. The girl groaned as the missiles fell into
the howdah upon the helpless shape of Costobarus, who did not lift a
hand to fend off the stones. The pagan, bruised and raging, drew his
weapon and spurred his horse to ride down his assailants, but they
scattered before him and from safe refuge continued their assault with
redoubled determination.
Momus, seeing only injury in attempting to enforce hospitality, turned
his camel and, swinging around the outermost limits of the settlement,
fled. Aquila followed him, and a moment later the rest of the party
joined them.
Without the range of the village, the party halted. Momus and Aquila
lifted Costobarus down and laid him on a rug that Laodice had spread
for him. But when she would have knelt by him, he motioned to Aquila
not to permit her to approach. The mute stood by his master. In that
countenance fast passing under shade was written charge and injunction
as solemn as the darkness that approached him.
"Here, O faithful servant, is the wife of a prince, the daughter of
thy master, the joy of thine own declining days. Shield her against
wrong and misfortune by all the strength that in thee lies, as thou
hopest in the King to come and the reward of the steadfast. Promise!"
They were silent lips that once knew the art and the sound of speech.
The old habit never entirely fell away from them. Under this anguish
they moved--fruitlessly; over the deformed face flitted the keen
agony of regret; then he lifted his great left arm and bent it upward
at the elbow; the huge, even monstrous muscles, knotted and kinked
from shoulder to elbow, sank down under the broad barbarian bracelet
of bronze and rippled under and rose again from elbow to wrist,
ferocious, superhuman! In that movement the dying man read the mute's
consecration of his one great strength to the protection of the
tenderly loved Laodice. Costobarus motioned to the shittim-wood casket
and Momus undid it and strapped it on his own belt.