, wincing with pain,
and slowly felt himself all over. There was blood upon his head, where
he had struck it against a stone in falling, but it was caked and dried.
And his tunic was torn, on the left side, just behind and under the
shoulder. It took him some time to reach around and find the place, for
every movement was slow torture. The cloth at this place was stiff with
what he knew was blood. So, then, this was where the knife of Balbus had
gone home. He wondered if the wound were serious. The stars danced
dizzily before his eyes, and he was faint from loss of blood. But there
was a thing he had to do, a thing which all through unconsciousness had
given him no rest. Across the deeps of night and of oblivion a voice was
calling, and he must follow it while he had life to stand. He got to his
feet and stood swaying uncertainly. By sheer force of will he steadied
himself, and turning his back on the silent settlement, started walking
across the rough and broken country straight eastward toward the road
which led to his heart's desire.

Sometimes he walked; sometimes he fell and lay staring at the high sky
and the wheeling stars, waiting without sound or motion until he could
gather strength to rise. Sometimes he felt his tunic wet with fresh
blood, and could not get at the wound to stanch it, and did not try;
sometimes iron hammers, red-hot, beat upon his temples and left him
blind and reeling with pain. Always one idea possessed him; he must get
to her who called him. She was in danger; he cursed the gods who had
held him back from starting to her rescue with his mates. Time lost--his
chance gone--though he died for it, he would not let himself be beaten
in this by Fate. Every ounce of the dogged sullen strength of him
gathered itself to meet the demands of his stubborn will. And always,
whether he walked in reason or in delirium, his course held eastward,
straight as a homing pigeon for its loft.

In time, when the sun was high, he reached the road which crossed the
Sabrina and led to the moor towns beyond. Here he entered the barge of a
waterman about to leave the bank, and sat waiting to be ferried across,
staring straight before him, with never an answer to the boatman's idle
talk. The boat's nose poked into the further bank, and the boatman
demanded his fare. Nicanor looked at him with eyes glittering with fever
beneath his shaggy thatch of hair, and shook his head mutely, as at one
who spoke an unknown tongue.