Free Stealing Fire by Jo Graham Page B

of the wadi. Dusk was upon us and night was falling.
    “I don't see any spoor,” Ptolemy said. He stopped, one foot up on a boulder, and scratched at where one of the high straps on his boots had rubbed his leg. His face was hot with sunburn and exertion. “Chaos take this!” he exclaimed. “I've had about enough of this wandering around. We're going back to Memphis.”
    I must have said something appropriate. He had not noticed. Breathe, I told myself. Deep breaths. This is not that place. See how it is evening, not morning?
    Night. Night was coming up. I could see the first faint star.
    “Cleomenes?” Ptolemy called out. “Tell the trackers we're going back.”
    There was no answer. I sat down on a rock. I hoped I only looked tired. There was an excuse for that.
    Ptolemy called, and called again.
    There was no answer.
    He climbed up a little ways that we had come and shouted again. Then he looked down at me, and I saw his face tighten from annoyance into something different. “They've gone,” he said.
    I looked up.
    Ptolemy came back down, careful on the loose rocks. “They've left us.”
    Everything dawned on me. “With no horses and not knowing the way back.”
    “And no water,” Ptolemy said.
    “Where any accident might happen,” I said. “Snakes, a fall of rocks…”
    “A misstep that breaks a bone,” Ptolemy said. “A tragic accident. It could happen to any man lost in the desert.”
    I looked at him and he at me.
    Somewhere above, echoing off the walls of the wadi, we heard the answering roar of a lion.

UNDER THE MOON

    W e should follow the dry stream bed,” Ptolemy said.
    I nodded. A dry stream bed would eventually lead to a larger channel, and a larger channel would lead to the Nile. Once we had found the river, it would be easy to find our way back to Memphis.
    We began to walk. The ground was pitted and uneven, littered with fallen stones from above, and the going was difficult, made more so by darkness. We stopped after a little distance when Ptolemy twisted his foot, and I stood by while he cursed and rubbed it.
    “We can't wait until sunrise,” he said.
    “I know,” I agreed. We did not know how far the stream bed might twist around in the wadis. While as the bird flew we could not be more than half a day's ride from the Nile, it might be much farther as we had to walk following the track. If we climbed up the walls of the wadi and attempted to go over the top, not only would we have a dangerous climb, but we would not then know where we were, except for general direction. And when the sun rose and the heat of the day began we would feel the lack of water. Going on in the cool of the night was the best decision.
    I had not heard the lion again. I hoped that meant it was far away and uninterested in us. Unfortunately, I knew perfectly well that the lion you hear is no threat. It's the lion you don't hear that is silently stalking you.
    I do not know how long we walked. The moon rose high above the cliffs, a faint crescent in the dark sky, tilted like a reaper's sickle. We came to a place where the stream bed descended steeply, and I thought I heard the faint trickle of water. We climbed down, half sliding on the crumbling red stones. There, at the bottom where another dusty channel joined it, was a thin thread of water. We cupped it in our hands and lapped at it like dogs. I wished that lunch had not been quite so salty, though it was now many hours past.
    From somewhere quite nearby a howl went up. Jackals.
    “Shit,” Ptolemy said.
    Jackals do not normally bother men, but we were two alone and had probably come into their territory.
    I could see them slinking along the rocks, not moving at the quick trot they usually do, dark in color. In Egypt, jackals are the color of sand and stone. These were black and they moved like shadows. In the darkness their eyes glowed with an eerie light.
    “What are they?” I said. They seemed to gather out of the stones themselves.
    “I don't