"I see! I couldn't understand what it was. But when do you expect the main force back?"
"Soon, it must be soon. You can't live on the fruit of the land out here, can you? I've never seen such dead country."
I climb down the steps. Our conversation has left me feeling almost venerable. Strange that no one warned him to watch out for a fat old man in ragged clothes! Or has he perhaps been perched up there since last night with no one to speak to? Who would have thought I could lie so blandly! It is mid-afternoon. My shadow glides beside me like a pool of ink. I seem to be the only creature within these four walls that moves. I am so elated that I want to sing. Even my sore back has ceased to matter.
I open the small side gate and pass out. My friend in the watch-tower looks down at me. I wave, and he waves back. "You will need a hat!" he calls. I pat my bare skull, shrug, smile. The sun beats down.
The spring wheat is indeed ruined. Warm ochre mud squelches between my toes. In places there are still puddles. Many of the young plants have been washed right out of the ground. All show a yellowish discoloration of leaf. The area nearest the lake is the worst hit. Nothing is left standing, indeed the farmers have already begun to stack the dead plants for burning. In the far fields a rise of a few inches in elevation has made all the difference. So perhaps a quarter of the planting can be saved.
The earthwork itself, the low mud wall that runs for nearly two miles and keeps the lake-water in check when it rises to its summer limit, has been repaired, but almost the whole of the intricate system of channels and gates that distributes the water around the fields has been washed away. The dam and waterwheel by the lakeshore are unharmed, though there is no sign of the horse that usually turns the wheel. I can see that weeks of hard work await the farmers. And at any moment their work can be brought to nothing by a few men armed with spades! How can we win such a war? What is the use of textbook military operations, sweeps and punitive raids into the enemy's heartland, when we can be bled to death at home?
I take the old road that curves behind the west wall before petering out into a track that leads nowhere but to the sand-filled ruins. Are the children still allowed to play there, I wonder, or do their parents keep them at home with stories of barbarians lurking in the hollows? I glance up at the wall; but my friend in the tower seems to have gone to sleep.
All the excavation we did last year has been undone by driftsand. Only corner-posts stand out here and there in the desolation where, one must believe, people once lived. I scour a hollow for myself and sit down to rest. I doubt that anyone would come looking for me here. I could lean against this ancient post with its faded carvings of dolphins and waves and be blistered by the sun and dried by the wind and eventually frozen by the frost, and not be found until in some distant era of peace the children of the oasis come back to their playground and find the skeleton, uncovered by the wind, of an archaic desert-dweller clad in unidentifiable rags.
I wake up chilled. The sun rests huge and red upon the western horizon. The wind is rising: already flying sand has banked up against my side. I am conscious above all of thirst. The plan I have toyed with, of spending the night here among the ghosts, shivering with cold, waiting for the familiar walls and treetops to materialize again out of the dark, is insupportable. There is nothing for me outside the walls but to starve. Scuttling from hole to hole like a mouse I forfeit even the appearance of innocence. Why should I do my enemies' work for them? If they want to spill my blood, let them at least bear the guilt of it. The gloomy fear of the past day has lost its force. Perhaps this escapade has not been futile if I can recover, however dimly, a spirit of outrage.
I rattle the gate of the barracks yard. "Don't you know who is here? I've had my holiday, now let me back in!"
Someone comes running up: in the dim light we peer at each other through the bars: it is the man assigned as my warder. "Be quiet!" he whispers through his teeth, and tugs at the bolts. Behind him voices murmur, people gather.
Gripping my arm he takes me at a trot across the yard. "Who is it?" someone calls. It is on the tip of my tongue to reply, to take the key out and wave it, when it strikes me that this act might be imprudent. So I wait at my old door till my warder unlocks it, pushes me inside, and closes it on the two of us. His voice comes to me out of the darkness tight with anger: "Listen: you talk to anyone about getting out and I'll make your life a misery! You understand? I'll make you pay! You say nothing! If anyone asks you about this evening, say I took you out for a walk, for exercise, nothing more. Do you understand me?"
I unpick his fingers from my arm and slide away from him. "You see how easy it would be for me to run away and seek shelter with the barbarians," I murmur. "Why do you think I came back? You are only a common soldier, you can only obey orders. Stilclass="underline" think about it." He clutches my wrist, and again I loosen his fingers. "Think about why I came back and what it would have meant if I had not. You can't expect sympathy from the men in blue, I'm sure you know that. Think what might happen if I got out again." Now I grip his hand. "But don't fret, I won't talk: make up any story you like and I will support you. I know what it is like to be frightened." There is a long suspicious silence, "Do you know what I want most of all?" I say. "I want something to eat and something to drink. I am starved, I have had nothing all day." So all is as it was before. This absurd incarceration continues. I lie on my back watching the block of light above me growing stronger and then weaker day after day. I listen to the remote sounds of the bricklayer's trowel, the carpenter's hammer coming through the wall. I eat and drink and, like everyone else, I wait.
First there is the sound of muskets far away, as diminutive as popguns. Then from nearer by, from the ramparts themselves, come volleys of answering shots. There is a stampede of footsteps across the barracks yard. "The barbarians!" someone shouts; but I think he is wrong. Above all the clamour the great bell begins to peal.
Kneeling with an ear to the crack of the door I try to make out what is going on.
The noise from the square mounts from a hubbub to a steady roar in which no single voice can be distinguished. The whole town must be pouring out in welcome, thousands of ecstatic souls. Volleys of musket-shots keep cracking. Then the tenor of the roar changes, rises in pitch and excitement. Faintly above it come the brassy tones of bugles.
The temptation is too great. What have I to lose? I unlock the door. In glare so blinding that I must squint and shade my eyes, I cross the yard, pass through the gate, and join the rear of the crowd. The volleys and the roar of applause continue. The old woman in black beside me takes my arm to steady herself and stands on her toes. "Can you see?" she says. "Yes, I can see men on horseback," I reply; but she is not listening.
I can see a long file of horsemen who, amid flying banners, pass through the gateway and make their way to the centre of the square where they dismount. There is a cloud of dust over the whole square, but I see that they are smiling and laughing: one of them rides with his hands raised high in triumph, another waves a garland of flowers. They progress slowly, for the crowd presses around them, trying to touch them, throwing flowers, clapping their hands above their heads in joy, spinning round and round in private ecstasies. Children dive past me, scrambling through the legs of the grownups to be nearer to their heroes. Fusillade after fusillade comes from the ramparts, which are lined with cheering people.
One part of the cavalcade does not dismount. Headed by a stern-faced young corporal bearing the green and gold banner of the battalion, it passes through the press of bodies to the far end of the square and then begins a circuit of the perimeter, the crowd surging slowly in its wake. The word runs like fire from neighbour to neighbour: "Barbarians!"