"The more we are, the more of us to die. You must live; I must live,"
he explained, nodding toward Momus.
After a little silence, she asked:
"Do we not ride toward the frosts?"
"Yes; but even now pestilence may ride on beside us--your servant and
this woman. Let us save ourselves."
"Abandon them?" she questioned.
"Lest they go on without us," he added.
Momus turned suddenly and gazed at Aquila. Then he imperiously signed
the pagan to fall back.
They rode on.
The pagan slackened his horse's gallop and reined in beside the woman.
They talked together, argumentatively, for a single tense minute and
then Aquila, with a bitter word, put spurs to his animal and dashed up
beside Laodice's camel. In his one uplifted hand a knife gleamed. The
other reached toward the casket bound to Momus' hip. Laodice, raised
to an upright attitude in her fresh fright, saw that his face was
black and twisted and that he wavered stiffly in his saddle.
But the mute did not await the attack. He seized the pagan's
outstretched hands with that monstrous left and flung him backward.
Without an effort to save himself, falling rigidly and with a strange
cry, Aquila dropped back over his horse's crupper into the dust of the
road.
"Momus!" Laodice screamed.
Back of her the woman cried out:
"On! On! It is the pestilence!"
Momus wielded his goad.
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