Take This Cup by Brock Thoene, Bodie Page B

water I was craving, or imitate Kagba and try to sleep more.
    Outside the overhang, a ledge of decomposed granite formed a bench just before the hillside dropped away into the canyon.A lizard, blue throat pouch pumping rhythmically, stretched his legs in the sunshine.
    I envied him and wondered again, What danger could there be on this pleasant-seeming day? Imitating the lizard, I half emerged from hiding. It was good to feel the sun on the back of my neck and stiff shoulders.
    Across the chasm the thunderclouds built again, threatening an afternoon storm. A pair of stones clicked together somewhere below our perch. That slight sound was followed by the sifting of sand and the crunch of gravel hurtling into the abyss.
    A voice called out, “We’re still on their trail, Captain. Two sets of tracks—one small, one larger—came up this way.”
    Despite the warm sun, the gruff words that replied sent a chill down my spine. Zimri’s unmistakable voice echoed up the passage: “Good. They can’t be far ahead. Let’s catch them before it comes on to rain so we can get off this cursed mountain.”
    Someone posed a question I could not overhear, but Zimri’s answer was clear enough: “We’ll kill the old man and sell the boy. That way we get something out of this mess.”
    My instinct was to burrow instantly back into shelter and pull dirt over my head, but I had to know what we were facing. I bellied-crawled to the lip of the ledge, my face and body sheltered from view by a clump of wild pistachio shrubs, and peered over.
    Three switchbacks below, about two hundred feet of elevation and a half mile of traversing the hillside, was a single file of eight horsemen and a riderless ninth animal led by a rope. So my father and our servants had accounted for four of the raiders. My spirits rose with that observation, even though it left unanswered my parents’ fate. I also noted with grim satisfaction that Zimri’s forehead was bandaged, and another bandit had one arm in a sling.
    It would take them no more than twenty minutes to climb the rest of the distance to the ridgeline and the fallen yew tree. When the rebels reached there and saw that the footprints stopped, they would scour the area.
    Should I rouse the rabbi now? Could the two of us flee ahead of the horsemen to another hiding place?
    I felt a sprinkle of water on my head. Wind from the thundercloud spattered me with raindrops. Would the rain come soon enough and hard enough to wipe out our tracks?
    Rabbi Kagba was still asleep! His breath was hoarse and his color not good. Even if I could rouse him, could the elderly man move swiftly enough to escape?
    Back out onto the ledge I found the choice no longer existed. After the rain squall passed, the trackers were coming on faster now.
    Hope and pray and hide were the sole options that remained.
    I scrunched as far back beneath the overhang as I could. I resolved to make the bandits dig us out. I would not go easily into slavery or let them kill my friend.
    Outside the shelter, storm clouds spilled over the brink of the peaks and tumbled down, misting the gorge with vapor. Above me thunder boomed and rolled, bouncing off the walls of the ravine.
    A solid sheet of rain swept toward me, like a gray curtain blotting out sight and sound.
    Time passed. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the underbelly of the storm before the day was shattered by a crash so immense that the ground jumped under my stomach, and I with it. I held my breath.
    Rain—soaking, glorious rain—turned soil into mud and erased footprints while forming puddles in every crack andcrevice. Maybe the storm was ferocious enough that the riders turned back to seek safety at a lower elevation.
    A horse snorted and called. Another answered, sounding nervous amid the clashing peals of thunder and slashing rain. When Zimri spoke again, his voice came from right above my head. The raiders had drawn up alongside the fallen yew tree!
    “Well?” Zimri