The odd question startled the tery. Yes, he could speak. He tried but his tongue was too thick and dry and swollen for a single word.

"Can you understand?"

The tery closed his eyes. Why the questions? What did it matter, anyway? He was going to die here. Why didn't this strange human just go away and leave him in peace?

After a brief pause, the man tore a strip of cloth from the coarse shirt he wore and laid it over the tery's eyes. Then he strolled away. The sound of his retreating footsteps was soon joined by the creak of the wooden axle. Both eventually faded beyond perception.

It was a small act of kindness, that strip of cloth, and incomprehensible to the tery. Why a human should want to keep the flies off his eyes while the rest of him died was beyond him, but he appreciated the comfort it offered.

The sun blazed on him and he felt his tongue grow thicker and drier during the progressively shorter periods of consciousness. Soon one of those periods would be his last.

He was brought to again by minute vibrations in the ground at the back of his head. Trotting hooves, and something dragging. The soldiers were returning. He was almost glad. Perhaps they would trample him as they passed and quickly end it all.

But the hoofbeats stopped and footsteps approached — many feet. The cloth was pulled from his eyes with an abrupt motion and the faces that leaned over him were human but didn't belong to soldiers. The four of them glanced at each other and nodded silently. One with blond hair turned and moved from view while the others, much to the tery's surprise, bent over him and began to brush the flies and gnats from his wounds. All this without a single word.

The blond man returned with one of the mounts. From a harness around its neck, a long pole ran along each shaggy flank to end on the ground well beyond the hindquarters. Rope was basket-woven between the poles.