One of them said, 'He's coming round, sarge.'
A metal face like the anger of the elements came closer, filling Teppic's vision.
'We've been out without our hat, haven't we, sonny boy,' it said, in a cheery voice that echoed oddly inside the metal. 'In a hurry to get to grips with the enemy, were we?'
The sky wheeled around Teppic, but a thought bobbed into the frying pan of his mind, seized control of his vocal chords and croaked: 'The camel!'
'You ought to be put away, treating it like that,' said the sergeant, waggling a finger at him. 'Never seen one in such a state.'
'Don't let it have a drink!' Teppic sat bolt upright, great gongs clanging and hot, heavy fireworks going off inside his skull. The helmeted heads turned towards one another.
'Gods, he must have something really terrible against camels,' said one of them. Teppic staggered upright and lurched across the sand to You Bastard, who was trying to work out the complex equation which would allow him to get to his feet. His tongue was hanging out, and he was not feeling well.
A camel in distress isn't a shy creature. It doesn't hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn't phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn't mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn't know what angst is.
All a camel has got is a pair of industrial-strength lungs and a voice like a herd of donkeys being chainsawed.
Teppic advanced through the blaring. You Bastard reared his head and turned it this way and that, triangulating. His eyes rolled madly as he did the camel trick of apparently looking at Teppic with his nostrils.
He spat.
He tried to spit.
Teppic grabbed his halter and pulled on it.
'Come on, you bastard,' he said. 'There's water. You can smell it. All you have to do is work out how to get there!'
He turned to the assembled soldiers. They were staring at him with expressions of amazement, apart from those who hadn't removed their helmets and who were staring at him with expressions of metallic ferocity.
Teppic snatched a water skin from one of them, pulled out the stopper and tipped it on to the ground in front of the camel's twitching nose.
'There's a river here,' he hissed. 'You know where it is, all you've got to do is go there!'
The soldiers looked around nervously. So did several Tsorteans, who had wandered up to see what was going on.
You Bastard got to his feet, knees trembling, and started to spin around in a circle. Teppic clung on.
. . . let d equal 4, thought You Bastard desperately. Let a.d equal 90. Let not-d equal 45 . . .
'I need a stick!' shouted Teppic, as he was whirled past the sergeant. 'They never understand anything unless you hit them with a stick, it's like punctuation to a camel!'
'Is a sword any good?'
'No!'
The sergeant hesitated, and then passed Teppic his spear. He grabbed it point-end first, fought for balance, and then brought it smartly across the camel's flank, raising a cloud of dust and hair.
You Bastard stopped. His ears turned like radar aerials. He stared at the rock wall, rolling his eyes. Then, as Teppic grabbed a handful of hair and pulled himself up, the camel started to trot.
. . . Think fractals . . .
'Ere, you're going to run straight-' the sergeant began.
There was silence. It went on for a long time.
The sergeant shifted uneasily. Then he looked across the rocks to the Tsorteans, and caught the eye of their leader. With the unspoken understanding that is shared by centurions and sergeant-majors everywhere, they walked towards one another along the length of the rocks and stopped by the barely visible crack in the cliff.
The Tsortean sergeant ran his hand over it.