"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. Laodice, shaking and crying aloud, looked back to see the strange woman swerve her camel past the dark shape lying with out-flung arms in the road and sweep quickly on after them.