The dying man collected his will and the scraps of strength that were left in his tortured body, and shoving at the sand with one arm managed to roll over on his back. The horizon-cleared sun lanced sickeningly across his eyeballs, adding one more pain to the thousand which beset him. Three vague dark shapes bent above him.
"By the very God, he lives! Give him a drink."
Water, cool and terrible and yet incredibly wondrous to lips and blackened gums that had tasted nothing save blood for what must surely be centuries, dribbled down across his cheeks, ran into his mouth, reached through his rasped throat for his belly. He gurgled and thought he was drowning, and it seemed a splendid death.
But he had something to say, something of such importance that it had dragged him across this endless waste of hellish sand long after a missionless man would have given up and died. He recollected the message and blinked his nearly sightless eyes once or twice, and made futile little motions toward a sitting position. A brawny arm at his back tilted him upright. "Easy, man. You're all but dead. Don't strive so. Die easily."
"Godwin, you're a born diplomat," said the woman's voice. "Why don't you come right out and tell him he looks like two coppers' worth of dogmeat?"
"Well, he does," Godwin said grimly. "No sense in lying to a chap who's about to give up the spirit, Ramizail. No real man wants that."
"Listen," croaked the dying one. "Who are you?"
"Three adventurers," said the voice that had sworn by the very God. It was an elderly voice but full of vigor. "Three homeless travelers pledged to right wrongs and defeat hell's minions wherever they may be found."
"Thanks to the Holy Sepulcher," groaned the dying one. "Perhaps all may be well."
The man holding him up jerked with surprise. "Here," he said, with a kind of tender roughness, "are you a Crusader, man? Are you a Frank?"