"How?" they questioned. "He will be chained."
"That's a blacksmith's job."
There was a silence. "One cannot do that alone," said Nathan. "I'll go down with you."
"Before we go on," said Daniel, "we must have a leader. Up till now we have all been equal."
"We have already chosen," said another boy. "You have always been the leader."
"Not by a vote."
"There's no need to vote," said Nathan. "Does anyone here question who is our leader?" Not a whisper challenged him.
"Then you will obey my orders," said Daniel sternly. He felt no pride or glory that he was their leader, as he had once dreamed. Only a cold heaviness.
"The time has not come to fight the Romans," he told them. "We have no right to waste lives that are needed for the cause. Even for Joel. You are to stay on the cliff and distract the soldiers while I free Joel from the chains. Then you will all retreat as fast as you can. I don't think the Romans will follow. They'll be leery of a trap."
This time they kept silent, not questioning his command.
"Take all the weapons you have," he ordered. "We'll start now and find our place." He hesitated, feeling awkward but compelled to speak. "Joel is the one who has always read us the scriptures. Now we'll have to remember the things he has read. Judas and Jonathan and Simon went out with a few against the enemy. We can do it too. The same God will strengthen us."
In the darkness each boy reached out and clasped the hand of the one nearest him. "For God's Victory," they said together solemnly.
B
EFORE DAWN
the boys had found their position. In the darkness they had followed the shore road south past Magdala, striking inland to a place where the Via Maris, the road the Romans must follow to the coast, wound between steep, almost unscalable banks. There they worked their way painfully upward and hid behind rocky projections to rest. With the first light they ventured out, only one boy showing himself at a time, to collect the stones that would be their weapons. A very few carried spears and daggers. By the time the sun was fully risen, every boy was well fortified and concealed.
Even during the night there was traveling on this main road to the sea. During the early morning they counted five large caravans, with long files of burdened camels. Families, tradesmen, sometimes small detachments of soldiers passed beneath their hiding place. This had long ago been a dangerous section of road, but now travelers passed with confidence because, more than fifty years before, the great King Herod had wiped out the robbers who dwelt in the caves of Arbela, and now a Roman wall flanked the heights. So long had it been since bandits had inhabited this place that now Daniel dared gamble that the Romans would have no suspicion of attack.
On the steep cliff below where the boys were stationed, Daniel found the spot best suited to his own purpose. A fissure in the rock extended in an oblique line down the face of the rock, wide and deep enough in some parts to hide several men, ending on a narrow shelf barely ten feet above the road. In the crevice that dipped below the level of the rocky shelf he posted Nathan and Kemuel.
"I'll free Joel and lift him up to you," he told them. "You reach down and pull him up. If any soldiers follow, use your spears. Only one can climb up at a time, and I think the second will think twice before he tries."
"How do you get back?" Nathan asked, looking closely at Daniel.
"When Joel is up, then give me a hand," Daniel answered. He had no real expectation that he would get back up the bank, but he meant to see, with the last ounce of his strength, that Joel did. Nathan opened his mouth, then closed it, seeing in Daniel's eye a reminder that they had chosen a leader.
Through the noonday heat they waited, their energy draining away bit by bit under the merciless sun. As the hours went by, Daniel's foreboding deepened. This waiting was not the same as the times he had crouched behind a rock eager for Rosh's signal. It was no flimsily-guarded caravan they awaited. And behind him was no tight-knit band that would move with precision and cunning, only a cluster of untried boys. Even now, as he glanced up, the flutter of a coatsleeve betrayed one of them. Still, he could count on them. He knew that every boy in the band was prepared to give his life. It was up to him, the one they had chosen leader, to see that none of them had to.
But how different this was from the glorious battle they had hoped for! Would the day ever come when together they could pit their strength against the Romans for God's Victory? Daniel put that thought aside. A more immediate worry was the uneasiness that had persisted all night, the feeling that he was followed and watched, even in the darkness. Could it be that in setting a trap for the Romans he had led his band into some other trap? Almost, he was tempted to call them back. But there was Joel.
At midafternoon Joktan brought the warning. He alone, of all the band, was trained to this kind of attack. He wriggled and dodged his way along the roadside and skinned up the cliff into the crevice.
"Horsemen!" he gasped. "About e-eight. Then footsoldiers. Then the prisoners."
"Did you see Joel?"
"No. Too far away. But they've come a distance. The horses are lathered."
Daniel gave two sharp whistles, the alert they had arranged, and looked up at the bank.
"Climb up there, will you?" he growled to Joktan, pointing. "Tell whoever that is to pull in his rump before he gets a javelin in it." That would get Joktan also above the danger line, he reckoned.
The first horsemen swung into view, moving slowly to keep pace with the footmen. The cavalry rode in pairs, their spurs almost touching in the narrow pass, erect, silent, the plumes of their helmets rising and falling with the horses' pace.
Would the others remember? The horsemen were to go through. Daniel tensed. He felt a vast relief as not a sound or motion betrayed the boys on the cliff. Behind the horsemen came the footsoldiers, in a double line. He watched them pass, one steely face after another. He counted sixteen. Then shuffled the prisoners, chained together by the ankles in a long line. Joel was the fifth, barefoot, disheveled, his feet dragging. Between him and the rock marched a guard with a heavy whip. Behind the prisoners there would be more footsoldiers.
Daniel held his breath. When Joel was nearly below him he gave the signal. The first rock hurtled through the air and found a mark. A footsoldier stumbled. Instantly the air was flecked with rocks. An order crackled back across the line. As one man, the Romans raised their shields above their heads. Four men broke from the rank and charged up the almost vertical rock. A stone caught the first in the chest and sent him reeling back. A spear struck the second cleanly. But the line behind them resealed itself into an unbroken, purposeful unit. Daniel's heart sank. He had guessed wrong. The Romans were going to charge the bank and the boys could not possibly hold them back for long.
But in the same instant as his shout for retreat, a thunder drowned out his voice. Jerking back his head, Daniel saw with horror the great rock that teetered on the opposite bank, ripped from the cliffside, and crashed down, gathering speed and force, carrying with it a roar of dirt and stones. Stupified, he watched the leaping, frenzied soldiers. There had been no one on the other bank. What had dislodged the rock?
Then he glimpsed a shape, huge, crouched like an animal, dodging on all fours along the bank. For one flash he saw the powerful arms, the massive dark head. Samson! But how—?
Abruptly he came to his senses. Now was his chance. With a thrust of his arms, he pulled himself up to the shelf of rock and leaped. As his feet found the path, he sank his dagger below the shoulder of the guard, and as the man crumpled, dropped to his knees before Joel, pulled out his chisel, and reached for the chain. The first blow of the sharpened tool left a nick in the iron. He struck again, and saw the nick deepen.
Confusion swelled around him. The prisoners were screaming now. He heard a second thudding roar, but he did not look up. As he raised his arm for a third blow, he felt himself seized from behind, in a paralyzing grip, lifted clear off the ground, jerked upward like a helpless sack. For an instant he hung in the air, and then he struck against the rock. Pain whirled him in crazy circles, and through the pain he felt hands clutching and pulling, scraping his flesh along the rock. A heavy body struck squarely on top of him. Legs thrashed about his head, and blackness crashed down on him.
He came out of the blackness into the blinding sun. There was rock under him, and pain zigzagged through his body. He blinked, trying to focus through the glare. Near him he made out a figure—Joel—sitting with his knees drawn up, his face buried in his arms.
"Don't move!" a voice warned. Kemuel's face blocked out the sky. "They've about cleared out."
Memory came back suddenly. He jerked up, and sank back again, helpless against the pain. He saw now that he was in the crevice of rock, but higher up the bank.
"Careful!" Kemuel warned. "You've got a broken shoulder bone, I think. Maybe a couple of broken ribs. Joel was luckier. He landed on top of you. He's got hardly a scratch."
Daniel's hand groped for his head. It had an unfamiliar shape.
"My irons hit you," Joel said, his voice sounding weak and dull.
"Good thing," Kemuel spoke to Joel. "How could I have got him up here?"
Daniel pulled himself up. "The soldiers—?"
"Gone. But there may be a guard."
"They didn't come up the bank?"
"No. I think the leader went down with that rock. They never got organized again."
The rock! "Samson!" Daniel cried out, remembering. "I saw him up there!"
Joel and Kemuel looked at each other.
Daniel tried to shake his mind clear. "How did we get up here? We were on the road—"
Neither boy spoke for a moment. "You didn't see?" Joel asked finally.
"Not after they jumped on me."
"Not the soldiers," Joel said. "It was Samson. I thought at first it was another slide coming down, and then he was there. He threw you onto the rock. Right over his head. Then he got hold of my chain and twisted it open with his bare hands, and he pulled me free and threw me up on top of you. Nathan and Kemuel pulled us down inside."
It was Samson who had lifted him. And Samson who had been following all night, not knowing what they were going to do, but knowing that they could not do it alone. And Samson—the stupid one—who had hidden on the other bank and routed the soldiers. Daniel stared sickly back at Joel. He made himself ask, "Where is he?"
Joel's eyes met his squarely. "They took him. He was wounded. A spear hit him even before he had the chain open."
"He might be still—"
"No," said Kemuel. "They dragged him with them. He didn't even fight them. He was—you don't need to worry about the galleys, Daniel. He won't live to reach the coast."
Daniel turned his head away. Then he saw Nathan, sprawled with his face against the rock, the blood gathered in a blackened pool beneath him.
"He leaned too far out to pull you down," said Kemuel.
Nathan, whose bride of a few weeks waited in his new house!
A sob suddenly twisted Joel. "Why did you do it?" he choked. "I'd rather—you should have let me—"
"How many others?" Daniel asked.
"We couldn't see the others. Can you walk, do you think? We can climb back to where we planned to meet."
"I can walk," said Daniel.
Crawling, wriggling along the crevice, pulling themselves by fingers and toes, they finally reached the top of the cliff. Daniel lay panting, almost blinded again by pain. When he was able to look about him, he saw that five gray-faced boys lay flat on the cliff's top.
During the next endless hour, twelve more slowly wriggled their way to the meeting place. Finally they were all together, all but Nathan. They lay in hiding till sundown, not talking much. After the darkness fell, four of them went down to the crevice for Nathan's body. They could not hope to take him home with them, so they made a grave on the cliff and left him there. Then slowly, wearily, one at a time, they crept down to the road and made their way north like ordinary travelers. They shared a deep thankfulness that Joel was with them. But the might of Rome, seen close at hand, had shaken them. They knew that without Samson they would have failed, and the eager confidence of the night before would never be regained.
T
HE MONTH OF
T
ISHRI
brought the first autumn rains. The parched brown fields drank in the moisture. The soil fell back, dark red behind the plow, rich for the fall sowing. In the roads, after a sudden shower, the puddles shone like pools of melted lead.
There were no meetings in the watchtower now. The boys of the band moved cautiously, not daring to be seen too frequently with each other. Soon, they whispered as they passed, they would begin again. They would build up once more their store of weapons. They would make ready for the dav to come. But there was no eagerness in the whispers. They knew in their hearts that the day would not be soon. They had lost faith in the mountain.
In the steaming dimness of his shop, Daniel labored to the limits of each day's strength. Unable to lift the hammer, he filled his time with light tasks, filing, smoothing and polishing, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder. He cursed the pile of untouched work. He longed to beat a wall or furious sound against his own thoughts. At night, in the roof shelter he now shared with Joktan, he drew his cloak over his head and fell into an exhausted slumber. But always, during the long hours, he woke to the slashing of rain, and then the pain could not be ignored, and the thoughts were louder than ever.
In the darkness the same words echoed over and over. "They who live by the sword will perish by the sword." At first he could not recall where he had heard these words. They did not sound like Joel's scriptures. Then he remembered. Jesus had spoken them on a hot summer morning under a blue sky. Daniel had not questioned the words. To live by the sword was the best life he knew. To take the sword for his country's freedom and to perish by it—what better could a man hope for? But something he had not reckoned on had happened. He had taken the sword but Samson instead had perished by it, who had no freedom to gain, and Nathan, who had left behind a bride. Their deaths were on his head. And freedom was farther away than before.