Rome 2: The Coming of the King (30 page)

Presently the oryx dropped its head again. Pantera breathed. The lion made the last step and drew in her long back, shrinking into herself until her hind legs were coiled beneath. Her tail flagged left to right and was still.

Pantera held motionless by an effort of will, the pain in his torso, his elbows, his bladder lost in the lilac night. The lion was the best he had seen in eighteen days of looking out for lions from his desert ledge, where the vultures had watched early for his death.

He would not have minded dying here in the austere beauty of the desert, away from the palms and the olive groves, far from the timid sheep and the stench of humanity and its politics.

Here was only sky and rock and wheeling hawks and the small locusts that fed on dust, and mountain ibex that could spit a man on their scimitar horns, and wild asses that could never be tamed, and white oryx, whose beauty made poets weep. And the lioness who must make a kill here, now, that she and her young might not starve.

There passed a stillness long enough for Pantera to breathe and breathe again, and then she was flying through the air, swift as a thrown spear, perfect in the certainty of her intent.

The crack of the beast’s neck breaking rebounded threefold off the rocks. It crashed to the ground, its galloping legs sweeping the dust long after it died, carrying its soul to an afterlife set aside for white antelopes, where they might graze on lush grass on gentler inclines, where wadis ran with clear water, where the lions fed on other beasts.

The lion held herself aloof until the flailing hooves had stilled. Then, she gave a coughing grunt that summoned her three cubs from a fissure in the rock.

Too young to hunt, too starved to live much longer without food, with knife-sharp ribs staring through their mottled sand-coloured hair, they crept forward on their bellies until the smell of meat drenched their fear and, in a delirium of bloody joy, they hurled themselves to the feast. Goaded by their mewls, their dam ripped open the belly and let the guts spill out, and set her jaws to the steaming liver.

Pantera slid back then, dry-bellied and soundless, back along the ledge to a place he could wriggle into, and stand up and turn round and slide across the top of the bluff to the other side. Here was a fissure with steps cut in the side so that he could climb down, and find a place – at last – to urinate, and then climb back up to yet another hard, harsh rocky plateau on which was a camp that was both hidden and yet had a view across the whole of Judaea in any direction.

Menachem waited for him, sitting on a rock with his saddle bags tied, and his knife across his knee, and his eyes trained on the darkening sun: no lilacs now, only deep, bloody red and purple, like a bruise. His black hair shone in the reddening light. His brows were solid lines, carved by the hand of a god. A scroll lay rolled and fastened at his side. ‘Did she come?’

He held up a water skin. Pantera took it and drank. ‘She came, she killed, she has fed her young.’

He had seen the lion first on his third day here, and had watched her daily since. The desert healers had thought him sun-struck, but they had also thought he was going to die and had been content to let him occupy his mind with something other than the pain of breathing.

That he could observe her now with little pain was down to the healers’ ministry; to the bindings of linen and poultices of black mud from the poison-sea that were said to suck the illness from any wound, of body or soul. Their care had been exemplary and effective, but the day he had shown himself well enough to get to the ledge by himself they had washed their hands in the ritual vessels set beside him and turned away, not
wishing to soil themselves further with one not given to their god.

Menachem had paid them with his own gold as they left, and, with the ever-present Mergus, had taken over the application of the stinking black mud to Pantera’s abdomen, to his shoulder, to his left ankle, which had never fully healed after the interrogations in Britain. It was improving now, or they had told him so, and he had not the strength to disbelieve them.

The days had passed in a stupor of hot, stinking mud, but they did pass, and with each one he had been less prone to sleep without warning and more inclined to discourse and always, when he woke, Menachem, not Mergus, had been the one at his side, awake and willing to talk.

Over the course of a dozen nights, they had discussed the mountains, the desert and the beasts that lived therein. They had talked of the sky, the stars, the naming of the constellations, which was different in every tongue and creed, and the ubiquitous presence – or otherwise – of the sand-spirits that the Syrians believed in, the ghûls, the ifrit, the djinn.

If it was late, and they were tired, they discussed the differences between their gods: Mithras, god of truth who required of his followers that they face their own fears, that no man might have mastery over them, but had no written creed, and desired none, lest men come to worship the written word over the truth; and the Hebrew god, whose name could not be spoken, whose laws were so plentiful and written so completely that men did, indeed, fight and die to uphold one or other truth of them.

‘There is a simpler truth beneath all the written laws,’ Menachem had said, ‘and the people are ready to hear it. But first we must take Jerusalem, or they will not have peace to listen.’

And so they had discussed the possibility of taking Jerusalem, which was under Saulos’ control now; ruled from the tower-fortress of the Antonia that was built so close to the Temple as to be part of it. They talked of how the tower could be taken with
the least loss of life; how the garrison Guard might be lured out into full battle and outflanked; how, if that failed, they might drive tunnels under the walls of the Antonia to collapse them, and how the emperor might be brought to denounce Saulos in ways so unambiguous as to be fatal.

What they had not ever discussed was Masada and the possibility that they might assault it.

The whole idea might have been a dream born of a fever, except that each day of the last five Pantera had walked to the top of the nearest mountain and stared south towards the high, flat bluff on which Herod had built his stronghold, with its impregnable wall all around and its astonishing hanging palace, and its storerooms to provide for any who lived there: enough food and water – and weapons – to last a thousand men for ten thousand days, or so it was said, or ten thousand men for a thousand days, nobody was ever clear which, but enough, certainly, to take Jerusalem.

Pantera came to sit now beside Menachem. ‘We have waited long enough,’ he said. ‘We should go.’

‘The lion’s kill was an omen?’ Menachem stretched a rare smile. ‘I did not think you a man of superstition.’

‘The omen, if we need one, was that I could climb up unaided on to the rock, and lie for an afternoon still enough for a lion and an antelope not to see me, and climb down again afterwards. I am fit enough, therefore, to lead you into Masada.’

Menachem’s smile faded. He turned his face to the east, where the first silver blade of the moon sliced open the night, letting the stars leak in, one at a time, dimly. He looked down at his hands. ‘I did not betray you.’

‘I know.’

‘I thought perhaps—’

‘That we had not spoken of Masada since we came here because I feared you would betray me further? That was true at first.’

‘And now?’

‘Now?’ Pantera rose, walked a few paces and scooped up a
small stone and juggled it from hand to hand. ‘You are a patient man, but Saulos is not. If you were going to betray me, I would be dead.’

He threw the stone hard and fast, slanting across the desert. It bounced five times before it fell. ‘The traitor, therefore, is someone else. Perhaps someone in Jerusalem.’

‘Which means that Hypatia is in danger,’ Menachem said. ‘Iksahra, Kleopatra and Estaph also.’ They had stayed when the rest left: Hypatia, for a dream; Iksahra and Kleopatra, because they would not leave her; Estaph because … Mergus had not been clear why Estaph had stayed behind. It seemed most likely he had been asked to cleave to Hypatia and thereby make Jerusalem safe for Pantera’s return.

‘We are all in danger,’ Pantera said. ‘Which is why we must assault Masada.’ He nodded south, whence came the fickle, blustery wind that made knives out of dust and scraped them across his eyes.

Menachem came to stand beside him. Together, they gazed at the distant mass of rock that hogged the horizon, the only truly flat-topped mountain in the whole Judaean desert.

‘If a man were to stand on the edge of the casement wall and fly a banner of white silk enough to clothe a tall man,’ Pantera said, ‘I think it would be seen by a sharp-eyed observer who sat here, waiting. Who among your men could see it best?’

‘My cousin Eleazir has especially long sight,’ said Menachem. He glanced sideways at Pantera, so that he did not have to say,
Eleazir might be the traitor who sold you to Saulos
. Both knew it might be true, but had no proof, and so could not yet act.

Pantera said, ‘Would you trust your cousin to convey news of a victory to the rest of your men?’

‘I would. He wants the weapons as much as we do. Afterwards … we will worry what happens afterwards if we are alive.’ Menachem stretched his arms above his head until his shoulders cracked. ‘When you say “the rest of my men” – which will they be?’

‘The nine hundred we will leave behind when we ride for
Masada. We can take no more than one hundred with us. You need to pick those among your warriors with the best head for heights, but also the most experience of combat. If you have any with experience of combat?’

‘I have men who have fought each other in practice. They have killed when they had to, but in small numbers and always with the advantage of surprise. They have never faced trained legionaries in full battle.’

‘If I play my part right, we will have the advantage of surprise. As to trained legionaries … my father was never clear who was sent to Masada. As a child, I thought it was a place of punishment, where men were sent to march away their time stranded on a rock in the noonday heat with the wind that can flay a man’s skin in an hour and the rains that come twice a year if you’re lucky.’

‘And now? What do you think now?’

‘I have begun these last days to wonder if it was not perhaps a place of reward. Herod’s three-tiered hanging palace is there. It is said to surpass anything in Jerusalem for luxury. There are baths, and a gymnasium, and food to keep a thousand men for ten thousand nights. For men who dream of Rome—’

‘It would be a posting given by their gods; safe, secure from attack and free from the daily harassments of the city.’ Menachem began his long-limbed pacing. ‘If you are right, then are these men old, about to retire? Or the best of the garrison, sent to rest and recover?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pantera found his nerves strung newly tight. He folded his arms across his abdomen, and looked south towards Masada. A young moon was rising, made yet pale by the old sun’s gold.

He said, ‘Do you know the story of how Alexander of Macedon took the Sogdian Rock?’

‘Tell me.’

‘The Sogdians were vicious mountain people, who had a mountain fortress that was said to be impregnable: easy to
defend, impossible to assault. When Alexander’s troops first approached it, the defenders laughed at him, and said he would need to teach his men to fly if he were to reach them.’

‘Let me finish.’ Menachem gave his rare smile, which lit his face. ‘Every boy learns this story, even here. Alexander ordered that three hundred of his best climbers go up in the dark, past the Sogdians to the summit. They lost thirty men on the way but the others succeeded. When they reached the top, they unfurled the silk banners that had been wrapped round their waists and let them fly in the wind. Alexander called up to the defenders that he had, indeed, found men who could fly. The Sogdians surrendered without a fight, thinking him god-blessed.’ Menachem looked away from the moon. ‘Are we, too, going to fly to the summit of Masada?’

‘No, we will climb, and if necessary we will stuff our mouths with silk as Alexander’s men did, so that if we fall, we will not cry out and alert the sentries. But then, if we are lucky, they’ll think we have flown. You should tell your men this story before we leave. Surprise is the greatest asset in any assault, but in this it is doubly so, for if we succeed, we will have done what everyone believes to be impossible: we will have taken Masada without a thousand-day siege.’

‘Shock can weaken even the hardest of veterans,’ Menachem agreed. ‘I will tell the tale to the men who are coming with us. But what about those left behind? What do I tell them?’

‘Tell them to be patient until tomorrow’s noon. If they see the white banner, they can ride in and collect their weapons. If they don’t – if we fail – they can do whatever you think best. If you were to ask my advice, I would suggest they send runners into Jerusalem saying that you have succeeded and that you’ll fall on the city like a flight of locusts. Half of a battle is won in the hours before it starts. If they’re lucky, panic will spread among those who have most to lose and the garrison commanders will pack up the royal family and carry them to safety at Antioch, leaving the city open for your men to enter, with or without you at their head.’

Menachem turned to the rising moon. ‘If we fail in Masada, I will leave instructions for my men to do as you say.’ He bowed from the waist. ‘But we are makers of luck, you and I. We will not fail.’

IN HER DREAM
, Hypatia was a lion, stalking her prey. By scent she knew him, by the subtle changes of his fear; he was Saulos, and he knew that she was coming.

Pad on slow pad, with the taste of blood sifting past her teeth to her tongue, she advanced down a darkened alley. Or perhaps it was a fissure in some distant mountain; the part that knew she was Hypatia, and so knew that she was dreaming, could not tell where she was, except that the air smelled of new rainwater and man-urine together, and someone, or something, whispered in a tongue she did not know.