Shouts began again. A few arrows struck the wood around them as they climbed. One shot through the air so close that it tore across his arm. He felt the pain. He looked down and saw the blood. But he was numb to it now.
Just keep walking. Step by step. Body by body. Rising.
At the top of the stairs Selene walked them to the edge of the battlement. She leaned Caesar against it, standing him up beside Juba amid the men he had destroyed. Isidora was shouting, and he felt sudden heat as walls of flame shot up from the wooden walkways to their left and right. He was aware that there was fire raging below him, too.
Whether Isidora had set the stairway aflame behind them or whether the Cantabrians had done it, he didn’t know.
Didn’t matter. There was nowhere to go either way. This was the end. In flames amid the dead.
“Juba,” Selene was saying. “Stay with me. Hold on to Octavian.”
Juba nodded. Tears were streaming from his eyes, but when he looked out over the edge, he could see the stakes still mounted there, with the bodies of the legionnaires Corocotta had tortured. Beyond them was the valley, stretching out toward the Roman encampment. And flashing gold across it, in the light of the early morning, he saw eagles.
He heard horns.
Juba turned to tell Selene, and he saw that she was pulling Isidora up beside him. The little girl hugged close to his body even as he held Caesar’s. The fires were very close.
“Hold on tight,” Selene said over the flames. She put her left arm around Octavian’s back. Her right hand fell into her satchel and enclosed something there. She leaned close. Juba felt once more the hard plate of the Aegis. But he felt, too, the love of the heart behind it.
A wind rose around them, and Juba felt his weight lifting.
“Now jump,” Selene said. “I’ll catch you.”
19
WHAT LIES BEYOND
ELEPHANTINE, 26 BCE
Caesarion, his hand still on the shoulder of Vorenus, turned to look back at the man they’d all thought dead. Truly dead. “You died, Pullo?”
“I believe I did.”
There was a depth in Pullo’s eyes now. Caesarion had noticed it from the moment they had joyously greeted each other the day before. It was a depth that had shocked him even more than the horrible scars that crossed Pullo’s face like the cracks in the clay of a dry riverbed, even more than the painful way in which the broken man walked now. There had been no such depth in his eyes when last they’d met. Back then, Pullo was mirth and unbridled passion. Now, though the same hints of his old happiness were there, they were like flashes of light at the edge of a great pool. Caesarion had thought it was sorrow, but Hannah had said that it was wisdom. Perhaps she was right, as she so often was, but he wondered, too, if there was truly a difference.
“You died,” Hannah repeated.
Pullo nodded. “Though I’ve never spoken of it.”
“In Alexandria,” Vorenus whispered. “Beneath all that rock.”
Pullo nodded again.
“It was a brave act, Titus Pullo.” Hannah’s tone was almost reverent. “You saved our lives. You saved the Ark, and in so doing saved many lives more. You were like Samson among the Philistines.”
“Samson?” Vorenus asked.
“An ancient hero among the Jews,” Hannah said. “He was the strongest of men, and when he was captured and blinded by his enemies, placed in their temple, he pulled it down upon himself, killing them all. It was the sacrifice of a great hero, and his story has been long told among the Jews.”
“Just as yours has been among us,” Caesarion said. Then, fearful of too much emotional solemnity, he playfully punched the big man on the shoulder as he walked back over to Hannah’s side. “Not that you’re for sure the strongest of men, mind you.”
Pullo laughed at that, a rumble that felt like a sigh of relief.
“Though you are the strongest I’ve ever known,” Vorenus said, his heartfelt love and respect for Pullo abundantly clear. “But even so, my friend, how did you make it out? That much rock…”
Pullo’s rumble subsided, and he took a deep breath. “I don’t remember everything. But I remember enough. We’d thought he was dead. Juba, I mean. So when we took the Ark down to the platform under the bridge I didn’t even think to look behind us. My fault, I guess.” He looked up at Hannah, his brow knitted with sorrow. “I am sorry for your brother. I failed him. I failed you all.”
“You did not.” Hannah’s voice was both stern and forgiving. “It was not your fault. As the keeper of the Ark, his life and those of the other men who died that day were in my keeping. I have had to make my peace with Jacob’s soul. Don’t let it be your burden, too.”
“It’s true,” Caesarion added. “Don’t carry more than you need to carry.”
Pullo nodded, though he didn’t look convinced. Still, he took another deep breath and began to tell his tale.
“Well, he cut me across the backs of my legs. Hamstrings. You know how it’s done, Vorenus. I’m lucky he wasn’t as efficient as you or I would have been useless even if I did survive. He didn’t cut all the way across, I guess. I can still make my way around. Just not much good in a hurry, as they say.
“I remember screaming and falling, but then I don’t remember a whole lot for a little bit. Just flashes of what was happening around me. The unnatural wind. The surging power from the Ark. And Didymus talking to me. He was a good man, you know. After everything. He wanted to help.
“And then I saw how Juba was coming back. He was like a man possessed, you know. The look in his eyes, the ceaseless focus despite all the wounds he’d received.”
“Ah, yes,” Hannah said. “It was the armor he had on, Pullo. It’s one of the Shards of Heaven: the Aegis of Zeus. It has the power to preserve life, to heal and protect the body.”
“Healing.” Pullo chewed on the word for a moment. “Sounds right. I don’t know how many arrows he’d been pinned with, but he was still coming. Like a mindless thing.”
“There are stories of Alexander the Great being the same when he wore it,” Caesarion added. “They say he had a singular focus of determination, perhaps of rage. The Aegis must do that to men somehow.” He looked at Hannah hopefully. “Do any of your stories say that? About the Shards driving men mad?”
“Not that I know of,” Hannah said. “But we aren’t meant to use them. Few who have ever done so have survived.”
When she answered him there was a look in her eyes that she gave him occasionally. It was not unlike the one he remembered on the faces of servants in the palaces of Alexandria who had thought him to be the living embodiment of the god Horus. It was a look that made him uncomfortable, and so he looked back to Pullo. “So you knew he was coming back for the Ark?”
“I did. He was going to get it. I knew I couldn’t stop him. And you’d only barely managed to do it once, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
Caesarion held up his hands. “I don’t disagree at all, Pullo. I was unconscious at that point.”
“Anyway, I don’t know why, but it was right then that I remembered those explosives that were there to bring down the bridge. I didn’t know if they would kill us all, but I didn’t think I had much choice. So I blew them up.”
“I saw it from across the harbor,” Vorenus said. “It was horrific.”
“I remember the flash of fire. Red and orange. Hot and angry. And then everything became a white light. There was wind. Water. Earth. Waves upon a shoreline. It was like all my memories, all my life, all at once. Things I’ve done and said. Things that made me laugh. Things that wake me in the night.”
Pullo’s voice had become a whisper, and Caesarion became aware of how he had leaned in to hear him. Everyone else had, too.
“And then I sensed a darkness rising, like a great wave that would carry me away.” The big man paused for a moment, his head down and his eyes closed. After several long and steady breaths his head came up and he looked his old friend in the eye. “It was f
rightening, Vorenus. I don’t care about admitting it now. But it was also … well, it was comforting, too.” He looked around at them all. “It was the end, I guess. And it felt like that darkness was where I was supposed to go. So it felt right. My fear melted away, drifted away. I was ready. And it was then that I heard it.”
“Heard what?” Hannah asked.
“A voice. Out of the dark. Only, not words. More like a breath of air, but when it hit me I understood what it was saying. It told me I needed to come back. I wasn’t done. And the darkness fell back away, and I saw beyond it in just that moment. Just for a flash before I woke up.”
“What did you see, Pullo?” Vorenus had leaned in even farther.
“Heaven,” the big man said. He looked at Hannah. “That’s what you call it, isn’t it? We would’ve said the Elysian Fields, but I guess it’s the same thing, really. It was white shores. The sun coming up over a wide country of soft, green hills.”
Pullo’s eyes turned to look out toward the Nile, but Caesarion could tell he wasn’t looking at the river. Not now. He was looking beyond them all, at a far green country.
No one spoke. Everyone seemed wrapped in their own thoughts and questions, but no one dared disturb Pullo from his dream.
After a time Pullo blinked away the memory, and he smiled, looking back at them all. His expression reminded Caesarion of the look on Rishi’s face when he talked of the Teacher. “I only saw it in a glimpse,” Pullo continued. “But whatever it was, I can tell you that what the monk said a little while ago isn’t true: not everything after this life is suffering. The place I saw was beautiful. But it was so much more. It seemed like a place I could run forever.”
“Was it only what you wanted to see?” Vorenus asked.
Caesarion blinked for a moment, uncertain of the older man’s tone. Was he attacking the truth of Pullo’s vision?
If he felt any hostility, Pullo didn’t show it. He simply shrugged. “You know, I’ve thought about that. Maybe. Maybe not. But it felt real to me.” He sighed. “Anyway, as soon as I saw it the whole thing was snatched away, almost like a cord that had been tying me to that place had been cut. I awoke in the rubble.”
For a little while they were all silent. Bees buzzed in the air, dancing between flowers.
“How’d you get out?” Hannah asked. “I saw how much rock there was.”
“You’d know better than me about how much rock there was, though it certainly felt like a lot when I was under it in the dark. The way it had fallen there was space around my head and part of my chest. Like a pocket, where there was enough air to breathe, and at times I could smell the sea beyond the smells of the shattered stones. A few times I heard birds and even distant voices. I couldn’t tell time, but I’m guessing I was under there a day or two. But the bridge needed to be rebuilt. So eventually people came down to clear the rubble. They found me.
“They were pretty amazed I was alive, but I think the weight of the stones actually stopped a lot of my bleeding. Lots of bones were broken. And my back was really badly burned.” The big man laughed lightly and gestured to his face. “If you think this is bad, then you don’t want to see what I look like back there.
“Anyway, they took me to that same House of Asclepius you were in, Vorenus. And wouldn’t you know it, but that same old priest helped bring me back to the land of the living.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“He did, amazingly enough. For all that I’d been torn up and smashed and burned, he knew who I was. There were a lot of fevers the first couple of weeks, and he gave me a lot of medicines for the pain. But when I really finally came out of it, he told me how he’d destroyed my legionnaire uniform and that he’d told people I was just an unfortunate fisherman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Pullo chuckled. “He had no way of knowing how bad I am at catching fish.”
“Patience was never your strong suit,” Vorenus agreed, smiling.
“Well, anyway, he got me back to what you see here. I offered to do what I could to repay him, but he said that the Lord Pharaoh had always been a loyal supporter of his house, and that he owed you, Caesarion.”
“He was truly a good man,” Caesarion said. “The finest healer I ever met.”
“He certainly proved it again with me.”
“And thanks be to Asclepius,” Vorenus said. “Why didn’t you contact Didymus, tell him you were alive?”
“I thought about it. But by then I’d heard that you had been executed out on Antirhodos, my friend, that you had been killed, my lad, and that the Lady Selene had been captured and would be forced to wed Juba the Numidian. I’d heard nothing of the Ark, though, so I thought maybe it had gotten away. Meeting with Didymus—well, I just thought it wouldn’t do any good, and if I was recognized it could lead to Juba and Octavian maybe finding the Ark through him. Besides, what good was I now anyway? Better to just let it go and move on.”
Vorenus sighed. “You were certainly right about the troubles of being recognized at the Great Library.”
“The blame for that is mine,” Caesarion said. “You had been against meeting with Didymus. Khenti’s death is mine to bear.”
Vorenus nodded. Then he reached over and patted the knee of his big friend. “But if not for that tragedy, I suppose we would not have met again. Good can come from evil things.”
“All is not suffering,” Hannah said, smiling.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Pullo said. “Seker found me in the slums a year or two ago, where I was doing anything I could do for the coin to buy bread. He hired me and paid me well enough. I didn’t like hurting people, but he told me I wouldn’t really need to.”
Caesarion smiled. “One look at our giant here and people got in line? I know the feeling. As a kid I was scared to death of the great Pullo. Still am, I think.”
Color blushed the big man’s cheeks, turning his scars into rivers of dark blood. “Well, he was right, anyway. Mostly I just stood around and grunted now and then. I really can’t tell you much beyond that. This scholar came to us about kidnapping someone he said was worth a pretty coin. I didn’t know until the moment of it that it was Vorenus here. Was like seeing a ghost.”
“For me, too,” Vorenus said.
“Well,” Pullo said, his voice taking on a mock-defensive tone, “I did die. So maybe I am part ghost.”
“The finest ghost I could ask for,” Caesarion replied. “Any special powers come back with you?”
Pullo frowned and bit on his lip in concentration as he turned his hands over and back in front of himself. “Doesn’t seem so. Just the strength of Hercules, but that’s nothing new.”
“Just the same old Pullo, then,” Vorenus said.
“Older old Pullo,” the big man replied, cracking his neck for emphasis.
“I don’t think so,” Hannah said, interrupting their companionship. When Ceasarion looked over, he saw that she had that look upon her face again, only this time she was giving it to Pullo. “Not the same man at all. He was sent back. That makes you quite special indeed, Titus Pullo.”
Pullo blushed. “We don’t know what for. And maybe it was all in my head. I don’t know.”
“I don’t think so,” Hannah said. “I think you saw beyond.”
Pullo seemed suddenly nervous to be the center of everyone’s attention. “Well, anyway, that’s my story. And I don’t think it’s the important thing right now.”
The big man looked over at Vorenus, who started to open his mouth, then closed it again.
“What is it?” Hannah asked.
Vorenus stared at the ground and shook his head for a moment before looking up to address them. “He means the Ark. We need to move it.”
“Why?”
When Vorenus didn’t answer her right away, Caesarion started putting the pieces together. “Because of this scholar, Thrasyllus. You think if he heard enough to know to attack you on the canal, he might have heard enough to know that we are here.”
“He
might have.”
Caesarion frowned. It was possible, he supposed.
“He never said anything about this place,” Pullo said. “Or about the Ark. Or about you, Caesarion.”
“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know,” Vorenus said. “He killed Seker, right?”
Pullo nodded in agreement. “He did. Stabbed him in the back.”
“So he’s capable of deceit,” Vorenus said. “He wants to hide something.”
“He also probably didn’t have the money to pay what he promised,” Pullo pointed out. “When he saw that everything had gone wrong he might have just killed the man for his money.”
It was a valid point, Caesarion thought. “If he knew about me, though, why go after you? I mean no offense, Vorenus, but I can only imagine that my head is worth rather more than yours these days.”
Vorenus smiled. “No offense at all, Pharaoh. Honestly? I think he might have been greedy. Maybe he wanted to use me to get to all this. So he could have the Ark all to himself.”
Caesarion found himself frowning again. “Maybe.”
“He never struck me as a schemer,” Pullo said, “though I’m admittedly not the best judge of character. I have been friends with Vorenus for quite a long time, which says a lot.”
Everyone smiled, but the mirth didn’t last long amid such serious matters. “I think it’s something we need to consider,” Vorenus said. “It would be prudent to move the Ark.”
Caesarion nodded. Prudence was indeed wisdom, though the danger seemed slight. He turned to Hannah. She was the keeper of the Ark, after all. Any decision would have to be up to her. “What do you think?”
Even frowning she was more beautiful than anyone he’d ever laid eyes on. Love did that to your point of view. Caesarion had read enough stories of love to know the truth of that old wisdom. But he also knew that it didn’t really matter when you were the one in love.
“Hard to say,” she said. “You’re right that this is a danger, Lucius Vorenus. And it is true that we should be mindful to protect the Ark above all else.”
The Gates of Hell Page 21