The Gates of Hell

by Michael Livingston

  Control what you can, he told himself. The bell. Raise the alarm. Go!

  The attackers, whoever they were, apparently only had a few bowmen who could make the ranged shot against him, because by the time the next salvo came he was reaching the end of the dock, where he had space to dart and dodge in a jerking, serpentine rush. The arrows flew past him—four, he thought—and he saw them strike the walls of the lighthouse ahead with splintering cracks. All of them were high, he realized, probably because the bowmen were still in the boats.

  He crouched lower, making himself small as he continued his quick movements, and when he heard the first snap of the next salvo, he kicked his legs forward, sliding feet-first into the open doorway of the lighthouse as the arrows sang over his head.

  He crashed into the darkness of the first floor, overturning chairs and smashing into a table with such force that he sent papers and ceramic pots scattering.

  Even before he came to rest his mind was screaming at him to get up, to move, to sound the alarm.

  There were footsteps pounding on the dock as Caesarion struggled to get his feet under him, shuffling and slipping on papyrus sheets until he managed to get upright and begin fumbling in the dark for the stairs.

  He tripped over the first step, but then he was scrambling upward, taking the steep steps two at a time, determined to get to the top, to warn his friends before he was caught. Men burst into the room in his wake, just strides away, and Caesarion pitched over cases of scrolls and boxes that had been placed against the walls of the stairwell. He heard the men cursing as they stumbled behind him.

  The stairs ended in a small circular room with a ladder rising to a trapdoor. Caesarion hardly broke pace, leaping up onto the ladder and then jumping upward off of its rungs, his arm extending out and throwing open the wooden panel at the ceiling.

  After the dimness below, coming into the sudden presence of the lit beacon at the top of the lighthouse felt as if he’d come face-to-face with the sun. Caesarion had to shut his eyes against the harsh glare even as he pulled the rest of himself up the ladder. He clapped the trapdoor shut just as the men chasing him reached the top of the stairs, and then he stood over it, letting his weight hold it down as he blinked and squinted at his surroundings. There was a pile of wood within arm’s reach, meant for feeding the burning harbor beacon, and he pulled it to him, unceremoniously dumping it down upon the trapdoor as he hopped back off of it. For a moment the men pushing from below got the edges of it to lift, but then the wood crashed down and pushed it shut again.

  It wouldn’t hold them away for long—already their pounding was shifting the logs and rolling some away—but it would be enough. He only needed a few seconds. It might be all that stood between life and death for his friends. For his love.

  It was all he could do. It would have to be enough.

  Caesarion, once pharaoh of Egypt, took two steps around the fire, grabbed the rope of the bell, and raised the alarm over Elephantine.

  25

  THE WHEEL TURNS

  ELEPHANTINE, 25 BCE

  Vorenus was sitting with Pullo upon the ruined altar in the middle of the Jewish temple when the harbor bell began to ring. He bolted up to his feet, and he turned in the direction of the sound as if he might discern something through the thick walls that surrounded them. He saw nothing but the fog, seeming to show the faintest light of a coming dawn.

  Pullo had lumbered up, too. “An attack?”

  Vorenus nodded. The ringing was no steady chime. It was panicked, frightened.

  “What do we do?”

  It couldn’t be Romans. They were all gone into Arabia, weren’t they? But if not Romans, who?

  “Vorenus, what do we do?”

  “See that the doors are secure,” Vorenus replied. “Keep them fast. I’ll awaken Hannah.”

  Pullo, as if he were still within the legion, snapped to attention at the order, and he shuffled as quickly as he could toward the door that Caesarion had taken.

  Caesarion! He’d gone toward the docks. He ought to have reached them by now, and if he was—

  The bell clanged once more, and then it stopped.

  There was an eerie silence in the air, a hush as if some violence had silenced the ringing alarm.

  Vorenus felt a yawning pit open in his belly, even as he hoped against hope that the bell had only been a false alarm.

  But then he heard, echoing through the buildings of the city, the sounds of battle. The island was under attack.

  “Hurry, Pullo!” he shouted, swallowing his dread as he ran for the inner shrine.

  The door opened just as he reached it. Hannah was there. “Where’s Caesarion? What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Vorenus admitted. He skittered to a halt in front of the doorway, looking beyond her to where the Ark was standing, serene and still, where it had been for years. “But gather your things. If he comes back we may need to be ready to move.”

  Hannah nodded and spun back toward the chamber. Vorenus stood at the doorway for a moment longer, measuring the Ark with his eyes.

  “Vorenus!” Pullo called out, pointing from one door of the courtyard across to one he hadn’t yet reached. It was opening.

  Though Vorenus had long since lost his uniform as a Roman legionnaire—it was far safer to appear to be a common man these days—he hadn’t lost his gear. Beneath his loose-fitting robes he still had a chain shirt, and at his side he still had his bone-handled gladius. As he spun through the dirt and began sprinting for the doorway, the blade was in his hand with hardly a thought. Old habits died hard.

  The door creaked, opening slowly as Vorenus closed the distance to it. A hand appeared, fingers tentatively curling around the wood, and then—just as Vorenus was preparing to barrel himself into the wood and shove it backward—Madhukar’s brown face appeared in the gap.

  Vorenus pulled up, catching himself. “Madhukar!”

  The Therapeutan man looked relieved as he stepped inside and helped Vorenus push the door closed. “We are under attack,” the monk gasped. “It’s Nubians, from Kush.”

  Vorenus sheathed his gladius. That answered one question, at least. Kush was the kingdom south of Egypt, the land just beyond the cataracts. With so many of the Roman legions away in Arabia, this would be the perfect time for them to come down the Nile and make an assault on Egypt’s riches. He reached down to lift the heavy wooden beam that would bar the door.

  Madhukar’s hand fell upon his shoulder. “No, my friend. We must leave. They will burn the town.”

  Vorenus froze. “Burn it?”

  The Therapeutan nodded vigorously. “It is their way. We have boats on the other side of the island. We’ll sail for the western shore.”

  Pullo had come up, having barred the other doors. “Boats?”

  “Yes. Enough for you all.”

  Vorenus looked back toward the shrine, toward Hannah and the Ark. Where was Caesarion? “We can’t leave.”

  “To stay is to burn,” Madhukar implored.

  “But we can’t leave it,” Vorenus said, but even as he spoke he found himself looking between them. It was a foolish thought he was having. They were three older men. She was one very young and very pregnant girl. But Pullo, even crippled as he was, might well be stronger than any other two men on the island. And his own bones … maybe he had enough in him for one last push.

  “Can’t leave what?” Madhukar asked, but already Vorenus was running back to the shrine. Pullo was running after him, and when Vorenus glanced back he saw that the big man seemed to have guessed his plan. He was beaming through the scars on his tattered face when he caught the eye of Vorenus. “We’ve done crazier things.” He laughed.

  The plans to leave Elephantine had been set in motion earlier in the night, so it hadn’t taken Hannah long to put the last of her things into a sack that was already filled with books and clothes. She turned when Vorenus burst in, and she didn’t need to speak the question that was so clearly written on her face.
r />   Vorenus shook his head. “He’s not back yet.”

  Her face fell with despair. “How are we going to—”

  “My God,” Madhukar whispered as he came up behind them.

  Vorenus didn’t look back. “Pretty much.”

  “Is that—?”

  “The Ark of the Covenant,” Pullo said, pushing his way past them all and hulking into the shrine. The space seemed at once smaller for his presence.

  “I didn’t know,” the monk said. “I’d heard the stories in your books, but I didn’t—”

  “Now you do,” Vorenus said, and he hurried forward to join Pullo in retrieving the Ark’s smooth carrying poles from their places at the side of the room. They began to thread them carefully through the metal rings affixed to its sides.

  Madhukar just stared. “What are you doing with it?”

  “They’re going to try to move it,” Hannah said, the disbelief clear in her voice.

  Vorenus got his pole situated, stared at the beauty of the Ark for a heartbeat, and then fetched a heavy canvas sheet that he threw over the top of it. “That’s right,” he said. “And we need you to help.”

  “Us?” Madhukar sounded incredulous.

  From the other side of the Ark, Pullo spread his big arms, taking a wide grip on the pole there. Vorenus took a position at the back of his own side. “Just you, Madhukar,” he said. “My side. Let’s start with a few steps.”

  “You’re mad,” Hannah whispered.

  Maybe, Vorenus thought with a shrug. “Hurry, my friend. To stay is to burn, remember?”

  The Therapeutan hurried forward, looked between the two former legionnaires, and then took position where Vorenus pointed. “Only a few steps at first. We don’t have to get it far. Just outside. Then onto a cart. Then the boats. Then safety.”

  Hannah was right. It was, as he heard himself say it, utter madness. But he simply didn’t know what else to do. They couldn’t leave the Ark, and he was certain that the old monk was right. If they stayed, they died. As good as he and Pullo were, they surely couldn’t hold off a Nubian army forever.

  “On the count of three,” Pullo said. “One. Two. Three.”

  The men strained, and the Ark lifted high enough that they were able to shuffle it forward a few feet before Madhukar had to set his end down. “I just need to change my grip,” he said.

  Vorenus adjusted his own, smiling over at Pullo, a man who never ceased to amaze him. Then, when Madhukar was ready, they lifted it and went a little farther, getting it just past the low, broken wall between the two chambers of the shrine.

  “Good,” Vorenus said when they paused for breath. He glanced up to say something to Hannah, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “On three again,” Pullo said. The scars on his face were hot with blood.

  Again they lifted together, and this time they made it to the door. Just as they set it down there, Hannah appeared in the frame. She was panting, her face flushed, and she was holding her belly protectively, but she was smiling. “A cart,” she said. “I found a cart.”

  She had indeed. They could see it in the courtyard, a four-wheeled wagon littered with hay, sitting perhaps halfway between the doorway and the altar. It was a battered, rough-looking thing, but it appeared big enough to hold the Ark. “There we go,” Vorenus said. “We’re going to make it.”

  That he could smell smoke in the air, that he could hear distant screams, he didn’t say.

  Foot by foot, grunt by grunt, they stepped the Ark out of the doorway and into the open air. Minutes passed, but they brought it up behind the cart, lining it up as best they could before they set it down. Madhukar was panting, and he’d begun to say little prayers beneath his breath, though Vorenus did not understand them.

  The sounds of battle were pressing close.

  Up to now they had only lifted the Ark a few inches from the ground while shuffling alongside it. Standing beside the cart, Vorenus could see that the bottom of it was easily as high as his aching hip.

  A horrific scream echoed up from the Khnum temple, and they all instinctively looked in that direction. It was, as they listened, just one scream of many in the town. And when Vorenus saw how the sky was growing brighter he didn’t know if it was the rising sun or the burning of homes, of goods, of people. He swallowed hard, tasting the acrid smoke, and forced himself to look away, back to the Ark. There was no other choice, was there?

  Pullo, he saw, was smiling at him as they once had in battle. “Just one more lift,” he said.

  Vorenus nodded. Madhukar took his position, and with a heave they raised it a foot, then nearly to Vorenus’ knees, before Pullo groaned and they began to lower it. The Ark came to the ground and the big man let out his breath in a sob. “I can’t.” When their eyes met, Vorenus could see his eyes were red, and he was freely weeping. “Maybe once … I’m not what I was. I’m sorry, Vorenus. Gods, I’m sorry. I can’t do it alone.”

  “Then not alone,” Hannah said. She pushed herself up beside him, gripping the pole tight.

  “Hannah,” Vorenus said, “You shouldn’t—”

  In reply she took one hand and pulled free the necklace she had around her neck. The emblem upon it was the same that was upon the side of the Ark. All the keepers had one. “My family won’t fail. Not while I live,” she said.

  The door of the temple that faced the Khnum temple shook as someone tried to open it. There were angry shouts coming over the wall in a language that Vorenus did not know. It was now or never. “On three,” he said.

  Pullo repositioned himself, and Madhukar, even gasping for air as he was, counted them down.

  They lifted as one, and they were just inches away from getting the bottom edge of the Ark up and over the lip of the cart, when Hannah screamed in pain.

  “Back down!” Vorenus urged, and they were able to get the Ark back to the ground before Hannah had to let go of it. She gasped, then doubled over, gripping her stomach in agony.

  Pullo caught her, lowering her to the ground beside the Ark. “Hannah,” he was saying, “oh, gods, Hannah…”

  Vorenus started to ask what it was, but the moment he had rushed around to her side of the Ark and saw the way she was holding her belly and the horrified look on her face he knew that there was no need. “No,” he gasped. “Oh, please no.”

  Hannah’s body tensed, and when she opened her mouth the scream that tore from her was as if her very soul were being torn apart.

  Vorenus wanted to weep. He wanted to cry out at the injustice of it all.

  But none of that would help.

  A second of the barred doors to the temple was shaking now. The shouting was very loud, and the smoke was thicker than the fog. Vorenus let out his breath, and once more his gladius was in his hand. The battle calm fell over him, that eerie sense of peace he’d known at Actium, at Gaul, at those moments when all hope of survival had left him and he had resigned himself to his fate, freed himself from fear, freed himself to simply do what needed to be done.

  “Madhukar,” he said. “You need to go. Now.” He nodded toward the last door, the one they’d intended to take the Ark through. “I’ll bar it behind you.”

  The monk had crouched down beside Hannah, and he was holding her hand. When he looked up, his eyes were wide and wet, but there was a peace behind them as he shook his head. Then, with a kind of regretful smile, he stood and hurried across the courtyard to the door, which he began to bar.

  Pullo was feeling Hannah’s belly as she gasped in uneven breaths. “She is bleeding badly, Vorenus. I think the child may be coming, but it is not good.”

  “So is the enemy.” Vorenus said. “Let the monk do what he can. I need you, Pullo. I can’t do this alone.”

  The monk came back and once more knelt beside the agonized young woman. He and Pullo whispered urgently. Around them the doors were crashing against the bars as they were rammed from the outside. Vorenus turned toward the nearest of them, and he absently gauged the familiar weight and balance of th
e blade in his hand. For all the twists his life’s story had taken, he never would have expected that his end might be in blood upon the sands of Egypt.

  So be it, he thought.

  Pullo walked up to stand beside him. He used the shining tip of his own sword to point toward the second door that was likely to fall. “I’ll take this side.”

  Vorenus looked at his old friend, so battered and broken. He couldn’t imagine they would last long, but he knew there was nothing else to be done. And while Caesarion lived there was still hope. Time was all they could offer him, all they could offer Hannah and Madhukar and the child to come. It was all they had left to give to the Ark.

  Titus Pullo swept his blade back and forth in the air, stretching his tired muscles. “It’s been too long.”

  Vorenus smiled. Then the first door finally gave way, and it began.

  26

  THE CITADEL OF CARTHAGE

  CARTHAGE, 25 BCE

  Walking up the hill in the darkness of Carthage, carrying the cloth-wrapped Trident before him like a sacred offering, Juba thought of many things. He thought, first and foremost, of his beloved Selene, who strode behind him, her hands wrapped protectively around the satchel in which she held the Palladium, the Shard that could control wind. He’d long known that he loved her, but the clarity of his resolve since he’d learned of her rape had made clear to him the desperate nature of his passion for her.

  And his fear of what Tiberius had taken from her.

  Looking back, it still shocked him how quickly he had abandoned his desire to live in peace and to come here instead, to unlock even greater power from the four Shards of Heaven in their possession—shocked him, though never for a moment had he regretted the decision. It was, he was still certain, the right thing to do. It was the only way he knew to end the suffering that she had borne for so long in silence. It was the only way he could destroy the haunting memories of Cantabria: her rape, his destruction of all those men.