by M C Scott
‘What?’ Kleopatra spun. Iksahra was moving up the road, arms outstretched, white robes billowing behind. Even had the guards’ eyes not been dulled by the lighting of the lamp, it would have been impossible to see her arms and legs and head. Her robes, it seemed, came on of their own volition, rippling softly. The cheetah stalked at her side, taller than it seemed in daytime, its eyes aflame in the meagre lamplight.
As she moved, a line of Romans marched across the road, blindly, steadfastly forward, as if on a long, long route. She flowed through them, or they through her, or each through the other, as ghosts are wont to do.
‘What?’ Kleopatra peered down the road in evident confusion. ‘What is it? I can’t see—’
The smaller guard was already running. The taller dropped the lamp. The light guttered bravely on, leaving a glow in the air as he turned, feet scrabbling, and ran, high-kneed, up the road towards the palace.
Kleopatra picked up the lamp, shaking her head. Iksahra came to join her, bubbling with silent laughter. Mergus and his men gathered a short distance away, grinning in spite of themselves.
‘You could have killed them easily,’ Kleopatra said. ‘Why did you not?’
‘Because a terrified man spreading fear among his brethren is more useful tonight than that same man safely dead. We did what we needed to do. There are seven more gates to clear before dawn. Shall we go?’
The guard to the cellar dungeon changed in a clatter of lock and key and footsteps, with a new torch lit and the old one left to smoulder, to help fight back the dark. Nobody came to visit the prisoners, although the new guard paused a moment in the entrance to the tunnel and stared towards them, to be sure they were still alive.
Hypatia stood by the bars after he had gone. Her cheek felt cold metal, her feet cold stone. Her mind was a tumble of memories, of dreams, of a lifetime’s nightmares, all different in small, definable ways, all leading to this place, this time, this cold, this dark.
All her life she had thought that if she did things differently, if she turned a different way at each of the crossroads to which fate had brought her, she might be able to escape this. And she had failed. She took a bitter breath and looked ahead, down the pathways of the dream.
Only two paths stretched before her now, and one of them so rare, she had dreamed it just three times. The first, the common one, had haunted her life. She knew by heart each moment of this long, cold night and the messy death that followed.
But the path of the rare dream was not yet unravelled; she still walked its route, the point at which the two diverged yet to appear. Closing her eyes, she pressed her forehead harder against the bars and began to clear the fears that cluttered her mind, to leave space into which the god might choose to come.
She let out a breath and another and on the third she did not breathe in again, but stepped forward in the dark space of her mind, into the void that was deeper than water, wider than the oceans, emptier than the dungeons at night. And in that space, she asked of the listening silence the only question that had ever mattered: What would you have me do?
Nothing came, and less than nothing; no word, no sign. Resting on the cusp of a breath, as near to death as she might come and still live, she thought she was forsaken, lost, alone.
Then she felt the hot press of a living pelt against her calf, and smelled the meat-mellow breath of a hunting cat. She heard its breath rasp by her ear, recoiled at the sharp prick of whiskers against her cheek, and when she looked deep in the dark, there was the smudge of black against paler black in a patterning she almost recognized and two green-amber eyes, that grew stronger as she gave them her attention.
She thought it was a leopard, sign of Pantera, and said so. Somewhere, the god laughed. The beast drew back its lips and padded closer until its outline was clear, taller than a leopard, longer-legged, with a muzzle more square, and a head held higher.
From all of these, she knew it as Iksahra’s cheetah, a beast that had viewed her with nothing short of disdain since the day she had first seen it. Nevertheless, it was here, in the space of Hypatia’s unbreath. She touched her forehead, as she might have done to Isis, or Ma’at or Apis, bull-god of Memphis, and waited. And waited. The beast blinked at her; the only movement in the void.
Again she asked, What would you have of me? Again the beast blinked, and in that movement she saw through the patterned pelt to the black skin of a woman behind, saw through its eyes to gold-brown eyes, saw black hair, tight as a shearling ram, and the flash of white teeth.
Pain flooded her then, the twisting knife that leaves a heart in fragments; the pain she had thought set aside, safely, that it might not undo her this close to the end.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again both woman and beast were gone and in their place was the whistle of wings and the far, high keening cry of a falcon, bird of Isis, hunting.
Somewhere far beyond it, the god said, I would have you taste the true cost of life. There is no escape from this.
Hypatia breathed in, a great gulping swallow of air, of life, of cold and the present moment. Her head ached, as if the god had struck it in passing.
She took another breath, and stilled it, and came back to herself, to all that she had lost and gained and might lose again. Aloud she said, ‘Thank you.’
From behind, she heard Estaph take breath to speak. Without turning, she said, ‘No.’
‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’ They both spoke quietly and directed the sound at the floor: already they had learned what would carry to the guards and what would not.
‘You were going to suggest that you could kill us both now, and leave only yourself alive for the morning.’
‘It’s the only way.’
‘It’s one way,’ Hypatia said. ‘But if we take it, you will spend two full days dying and Saulos will have won. I have dreamed this every night of my adult life. I will not let you do it.’ She stepped to the centre of their small circle, standing between them. ‘If anyone should stay alive, it should be me. There may be a limit to what even Saulos will dare do to the Chosen of Isis.’
‘There isn’t,’ Berenice said. ‘He does this for his god, and his god feeds on the blood of others. There is no limit at all to what he will do. If you have dreamed this, you know it is true.’
Whatever else she had dreamed, Hypatia had certainly dreamed this moment, these words; now. Perhaps a dozen times in her life, the many branching pathways of possibility had brought her to this, the last of the turning points. Two pathways lay ahead, each one distinct from the other: the first, the easiest, led to certain death. The other … she wasn’t sure where the other led, she had been along it only twice in her life, and each time was different. Still, she was the Chosen of Isis, and she was not given to procrastination. She made her decision swiftly, took a breath, and let it out again.
Berenice saw a moment’s indecision and gave a small, tight smile of triumph. ‘Shall we draw lots for it?’ she asked. ‘The loser is the last one to remain alive.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
AMONG THE HILLS north of Jerusalem, a thousand small cooking fires showed the size of Menachem’s army.
Of those thousand, a hundred clustered close around the shoulder of a low hill and beneath their light a spring bubbled and sang, gold and silver as it passed from firelight to starlight.
In this place of drought and desert, a stone channel poured water down into a plunge pool deep enough to take one man standing upright and cover him to the crown of his head.
Stone steps led down into the water. Menachem stood naked on the topmost tread with his head bowed, watching the torch-made dapples shiver across the water. About him, about the spring, his army waited in such silence as was possible for two thousand men dressed in new mail, with new weapons and tired horses and a battle ahead.
Pantera stood apart, on the spring’s southern side, holding by the bridle the almond-milk mare that had been Iksahra’s parting gift to Menachem, that he might ha
ve a mount fit for a king. The mare was anxious. She stood, watching the fires, the men, the silver stream. A single foreleg struck the ground, calling thunder from the earth.
Menachem looked up at last. His gaze met Pantera’s and his mind returned from the distant place where it had been. He clasped his hands together. Black hairs grew in strong lines down his arms and thick swards on his chest. They stood upright now, testament to the morning’s chill.
‘How much longer?’ he asked.
Gideon stood with his back to them, staring at the faint strand of silver strung along the horizon. ‘Soon,’ he said.
And soon, soon, with goats grazing in the distance, and morning cookfires of Jerusalem threading the morning sky, with cockerels crying a greeting and small birds taking up the call, then did the shy sun blush over the edge of the mountains behind, and burn the dew off the thin grasses, so that the mare dropped her head at last to graze.
Pantera said, ‘In two hours, Hypatia, Berenice and Estaph will die.’
‘They will begin to die,’ Menachem said. ‘But we will be in Jerusalem by then. The city will be ours.’
‘It may not. If Iksahra has not ripped the hearts out of the garrison Guard, this will be a battle of a different mettle than the one on Masada.’
‘Even so, this is our home. You may be surprised—’
‘Look,’ Gideon said. He pointed at the rock at the pool’s lip, and they fell to silence, and watched as the sun lifted the shadow from Menachem’s feet to his thighs, to his torso, to his brow.
Between one breath and the next, he was bathed entirely in light and the stream flowed liquid gold. Then Gideon said, ‘Now,’ quietly, so that only Pantera, who was closest, might hear, and Yusaf, who stood a little behind.
Thus, in the first opening of dawn, before the gathered multitudes of his army, Menachem, grandson of the Galilean, stepped down into the liquid light, and under it, completely, so that only the very top of his black hair showed.
When he stepped out again, Gideon came forward with a jar of perfumed oil and drizzled it on to his streaming hair and raised his voice, so that it rang from hillside to hillside, to the two thousand men and their horses, to the goats and the rising hawks and the distant, discordant city.
‘I give you Menachem, of the line of David, of the tribe of Judah, grandson of the Galilean, greatest of Rome’s enemies. As spoken by the prophets, he shall ride into Jerusalem on an ass, symbol of peace. He shall cleanse the Temple of its iniquity. He shall free us from oppression. For in his righteousness is the path to peace, and he shall set the sons of Zion upon the sons of Greece, and shall dispel them, that our city, and our Israel, shall live without war, in a time of harmony, under the eyes of the living god!’
They heard their priest in silence, the army of the king of Israel, and for a heartbeat more they held that silence, and then they lifted their new blades, and beat their hilts on the hard bull’s hide of their new shields, and the sound rocked the earth and the roots of the hills and the pillars of the sky, and surely it must also have rocked the city, wherein waited men and women in their hundreds of thousands for the king who had been promised.
Menachem opened his mouth to speak.
‘Not here. Go to the head of the spring where they can see you,’ Pantera said, and like a blind man Menachem turned, and stepped up and up to the spring’s head.
The sun cast him in gold. The spring sang out of the earth at his feet and when he bent and cupped it in his hands, and sprayed it over the men nearest, they were drenched, lightly, in liquid silver.
He raised his hands high, as the priests did on the Sabbath. The rolling thunder of hilts on shields rose and fell away. His voice rang out over the heads of his men, straight to Jerusalem.
‘I am of David’s line. I am son of my father’s father, Yehuda, the Galilean, who should have been king of all Israel, and would have been, did he only have you at his side to make it happen. Today, we shall complete what he began those many years ago when he assaulted the armoury at Sepphoris. Today, we shall drive Rome from the sacred places of our people. By tonight, all Jerusalem will be ours under one god. You have waited for this, you have worked for this, you who have been true from the start …’
He spoke to men by name, drawing them forward, naming their courage in particular battles at particular times, or brothers lost, or children dead in their absence. They came and knelt and went away again, shining with love for him and pride in themselves and their army.
Pantera backed away and stood with Gideon and Yusaf on the lower ground by the spring. ‘He looks good there, with the newborn sun at his back and the water before him. We must remember this, if he is to speak often: it is what the men will recall, later, when the terror of combat has burned away their other memories.’
‘But not our other memories,’ said Yusaf, drily. ‘Or at least, not yours. Do you ever feel true fear like mortal men?’
‘Of course. You would not believe how often.’
‘We do not believe you now,’ Gideon said, in a tone that matched Yusaf’s exactly. ‘One day you must show me how you hide it so efficiently. Meanwhile, we must find ourselves a donkey colt. Zechariah was a rambling idiot who contradicted himself with each second word, but every child knows that the king comes in righteousness and salvation riding on an ass. We can’t let it pass.’
‘We can,’ Pantera said. ‘We must. This is battle, not a coronation. He will ride Iksahra’s mare. Nothing less will keep him alive.’
‘The ass is to signify peace.’
‘And righteousness, I heard. But to get to peace, he must live through war, and this mare is battle trained. Lay your hand here, on her hide, and feel the shiver of her sinews. She knows there’s a fight coming and she’s desperate to take part. You won’t find a donkey that’ll fight for you.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing. He’ll look better mounted on that mare than on anything else, trust me, and there are prophecies enough to go round: one of them probably mentions a white horse with black feet if you look hard enough. Put your effort into seeking that out if you find yourself with time on your hands through the morning.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
SIX OF JERUSALEM’S seven gates cleared smoothly through the remaining hours of darkness. Six more pairs of legionaries fled to their barracks, carrying stories of a ghûl abroad in the night, of ghostly legionaries marching to nowhere, of monsters greater than any they had seen.
Iksahra gained in stature with Naso and his legionaries with each gate, so that by the time they approached the last, set in the western wall behind the beast gardens, they were no longer drawing wards against evil when she passed them by, but were sketching instead the sign for good luck.
The process was not fast, though; the city’s cockerels were clearing their throats and the small coloured birds of the gardens and groves were already courting by the time they reached that last gate, tucked away behind the palace. The morning was lighter than it should have been; the perimeter of the beast garden was etched clearly across a grey sky.
Kleopatra caught Iksahra’s arm. ‘It’s too late; dawn’s nearly on us. They’ll see you’re not a ghûl.’
‘I know. This time we have to fight. They are ten and we are seven, but we have the cheetah, and Mergus’ men have the advantage of surprise: the Guard will not expect to be attacked by men they know. Still, we need to get closer. Will you go forward now and ask them if your family has already left? Keep them talking until we get near.’
It was easier, this time, for Kleopatra to walk up the road, and, this close to the palace, the guards were civil.
‘The king left before dusk, lady, and all his family with him. You’ve missed them, but you can’t leave now. The zealot army is already outside the walls. They’ve armed themselves and moved north of the city in the night. There’ll be a battle before noon. You should be indoors.’
It was the captain who spoke, first of ten men, stationed five on each side of the locked
and barred gate. Each of them held his sword out, his shield off his shoulder, ready against ghûls and zealots equally.
‘I have to join them.’ Kleopatra bit her lip and stared at her feet and found that the morning had progressed so far that she could easily see the detail of her toes. She looked back up at the guard. ‘Would it be possible to—’
His raised hand stopped her. To his men, not to her, he said, ‘Here she comes. See? It’s the king’s Berber beastwoman. I told Antonius it wasn’t a ghûl. Make a line on me and advance on my word. My lady, if you could step behind us, you’ll be safer there.’
They made a line of iron and bull’s hide; men who had fought and killed all their adult lives. They guarded the gate nearest the palace, likely first focus of any assault from the north and west.
Kleopatra was pushed behind, so that she saw Iksahra through the gaps between their shields. She was walking down the road with the cheetah at her heels, making no effort at all to stretch her arms, or to appear as an apparition. She came to a halt ten feet away from the line of guards.
There followed a moment’s hush in which ten men braced themselves, waiting for an order. In her bones, Kleopatra felt the thrill of preparation run through them. She saw the captain take a breath to shout and slid her own hand into her sleeve where her knife was hidden: better to die trying to cut his throat than to see them crucify Iksahra alongside Estaph.
Iksahra lifted her arm. The captain said, ‘Steady, steady …’
Iksahra dropped her arm. The cheetah sprang forward as commanded and its fluid gold-black flight merged with Iksahra’s battle shout, for as her arm came down her thrown knife caught the first edge of the dawn and carried it forward, lancing the throat of the captain as he, in his turn, launched himself at Iksahra.