The Coming of the King

Chapter Fifteen

Kleitos was a large and clumsy moth, flitting haphazardly through Caesarea, along wide streets, with their flower gardens muted under the rising moon; Mergus and Estaph were fleet as wolves on his trail, silent as night owls whose wing feathers make no sound.

Here, in the mercantile quarter, everything was uneasily peaceful. The sounds of the riot were a background mumble, and if there were fires beyond the one that Kleitos and his friends had tried to light, their flames were yet to paint the horizon.

This is not Rome. Not Rome, Mergus said to himself, timing the words with each footfall. Not Rome… not fire… not burning…

He had not realized how afraid he was of fire until the smell of smoke in his nostrils had been tainted also by memories of roasting flesh, and the ears of his mind had been deafened by the screams of men and women, burning. He turned back at each corner and searched the horizon, but saw no fire, yet. The roar of the crowd grew louder though, until it was the roar of a circus crowd, a gladiators’ match, heard from the far side of the city.

Kleitos was heading north towards the Hebrew quarter. Two blocks past the Temple of Tyche, he reached a crossroads and stepped back off the roadway while half a dozen watchmen ran past, heading towards the palace. Mergus raked his gaze along the line to see if Jucundus was among them — he wasn’t — and when he looked back again, Kleitos was gone.

‘That way,’ Estaph said, and pointed.

Cursing, Mergus followed him at a run across the open street and into the road end beyond. The area had been prosperous once, with small, neat houses and lush gardens; recent neglect had left it shabby.

There was worse than neglect ahead. Making his way cautiously through the dark, Mergus saw scaffolding loom ahead and by that sign knew they had reached the beleaguered synagogue, where Pantera had met Estaph and over which men were rioting down near the palace.

‘Stop.’ Mergus caught Estaph’s elbow. ‘This is a trap. Kleitos has gone too easily and into a place that we know. If we follow him in there, we’ll meet more than six against us.’

Feeling Estaph hold still at his side, Mergus took time to peer through the dusk. Night was on them now, so that grey starlight made of his hand a phantom, stole his feet that he might not see where he trod. Ahead, in the synagogue’s porch, a flame was struck, and a small lamp lit. Shadows leered from either side; men waited, and something else, that fluttered and cried and then died, suddenly, with the soft noise of a bird’s neck breaking.

Kleitos stepped into the lamplight. He held the bird and laid it down with something approaching reverence on to an olive jar turned upside down.

‘God of all gods…’ Mergus touched the brand of Mithras at his chest. He turned, slowly, backing away. ‘They’ve sacrificed a dove on an upturned vessel.’ And then, at the unchanged contours of Estaph’s face, ‘It’s what they do here to cleanse a building of leprosy; they’re saying the god of the Hebrews is a leper.’

Estaph’s eyes gleamed. ‘When your friend and I removed a sow’s head from the porch, I thought they could do nothing worse. I was wrong; this is a thousand times worse. If the Hebrews find this…’

‘They won’t. It must be removed.’ Grimly Mergus looked back along the route they had come. ‘I’ll stay here. You should find Jucundus and-’

‘No.’ Estaph took his arm. ‘I am Estaph of Parthia, axeman and son of axemen. I do not walk away from battle.’

‘This is not your fight. And we are outnumbered. I counted five men, including Kleitos.’

‘It is not your fight, either, but we have already killed together this night, there is no reason to stop now. How well can you throw your knife?’

‘Well enough.’

‘Good.’ Estaph slid one of his axes into his belt. The other was shining, the colour of the moon. He raised it in salute. ‘Your friend, Pantera — he draws men to him, I think, and they take risks for his sake?’

Mergus nodded, his mouth set.

‘So then we will make the risks less, and we will live through it, so that he has no need to find yet others to follow him into danger.’

Mergus found himself smiling too tightly, with his throat hard. He reached out and grasped Estaph’s forearm, up high, by the elbow, so they linked, arm to arm, as legionaries did before battle. ‘Take care, my friend.’

‘And you keep away from my side. The axes need room to swing.’

And thus it was that, dry-mouthed, Mergus wormed his way forward until he could see all of the porch, and the shadows of men around it, and the small pot, with the zigzag lines drawn in blue below its lip, and the maker’s mark on its upturned base, half hidden by the limp body of the dove.

Men gathered about it, weapon-ready and sharp, watching out to the night. Kleitos was among them, but boxed in by others, so there was no clear space through which a knife might pass.

Frustrated in his first choice, Mergus picked instead the tallest of the men, who carried a knife in one hand and a bow in the other. In the absolute dark of the shadows, he rose to his feet, sighted and threw.

The blade was a glimmer of torchlight, flying. And then a hilt, buried under a man’s chin, with thin blood spraying like spittle from his throat. It was not a clean throw, but it was good enough; and already Estaph was passing him, roaring, with his two moon-bladed axes spinning in the torchlight.

Mergus gripped his own knife and, screaming, hurled himself after.