The Eagle of the Twelfth

Chapter Thirty-Eight

We tasted the sour, cold brine before we saw it; in the near-dawn chill, I licked my lips and found them salty, and knew we were close.

Shortly after, the smooth, undulating land became harder and more dangerous, cut across its sweep by lethal steep-sided clefts that struck deep into the rock beneath us. Here we rode on the backs of cliffs whose top surface was clean of detritus and dust, as if floods swept this place often. Ahead, the last stubborn starlight stitched sparks across the wide, slack sea.

Pantera raised his hand and we slid from our horses on his either side. ‘Tether them,’ he said, and they were honest beasts and stood for us as we tied the off fore to the near hind, loose enough for them to walk, not so loose that they could run. We gave them clean water from our cupped hands, then scattered grain for them to eat.

The rock was sculpted in shades of grey so that when Pantera lay face down he became part of it, lost in the grey night, and we only knew where he was by the rasp of his linen tunic on the stone as he edged forward to the lip of the plateau.

Horgias and I went down on our bellies and followed him and looked down, all the long way down, until we saw the treacherous Judaean sea fully for the first time; vast and slow and greasy to look at, as if the water had been mixed with egg white and then beaten to a froth at the edges.

It held us only a moment before we tore our eyes away and looked south down the uneven line of the cliff that stood higher than the tower of the Antonia all along the sea’s edge.

And there, along its face, as Pantera had said, cave after cave studded the ghosted grey stone like so many holes in a cheese. Some were big enough for a horse to walk in, some so small, a child crawling would have become lodged.

I tried to count and gave up; even those nearby were too many, and by a hundred paces distant the rock and the night had merged, making counting impossible.

‘How many?’ Horgias asked.

‘According to Yusaf, no man has counted them all, but there are at least a hundred, all linked by tunnels and other caverns as a honeycomb deep in the rock. The only way to reach any of the caves passes down there.’ Pantera wriggled back from the edge and pointed out a gully that ran steeply down in front of us from right to left. ‘Everyone who comes here must follow that path. Can you track men on bare rock?’

‘I can,’ Horgias said.

‘Before dawn?’

We turned to look east, where a silver line creased the horizon far beyond the sea. It promised enough light in under an hour to render us visible to anyone who chanced to look down from the cliff-caves to the paths below.

‘If we start now.’ Horgias had risen to his knees and was wrapping his tunic tight about his legs. Tying the last knot, he turned to us. Even in the un-light, the fire in his eyes burned bright. He laid a hand on my arm. ‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

We clasped arms, like brothers, and turned, and would have run then, but Pantera held us back.

‘A moment.’ He slid a long, narrow knife from his sleeve, thin as a reed and fluted down its length. I had seen its like only twice, on men who had bought them from barbarians who were supposed to be able to throw them with such accuracy that they could split a held hair at a hundred paces.

This one, he used as a pen to draw on the hard rock. ‘According to ben Matthias, this is not only home to the Eagle. Everything the Hebrews want to preserve from Rome is to be hidden here, including the scrolls of the most sacred of their writings, and they won’t leave such things alone.’

‘They’ll be guarded,’ I said. The thought of combat made my blood sing. I rolled my shoulders and checked the slide of my own knife from its sheath.

Pantera, watching, said, ‘If we have to fight, it may be that only one of us can get away, so you both need to know the way back to Vespasian from here.’

I barely glanced down at the route he had drawn on the rock. If ever a man knew his death-place, this was mine, and I was certain that if one of us had to stay and fight so the others could run, I was that man.

Then I looked at Horgias, and found the same truth written on his face. We made a silent vow, there and then, that we would stand together at the end, and let Pantera go back to Vespasian alone.

The salt-stiff air parted reluctantly before us as we eased down the path towards the foot of the cliff. Every dozen paces or so, we paused while Horgias bent and searched the bare rock for signs of men’s passing. If he found them, I never saw what they were, but he led us on with a steady confidence. He was less Roman now than he had ever been, and completely given to the legions.

Near the sea’s edge, the path turned hard right so that we were heading towards the cliff face. We followed, and there, where rock and mud and sand were one, I saw the first footprints, and heard Horgias’ grunt of triumph before he led us, loping onwards and upwards, along the path that led to the honeycombed cliff.

The cliff became more alive the closer we approached; what had seemed a flat, vertical face was hewn by wind and water to a wavering surface that put me in mind of a fine curtain’s billowing.

Shadows played along it, sent by the ever-rising sun, so that Pantera and I glanced up often, expecting a shout and the first hail of stones or spears. Horgias alone kept his eyes on the ground and would not be hurried lest we take the wrong track.

Presently, the path began to rise, so that we walked uphill ever more steeply, then scrambled up on broad rocky steps, like a giant staircase leading to the skies, and then, finally, took to the rock face where we must set hand and foot on the cliff, searching for handholds, footholds, for places to press tight to the rock with face turned sideways simply to breathe.

The climb was no more than thirty or forty feet, but it was long enough to bring me to the last hold with my hands slick with sweat.

‘Here.’ Horgias had been first up. He took my wrist and pulled me the last few feet on to a ledge a hand’s length wide and long enough to take all three of us. I turned carefully and crammed my shoulders to the living rock behind. Like that, I could see land and sky and a little of the sea and not know how high up we were. Beside me, Pantera was shivering, finely, like a leaf in a tight breeze.

He caught my eye, gave a wry smile. ‘We’ve done it. The sun can rise now and they won’t see us. All we need is for Horgias to find the way to the right cave.’

That was easy to say, less easy to do. We were in the midst of an embarrassment of caves; too many to count, but none within easy reach. Horgias was searching the rock like a blind man, running his fingers over it, pausing here and there to snatch back and examine what he had found.

I eyed the ledge left along its length, and saw where it tapered away to nothing, and where, fifty feet beyond it along the cliff face, was a cave that we might enter.

Above us was another, a mere twenty feet away, and another a little to our right and above, that might be reached in two strides by any man who had legs twelve feet long and arms to match.

And then, because I wasn’t thinking, I looked down.

I snatched at Pantera’s arm; he was closest. ‘ Below. We’re not alone.’

Eight men walked where we had been. Eight young Hebrew zealots, each bearing a large pack on his shoulders, and one of them with showy bronze locks that glimmered in the pale morning light and labelled him Nicodemus as surely as a placard bearing his name.

He didn’t look up, none of them did, for they were deep in the shadowed part of the path where they had to watch their footing — but only for now.

‘We have to find the cave.’ Pantera breathed it, no more a sound than the rising of the moon. ‘Horgias? Which one?’

Horgias shook his head. ‘I don’t know. There are fragments of wool and linen on the route to each of the three closest. The Eagle could be in any one of them.’ He chewed his lip, looking up. ‘We could draw lots?’ he offered doubtfully.

I had a better answer. Even as he spoke, three white birds came from the south and rode the strong air that lifted over the deathly sea. I pointed, and we watched them turn west, back towards Jerusalem, and, ultimately, towards Rome.

‘Three,’ I said. ‘Sacred to the gods and pointing our way. We need to go in through the third cave, counting along from south to north.’ I pointed to the smallest of the three caves nearby; the one up and twelve feet to our right that a long-limbed man might reach.

Horgias squinted sideways at me. ‘You saw the birds first. Do you want to lead?’

I looked up at the rock and found that in the better light of dawn the shadows had grown smaller and deeper and the route across was suddenly obvious even to such as me who did not have the stature of a giant.

I eased past Horgias, and if I was not fearless as I stepped to the end of the ledge and reached for the first small pinch of rock to anchor me, I was at least lifted by the gods and their promise.

My foot slid out to a shelf no wider than my thumb and I felt the cold stone grow warm beneath me as it took my weight and held it so that I might bring my left hand to a slight crack and my left foot to a knuckle of rock and then I was crabbing sideways across the rock face with a fall of a hundred feet straight down if I let go.

Don’t look down. My own voice in my head, the old memories hazy now. I did look down and saw the sun-washed sea and the men still making their way up the path, and prayed to the same god that had sent the white birds that Nicodemus and his zealots might not look up.

My hand reached the edge of the cave and found it not a flat ledge but a lip, like the edge of a beaker, that I could wrap my whole hand around and so haul myself up as on to the branch of a tree, then inside to the floor about a foot down.

The air moved past me fast enough to lift my hair, but it was too dark to see more than a yard or two of the interior. I found an iron ring embedded deep in the rock, but nothing else to show that the cave had ever been inhabited. No mencame to assault me; no guards set about their sacred writings. I was relieved and disappointed all in one messy round.

Safe, I guided Pantera with silent signals until he, too, scrambled over the lip and went on past me to explore the dark interior, and then Horgias swarmed up smooth as a lizard and came to sit beside me inside the lip of the cave, far enough back to be lost in the dark should the zealots look up, and yet close enough to the front to watch them as they took the path below us, each one humped like a she-camel with a linen-bound pack.

‘Their packs look as if they weigh heavy,’ I said. ‘It won’t be easy climbing with those on.’ I tried to imagine making the last crab-crawl across the rock with a pack on my back the weight of a sheep and shuddered at the thought.

‘There are weapons on top,’ Pantera answered, from behind my right shoulder. ‘You can see the ridges of sword blades in their sheaths.’ He took a step back into the gloom. ‘This cave has two openings about twenty paces back that lead deeper into the mountain. There may be men through either of them, but the mouths of both are silent. If Nicodemus and his group come up to here, we can hide in one and hope they take the other.’

‘And if they don’t?’ Horgias asked.

Pantera’s grin was the only part of him we could see. ‘If they don’t, then we fight.’ He drew a broad-bladed knife from one forearm and held it up, mirror to our eyes. ‘If they bring a rope, try to tie it to the ring. It’ll make getting down a great deal easier afterwards.’