Unholy Night

I

The thieving wise men rose before dawn, unhitched their camels, and led them into the bitter cold. The sky was just waking up to the first hints of deepest blue, but the sun was still a good half hour from revealing itself behind the eastern hills. Stars could still be seen shining clearly between the dark outlines of clouds. But not the star of Bethlehem. Sometime during the past few hours, it had simply vanished. Snuffed out by the desert wind. Balthazar wasn’t surprised. Nothing that bright burned for very long.

Joseph and Mary hadn’t said a word when the men woke, hadn’t so much as looked at them as they left, not even when Melchyor had wished them well in his affably stupid way. Balthazar didn’t blame them for the lack of civility. In the space of a few cramped hours, they’d managed to beat the carpenter bloody, insult his wife’s honor, hold them both hostage, and denounce everything they believed in as a joke. All the same, he was happy to be rid of them. Let them babble about their paranoid fantasies to someone else.

The wise men mounted their camels and looked south into Bethlehem. The village was already alive, smoke rising from cooking fires and clay ovens, young girls shaking the dust off sleeping mats in the streets. The shepherds had risen before the first hint of blue and taken their flocks out to pasture, their sons in tow. The women had risen to cook for them. And now, with the men gone for the day, they and their daughters busied themselves with housework and tended to the younger children. The ones who were too small to help.

It was a village almost entirely devoted to goats, but not all the men of Bethlehem were shepherds. A few of them could be seen leading their small herds north along the road that passed by the wise men’s stable. They were almost certainly headed to Jerusalem to sell their animals for meat or as sacrifices at the Great Temple. Dragging their goats up and down the road in bare feet, five miles each way. Day after miserable day. Up before sunrise, home after dark. All in the hopes of selling a single, stinking animal. All in the hopes of making enough to put a crust of bread in their children’s bellies. When life was that hard, anyone who didn’t steal for a living was crazy.

The sight of three noblemen riding at this early hour was unusual but not strange enough to warrant a second look from the goat draggers they passed on the road to Jerusalem. It was best to avoid staring at noblemen too long, anyway. There was always the chance they’d take offense and have you lashed, or worse.

Though the wise men wanted to get as far away from Herod as possible, they were headed back in the direction of his palace. Their plan was to take the road north toward Jerusalem, then, a mile or so before the South Gate, make a hard right and cut fifteen miles east through the desert to Qumran — a tiny settlement on the shores of the Dead Sea.

Qumran was home to a small sect of Jewish monks who called themselves the Essenes. But while the word monk evoked an image of clean, quiet reverence, the Essenes were more like mad hermits — men who shunned material wealth, carnal pleasure, and regular bathing in order to devote themselves to their beliefs. From what Balthazar could tell, those beliefs amounted to scribbling ancient nonsense on scrolls and then hiding those scrolls in the caves that dotted the surrounding mountains of the northern Dead Sea. Why they hid them, or who they hid them from, were mysteries.

Balthazar had taken refuge in those caves on several occasions, and he’d made some handsome donations to the monks in return for their hospitality. While they didn’t particularly care about material wealth, they loved the things it bought: rugs for their floors, clothes for their bodies, parchment and ink for their mysterious musings. Balthazar knew many of the Essenes by name. He also knew they could be trusted to keep his whereabouts a secret. Most important of all, he knew that Herod’s men wouldn’t dare disturb such a sacred Jewish settlement. That was one of the great things about the Judean Army. It was made up almost entirely of Jews.

After the trail was sufficiently cold, Balthazar would cut his loyal servants loose and disappear with the seven winds. He didn’t like traveling companions. It was one of the reasons he never worked with partners. Partners couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing a hundred percent of the time. They slowed you down. They had differing opinions. When you enlisted them to help you pick pockets, they screwed up spilling wine on your targets and got you chased across aqueducts. Partners were bad news, even when they were in your debt.

The wise men were less than a mile from Bethlehem when the first whispers of trouble reached their ears. A faint rumble from the half-darkness ahead. A growing rumble, like the beating of hooves against earth. With it, the clanging of armor growing sharper against the air.

“What is that?” asked Gaspar.

Balthazar knew at once. Even before he saw the first shapes crest the hill on the road ahead, before he saw the outlines of swords and spears against the faint desert sky, he knew. They were finished.

Herod’s troops were galloping south toward Bethlehem. Dozens of them, from the sound of it. Without discussion, Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchyor veered their camels off of the road and into the desert on their right, making way for the approaching horsemen. They lifted the fronts of their shemaghs to cover their faces. This, Balthazar realized, was a useless piece of instinct.

As if the sight of three wise men riding beside the road isn’t suspicious enough. As if anyone can even make our faces out in this light.

“What do we do?” asked Gaspar. “There must be a hundred of them. We have no weapons.”

Balthazar was suddenly struck by how stupid they’d been to stick together. The soldiers would be looking for three men, and here they were, three of them. They’d been stupid to stop in Bethlehem. It was too close to the city. They should’ve gone into the desert. Yes, that star had made the night almost as bright as the day, but there was a lot more desert to cover than villages to search. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Why hadn’t they kept riding? Because they’d been tired? Was being tired worse than being dead?

“Balthazar, what do we do?”

If they took off now, they were sure to draw the army’s attention. Running was an admission of guilt, an invitation to be chased. The only shot they had — and it was an absurdly long shot — was that the soldiers hadn’t spotted them yet. That they’d be missed in the relative darkness of dawn.

“Keep riding.”

“But — ”

“If they see us, we take off in different directions. Understand? Split them up, try and lose them in the desert. Melchyor? Do you understand?”

“Lose them in the desert… ”

He wasn’t listening. He was focused on the armored men riding south, kicking up a cloud of dark dust. The men who would reach them in a few seconds and tear them to pieces.

“Not yet,” said Balthazar. “Nobody take off yet. Not unless they see us… ”

Of course they were going to see them. They were barely fifty feet from the road, and silhouetted against the eastern sky, which was growing brighter by the minute.

Don’t mind us, thought Balthazar. Just three wise men riding along a dark road for no reason whatsoever…

The army galloped by to their left. There was no question they were close enough to make out the shapes of the wise men, no question that some of the soldier’s helmets were turning toward them — their eyes focusing in like arrows on a stretched bow. Balthazar gripped his camel’s reins tightly, readied his right leg to deliver a swift kick to its side as soon as the first horse turned in his direction.

But none of them turned. They just kept on riding south toward Bethlehem. Balthazar couldn’t believe it. They’d seen them; he was sure of it. They’d seen three wise men riding along the road at a strange hour, yet they hadn’t even stopped to question them.

As the rumble of hooves passed by and grew weaker behind them, the wise men stopped and pointed their camels south. They watched in silent disbelief as that dark, dusty mass of horses and men, that creature, crawled along the road, toward the smoke of cooking fires and clay ovens in the distance.

“I don’t understand,” said Balthazar.

“What is there to understand?” asked Gaspar. “The Fates are with us!”

“But… they saw us.”

“We can discuss it on the way to Qumran! Let us go, now!”

Balthazar watched the creature slither along the road toward the north of Bethlehem, the dark blue of the heavens growing lighter by the second. For some reason, he could hear the faint, raspy voice of Herod in his skull. Raging at his advisors, shaking the walls of his throne room.

“Balthazar — to Qumran, quickly!”

Gaspar was right. What was there to understand? They’d been lucky, that’s all. They could sit here and wonder why, or they could take advantage of that luck. The wise men pointed their camels north and rode toward their freedom, even as that faint voice echoed in Balthazar’s brain. Deep down in the smooth-walled, iron-barred dungeons, where all the bad things belonged. He knew they’d been spotted. He’d felt those eyes on him. Those arrows…

They’d gone only a few feet when they heard something on the air. Something distant and shrill. Something that could almost be mistaken for the howl of a wild dog. But it was a scream. A woman’s scream. Then another.

The wise men turned back and found the road empty, all traces of the creature gone. It had been absorbed into the village. Absorbed like blood into cloth. And somewhere beneath the smoke of cooking fires and clay ovens, it was making a woman scream.

“Balthazar… you don’t think… ”

Do I think the carpenter and his wife were right?

Herod was many things, but a murderer of infants? No. No man was capable of that. Not even the twisted, decayed wisp of a man he’d come face-to-face with at the palace. And even if he was capable, he was too smart. There would be riots in the streets if word got out. A civil war. Herod was many things, but he was a politician first. He knew better.

But the voice… that voice faintly raging in the depths of Balthazar’s brain told him otherwise.

“We’re going back,” he said.

“Are you mad?”

“I just want to have a look, that’s all.”

“The Judean Army is out there looking for us, and you want to go look for — ”

“They saw us, Gaspar. They saw us and they weren’t interested.”

“So?”

“They should’ve been. Three men on camels? Three men with their faces covered? They should’ve — ”

He was cut off by another scream. Gaspar and Balthazar turned away from each other and looked back toward the village. This had been a different scream. The same woman, maybe — but a different scream altogether.

“Just a look,” said Balthazar. “That’s all.”

Balthazar kicked the side of his camel and took off down the road to Bethlehem. Gaspar and Melchyor shared a look behind his back, then followed. They were in his debt, after all.

The sun had finally pushed its head above the crest of the eastern hills — beginning a journey that would see it reach the pinnacle of the heavens before growing old and dying peacefully in the west. Its orange light spilled onto the wise men’s backs as they looked down from a ridge on the east side of Bethlehem. From here, they could see down some of the wider cobblestoned streets in the village’s center. But where those streets had been full and awake with the activities of daily life, they were now suddenly, eerily empty.

Empty except for a woman in dark robes, running barefoot toward them down one of the cobblestoned streets. Running faster than she’d ever run in her life, because nothing in her life had ever been as important. From their perch, Balthazar and the others could see why:

There was a baby in her arms.

Naked. Tiny. Held to its mother’s breast as she ran from the horse. The black horse galloped after them with a soldier on its back, his armor clanging around him, his sword drawn.

Balthazar could hear that faint voice in the dungeon growing louder with each fall of the horse’s hooves. He could hear the diseased rants of a king obsessed with power. A king who had once ordered his own wife and children put to death. Who’d turned on his own blood. Why wouldn’t he? If a man could murder his own children…

The soldier swung his blade and struck the woman in the back. She fell forward, and though she tried with all of herself to hold on, the baby flew out of her grasp. It landed on the cobblestones and rolled for a few feet, too fragile, too new to brace itself against the impact. It came to a stop on its back, lay silent for a moment, then let out a terrible shriek, its lungs doing their work brilliantly. Its eyes shut. The woman responded with a shriek of her own, crawling toward it as the soldier dismounted and walked over to where the infant lay crying. Crying out for its mother’s comforting touch.

The soldier stood over the baby a moment, then ran his sword through its belly.

The soldier ran his sword through its… the soldier ran his —

Stop.

It didn’t happen that way at all. Balthazar’s eyes had betrayed him. He was back in the world of infinite oceans and distant visions. No, it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Only… the cold, sick water in his blood told him that it was. That familiar feeling. The one that had sent him chasing after the flittering gold pendant.

The baby’s cries sharpened, then stopped. Its arms and legs flailed weakly for a moment… then it was still. The soldier withdrew his blade. Wiped it on the bottom of his sandal.

He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead…

The mother was still crawling across the cobblestones toward her son — screaming her throat raw. The soldier walked back to her casually — you coward, you dog… you won’t do it, I’ll kill — and ran the blade through her back. But she kept crawling. Crawling toward her son, so the soldier ran her through again. Her body tensed briefly and was still.

Gaspar and Melchyor couldn’t believe their eyes. They were criminals. All of them, criminals. They’d seen their share of murder and cruelty. God knew they had.

But neither of them had ever seen anything like this. Neither of them had ever imagined it possible. They’d been rendered mute by the sight.

Balthazar’s teeth clenched so tightly around his lower lip that blood had begun to pool in his mouth.

This simply wouldn’t do.

The hell with Qumran. The hell with all of it. He decided to kill them. All of them. He was going to snuff out every one of their worthless lives, stand over every one of their dismembered bodies. He didn’t know how he was going to do this, seeing as he didn’t have any weapons and was outnumbered at least twenty to one, but he knew. His being was overflowing with something. Not rage. Something stronger than rage. Something more powerful and just.

The woman lifted her head as she lay dying in the street. The black horse was leaving with the man on its back. Riding away. Leaving them both to bleed in the street. She held her head up as high as she could, determined to look at her son one more time before she left this life.

The sun was rising. Its hard orange light had caught some of the infant’s fine hair. Hair whose color would never change. His eyes closed, his chest no longer rising or falling. His hands. Tiny, delicate, cold. But there was something else. Something above him. Above all of Bethlehem in the early light. The woman thought she saw the shapes of three men on camelback, but it was hard to tell. The sun was directly behind them, creating a blinding halo around their heads. With her last thought, she wondered if they’d come to welcome her into the next world.

When Balthazar spoke at last, he had to will every syllable into existence.

“The two of you are in my debt?”

“Yes,” said Gaspar, “but you can’t be think — ”

“The two of you are in my debt?”

Gaspar hesitated. He knew what was coming next.

“Yes… ”

“With me.”

Balthazar kicked the side of his camel and rode down into the village. In accordance with the law of the desert, but against every one of their instincts, Gaspar and Melchyor followed him.

Joseph and Mary could hear the screams too. And though they didn’t dare leave the stables to see, they knew. They knew it was happening. Right now. Right here in Bethlehem. They could hear the hooves beating against the road, the clanging of armor as it entered the village. It was too late to run. There were too many of them out there.

Joseph hurried Mary and the baby into one of the stable’s tiny stalls. A black-and-white spotted goat protested as Joseph shoved it aside to make room for his wife, who lay beside it in the fetal position, the baby beside her. Joseph covered them with as much hay as he could — much of it matted together with dry manure. There was barely enough of it to cover them both, but it would have to do.

Having hidden them as best he could, Joseph slammed the stall shut and tried to look like he belonged, grabbing his old friend the pitchfork and pretending to clean up the stable. If the soldiers barged in, they’d see a man going about his work, nothing more. They’d leave him alone and look elsewhere. But if they didn’t — if for some reason they decided to look around, God forbid, he could use the pitchfork to buy Mary a little time.

Joseph waited and prayed. Prayed that the soldiers wouldn’t bother with the stable at all. Why would they? It doesn’t make sense. Stables are for animals, not infants. He prayed that the shepherd who’d taken pity on them — who’d given them their lodging in the first place — wouldn’t give them up now. Mostly, Joseph prayed that the baby wouldn’t start crying. So far, remarkably, it had stayed happy and calm as it had been covered with hay and manure.

A lone soldier chased a twelve-year-old boy over the cobblestones near the village center. Not to slaughter him, but the baby brother he held in his arms. The baby he’d snatched away from his mother, certain that he could ran faster than she could. And he’d been right to do it. He was faster than she could have ever hoped to be. But he wasn’t faster than the black horse with the clanging man on its back.

The soldier drew his sword as he closed in on the boy’s back, unaware that three men on camels were currently chasing him down the same street. Unaware that the Antioch Ghost was almost on him, kicking the side of his camel harder than he’d ever kicked anything in his life. Harder than he’d kicked his ill-fated camel in the Judean Desert. Faster you piece of shit. Gaspar and Melchyor riding close behind him…

The camel responded, galloping across the cobblestones and pulling up just behind the black horse. Close enough to strike with a sword, if he’d only had one. Balthazar settled for the next best thing: He grabbed the back of the soldier’s collar and yanked him off his saddle and onto the cobblestones, where he was promptly trampled by Gaspar’s and Melchyor’s camels. They hadn’t meant to run him over — they simply couldn’t stop in time. But now they did, pulling up on their reins and circling back to inspect the damage.

Balthazar stopped his own camel and watched the soldier’s horse gallop on for a hundred more feet, stop, then trot in a circle, unsure what to do with itself. He watched as the boy kept on running with the infant in his arms, unaware that the menace behind him was gone.

Run, boy, and don’t stop running until you drop from exhaustion.

The soldier was lying motionless on his back, a deep dent in his breastplate where a camel’s foot had struck his chest. He was older than most men of his lowly rank, a tinge of gray at his temples. He was coughing up blood, the result of a splintered rib cage and torn organs, Balthazar guessed. Good. His left arm had been mangled beneath another camel foot, flattened below the elbow and rendered useless. He writhed, moaned.

Good… I hope it’s the worst pain you’ve ever known.

Balthazar jumped down off his camel and walked toward him. He walked calmly, like the dead man he was. He stepped on the soldier’s wrist, leaned over, and took his sword away. It wasn’t much to look at. Standard issue for a low-ranking Judean soldier. But it would do.

Balthazar held the tip of the sword over the soldier’s throat.

“P-please,” said the soldier, struggling for breath. “D-don’t — ”

“Don’t what?” asked Balthazar, cupping a hand to his ear.

“Don’t k-kill… ”

“Don’t kill you? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Don’t k-kill me… ”

The soldier was sobbing. Balthazar was almost embarrassed for him.

“And if you’d caught up with that boy and baby, would you have shown it the same mercy?”

“Ple — ”

Balthazar pushed down until he felt the “pop” of the blade going through the soldier’s Adam’s apple. The man clutched at it with his right hand — the blood bubbling up on either side of it. He tried frantically to pull it out of his throat, but Balthazar only pushed harder and twisted the blade, tearing an even bigger hole open. There was that same shade of white… that same mask of fear… that same dreadful realization that he was going to die.

Good, thought Balthazar. I hope you’re afraid.…

Gaspar and Melchyor had dismounted behind him, watching the soldier die on his back. His limbs moved weakly, then not at all. Balthazar lifted his eyes from the dying soldier’s face, drawn by a renewed clanging of armor in the distance. Looking up, he saw five Judean soldiers emerge from a house at the far end of the street, their swords stained with blood, a mother’s and father’s screams coming from inside. The soldiers were halfway to their waiting horses when one of them caught sight of Balthazar standing over the body of their dying comrade. Upon bearing witness to this tragedy, the soldier and his four companions reached the same conclusion that Balthazar had only minutes earlier:

This simply wouldn’t do.

Balthazar watched them charge — so incensed, so focused on righting this injustice, that they’d forgotten to bring their horses with them. If the wise men mounted their camels now, they could escape, no question. But Balthazar hadn’t ridden into Bethlehem to run. He’d come to kill every last one of them, or die trying.

He pulled the sword out of the dying soldier’s throat and walked to the middle of the street to meet them. The Judeans had every advantage. Numbers. Armor. But Balthazar didn’t care. He would stand his ground. He would take them all on.

“Give me the sword,” said Melchyor.

Balthazar didn’t flinch. His kept his eyes fixed on the approaching men.

“I’ll do it.”

“Give… me… the… sword.”

There was something about Melchyor’s voice. A different quality. Those words hadn’t come from the quiet simpleton he’d met in the dungeon, or the harmless cherub who cooed and made stupid faces at the infant when they’d left the stable.

Balthazar looked to Gaspar. Is he serious? Gaspar nodded.

“Give him the sword,” he said.

Balthazar didn’t exactly know why he handed their only sword to the shortest, fattest member of their group. But he did. Somehow, it just felt like the right thing to do. Melchyor gripped it in his fingers. Swung it from side to side, getting a sense of its weight. He ran his fingers along its blade, getting a sense of its power. Speaking to it. It wasn’t much of a sword, but it would do.

After all, there were only five of them.

When the soldiers were almost upon them, Melchyor held the sword out in front of his body and charged. The Judeans were taken aback — even amused by the sight of the little Greek coming at them all alone. The soldier who was farthest out in front of the pack planted his feet and readied his blade, turning his body to the side in a classic fencing stance. He was ready for anything. Especially the mad charge of a little man.

A second later, his left leg was gone, and he was crying out from the ground.

The little Greek had rolled forward at the last second and swung his blade across the soldier’s firmly planted lead leg. He’d never even gotten a chance to fight back. And as the soldier lay there on his side, feeling for a leg that was no longer there, his four comrades weren’t getting their chances, either.

One by one, Melchyor spun and struck his way through the soldiers — cutting them down as if they were following his instructions: striking him when he wanted them to strike, leaving themselves defenseless at exactly the moment he was ready to attack.

The second soldier twisted his torso, winding up for a ferocious swing. But with his side momentarily exposed, Melchyor shoved the blade through the space between his front and back armor plates, upward through his intestines.

His sword was still in the second soldier’s gut when the third came at him, swinging for his head. Using his short stature to his advantage, Melchyor ducked beneath the blade, yanked his sword free, and struck back at the off-balance opponent, cutting the soldier’s throat with such force that only his spine stopped the blade from going all the way through.

The forth and fifth soldiers attacked together, bringing their swords down on Melchyor’s head in unison. Melchyor used his own sword to shield himself, then did something incredibly stupid. Something that ran counter to everything anyone had ever been taught about sword fighting:

He dropped to his knees, as if in prayer.

The soldiers kept striking. But their blows were different. Weaker, clumsier. And now Balthazar saw the brilliance of what Melchyor had done. The Judeans wore large steel breastplates to protect their organs. Plates that ran from their necks to their belts. And while these were great for protecting their innards during an upright assault, they made it difficult for them to bend forward and robbed any strike below the waist of its power. All Melchyor had to do was keep blocking their awkward blows and wait for one of them to make a mistake.

The fourth soldier made just such a mistake, leaning too far forward and falling on his face to Melchyor’s left. A second later, he paid for that mistake with his life, as Melchyor drove the sword into the back of his neck, severing his brain stem.

Now it was just one-on-one. The last soldier wasn’t quite as hopeless a swordsman as his companions, but he wasn’t particularly good, either. After becoming the only man to make contact with Melchyor’s body — landing a graze across his shoulder — he went for the kill, thrusting forward. But his sword was too far out in front of his body, his feet too far apart. Melchyor knocked the soldier’s weapon out of his hands and thrust his own forward. The fifth soldier held his hands up in an attempt to block it, but Melchyor’s sword simply went through his left hand, pinning it to the soldier’s face an instant before the tip of the blade lodged in his brain. Melchyor held it there until he felt the soldier’s full weight hanging dead in the air, then pulled it out, letting his useless body fall to the ground.

Now it was Balthazar who’d been rendered mute.

The little Greek was the best swordsman he’d ever seen. Quicker, more powerful than any man had a right to be. There couldn’t be a doubt about it. Criminals were a bragging breed, but this had been no boast. This was fact.

“I told you,” said Gaspar. “Best in the empire.”

A second ago, there’d been five soldiers bearing down on them. Now there were five men lying in the street — two of them dying, the other three dead. There were so many questions. So many tricks to learn. But they’d have to wait. The screams of women and children were still coming from every corner of the village.

Balthazar and Gaspar each grabbed a sword from one of the dead soldiers, then mounted their camels and rode as fast as they could.

Joseph’s prayers weren’t answered. There were soldiers outside. Dismounting. Any second, they’d cross the threshold.

Had the shepherd been forced to give them up? Had the criminals sold them out for a reward? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. Nothing but the plan. Joseph was a simple shepherd, cleaning up his stable. No, everything would be fine. They’d question him; they’d leave. What use was there in looking around unless you enjoyed the smell of goats and their filth? All he had to do was stay calm. Not come off as nervous or jittery. All the baby had to do was stay quiet.

There were three of them. Two younger, one older, the latter with a more intricate helmet and breastplate. An officer of some kind, if Joseph had to guess. They entered and took in what little there was to take.

“Who are you?” asked the officer.

“A simple shepherd, sir. This is my stable. These are my goats.”

The officer examined Joseph’s face for a moment, then looked around again. It wasn’t much of a stable. Hardly worth his time. There were a thousand places to hide in Bethlehem. Almost any of them would’ve been more appealing than this one. What would a baby be doing in a stable, anyway?

Satisfied that only the lowliest forms of life would stoop to sleeping in such a place, the officer motioned to the other soldiers to follow him out.

Joseph felt a wave of relief wash over him. He’d done well. He hadn’t come across as nervous or jittery. The baby hadn’t —

“What was that?”

The officer spun around. He’d nearly been out the door when a squeal had filled the little stable. Not the bleating of a goat. Something different.

“Just a goat, sir.

The officer was on the verge of convincing himself that it was nothing, when another squeal came from one of the stalls on the right. This one almost a laugh.

No, Lord… please…

Under a thin covering of hay and manure, Mary had her hand pressed to the baby’s mouth, trying desperately to stifle her son’s cooing.

“It’s just the animals, I assure you.” Joseph had lost his calm. He could feel himself beginning to sweat, feel himself getting nervous and jittery.

“Hold him.”

The other two grabbed Joseph and forced the pitchfork from his hand. They held him against the wall while the officer drew his sword and began opening stall doors.

“I’m telling you, it’s just the anim — ”

“Quiet!” The officer turned to his men. “If he talks again, kill him.”

One of the soldiers drew his sword and held it against Joseph’s throat. The officer turned back to the stall door. The last one on the right side of the stable. He opened it…

There, beneath a black and white spotted goat and a thin layer of hay and manure, was a girl covering a baby’s mouth with her hand. Mary screamed as the officer pulled the back of her robes, trying to yank her away.

Joseph pulled free of the soldier’s grasp, ran at the officer, and jumped on his back. He got an arm around his throat and pulled as hard as he could, knowing that he’d be run through with a sword from behind any second. It didn’t matter. Let them run him through. Until they did, he planned to keep squeezing — keep choking this man until his last breath, in the hopes that Mary might free herself and run.

The officer dropped his sword and grabbed at Joseph’s arm with both hands. He managed to pry one under Joseph’s arm and pull it loose. His breath restored, he found the strength to throw Joseph over his back and into the stall with his wife and baby. Quickly, the officer looked down for the sword he’d dropped…

But it was gone.

He turned and found himself face-to-face with two men he’d never seen before. Two men who were standing on either side of the Antioch Ghost. The same Antioch Ghost he’d captured and dragged into Herod’s Palace from Bethel. The same one who was supposed to have been his ticket to a better life. He also saw the bodies of his men on the stable floor, their throats cut.

“But you’re… you’re supposed to be dead,” said the captain.

But I am, thought Balthazar. Don’t you understand? I am dead.

Balthazar cut the captain’s throat.

Joseph climbed onto the back of Melchyor’s camel. Gaspar made his animal kneel and helped Mary onto its back, the infant in her arms. Balthazar rode alone, with a sword in each hand.

They could make it if they went now. If they crossed the road and kept going, straight into the desert. But those screams continued to echo through Bethlehem. There were still dozens of soldiers out there, searching from house to house. Slaughtering children who’d barely known the earth. Mothers and fathers who were giving the last of themselves to save them. Now, at this very moment.

That screaming wouldn’t stop. Not until time itself stopped. You couldn’t get sounds like that out of your ears. Not completely. Never completely. They would always be there, faint whispers in that underground dungeon, where all the bad things belonged. Balthazar knew this. Just as he knew that they could make it if they went now. Just as he knew that saving all of them was impossible. And still, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

Gaspar could see it on his face. In the way he clenched the reins until his knuckles turned white, staring south into the village. “Balthazar… we can either die trying to save them all, or we can save this one while there is still time.”

Gaspar was right, of course. Balthazar had faced this choice before. The choice between dying a noble death and living to fight another cowardly day. The temptation to die could be overwhelming. The temptation to let the anger wash over you, to baptize you into a new, glorious existence. Burning briefly and brightly. But it was just an illusion. For no matter how many you killed in those final moments, it was never as many as you would have killed over time. That was the trick of it. The longer you lived, the more of them you could eventually kill. It was easy to forget a truth like that with the anger burning a hole in you.

There was still time. He would save this one. He would fight another cowardly day. And he would find a way, someday, to burn their whole world to the ground. Maybe even find a way to get those screams out of his ears. Balthazar swore this to himself and kicked the side of his camel.

They would ride straight into the desert this time. They would push their camels as fast as they would go, and they wouldn’t let up until they reached Qumran. The Essenes would keep them safe for at least a night or —

“You! Stop!”

Balthazar turned back. A pair of horsemen had spotted them from the south, one of average height and build, the other simply gigantic. Both were chasing them, side by side, up the road from Bethlehem with their swords drawn.

“Keep going!” said Balthazar to the others. “Stay with them!”

He turned his camel around and charged at the two horsemen — his left hand on the reins, his right behind his back. He would save this one. Gaspar and Melchyor would keep it safe, and he’d catch up with them in the desert as soon as this was done.

Balthazar rode straight at them, his camel’s nose pointed directly between their horses. He’d ride straight into them if he had to, but he wasn’t going to flinch. The soldiers were less than twenty feet from impact when they realized this and turned their horses to either side to go around him. As they did, Balthazar took his left hand off the reins, reached behind his back, and grabbed the two swords — holding them out to his sides like wings. Like a man with wings. Knocking both soldiers off their horses and into the dirt.

He circled back and dismounted, a sword in either hand. The smaller one was still trying to stand up, still trying to shake the impact off. But the bigger one was on his feet and on him in a hurry. With a low grunt, he ran at Balthazar and thrust the point of his sword toward his chest. But Balthazar was able to move out of its path and make him miss, tripping him in the process.

The smaller was up on his feet again, swinging wildly at Balthazar while his partner recovered. But the fall had taken a lot out of him, and Balthazar cut him to shreds, avoiding his armor and slicing deep gashes in his bare arms. When the bigger came at him again, he took a cue from Melchyor — dropping to his knees and hacking away at both of their legs, until the smaller fell onto his back and the bigger retreated out of reach.

“You tell Herod,” said Balthazar to the bigger man, “that the Antioch Ghost is laughing at him.”

The soldier’s already fearful eyes grew even wider.

“You tell him I’m laughing.… You tell him I’ll stand over his grave.”

The soldier considered this, then ran back toward the village, determined to fight another cowardly day. Balthazar watched him go a moment — a giant running on shredded legs — then turned his attention to the soldier squirming below him. The soldier pulling himself along the ground despite the deep gashes in his limbs. He was trying to get away, and yet he knew there was no chance of that happening.

“We… we were ordered… ”

“You were WHAT?”

“We were ord-ordered to do it, by Herod himself.”

“Ordered to do what?”

“To… k-kill all the male infants of Bethlehem.”

Balthazar raised the sword above his head and held it there. He gripped the handle’s leather straps so tightly that his entire arm shook.

“Any man who follows an order like that doesn’t deserve to walk the earth.”

Balthazar brought it down and struck the soldier’s face with the broad side of the blade. The first blow broke the soldier’s nose, cracking a dam behind his nostrils and sending a flood of red over his chin. The second broke his left eye socket and all but liquefied the eye inside it. Before Balthazar could land a third blow, the soldier’s instinct finally caught up with his shock, and he held his hands out to protect himself. Balthazar pulled the sword back and swung across his body, striking the soldier’s left wrist. The hand attached to it fell toward the road but was caught by a few strands of sinew and skin before it landed. Balthazar resumed striking him in the face, again and again and —

His jaw’s broken you should probably stop hitting him he’s unconscious Balthazar you can stop hitting him now his teeth are shattered stop Balthazar he’s dead he has to be dead by now what are you doing Balthazar why are you still hitting him there go the brains out the top of his skull stop Balthazar he’s not the one who did it I know but he’s the same he’s just like the one who killed —

A hand grabbed Balthazar’s wrist from behind as he raised the sword for another strike. He spun around, ready to kill whoever dared touch him. Ready to bash their brains right out of their ears.

But it wasn’t a Judean soldier. It was the carpenter, looking down at him from the back of Melchyor’s camel.

“He’s dead.”

They were all looking down at him. All but Mary, who’d turned away from the gruesome sight with the baby held tightly to her chest. Balthazar yanked his wrist out of Joseph’s grasp.

“Others will be coming,” said Joseph. “We have to go.”

Once again, he knew. He knew they had to go… but he couldn’t get his feet to move. In fact, he couldn’t get anything to move. Balthazar was having trouble catching his breath. He felt faint. Weak. They were all looking at him with strange expressions.…

“Balthazar… you’re bleeding.”

Who’d said that? The carpenter? Gaspar?

He looked down at his robes. There was a growing patch of blood on the right side of his chest. He pulled them apart and saw the wound. A puncture from a sword between his ribs. With his every breath, minuscule air bubbles formed in the bright, rich blood running from the wound.

The soldier hadn’t missed.

The sun had barely crested the eastern hills, but Balthazar could feel it setting already. Night was coming, and with it, some much-needed rest. For a moment, he thought that the strange, brilliant star in the east had returned.

This time, he was the only one who saw it.