The Nazarene’s limbs kicked in agony beneath him; his body writhed and convulsed. Yet he made no sound. Then at once his spirit fled. He crumpled from the waist.
With a cry of woe, the sorceress sprang free of her captors. Her arms to the elbow and the entire front of her smock were slathered in sputum and tissue. Her face and neck, even her tangled mane, glistened with the blood of the Nazarene.
Michael had fallen now, life-fled, released by the two who held him. His head lolled grotesquely from his unstrung neck.
At a sign from Severus, the legionaries and even the Arabs let the witch flee through their cordon. David saw her sprint, like a mad thing, away into the desert.
Above and around the children’s hiding place, Nabateans and Romans redoubled the intensity of their search.
Now Severus and his men turned to Telamon.
− 29 −
THE MINISTRATIONS OF EMPIRE
“UPEND HIM!” THE HOBNAIL CORPORAL CRIED.
In moments the Romans had rifled the mercenary’s cloak and kit. From his distant vantage, David could see a runt sergeant with orange curls dig Telamon’s remaining golden eagles from a packet of his kit. The man displayed these triumphantly.
“Haul him up!” the sergeant bawled. A chain was secured about Telamon’s neck. As the iron ran tight, it seemed nearly to snap the mercenary’s spine. David strained to see. The chain ascended to some kind of elevated tackle. The man-at-arms, half strangled, was lashed by cords to stone projections in the face of the aqueduct wall.
A heavy rope was looped around his chest, beneath both arms, and drawn tight from behind. When he struggled against this, the corporal with the hobnails swatted him below the eye as hard as he could with the butt of his gladius. A second cord was wound around both the mercenary’s ankles, double-lashing them together.
“Secure the wrist bindings,” ordered Severus. “One line around each. Lash them tight. I want nothing slipping.”
Telamon was jerked upright by the heavy rope beneath his armpits. Two Arabs, one after the other, spat in his face. A third seized him with one hand by the testicles. Looking directly into the mercenary’s eyes, he made an obscene gesture while spewing some curse in the Nabatean dialect.
A cluster of legionaries drove the tribesmen back. The soldiers came forward, collecting about Telamon. Each searched the man-at-arms’ face, as if seeking a mark of fear or any indication that the captive would now plead for his life. Several of the men appeared to know Telamon. These peered with even keener intensity. “Are you sure,” said one, “this is him?”
“This is the man.”
This from Severus, stepping forward. With a gesture he dispersed the others, Romans and Arabs, apart from the man-at-arms. The commander alone, save his lieutenant, stood now before his captive.
“We’ll catch the girl—you know that, peregrine. How far can she run? There’s not a blade of grass to hide behind for forty miles.”
The tribune indicated the mounds of building blocks—a score and more, extending in a line from the capture site for a mile along the path of the abandoned aqueduct.
“She’s hiding in one of those—wriggled down beneath the stones,” Severus declared. “Where else can she be?”
Telamon could turn just far enough to track the line of mounds. Already Severus’s men, assisted by their Arab confederates, were cutting and collecting boughs of flammable sumac and terebinth.
“I’ll smoke her out or roast her in place where she hides,” said Severus. “Unless you see sense and call her forth.”
“I don’t control her,” the mercenary responded.
“I warn you I’m not playing!”
“Nor am I.”
At Telamon’s feet lay the physical remains of Michael. The mercenary’s glance declined now toward the Nazarene’s corpse.
Severus remarked this.
“Has Rome acted too harshly here?” the tribune said. “I’ve seen you, peregrine, perform far worse in her service. I hired you expecting just that. Or perhaps you think this subversive or Messianic or whatever he calls himself didn’t deserve such a grisly end, that the letter he carries, or that the girl bears if the witch speaks true, is not worth such extravagant measures to intercept and destroy.” Severus used the Latin exstirpare, meaning to root out and destroy utterly.
“The emperor,” said Severus, “fears no power on earth. Armies cannot overawe him. Insurrection cannot drag him down. Only one force unsettles Rome’s slumber—that which this missionary bears in words and speech.”
The commander paused and glanced about at the legionaries and their officers attending every word.
“Faith,” said he. “A dream of deliverance—not only in the next life but in this one here and now. The ‘kingdom of heaven’!”
Severus turned back to Telamon.
“The most dangerous thing in the world is faith. That is why I selected you, peregrine—you and no other—for this assignment. A man who believes in nothing . . . who takes pride in believing in nothing.
“Yet you have failed me. Indeed, you have, it seems, gone over to the foe—and at a toll to you of a considerable fortune! Why? What has turned you? What made you change your mind?”
Three legionaries scurried into view, signing for the lieutenant’s attention. This officer, it seemed, had commanded them to fetch a certain item. They saluted now, indicating they had done so.
The soldiers bore a stout wooden beam, collected apparently from the construction materials lying about the site.
“Good,” said the lieutenant.
With a gesture he directed the soldiers to rig the beam horizontally and secure it to the tackle already mounted above Telamon on the face of the aqueduct. The three, assisted by others, took the timber in hand and elevated it behind the mercenary. The hobnail corporal and two others seized the man-at-arms and manhandled him rearward until he stood directly beneath this instrument.
Severus signed for his men to hold.
He regarded Telamon, it seemed, with genuine mystification.
“What is it?” he asked. “Is it me? Do you hate me that much? Is it Rome? Has your heart turned so fervently against the comrades with whom you once served?”
The tribune indicated the beam rigged above Telamon’s shoulders.
“You would drain your life in agony . . . for what? Some vain and empty gesture against the emperor? Against the supreme and unshakable power of the world?”
With a blow of his hand the commander struck the horizontal spar.
“Do you see what you compel Rome to do? Do you understand the end you call down upon yourself? We were brothers once! The way I sheathe my sword, the very manner in which I buckle my armor I learned from you! What has become of you?”
The man-at-arms responded evenly, absent rancor. “I might ask, brother,” he said, “the same of you.”
The tribune took half a step back.
“Bind him to the instrument.”
At their commander’s signal, the legionaries cut the rawhide thongs that yoked Telamon’s wrists. They spread the mercenary’s arms wide, each to one side, and lashed them to the wooden beam.
“Spike him, sir?” inquired the sergeant.