They came close, and the men parted to let them through. The legionaries were led by an optio; all their centurions were dead. He was lean and wiry, Roman to the ends of his toes. He took his sword and held it across the flats of his palms and knelt, and put it at Menachem’s feet. He was bleeding from a wound on his shoulder, not badly. He said, ‘We are dead men. We commend ourselves to your care.’
Menachem looked down at the sword, at the notches on its blade made in the battle just gone.
‘A prisoner,’ he said, in the clear Greek they all spoke, ‘is the man who in the last breath was trying to kill me, and in the next wishes me to feed him and give him water.’ He turned to Pantera. ‘What do we do?’
‘If you were Roman,’ Pantera said, ‘you would crucify them in sight of their brethren in Jerusalem so they would know what awaited those who stood against you.’
‘I am not, and I will not.’ Menachem spat. A ripple ran through his men, of pride, perhaps.
‘You could let them fall on their swords,’ Pantera offered. ‘Or walk off the edge of the plateau. Either death is swift, honourable and takes considerable courage. They would go cleanly to their gods. You would be doing them a kindness.’
A long moment passed, with no words to fill it, nor none needed. At the end, Menachem turned to Moshe and nodded, and with that as the only order, his men opened out and made a column, lined on both sides, between the stores and the edge of the plateau, to the one place where there was no wall to keep men from falling. They did it with pride, and with a sense of honour that shone from them.
The legionaries watched it and they too did not need to speak. With a glance at Menachem for permission, the optio bent to retrieve his sword, buckled it on and turned to face eternity.
His men fell into line behind him, two on two; thirteen of them in all. A standard-bearer took the hindmost place, for all that their only standard was a small military pennant; the eagle of their legion was miles away.
In the heavy silence, the optio spoke aloud his own name, and that of his god. His men spoke after him, all at once, so that for a moment the sound was once again the discord of battle. And through that sound came Mergus, breathing hard, sweeping blood from the hilt of his sword.
He said, ‘My lord, there is another way. If you will allow me?’
Menachem’s eyes flashed. ‘Does this way avoid bloodshed? And yet leave my men safe?’
‘I believe it may.’ With a bow, Mergus laid his sword on the ground in place of the one just lifted. Beside it, he laid his helmet, so that he stood bareheaded, his hair slick to his scalp with sweat. In short order after these, he shed his mail shirt, his undercladding and his shirt, until he stood before them half naked.
The Hebrews turned away, but Romans took in the marks of his past and his present; the scars of old floggings, ubiquitous in the legions, the tattoos of his rank: centurion of the Twentieth; the brand of Mithras on his sternum and the later marks that took him from the lowest rank of Raven to the higher one of Lion, a priest of that cult.
In Latin, in the cadences of the parade ground, Mergus spoke.
‘I am Appius Mergus, centurion of the Twentieth legion, in Judaea in the service of my emperor. With me is Sebastos Pantera, known as the Leopard, citizen of Rome, made so by the hand of the emperor himself in consideration of his services to the city and the empire. The one who has taken control of Jerusalem is a traitor and a spy. He it is who burned Rome two years ago; we fought him then, and we fight him now. I swear to you now in the name of my god, by the bull-slayer, first Father, god of the nights and of the days, that this is true. If you join with us, if you take a new oath to Menachem, rightful king of Judaea, you will be rewarded for it by the emperor when this conflict is over.’
The silence when he finished was more dense than it had been before. Mistrust flooded from both sides, from men who had killed and had no desire to take the enemy as a brother.
Only from Menachem was there a measure of equanimity. In good, clear Latin, he said, ‘If you will swear an unbreakable oath to serve in my interests, I will accept it.’
For a dozen slow heartbeats, Pantera dared to hope. Then the optio shook his head and turned back to face the edge of the plateau. He looked over his shoulder at Mergus.
‘If it offend you, I apologize; I would not go to my death carrying one more man’s hurt. But I prefer to die now, than to serve against my brothers.’
He marched as he would to war, fast and straight, two dozen strides to the edge, kicking up dust to his knees so that he seemed by the end to float on a cloud of heavy air.
He might have gone on walking on that cloud, out into oblivion, but the weight of his armour caught up with him, and he was gone, suddenly, shockingly, fast as a stone.
Not a scream came from him or from the four ranks of men who followed, dropping in pairs, so that there was silence, for a while, and only the faintest crashing impact as they met the valley’s floor.
Menachem had closed his eyes and was speaking a prayer to his god, and so he did not see, as Pantera did, when the standard-bearer changed his mind.
‘Strabo, Silanus, Ralla, Bassus, on me! About face!’ The order snapped and the four named men snapped with it in a perfect turn. The rearmost, who had been foremost, teetered a hand’s breadth from the edge; the merest gust of a breeze would have pushed them over.
It did not come. They stood square and straight. The standard-bearer planted the end of his pennant on the rock. ‘I am Gnaeus Galerius, called Naso, optio of the fourth century, second cohort of the Fourteenth. I served in Britain under Paullinus. Did you march to Mona with him?’
His question was directed at Mergus. ‘I did. We marched there to fight the dreamers and back to the battle with the rebel forces and on down to the south to relieve the Second. Did you march with us?’
‘No.’ Naso sounded sad that he had not. ‘We left before that war. Gallus sent us to Claudius with a message after some small skirmish and Claudius kept us in Rome. When he died, the new emperor, Nero, kept us on. He sent us to Judaea less than a year ago.’ Naso smiled, thinly. ‘I believe it was a gift for good behaviour.’
‘You are not seconded to the Tenth?’ Mergus asked. The nine men who had gone were all of the Tenth legion, the marks on their belts had proclaimed it.
‘Not seconded to, not friends with, not particularly impressed by
… no.’ Naso picked his nose, thoughtfully. ‘And unlike the Tenth, who have been in the east so long they have begun to believe every rumour they hear, I have seen Nero, watched him as a boy and saw him come to a man. He is…’ Naso might have been close to death, but he was not stupid. He swallowed his opinion of Nero. ‘He is a man I would trust with the truth. And Mithras is a god I would trust with my life.’ He eased his blade from its sheath. To Menachem, he said, ‘Would you take our oath, to defend you at all times, from all harm, until death?’
‘We march next on Jerusalem,’ Menachem said. ‘The men of the garrison Guard are legionaries of the Tenth under Saulos’ command. Unless we can persuade them to abandon him — and I do not hold out much hope for that — we will attack them. Will you fight against your brothers?’
‘It would hardly be the first time,’ Naso said. ‘And I doubt if it will be the last. Caesar fought Pompeius with his legions and then Marcus Antonius fought Octavian who became Augustus. The legions fight for who pays them and whom they trust. I will trust you if you will trust me. And my men go where I go, all of them.’
‘Then I take your oath,’ Menachem said. ‘And, in turn, give you mine, not to send you into danger that is ill-thought or ill-judged, not to ask of you more than a man may reasonably give, and never to hand you to the authority of another, should your emperor decide that he does not wish, after all, to support these two, who carry out his orders.’