Pullo nodded, though he didn’t look convinced. Still, he took another deep breath and began to tell his tale.
“Well, he cut me across the backs of my legs. Hamstrings. You know how it’s done, Vorenus. I’m lucky he wasn’t as efficient as you or I would have been useless even if I did survive. He didn’t cut all the way across, I guess. I can still make my way around. Just not much good in a hurry, as they say.
“I remember screaming and falling, but then I don’t remember a whole lot for a little bit. Just flashes of what was happening around me. The unnatural wind. The surging power from the Ark. And Didymus talking to me. He was a good man, you know. After everything. He wanted to help.
“And then I saw how Juba was coming back. He was like a man possessed, you know. The look in his eyes, the ceaseless focus despite all the wounds he’d received.”
“Ah, yes,” Hannah said. “It was the armor he had on, Pullo. It’s one of the Shards of Heaven: the Aegis of Zeus. It has the power to preserve life, to heal and protect the body.”
“Healing.” Pullo chewed on the word for a moment. “Sounds right. I don’t know how many arrows he’d been pinned with, but he was still coming. Like a mindless thing.”
“There are stories of Alexander the Great being the same when he wore it,” Caesarion added. “They say he had a singular focus of determination, perhaps of rage. The Aegis must do that to men somehow.” He looked at Hannah hopefully. “Do any of your stories say that? About the Shards driving men mad?”
“Not that I know of,” Hannah said. “But we aren’t meant to use them. Few who have ever done so have survived.”
When she answered him there was a look in her eyes that she gave him occasionally. It was not unlike the one he remembered on the faces of servants in the palaces of Alexandria who had thought him to be the living embodiment of the god Horus. It was a look that made him uncomfortable, and so he looked back to Pullo. “So you knew he was coming back for the Ark?”
“I did. He was going to get it. I knew I couldn’t stop him. And you’d only barely managed to do it once, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
Caesarion held up his hands. “I don’t disagree at all, Pullo. I was unconscious at that point.”
“Anyway, I don’t know why, but it was right then that I remembered those explosives that were there to bring down the bridge. I didn’t know if they would kill us all, but I didn’t think I had much choice. So I blew them up.”
“I saw it from across the harbor,” Vorenus said. “It was horrific.”
“I remember the flash of fire. Red and orange. Hot and angry. And then everything became a white light. There was wind. Water. Earth. Waves upon a shoreline. It was like all my memories, all my life, all at once. Things I’ve done and said. Things that made me laugh. Things that wake me in the night.”
Pullo’s voice had become a whisper, and Caesarion became aware of how he had leaned in to hear him. Everyone else had, too.
“And then I sensed a darkness rising, like a great wave that would carry me away.” The big man paused for a moment, his head down and his eyes closed. After several long and steady breaths his head came up and he looked his old friend in the eye. “It was frightening, Vorenus. I don’t care about admitting it now. But it was also … well, it was comforting, too.” He looked around at them all. “It was the end, I guess. And it felt like that darkness was where I was supposed to go. So it felt right. My fear melted away, drifted away. I was ready. And it was then that I heard it.”
“Heard what?” Hannah asked.
“A voice. Out of the dark. Only, not words. More like a breath of air, but when it hit me I understood what it was saying. It told me I needed to come back. I wasn’t done. And the darkness fell back away, and I saw beyond it in just that moment. Just for a flash before I woke up.”
“What did you see, Pullo?” Vorenus had leaned in even farther.
“Heaven,” the big man said. He looked at Hannah. “That’s what you call it, isn’t it? We would’ve said the Elysian Fields, but I guess it’s the same thing, really. It was white shores. The sun coming up over a wide country of soft, green hills.”
Pullo’s eyes turned to look out toward the Nile, but Caesarion could tell he wasn’t looking at the river. Not now. He was looking beyond them all, at a far green country.
No one spoke. Everyone seemed wrapped in their own thoughts and questions, but no one dared disturb Pullo from his dream.
After a time Pullo blinked away the memory, and he smiled, looking back at them all. His expression reminded Caesarion of the look on Rishi’s face when he talked of the Teacher. “I only saw it in a glimpse,” Pullo continued. “But whatever it was, I can tell you that what the monk said a little while ago isn’t true: not everything after this life is suffering. The place I saw was beautiful. But it was so much more. It seemed like a place I could run forever.”
“Was it only what you wanted to see?” Vorenus asked.
Caesarion blinked for a moment, uncertain of the older man’s tone. Was he attacking the truth of Pullo’s vision?
If he felt any hostility, Pullo didn’t show it. He simply shrugged. “You know, I’ve thought about that. Maybe. Maybe not. But it felt real to me.” He sighed. “Anyway, as soon as I saw it the whole thing was snatched away, almost like a cord that had been tying me to that place had been cut. I awoke in the rubble.”
For a little while they were all silent. Bees buzzed in the air, dancing between flowers.
“How’d you get out?” Hannah asked. “I saw how much rock there was.”
“You’d know better than me about how much rock there was, though it certainly felt like a lot when I was under it in the dark. The way it had fallen there was space around my head and part of my chest. Like a pocket, where there was enough air to breathe, and at times I could smell the sea beyond the smells of the shattered stones. A few times I heard birds and even distant voices. I couldn’t tell time, but I’m guessing I was under there a day or two. But the bridge needed to be rebuilt. So eventually people came down to clear the rubble. They found me.
“They were pretty amazed I was alive, but I think the weight of the stones actually stopped a lot of my bleeding. Lots of bones were broken. And my back was really badly burned.” The big man laughed lightly and gestured to his face. “If you think this is bad, then you don’t want to see what I look like back there.
“Anyway, they took me to that same House of Asclepius you were in, Vorenus. And wouldn’t you know it, but that same old priest helped bring me back to the land of the living.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“He did, amazingly enough. For all that I’d been torn up and smashed and burned, he knew who I was. There were a lot of fevers the first couple of weeks, and he gave me a lot of medicines for the pain. But when I really finally came out of it, he told me how he’d destroyed my legionnaire uniform and that he’d told people I was just an unfortunate fisherman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Pullo chuckled. “He had no way of knowing how bad I am at catching fish.”
“Patience was never your strong suit,” Vorenus agreed, smiling.
“Well, anyway, he got me back to what you see here. I offered to do what I could to repay him, but he said that the Lord Pharaoh had always been a loyal supporter of his house, and that he owed you, Caesarion.”
“He was truly a good man,” Caesarion said. “The finest healer I ever met.”
“He certainly proved it again with me.”
“And thanks be to Asclepius,” Vorenus said. “Why didn’t you contact Didymus, tell him you were alive?”
“I thought about it. But by then I’d heard that you had been executed out on Antirhodos, my friend, that you had been killed, my lad, and that the Lady Selene had been captured and would be forced to wed Juba the Numidian. I’d heard nothing of the Ark, though, so I thought maybe it had gotten away. Meeting with Didymus—well, I just thought it wouldn’t do any good, and if I was recognized it could lead to Juba and Octavian maybe finding the Ark through him. Besides, what good was I now anyway? Better to just let it go and move on.”