M. Scott: The Coming of the King

‘As your whore?’ Her voice dripped contempt. The spiral marks on her face stood proud a little; he kept his eyes on them and was sure not to smile at the image of that.

‘Assuredly not. You would be the king’s favoured falconer. Also his beastmaster, the keeper of his hunting hounds, his big cats, his hounds, his horses.’ As was your father to his father. He did not say that, but the understanding twisted in the hot air between them.

‘The new king does not hunt,’ said the woman, slowly. ‘The whole world knows that he prefers to keep to his bed and his… playthings, while his sister rules the land. It is the queen who hunts.’

‘But any gift must be given to the king, even if Queen Berenice is its true recipient. In any case, it matters not which of them takes you, only that you are there, with your falcons.’ He hesitated, delicately. ‘Would I be correct if I were to surmise that your birds could hunt and kill a message-dove, one of those that flies fast and low across the sands and carries the written word from one side of the empire to the other?’

She did not answer that, only looked at him as if even the question were an insult.

‘Good.’ He gave a shallow nod. ‘So then, your part in this will be to intercept the message-doves that are sent to the king’s loft from across the world. They come from Rome, from Damascus, from Antioch, from Athens, Corinth, Alexandria and further abroad. They come mostly at dawn and dusk, and, while the king is at Caesarea, they fly always over a particular isthmus on the sea coast, which is out of sight of the palace, but surrounded by flat, open land, so that you cannot be watched without your knowing.

‘You will take these birds from the sky and bring their messages to me so that I may know what they say. Further, as the king’s beastmaster, you will be tasked with the care of some message-birds in the beast compound so that they may be sent out with the journeymen who take them to far-flung cities. Therefore, once in a while, we may use them ourselves to convey messages of our own to the king — as if they came from far abroad. Then, when we know who our enemies are, and how they are ranged against us, we will act.’

‘What will we do?’

‘We will foment war with Rome. King Agrippa resides at Caesarea, the city founded by his grandfather, Herod the Great. That place has its own tensions and we will use them to force the entire royal family to Jerusalem. There, if the zealots of the War Party can be made to declare war against Rome, Nero will send the legions to crush them and once that happens, the whole of Judaea will rise against the armies of occupation.’

‘Then they will die,’ said Iksahra, with certainty. ‘No one can withstand Rome’s legions.’

‘Exactly so; and Jerusalem will be razed to the ground, brick by ancient brick, until nothing is left and the people who live therein are dead or enslaved in foreign lands. Then you, who hate Agrippa, and I, who hate the Hebrews, will know that our vengeance is complete.’

Saulos rose smoothly; that, too, was a skill he had learned. ‘I leave with the evening’s cool. If you wish to join me, I would welcome your company, and that of your beasts.’

Saulos did not ride alone from the encampment; three guides came with him, but Iksahra sur Anmer, the best hunter among the Berber tribes, was not one of them.

He concealed his disappointment, and rode with the men, letting them entertain him with stories of horses and hunts and the inexplicable deeds of women. At nightfall, when they made camp in the lee of a dune, he took himself a little away from the firelight to urinate.

He was turning back when her hand caught his wrist. She was remarkably tall. The cheetah’s yellow eyes regarded him from a place that had been entirely dark.

He said, ‘I had hoped you might come.’

Her face was close to his. ‘You know why I seek vengeance. Why do you?’

‘Will you come with me to sit at the fire? The night is cold and I am still not used to the changes in temperature. We will be given privacy, I think.’

He was right; the men saw Iksahra and left, not for privacy, but out of fear. One made the sign against evil as she passed. Another hissed something, of which Saulos only heard the word ifrit and wished he had not.

Seated, fed, with a bladder of water in his hand — these people drank neither wine nor ale — Saulos felt safer. He stared into the fire and found it easier to believe she was a woman who hunted with matchless skill, not a winged demon who might feed on his soul.

He said, ‘My tale is a long one, but at its shortest… In my youth, I was trained as a Roman agent by the late spymaster Seneca, known as the Teacher, and sent to Judaea to bring the Hebrews under Roman rule.’

‘You did not succeed in that.’ Her wild eyes laughed at him.

He bit his lip. It was a long time since he had been the butt of anyone’s ridicule. He said, ‘No. But I did burn Rome.’ Flames leapt between them. ‘I lit the blaze that nearly consumed it.’

‘Why?’

He studied the small fire that lay between them. None of this was as he had planned. ‘For a prophecy,’ he said, which was true. ‘The Sibyls said that if Rome burned under the eye of the dog star, then Jerusalem might be sundered and in its place…’ With an effort, he held her gaze. ‘In its place, the god they have denied will enslave them all, and rule in glory. But Judaea must fall for that to happen.’

‘And if Jerusalem falls-’

‘Then all of Judaea will fall with it; yes. The loss of Rome seemed a small price to pay.’

‘And your own life? Was it an accident that the fire nearly killed you?’

‘No. That was my enemy’s doing. He is the second reason we are going to Judaea.’

‘Is he there?’

‘Not yet. But I will draw him there and when I have done so, I will undermine his allies until he no longer knows whom he can trust. I will remove his friends from him, one at a time, until he is alone, and friendless and lost. I will let him see what we are doing, slowly, a piece at a time, and when Jerusalem’s fall is certain, I–I alone, I will kill him, slowly, by inches, by heartbeats, and he will know, each moment, why he dies and by whose hand.’

He stopped, because the crimson haze around him was real, and the flames were licking his face as his passion brought him lower and closer to the fire.

His cheeks were scorched. Iksahra had sparks on her clothing, where his hands, smashing the sand, had disturbed the fire. Thin tendrils of smoke rose to the night air and vanished.

She gazed at him, unreadable. ‘What is his name, this man you hate so much?’

Saulos closed his eyes against the sweep of her stare. ‘My enemy’s name,’ he said, evenly, ‘is Sebastos Abdes Pantera. He rides with a former centurion named Appius Mergus, and with Hypatia of Alexandria, the Chosen of Isis.’

‘I will remember their names.’ Iksahra sur Anmer rose and stretched out a hand. He took it and she lifted him to his feet, effortlessly. ‘We have things in common,’ she said, and her white teeth flashed. ‘I will join you. I will hunt the message-birds. But when the time comes, I will kill King Agrippa and you will not stop me.’

‘ Caesarea, pearl of the east. A tinderbox, waiting for the spark.’

Pantera had not spoken in half a day. His voice was dry as the desert. ‘Saulos is there,’ he said. ‘Can you smell him? The danger that hangs around him?’

Mergus edged his horse in closer to where they could talk and the sound not carry on the desert air. He still marvelled that they were there at all, in the desert, half a day’s ride east of Caesarea: when the message-birds had come to the emperor’s loft in Rome, saying that their quarry was moving, that Saulos had finally left the fastness of the Berber lands, Mergus had wanted to take ship then, that night, and be after him.