M. Scott - The Coming of the King

Berenice saw a moment’s indecision and gave a small, tight smile of triumph. ‘Shall we draw lots for it?’ she asked. ‘The loser is the last one to remain alive.’

Among the hills north of Jerusalem, a thousand small cooking fires showed the size of Menachem’s army.

Of those thousand, a hundred clustered close around the shoulder of a low hill and beneath their light a spring bubbled and sang, gold and silver as it passed from firelight to starlight.

In this place of drought and desert, a stone channel poured water down into a plunge pool deep enough to take one man standing upright and cover him to the crown of his head.

Stone steps led down into the water. Menachem stood naked on the topmost tread with his head bowed, watching the torch-made dapples shiver across the water. About him, about the spring, his army waited in such silence as was possible for two thousand men dressed in new mail, with new weapons and tired horses and a battle ahead.

Pantera stood apart, on the spring’s southern side, holding by the bridle the almond-milk mare that had been Iksahra’s parting gift to Menachem, that he might have a mount fit for a king. The mare was anxious. She stood, watching the fires, the men, the silver stream. A single foreleg struck the ground, calling thunder from the earth.

Menachem looked up at last. His gaze met Pantera’s and his mind returned from the distant place where it had been. He clasped his hands together. Black hairs grew in strong lines down his arms and thick swards on his chest. They stood upright now, testament to the morning’s chill.

‘How much longer?’ he asked.

Gideon stood with his back to them, staring at the faint strand of silver strung along the horizon. ‘Soon,’ he said.

And soon, soon, with goats grazing in the distance, and morning cookfires of Jerusalem threading the morning sky, with cockerels crying a greeting and small birds taking up the call, then did the shy sun blush over the edge of the mountains behind, and burn the dew off the thin grasses, so that the mare dropped her head at last to graze.

Pantera said, ‘In two hours, Hypatia, Berenice and Estaph will die.’

‘They will begin to die,’ Menachem said. ‘But we will be in Jerusalem by then. The city will be ours.’

‘It may not. If Iksahra has not ripped the hearts out of the garrison Guard, this will be a battle of a different mettle than the one on Masada.’

‘Even so, this is our home. You may be surprised-’

‘Look,’ Gideon said. He pointed at the rock at the pool’s lip, and they fell to silence, and watched as the sun lifted the shadow from Menachem’s feet to his thighs, to his torso, to his brow.

Between one breath and the next, he was bathed entirely in light and the stream flowed liquid gold. Then Gideon said, ‘Now,’ quietly, so that only Pantera, who was closest, might hear, and Yusaf, who stood a little behind.

Thus, in the first opening of dawn, before the gathered multitudes of his army, Menachem, grandson of the Galilean, stepped down into the liquid light, and under it, completely, so that only the very top of his black hair showed.

When he stepped out again, Gideon came forward with a jar of perfumed oil and drizzled it on to his streaming hair and raised his voice, so that it rang from hillside to hillside, to the two thousand men and their horses, to the goats and the rising hawks and the distant, discordant city.

‘I give you Menachem, of the line of David, of the tribe of Judah, grandson of the Galilean, greatest of Rome’s enemies. As spoken by the prophets, he shall ride into Jerusalem on an ass, symbol of peace. He shall cleanse the Temple of its iniquity. He shall free us from oppression. For in his righteousness is the path to peace, and he shall set the sons of Zion upon the sons of Greece, and shall dispel them, that our city, and our Israel, shall live without war, in a time of harmony, under the eyes of the living god!’

They heard their priest in silence, the army of the king of Israel, and for a heartbeat more they held that silence, and then they lifted their new blades, and beat their hilts on the hard bull’s hide of their new shields, and the sound rocked the earth and the roots of the hills and the pillars of the sky, and surely it must also have rocked the city, wherein waited men and women in their hundreds of thousands for the king who had been promised.

Menachem opened his mouth to speak.

‘Not here. Go to the head of the spring where they can see you,’ Pantera said, and like a blind man Menachem turned, and stepped up and up to the spring’s head.

The sun cast him in gold. The spring sang out of the earth at his feet and when he bent and cupped it in his hands, and sprayed it over the men nearest, they were drenched, lightly, in liquid silver.

He raised his hands high, as the priests did on the Sabbath. The rolling thunder of hilts on shields rose and fell away. His voice rang out over the heads of his men, straight to Jerusalem.

‘I am of David’s line. I am son of my father’s father, Yehuda, the Galilean, who should have been king of all Israel, and would have been, did he only have you at his side to make it happen. Today, we shall complete what he began those many years ago when he assaulted the armoury at Sepphoris. Today, we shall drive Rome from the sacred places of our people. By tonight, all Jerusalem will be ours under one god. You have waited for this, you have worked for this, you who have been true from the start…’

He spoke to men by name, drawing them forward, naming their courage in particular battles at particular times, or brothers lost, or children dead in their absence. They came and knelt and went away again, shining with love for him and pride in themselves and their army.

Pantera backed away and stood with Gideon and Yusaf on the lower ground by the spring. ‘He looks good there, with the newborn sun at his back and the water before him. We must remember this, if he is to speak often: it is what the men will recall, later, when the terror of combat has burned away their other memories.’

‘But not our other memories,’ said Yusaf, drily. ‘Or at least, not yours. Do you ever feel true fear like mortal men?’

‘Of course. You would not believe how often.’

‘We do not believe you now,’ Gideon said, in a tone that matched Yusaf’s exactly. ‘One day you must show me how you hide it so efficiently. Meanwhile, we must find ourselves a donkey colt. Zechariah was a rambling idiot who contradicted himself with each second word, but every child knows that the king comes in righteousness and salvation riding on an ass. We can’t let it pass.’

‘We can,’ Pantera said. ‘We must. This is battle, not a coronation. He will ride Iksahra’s mare. Nothing less will keep him alive.’

‘The ass is to signify peace.’

‘And righteousness, I heard. But to get to peace, he must live through war, and this mare is battle trained. Lay your hand here, on her hide, and feel the shiver of her sinews. She knows there’s a fight coming and she’s desperate to take part. You won’t find a donkey that’ll fight for you.’

‘But-’

‘But nothing. He’ll look better mounted on that mare than on anything else, trust me, and there are prophecies enough to go round: one of them probably mentions a white horse with black feet if you look hard enough. Put your effort into seeking that out if you find yourself with time on your hands through the morning.’

Six of Jerusalem’s seven gates cleared smoothly through the remaining hours of darkness. Six more pairs of legionaries fled to their barracks, carrying stories of a ghul abroad in the night, of ghostly legionaries marching to nowhere, of monsters greater than any they had seen.