P. Deutermann - The Last Man

Ben Jair had paused to catch his heaving breath and to drink some water. “So now,” he continued, “now that the fateful hour is at hand we must choose. We are the final warriors of the Jewish race. God’s Temple is demolished; Jerusalem is a defiled, corpse-ridden ruin. Our lands, our villages, our hearths and homes, gone, all gone. Our kinsmen’s bones bake in the desert. The Romans have hunted down every last patriot and slaughtered them all like leprous dogs. They even buried the old hermits alive in their caves at Qumran and then posted guards until the smell told them it was finished. They leveled Machaerus and killed everyone who surrendered, and now they have laid siege to this final fortress, here at the bottom of the world, for nearly three years. At dawn, it will be finished here as well. At third cockcrow, the Roman juggernaut will march up the ramp to kill and rape and torture, and any survivors here will envy the dead.”

Ben Jair had stared at the hollow-eyed warriors standing around the main audience room in Herod’s palace, his gaze hot, eyes blazing like a demon’s as he seduced them one last time with all the hypnotic urgency of a prophet. Always the posturer, he had gathered himself in front of them, coiling his dirty robes like a Levite, chanting his final exhortation.

“We long ago, my generous friends, resolved never to be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God himself. The time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice. We were the very first that revolted from them, and we are the last that fight against them. I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God hath granted us that it is still in our power to die bravely and in a state of freedom. It is very plain that this place shall be taken in a day’s time. We are openly deprived by God himself of all hope of deliverance. That fire which was driven upon our enemies did not, of its own accord, turn back upon the wall which we had built. This was the effect of God’s anger against us, for our manifold sins which we have been guilty of in a most insolent and extravagant manner with regard to our own countrymen, the punishments of which let us not receive from the Romans, but from God himself, executed by our own hands.

“Let our wives die before they are abused, and our children before they have tasted of slavery, and after we have slain them, let us bestow that glorious benefit upon one another mutually and preserve ourselves in freedom as an excellent funeral monument for us. But first let us destroy the fortress and our money by fire, and spare nothing but our provisions, that they may be a testimonial when we are dead that we were not subdued for want of necessaries, but that we have preferred death before slavery.”

Judah’s face twisted in a grimace as a ballista stone cracked the steps by the doorway. He wiped some dust off his face and realized that it was getting cold. The final hours before dawn were always the coldest. He waited and listened. The artillery bombardment seemed to be slacking off.

It had been an amazing exhortation, and, equally amazing, the surviving warriors had done exactly what ben Jair proposed. Men went among their families, gathered most of them into Herod’s palace, shawled their faces and heads, and then killed them all. Then they reassembled and drew lots to choose ten among them “to bestow that glorious benefit” on themselves. The second slaughter completed, the bloodied ten had assembled one last time to again draw lots. Judah Sicarius had drawn the fateful tile. He had withdrawn to the southern end of the fortress to wait until the last hour before dawn, so that the remaining nine could fulfill their compact with honor. If they failed to do that, well… He ran his fingers along the well-oiled blade of his own dagger.

It had been an amazing exhortation. Also a glorious, masterful lie, of course. Yes, they would die, and willingly. They were Kanna’im. Zealots. Fanatics. Yet they chose death not just to deprive the Roman beast of its final triumph. This self-inflicted immolation was for something far more important than that. Over and above a final, glorious defiance, their mass suicide would also protect the holy relics hidden in the heart of the mountain. The holy things spirited out of the Temple on that last horrific night, when the combined legions of Titus and Vespasian had run amok through ankle-deep gore in the streets of Jerusalem, their sandals splashing blood onto the very walls in a manner reminiscent of the times of Moses and the plagues in Egypt.

He peered through a hole in the building’s walls again. The flames inside the western palace and along the walls were unremitting. It was time to move, time to begin the hunt through the battered ruins atop the mountain. The final ten had included ben Jair. Judah, as the Last Man, must now ensure that all had died before he took his own life. Especially ben Jair himself. He could make a fine speech, ben Jair, and he had been a stalwart commander and lethal warrior, but Judah knew the man of old. He did not think Eleazar had the courage to turn his dagger upon himself.

It was strangely quiet now across the open ground outside. He shook his head in wonder at all that had happened in these past six years, and the dreadful duty he faced. Once he had confirmed that all the defenders were dead, he would be the last Jew alive of all the uncounted thousands of warriors flattened beneath the Roman yoke during the civil war. They would never find him, though. He would be with the treasure, a treasure to which he, the last Daggerman, the despised Judaean, the last of the Kanna’im, would add one final, supremely ironic object before honoring the fate decreed by the tiles.

I shall be the Last Man.

The wind shifted yet again, and the smoke suddenly surged thick in the ruined room. He could not breathe. It was definitely time. He hefted the long dagger with a deep sigh. In a way, he would have it easy. He had had no wife or children to slaughter this dark night. All that was left was for him to go through the surviving buildings in search of any stragglers and, especially the body of ben Jair. Coughing in the smoke, he lunged for the door, pausing only to get a breath before launching himself into what was now indisputably the Roman night. From the plains stretching below the sheer red walls of the mountain he could hear the soldiers’ massed cheers swelling over the crackle of flames and the keening of the bitter desert wind. You bastards won’t be cheering on the morrow, he thought grimly as he bolted from the smoke-filled building. We have rebuffed your best efforts for almost three years, and now, in death, we shall defy you.

I shall be the Last Man!

Judah barely avoided the slashing bolt from a catapult as he rolled into the rubbled floor of the mikveh, the ceremonial purification baths near the western palace. Roman bastards ! He peered back through a crack in the wall. Above the billowing flames, the charred tops of the siege tower, hulking just below the rim of the mountain, harbored a dozen or so snipers who were probably calling targets for the ballista artillery catapult farther down the ramp. The hard rock plain that was the top of the mountain was totally illuminated now by the burning western walls, and his mad dash across the open space between the palace watch-room and the mikveh had apparently been spotted. He winced as another bolt came ricocheting through the doorway and skittered around the cluttered anteroom. The demons knew he was in here, he thought. There were weapons stacked in one corner. He longed to return the fire, although the tower was probably out of range now. Besides, he had things to do.

He looked around. The mikveh consisted of two buildings, with the purifying baths, now empty and dry, between them. The first room was for undressing and ritual cleansing. It had remained relatively intact since the bombardment, except that one glancing hit on the roof had covered the mosaics of the floor with bits of mortar and broken roof tiles. Three families had taken refuge in the small building directly across from the purification pools after their quarters had been overtaken by the fire along the western walls. Most of the Zealots’ families had lived inside the casemate walls themselves during the siege, existing in tiny rooms that allowed them to defend against climbers and stay out of range of the Roman snipers on the other side of the deep ravine called Wadi Masada. If they had not sought shelter in the palace, and the killing had been done, he should find bodies in the building on the other side of the empty pools.