P. Deutermann - The Last Man

Judah the Daggerman had finally had enough of slaughter. He just wanted it all to end. He had himself been a killing machine ever since those dramatic days in Jerusalem, almost forty years ago, when the Romans, aided and abetted by fat Levites, had crucified an insignificant, deluded visionary from Galilee in a grotesque public execution, thereby igniting the fuse that led ultimately to the utter destruction of Israel. Just precisely as that ragged prophet had predicted, he reminded himself. He surveyed the war-ravaged grounds of what had been Herod the Idumean’s pleasure dome. This is the last of our works, he thought, and I shall be the Last Man.

The smoke cloud thickened momentarily as he gathered himself. He could see nothing of the palace now and had to bend his face into the crusted shroud of his outer sleeve to keep his eyes from tearing in the acrid smoke. Then it cleared, and he made his run, staying low, not even looking toward the siege tower as he scrambled across the rubble as fast as he could go to the palace wall, where he flattened himself out of sight of any watchers in the tower. The smoke coiled upon him with a vengeance, and he had to inch his way across the stone wall, eyes clamped shut, until he felt the double doors, which were partially open. He bent low and took one last look around in the gloom for intruders, then slipped through the doorway and pushed first one and then the other man-high door shut behind him.

It was nearly full dark inside the storeroom building, but Judah, like all of the warriors, knew his way around these corridors blindfolded. There were three main parallel passageways, off of which were the storerooms themselves. The building was attached to the northern palace, whose spacious throne room had that night become the communal killing ground. He moved quickly through the storeroom passageways, blinking back tears. Even here, in the storeroom building, he could detect another smell above the wood smoke. He knew all too well what it was.

He pushed open individual storeroom doors, looking for anyone who might have lost his nerve and hidden in the labyrinth of small rooms. There was no one. He slowed as he finished his survey of the third and last passageway, dreading what he had to do next.

What’s the point, he asked himself as he stood in front of the connecting door between the palace complex and the storeroom building. They’re all dead in there. Anyone left alive would want to kill himself, just from seeing the spectacle of death behind that door.

Because you promised, he told himself. You, Judah Sicarius, will be the Last Man, but not until you have made sure that none of them is left alive. Only the ten most senior officers among the Kanna’im even knew about the great cavern’s existence, and only Eleazar, Jeshua ben Matthias, and Judah knew what was secreted there. At least, that’s what Eleazar had told him, but who could know what rumors might have leaked out among almost a thousand defenders? It was tragic enough that the pagan bastards had burned God’s Temple in Jerusalem, carrying off sacred scrolls, vestments, and the glorious golden fixtures to one of their tawdry triumphs for the mob in Rome. Nothing could be done about that. Perhaps one day, however, in the distant future, the Jews would establish a new kingdom, and if they did, what was hidden in the heart of the mountain might once again adorn a great Temple.

He pushed open the doors to the main palace and gagged at the stench. His stomach clenched, and for an instant he thought about stepping outside for a lungful of wood smoke — anything would be better than this horror in the darkened audience room beyond. Directly ahead was a short corridor and then a guards’ room, and beyond — well, there were no words for what lay beyond. There were no lamps burning here, no more royal torches flaring in their iron holders.

He was supposed to fire the palace but not the storerooms. For that he needed flame. He went sideways down a small corridor to a complex of what had been offices in King Herod’s time, beyond which was a second, larger guards’ dayroom. He felt his sandals slipping on the marble floors and realized there were bloody footprints running down the center of the hallway. Someone had fled the massacre inside. He stopped.

Was that someone still alive?

The hallway was too dark for him to see much other than the slick smudges on the marble. Slick, but also sticky. Not fresh blood, then. He reached the larger guards’ room and saw what he needed, a small oil lamp burning high up in a niche on the outer wall. All he would have to do would be to roll a few amphorae of oil into the audience chamber, crack the seals, and ignite the oil.

There were windows in the guards’ room, and it was definitely growing lighter outside than in. He could see the clouds of smoke rolling past, looking like huge amorphous ghosts on a mission of vengeance. The sound of the kettledrums penetrated this end of the palace. Very soon now, he thought.

He reached high and picked off the oil lamp. Turning around, he froze. The gaunt, soot-streaked face of another man stared back at him from the gloom of a corner in the room. Not just any face: It was Eleazar himself.

Judah raised the tiny oil lamp to make sure. “You?” he gasped. “How can this be?”

Eleazar was a lean and intense warrior who had led the defense of Masada from the beginning. He was not much younger than Judah, and he was a descendant of that Judah who had instigated a tax revolt against Cyrenius, which had in turn led to the formation of the Sicarii. Judah was suddenly furious that Eleazar, of all men on the mountain, had failed to keep the covenant, the one he had preached in the first place. He lifted the oil lamp higher, better to look into the leader’s gaunt face. He noted that Eleazar’s sleeves and shins were bloody, but there was no other mark upon him. When he thought about the sights he had witnessed in the outer precincts of the fortress, and the catastrophe that lay beyond in the great hall, he trembled with anger.

“It is still an eligible thing to die after a glorious manner?” he growled, throwing Eleazar’s earlier words back at him. “And after we have slain them, let us bestow that glorious benefit mutually and preserve ourselves in freedom? Glorious benefit ?”

Eleazar wouldn’t look at him, nor would he speak. He stared down at the white tiles of the guards’ room, his hands empty in his lap, his mouth set in a grim, flat line. Judah moved closer, his right hand closing on the haft of his dagger.

“ You said these things,” he spat. “ You convinced them — you convinced all of us — to kill ourselves to spite the Roman beast. ‘Where now is that great city that was believed to have God himself inhabiting therein?’ you said. ‘It is now demolished to the very foundations, where unfortunate old men lie upon the ashes of the Temple, and a few women are there preserved alive, for our bitter shame and reproach’? Were these not your words?”

Eleazar still refused to look at him. “I couldn’t do it,” he said softly. He shook his head, slowly, from side to side, as if amazed at his own cowardice. “I could not bring myself to do it.”

Judah drew the long dagger and pointed it down at Eleazar’s wan face. Eleazar raised his eyes and made a gesture of resignation with his hands. In one swift movement, executed too many times throughout his career as a professional assassin, Judah stabbed down, impaling Eleazar just below the breastbone.

“‘Let us make haste to die bravely,’” Judah roared, as he pushed the blade deeper, ignoring Eleazar’s mortal, convulsive groan and desperately grasping hands. “‘Let us pity ourselves, our children, and our wives, while it is in our power to show pity to them. Let us go out of the world in a state of freedom!’”