the hare. The raging calm of the predator descended upon Yeshua. He looked down at the wiry grass that had been his companion all night, and up at the heavens through a few patches of clear sky. The Egyptian’s cynical prayer had done its job. He knew well enough that it was offered only to himself. He knew this God was merely the convenient name of his own projected anger. But by deceiving his own spirit with the conviction that some greater Other was being engaged, he broke the stranglehold of self-doubt.
The genuine otherness of the prayer was the recollection it brought of his father’s friend, Caius. The legionary’s tales were treasure to a wide-eyed adolescent eager for stories of war. Whatever the story, the same moral would mark the climax: “you can’t fight well ‘till you let go of your life.” Only then can you be totally consumed with the task in hand. “No safe path to victory!” was the old soldier’s refrain. The logic seemed to work, and to work its way into Yeshua’s prayer. His supplication had certainly pulled some handle, released some demon to kindle the fiber of his frame.
Even more heartening was the thought that his target was no legionary. No elite troops were assigned to Caesarea, only civilians with ill-deserved military uniforms. “Remember, Theudas—these are not real soldiers. They’re just auxiliaries.”
“Auxiliaries, p’ah,” Theudas scoffed, mimicking the old soldier’s scorn for any troops but legionaries. His brother’s response lifted Yeshua’s spirit. He was ready. Creation had taken his side and bestowed upon him divine status for his righteous duty.
The auxiliaries, basking in their delusions of divinity, were about to discover they were all too human: mortals, unworthy of all reverence or respect. Yotham and Saul had been worthy, before they were crushed under the might of the empire. His brothers’ lifeless faces; his father’s undignified wailing. The inescapable memory of them fuelled the Egyptian’s resolve as he considered the justice of his motives. If his targets were gods, he would be an angel of revenge. Appointed and anointed by whom, he was unsure. But he was an agent of justice, a justice that must be served if the world were not to crumble under the weight of unrighteousness.
The facial features of the soldiers were now visible and their conversation audible. Yeshua held his dagger in the predetermined grip, his hands ice-cold, the only remnant of fear his body now retained. Confident, he ran his left hand through the loose gravel scattered across the harder, sun-baked texture of the ground. Looking up, he found himself commanding a heightened sense of all he could see. Every stone and tree, every cloud and star was in on the plan, feeding his determination, but he would not move as a wild savage. As the soldiers ambled slowly towards the assassin’s position, the Egyptian’s nerve was utterly calm. His fury would be measured, disciplined: no war cry, no raised arms, only a simple task to fulfill. He had become a machine, waiting to be activated the moment his targets crossed the line between the trees under whose shade he lay.
“No more talking now. Stay calm. Hold your nerve.”
“This is it,” Theudas replied.
The soldiers arrived within ten paces as Yeshua loosened his limbs and prepared to move. But across the track, Theudas sprang to his feet in full view of his targets. The soldiers turned towards him. And there he stood: motionless, speechless.
Yeshua acted instinctively. Theudas’ departure from the plan had created a decoy. The soldiers had walked side by side along the track but by turning towards Theudas they presented their backs to his brother. He moved in on the first target. Neither feeling nor calculating his attack, he merely rehearsed his move. By the time he registered the smell of the leather and oil rising from the soldier’s metallic amour, his target’s muscles had flinched, relaxed and given way. The still upright corpse was abandoned to gravity as the Egyptian closed in on his next mark.
Undistracted by the liquid that dripped warmth from the dagger onto his cold right hand, the assassin repeated the move. He pulled the blade into the scarf. But the resistance of the knot protecting the soldier’s throat forced the dagger handle, now lubricated with blood, to slip through Yeshua’s fingers.
Instantly, the alerted soldier became as solid as Roman marble. A statue quickened with life, he twisted sharply to the left, throwing off his assailant’s embrace with his right elbow. Yeshua, in the knowledge his life was now forfeit, stepped back towards the fallen body of his first target. The second soldier had dropped his spear but had also now turned fully. Yeshua sank to the ground to retrieve the first fallen spear. The Egyptian cotton merchant, who before that moment had never laid his hand on a spear, prepared to face an infantryman, fully trained, fully armed and ready for combat. The soldier’s right hand reached for the hilt of his sword, but the terrible chime of his unsheathing blade was never heard. Another face had appeared at the Roman’s left shoulder. The soldier froze, gurgled and coughed. Theudas had finally completed his mission. A heavy thud concluded the action.
Theudas began to shake his head. “Yeshua. I am so, so . . .”
“Late? . . . Or was it early?” grinned Yeshua.
“Better late than never,” Theudas grimaced as he answered his older brother. “I don’t know what happened, I just . . .”
“Theudas. . .” Yeshua frowned as he embraced his younger brother, before turning toward his fallen victims, mesmerized by their lifeless bodies.
“Now what do we do?” Yeshua heard his brother’s words, but was immersed in an involuntary prayer of thanksgiving to the God he did not believe in . . .
“Yeshua!” came the whispered shout.
The Egyptian waited a moment and, without change of expression, the command, “search them!” escaped his mouth before his brain had chance to hinder it.
Stooping in compliance, Theudas offered an obligatory but meaningless protest: “Robbery was never part of the plan.”
Stepping towards the other body, Yeshua replied with equally casual tones, “Well, neither of us have followed the plan that well.”
Killing a Roman soldier did not feel like a crime, but fumbling around his dead body . . . “Forget it. Let’s just hide them, take their swords and go.” But as Yeshua dragged his victim from the sandy track, he noticed a small bag, full of coins. A purse was removed from each soldier, their bodies pulled into the long grass and sand kicked over the deep red patches underfoot. Within three minutes of the soldiers’ appearance at the gate of Caesarea, the companions were on their way. Armed with a sword, a surplus of ego and an unknown sum of cash, the newly graduated assassins ran silently towards the dawn, stretching the ground between themselves and the Mediterranean.
2
As the Egyptians fled, the distant stonework of Caesarea, still visible as an ornament upon the sea, finally found its voice. It called after them, proclaiming that the escape attempt would fail, that their victims would be avenged. The creation, which so recently had been their ally, now became an enemy who condemned their righteous act. Every tree and bush breathed out its scorn as the assassins hurried by. Each panting breath of fresh morning air filled their lungs with the toxic of contempt, slowing their escape.
The quiet town of Narbata was only eight miles east, but every anxious glance over the shoulder saw Caesarea no more distant than the last. Each new stretch of the track ahead drew Yeshua’s frantic visual search for the nearest means of cover should the thunderclap of angry hoof break from the track behind. Occasionally, the runners would quicken their pace to cross chasms of open road that offered no hiding place. Soon after the run would drop to the slow jog demanded by an exhaustion that seemed to draw them back towards the coast as they recovered their breath.
The
