Thick mists still clung to the riverbed, trailed wisping up its sides, or joined with the lowering clouds to cut off the heights above. Cassius led his horse as best he could along a path he had found across the hillside, slowly twisting at its height above the river, still lower than the huge granite thrusts which continued to rise on their left. There was only one direction, south, away from the icy breath of winter that gathered in the Pyrenees behind them.

The girl sat wrapped like a virgin in the blanket, riding in the lonely cold as another had done before her. But no shining star lit the heavens to guide them—the morning sky was blocked from their sight—only the illusory mists, shrouding in unearthly mystery the strange, snow laced heights above them. The girl looked up at them in wonder, her imagination soaring.

“It looks as if, climbing them, you could step into another world. As if they were a stairway into Heaven.”

“Or Hell,” said Cassius bluntly. “Please try to keep your voice down, I can’t see forty feet in front of me.” Indeed, he wore the face of one listening intently, more than listening, trying to use some other sense to learn what no man ever could: what lay before him on the way.

Toward midday he stopped suddenly. The girl thought at first that the strain on his nerves had become too great, and that his mind had begun to create sights and sounds that were not there. The hours had been long and the mists, protected from the sun by the impenetrable clouds, had cleared little. Just watching him, leaned forward like a hound on the trail, or backward like a fugitive fleeing from hounds, had been enough to start her own worst fears, and fill the void with phantoms. She tried to whisper that it was all right, there was nothing. But a sharp motion of his forearm checked her. And then she heard the sound herself.

A groan, as of a man in unbearable anguish. Then another: higher, more insistent, yet seeming farther away. Still another plaintive cry split the stillness: inward, to their left. They advanced stealthily until, if such a thing were possible, through the ghastly and irregular chorus rose a yet more terrible silence, as if a few men still suffered, but many more had been engulfed in final blackness.

Cassius led his horse into a broad gap in the outcroppings beside them, a little lower now, more broken. They entered a strange vale of half defined promontories. . .which, drawing closer, resolved themselves into long hills, pierced by teeth of stone. Like the graves of giants, or the altars of forgotten gods. The sounds of torment echoed faintly among them, as if they had been heard in this place a thousand times and for a thousand generations, as if they were the only human sounds. The girl felt a shudder run down her back, but the man moved sullenly forward, as if this cold arena of stone and steel and misery held a message he understood, an opportunity he cherished.

At length Cassius spied shelter, two slags of stone leaning together at the face of a hill, and here he moved the horse and the girl out of sight. Not quite a cave, more the entrance to a passage that led nowhere, died at the start. It was cold and dark and as the girl touched her fingers to the backleaning walls she asked him, as if herself one of the wounded that lay somewhere ahead in the gloom.

“Cassius. . .I’m cold right down to my bones. Could we please light a fire?”

“Perhaps, if I can hide it in the depths. Stay here for now, I’ve got to have a look around.”

Before she could ask him not to, or warn him to be careful, before she could even say goodbye he was slinking out of sight, enveloped by the mists which gathered in this vale of death as thick as ghosts about a battlefield.

And battlefield it was, as Cassius’ long experience had told him it would be. The poor visibility kept him from taking it in as a whole, but less than a hundred yards from where he had left the girl, he began to come across the bodies. Alone, in groups of two, or three, or ten. Vandals and Sueves, swordsmen and spearmen, young and old.
He could, if he wanted to, have pieced it together in his mind: the Vandals mounted, advancing, coming upon this loosely fortified line in the Suevian defenses: felled trees, wheels of sharpened stakes joined by a common shaft. The horsemen attacking, pulling these aside with rope and grappling hooks, fighting fiercely, breaking through. The Sueves, in a panic, running and being hewn down, crying for mercy they knew they would not find.

But this was not why he had come. Instead he checked the bodies one by one, not for gold or weapons, which would not serve and would already have been taken, but for clothes, and winter warmth. He found a burly older man lying face-down on a spear, and from him he took a heavy fur cloak. From a younger man, little more than a boy, he took the fur boots he coveted for the girl. And so on—sickened, and yet needful.

The few survivors he passed were beyond saving. If their anguish was too great he sometimes felt the urge to finish them quickly, mercifully with a single thrust of his drawn sword. And yet he did not. He could not have said why. As a younger man he had often been assigned to this duty, and had not shrunk from it. Indeed, it was part of what had first hardened him to combat, and closed his mind to suffering. Not from fear or revulsion did he withhold his hand, nor even from indecision. Some new voice in him, though he railed at himself for listening, told him it was not his place. Perhaps they would yet live? Small chance of that. And if they did they would only pose a threat to himself and the girl. Yet somewhere in his more recent experience, his relations with the girl, a greater respect for life, and even for death, had begun to grow in him. This new voice told him that if he did not know the ends of an action, better not to take it. He was not sure he believed this, either.

He returned heavily laden, after first satisfying himself that the Vandals had moved on. Perhaps a few Sueves had escaped into the stone hills around them, but he was not afraid of a few stragglers from a days-old battle. These lacked direction, and heart, and he had faith in himself and his sword. A larger battle, where they could form into groups, was something else….. He gave one last sweep with his senses, then entered again the dark opening.

The girl sat huddled for warmth to one side of it. The horse, which nearly filled it, stood in the high center of the enclosure, clearly ill at ease. Ariel raised her hands toward its smoking breath to warm them, gave a start as she became aware of her human companion.

“Here, put these on,” he said, handing her the knee-high boots and straps of rawhide. She quickly slipped off her sandals, too desperate for warmth to ask where the new things came from. But when he told her to stand, and wrapped a thick leather jerkin about her upper body, then a heavy, hooded cape, the associations finally started in her mind. The jerkin was slit just above the navel, and there was a stain there, cold and brown.

“Where did you get these!” she cried suddenly, pulling away in alarm, as from something venomous and vile.

“Ariel, there was no other way—” But at the thought of the corpses which had filled them she began to fling off the garments one by one, drawing back her hand after each as if it was scalded. Then in irrational panic she tried to run out into the snow. I’ve got to get out of here!

Cassius caught her, held her firmly until she stopped struggling. He could feel her abhorrence, but also her shivering need. Just as he knew, all too well, her bitter despair as she began to accept it.

“Oh God, I hate this!” she said at last. “Look at us, Cassius. What have we become?”

“From death comes life,” he said grimly. “And unless you want to join them..... I’m sorry, Ariel. We’ve got to survive, or nothing else matters.”

She looked at him, lowered her head, and said nothing. Instead she stiffened, her fists at her sides, let out a groan of disgust. Then went back to the pile of discarded clothes.

“If I put them on, can we leave this horrible place?”

“Yes. I fear we must be many miles from here before we seek shelter for the night.”

“Crawling from one hole to another,” she muttered as she dressed.

“You crawl if you want to. I’m going to stand. And if you think it beneath you, don’t come with me.”

“Cassius. I didn’t mean.....”

“I know. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Seventeen

Once out in the open, Cassius hesitated. He felt a moment of indecision. A thought had come to him, from where he could not say, telling him that he must now change course. It seemed odd, and not at all what he wanted. Yet even as he tried to reject it out of hand, he began to realize the dangers of going on as before.

To remain in the river valley might be safer, or it might not. Now that it belonged solely to the Vandals, others might follow..... But that was not the heart of it. For the river was a channel not only of water, but of air. Its waters flowed from steep canyons in the mountains, but its breath blew down from icy peaks that tore the winter sky. Even as the words passed through him, a cold wind blew across them both, and the girl shivered miserably. Perhaps if they followed the gap they had entered, a little east before turning south again..... But which way had the Vandals turned? Their tracks, at least a day old, would be covered by the snow..... He cursed himself again for not knowing, but there seemed little else he could do.

“Ariel, I’ve changed my mind. We’ve got to leave the cold drafts of the ravine. To do this I’ll have to take you across the battlefield. Close your eyes, and your heart if you can. It’s not something a young girl should have to see.”

But these words, taken together with his earlier rebuke, only goaded her. She felt challenged, not only by the man, but by the nameless Horror around her. And as he led the horse forward, she determined not to look away.

But as they came across the first corpses, a man who had killed another with his sword, then fallen across him as he himself was slain by a blow to the head, she felt her shiver become a sickened trembling of both body and spirit. The axe-blade had split his skull, and blood and brains both oozed down onto his neck..... She closed her eyes hard, praying it would go away.

But it would not go away. The wounded had not ceased their moaning, and as she passed within their sight, it increased tenfold. For the sight of a woman, and the last desperate thoughts of a woman’s compassion, roused in each fallen man emotions that were in that moment unbearable. As painfully as the blades and points had pierced their flesh, dragging it again to cold earth, so the memories of mothers, daughters, wives who had loved them, shot through their mortal souls. And this horror of remorse, combined as it was with nearness to Death, and the realization of a life’s folly, was Hell enough to last an eternity.

Ariel could not understand the words, but their meaning was more than clear. They called to her as to a Savior: for deliverance, forgiveness, one last embrace. They called to her like homeless children, like frightened animals, like dying men. She felt the thousand tiny grappling hooks they threw tearing at her heart. It ached, it bled, but there was nothing she could do. The distance was uncrossable, the time, unendurable.

At last the sounds of suffering died away, or were about to. But for some reason Cassius had stopped. Slowly, unwillingly she opened her eyes. The mists were thinner here, away from the river, and through the wavering cloud cover a whitish blear of sun could be seen, as if trying to shed the least warmth over the cruelty of men. And then she saw why Cassius had stopped.

Another man was dangling forward, face down, unmoving, pierced by the stake onto which he had no doubt fallen from a horse he could not master. But beside him, standing straight and looking back at them soundlessly, was a small boy, marked (physically) by no greater wound than a bruised cheek and torn tunic. He must have remained beside the body all the long day and night, trying in vain to pull his father off the bitter point. Or realizing it was hopeless. . .had nonetheless remained beside him, too traumatized to move away: to think, or feel anything but death. So Cassius read the tragedy.

He studied the boy more closely, not so very much older than his own son. Scraggly hair of blonde and brown showed beneath a leather cap. His clothes were a macabre miniature of his father’s, drab dun tunic, trousers and a sheepskin jacket. The face was dirty and hard, but the eyes of piercing blue looked at the two of them with such bitter and uncomprehending pain..... Mute tears flowed from them as he pointed blankly at his father.

This was too much for Ariel. Crooking one leg, she slid down off the horse’s back, and tried to move around the man. But he took hold of her arm and said strangely, as if trying to deny his own emotions. “Have a care. That’s a German brat, as likely to stick you with a knife— ”

His words ended abruptly as she struck him across the face and pulled free. She went to the boy, and he did nothing of the kind. He remained still, looking up at her with the same desperation she had heard in the voices of the dying men. She fell to her knees, heart bleeding, and embraced him. He gave a single, moaning cry and wrapped his arms tightly about her neck.

As Cassius looked on at the children of war.

After a short time of this, two things became clear to him. Whatever his own emotions, the girl was not going to let the boy go. And go they must.

He moved toward them, and as he expected, the girl sheltered the child from him as from an enemy. “We’re not just going to leave him!” she said fiercely.

“Did I say we were? Stand aside.”

Not quite obeying him, the girl remained in a squat position with her arms around the boy, ready to protect him. But there was no need. Putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Cassius spoke to him in a language that was strange to her: not that of the fallen, but a close cousin to it. First, it seemed, came a strong statement of fact. Then a question. The boy nodded, pushed away the girl’s protective embrace.

Then putting his strong hands under the boy’s arms Cassius lifted him to his side, carried him to the horse, and set him squarely on its back. Overwrought as she was, the girl saw that he did this both well and with care, if not affection, as if these motions were familiar to him. The boy, too, seemed to understand his abrupt firmness, and not to be afraid.

He came back and took her by the wrist and led her also to the horse, setting her behind the boy in much the same manner. Through the torrent of her womanly emotions, she managed to say quickly,

“You must have been a good father.”

“Don’t start with me. I haven’t said we could keep him.” He paused with the reins in his hand, not looking at her. “I know you think I have no heart. Maybe I don’t. But I’m not going to leave a small boy..... Aahh.”

He led them away from the battlefield.

The granite hills were now on their right, undulating as they went like the bones of some colossal dragon that had fallen from the sky, and lay in ruin upon the startled earth.

The boy rode silently before her. Since that first desperate embrace, since the man had lifted him and set him on the horse, he had shown very little emotion. At one point she wrapped her arms more closely about him, and he did not resist, nor seem to resent the show of womanly affection. Yet neither did he seem to need it. Cassius had turned to her and said, “He’s a soldier’s son, leave him be.” And though she tried to resent him for it, she was forced to admit that the boy appeared all right without further comfort and reassurance. Or perhaps he was still in shock. The truth was, both were true.

Cassius had turned south again as soon as possible, feeling a sense of foreboding as the sun slowly burned its way through the clouds, lightening the somber landscape around them. They moved now through folding, stone ribbed hills similar to those they had passed through before entering the ravine. As the way led them near the tops of these he would look out upon the east, where the land grew gradually more level, and exposed. The girl felt his trepidation each time, and saw that he hugged the granite rise as much as possible.

Here among the hills there was cover enough, from the turn and slope of the land, the thick and tangled growth around them. Largely treeless, still it rose to the height of a man and more, long twisting branches to which the dry and ragged leaves still clung, impenetrable. They followed a narrow path that wound its way forward into dells and clearings that were quickly passed through, then again to the winding way that never showed more than forty yards ahead before bending again out of sight.

Cassius continued on until the day began to fade, and he was so mentally exhausted that he no longer trusted his own judgment. He turned aside and, making his way up into the hills on their right, found a niche at the base of a glowering cliff leaning outward, and hidden from the east by stone and growth. He helped the two dismount, tethered his horse, and was about to set off for firewood.

But before he did, he took the wooden bowl from his pack and gave it to the boy. He said a single word which she assumed to mean, “Berries,” and sent him on his way.

“Aren’t you worried he’ll get lost?”

“As long as he’s with us he does his share..... Don’t pamper him, girl, he won’t understand it. This is no gentle Jew, but the son of a fighting man.” And despite his weariness, he managed a wry smile. “And you, too, get to work. Take down my things and clear a place for a fire, then one for us to sleep on. Out of the wind, mind—it’s going to be cold enough without that.”

Using the small hatchet he had taken from his pack, the man moved a short way off, then set to cutting firewood. He chose the branches carefully, mangling the severed ends wherever possible, trying to leave no sign of their passing. For they were no longer in the isolated river valley, cleared free of native inhabitants by the gruesome face of leprosy. He suspected that the Vandals had continued east..... “Don’t take that for granted!” he warned himself. He continued with his work.

By the time he returned to their camp it was nearly dark. The boy, too, was just returning. After he had set down the firewood Cassius took the bowl from him and looked inside. There he found blackberries, a little over-ripe, but still edible. There he also found hard, red berries that he knew to be poisonous.

“Did you eat any of these?” he said sharply.

“Esse?” The boy shook his head. “Gut. Poison, do you understand? Nein essen.” The boy nodded, took back the bowl and, sitting on a stone, began to separate out the red berries. The girl watched him, already feeling a kind of pride at his clever determination. As the man watched her, and shook his head.

He started a small fire in the place she had cleared and ringed with stones, began to cook the shank of horseflesh he had taken from the battlefield.

“Ugh,” said the girl, looking at it. “Are you sure that isn’t poison?”

“It’s been on ice, nearly frozen, and wrapped in horse-hide. But if you’re not hungry.....”

After they had eaten Cassius dug a shallow pit, wider now, lined it with embers from the dying fire, and covered all with the woolen blanket as before. Together they lay down, well under the backleaning stone. The boy lay furthest in, the girl next, then the man, his sword at his side. For additional blankets they used the assorted furs and capes he had taken that morning. Still it was cold, and only their close proximity and shared body heat made it bearable. The girl, on her side facing the boy, held him close against her, while Cassius did the same with her.

The feelings aroused in her by holding the strong little boy, and being held in turn by the man, his loins resting sensually against her, were at first a little too intense. But they were also warm, and as she began to drift irresistibly toward sleep, felt more and more natural and reassuring. She felt a kind of peace, and attachment to her world, that she had needed more than she knew. Without being conscious of it she began to rub the boy’s little chest to warm him, and felt Cassius’ big hand gently massage the side of her leg, her ribs and then her breast. Warm and contented, she fell asleep.

But Cassius could find no such release. Sleep, and most of all, safety, seemed a thousand miles away. As good as it felt to have the girl lying there before him, warm and sheltered, just that cold and exposed did the world at his back now seem to him. The weight of danger and responsibility were almost overpowering. He could not even think about the boy. He tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that had it not been for his own actions, they would both be dead. And if they perished some time in the future. . .he had done all he could.....

But this was no good, and he knew it. Because for all the death that he had seen and been a part of, all the crushing pain of his personal tragedy, he had not stopped feeling the call of life. And that is a call to care and responsible action.

How could he protect them? Where would they go? All the same questions that he had wrestled with that morning by the riverside returned to him. And he realized with a qualm of anxiety that he had already begun to think of the boy as theirs, the girl as undeniably his own. He began to think how strange it all was, how beyond understanding. His own wife and son, whom he had never loved as he should, taken from him in an instant, before he could realize it was they, and not Rome that he should have protected, and been willing to die for. Then the long, bitter isolation that followed, feeling, nay, being certain, that there was nothing left worth fighting for—that he would never again feel anything, never need or want the very thing he held in his arms. Life.
And why had he turned from the river like that? Where had the thoughts come from that told him to do so, almost against his own judgment? Why had he come to Spain, for that matter, and to Ariel’s village on the very day that she needed him?

As always when his mind turned to thoughts of Providence, an anger, and also trepidation, began in him. Because all his experience told him that the surest way to bring death and disaster was to trust in anything outside himself, to believe that anyone or any thing gave a damn whether he lived or died. And yet there were too many coincidences, too many things that could not be explained by will or logic.

He looked back at the strip of sky behind him, the cold, distant stars. “If you’re up there, you’re one hell of a bastard,” he muttered. “The strictest son of a whore that I ever heard of.”

And then he fell to memories of Arna, his sweet wife, and of their fine, strong son. “Why did you take them?” he said aloud, all his weariness and pain rising suddenly like the Spring flood. “My sweet, loving family.” And for all his sullen anger he could not stop the tears. He cried, with the pain of a man for whom tears do not come easily, feeling lost and defeated. Then put his arm around the girl and the young boy both.

As the wind moaned, desolate and unforgiving, through the vast emptiness of cold stone and living growth.

Nineteen

The sun rose, cold but unhindered, in a sky first topaz, then turquoise, then finally a deep and rich late autumn blue. The wind, also, had turned from the east, blowing now from the more temperate sea. Despite the morning chill, Cassius knew that a warmer day was coming.

He was the first to rise and, despite the danger, was still able to feel the sense of glorious freedom that came from waking in wild, open country. The wind in his hair and the sun on his face..... He breathed it in deeply, stretched his limbs, then raised his eyes to the heavens.

“I’m still alive, you bastard.”

Ariel and the boy still lay, picturesque in their unconscious closeness, her arm about his waist as he lay sprawled on his back with one arm across her neck. Leaving them to sleep a while longer, he set off to scout the land immediately surrounding the promontory.

The place remained empty of human inhabitants. A few lonely birds piped shrilly, or flew off in a quick flutter of wings as he approached. On the path they had followed here, he saw through the thin layer of snow no tracks save their own. These he concealed as best he could by dragging an uprooted pine sapling across them, combing the snow gently with the fine young needles. From this he went on to the highest hill in a line of three that looked out on the east. Standing beside a stout and solitary oak that grew at is crown, he looked out from the edge of a steep and rocky slope. His eyes were greeted by a broad and magnificent vista.

The land rolled away eastward, gradually flattening toward the unseen waters of the Mediterranean, some fifty miles away. To the northeast he saw the hills rising steadily behind Ariel’s village and others like it, though the walls and houses themselves were lost in distance. To the south as well hills could be seen, less stark, lined with stone fences and great fields of well ordered grape vines, only some of them blackened by fire. And unlike the hills to the north, these were not the precursor to oppressive, snow-capped peaks.

Due north, the Pyrenees themselves were somewhat shielded from view by the angle, and by the foothills rising row upon row before them. But he had seen them before, and not even the mighty Alps could shame them. Less sharp and vertical, their hugeness lay instead in the sheer volume of their bases, often joining together and running in a high, unbroken wall of ice and rock for fifty miles at a stretch. A more effective shield against invasion from the European mainland was difficult to imagine.

And yet the barbarians had crossed them. And more than that, they had brought their women and children with them. This, more than any other sign, spoke of the savage determination of his enemy, whose relentless drive to settle new lands had overrun all of Europe.

Don’t start glorifying them, he reminded himself. Put a sword in them and they fall just like anyone else. But his sword was only one, and they were many. Many. His estimation was that two hundred fighting men had stormed the pass held by the Sueves, a good-sized clan, but still only one of perhaps forty that now controlled northern and central Spain. What I wouldn’t give for two or three of the old Legions, six thousand strong. I’d mow them down like winter wheat, one field at a time, till there was nothing left but blood and open countryside. But such fantasies were wasted, and he knew it.

As the sun continued to climb, he slowly became aware that what he had first taken for a morning haze, was in fact a cloud of dust, rising slowly from..... His heart stopped. Only an army, several thousand strong, could raise that kind of dust. Now he was sure, as amidst the rising cloud he began to see the darker specks, the crows and other carrion birds that had learned to follow soldiers on the march.

What could it mean? Had the Sueves massed for a counter-attack? It seemed unlikely. While the barbarians tended to move in mass migrations, once established in a country as large as Spain, they rarely stayed together. The Roman skills to govern and administrate were wholly lost on them. Tribalism reigned supreme, with any number of separate lords and leaders ruling individual domains. At that there were always factions that became discontented and would split off, marauding. At times of war or outside threat the various tribes would sometimes come together under a single ruler..... But not like this.

He needed a better vantage point.

He set off running, feeling his urgency grow with each step. Back to the camp, where the others were just stirring. “Ariel! Get our things packed and onto the horse. Be ready to move out at my signal.”

“What is it?” she asked, her childlike face beginning to register more womanly alarm.

“I don’t know yet. Men on the move, thousands of them. They’re still miles to the east, but what they might drive before them.....”

With this ominous threat resounding inside him, understanding in his conscious mind the reason for his instinctive panic, he began to climb the serrated face of the cliff. Finding what crevices and handholds he could, he moved as one possessed, more afraid of the looming danger than of the

climb itself. He pushed on, sweating in his layered clothes, denying the strain on his body. Until he reached the craggy overlook, some hundred and fifty feet above the others.

He stopped and turned around, and only then seemed to feel the violent laboring of his heart. At first it caused him no great concern, and peering intently toward the east, he was able to breathe deeply and ignore it.

But after several minutes had elapsed and the blur in the distance became no clearer, he began to feel a pain and tightness in his chest that were altogether new to him. And all at once his breath would not come. He went down on one knee, disbelieving.

“No!” he gasped. “Not now, please.” The constriction of his heart bent him back across his leg, the rough stone cutting into the hollow between his shoulder blades. And through the pain and shock rose a horror so black..... Not of death, which he had faced a hundred times and did not fear, but of the brutality of a world, a God, that would try to take him now. What kind of cold and malicious being..... Why now, when those he loved remained in danger far below? Now, when each had suffered such unspeakable loss, had struggled so hard and so long, had again found meaning and a reason to live..... All his soul cried out against it.

“No!”

But none of this could help him now. He forced himself to be still, to let go of rage and hate. He breathed, shallowly and evenly.

And slowly. . .so slowly. . .the feeling passed. The pain lessened, and his breath began to come more naturally. Into his mind came an image, peaceful and soothing, that seemed from a distant past, though he had seen it in the flesh just an hour before. Ariel, flawed and human but still so beautiful in his eyes, embracing as her own a strong, wild boy whom she had known for less than a day. And he, too, showed such an instinctive trust in her. For they were two of a kind, orphans whom the world had abandoned. Victims of the nameless Horror he now faced. For them he must live, and keep trying. For them he must forget his own failures, and broken dreams, and find a way.....

“Yes!” he whispered, his soul embracing the word as completely as it had rejected the other. As the tears ran easily, no longer painful, down the sides of his face. For in that moment he finally learned: only the light of love drives away the black void of death, and makes life possible.

A woman’s voice, like that of an angel, came drifting up to him from below.

“Cassius? Are you all right? What do you want us to do?”

He thought for a long moment, bringing himself back. Then in answer he picked up a small stone, and tossed it lightly over the side. He heard it strike softly below. She seemed to understand, for she made no further sound.

After several minutes he roused himself and stood up, trying, as a strong man will, to deny what had just happened inside him. But no sooner had he done so than he was forced to drop back to his knees. There was no more pain, but he had no strength. At all. He hung his head heavily, breathing with his mouth open. Then sat back against a boulder, and for a time could do or think of nothing at all.

Nothing.

Then slowly, so slowly that it frightened him, he began to remember why he had made the swift and brutal climb. He stood up again, more cautiously, and though the earth seemed to move beneath him, braced himself with his arms spread wide to look out over the precipice.

Perhaps twenty minutes had passed. And while the army in the distance had not drawn visibly closer, something in front of them was now stirring: thinner, faster-moving lines which broke apart and came together in strange patterns.....

The Vandals! Horsemen, hundreds of them, had turned from this new menace and were moving toward them in wild haste, riding back to their old boundaries, splitting off into groups to warn their scattered brothers. One group, perhaps eight miles off, was headed straight towards them.

He knew what he must do. He knew what he must do. But how to make his body do it? He breathed deeply three times, shook himself severely, then turned and lowered his feet out over the side.

The climb down was hard, and more dangerous than he was capable of realizing. For though gravity now worked with him, he had no strength, and it was difficult to muster the concentration he needed. More than once his hands lost their grip, or his feet could not find the hold they sought. Yet somehow he held on, struggling, sliding, and stumbling at last to solid ground. Ariel came up quickly, and putting her head beneath his crooked arm, helped him to his feet.

“Are you all right? What happened?”

“My heart.” He still breathed heavily. “We’ve got to get out.”

“Your heart? But what— ”

“Please. There are mounted men, headed this way. We have to go!”

“All right,” she said, taking this in and trying to steel herself to the danger. She led Cassius to the horse, which stood ready, and as the boy came running up to her, set him on its back. Then a thought came to her, which she acted on at once. She reached inside the saddle pack and took out the water skin.

“You should drink.”

“Yes.” He let her raise it to his lips, then taking it from her, poured the rest out over his face. With this he recovered his senses, shook himself again. Then cupped his hands together to boost her up.

“No, Cassius, you’re not well. You’ve got to ride this time, at least for a while.”

He tried to dispute her, but she was adamant. And she was also right. He led the horse beside a rise of stone which he used for a platform, climbing weakly onto its back. Then reaching forward around the boy, he clung to its mane as if to life itself. As Ariel took the reins, and led them away.

“To the south?” she asked, her face set.

“Yes. We’ve got to find cover.”

Twenty

They had not gone far before, with growing desperation, Cassius felt the danger closing in on them. He had hoped to find some kind of cave in the granite rise, or at least a narrow gap that the Vandals in their haste would not investigate. Instead he found nothing but an unbroken wall of stone. Alone he might climb it, but this offered no safety to Ariel and the boy, no concealment whatever for his horse. Worse still, the winding hills before them had begun to flatten out. Even flight, had it been possible, would not avail them.

And then he heard the sound he dreaded. Hoofbeats, not yet close, but closing. He slid down off the horse’s back, looked wildly about him. To the left, only the failing hills blocked the Vandals from their sight. Perhaps they could scramble in among the bushes..... No. They would not be able to penetrate deeply enough, and between the rustle and this bright daylight they might easily be spotted. To the right lay only the diminishing granite, here thrusting out parallel roots like sharp-edged waves of stone.

“Christ!” He saw only one chance, and it was not a good one. Taking the boy down from its back, he quickly stripped the horse of their gear, putting the pack across the girl’s shoulders, the saddle over his own, and handing the rolled blanket to the boy. Forcing himself not to look back, he worked frantically to remove the bridle. There was nothing else he could do.

“Goodbye, loyal friend.” And fighting back emotion, he drew out his sword and struck it smartly across the thigh with the flat of the blade. The horse started, cried out, and bolted off to the south. And even as he watched it go its cry was answered by a Vandal’s horse, scarcely two hundred yards away. One last hill separated the man, woman and child from them.

“Quickly,” he whispered. “Up into the rocks. Stepping only on bare stone! We can’t let them track us.”

Together they scrambled as best they could up the layering rock, till he spied a jutting shelf that would just shield them from view. They moved laterally toward it, but too slowly. Looking back, Cassius saw the first riders appear at the crest of the hill. He threw out his arms and caught them both about the shoulders, hurling them to the ground before him, and with desperate strength closing a hand over each of their mouths.

He lay perfectly still, and anything approaching the feeling of helpless exposure, of sheer terror, not for himself but for those he loved, he would not have believed possible. He heard the riders speaking from the hill’s crest, saying something about the horse and, he imagined, pointing toward its tracks, and to the place where they themselves had dismounted. As with nightmare confirmation they made their way down the slope and came to the spot, not sixty feet below them.

“Someone has been here,” said a voice in harsh, Vandal German. “They must have dismounted and moved up into the rocks.”

“Six thousand armed men behind you,” came a gruff reply, “and you want to stop and kill more natives.”

“I tell you, we can’t let them go!”

“Then hunt them down yourself!” shouted the second man, apparently the leader. “We’re off to find Hegel and the other lords. No rabble’s whore of an army, be it from Rome or from Hell, is going to drive me from the land I fought for!”

In the short silence that followed, Cassius felt their lives suspended, hanging by a thread. Time seemed to freeze like the stars in their distant heavens, as the gods decided their fate. And not even gods, but a mindless enemy, bent on destruction. Their executioner seemed to waver, shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.

“Curse these Spanish rats! I’ll kill you all before I’m finished!” But with this shouted threat he drove heels into his horse’s flanks, and rode away with the others.

Cassius remained, silent and still. He felt the girl tugging gently at his hand. The boy made no move, understanding. He let himself breathe.
The girl’s tugging became more insistent. Slowly he realized that she was not going to cry out, but only struggled for breath. He released her face, and the boy’s as well. After a few gasping breaths, all were silent. At length the girl shifted her body, bringing her lips very close to whisper in his ear.

“Are you all right?” He nodded, though it was not quite true. “Can we leave here and go on?”

“No. There may be others.” He turned over onto his back, trying to breathe evenly. His head had cleared a little with adrenaline’s surge, but the tightness in his chest was returning. The girl sat up, moving a little higher into the gap behind the sheltering stone. Looking first to the man, who nodded, the boy moved to join her. But when she saw Cassius’ pained expression…..

“Is it your heart?”

“Yes. Help me with this.” Together they loosened first the heavy cloak, then the tunic beneath it. He lay still as, not knowing what else to do, she gently ran her fingers across his chest, not quite massaging it, only trying to reassure him.

He let his mind go blank, thinking only of the sweet touch of her fingers on his breast. And again the feeling passed. When he looked up, her eyes were full of tears.

“Don’t die, Cassius. Please.”

“Nay, girl. It’s a little better now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve got to be strong now, for all of us.”

He gently patted her leg. The three remained quiet, until she could see his color returning, his expression become more natural.

“Will it tire you to speak?” she asked.

“No. Just try to keep your voice down.”

“What can we do now? What did you see from the cliff?”

“Soldiers on the march, thousands of them. That’s why the Vandal marauders turned and came back this way, to alert the others. We’re right in the middle, caught between two opposing armies.”

“What will we do?” And he saw from her expression that something of the frightened child had returned, though she tried hard to suppress it. How quickly she had grown! How quickly all must grow in this age of Darkness.

“I don’t know. We’ve got to wait here for another hour at least, then find shelter. . .some place to hide.”

It was closer to two hours before Cassius let them rise and look about, as he tried to decide which way to turn. As far back as the gap where they had found the boy, he could not remember a single opening, or shelter of the kind they needed, not just for a day, but until the clash of arms had been settled or moved on.

From this new vantage point he saw that the south held even less cover than he had first thought. Along the path they had followed lay only the declining hills to one side, and the failing granite ridge on the other. Beyond these, several hundred feet lower than the high plateau from which he now surveyed it, a broad valley opened before them, and on to the placid wine country beyond. Down its center ran a peaceful river..... With a qualm he realized it was the same stream they had followed, bending, as all waters must, to the Sea. Whatever course he had chosen from the battlefield, it would have led them to exactly the same place. And there was no turning back.

To retrace their steps northward would be treacherous at best. Again he felt the hopelessness of their cause..... But returning his eyes to what lay directly before him, he saw that the shelf of rock behind which they had sought shelter, formed a kind of pathway in itself. A little farther up it doubled back to the right, then to the left again, a kind of zigzagging staircase up the face of the stone. Of course it might die out as quickly as it had begun, leaving them stranded halfway up. But with a grunt wholly devoid of laughter he asked himself, What else can we do?

“Come on,” he said, shouldering the saddle.

“Where are we going?”

“Up.”

The climb was long and difficult. More than once Cassius despaired of his strength, as the way led them to an impasse, or died out altogether into the face of nearly vertical stone. But working together, forced to trust each other wholly, they would reach and claw and cling to each other’s limbs, overcoming the obstacle and continuing on their way.

Stopping to rest on a broad ledge high above the plain, the three finally turned to look about them. Somehow they had made it nearly to the top of the great spine of granite, and could gaze out far to the east and south. But as he tried to focus his eyes on the loose columns still advancing toward them, Cassius realized bitterly that though they might well find a hiding place here among the cliffs, they would have neither food nor water, nor shelter from the elements. Almost nothing grew among the stone and hard-packed earth. They had left the sheltering scrub far below— not even a gnarled pine with which to construct a lean-to. He had led them from one kind of exposure to another, just as dangerous.

“Look how far we’ve come,” said the girl, her spirits rallying. “Is that the army over there?”

“Yes,” he said, with an indifference that troubled him. He tried to shake it off. “I don’t expect they will come much closer before setting up a fortified camp. They are aware of the Vandals by now, and beginning to remember they’re in hostile country, far from home.” Beneath his breath he repeated the word, an echo of emptiness. “Home.....”

“But who are they?” she asked, intrigued.

“By their banners, and the way they’re trying to march, I’d say they fancy themselves Romans.”

“The Romans? Maybe they’ll help us! We’ll just wait here until they come close enough, then you can go down and explain..... Cassius? My God. Why do you look so dejected?”

She had read his emotions correctly. Standing there, weak and short of breath, he felt as flat and exhausted as a man who had run a marathon, and lost. He told himself it was due to his physical condition, and to the emptiness that always followed a wound and loss of blood..... With a shake of the head he remembered that he had not been literally wounded, not this time. Though his body giving out from within was in many ways a more bitter betrayal, a more grievous loss. But even if he had been in perfect health, a thing he would never know again, he would have felt much the same.

When he had heard the Vandals speaking, half fearfully, of an army from Rome—once they had gone, his breath returned, and he had a chance to think about it—all the old martial feelings, the old dreams, had tried to stir in him. But with every step of the torturous climb they had weakened: no more fuel to feed the fire. For this mixed and vagabond army, probably not a quarter of them true Roman soldiers, was all that remained of the cause, the living body that he had served and been a part of for so long. Rome: an ideal society, a perfection of the mind, long since fallen to an absurd parody of itself. The Goths who sacked and raped her remains had no doubt placed a figurehead on the throne, assembled these armies, and were trying to live out the fantasy Empire: of conquest and control. But it was gone. All of it, gone.

He fell back against the stone and slid down to his haunches, as lost and disillusioned as the last of a race. After a time, he spoke.

“All my life I’ve fought and struggled, always thinking that my reward, the life I wanted, lay just over the next hill. One more battle, one more campaign, and it would be mine at last. I gave myself to it, heart and soul, refusing to see what my eyes tried to show me, refusing to feel what I knew in my heart..... There’s nothing left of Rome, Ariel. These are just barbarians and conscripts, the lowest of the low.” He tried to stop for her sake, but the words would not be silenced.

“I begin to think that Rome was never more than a grand illusion. Because no matter how strong it became, no matter the wealth and power it possessed. . .it was still mortal, a moment’s sunlight on the grass. Her rulers, her soldiers, even her slaves, suffered the same slow decline, the dissolution of the years. And nothing saves us from death.

“God..... We are born into the world with such energy, such dreams, and an innocent belief that we are going somewhere. Then comes youth, a time of magic and romance, only fueling our fantasies, and making us believe that anything is possible..... We grow to manhood, and wear ourselves out pursuing those dreams, never guessing that the only happiness we will ever know is right there beside us, in the love of a wife, a child..... “I’ve forsaken my family, and thrown away my life. It’s too late for me, Ariel. It’s too late.”

She leaned back against the rough stone, her own emotions stirred so strongly that it was difficult to comfort him. But the well-spring of courage she had discovered when they found the boy, making her more than she would have believed possible, had not been exhausted by the trials of the day. As she looked first to the man she loved, then to the child she had taken to her heart, she felt with a deep throbbing of life’s blood, that it never could be. She was a woman, and knew what she must do.

“No, Cassius. It’s not too late, and I want you to stop talking that way. You had a problem with your heart, under extreme circumstances which you won’t repeat. You’ll have to take better care of yourself, and stop being so fanatical with your body. Maybe you have lost something, but you’ve gained something, too. You are learning, as some men never do, what is and is not important. You are learning the truth— about Rome, and about yourself.” He started to turn away. She would not let him.

“Listen to me, Cassius. I love you. We need you, and you are not going to give up.”

Shamed by her words and her strength, slowly his own sullen determination returned. He stood up.

“I’ll live to mount you yet,” he said, only half in jest. “All right. Let’s see where your God has led us this time.”

It was not much farther to the top. The ledge from which he had given his dark soliloquy bent upward, growing narrow as it curved around the extreme southern end of the knifing promontory. But where he expected to find only the knife's edge, a shelterless stab of rock, he found instead a narrow gap between opposing walls, a split in the stone which seemed to run on for some distance.

The three of them stood on a last curving bulge of the ledge, facing the shoulder-high entrance of the split. From here the way descended slightly, into shadows that grew deeper and wider as the eye followed them in. Half consciously the man realized that whatever this place was, it would be completely hidden from below.

“How strange,” said the girl. “I wonder where it leads.”

Cassius said nothing, too bewildered to think clearly. Was it possible? Had Fate at last reprieved them, leading them to safety and shelter? It went against all his experience.

“Be careful,” he replied, leading them in with his sword drawn. “It feels too easy. It may be a trap.”

“Or a miracle,” said the girl, still chafing at his earlier fatalism.

“I don’t much trust miracles. Here, watch your step, boy.” Together they advanced into the gloom.

It was hard to see more than a few feet ahead. The sun was westering, and the shadows were deep. And though the floor of dirt was more or less even, the walls were not, jutting hard and irregular across their path. But in time the way became wider, the walls higher and more predictable. As their eyes continued to adjust, they could see before them what seemed to be a path, right down the middle, leading them on. Cassius felt his vision blur, and in the confused haze of his mind, thought he saw a low wall of stones. But when he went to step over it, it was gone. Then in the distance he heard a sound so distinct, and yet so improbable..... He heard the sound of goats, bleating as they were herded into a pen. He stopped.

“We’re not alone here.” And again all his thoughts grew black.

“We’ve still got to go forward—”

“No!” But with this utterance the last of his strength failed him. He sprawled out his arms, as the ground rushed up to meet him.

Kneeling quickly beside him, Ariel turned him carefully onto his back. She loosened his clothes as before, and put her ear to his chest. But though he had lost consciousness, his breath came regularly, and his heart seemed to beat an even stroke.

“He’s just exhausted,” she said to the boy, whose stoic face was churning with emotion. “Stay here with him,” she said, gesturing to try to make him understand. “Here. He needs water. I’m going to see what lies ahead.”

Though loyalty and caution told her to remain there with them, something which she could not explain drove her onward. Whether curiosity or desperation, still it made her rise, and work her way steadily forward. She went almost recklessly until, as the sound of the goats drew nearer, she heard with it the small scoldings and shooshing encouragements of a man.

A man.

She stopped, hugging up against the deeper shades of the western wall. Advancing more cautiously, her hands spread behind her against the stone, she now saw that the walls were lowering slightly, or the ground was rising, allowing more and more light into the broadening expanse. One last protrusion separated her from the sounds, the light, and the mystery ahead. Her heart pounded. A sudden fear came into her, and she found she could not move.

But then the voice, apparently that of an old man, changed from wordless exhortations into speech. And she heard, soft but distinct, a gentle and weary voice, speaking Hebrew.

“Another day’s useless wandering, Lord. When will you hear me, and lead us from this desert?”

Unable to control herself, she burst from cover and ran towards the sound. She saw a wooden fence to one side, stone houses straight ahead, built against a backdrop of solid rock. A cistern in front of them, a short stairway cut into the earth. Then a startled man in plain but honest garments, stepping back and away. His forehead was bald, with white hair about the temples, and curling in a beard across a noble but careworn face.

“Please,” he said in Spanish. “Leave us alone. Just let us die in peace.”

Ariel’s throat swelled with emotion, making it hard to speak. Somehow she managed, “Shalom.” And all at once the man’s expression changed.

“You are a Jew?” he asked, astonished.

“I am a daughter of Abraham,” she replied, also in Hebrew. “And I come in peace.”

The man stepped haltingly toward her, then opened his arms wide. And as she ran to him and embraced him, he broke into uncontrollable tears.

Twenty-Three

The man opened his eyes slowly. He was lying in a bed. Stone walls surrounded him, but did not feel like those of a prison. They felt, though he feared to hope it, like those of a home. Firelight played about them, and reinforcing this belief, they emanated not cold, but warmth.

He tried to sit up, but found he had not the strength, falling back woozily. And while such frailty must always concern a man whose life, of necessity, is born of action, he saw in that brief rising a sight that calmed him more than any other would have. He saw the girl, Ariel, asleep in a chair at the foot of the bed. There was nothing else for it but to remain immobile, and try to gather himself slowly.

He searched his memory, trying to bring it, and himself, to this place. His first impressions, even before opening his eyes, were that they had somehow journeyed back to the stone house by the stream, the gentle pool. But though he could not yet reassemble the intervening time, he knew that much had happened since those quiet, anxious days..... How long ago? It seemed a lifetime.

“Ariel,” he said hoarsely, his throat dry. Though he could not quite see her, he heard her stirring at the sound of his voice. She raised her head, looked about her for a moment, then with eyes opening wide in sudden understanding, came quickly and sat beside him on the bed. She took his hand, palm upward, and brought it to her lips. Her eyes shone with emotion, but for all that there seemed a kind of pious serenity beneath her stirrings. The man could not understand it, and it troubled him.

“Ariel. Where are we?”

“Among friends.”

“A wounded soldier has no friends.” He felt himself coarse for saying so, but it was the truth.

“We are among Jews.”

With this news, strange as it was, his mind began to work again, putting back the pieces. He saw again the more recent past, began to remember the long climb, the shadowed gap between the rock. And from a memory deeper still, that of old campaigns passed down from father to son, came a word shrouded in ancient mystery. Seeming improbable, still it would explain much.....

“Masada.”

“Yes. Jacob said that was the inspiration for this place: a high fortress, a refuge in time of war and strife. Here we can study the Torah, and open our hearts to the one true God.”

“Enough of that,” he said coldly. “So, we are among Jews. Tell me this first. Are we safe?”

“Yes. Yes and truly, for the first time since I met you. Since you took me away from the village. . .away from death.” And all at once the composed and understanding woman was gone. In her place the forlorn and loving child lay down and spread herself across him, arms wide. She was crying, and he thought he knew why.

“My heart feels fine, Ariel. I just don’t have any strength. But it will come back again.” He was not at all sure it would, but in that moment it was all his desire.

The emotions became too much. He turned his head away. “Can you tell me something more about this place, how we came here?”

“If that’s what you want.” She shifted her body to make them both more comfortable, her face on his good shoulder, her hand at his throat. And through the turmoil of their other thoughts, both felt that this was as it always had been, always should be. “How much do you remember?”

“I remember standing on the promontory, looking out at the armies and feeling all twisted inside. Then my heart began to fail me..... After the worst had passed I descended.....”

As he spoke it came back to him. For he was not an innocent adolescent whose mind, for its own protection, must hide from a bitter truth. He needed only to say the words to relive the experience, and bring himself back to the present.

“.....as we continued on through the rift, my mind began to fade. I was assailed by strange fears, and everything became dark and confused. I heard the sound of goats. . .then I must have blacked out. Is that right?”

“Yes. Do you remember anything afterward?”

“Just glimpses, fading in and out. You took me by the arm I think, put your head under and tried to lift me. There was an old man with you. That startled me. My senses woke for a moment, but I was too weak to fight. I pushed a little with my legs, first to try to stand, then to help you carry me..... And I remember the boy. He seemed in a bad way, as if he was afraid of something.”

Unconsciously her hand moved to his shoulder, and she stroked his scar with anxious fingers.

“He was, Cassius. I think in part he was reliving his father’s death, transferring those feelings onto you. But I’m sure a part of him realized it was you. . .and he was afraid. Afraid of losing you.” For a moment she could not speak. “He loves you, Cassius, and he thought you were dying.”

He held her closer, kissed her eyes to ease the tears. “I’m right here, Ariel. I’m not going anywhere.” After a time of silence, she went on.

“Do you remember that when we brought you here, and laid you in the bed he wouldn’t leave you? At first he wept, then as Jacob tried to lead him gently away, pulled out a little dagger and threatened us both. I guess you were right about that.” She laughed a little, held him tighter. “So we let him stay. He lay beside you for two days, and it was all I could do to get him to eat or drink. It was only this morning that he finally let Jacob take him out for some air.”

At that moment the solid wooden door opened from without. The boy entered first, followed by the old man. And when he saw Cassius awake and alert, the boy ran to the bed and leapt up beside him. Ariel made way as he wrapped his little arms about the Roman’s bearded neck.

“I’ll leave you for now,” said the rabbi from the doorway.

“Wait. I’d like to speak to you first.”

“In good time, my friend. For now enjoy the family that God has given you. It is a great gift, and you should savor it while you can.”

And as he quietly closed the door, Cassius felt the wisdom of his words. But as he repeated the one word, “Family,” as he embraced the two that he had found, he was stung by such hot tears that he found he could not breathe.

Because he knew that it was true.

Later that day there came a knock at the door. Jacob opened it slowly and came in, carrying a loaded tray. He set this on a broad table across from the bed, on the far side of the hearth fire, which Ariel had kept burning brightly.

“Shall we eat together?” he said. “Or shall I leave you at your ease?”

“No, no,” said Cassius, sitting up against the headboard. “I want to talk to you anyway.”

“Then let me bring another chair. I’ll be right back.”

As he left, Cassius threw aside the blanket, put his legs over the side of the bed. A weakness and dizziness accompanied these movements, and to cover this he said to the girl, who watched anxiously. “Bring me my clothes, I’m all right.”

He dressed himself stiffly, not yet trying to stand. Then took a deep breath, his hands beside him on the mattress.

“Let me help you,” said the girl, coming closer.

“Step aside. A man who can’t stand on his own might just as well be dead.” There was a hardness in his voice that brooked no argument. He stood up, steadied himself for a moment, and made his way to the table.

At that moment Jacob pushed open the door with his back, carried in an oaken chair, thatched with interwoven leather. “Ah. I see you have chosen to rise alone. To let us help you might have been more prudent. But sometimes the greater wisdom lies in yielding to one’s own nature, when it will not be silenced.”

“What do you know of my nature?” said Cassius, surly, not yet sitting.

“That you are a Roman is obvious. That you are also a soldier became clear when I saw the wound and the short sword, which is a hundred years old if it’s a day. And Ariel has told me that you fought, greatly outnumbered, before the walls of Rome itself. That took courage, and stubbornness. No, don’t be alarmed. In truth the girl has told me very little, only that which was needful. She said there were some things, close to your heart, that she did not think she should tell, and I did not press her. Nor will I press you now. But you are quite right. We must talk. But first we must eat.” And the old man began to spread out the things that he had brought: plates and utensils, bread and goat cheese, figs, water and wine.

“No meat?” grumbled Cassius as the four sat down to table, he at one end, Jacob opposite, the boy sitting on Ariel’s lap between them. Jacob asked if he might say a prayer first. Cassius grunted. Ariel bowed her head.

“Yahve, our Father, the first and only God. Thank you for bringing your daughter Ariel safely to this place. Thank you also for the soldier, Cassius, who served as her protector. Guide us by your wisdom so that the two of us, so different, can work together to fulfill your sacred will, to the glory of your name.”

“Not Hebrew?” asked Cassius. “I thought a true rabbi must always pray in Hebrew.”

“So, you know something of me as well. I see that you, too, are a man of observation. Well, owing to present company, I thought it might be best to speak in a language you would understand. Please, take some wine.”

“This Kosher stuff is too sweet for my Italian tongue. And unleavened bread.” He lifted it dubiously. “Our soldiers in Judea used to say it was hard enough to patch a shield, if need be.”

“Very amusing.” But the old man’s face showed no appreciation for the joke. Instead, a dark cloud passed over it. “Your soldiers were less jovial. . .when they crucified ten thousand Jews, nailing them to the sides of their own houses because there weren’t enough trees.” Cassius began to rise, but Ariel put a hand gently on his forearm.

“Old memories can be painful,” she said, speaking to them both. “Cassius would never be a part of that, would you? And Jacob, he won’t always speak lightly of things that upset you. It’s just his way at first.....”

“Yes,” said Jacob, slowly raising his head. “But it brings us to an important point, doesn’t it? How do you feel about the Jews, Cassius?”

“I will tell you the same thing I told Ariel. And I know nothing of crucifixion, except to put down insurrection. I bear no grudge against the Jews, nor did any Roman before Constantine. It doesn’t matter to me who you pray to, Yahve, Jesus or Jove. It’s all part of the same cruel hoax, and I won’t have any part of it.”

Jacob shook his head, looked solemnly at the Roman. “After all the darkness that you have somehow passed through, and despite the greatest miracle of all, Life, still you harden your heart against God.”

“And what has he done to help you, old man? You say I am a man of observation, let me make a few guesses about how you came to be on this mountain all alone. You are alone, aren’t you?”

“My wife lies buried just outside. My God and my hopes for our people live inside me. If you want to call that alone— ”

“Yes, I do. You built this place with the help of your followers, inspired by the memory of Masada (and you will recall that Masada could not protect the Zealots from the Roman will). You thought it would be a place of safety, in time of war and strife. Stop me when I’m wrong.” The other said nothing, nodded gravely. “You used the Spaniards’ fear of leprosy as a cover for your movements, stocking it with food and drink to last forty people for several months. Am I right?”

“Yes, though we would have housed more if need be.”

“Except that when ‘war and strife’ came, it came too quickly. Your people were paralyzed with fear. Towns were overrun, families scattered, men, women and children slaughtered. And despite your God and his ‘sacred will’, no one has come.”

For a time Jacob said nothing. “Well,” he whispered sadly. “You are certainly a Roman.”

“Meaning what?”

“You sum up the tragedy of an entire people without feeling it in the least. That our tragedies are similar, moves you not at all.”

“What do you know of my tragedy?” demanded Cassius angrily, looking first to Ariel, then back at the man.

“Don’t you want to hear my observations? It costs so little to pass judgment on the lives and failures of others. Have you the courage to stand
on the other side of the sword?”

Cassius felt the blood rush to his face, looked away. His instincts told him to fight, to reject. But his sense of justice, nurtured by the girl and always stronger in her presence, told him the old man was entitled to this much at least. And he remembered that this man had given refuge to those he cared for, had taken them all into his home.

“Yes, I have the courage. Tear my heart out, both of you.” And again he glared at the girl.

“I will tear no one’s heart out, and please stop accusing the girl of things she hasn’t done. What she told me of your life are only bits and pieces. There is much I do not know. And I would never assume, as you have, to know the innermost feelings of another man. Still, I too like to think that I have seen some small part of life, and can read something of the man before me.”

“So what are you waiting for?”

“Nothing. Stop me, when I misspeak.”

Ariel’s eyes moved from one to the other of the men she looked up to. Cassius had been her whole world from the time her village was destroyed, and the past that she had known was torn away from her. And under his influence, his dominance, everything before that time had begun to seem unreal, a kind of dream too beautiful to stand in the hard light of day he brought. But during the quiet times she spent with Jacob, she had begun to believe again, and to think that God, peace and family were the lasting truths, the chaos of war but a passing storm upon the earth. And here now, in the presence of the rabbi, Cassius’ views seemed too harsh, his actions aggressive without purpose. But turning back to Jacob, she saw that a few hard words from the Roman had cut him deeply, and stripped him of the inner peace that came from understanding God’s will. Who was right?

All these thoughts passed through her rapidly, in the time it took for Jacob to gather himself to speak.

“You are a Roman soldier,” he began. “And unless much has changed, that means the son of a soldier as well. Your fathers’ fathers fought and conquered, butchered and subdued in the name of Rome, and the Order of the Gods.” At this Cassius bristled and stood up. Jacob, remembering himself, mellowed his tone. “I’m, sorry. Please, sit down..... Very well. We will not yet debate the goods or ills of the Pax Romana, your heralded ‘peace of Rome’.

“You were born to a race of warriors: proud, unyielding, unaccustomed to defeat. But you were born too late. The vast Roman Empire had fallen to a mere remnant, struggling to survive. I do not envy you, my friend, and I do not mock you when I say that you have paid the price for the follies of men you never knew. The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their sons. It is quite true. All the violence and oppression of your ancestors has returned to rest upon your head, your troubled soul.”

“That’s a hell of a way to look at it,” growled Cassius. “And what was my wife’s sin— ” He stopped short, enraged and ashamed.

“So that is why,” said Jacob more softly. But Cassius had risen in earnest and moved around the table, towering over the smaller man.

“Cassius!” cried Ariel, terrified.

“Peace, child, he will not harm me.”

“Speak one more word of my wife and God’s will, and I swear I will!”

“My friend. My friend, please. I did not realize you had lost her in such a way, and I will say no more. That is a pain I have known myself, and perhaps more recently.” Seeing what he had done, the old man lowered and shook his head, then put his worn and weary fingers to his eyes.

All were silent. Cassius took a step back.

At length Jacob looked up, seeming at first not to recognize them.

“Well,” he said at last. “I think that is more than enough for our first meeting. Perhaps in the future we will be more gentle with each other’s loss. It’s all right, Ariel, I can take myself out. I’ll leave you alone now.

Sleep well.”

And he walked absently out of the room.

But though all felt that perhaps the day should have ended there, it did not. Jacob was left with several hours of daylight, and Cassius with the knowledge that he had badly repaid another man’s kindness. Ariel would not at first speak to him, then when at length she did rise, only embraced him and said sadly.

“Please let me go to him, and say that you’re sorry.” And her luminous eyes looked down at him.

“No. I will go myself.” And despite her objections he finished dressing, strapped on his sword, then went out to find the man that he had wronged.

A light but steady snowfall greeted him as he opened the door, accumulating soundlessly in the pristine stillness of the place. The lowering sky was grey and cold. Stepping out onto the raised level before the six or seven stone dwellings, he took stock of his surroundings.

Each building, ranging in size from a single square room to a long, two storied hall, was backed by solid granite, a last, irregular wedge before the high gap closed against the north. From their flat, wooden roofs this natural barrier of stone rose no more than ten or twelve feet: not high enough. For the smoke from the two squat chimneys in use, though dispersed somewhat by their design, and by a steady breeze from the north, might one day be spotted by a watchful eye from below. And something else troubled him as well. But for the remoteness of the place, and the difficult climb needed to reach it, there were almost no fortifications. “No doubt their God was to protect them as he did at Masada,” he muttered. “Though I don’t much fancy cutting Ariel’s throat, and then my own.”

But this was not why he had come. A thin streak of firelight showed beneath the door of what must be Jacob’s house. A small mound of earth to one side of it, covered with stones, confirmed this. He stood on the threshold, knocked gently.

“Come in, child,” came a voice from within. He lifted the latch—iron, but still not stout enough—and entered.

The old man was sitting at a writing table beside the fire, quill and parchment in hand. On the table itself, as on the wooden shelves all around, maps and scrolls were neatly arranged, giving the room a scholarly, and to the soldier, a somewhat intimidating appearance. “It’s all right, Ariel. No need to apologize. I just have to finish a few more lines, then I’ll be with you.”

“It’s Cassius.”

“Oh,” he said, turning round. “Are you sure you should be up and about?”

“Yes, Jacob. There are still some things that need to be said.”

“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” said the rabbi softly.

“No, but I think it should be.”

“.....please sit down.” He indicated a chair.

The Roman sat, then stirred uneasily. “I’m no good at apologizing.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do. You gave shelter. . .took care of..... You might have saved us all.”

“I would do it again.”

“I know you would. That is why..... I’m sorry, Jacob. I hope we can start again. Because there really is something else, that I need to talk to you about.”

“Very well.”

“Is there some kind of vantage point here, from which to look out on the broad valley to the south?”

“You’re concerned about the two armies.”

“Yes. You know about them?”

“My friend, we Jews are gentle by nature, but that does not make us passive. It is the Christians who call themselves sheep, though they often act more like wolves.” Cassius nodded, acknowledging the point. “I watch, and listen, every day: for signs of our own people, trying to reach us, or of intruders, who would destroy us. And I have weapons, too.” He gave the Roman a significant look. “I even saw you, though you did not know it.”

“When?”

“As you stood on the craggy overlook, north and east of here, looking out. I saw you fall. . .it seemed an arrow had struck you square. I might have helped you, but I didn’t. I thought you were a barbarian, and that we would be discovered..... So you see, we both have something to be sorry for.”

Cassius looked back at him, disbelieving. Whether or not Jacob should have come to his aid was irrelevant. He himself would have done the same thing without thinking. What came as a shock was that he, a soldier and scout for most of his life, had been seen by a man he did not see. True, he had been harried at the time.....

A new respect for this man, and a grudging acknowledgment that his approach to life held value, planted their seeds in his mind. And he was forced to admit that for all its faults, this mountain hideaway was nonetheless the work of a shrewd and enterprising people. And to have found the place at all..... Again he felt the reluctant realization that there might be other forces at work in the world, an alternative understanding he lacked. Hadn’t he felt it before, with Ariel? What was it that protected her, and gave her, despite her years, a kind of naive wisdom? At this his pride rallied, reminding him that the biggest part of what had protected her was himself, and his own will. Still.....

“I think perhaps we need each other,” said Jacob, as if reading the thought in his face. “We are strong, and also weak, in different ways. But if we were united.....”

Though Cassius had been on the verge of concluding this himself, to have another man interpret it for him, and tell him what he needed, was unacceptable.

“We can talk about that later,” he said tersely. “Right now I need to know about the armies.”

“Yes, of course.” Taking down a rolled map from one of the shelves, he slipped off the loop of ribbon, and spread it before them on the table.

“Will you hold this side?”

“Yes. Who drew this?”

“I did. There are others like it for every part of the country for miles around, drawn by our people living there. They may be very useful, if and when we decide to leave this place.” Whatever the old man meant by this, Cassius knew by his tone that it was not an idle comment. Together they leaned over the map.

“Where were the two armies at the time of your last sighting?” he asked.

But Jacob did not answer right away. And when he did there was a quality to his voice, the look he gave, that was almost like a challenge, a test.

“What do you know already?”

“Well,” replied Cassius, clearing his throat to rebuff him, but still feeling challenged. “With the Romans, such as they are, probably encamped to the south or east, and the Vandal riders dispersed westward to summon the horde, this southern valley seems a likely place for the thing to be settled. And that troubles me. With a battle of that size there will be any number of stragglers, deserters, all looking for somewhere to hide. If we stumbled onto this place, others might do the same.”

“You have a keen military mind,” said Jacob. “That is much the way it has unfolded. The Romans are there now, digging in, while the Vandals are massing to the south and west. Here, and here.”

“With the Romans just sitting?” Though it was no longer his army or his cause, still this blunder galled him.

Cassius began to pace. As Jacob watched, it occurred to him that he looked very much like a general on the battlefield, considering his next move. The metaphor was a good one, and he was struck by its aptness to his own train of thought.

“You don’t approve?” he asked.

“No, and I’ll tell you why. There is a saying, ‘Better to attack than be attacked.’ It is not always true. But when you are fighting a nomadic people on ground more theirs than yours, the last thing you want to do is sit still and let them mass against you. Far better to keep moving, attacking camps and settlements as you come upon them, separate bands which must remain behind and defend their homes and families.”

“Go on.”

“Also, you have to take into account the quality, the motivation of those fighting under you. Even in my time, half our soldiers were mercenaries—unreliable. Now they’re all mercenaries, if you follow, because the few Romans that remain are no longer fighting for themselves, but for a conquering barbarian leader, or the puppet he has placed on the throne. They are far from home, in territory that means nothing to them. And they must all know, deep down, that they cannot control all of Spain.

“You must think how it appears to them,” he continued. “Some fool in Rome wants to play Caesar. He has paid them, and given them a rousing speech, along with the promise of rich rewards. But that’s not enough to die for, not the same thing at all as fighting for your home and your people. The Vandals have all this on their side, along with a reputation for ruthless cruelty. The one chance the Romans had was to get on top of them quickly, and stay on top by cutting a bloody swath across the countryside, driving them on to new lands in the south. Then you can start thinking about consolidating territory.”

The rabbi listened, both fascinated and horrified. For this man was speaking of killing, of laying waste, as if it were nothing more to him than a farmer harvesting grain. But he also knew, sadly, that such martial attitudes would be necessary.....

“They are fortifying their position with trenches and stake fences,” he put in.

“It makes no difference,” said Cassius, with some heat. “We are fighting horsemen, highly skilled and highly mobile. They overran the Suevian position to the north of here as if it were nothing at all. They too had built defenses, flimsy and inadequate as they were..... Why the devil are you smiling?”

“You said ‘we’ are fighting.”

“Listen to me, Jacob. And if you hear only one thing I say, hear this. War is not something to be trifled with, nor are the loyalties of the men who wage it. You are testing me, I believe, with some thought of using me as your general if and when your people can be mustered. I don’t say yes or no to that, only that you are thinking it.” Jacob nodded.

“The first thing you need to know about war, the very first, is that it is fought by desperate men, squaring off against each other at close range. One man will turn that fear into sullen determination, and overcome. The other will die. There are no theories. It is not a thing of the mind, that you can gain from me by asking a few clever questions. You cannot know until you have tasted it: the primal struggle, flesh set against other flesh, blood against blood. And only the very strong will survive.”

He drew out his sword, put it on the table before them. 

“Look at this, Jacob: the Roman short sword, the weapon that built an Empire. The blade and handle are one, forged together: they will not crack or separate under the weight of the most telling blow. My father gave it to me, as his father gave it to him. It is sixty-five years old, and yet it endures. Why? Because it has but a single purpose: to thrust and kill. It is not for the sword-play that modern soldiers seem to favor. You will never see me ‘cross and parry’ with my enemy. Block with the shield, thrust with the sword. And that thrust had better be true, for you will not get a second chance.”

“But you carry no shield,” said Jacob. “And why do you seek to make every man your enemy?”

“No, I carry no shield. My shield arm is damaged: I cannot protect myself as I would. But I can still fight. If my sword arm was useless, I would kill myself.”

“But— ”

“Why do I make other men my enemy? I don’t. They take that decision on themselves. But I will go this far. ‘He who is not for you is against you.’ The one thing Jesus said that I agree with. Only when your enemy is cold and dead can he be trusted. In any other state he will rise up to stab you in the back, and steal away the life’s blood that your forefathers fought and struggled to pass on to you, and which only you can defend.” The old man shook his head.

“Listen, Jacob. For the last time, listen. There is no divine plan, no God as we try to know him. There is only survival for the strong, and death for the weak. It is Nature’s law, and I do not choose to break it.”

Jacob said nothing.

“Then with your leave I’ll say good-night. If you will take the watch tonight, I will come early in the morning to relieve you. A battle is going to be fought, and men are going to die. Just as we will die, if we are not vigilant.”

He turned, and left the room.

Jacob walked out into the cold and snow, feeling old and useless. And as he made his way along the sunken trail toward the southern outlook, his mind found no peace. For the words of the Roman, on both occasions, had passed through him like a sword through defenseless flesh. Oh, his mind had defenses. Even now he heard the ready arguments against this stark and disbelieving view of life. But they simply would not serve. There was a horrible truth in what Cassius had said.

As he walked, as the cold and dark sought to overwhelm him, his mind struggled and fought, trying to find some reason, some shred of meaning to the encounter. There must be a lesson in Cassius’ words, beyond the bitterness and rage, that he could apply to his own life, and be strengthened by instead of torn down. What lay at the bottom of his soldier’s experience? What was the essence of his discourse?

Take nothing for granted.

Yes. That was it. And while his rabbi’s training, the words of the Torah, told him to be faithful and obedient to God, to trust in God, to pray to God, his experience as a man showed him the wisdom of these words. He came to the shoulder-high opening, made his way down the familiar, but no less difficult incline.

“Take nothing for granted.”

Not so very far from his own belief. Wasn’t that why he had first envisioned the mountain fortress? Hadn’t he used much the same argument to convince those who were against it, but favored waiting, and lying low?

Nothing for granted. Yes. Wasn’t that a lesson that every Jew should have burned into the marrow of his bones? Living without a home, the eternal refugee. Moving from place to place, trying to escape oppression and religious hatred. Precariously carving out the smallest niche in which to survive, and pass that legacy on to their children. Enough.

Yes! This he could understand. This he could use. And with that conviction his thoughts began to move with greater purpose, his body to fight off the cold with its own, innate warmth.

And Spain. He shook his head. Spain had been no answer, though the early days had been filled with such hope. The land that was much like the land they had left behind..... But the people. No, this would never be a safe home, with or without the German invaders. The Spanish themselves
were so quick to anger, so hostile to foreigners, and so mistrustful of anything they didn’t understand.

And with the coming of Christianity, things had gone from bad to worse. Far from softening the native peoples, it had only given a more definite shape to their fears, and an iron-clad creed with which to beat down the hopes and beliefs of others. The Spanish. They seemed to miss altogether the precepts of love and forgiveness espoused by the gentle Jesus, seizing instead onto dark visions of Hell, and the Devil, and the ruthless punishment of unforgivable sin.

That had been ‘Saint’ Jerome’s contribution to the world, along with other grumbling old men: their bitter and sadistic ‘translation’ of the New Testament. So full of fear, and hate, and blatant anti-Semitism. How could they forget that Jesus himself had been a Jew? That his apostles had been Jews? That his mother and father had been Jews. Did they imagine that the ‘virgin birth’, of which only one in four of the evangelists spoke, borrowing it from the myths of his native Greece. . .did they imagine that with this fantastic breach of Nature, defying as it did the very essence of life and family, a whole new race had begun? Had Yahve suddenly abandoned his Chosen People, put aside his sacred covenant with the Jews, in favor of a people who denied their own history, their own ancestry, the very mothers and fathers who had given them life? Perhaps I’m being unfair, he thought, but this age-old hypocrisy still goaded him.

And the Spanish had already begun to embrace the writings of Augustine, another raging ‘prophet’, with such angry and aggressive zeal..... Indeed, it was against this coming darkness that the fortress had been built, with no greater knowledge of the Gothic hordes to follow than the rumor of fear brought by frightened refugees from the north.

Arriving at last, Jacob wrapped the blanket about him, lay forward as comfortably as he could upon the rising, block-shaped stone that was his vantage point upon the south, and waited. The clouds blocked almost all light of star and moon, and he could see but little of the valley far below. Torches and campfires flickered a little to the east, where the Romans were encamped. But the Vandals, further south and westward, showed no light at all.

But he had other senses, and he had his bow. And he knew, the realization only reinforced, not created by Cassius, that he alone bore the burden of their safety until morning. He shifted his body, making it slightly less uncomfortable on the uneven ground. Then rested his chin on his fists. And waited.

Cassius remained seated in the chair that he had brought beside his own fire, bone weary and distraught. The meal had long been cleared away; the goblet in his hands was empty. He had not drunk more of the wine than he should. It was not that. Ariel came up behind and touched her fingers lightly to the skin of his upper arms, bare beneath the sleeveless tunic.

“What is it, Cassius?”

“Nothing.” A lie. “I just need to think a little.”
She said nothing more than, “Take your time. I’ll prepare the bed.” But these simple words wounded and weighed on him heavily, with the nameless pain a man feels when he knows that he is losing.

Losing! It is a silent pain, and one which he can never fully convey to his woman. Not because she wouldn’t understand the words..... Then what? Perhaps because it was something foreign to her existence, a kind of naked exposure to harsh reality that she would never feel: the total absence of faith.

Because the bitter truth he was trying to accept, and couldn’t, was that his body was truly failing. Not merely illness or fatigue, which he had fought off a thousand times. Not merely the wound, which made him always less than a whole man. More even than the failure of his heart, which spoke inexorably of his own mortality, whether he fought bravely or not. No. What hurt him at the core, was the loss of his vital essence—his manly strength—and the unmourned death of his youth.

Because he knew that Ariel was ready: that somewhere deep in her heart she had consented to wed her flesh to his, and resist him no longer. She would be his woman, his lover, his passion..... And now he had nothing left to give her, this young and beautiful flower.

In sudden fury he lifted the goblet and hurled it into the fire, the drops of leftover wine hissing on the flames.

“Cassius, why? What’s wrong?” And again she came soundlessly behind him, her hands lightly touching. But his right hand reached across his body and gripped her by the wrist, pulled her harshly around and in front of him.

And looked at her. Somewhere among Jacob’s stores she had found the long and sensuous nightdress she now wore, ruby and silken and soft. And the sight of her lovely form, thick hair curling about the firm and rolling shoulders, her long and sensual neck opening down to the gently flowering bosom, were only so many more nails in his cross. And the searching question of her eyes, reflecting the firelight in tiny, round mystical mirrors, was the lance through his heart. His anger weakened with the flowing blood, though other fires, at war with his intellect, had begun to burn inside him.

“What’s wrong?” she said again. “Have I done something wrong?”

“No, my sweet Ariel. You’ve done nothing wrong.” And though his voice began to explain that he could not love her as he would, his hands were about her shoulders, caressing.

“Cassius,” she said, when at last she understood him. “I know you’re not yourself yet. In a way, that makes it easier. For the first time since we’ve been together, I’m not afraid of what you might do.”

“A clipped eagle is not likely to fly,” he said bitterly.

“No,” she said firmly, turning his face back with her hand. “It is because I want to lie with you, and not be afraid. Forget your soldier’s pride for one night, and lie in the arms of the woman who loves you.”

He took her hand in his, released a sigh. “Is the boy asleep?” He looked to the far side of the broad bed, saw that he was. “All right, then. There is something to be said for the soft touch of skin, and warm caresses on a bitter night.” And as he stood up, she put her arms through his and held him close. “But I warn you, sweet child. You are not altogether safe.”

“I know,” she whispered, her heart quickening.
And together they went to the bed.

Cassius woke an hour before sunrise. He needed no one to rouse him, no faintest trace of light beneath the door to tell him the dawn was coming. This was the morning before a battle—he could feel it—and nervous excitement coursed through every limb, countering age and fatigue. No matter that it was not his fight, that he would be watching from a distance. This scared and exulted preparation for combat was the very essence of his life as a soldier. And being a soldier was his life.

Dressing himself quickly, yet with a purposeful calm overlying all, he glanced briefly at the beautiful child he’d held so close, lying in the bed half exposed beneath the blanket that he had disturbed in rising. And while his first instinct was to put her from his mind, his first thought that he had done so already, it was not so. With a sigh he leaned out over her, one hand on the down mattress, and covered her again with the soft-spun cotton coverings. Then straightening he buckled on his sword, slid the long knife beneath his sword-belt on the opposite hip, and went to the door. He opened it, embraced by the cold, and went out.

The snow had stopped, but lay glistening faintly in the light of stars not yet diminished by the coming day. Jacob’s tracks were covered by six inches of powder and could scarcely be seen, but he thought he knew well enough where the southern outlook lay. In the heightened state of his senses, he was sure of it.

So he set out along the path between high walls which steered his course utterly, like a stream with no choice but to flow too quickly to the sea. This was his life, the life that had been chosen for him, that he had embraced. That had made him strong, then broken him. That had given him a wife and son, then taken them away. That had shaped his thoughts, hardened his heart, and made him the man he was: fierce, unquestioning, more ready to die for a cause than to live for those who loved him.

Yet as he walked, firm and resolute toward battle, his mind would not entirely be channeled. He found, somewhat to his dismay, that he was still thinking of the girl. Their intimacy that night had bound him somehow, had forced upon him responsibilities that he might not have wished. And he thought with sadness that though he had felt a similar tug at his heart the first time he took Arna to his bed, he had not let himself be moved by it. He did not want to be moved now.....

But he had done it, had pierced and penetrated Ariel’s virgin womb, and held her afterward as she cried. Not tears of pain and fear, but only of womanly emotion at innocence lost, and at the single, irrevocable step from child to woman. One day a girl, dancing for the sheer joy of it among a field of Spring flowers, the next a wife, a mother, bound to a life of work and worry, and endless concern for the care of others.

He did not know why his thoughts ran on like this, and he told himself again he owed her nothing. But he did. He had been inside her, had felt her moist inner flesh gently embrace his phallic thrusts, his desperate desire. Then afterward he had slowly softened, remaining inside her as she cried softly and asked him again and again if he loved her. And though it was true, he could not say it then, in those first moments after, when a man’s passion is spent and he has nothing left. And though later he had told her, it was with less conviction than he knew she needed.....

He came to the opening, and the descent beyond. Now he would have to move much more carefully. But even this forced concentration could not drive away the almost rueful train of his thoughts.

He had not wanted to take her then. His body had been exhausted, for one thing, though in the raw morning air he could already feel it trying to reassert itself. But as he lay with her, as he stroked the soft flesh of a body completely laid out to him, somewhere inside a rage of frustration would not be silenced. She had been within his grasp too many times, this lovely creature, and his desire had been denied for too long. And though she had not resisted him..... From the need to exert himself he had been too rough with her, thrusting hard and deep to keep himself rigid.
Well. There was no apologizing now, no explaining that the next time would be different: that he himself would be gentler, and she would not feel the same pain. All right, he conceded, with an odd mixture of relief and despair. It is done. I will marry her. If necessary, I will die for her. Now may I please concentrate on the battle at hand?

With these words he came upon the old man, leaning forward against a low boulder overlooking a steep slope. From there, though the granite rise was nearly at an end, the land continued to fall away so that even here, at its southern extremity, the base of the stone fortress lay several hundred feet above the plain. Cassius put a hand to his shoulder to rouse him, but Jacob had not been sleeping.

“Hello, Cassius,” he said wearily. The Roman went down on one knee beside him. A grey light had been growing steadily in the east, but as yet it revealed little of the great valley below.

“Any unusual movements during the night?”

“None that I could see. If the Romans moved, their fires did not. The Vandals showed no light at all.”

“Because they are moving,” said Cassius with confidence. “And horsemen in open country..... Well. Explain to me the last known positions of each, and as the sun rises we’ll check them against where they are now. I feel certain the Vandals will attack.”

“A soldier’s premonition?”

“Partly, but also because I know the Germans. Patience was never one of their virtues. But sometimes it is better not to wait.”

Jacob did as he asked, giving much the same description of troops and fortifications that he had while leaning over his maps, this time pointing to bends of river and rolls of land made vague with dawn and distance. Every moment the light grew, revealing by degrees the margins of the valley, snow white and pierced by dark lines of trees and bare hedges. But a cold fog still clung to the riverbanks for some distance all around, rising eerie and slow from the partly frozen waters.
Yet even as they watched, the north wind freshened. At first small patches were cleared away, then whole acres of land at once were revealed. Until finally, as if ordained by the god of War, the sun itself climbed above the rim of Earth in a fiery blaze, and the mists were rent asunder. The whited valley opened broad and clear before them, the river bending sharply from south to east, dividing it.

The Roman tents and fortifications could be seen huddled against the crook of the bend. Here earthworks had been raised against the bank. Reinforced by stout timbers and crowned with sharpened stakes, they were intended to discourage the Vandals from crossing the river in a surprise attack.

But in a swift and horrible moment Cassius’ senses revealed to him two things. First, the trampled snow leading northeastward, away from the camp, where half the mercenary army had deserted during the night. Then just beyond this, riding back like thunder along the very same track, ten thousand Vandal horsemen, bearing down with ruthless fury upon the few honest soldiers who remained. The Roman defenses were on the wrong side—worse than useless. Now they were trapped. They would be driven against their own earthworks and cut to pieces.
The two men, Roman and Jew, watched as the foot soldiers, voices raised in shock and alarm, tried hurriedly to form rank and prepare to meet the charge. But their small sounds were quickly drowned out by the thundering hooves and bloodthirsty cries of barbarians who outnumbered them three to one.

“My God,” said Jacob. “Yesterday their numbers were reversed, and the Vandals were spread across the countryside for miles in the opposite direction.”

“Bloody hell!” shouted Cassius, rising. “That is why you don’t sit still!”

The first wave of riders broke upon the Roman lines like angry seas, sweeping all before them. With a cry of rage Cassius drew his sword, and would have plunged down the steep embankment had Jacob not seized the arm with both hands.

“Don’t be a fool!” he cried. “You can’t change this. Get down before you’re spotted!”

Cassius tore the arm away. But for all his rage, the futility of the gesture was almost laughable. He could all but hear the snickering of cruel gods at his folly, at this last absurd gasp of the fallen Roman Empire.

“Curse you all!” he exploded, thrusting his sword at the indifferent sky. “And curse the bloody fools that lead good men to slaughter!” And a wordless cry burst from him, tearing his throat but touching no one.

The battle was lost, again.

Twenty-Eight

On the plain far below, Tiberius Gaius fought for his life. Not that he placed any great value on this. If given time to reflect he would have realized that this was what he sought: the death he could not find the strength to inflict upon himself. Because he was seventeen years old. And for all the times that he had stood determined, the knife poised at his throat, each time he found to his despair that he could not do it, could not bring himself to end his life.

Here now, surrounded by savage men who sought to steal that life from him, by friends he had known, dying on every side, it did not seem to matter that Rome was grotesquely altered, that his mother had been given by Honorius to the barbarians, or that he himself was impotent. He only knew that through the all-mastering fear of death, he felt something akin to real courage. These bastards would not have his life, not like this.

As the lines crumbled around him, as horsemen crashed through aiming blows at his head, then circled to attack from behind, his sword and shield rang not only with the impact of enemy blows, but with the counter-strokes of an unskilled but desperate defense. It did not matter that this was his first true battle; instinct had taken over. There was no time to think, only react.

They were being driven back now, en masse, toward the elevated earthwork that was supposed to protect them. Agrippa fell beside him, bleeding heavily from the shoulder. He took a step back to avoid him, then lunged forward and drove his sword into the groin of the mounted barbarian who had cut him down. The man lurched forward, writhing in agony, and Gaius pulled him off the horse with some thought of mounting. But the riderless animal had already turned and bolted.

They were closer still to the dug-in wall of timbers, beyond which stakes protruded from the artificial mound, pointing toward the river. More men fell, as the Vandal’s horses began to shy at the close proximity to the wall, the angled beams which supported it. What was his subconscious trying to tell him? Bodies, both living and dead, were being crushed against it as the horses were driven ruthlessly forward. Suddenly a rider was upon him, and a great axe crashed the helmet from his head. The blow had missed its mark, and the helmet absorbed most of the impact. Still he let himself fall, crying out as if the life were flying from him.

He looked up quickly. The axe-wielding Vandal, confident of the kill, had already turned his horse away in search of another victim. With no consciousness of having conceived the plan, or of now putting it into effect, Gaius crawled slowly toward one of the supporting beams, cringing together like a man mortally wounded, looking only for a place to die. Then he was under it, in the same moment thrusting his head and shoulder beneath the body of another man, whose blood flowed like water from a slash across the throat. As with the sword under him, Gaius enlarged the gash on his own forehead. Their blood flowed together, and but for the closest inspection, both would appear to be dead.

He lay perfectly still. No thought either of honor or cowardice arose in him, only the instinctive guile of a cornered animal, and the frenzied determination of youth escaping death.

The sounds of fighting went on around him for what seemed hours, though in fact was not much longer. The clash of metal on metal was the first to subside, as soon there were none left with the strength to fight back. Then the bloodthirsty cries of the riders grew less, and the sullen work of finishing the wounded began. One by one their final anguish was silenced, as men dismounted and moved from place to place, sometimes dangerously close at hand. A fear came on him then that they would begin to search the bodies for valuables.

And this they would undoubtedly have done, if Winter had not drawn close, and there had been anything approaching unity among them. But the time was short, and there was not. Being Vandals, and therefor treacherous even among themselves, those who had dismounted soon took horse again, and the assembled horde began to separate and come together in a way the young man could not understand, even when he dared to look. But to Cassius, who watched from above, their movements told a story he had come to know too well, and detest. For the various tribes, hurriedly gathered in this mutual defense, intermingled by the fray of battle, were now beginning to regroup, finding the brothers, cousins and near relations who could be trusted not to turn on them. These tribal groups, anywhere from a hundred to a thousand strong, then looked about them, viewing the others suspiciously. As the Roman watched, the silent standoff continued, broken only by the snorting and brutally suppressed movements of the horses, still wild and afraid with the heat of battle.

But for all his martial experience, Cassius was at a loss to know how it would turn. It was all so strange, this volatile mixture of pride and fear, shared triumph and distrust. Those in the larger groups seemed to eye the smaller with some thought of attacking. But no one moved.

Then, as if his hand played upon the strings of a mad puppeteer not yet satisfied with the carnage, the leader of the largest raised his sword to the skies, unable to raise his body. He uttered a cry which Cassius knew to mean, “Death to our enemies, victory and annihilation!” and pointed his sword to the east, toward their unfinished enemy, the Sueves. The cry and gesture were taken up by those around him, moving outward like a wave, and swelling to a fearful crescendo of hatred and violence.

“Gaiseric,” muttered Cassius, “the twisted brother of the king. It seems they have found a new leader.”

“Will he be worse than his brother?” asked Jacob, still trying to calm him and pull him down behind the stone.

“His name means gushing blood,” said Cassius coldly, “and he’s deformed in body and in mind.”

Then Gaiseric, his spine injured by a fall from a horse as a child—probably abusing it even then—put spurs to his horse and, followed in a vanguard by those closest to him, led ten thousand men in a body to the east.

Unable to contain his wrath, Cassius rose and thrust out his sword in defiance, the sun glinting for the briefest moment upon his uplifted blade. But if any of the riders saw him, it made no impact on the general movement, oblivious to anything but their own fatal cruelty. They moved, like sharks in the merciless sea, no more able to stop, no more able to feel remorse for the blood they spilled, and the utter destruction of life and hope that were their only legacy.

They moved.

Cassius frothed with rage, his body trembling with the need for violence. But there was no time. No sooner had the horsemen reached the edge of sight than he saw..... The very thing he feared. Along the northeasterly track they had taken, retracing the morning’s bloody charge, footsteps in the snow broke off to either side. In fleeing the night before, many of the faithless mercenaries had run directly into the massing Vandals. There they had no doubt been taken in as brothers, then quietly slain. But others, perhaps sensing the danger, had moved up into the hills, and would now be climbing with desperate haste.....

“Back to the hideaway!” he shouted at Jacob. “And I hope to God you know how to use that bow!”

“Why? What is it?” asked Jacob in alarm. “Have they turned toward the mountain?”

“Not the Vandals, you old fool. The mercenaries! Fleeing for their lives, the worst kind of desperate men. Now move!”

Cassius moved briskly up the slope, trying in vain to suppress the memory of another tragedy, another battle lost. Only the knowledge that his heart would fail him—

He cried out in animal rage, as for the first time in his life he felt a merciless hatred for the body he had once revered, of himself and all that he was. Let his heart fail him! Let him fall and die and make an end of it. He climbed until his knees burned like fire, throwing off his wraps, holding only the sword in one hand and the knife in the other, almost longing now for an enemy on which to vent his wrath.

He did not have to wait long. He had scarcely penetrated the entrance when a darker shadow flashed down at him from the right-hand wall. But as the man landed and steadied himself, he did not attack but began to speak, in the poor light mistaking Cassius for one of his own.

“Comrade,” he said in German. “Are we safe here?” His last words, his last mistake. Cassius’ sword thundered into his lung so that he could not scream, while the knife pierced his throat. In fury and desperation Cassius withdrew both blades at once, and let the body fall.

“What is it?” asked Jacob, breathing hard as he staggered up behind.

“The enemy,” said Cassius bluntly, with just enough discipline to keep his voice down. “Come on. Poise an arrow in that bow and follow me, quickly and quietly.”

Perhaps three hours passed before Gaius felt it safe to move, aside from trembling fits that began to take him as the blood of his ally, once warm, had turned inexorably colder with the rising North wind. During all that time his mind had faded in and out, like yet unlike sleep, as in his weakened daze the dreams would be at first soft and reassuring, like those of childhood. But then would come the horsemen in their hundreds, moving with horrific slowness, every savage gesture of face and hand a Winter’s night of terror. Then he was struck down—no mere glancing blow, but deadly and mortal. And he would fall, and die, alone. Till giant crows came and with their polished beaks, picked through the pile of sticks in which he sought to hide, the greatest so large that when it stretched out its wing, six and six of normal size would come and land upon it, until his horror grew so great..... But no sudden jolt of waking brought him back, only sheer force of will, a last, desperate struggle as of swimming up through a great depth of water, lungs bursting for air.

He was awake now, or conscious. But though his mind told the body it was safe to move, he found to his alarm that his limbs would not respond. Not from bodily paralysis, but from shock and fear. As in waking nightmare he tried slowly to coax them, speaking to himself.

“It’s all right. You’re all right. They’re gone now..... Yes, that’s it. Just a little more.” As muscle control returned to him, he tried to maneuver the dead man’s arm and shoulder…..

The dead man. Like an electric shock full consciousness returned, and he threw off the corpse in horror. He rose again, only to fall to his hip in dizziness, as something soft cushioned the blow.

Snow was all around him: on the ground, gently falling from the slate-colored sky. Instinctively he reached down his right hand, formed a scoop, and raised the crystalline powder to his lips. His mouth opened, and closed around it. Again and again, his throat burning with an unquenchable thirst. Then with the same snow and hand he cleaned the blood from his face, his neck. As all the while the silent white stillness laid its shroud upon the dead all around him. As it would cover him in a warm unending sleep if he did not rise, and move, and find shelter from the cold.

He stood up, fought off the rush of dizziness that sought to drag him under, and staggered toward the light that he had seen: was it real, or in delirium? He did not know, that moment of piercing brilliance, like a light beyond the grave: from the hilltop, when he dared to look up at the sound of the retreating horsemen. He did not know why he followed it now, the place where it had been, only that there was nothing else but to lie down in the snow and die. After a long, interminable time the land began to rise beneath his feet. Slanting ever higher, a mountain he could never climb.....

He moved.









Thirty

Cassius leaned heavily against the doorframe, breath coming hard and every limb aching with the cold. His sword was notched, his clothes were bloodied, and he bore gashes on his ribs and thigh both. Jacob knelt in the snow before him, also struggling for breath. He bore no physical wounds, but something deeper tore at his soul: the knowledge that his God had not protected them.

The fighting had been constant and intense, as both men in their different ways felt the relentless horror of an enemy that seemed to seethe from every shadow, every crack in the rock, and of desperate danger in a place that had once been safe. Their one and only bit of fortune had been that the deserters, true to their nature, had come upon them singly or in pairs. If they had come in a body, dropping down into the arena together, all Cassius’ experience and savage determination would not have saved them.

He had taken the brunt of the fighting on himself, stepping in to protect the old man whenever his bow failed to stop an oncoming opponent. More than once Jacob had been sure that death was imminent, and silently cried out to Yahve to save him. Not God, but an angry and bitter man had delivered him, sometimes cuffing him afterward, and screaming at him to rearm his bow.

But the worst moments had come when they first returned to the compound, only to find two mercenaries there ahead of them, trying to force the door beyond which Ariel and the boy sought the last vestige of shelter. Jacob could not control the trembling of his hands, leaving Cassius to deal with the two men alone.

And when Ariel heard his voice raised in anger, commanding them to stand away, in her panic and concern the girl had committed a fatal mistake. She opened the door and started out of it, as if her presence could somehow aid him. One of the two had seized her by the hair, put a sword to her throat and begun to back toward the open doorway. Only the boy and his ready blade had saved her, coming up from behind and stabbing the man square in the kidney. He released her, screaming in pain, and Cassius had done the rest.
Six men were dead by his hand. Three to five more (Jacob could not be certain) were wounded and likely to follow, as in their crippled state they
tried to flee down the sheer cliffs and steep embankments they had climbed. Several more had fled at the sight and sound of him, taking the secret of the place, and all future safety with them. It was all so horrible, so real.

But this was not why the rabbi now knelt in the snow, weeping. “My God,” he said to the wind and stone. “I’ve killed a man.”

But Cassius was in no mood for melodrama. He strode up angrily, took him by the shoulder.

“Stand up, old man!”

Jacob did as he asked, submitting like a child before a hard master. “I’m sorry. Thank you for. . .for— ”

“If you say for saving your life I will correct that mistake now! I did what I did to protect my own, among whom you are not counted.” But the old man was sobbing again, and even in his after battle rage the Roman could not retain his fury. Instead he looked away, breathed deeply several times, then turned back to him and said. “So now you’ve had a taste of it, eh? So now you know..... Go and stay with Ariel and the boy. You’re no use to me like this.”

“But you’re wounded.”

“Yes, I’m wounded. And it is almost dark and I will probably be ambushed. In case you’d forgotten, we’re in danger. You need to defend the house, and I must make one more sweep of the perimeter. Your ‘Masada’ has been breached, and there is no safety to be found here..... Go on.”

The old man gathered himself as best he could, and walked slowly across the compound. A gentle knock brought Ariel to the door. She helped him inside, then began to come out—

“For the last time,” said Cassius, exasperated. “Get back inside and bolt the door! Not another word.” She did as he asked, her face looking back at him sorrowfully. The door closed between them, and the warm light that had emanated from it, was gone.

“God damn you all!” he cried in turn to the wind and sky. “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

His entire body ached. He felt a thousand years old. The gash across his thigh burned against the numbing cold, making it impossible to walk without pain.

But the work was not done. He knew that he must run the gauntlet one last time, prepared at any moment for another enemy, another meaningless battle, which in his present state might well end his life. The sword felt like a weight of iron in his hand. His steps were heavy and slow, and it was difficult to make his eyes focus on solid objects through the heavy swirl of snow. He was vulnerable, and ill-prepared. Yet for all the responsibility he knew to be his, in that moment it was impossible to care. His mind was numb. His thoughts were black. All was weariness and pain. He walked.

He had nearly reached the V-shaped entrance when he saw, by the last grey light of day, something black against the sky beyond. He stopped.

More than seeing, he felt the man coming toward him.

All within the crevice was so dark that Cassius felt sure the intruder had not seen him. But the man’s shape was too indistinct: he couldn’t be sure enough of his position to run him through cleanly. So the Roman took three hard steps to alarm him, growling beneath his breath, the sword raised. And when the other did in fact start, betraying himself, he brought the blade down with a harsh cry, a terrible blow meant to crack the man’s skull.

Metal clashed against metal, solid and sharp. And if his mind had been a hundred times more darkened, if he had stood at Death’s very door, Cassius would have recognized the sound it made. An echo of his youth, and of the very first days of his training: the sound of one Roman short sword striking another. He took a step back.

“Who are you?” he demanded in Latin. “By all the gods, name yourself!”

“I am..... Tiberius Gaius.”

“Deserter?” he asked just as sharply, just as ready to kill at the wrong answer.

“No. Left for dead. Left for.....” And all at once the man collapsed against him. Cassius braced himself against the sudden weight, undecided.

Then with emotions unreadable, even to himself, he reached down and lifted the man onto his shoulder. He straightened his back, and walked with him to the place where those under his protection sought shelter from the storm.

Gaius felt something lightly touching his face, calling him back, as from the bottom of a great abyss. His spirit rose slowly in answer. Again he felt the cooling touch, nearer. It seemed a fine mist was breaking against the skin of a body once more his own, like the spray from an enchanted fall of water.

Water. His whole soul yearned for it. Somehow the caller understood, as something hard and smooth and wet was brought to his lips. Still half conscious they stirred, then parted expectantly. He felt the blessed substance breach the corners of his mouth, sliding in a trickle toward his throat.

But when it touched, his throat burned and rasped like crumbling cinders. He choked, neck stiffening outward and head straining from side to side. Something steadied him, then lifted his head and laid it gently on the pillow. Yet again he felt the soft spray..... No, this time gentle fingers, a silken touch upon his face.

“It’s all right,” came a voice, feminine and soothing, seeming to reach far into his past, and to the depths of his soul to comfort him. “You’re safe now.” And for a blessed moment he was a child again, waking from a bad dream to find his mother holding him close in the candlelit room, with gentle caresses and words of reassurance. One last time he felt the water, a cooling sponge, being applied to his forehead, his eyes. He waited patiently, then opened them slowly in wonder and awe.....

An angel’s face was there before him, as in the softened state of his senses all else appeared a featureless blur, superfluous. Soft dark hair framed a face so flawless, so full of concern. . .he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.
It all made sense now, the reason for all that had happened. He had been delivered, brought to this place. To Her. He looked into her eyes, so guileless and true, and felt his heart overflowing with love and gratitude. He reached out a hand, trembling with emotion. To touch her face. His Angel.....

But a stronger hand seized him by the wrist, pulling him suddenly away from her. Now both wrists were held and he was sitting up. A hard and unforgiving face took the place of hers—the face of a father, but many times as cruel. And there was an open contempt in the dark, bristling eyes that bordered on violence.

“The first thing you learn,” said the dark man harshly, “the very first, is that the girl belongs to me.”

Gaius was too stunned to react. All he could do was stare at the man, bewildered. He tried to look back at his deliverer, but felt the crushing grip tighten. He could not understand. Why didn’t she come to his aid, and explain to her father the innocent love that had passed between them?

But for all the pain she felt at Cassius’ latent coldness, and the sympathy she held for the younger man, Ariel knew this was not the time to intercede. She thought of Cassius’ own words, describing his life with Arna.

“Though I would often come back wounded, and in a vile temper, in her silent and suffering way she accepted it, accepted me.....”

Arna. How easy it was to understand what this woman must have felt: the love, and also the pain of giving herself to this hard, demanding man. She turned to Jacob, still seated by the fire, where, until Cassius had risen in a rage, he had been treating his wounds. As always, the rabbi understood her.

“Cassius, please,” he said. “You’ll tear your stitches. The boy meant no harm.”

“Then tell him to keep his hands off my wife!” And he threw aside the gentler man’s arms.

Ariel looked up quickly at the word, her face flushed with emotion. Their eyes met, and she saw that he meant it. She saw also the struggle within him—to control himself, to explain himself—and the need to know she understood him, was still with him in spite of all.

“It’s all right,” she said, the same words she had given out of kindness to the stranger, now resonating with womanly emotion.

Cassius rose, as was his wont, and began to pace back and forth at the foot of the bed. Gaius tried to compose himself as her hands laid him quietly back. . .but again he felt his heart crushed, his world cut out from under him. How could this be? The sweetest, most beautiful woman he had ever seen, in love with a man such as this. Even the slightest touch of her fingers stirred him, as they lightly left his chest. But now the risen man was addressing him, and the girl was moving away.

“Tiberius Gaius,” he began. “You have had a rude awakening. There is a reason for it.”

As he spoke Cassius watched the girl. Her back was to him as she began to prepare a meal, but he knew that she was listening intently.

“The last twenty-four hours have been Hell, for all of us. I myself am wounded, and not as I would be—with you, or with those closest to me. For this I ask your patience.

“The battle in which you fought has not spared us,” he continued. “Each of us, in our own way, has been deeply shaken. And unlike yours, our fight is far from over. The secret of our mountain refuge is gone, carried off by deserters. That is why we must be very careful. That is why I put hard questions to you now.”

“Be at peace, lad,” said Jacob mildly. “You are among friends.”

“If you don’t mind,” replied Cassius firmly, “I would like to judge that for myself.”

“I’m not afraid of your questions,” said Gaius, his pride returning. “Ask me anything you like, I have nothing to hide.”

“Very well,” said Cassius, his eyes boring in on him. “Let’s start with the obvious. Yours is not the physique of a soldier. And your hands, not a callous on them.” In both cases he exaggerated—the man had muscle and callous both. Yet they seemed but recently acquired, and the face was gentle, more that of an artisan than a fighter. “That you are a Roman is clear from your speech. But you’re not a real soldier, are you?”

Gaius reddened at the accusation, the underlying slight to his manhood. He too was aware the girl was listening. “I was soldier enough to survive the barbarians,” he said defensively.

“Yes, so you say. But the question remains. You were not born to fighting, to say nothing of hard work. And you don’t look like any mercenary I have ever seen. What gives you the right to wear the Roman breastplate, and carry the Roman short sword?”

“I have as much right as you!” he burst angrily, rising in the bed. But at this the other drew his sword, and froze him with such a look..... Gaius turned away, and the point was established. They were not the same: Cassius would kill him, without hesitation or remorse.

At this point Jacob rose and came soundlessly between them, laying a quiet hand on Cassius’ sword arm. “What he means, young friend, is that you, like myself, are not a fighter by nature or calling. What he is asking, for all of us, is what brought you here. Why did you enlist in this campaign?”

Gaius glanced quickly at his rival, found to his consternation that Cassius was smiling, and no longer seemed to consider him a serious threat. His words:

“Why, you’re nobility, boy. Nobility, or I’m a woman. What in Hell’s name were you doing in an army?”

Gaius blushed, ashamed of the truth. And now the girl was looking, too.

“My father,” he stammered, looking down. “My father was a Senator of Rome. He was executed when Alaric, the Goth, took control of the city. I was given this choice: enlist for Spain, or be given up.”

“I see,” said the other, as if this was nothing more than he expected.

“What was your father’s name?”

“Antony Tiberius.”

“Tiberius?” roared the soldier, laughing outright. “Faithless Tiberius, the senator without a spine? Always the first to make a brave speech, always the first to cower to the barbarians, and give in to their extortionate demands? Tiberius, who when the city was under siege agreed with the others that since the Christian God had failed to protect them, perhaps offerings should be made at the altars of Jove and Mars instead, but then lacked the courage to execute even this pitiful plan? Antony Tiberius? We used to say there were no bones in him, that he would bend with the slightest wind. Or more likely, bend over.” This was too much for the younger man.

“Do you think I don’t know what kind of man he was? Do you think I didn’t hate him? I was there, when he tried to offer my mother as a whore, to save his own worthless skin.” Now his shame turned to bitter rage.

“That is my father, and not his son! I am not a coward, or a deserter. Maybe I’m not a born soldier. Maybe I won’t kill, like a dog, on command. But so help me God I won’t sit here and be mocked, or told I’m not a man!”

His body trembled and he breathed too rapidly. He had no weapon, but he was ready to fight.
Ariel watched them, with the now familiar dread that Cassius would kill an innocent man in a fit of temper. He did not, though she saw the effort it cost him to stay his hand. Slowly, deliberately, he put the sword back in its sheath.

“Well,” he said finally. “At least you have some fire in you. I was beginning to wonder how much you’d take. Do stop the theatrics, Jacob. We’re not going to kill each other.”

“Then please,” said the rabbi, himself at the end of his wits. “No more confrontations. Tell the young man, in whatever language you like, that we accept his story, and his presence among us.”

Cassius realized briefly that in their heat the two men had lapsed into Latin. This in itself told him something..... He had no reason to doubt Gaius’ story. Sending untried Roman youth to sure death on the battlefield sounded very much like Alaric’s style. And somehow, against considerable odds, the boy had survived. But to take him among them..... This he was not yet willing to do.

“Sit down, Jacob.” With an exasperated sigh the old man obeyed, moving to the table where Ariel had laid out their supper. “Gaius,” the soldier continued, with a look neither kind nor cruel. “We must come to an understanding.” The younger man said nothing, looked away to hide the tears welling up inside him.

“This place is not mine,” said Cassius. “I do not command here, except where the safety of my wife and child are concerned.” Again Ariel looked up, read the confirmation of the words in his face.
For the first time Gaius seemed to see the boy, sitting on a stool in a corner by the door, watching him fiercely. He closed his eyes, felt his last hopes crumble. The hardened soldier was speaking again, but Gaius hardly heard him.

“Jacob has accepted you. That is his right. But when my family and I leave here, as clearly now we must, I make no promise that you will come with us, even if you choose to do so. I suppose according to sentiment I should be glad to find a countryman, even from your elevated sphere. But in truth I’m not. Country is not family, as I have learned all too painfully....” He stopped, thinking he had shown weakness, only to find Jacob and Ariel both looking at him in dismay. His own face registered confusion, alarm. “What?”

“You won’t stay and help us?” asked Jacob, as in the same breath Ariel broke in, “Why do you want to leave?”

But Cassius’ disbelief was just as great. “Why do I want to leave? Can’t you see what’s happening? My God, what can you be thinking?”

“A few stragglers,” argued Jacob. “We may have more fighting ahead, but that’s no reason to surrender everything. We are three now, we can hold them off.”

“You just don’t see, old man. Even you, Ariel. Even you.” He brought a closed hand down upon his forehead, as if trying to pound back his frustration, pound into them this lesson. “The danger has never been from mercenaries, nor from the few native peoples left alive. The Vandals rule here now. It is the Vandals we must fear.”

“But they don’t know we’re here,” insisted Jacob. “They’re miles to the east now, battling the Sueves. And who would tell them— ”

“They will finish the Sueves in a week,” said Cassius flatly.

“I’m afraid that’s true,” put in Gaius unexpectedly. He did not know why he spoke at all, let alone to agree with his enemy. But it was the truth, and if the girl’s safety was at stake.....

“We inflicted heavy casualties against the Sueves in our first engagement. They are scattered and in disarray.”

“Yes,” said Cassius emphatically. “And when the Vandals have done with them they will return here, to their women and children: to their homes, however temporary. I suspect they must move again soon—southward, to warmer climes and fresh plunder. But that doesn’t help us here and now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jacob, almost fiercely.

“Don’t you understand anything? The Vandals are notorious for torture. It is a standard practice whenever prisoners are taken—interrogation to the death, in the hope of unearthing hidden treasures. And if they capture even one of the half dozen deserters who now know of this place. . .which they will,” he added emphatically.

“But why should a prisoner tell them about a few plain dwellings hidden on a mountaintop? And why would the Vandals care?’

“Old man, you live in a dream!” cried the Roman, losing all patience.

“Have you ever seen a man under torture? A weak man will say anything, anything at all to save himself. Look at what this boy’s father did, before a hair on his head had been touched. Jesus.” And he began to pace again.

“You ‘believers’ are so naïve. You have no comprehension of the total blackness of a ruthless heart. The Vandals would send a hundred men up here, rape Ariel to death,” he added, looking hard at her, “and strew our body parts across the mountainside just on the principle of someone eluding them.”

Again Jacob put his fingers to his eyes. “Then it’s truly over. All my hopes for our people..... Dust.” He sat down again, broken.

Cassius said nothing as Ariel moved to stand over him. She put a hand to his shoulder to comfort him, then dropped her own forehead against it. Both wept.

Later that night, Jacob went to install the younger man in his own quarters. Cassius had asked as a precaution that the two men make a last sweep of the perimeter before turning in. He had done this for two reasons. First, to test Gaius’ character and resolve. He knew the younger man was wounded and ill, but very far from death’s door. And if he were to join them, even in the short term, he must be not only physically resilient, but emotionally strong as well. Second, and more importantly—since Ariel was devoted to him, and would go nowhere without him—he did it to give Jacob something meaningful to do. Clearly he was devastated, and of no use to anyone until he turned away from his own inner darkness, and determined to go on.

So the two men, young and old, bearing different wounds for different reasons, walked the length of the darkened passage. At first both were silent.

But Gaius, being young, was so driven by unfulfilled yearnings, so tormented by persistent questions..... As together they reached the shoulder-high entrance, and paused to look down at the snow covered valley below, he found he could hold his peace no longer.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“What is it?” said the old man absently.

“I don’t understand it. The gruff soldier and the beautiful young Jewess—” He feared to betray too much of himself, but as he looked across quickly he saw that the rabbi was hardly aware of him. “They seem an unlikely pair,” he pursued. “How did they come to be married?”

Jacob stood silent, looking down into the sparkling valley, so innocent and white. But he knew now, truly knew, the pain and suffering it concealed. “So far as I know,” he said finally, “they are not.”

“But the boy. Surely when she became pregnant.....” But in a searing instant a much larger question occurred to him, which in the depressed state of his senses had somehow eluded him. “She’s too young,” he said out loud. “The boy must be four years old.....”

At this Jacob turned to look at him. And as his mind slowly traced the course of the younger man’s thoughts, the one emotion he found himself capable of, was wonder.

“He is not their natural son,” he replied solemnly. “They found him, much as they found each other, in the wake of terrible tragedy.”

But this latent realization, and the wisdom it contained, were wholly lost on the young Roman. For at that moment the wind freshened and the light of the waxing moon, as it broke free in a clearing sky, seemed to pierce his heart with an intolerable ray of hope. The girl he loved, and who had called his spirit back to Life and longing. . .might yet be his! And the valley below which had so nearly ended his life, now seemed to sparkle with thousands of tiny diamonds, and like the multitude stars above, to profess his eternal and undying love.....

For her.