Smiling coldly at the quivering figure on the floor, Saka lifted the axe and twirled it lightly, directing Jacob's eyes upwards. She had hung her bags from a rafter and the staff end doubled as a hook to retrieve the items. He pulled Hadassah from the floor and distracted her with talk about the running battles in the streets, but couldn't get his mind working. Behind Hadassah, Saka stripped off the female garments and pulled on her pants and vest.
Sensing his lack of attention, Hadassah's voice rose to a near-shriek. The volume was unacceptable, but he was at a loss as to what to do with the hysterical woman. Saka wasn't so encumbered. Moving decisively, she pinched the wick, plummeting the room into darkness, stunning the woman into silence. Jacob heard the soft scuff as Saka assembled her spear, laced her boots and made for the back door where her horse waited.
"Jacob, I leave you my bow, use it. Am I to bring your family here or...?” she left the options open, waiting to be commanded..
"If that area of the city is filled with troops, then they make for the temple, to throw out the pagans who defiled it. No,” his voice strengthened with resolve, “they must be defended and kept safe where they are."
Nodding, he watched as she turned to leave.
"Wait!” He hurried in the dark and tripped over the bench with a curse. Standing in the doorway, he saw muddled moonlight play over her thick plait of hair. Almost afraid to touch her, as if she would dissolve into nothingness, he let the tips of his fingers ghost along her cheekbone, caress a stray curl. “Men from my brother's family will be waiting for you by the butcher's stall.” He didn't want this amazing creature to leave his house, his life, not to die in the mud for something she would never understand.
"Come back to me,” he commanded pulling her close and crushing her lips under his own.
* * * *
She startled and with a tremble, inexpertly tried to return the embrace before stumbling back. Shocked, Saka was glad her retreat propelled her into the cool, steady patter of rain. Rain. She looked up, blinking the moisture from her eyes.
"This was what you've all prayed for those last weeks,” her voice was awed. “It has come.” Excitedly, she turned to Jacob, “This was the sign they waited on!” Emboldened, she grabbed the front of his robe and licked at his bottom lip, enjoying the flavor of his mouth one last time. “I will come back for you, my Jacob.” Turning, she grabbed the dropped lead and pulled Darghu into the alley before swinging onto his back.
Heels down, she called to her mount and lifted spear and battle axe to the ready. The Hellenes were a war-loving people; she would give them a good death.
* * * *
"So that is how it is, eh my husband's sib?” Hadassah's sly calculating voice slid through the darkness before an oil lamp sprang to life.
"How what is?” Jacob pretended ignorance as he moved through the room, fitting wooden slats over the window openings. They had been Saka's idea. With the increase in patrols and raids, she hadn't wanted the soldiers to see him reading, equating the ability with the priesthood. Neighbors all believed he did it out of modesty, to hide that he had taken his servant to his bed.
"By Moshe's beard!” He loomed over Hadassah. “Is mating all people can think of? She puts covers on the windows and the laundry workers giggle that I ‘ride my new mare nightly.’ I ask to buy her freedom and father tells me to quit thinking with my rod and mother wails I scatter seed in a furrow best left unplowed.
"That woman was ejected from her people, sold like a sheep and sent to me to die should my life be put in peril and all anyone can think of is if I have taken her into my bed!"
Angrily, he strode over to the table and picked up the bow and full quiver left for him. As he picked it up, the items on the table fell into a recognizable pattern. Pieces of scavenged bone carved with care, layered sections of carved wood and small scrap pieces of silk woven together as binding. Saka had been skulking about, going without sleep to make him a bow. The weight of her silent worry fell on him. She accepted the fact of her own death and wanted to be certain that, when the time came, he had a chance. But the war came too soon, so she left her greatest tool with him.
He balanced the lethal device in his hand and stared hard at way the light flowed along the curves, each smooth bend reminding him of Saka. Eyes hard, he glared at Hadassah, “I wish I had taken her to my bed."
Chapter Nine
The rain soaked her hair and clothes within minutes, but she waited for it to happen, better to remove the wet as a distraction through immersion. Saka blinked water from her eyes and used her knees to guide Darghu to the lower side of the alley. Wet sand muffled the sound of his hoofs and allowed her ears to pick up the echoes of soldiers barking orders and the ring of sword on sword. In the dark ahead, she sensed more than saw motion from inside the small paddock the butcher kept for his goats.
"I serve Jacob, Hadassah sent me.” She cursed not being better with the language but it was enough, the men stood and waited as she neared.
"Moshe sent us, sent the mother of his granddaughter out tonight for this female?” Those words were ones Saka understood all too well and she was heartily sick of their ilk. Rolling her spear in her fingers, she thrust it forward, catching the man's head covering and tossing it into the goat pen with a flick of her wrist.
"You want rain? Stand under rain, no cover. Soldiers look for the cover, see target. Be not target.” With that she was finished with the worthless cringing ‘guards’ sent to fetch her to the house of Moshe and Naomi. The sound of laughter and snarling hissed words faded behind her as she navigated the streets, keeping to pathways that concealed the sound of Darghu and the over-loud fools trailing behind.
Three streets down, the remains of a squad gave a cry and headed her way. Saka screamed her own challenge and neatly caught two soldiers in the throat with her spear as she swung her battle axe in an arc, cleaving a third from groin to chin. As one possessed she thrust the spear and whirled her axe in the melee. A face she recognized, the one who enjoyed the shellfish, grabbed the spear as it pierced his belly, his feral grin triumphant as death glazed his eyes. It was an old maneuver. Saka released the haft and pulled her dagger, swinging blindly in the direction his face had turned at the end, catching the last guard in the eye. He screamed as she jerked the blade free and coolly slashed his throat, reducing his sound of pain to a wet gurgle.
Tapping the bronze-tipped shaft of her axe on the ground to still her mount, Saka prepared to retrieve her spear when one of the guards from the goat pen quietly walked up and gripped the weapon. His face contorted, belly wounds always smelling foul, as he settled a foot against the dead man's chest and yanked the spear free.
"Lead us,” he said. With a nod, she agreed, sliding through the wet night.
The streets ran with water, blood and worse as the night thinned to morning, but Saka and her handful of men moved in a pattern, clearing the avenues flanking the main street that led from the fertile Golan Heights into the heart of Jerusalem. The street that opened onto the great temple that was at the heart of the war.
Screams and cries rent the air, but it didn't bother Saka and, after a few hours, the men learned to take their cues from her. When the ground was slippery from the wet, they removed their sandals at her command, finding better traction in bare feet. In the distance a building blazed and one of the growing numbers of defenders following in her wake spoke, awed, “fire in the rain."
It was puzzling, but if the fire were inside one of the homes and somehow ignited the very bricks; her mind stalled. It was something she heard of but had never seen, a blaze so hot as to make the very stone burn. Not a few of the men called laments to their God.
She pointed at the inferno, “Needed?"
One of the men seemed to understand and nodded sadly, saying words she recognized too well. “Rabbi Pathai."
Failure tasted bitter on the tongue, but the night had been long and hard with soldiers seeming to spring up at every corner and shadow. Still, it was Saka's sham
e that she had not located and defended the home of the valued religious man. She had done as Jacob asked; she kept the war from spilling into the gardens and the halls of his parents’ home, not as Moshe commanded. Rain dripped off her nose as she stared into the brilliant flames, it was hard to remember she lived with Jacob but belonged to his father.
Sunlight filtered through the cloud-laden skies, bringing the dawn. Looking around, Saka noticed some of the men were so exhausted they slumped to the ground at her horse's feet. Others leaned against walls or fence posts. These were not fighting men, but fathers and sons hoping to protect their families. Where were the caravan drovers and mercenaries hired to protect ones such as the Kohanim?
Clucking at her tired mount, she guided him through the growing light and when stopped by the confused, directed fresh men to help the tired and injured home. The sounds of battle had shifted for the moment to the south. There was time for rest and time to find where the damned guards disappeared to.
As she neared the house where she had labored learning to weave, a feeling of unease gripped her. Saka crooned soothingly and her stallion slowed, dropping his head as if exhausted. From beside the house a figure moved impossibly fast, “Hai, Darghu!” Spinning on his fetlocks, he reared and spun as she swept her battle axe in a circle, catching the long willow spear behind the head. Instead of killing her horse, the point slashed her vest burning a line across her right shoulder and back.
Screaming her war-cry, she set her heels to Darghu, thinking of nothing but killing everything and everyone, despair in her heart. To have been attacked by the home she was bought to defend meant she failed, it had fallen.
"No!” Orali dashed from the house, calling orders in a fluid language. Saka hissed, straightened, stiff-legged and Darghu skidded to a halt. Anger kept her tongue behind her teeth as Nubian men melted from the morning as if the air hid them by means of sorcery. Her back burned from the slice but she sat silent.
* * * *
Surrounded by hard faced mercenaries, Jacob and Hadassah hurried through the now silent streets. Rain still eased from the heavens but not fast enough to erase the evidence of fighting. Not three hundred paces from his home was an entire squadron of dead soldiers. The men stopped and surveyed the scene, one cried out and stepped among the dead to retrieve a wooden cask. Jacob almost made a comment about looting until he caught the grim looks exchanged. It wasn't a wine cask but something worse.
What was normally a pleasant walk turned into a maze of horror. Men Jacob had laughed with, traded with, lay dead or dying surrounded by wailing wives and silent children. Some of the bodies were common folk trying to lend aid, others wore rough-spun tunics bearing the symbol of the Maccabeus, a hammer, but most of the dead were the Seleucid troops: Hellenes, Macedonians and Turks in boiled leather armor.
A distant rumble shook the air and the ground trembled, Hadassah cried out, clutching Jacob's arm. He resisted the urge to shake off her hand, in the center of so many protectors it was obvious his fledgling skills with Saka's bow wouldn't be put to the test. He ignored the leader who joked his men were in more danger from the ‘pretty man’ than the Seleucid squadrons.
Every insect-infested scene of carnage had Jacob scanning the faces, feeling numbness steal into his chest. Saka never returned home ... he shook his head, refusing to look down alleys and bisecting lanes. She had to live. He couldn't imagine tending the shop without her silently sweeping and twirling the broom, making children laugh when no one watched. She never complained, not at being banished to his mother's side or for spending hours in prayer.
Archery lessons had been the hardest and most bittersweet. Holding her bow, he remembered the feel of her body pressed against his back, her husky voice breathing encouragement in the shell of his ear, the touch of her fingers sliding from his shoulder to wrist and back again. Each evening's practice became fodder for dreams that left him sweating and aching by morning, no matter how cool the nights.
Swamped by memories and regrets, Jacob bumped into the guard in front of him as they halted outside his father's home. Waking to his surroundings, he took in the angry crowd and his father's red face. Not a few fists were shook. Relieved, he noted that none clutched weapons.
"What goes on here?” he asked the guard. Were the neighbors wanting his father's people to join with the army trying to retake Jerusalem? Surely theirs wasn't the only family with private guards? If there was a way, Moshe would have sent men ahead to supplement the supplies he had contributed. The guard merely grunted, pushing through the throng.
"Jacob, isn't that Saka?” Hadassah's voice shook. The trip had taken a significant toll on the once sheltered woman. Indeed there she was. Saka stood behind his father, staring into nothing, her hands bound. The wash of elation nearly drove him to his knees before the tableau registered. Was his father handing her over to an angry mob?
Chapter Ten
"Jacob!” A figure pushed his way through the throng, only to be held at bay by a mercenary.
"Laban?” Jacob waved the man off and stepped outside of the protective ring of guards. “What is going on here? What's happened?"
"Your father is being an utter fool!” The older man turned and yelled at Moshe. “You are acting like the hind end of an ass!” Pulling Jacob by the elbow, Laban tried to explain, “Last night the men the Maccabeus managed to smuggle into the city took advantage of the rain to begin the battle for Jerusalem."
"Yes, I know. Hadassah came and explained.” Jacob tried to calm him. The frenzied way Laban kept throwing himself through gaps in the screaming herd of humanity was unnerving.
"The Seleucid's soldiers retaliated. They had been waiting. When the fighting started, a squad blocked Rabbi Pathai in his home. Jacob, they killed him with fire, throwing pitch at his doors and windows to fuel the flames, even in the rain. There was nothing that could be done."
Jacob faltered to a stop, no ... it couldn't be!
"Move aside boy,” the burly guard who had picked up the cask muscled past.
"Boy? I'm every bit the man you are!” The insult snapped him back to the here and now.
Sneering, the guard turned and aimed a kick at Jacob's knee that never landed. Somehow Saka pulled free from his father and looped the rope binding her hands around the man's throat, throwing her weight back into the crowd. People scattered but a few still fell as the pair thrashed, one cursing in fluent Rus, the other struggling to breathe.
"Look!” Laban dove over the pair, pointing at the barrel that fell at Moshe's feet. “The soldiers were heading for your son, our future Rabbi, when this...” Words seemed to fail the man as the woman he was trying to defend was busy making a man's face turn purple over a simple insult. “Well, she's no Devorah, perhaps like Jael.” He shooed Jacob. “Get her to stop or she will be killed for this!"
"Saka,” He tripped over the guard, now foaming at the mouth. He tried to ignore the men arguing and focus on his defender. “You can take a life only to save the life of another.” His hands covered hers. “He only insulted me, please stop. If you kill him your life is forfeit."
"I'm dead already, by your father's decree for allowing your shaman to die."
The words tore at his heart worse than the loss of his teacher and mentor, but he was relieved her grip eased. “You did not ‘allow’ the Rabbi to die, Saka. You argued with us both daily to let you accompany us, to watch over where we studied. Had we permitted you, I am sure he would be with us.” Standing, Jacob confronted his father.
"On this, a day of celebration for our family, as we welcome a new life, you would bring God's wrath on us for killing a servant that kept your household and mine safe?"
Moshe stared at his sandaled feet, refusing to meet his son's gaze. “It's only because you bed the—"
"Say not another word or you will be less one son.” The words came out as a growl, stunning the older man into looking upwards. “There are wounded and dead to attend to, a babe to be welcomed and a mother honored. Soldiers need to be t
hwarted and others aided. These are things that need doing, not,” he gestured angrily at the crowd standing at his back, “this! You ill-repay the lives she saved by punishing her for not being able to do the impossible. Only Elokim can do the impossible."
Orali's men had slipped around the crowd and pulled Saka to her feet, freeing her and trying to convince her to follow them. Jacob caught the activity and nodded.
Stiffly she turned to leave and he gasped.
"Your back.” It was a matted mess of blood, dirt and sand.
She turned to him with a pale, forced smile. “It is nothing. With all the bathing you have me do I'll soon be as healthy as Darghu."
His gaze narrowed. She said she would never give him the name of the warhorse, it was synonymous with handing the reins of control over.
"Where is your horse?” A squeal and drum of hooves answered that question. The squat, shaggy beast was busy keeping the row of camels as far away as possible. Despite the weight in his chest, he smiled, “Why tell me his name?"
"Should the baths not work.” The fatalistic remark was all she said as she allowed the Nubian hunters to lead her into the house.
* * * *
"Mother.” He kissed Naomi's pale cheek. “Are you well?"
"Yes, but I'm tired. The birth was difficult, I lost blood. You've got another brother.” Her smile was sad, but glowing. “The healer did well seeing me through my time. I've told him to see to your Saka."
She lifted a tired hand. “I don't care if you haven't taken her to your bed. I see by the way you watch her it is only a matter of time. Time is something we may not have, Jacob, not if this war goes badly. Couriers carry word from every valley and plane, the Seleucids move to destroy every remnant of our faith, to leave us naught but an empty Temple should they fall."
Jacob kissed her brow. “You know better. So long as a daughter of Judah lives, so lives our faith. Now, I want to see my new brother.” He smiled at her tears, understanding her thwarted wish. “Do you wish me to find a Rabbi from another neighborhood for the naming?"
Babes in Toyland II Page 17
