The Realms of God--A Novel of the Roman Empire (The Shards of Heaven, Book 3)

by Michael Livingston

  Still, the walls were impressive enough to Miriam, who’d known no other city. They were as tall as two homes, and half as thick, with higher towers at their gates and angles. Many of the biggest buildings in the city, like the massive temple of Dushara, were painted white, but the walls were left as natural stone. Somehow this made them even more daunting to Miriam’s mind: at times they looked almost as if they’d grown up from the earth, or extended out from the feet of the high mountains above.

  The gates of the city were open, as they usually were during the day, and no one stopped the nineteen-year-old girl as she passed through the unbarred path and into the Roman camp just beyond.

  Miriam was struck at once by the smells of the place: the cooking fires smoking unfamiliar foods, the chalky dust floating like a haze between the tents, the horses fouling noisy corrals, and, above all, the heavy smells of the men. The legion had only been encamped for a week, but already the air was thick with their sweat and leather. The camp was a noisy place, too, a constant churn of movement as men marched or labored or rested with a rhythm that reminded her of music.

  Romans, Vorenus had once told her, were nothing if they were not organized, and Miriam quickly saw the truth of it as she made her way between the tents. The camp was laid out in careful grids, broken down by the roles of the legionnaires. It did not take her long to find the place of the archers, where bow staves stood in racks beside bowyers, and men counted out sheaves from barrels of arrows.

  Pullo and Vorenus had worked hard to teach her every language they knew, and Miriam chose Latin rather than common Greek to ask a few of the relaxing bowmen about the whereabouts of Abdes Pantera. The first two didn’t know him, but a third sitting beside his tent with a plate of food did. The man squinted his eyes at her when she asked about the archer, then stabbed a chunk of pork with his knife. Lifting it up, he used the skewered meat to point toward the mountains south and west. “He likes to wander,” he said. “He’s gone to whatever is up there, I think.”

  Miriam followed his vague gesture and in a moment recognized the mountain that he was referring to: a steep-sided peak of ragged rocks and cliffs, it stood sentinel on the horizon, between the high basin of the city and the stretching deserts far below. From a perch at its high summit came the tiniest shimmer of white stone.

  Miriam glanced up at the morning sun, calculated the distance of the climb in her mind, and then cinched up the quiver of arrows at her back. She nodded gratefully to the archer and thanked him in the most formal Latin she knew. His eyes widened a bit, but his mouth cracked into an earnest smile missing several teeth. “You are most welcome, my lady,” he said.

  The Roman camp was set beside the caravan road to Sabra, and Miriam hurried over to join it, knowing the path well as she followed it south, glad that she’d brought the water as the sun rose into the deep blue of a cloudless sky. The road skirted the farming terraces along the base of the mountains, not far from one of the many dry channels that crossed the basin floor like veins upon a leaf. Though parched now, the channels would run with a fierce roar when the seasonal rains came into the mountains.

  The city depended on those rains, as every Nabataean knew. When the sky opened up, nature’s water courses would roar down toward Petra only to be fed into an elaborate system of channels and dams. Even the mountain walls around them were made to serve the people: they were carved out not just with the tombs for the dead, but with cisterns for the living. The system halted the destructive impact of the floods, but more importantly it preserved the life-giving waters for the dry months of the year. This far from the city, though, the streams would still run wild, and from an early age Miriam had been taught by Pullo and Vorenus never to walk in a dry channel, even when there was no cloud in the sky: rain falling in mountains beyond her sight could still flow and funnel into a flash flood on the basin floor.

  Two hours after she started down the road, Miriam crossed a deep ravine where three dry channels came together, and then, tacking to her right, she left the more traveled caravan road and started up the steep and rocky track toward the summit of the Mount of Aaron.

  It was a warm day but not a hot one, and Miriam’s legs were accustomed to hiking through the red rocks above Petra. Though outside of the town, this mountainside was little different from those. Her legs burned from the strenuous climb, but she made good headway, the small rock cairns that she passed reassuring her of her path as she followed the thin ribbon of a trail as it wound higher and higher among the cliffs above the receding basin.

  An hour later, after a hard push up a final set of steep switchbacks, Miriam at last crested the edge of a little plateau upon which were scattered the weathered ruins of forgotten structures. At the plateau’s far end arose the rocky height of the final summit itself, which was crowned by a squat, flat-roofed shrine painted white. A wind had begun to roll over the top of the mountain here, muting the world to an eerie howl as it swept through the battered ruins around her, and Miriam gazed at them as she passed by, her mind absently wondering about their makers and their purposes as she recaught her breath.

  Now at last she saw the Roman archer: his hair flowing in the steady wind, he was standing beside the shrine, and he was looking half away from her, as if someone had called his name. He was raising his hand to his head, shielding his eyes from either the high sun or the dust carried upon the wind. His bow was still strapped to his back.

  Miriam thought about calling out to him, but with the wind she doubted he would hear. So she shrugged her load with her shoulders and continued on, wondering why the weight at her back seemed lessened.

  Only in that moment, with her mouth caught between a smile and a frown, did she finally see that Abdes Pantera was not alone. She stopped walking and stood in the decayed ruins below the summit, frozen in terror.

  The track Miriam was following wound around the craggy hill of the summit to a sharp cleft, through which stairs had been carved that would lead up to the top and the ancient shrine. There was another man there, and even at a distance she could see that he was no Roman: he wore the desert garb of an outlaw, and in the moment before she lost sight of him she saw that he had a short blade in his hand.

  Bandits. Thieves. Murderers.

  She knew enough to know they never traveled alone, and her eyes darted through the ruins around her as her heart pounded in her chest. Seeing nothing, she scanned the rocks around the summit as quickly as she could.

  At last she saw the second man. He wasn’t coming up the old stairway with his companion. Instead, he was climbing the rocky side of the summit, right in front of her, right behind Pantera.

  Miriam wanted to scream out, but the wind pressed against her like a stern hand, somehow seeming even louder than it had been. There was no way that her small voice could be heard, much less understood. She’d found the young Roman archer, but for a frightened moment she was certain she’d only found him to watch him die. She thought about running, about trying to slip away lest the bandits see her and come for her, too.

  But then she remembered her bow. And she knew she could never run. Pullo and Vorenus never ran. And her parents never had, either.

  Without thought, one hand was making a fist around the grip of her bow while the other was reaching back for an arrow. Her eyes didn’t leave the man climbing up behind Pantera. Her fingers nocked the arrow to the string, and her feet took position, one foot before the other. Her breathing stopped, she measured the wind, and just as the bandit came up over the edge she loosed.

  The shaft lanced through the air, its song quickly lost to the wind, but it sailed down and to the right of her target—just as her shots had done in the wadi—and snapped on the rocks beside the bandit as he lifted himself onto the summit. Miriam cursed, reaching for another arrow, but the bandit was already onto his feet and rushing at Pantera, a knife glinting in his hand.

  The Roman flinched, turned, and even at a distance Miriam saw his eyes go wide when he saw the bandit. He reacted quickly,
spinning away from the lunge that was aimed at his ribs. The knife met air, and Pantera staggered away on the rocks. He managed to pull his bow from his back, and he used the wooden length as a kind of staff to keep the bandit at bay.

  Miriam had another arrow in her fingers, and she nocked it to the taut string.

  Pantera deflected a strike with the wood.

  She took a deep breath.

  He deflected another blow, but he was losing his balance.

  She let the air out of her lungs.

  He was falling, down to the ground, out of her view.

  Don’t rotate your elbow, she told herself. Don’t.

  The bandit was rising up as Pantera went down, and in that moment the wind abruptly died upon the mountaintop. Her arm as steady as if she were shooting at a sack of corn, Miriam loosed the arrow and watched it slice through the air, straight and true, to impact in the perfect center of the bandit’s back.

  In the sudden stillness she heard it punch into his body with a sickening crunch. She heard him scream. He fell forward out of sight, and she heard the sound of a struggle before a cry was choked out.

  Please, she thought. Please.

  For long heartbeats there was nothing, then from the summit she heard the angry cry of another voice, hard footsteps on stone, and the clear sound of a bowshot.

  Miriam ran. Not away, not in the direction of safety, but in the direction of the fight.

  Dodging between the crumbling lines of foundation stones, she already had an arrow to the string when she reached the base of the cleft and began leaping up the ancient carved steps toward the summit, ignoring her burning lungs as she took them two at a time.

  The rock stairs made a final switchback, and then she was bursting out onto the open high ground.

  “You!” Pantera gasped out.

  Miriam looked to her right and saw the young archer standing next to the shrine, his bowstring drawn, the glint of an arrow pointed straight for her heart. He lowered the bow and leaned tiredly up against the white bricks beside him. Miriam relaxed her own bowstring as she hurried over toward him. “Are you all right?”

  He smiled, and it was lopsided. Then he nodded down to the man facedown in the rocky dirt not far away. The arrow that he’d given her was sticking out of his back like an obscene thorn. “Thanks to you. Nice shot.”

  Seeing the dead man made her exhilaration start to wash away, and she felt her stomach twist and her breath catch. She looked away, back in the direction from which she’d come, and she saw the second bandit, not far from the stairs. He, too, had an arrow in his back. “I got one, too,” Pantera said from behind her. “Though I wouldn’t have had the chance if you hadn’t been here. Do you think there are more?”

  Miriam shook her head, her lungs contracting in sharp, short bursts. Her face felt numb.

  She felt the Roman’s hand on her shoulder, turning her away from the bodies. “Hey,” he said, “let’s sit down over here.”

  Miriam’s legs felt weak, and it felt like the mountain beneath her was moving with the wind, though there was nothing but the softest touch of a breeze on the summit now. She staggered, but she moved, and the archer led her to the other side of the shrine on the summit. There was a ledge of rock there, and he gently took her bow out of her hands and sat her down upon the stone.

  “Lean forward,” he said. “Put your head down if you can.”

  Panting, Miriam did as he said, and he sat down beside her with one hand on her back. The world swam around her, and more than once she felt she would lose her stomach on the shifting ground before her, but she focused on the touch of the young man, let it hold her in place like an anchor.

  After a minute or two, her breathing began to slow, and the mountain beneath her feet seemed once more a mountain: steady and unmoving.

  “It’s a beautiful view up here,” the archer said.

  Miriam took a deep breath into her lungs, blinking, and felt his hand move away. She lifted her head slowly and looked out over the steep-walled basin far below. Petra sparkled like a jewel in the distance. The Roman tents were dots against its walls. “It is,” she managed to say.

  “You must come here a lot.”

  She took another deep breath, feeling stronger. “Not often,” she said. “It’s a sacred place.”

  “Oh,” the archer said. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t be here, then.”

  Miriam shrugged. “Depends on your gods.”

  “This is dedicated to one?”

  Miriam looked over and saw that he was gesturing to the little square building beside them. It was a simple structure, unremarkable aside from its location, just four painted walls and a single wooden doorway. “Someone is buried there, actually. It’s a tomb. The mountain is named for him.”

  “Must have been quite a great king.”

  “Not a king at all,” Miriam said, finally allowing herself to smile. “He was a prophet, and he led my ancestors out of Egypt. His name was Aaron.”

  “You’re Jewish?”

  His voice sounded surprised, and Miriam looked up at him with surprise of her own, not expecting that a Roman would know anything about the Jews. “My mother was,” she said. “And I know the stories.”

  “My mother was, too,” Pantera said.

  “I didn’t know there were any Jews in the Roman armies.”

  “The Romans will take just about anyone who will serve,” the archer said, laughing a little to himself. He nodded down toward the encampment far below. “You’ll find many gods down there, but we’re all one in the legion.”

  “You’re from Rome?”

  “Not at all. I was born in Sidon, but my father is a trader. He knows which way the winds are blowing. And they blow for Rome. That’s the future. Some of my father’s friends even say that Augustus Caesar is the Messiah who will unite the world, but that doesn’t make sense to me. Unless Caesar is secretly a Jew.”

  The young man winked at her in amusement, and Miriam allowed him a smile. The idea that the Roman emperor was Jewish was indeed truly preposterous. He had taken an ironfisted control over Jerusalem, pressuring both King Herod and the Jewish high priests to bow to his will. As he did with King Aretas in Petra, Augustus seemed to believe that no man should rule without his consent, as if he were truly the son of the god that Rome had declared his adopted father to be. In fact, his uncompromising pro-Roman policies throughout Judaea, and the legions that he had put in place to enforce them, had done more than anything else to reinvigorate Jewish dreams of a Messiah who would, above all else, deliver them from Roman rule. Though she knew too much of the truth to partake in the ritual observances of the small community of Jews in Petra, she was still close enough to them to have heard of the past glories of Israel and its present plight: so many people, it seemed, were waiting for someone to come and destroy Rome, to bring God’s kingdom on earth.

  That it hadn’t happened didn’t seem to affect their faith that it would, and Miriam knew that she could not speak to them of the real truth, the real reason no Messiah had come and none ever would: God was dead, and one of the few pieces of Him that remained sat in the empty tomb that she and Pullo and Vorenus would guard for the rest of their lives.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t think Caesar is the Messiah.”

  “I don’t think there really will be one,” Pantera said, his voice suddenly serious. “I think we’re supposed to save ourselves, make our own way in the world. And Rome … well, if you serve in the legion long enough then they’ll let you be a full citizen.” The archer grinned mischievously. “Don’t tell anyone, but I lied about my age to enlist as soon as I could.”

  Miriam nodded, as if this made all the sense in the world. Then, without really knowing why she was doing it, she held out her hand. “I’m Miriam,” she said.

  The archer smiled and leaned his bow against his side in order to take the offered hand. “Abdes Pantera,” he said as she clasped it. Then his cheeks blushed. “But I guess I’d told you that before, didn
’t I?”

  Miriam nodded, releasing his grip. Her gaze drifted down and caught sight of his weapon, which was chipped and cracked from where it had stopped the bandit’s knife. “Your bow,” she whispered.

  “Hmmm?” Pantera took a moment to look away from her, then he lifted the bow so they could more closely examine the damage. “Oh. Well, I don’t think it was made for that,” he said.

  Miriam allowed herself a light laugh. “No, it wasn’t.”

  The Roman sighed and stood, offering his hand to help her to her feet. “I guess this means only one thing,” he said, his lopsided grin returned. “If we run into any more trouble, you’ll have to be the one to take care of it. Are you okay to walk now?”

  “I think so,” she said, “but I’m not sure I want to see them again.”

  “Me neither,” he said, though from the calm steadiness of his voice she was sure that these were not the first dead men that the archer had seen. “But I need to just check the bodies really quick. Stay here.”

  He left, and Miriam stood beneath the sun, beside the tomb of Aaron, staring down at the city.

  Pantera came back only a few minutes later. He was still grinning. “All set,” he said. “Let’s walk down together. We can send some other men to clean the mess. And if anyone asks, do you want to tell them I rescued you?”

  Miriam smiled in earnest. “Not a chance,” she said. “I’ll see to it that everyone in your camp knows how Abdes Pantera of Sidon was saved by a girl.”

  The young man sighed in mock pain.

  It was Miriam’s turn to grin mischievously. “Give me some more arrows, though, and I might be persuaded to tell them that I only made my second shot because you taught me not to rotate my elbow.”

  “Deal,” he said, looking proud.

  Miriam nodded, shook his hand, and then took a few steps before she realized that he was looking at the shrine still. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving silently.