by Hank Davis
“Wah, these be evil days for Jacob’s children; they are as the tribes in Egypt were, only they have neither Moses nor a Joshua! . . . The tax of a denarius on every household, and each one forced to journey to his birthplace . . . Now they slay our children in their swaddling bands . . . This Romans’ puppet that sits on the throne, this unbelieving Greek!”
“But Judas will avenge our wrongs; men say that he is that Messiah we have waited for so long. He will rouse his mighty men of valor out of Galilee and sweep the Roman tyrant in the sea—”
“Sh-s-sh, Joachim, hold thy babble; that one yonder is belike a spy!”
With one accord the men turned toward the figure hunched in sleep before a dying fire of thornbush. Flaxen-haired, fair-skinned, he drooped above the whitening embers, his cloak of ruddy woolen cloth draped loosely round his shoulders, the sinking firelight picking out soft highlights on the iron cap that crowned his flowing, braided hair. A man of mighty stature, one of the gladiators kept by Herod in his school for athletes that was constantly replenished with recruits from German provinces or the Slavic tribes beyond the Danube.
“What does the godless dog so far from Herod’s kennels?”
“The Lord of Zion knows, but if he go back to the Holy City and tell the tale of what he has heard here, three crosses will crown Golgotha before another sun has set,” Joachim interrupted softly, and, dropping to his knees, unloosed the dagger at his girdle as he began to worm his way across the courtyard flints. In all the country round about Jerusalem there was no hand more skilful with the knife than that of Joachim, the cut-purse. Softly as the cat that stalks a mouse he crept across the stones, paused and bore his weight on one hand while he drew the other back . . . a single quick thrust underneath the shoulder-blade, slanting downward to the heart, then the gurgling, blood-choked cry, the helpless thrashing of the limbs, the fight for breath, and—perhaps the sleeping gladiator had a wallet stuffed with copper, or even gold. They were well paid, these fighting dogs from Herod’s kennels. The firelight glinted on the plunging knife, and on the golden bracelet on the Northman’s arm.
“Ho, little brother of a rat, would you bite a sleeping man,” the giant’s bell-like voice boomed, “and one who never did thee any harm? For shame!” White lines sprang into prominence against his sun-gilt skin; his mighty muscles tightened, and a yelp of pain came from Joachim as the knife dropped from his unnerved fingers and a crackling like the breaking of a willow twig told where his wrist-bones snapped beneath the other’s sudden grip.
“Have mercy, mighty one,” he begged. “I thought—”
“Aye, that thou didst, thou niddering craven,” came the answer. “Thou thought me sleeping, and like the thief thou art, were minded to have had my purse and life at once. Now get thee gone from out my sight, thou and those hangdog friends of thine, before I crush that puny neck between these hands of mine.”
He spread his hands, great, well-shaped, white-skinned hands trained in the wrestler’s art and in the wielding of the sword, and his strong, white fingers twitched as though already they felt yielding flesh between them. With a frightened skirking, as though they were in truth the rats the stranger named them, the three conspirators slunk out, Joachim the cut-purse nursing his broken right wrist in the crook of his left arm, his two companions crowding close beside him as they sought to gain the exit of the courtyard before the giant Northling reconsidered and repented of his mercy.
The blond-haired stranger watched them go, then swung his cloak back from his shoulders. Beneath the cape he wore from neck to knee a tunic of fine woolen stuff dyed brilliant red and edged about the bottom with embroidery of gold. A corselet of tanned bullhide set with iron studs was buckled round his torso; his feet were shod with buskins of soft leather laced about his legs with rawhide thongs; from the girdle at his waist on one side hung a double-bladed ax, on the other a soft-leather pouch which clinked with a metallic sound each time he moved. Between his shoulders swung a long two-handed sword with a wide, well-tempered blade, pointed and double-edged. He was brawny and broad-shouldered, his hair was braided in two long, fair plaits which fell on either side of his face beneath his iron skullcap. Like his hair, his beard was golden as the ripening wheat, and hung well down upon his breastplate. Yet he was not old; the flaxen beard was still too young to have felt shears, his lightly sun-tanned skin was smooth and fair, his sea-blue eyes were clear and youthful. He glanced up at the star-flecked heavens, then drew his cloak about him.
“The dragon marches low upon the skies,” he muttered; “’tis time I set forth on my journey if I would reach the homeland ere the winter tempests howl again.”
The road was thick with travelers, mostly peasants on their way to market, for the day began with sunrise, and the bartering would start within an hour. Hucksters of every sort of article, fanciful as well as necessary, pressed along the way, tugging at halters, now entreating, now berating their pack-animals to greater speed. A patrol of soldiers passed him, and their decurion raised his hand in greeting.
“Salve, Claudius! Art thou truly going back to that cold land of thine? By Pluto, I am sorry that thou leavest us; many is the silver penny I have won by betting on those fists of thine, or on thy skill at swordplay!”
The Northman smiled amusedly. Though he had been among the Romans since before his beard was sprouted, their rendering of his simple Nordic name of Klaus to Claudius had never failed to rouse his laughter.
“Yea, Marcus, I am soothly gone, this time. Five years and more have I served Herod’s whim, and in that time I’ve learnt the art of war as few can know it. With sword and ax and mace, or with bare hands or cestus have I fought until methinks I’ve had my fill of fighting. Now I go back to till my fathers’ acres, perchance to go a-viking, if the spirit moves me, but hereafter I will fight for my own gain or pleasure, not to the humor of another.”
“The gods go with thee, then, Barbarian,” the Roman bade. “’Twill be a long time ere we see thy match upon the sands of the arena.”
A rambling, single-streeted village fringed the highway, and at the trickling fountain where the women came to fill their jars the wanderer rested to scoop up a sup of tepid water in his hand. The sun was up six hours, and the little square around the spring should have been alive with magpie-chattering women and their riotously noisy children; but the place was like a city of the dead. Silence thick as dust lay on the white, sun-bitten road; utter quiet sealed the houses with the silence of a row of tombs. Then, as he looked about in wonderment, Klaus heard a thin-drawn, piping wail: “Ai-ai-ai-ai!” the universal cry of mourning in the East. “Ai-ai-ai-ai!”
He kicked aside the curtain at the doorway and looked into the darkness of the little house. A woman crouched crosslegged on the earthen floor, her hair unbound, her gown ripped open to expose her breasts, dust on her brow and cheeks and bosom. On her knees, very quiet, but not sleeping, lay a baby boy, and on the little breast there flowered a crimson wound. Klaus recognized it—a gladiator knew the trademark of his calling!—a sword-cut. Half a hand’s-span long, tagged at the edges, sunk so deep into the baby flesh that the glinting white of breastbone showed between the raw wound’s gaping, bloody lips.
“Who hath done this thing?” The Northman’s eyes were hard as fjord-ice, and a grimness set upon his bearded lips like that they wore when he faced a Cappadocian netman in the circus. “Who hath done this to thee, woman?”
The young Jewess looked up from her keening. Her eyes were red and swollen with much weeping, and the tears had cut small rivulets into the dust with which her face was smeared, but even in her agony she showed some traces of her wonted beauty.
“The soldiers,” she replied between breath-breaking sobs. “They came and went from house to house, as the Angel of the Lord went through the land of Egypt, but we had no blood to smear our lintels. They came and smote and slew; there is not a man-child left alive in all the village. Oh, my son, my little son, why did they do this thing to thee, thou who never did th
em any harm? Oh, woe is me; my God hath left me comfortless, my firstborn, only son is slain—”
“Thou liest, woman!” Klaus’s words rang sharp as steel. “Soldiers do not do things like this. They war with men, they make no war on babes.”
The mother rocked her body to and fro and beat her breast with small clenched fists. “The soldiers did it,” she repeated doggedly. “They came and went from house to house, and slew our sons—”
“Romans?” Klaus asked incredulously. Cruel the Romans were at times, but never to his knowledge had they done a thing like this. Romans were not baby-killers.
“Nay, the soldiers of the King. Romans only in the armor that they wore. They came marching into town, and—”
“The soldiers of the King? Herod?”
“Yea, Barbarian. King Herod, may his name be cursed for evermore! Some days agone came travelers from the East who declared a king was born among the Jews, and Herod, fearing that the throne might go to him, dispatched his soldiery throughout the coasts of Bethlehem to slay the sons of every house who had not reached their second year.”
“Thy husband—”
“Alas, I am a widow.”
“And hast thou store of oil and meal?”
“Nay, my lord, here is only death. Ai-ai-ai—”
Klaus took some copper from his pouch and dropped it in the woman’s lap beside the little corpse. “Take this,” he ordered, “and have them do unto the body of thy babe according to thy custom.”
“The Lord be gracious unto you, Barbarian. To you and all your house be peace, for that thou takest pity on the widow in her sorrow!”
“Let be. What is thy name?”
“Rachel, magnificence; and may the Lord of Israel give favor to—”
Klaus turned away and left the weeping woman with her dead.
The waxing moon rode high above the grove where Klaus lay bundled in his cloak. Occasionally, from the denser of the thickets came the chirp of bird or squeak of insect, but otherwise the night was silent, for robbers roamed the highways after dark, and though the soldiers of the Governor kept patrol, the wise man stayed indoors until the sun had risen. But the hardiest highwayman would stop and give the matter second thought ere he attacked a sworded giant, and the nearest inn was several miles away; also a journey of a thousand miles and more lay between the Northman and his home, and though his wallet bulged with gold saved from his years spent as a hired fighter in the Tetrarch’s barracks, it behooved him to economize. Besides, the turf was sweet to smell, which the caravansaries were not, and the memory of the widow-woman’s murdered son had set a canker in his brain. It were better that he had no traffic with his fellow men for several hours.
The broken rhythm of a donkey’s hoofs came faintly to him from the highway. The beast walked slowly, as though tired, and as if he who led it were also weary and footsore, yet urged by some compulsion to pursue his journey through the night.
“By Thor,” mused Klaus, “they are a nation of strange men, these Jews. Always disputing, ever arguing, never faltering in their lust for gold; yet withal they have a spirit in them like that no other people has. Should their long-sought Messiah finally come, methinks that all the might of Rome would scarcely be enough to stop them in their—”
The hail came piercingly, mounting in a sharp crescendo, freighted with a burden of despair. “Help, help—we be beset by robbers!”
Klaus smiled sardonically. “So anxious to be early at tomorrow’s market that he braves the dangerous highway after dark; yet when the robbers set upon him—”
A woman’s scream of terror seconded the man’s despairing hail, and Klaus bounded from his couch upon the turf, dragging at the sword that hung between his shoulders.
A knot of spearmen clustered round a man and woman. From their crested helmets and bronze cuirasses he knew them to be soldiers in the livery of Rome. From their hook-nosed faces he knew them to be Syrians, Jewish renegades, perhaps, possibly Arabs or Armenians, for such composed the little private army which the Tetrarch kept for show, and to do the work he dared not ask the Roman garrison to do.
“Ho, there, what goes on here?” challenged Klaus as he hurried from the woods. “What mean ye by molesting peaceful travelers—”
The decurion in command turned on him fiercely. “Stand aside, Barbarian,” he ordered curtly. “We be soldiers of the King, and—”
“By Odin’s ravens, I care not if ye be the Cæsar’s soldiers, I’ll have your reason for attacking this good man and wife, or the sword will sing its song!” roared Klaus.
“Seize him, some of you!” the decarch ordered. “We’ll take him to the Tetrarch for his pleasure. The rest stand by, we have our task to do—give me thy baby, woman!” He bared his sword and advanced upon the woman seated on the ass, a sleeping infant cradled in her arms.
And now the wild war-madness of his people came on Klaus. A soldier sprang at him and thrust his lance straight at his face, but Klaus’s long sword drove through bronze spearhead and ash-wood stave, and left the fellow weaponless before him. Then before his adversary could drag out his short sword, Klaus thrust, and his blade pierced through the soldier’s shield and through the arm behind it, and almost through the cuirassed body. The man fell with a gasping cry, and three more soldiers leaped at Klaus, heads low above their shields, their lances held at rest.
“Aie, for the song of the sword, aie for the red blood flowing, aie for the lay the Storm-Maidens sing of heroes and Valhalla!” chanted Klaus, and as he sang he struck, and struck again, and his graysteel blade drank thirstily. Four soldiers of the Tetrarch’s guard he slew before they could close with him, and when two others, rushing to attack him from behind, laid hands upon him, he dropped his sword and reaching backward took his adversaries in his arms as though he were some monstrous bear and beat their heads together till their helmets toppled off and their skulls were cracked and they fell dead, blood rushing from their ears and noses. Now only four remained to face him, and he seized the double-bladed ax that dangled at his girdle, and with a mighty shout leaped on his foes as though they had been one and he a score. His iron ax-blade clove through bronze and bullock-hide as though they had been parchment, and two more of the Tetrarch’s guardsmen fell down dead; the other two turned tail and fled from this avenging fury with the fiery, wind-blown beard and long, fair hair that streamed unbound upon the night wind. Then Klaus stood face to face with the decurion.
“—Now, thou sayer of great words and doer of small deeds, thou baby-killer, say, wilt thou play the man’s game, or do I smite thee headless like the criminal thou art?” asked he.
“I did but do my duty, Barbarian,” the decurion answered sulkily. “The great King bade us go through all this land and take the man-child of each house, if he were under two years old, and slay him. I know not why, but a soldier’s duty is to bear his orders out—”
“Aye, and a soldier’s duty is to die, by Odin’s Twelve Companions!” Klaus broke in. “Take this for Rachel’s child; the widow-woman’s only son, thou eater-up of little, helpless babes!” And he aimed an ax-blow at the decarch, and never in his years of fighting in the circus had Klaus the Smiter smitten such a blow. Neither shield nor mail could stop it, for the ax-blade sheared through both as though they had been linen, and the ax-edge fell upon the decarch’s side where neck and shoulder join, and it cut through bone and muscle, and the arm fell down into the white dust of the roadway, and the ax cleft on, and bit into the decarch’s breast until it split his very heart in two, and as the oak-tree falls when fire from heaven blasts it, so fell the soldier of King Herod in the dust at Klaus’s feet, and lay there, quivering and headless.
Then Klaus unloosed the thong that bound the ax-helve to his wrist, and tossed the weapon up into the air, so that it spun around, a gleaming circle in the silver moonlight, and as it fell he caught it in his hand again and tossed it up above the whispering treetops and sang a song of victory, as his fathers had sung victory-lieder since the days when Northm
en first went viking, and he praised the gods of Valhalla; to Odin, father of the gods, and Thor the Thunderer, and to the beauteous Valkyrior, choosers of the valiant slain in battle, he gave full praise, and on the bodies of his fallen foes he kicked the white road-dust, and spat upon then, and named them churls and nidderings, and unfit wearers of the mail of men of war.
His frenzy wore itself to calm, and, putting up his ax, he turned to look upon the little family he had succored. The man stood by the donkey’s head, holding the leading-strap in one hand, in the other a stout stick which seemed to have been chosen for the double purpose of walking-staff and goad. He was some fifty years of age, as the gray which streaked his otherwise black beard attested, and was clothed from neck to heels in a gown of somber-colored woolen stuff which from its freshness evidently was the ceremonial best that he was wont to wear on Shabbath to the synagogue. A linen turban bound his head, and before his ears the unshorn locks of “David-curls” hung down each side his face. His clothes and bearing stamped him as a countryman, or villager; yet withal there was that simple dignity about him which has been the heritage of self-respecting poverty since time began.
Unmindful of the battle which had taken place so near it, the donkey cropped the short grass at the roadside in somnolent content, indifferent alike to war’s alarms and the woman seated on the cushioned pillion on its back. The woman on the ass was barely past her girlhood, not more than fifteen, Klaus surmised as he glanced appreciatively upon her clear-cut, lovely features. Her face was oval, her skin more pale than fair, her features were exquisite in their purity of outline; a faultless nose, full, ripe and warmly-colored lips, slightly parted with the fright the soldiers’ rude assault had caused, a mouth where tenderness and trust were mingled in expression, large eyes of blue shaded by low-drooping lids and long, dark lashes, and, in harmony with all, a flood of golden hair which, in the style permitted Jewish brides, fell unconfined beneath her veil down to the pillion upon which she sat. Her gown was blue, as was her over-mantle, and a veil and wimple of white linen framed her features to perfection. Against her breast she held a tiny infant, bound round in Jewish fashion with layer on layer of swaddling clothes, and a single glance showed the mother’s beauty and sweet purity were echoed in her baby’s face.
