The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (6 page)

I spun around and grabbed his muscular
forearm, twisting it and sending its owner flat on his back on his
blanket. With an angry “Ow!” Spud pulled his arm away and rubbed
the tender tendons that I’d strained.

“Dammit, Spud. You shouldn’t have snuck up on
me like that! I have razor-sharp reflexes, remember?” I countered.
“And where the heck were you, anyway?”

“False alarm,” Spud admitted ruefully. “I
overheard our friends over there conversing and thought we had a
lead.”

“No?”

Spud shook his head. “Wrong Yeshua.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “Did you hear something
about death, too?”

He nodded. “Apparently, one of the men has
inherited some property on the outskirts of town on which he wants
to build. The Yeshua they were talking about is an old squatter,
living on the land, so they have to encourage him to move on, one
way or another.”

I winced. “I don’t think I want to hear about
their plans. I know it’s not our mission, but shouldn’t we, uh,
help this other Yeshua?”

“We can’t,” Spud reminded me. “You know the
rules when we’re on a mission. Observe and Preserve. No
interference in local environments unless it’s an official
assignment. And you know the punishment if we do.”

I shivered involuntarily. “It wasn’t the most
pleasant hour of my life.” I’d already felt the wrath of the Omega
Archon’s strict governance when I’d flouted the “rules” as an
intern, and I’d suffered the unrelenting agony of the burning
flames of Hell. My sentence had only been for thirty minutes, but
I’d resolved never to find myself “in stir” again. I stood up and
stretched, trying to relieve the sudden tension in my muscles. “So,
what’s our next step?”

“Gary briefed us that Bar Maryam is likely in
construction work of some kind,” Spud suggested. “We could get a
position with one of the local crews and see what we could, er, as
you say, dig up?”

“Funny.” I shook my head. “No … it won’t
work. These guys are real craftsmen. We’d never be able to look
legit as construction workers with just upload learning from our
Ergals.” My eyes followed a rat as it scurried from one end of our
room to the other. “I’ve got it! Roman building inspectors.”

“Say again?” Spud looked confused.

“We can pretend to be Roman building
inspectors. Checking on permits, taxes, titles, all that crap.
Feared by all the locals. I’ll bet they’d be happy to give up Bar
Maryam just so we stay off their backs.” I nodded at Spud’s smooth
hands. “We would make more convincing bureaucrats than
tradesmen.”

“Good point.” Spud chewed his lip. “In fact,
that might possibly work. How is your Latin, Danielis?

I smiled as I set my Ergal for the ancient
language. “Praepara, Arcturus.”

* * *

A few Ergal-facilitated additions to our
costumes and we were ‘praepared’. Pretending to be Roman estate and
building inspectors and revenue collectors, we spent the next two
days scouring the city. I don’t believe we missed visiting a
workshop, construction site, or warehouse in the entire town of
Sidon. By the second day, we had accumulated hundreds of shekels in
bribes from anxious landowners, but, unfortunately, few real leads.
None of the builders and tradesmen we met admitted to knowing a
Yeshua Bar Maryam, itinerant craftsman from Judea. If we didn’t get
lucky soon, an Andart or Andarts were certainly going to beat us to
the young man!

Our next stop was a large structure being
erected on an isolated lot near the edge of town. The base of the
building was made of stone, granite, and marble. A wood frame rose
out of the base, within which a cadre of brawny masons were laying
kiln-fired bricks.

There was no well-dressed landowner at this
site, so Spud approached the idlest of the workers, whom we assumed
was the supervisor, and, in Latin, introduced us as visiting
Romans. The supervisor visibly trembled, protested in Phoenician
that his Latin was poor, and, before we could begin our auditors’
spiel, reached into a ragged pocket and pulled out a handful of
shekels. Spud rolled his eyes, and I raised my hand to indicate our
disinterest in his proffered funds.

Sighing, Spud, in Phoenician, asked the
anxious man if he had heard of a Yeshua Bar Maryam. He clicked his
tongue and raised his eyes and eyebrows, the local gesture for
“no.” But, after Spud tried describing the young man’s likely
appearance, the supervisor nodded, and pointed a dirty thumb at a
sun-bronzed lithe youth and a wizened old man toiling in the hot
sun several yards away, adding, “The Teacher. He is there.”

“Gratias,” I added in my lowest register, as
Spud and I walked over to the two men. Close up, the young man
looked familiar, though he was taller than he had been in the holo
we’d viewed at Earth Core, and was now sporting a thin mustache and
beard. On his knees, his forehead glistening with sweat in the
still oppressive heat, he was carefully laying bricks alongside the
gray-haired worker, who, perspiration streaming down his face,
halted his own labors every few moments to check on the work of his
apprentice. Spud and I naturally assumed that the elderly mason had
to be “the Teacher,” and we greeted him by name, first in
Phoenician, then Aramaic.

The old man chuckled, and, shook his head.
“My knowledge is limited to bricks and stones,” he replied softly
in Aramaic, as he nodded at the youth. “My young friend is the
Teacher,
he
knows the word of God.”

The youth stood up, wiping the dirt from his
hands onto his tunic. “Saul is too kind. I have still much to
learn. And much to do. What seek you, gentlemen?”

“I am Akbar of Berytus, and this is my
brother Danel. Yeshua Bar Maryam?”

The young man’s eyes widened and he
instinctively pulled away. Spud leaned forward and whispered in his
ear, “Do not be afraid, we are here to protect you.” Observing that
the gazes of all the site’s workers were now focusing on our
foursome, and fearing that their intervention might prevent us from
leaving with our quarry, Spud gently took Bar Maryam by the elbow
and guided him away in the direction of the street, while
announcing loudly, “Servus illicitus
^ix
!
You will come with us immediately and be brought before the
magistrate!”

Hearing Spud’s words, the old man stood up to
his full height, towering over Spud’s six feet. Saul grabbed the
youth by the shoulders, breaking Spud’s hold on Yeshua’s arm, and
tore him away. Glaring at us with flashing eyes, he cried in
Aramaic, an invitation to his fellow masons, “Roman invaders! We
are free men! You shall no more molest our people! We will fight
you all!”

I nudged Spud, but he had already noticed
that the rest of the bricklayers had risen from their posts and
were inching closer to us. Somehow, I didn’t think their
approaching us was simply due to friendliness or curiosity. Maybe
we would have been better received as tradesmen after all.

As the circle of men now surrounding us grew
tighter and tighter, Spud and I looked at each other in
desperation. My left hand slid through the folds of my tunic and
grabbed my Ergal, wrapping my fingers around the activator on its
handle, and—

A cry to attack shook the air, and the men
lunged at us. I shouted at Spud, “Vola!” and, to escape our
hunters, we both faked a running start and leaped up high over the
ring of men. I levved a few seconds at six feet, then dove down
feet first to strike two masons unconscious. Spud, show-off that he
is, did an arm-stand forward somersault pike and took out three
more. One man came up behind me and tried to grab me in a
half-nelson, but I threw him over my head and kneed him towards a
newly-built brick ledge, which shattered and blanketed him as he
slept. I was grateful for those months of practice in the sparring
ring with Spud at Mingferplatoi. A few flying karate moves later,
Spud and I had knocked out all the men save for our target and his
elderly protector.

We were lucky that our out-of-the-way
location prevented bystanders from witnessing our acrobatics;
passers-by who might not only ask uncomfortable questions about our
combat skills, but leap into the fray to help their unconscious
brethren. Alone, the old man would be easy to handle now. We could
simply stun him and cover him with an E-shield
^x
, blocking his movement and
sensation, until we were ready to X-fan to more secure ground with
our charge.

“Yeshua,” I ordered in Aramaic. “Please,
listen to us. Move away from the elder, and you will be safe.”

“I am safe,” the youth said quietly. “Not
even the blade Saul rests against my back can make me afraid.”

Blade?!!! My partner eased over to the side
of the Teacher to scout out said weapon. As he spied it, Spud’s
artificially bronzed face turned pasty white under the tanning
effect. He looked over at me with alarm.

Puzzled, I too peeked behind Bar Maryam as
the elder watched me with a self-satisfied smile. Oh my God!

The sharp point of the knife was only a
centimeter long and extended from the barrel of a much longer, and
much more dangerous, late-model Zygan stun gun.

“I should thank you for helping me with the,
uh, competition,” the elder said in modern English, nodding at the
supine men around us. “It would have drawn too much uncontrollable
attention for me to … take care of Yeshua with an audience.”

“
We’re
an audience,” I cried angrily,
before realizing the implications of his statement. I tried not to
look chagrined … or alarmed.

“Hands up, please. You know the routine.” The
old man slid his thumb over the trigger button of his gun.

Reluctantly, we raised our hands above our
heads. If only I could reach my Ergal, we could X-fan—

“You move, you’re dead,” the elder instructed
ominously.

Bzzt. The shot came from the stun gun. We
turned and saw that the youth had been frozen in his standing
position, his head bowed and his hands together in a gesture of
prayer. The elder stepped away and moved into position for a clear
shot at us.
Now
I looked alarmed. I knew the setting he was
going to use this time was not going to be stun.

A loud crack came from my left. No, Spud!
Don’t!
The old man quickly turned in the direction of the
noise and fired a red beam at the source of the sound. I heard the
burning hiss of laser against flesh. My partner! My friend!

But, thank the heavens, it was not Spud who’d
been hit. The shot had, however, given Spud the opportunity to leap
up with his lip-splitting
bartitsu
kick and knock the weapon
out of the elder’s hands. It discharged again, this time striking
and completely dissolving a juniper bush with a loud sizzle. I
jumped on Saul and got a lock on his neck. The elder began gasping;
my persistent pressure on his windpipe and his carotid arteries was
turning his leathery skin to blue. Spud quickly Ergaled himself a
stun gun and stunned the elder just as he slipped through my arms
and collapsed unconscious onto the ground.

We both turned to check on Yeshua. The youth
remained erect, frozen in his position of prayer. Beyond him, we
glimpsed the elderly Keeper we had run into outside the Temple of
Eshmoun a few days before, picking up the remains of a shattered
marble statue and appearing surprisingly unflustered. I noted that
a corner of his tunic had been singed, but otherwise he seemed none
the worse for wear.

“A thousand apologies, Akbar, Danel,” the
Keeper said in Phoenician. Oblivious to the scattered bodies laying
about the construction site, he calmly continued to put the broken
pieces of the statue in a large sack. “Philosir the Priest will not
now have his image of Shapash to grace his entrance, I fear, until
next year’s harvest.”

The Keeper’s clear hazel eyes gazed intently
into each of ours and then at the praying youth. Nodding at Yeshua,
the Keeper picked up his sack with a sigh and threw it over his
bent shoulders. “I shall have to commission Bodmelqart the Sculptor
to make him yet another,” he added with a rueful smile as he
trudged off the lot onto the footpath in front of the acreage.

Spud and I glanced at each other, totally
taken aback. The Keeper seemed calm and oblivious to the unusual
events that had occurred around him. How was that possible? “Thank
you,” I finally essayed in my stumbling Phoenician towards the
departing cleric. He did not turn back to look at us again, but, he
did wave his free hand, from which a gold ring glistened in the
sun.

Spud seemed equally puzzled by the Keeper’s
behavior, though I’m sure he was as grateful as I was that we’d all
come out of the showdown alive. As we, both frowning, watched the
Keeper disappear around the bend of the road, I remembered that
Yeshua was still standing a few feet from us, frozen.

“Oh, God, we’d better unstun him,” I said to
Spud. Spud nodded and pulled out his stun gun.

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt,” I reassured
him in Aramaic as Spud aimed and fired the wave that would unstun
and unfreeze the youth. To our alarm, the young man didn’t move,
but continued to stand immobile in his position of prayer.

“Yeshua!” I laid my hand gently on his
shoulder.

The young man was mumbling barely audible
syllables. “Adonay Elohim atah hachilota lehar'ot et-avdecha
et-godlecha ve'et-yadecha hachazakah asher mi-El bashamayim
uva'arets asher-ya'aseh chema'aseycha vechigvurotecha.”

“Yeshua, are you okay?” The language didn’t
register as Aramaic in my Ergal. I looked over at Spud with
concern.

“Deuteronomy 3:24. It’s from the Torah. In
Hebrew,” Spud translated. “‘O God, Lord! You have begun to show
me
Your greatness and Your
display of power
. What Force is there
in heaven or earth who can perform deeds and mighty acts as You
do?’” Seeing my admiration, he added, “One obtains a broad
classical education in British public schools …”