Unholy Night (11 page)

The soldier swung his blade and struck the woman in the back. She fell forward, and though she tried with all of herself to hold on, the baby flew out of her grasp. It landed on the cobblestones and rolled for a few feet, too fragile, too new to brace itself against the impact. It came to a stop on its back, lay silent for a moment, then let out a terrible shriek, its lungs doing their work brilliantly. Its eyes shut. The woman responded with a shriek of her own, crawling toward it as the soldier dismounted and walked over to where the infant lay crying. Crying out for its mother’s comforting touch.

The soldier stood over the baby a moment, then ran his sword through its belly.

The soldier ran his sword through its…the soldier ran his—

Stop.

It didn’t happen that way at all. Balthazar’s eyes had betrayed him. He was back in the world of infinite oceans and distant visions. No, it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Only…the cold, sick water in his blood told him that it was. That familiar feeling. The one that had sent him chasing after the flittering gold pendant.

The baby’s cries sharpened, then stopped. Its arms and legs flailed weakly for a moment…then it was still. The soldier withdrew his blade. Wiped it on the bottom of his sandal.

He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead…

The mother was still crawling across the cobblestones toward her son—screaming her throat raw. The soldier walked back to her casually—
you coward, you dog…you won’t do it, I’ll kill
—and ran the blade through her back. But she kept crawling. Crawling toward her son, so the soldier ran her through again. Her body tensed briefly and was still.

Gaspar and Melchyor couldn’t believe their eyes. They were criminals. All of them, criminals. They’d seen their share of murder and cruelty. God knew they had.

But neither of them had ever seen anything like this. Neither of them had ever imagined it possible. They’d been rendered mute by the sight.

Balthazar’s teeth clenched so tightly around his lower lip that blood had begun to pool in his mouth.

This simply wouldn’t do.

The hell with Qumran. The hell with all of it. He decided to kill them. All of them. He was going to snuff out every one of their worthless lives, stand over every one of their dismembered bodies. He didn’t know how he was going to do this, seeing as he didn’t have any weapons and was outnumbered at least twenty to one, but he
knew
. His being was overflowing with something. Not rage. Something stronger than rage. Something more powerful and just.

The woman lifted her head as she lay dying in the street. The black horse was leaving with the man on its back. Riding away. Leaving them both to bleed in the street. She held her head up as high as she could, determined to look at her son one more time before she left this life.

The sun was rising. Its hard orange light had caught some of the infant’s fine hair. Hair whose color would never change. His eyes closed, his chest no longer rising or falling. His hands. Tiny, delicate, cold. But there was something else. Something above him. Above all of Bethlehem in the early light. The woman thought she saw the shapes of three men on camelback, but it was hard to tell. The sun was directly behind them, creating a blinding halo around their heads. With her last thought, she wondered if they’d come to welcome her into the next world.

When Balthazar spoke at last, he had to will every syllable into existence.

“The two of you are in my debt?”

“Yes,” said Gaspar, “but you can’t be think—”

“The two of you are in my debt?”

Gaspar hesitated. He knew what was coming next.

“Yes…”

“With me.”

Balthazar kicked the side of his camel and rode down into the village. In accordance with the law of the desert, but against every one of their instincts, Gaspar and Melchyor followed him.

Joseph and Mary could hear the screams too. And though they didn’t dare leave the stables to see, they knew. They knew it was happening. Right now. Right here in Bethlehem. They could hear the hooves beating against the road, the clanging of armor as it entered the village. It was too late to run. There were too many of them out there.

Joseph hurried Mary and the baby into one of the stable’s tiny stalls. A black-and-white spotted goat protested as Joseph shoved it aside to make room for his wife, who lay beside it in the fetal position, the baby beside her. Joseph covered them with as much hay as he could—much of it matted together with dry manure. There was barely enough of it to cover them both, but it would have to do.

Having hidden them as best he could, Joseph slammed the stall shut and tried to look like he belonged, grabbing his old friend the pitchfork and pretending to clean up the stable. If the soldiers barged in, they’d see a man going about his work, nothing more. They’d leave him alone and look elsewhere. But if they didn’t—if for some reason they decided to look around, God forbid, he could use the pitchfork to buy Mary a little time.

Joseph waited and prayed. Prayed that the soldiers wouldn’t bother with the stable at all.
Why would they? It doesn’t make sense. Stables are for animals, not infants.
He prayed that the shepherd who’d taken pity on them—who’d given them their lodging in the first place—wouldn’t give them up now. Mostly, Joseph prayed that the baby wouldn’t start crying. So far, remarkably, it had stayed happy and calm as it had been covered with hay and manure.

A lone soldier chased a twelve-year-old boy over the cobblestones near the village center. Not to slaughter him, but the baby brother he held in his arms. The baby he’d snatched away from his mother, certain that he could ran faster than she could. And he’d been right to do it. He was faster than she could have ever hoped to be. But he wasn’t faster than the black horse with the clanging man on its back.

The soldier drew his sword as he closed in on the boy’s back, unaware that three men on camels were currently chasing him down the same street. Unaware that the Antioch Ghost was almost on him, kicking the side of his camel harder than he’d ever kicked anything in his life. Harder than he’d kicked his ill-fated camel in the Judean Desert.
Faster you piece of shit.
Gaspar and Melchyor riding close behind him…

The camel responded, galloping across the cobblestones and pulling up just behind the black horse. Close enough to strike with a sword, if he’d only had one. Balthazar settled for the next best thing: He grabbed the back of the soldier’s collar and yanked him off his saddle and onto the cobblestones, where he was promptly trampled by Gaspar’s and Melchyor’s camels. They hadn’t meant to run him over—they simply couldn’t stop in time. But now they did, pulling up on their reins and circling back to inspect the damage.

Balthazar stopped his own camel and watched the soldier’s horse gallop on for a hundred more feet, stop, then trot in a circle, unsure what to do with itself. He watched as the boy kept on running with the infant in his arms, unaware that the menace behind him was gone.

Run, boy, and don’t stop running until you drop from exhaustion.

The soldier was lying motionless on his back, a deep dent in his breastplate where a camel’s foot had struck his chest. He was older than most men of his lowly rank, a tinge of gray at his temples. He was coughing up blood, the result of a splintered rib cage and torn organs, Balthazar guessed.
Good.
His left arm had been mangled beneath another camel foot, flattened below the elbow and rendered useless. He writhed, moaned.

Good…I hope it’s the worst pain you’ve ever known.

Balthazar jumped down off his camel and walked toward him. He walked calmly, like the dead man he was. He stepped on the soldier’s wrist, leaned over, and took his sword away. It wasn’t much to look at. Standard issue for a low-ranking Judean soldier. But it would do.

Balthazar held the tip of the sword over the soldier’s throat.

“P-please,” said the soldier, struggling for breath. “D-don’t—”

“Don’t what?” asked Balthazar, cupping a hand to his ear.

“Don’t k-kill…”

“Don’t kill you? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Don’t k-kill me…”

The soldier was sobbing. Balthazar was almost embarrassed for him.

“And if you’d caught up with that boy and baby, would you have shown it the same mercy?”

“Ple—”

Balthazar pushed down until he felt the “pop” of the blade going through the soldier’s Adam’s apple. The man clutched at it with his right hand—the blood bubbling up on either side of it. He tried frantically to pull it out of his throat, but Balthazar only pushed harder and twisted the blade, tearing an even bigger hole open. There was that same shade of white…that same mask of fear…that same dreadful realization that he was going to die.

Good,
thought Balthazar.
I hope you’re afraid.…

Gaspar and Melchyor had dismounted behind him, watching the soldier die on his back. His limbs moved weakly, then not at all. Balthazar lifted his eyes from the dying soldier’s face, drawn by a renewed clanging of armor in the distance. Looking up, he saw five Judean soldiers emerge from a house at the far end of the street, their swords stained with blood, a mother’s and father’s screams coming from inside. The soldiers were halfway to their waiting horses when one of them caught sight of Balthazar standing over the body of their dying comrade. Upon bearing witness to this tragedy, the soldier and his four companions reached the same conclusion that Balthazar had only minutes earlier:

This simply wouldn’t do.

Balthazar watched them charge—so incensed, so focused on righting this injustice, that they’d forgotten to bring their horses with them. If the wise men mounted their camels now, they could escape, no question. But Balthazar hadn’t ridden into Bethlehem to run. He’d come to kill every last one of them, or die trying.

He pulled the sword out of the dying soldier’s throat and walked to the middle of the street to meet them. The Judeans had every advantage. Numbers. Armor. But Balthazar didn’t care. He would stand his ground. He would take them all on.

“Give me the sword,” said Melchyor.

Balthazar didn’t flinch. His kept his eyes fixed on the approaching men.

“I’ll do it.”

“Give…me…the…sword.”

There was something about Melchyor’s voice. A different quality. Those words hadn’t come from the quiet simpleton he’d met in the dungeon, or the harmless cherub who cooed and made stupid faces at the infant when they’d left the stable.

Balthazar looked to Gaspar.
Is he serious?
Gaspar nodded.

“Give him the sword,” he said.

Balthazar didn’t exactly know why he handed their only sword to the shortest, fattest member of their group. But he did. Somehow, it just felt like the right thing to do. Melchyor gripped it in his fingers. Swung it from side to side, getting a sense of its weight. He ran his fingers along its blade, getting a sense of its power. Speaking to it. It wasn’t much of a sword, but it would do.

After all, there were only five of them.

When the soldiers were almost upon them, Melchyor held the sword out in front of his body and charged. The Judeans were taken aback—even amused by the sight of the little Greek coming at them all alone. The soldier who was farthest out in front of the pack planted his feet and readied his blade, turning his body to the side in a classic fencing stance. He was ready for anything. Especially the mad charge of a little man.

A second later, his left leg was gone, and he was crying out from the ground.

The little Greek had rolled forward at the last second and swung his blade across the soldier’s firmly planted lead leg. He’d never even gotten a chance to fight back. And as the soldier lay there on his side, feeling for a leg that was no longer there, his four comrades weren’t getting their chances, either.

One by one, Melchyor spun and struck his way through the soldiers—cutting them down as if they were following his instructions: striking him when he wanted them to strike, leaving themselves defenseless at exactly the moment he was ready to attack.