"Every one that has forsaken houses, or brothers and sisters, or father or mother or wife, or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and inherit everlasting life," the Son of God said.
The Rock cared little for everlasting life just then. Preserving what life he had in the world suddenly looked more urgent to him. He shoved his chieftain, and the leader of the revolt reluctantly began to move. By then it was too late. The Westerners' scouts were ahead of them, the main body close behind.
"We've got all these stinking prisoners," Quintus said. That was literally true: the swarm of rebels the soldiers had captured did stink, not only because they hadn't bathed in much too long but also because fear had an odor all its own, a rank, wild stink that filled the victors' nostrils.
Marcus eyed the scrawny, dirty captives. They were so beaten, so demoralized, he would have pitied them-if they hadn't been trying so hard to kill his pals and him till the moment they threw down their weapons and threw up their hands and shouted, "Friend!" in as many languages as they knew. He didn't feel any too friendly toward them now. Neither did his buddies. Not all the locals who'd tried to surrender had succeeded.
Quintus held up a list. "We've got the top thirteen to sort out, see if they're alive or dead," he said. "Big reward for all of them, double reward for the rebel leader. With a little luck, some of us'll earn it."
"How are we supposed to know who the bastards are, sir?" Marcus asked. "One of these miserable, hairy assholes looks just like another one to me."
"The prisoners'll know who's who," Lucius said. "Some of them speak languages a civilized man can understand, too."
"Those are the ones who really piss me off," Quintus said. "They've got a good Western education, some of them, and they're still religious fanatics underneath." But he nodded. "Using the prisoners is just exactly what we're going to do. Either the leaders are hiding in among 'em, or else they'll know where the big guys are likely to have run off to. Do what you need to do to find out. Whatever it is, I don't want to hear about it." He made a production out of turning his back.
"Come on," Marcus said to Lucius. "Let's do it. I could use some reward money. How about you?"
"I wouldn't mind," Lucius agreed. "I wouldn't mind working out on the ragheads a little more, either." He had a small wound on one arm, and another on one leg. If he wanted to get a little revenge while he was interrogating, it was no skin off Marcus's nose.
Before long, they caught a break. They found a man named Bar Abbas. He wasn't one of the Big Thirteen; he looked like a thief. But he could understand them if they talked loud enough and thumped him a little, and he could talk to them some, too.
He pointed them at another man, a foxy-faced fellow with a red beard-uncommon even in the West and almost vanishingly rare here. Red Beard tried to deny everything, but Marcus saw the terror that stole across his face when he got pulled away from the rest of the prisoners. Lucius had fun persuading him that bullshit at a time like this wasn't a smart plan.
"All right! I'll talk! Don't get cross with me! Please don't get cross with me!" he said after a while. He talked funny, but you could make out what he was saying. He went on, "If you let me go afterwards, I'll take you to… him." He named no names, but he didn't need to.
"I think I'd sooner-" Lucius began.
Marcus grabbed his arm before he could. "You want the Senate to start investigating us or something? We need to find this guy. Besides, remember the reward."
"Oh, all right." Lucius still sounded sulky, but he went along. He nodded to the red-bearded local. "You got yourself a deal, pal. Take us to Mister Big and you go home free. Better than that-we'll even pay you a little something." He glanced over at Marcus. "There. You happy now?"
"I'm fucking jumping up and down," Marcus said, which made Lucius laugh. Marcus turned to Red Beard. "Come on, pal. You told us you were gonna do it. Now you better come through. If you don't, I'll just hand you to my buddy here and walk away. Nobody'll give a rat's ass what happens after that."
The local got the message, all right. He got it big time-he almost peed in his robes, in fact. "Let us go. If he is among the prisoners, I will show him to you."
"Uh-huh." Marcus and Lucius both said the same thing at the same time. They were both thinking the same thing, too. Marcus would have bet on that. If Red Beard tried to say the rebel honcho wasn't anywhere around, he was history. Extremely ancient history, too.
Red Beard went to and fro in the prisoner compound, and he went up and down in it. Marcus and Lucius tagged along behind, not too close but not too far. If the foxy-faced fellow tried blending in with the other captured rebels, that wouldn't work out so well for him, either, not considering what sorts of things were likely to happen to them pretty soon.
But he didn't. All of a sudden, he came on point like a truffle-sniffing pig getting a whiff of some of the juiciest goodies it had ever smelled. "Hey, hey," Marcus said to Lucius.
"Yeah," Lucius said to Marcus, and then, "I wonder if we ought to have some backup."
They weren't the only soldiers going through the compound looking for the worst of the bad eggs. Marcus thought about waving to bring some of the others over. He thought about it, and then he shook his head. "They're liable to try and split the reward with us," he pointed out. "Let's see if we can extract this guy all quick and smooth-like. If we have trouble, then we yell for backup."
"Deal," Lucius said.
They hurried after the guy with the red beard. He stooped by a prisoner who didn't look much different from any of the other bedraggled locals and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then he pointed to the fellow next to the one he'd kissed and said, "And this is the man they call the Rock."
The Rock didn't seem to care anything about himself. He pointed to the rebel Red Beard had kissed and he gabbled, "This is not the Son of God. It is not. It is not!"
Marcus and Lucius looked at each other. They both knew lies when they heard them. Their swords cleared their scabbards at the same time. "Come along," Marcus said. "Both of you, and make it snappy."
Red Beard had to translate for the rebel chief. Marcus wondered if there'd be trouble, but the man just wearily climbed to his feet. He knew it was all over, then. He said something guttural. "What's that?" Lucius asked.
"He said to give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to give God what belongs to God," the red-bearded local reported.
"His ass belongs to Caesar-and so does the Rock's," Marcus said. "Let's get moving."
They got the big shots out of the compound without the prisoners trying to mob them, which had worried Marcus. As soon as they made it outside, the guy with the red beard said, "You told me you'd let me go."
"Yeah, fine. You held up your end. We'll hold up ours. So long. Get lost," Marcus said. "Get lost and stay lost, in fact. We catch you making trouble again, we'll bury your sorry bones in a potter's field."
"My reward," the local whined.
"We haven't got ours yet," Marcus pointed out. Red Beard looked put upon. Marcus was tempted to scrag him. He didn't quite. He and Lucius hauled out their wallets and split the damage. "Here's thirty," Marcus said, handing the local the money. "Now fuck off, and be thankful you got this much."
Red Beard bowed almost double, like a slave. Then he disappeared.
The Rock eyed both the enemy general and his own chieftain. The enemy had not an ounce of give in him anywhere. The hillmen had rebelled, and they'd lost, and they were going to pay for it. They were going to pay for it in ways as nasty as the general could imagine, and he looked like somebody with a good imagination for that kind of thing.
His own chieftain, by contrast, still looked as if he didn't know what had hit him. The Son of God had been in shock since the men from the West shattered his army. The last betrayal only added insult to injury. The Westerners' awesome and awful display of power in the field would have made almost anyone doubt.