It was the light of fires.
A chill ran up the back of Caesarion’s neck as he crossed the last stretch of wood to where the harbormaster sat upon the crates.
In the darkness he could see no blood, but the shafts of the two arrows sticking out from his body—one in his gut and one centered upon his chest—were evidence enough of his fate.
Caesarion instinctively dropped low, squeezing himself behind the man and the crates, away from the dark water from which the killing shafts had sailed.
Almost in the instant that he did so, thin whistles of wind pierced the fog, and two more arrows impacted where he’d been standing. One thudded into wood, while another plunged into the harbormaster’s corpse with a wet, meaty sound. Out in the dark, someone cursed.
Caesarion panted for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Staying was hardly an option: sooner or later whatever ship was on the water would get an angle to reach him. And if Elephantine was under attack, he had to raise the alarm. He had to try to warn Hannah and the others. They had to protect the Ark.
Crying out would do little good. What he needed, he decided, was to ring the harbor bell. And that meant getting to the lighthouse.
He crouched. He took one deep breath, then another. And then he flung himself away from the crates, keeping as low as he could while he launched himself into a sprint.
Arrows shot out from his left, and he heard them nipping through the air, somehow missing him. He heard muffled commands in a language he did not know, and the voices were fearfully close. Without breaking stride, he chanced a single look in that direction. There were black boats gliding through the water, boats full of men, and they were going to come ashore between him and the Ark.
Control what you can, he told himself. The bell. Raise the alarm. Go!
The attackers, whoever they were, apparently only had a few bowmen who could make the ranged shot against him, because by the time the next salvo came he was reaching the end of the dock, where he had space to dart and dodge in a jerking, serpentine rush. The arrows flew past him—four, he thought—and he saw them strike the walls of the lighthouse ahead with splintering cracks. All of them were high, he realized, probably because the bowmen were still in the boats.
He crouched lower, making himself small as he continued his quick movements, and when he heard the first snap of the next salvo, he kicked his legs forward, sliding feet-first into the open doorway of the lighthouse as the arrows sang over his head.
He crashed into the darkness of the first floor, overturning chairs and smashing into a table with such force that he sent papers and ceramic pots scattering.
Even before he came to rest his mind was screaming at him to get up, to move, to sound the alarm.
There were footsteps pounding on the dock as Caesarion struggled to get his feet under him, shuffling and slipping on papyrus sheets until he managed to get upright and begin fumbling in the dark for the stairs.
He tripped over the first step, but then he was scrambling upward, taking the steep steps two at a time, determined to get to the top, to warn his friends before he was caught. Men burst into the room in his wake, just strides away, and Caesarion pitched over cases of scrolls and boxes that had been placed against the walls of the stairwell. He heard the men cursing as they stumbled behind him.
The stairs ended in a small circular room with a ladder rising to a trapdoor. Caesarion hardly broke pace, leaping up onto the ladder and then jumping upward off of its rungs, his arm extending out and throwing open the wooden panel at the ceiling.
After the dimness below, coming into the sudden presence of the lit beacon at the top of the lighthouse felt as if he’d come face-to-face with the sun. Caesarion had to shut his eyes against the harsh glare even as he pulled the rest of himself up the ladder. He clapped the trapdoor shut just as the men chasing him reached the top of the stairs, and then he stood over it, letting his weight hold it down as he blinked and squinted at his surroundings. There was a pile of wood within arm’s reach, meant for feeding the burning harbor beacon, and he pulled it to him, unceremoniously dumping it down upon the trapdoor as he hopped back off of it. For a moment the men pushing from below got the edges of it to lift, but then the wood crashed down and pushed it shut again.
It wouldn’t hold them away for long—already their pounding was shifting the logs and rolling some away—but it would be enough. He only needed a few seconds. It might be all that stood between life and death for his friends. For his love.
It was all he could do. It would have to be enough.
Caesarion, once pharaoh of Egypt, took two steps around the fire, grabbed the rope of the bell, and raised the alarm over Elephantine.
25
THE WHEEL TURNS
ELEPHANTINE, 25 BCE
Vorenus was sitting with Pullo upon the ruined altar in the middle of the Jewish temple when the harbor bell began to ring. He bolted up to his feet, and he turned in the direction of the sound as if he might discern something through the thick walls that surrounded them. He saw nothing but the fog, seeming to show the faintest light of a coming dawn.
Pullo had lumbered up, too. “An attack?”
Vorenus nodded. The ringing was no steady chime. It was panicked, frightened.
“What do we do?”
It couldn’t be Romans. They were all gone into Arabia, weren’t they? But if not Romans, who?
“Vorenus, what do we do?”
“See that the doors are secure,” Vorenus replied. “Keep them fast. I’ll awaken Hannah.”
Pullo, as if he were still within the legion, snapped to attention at the order, and he shuffled as quickly as he could toward the door that Caesarion had taken.
Caesarion! He’d gone toward the docks. He ought to have reached them by now, and if he was—
The bell clanged once more, and then it stopped.
There was an eerie silence in the air, a hush as if some violence had silenced the ringing alarm.
Vorenus felt a yawning pit open in his belly, even as he hoped against hope that the bell had only been a false alarm.
But then he heard, echoing through the buildings of the city, the sounds of battle. The island was under attack.
“Hurry, Pullo!” he shouted, swallowing his dread as he ran for the inner shrine.
The door opened just as he reached it. Hannah was there. “Where’s Caesarion? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Vorenus admitted. He skittered to a halt in front of the doorway, looking beyond her to where the Ark was standing, serene and still, where it had been for years. “But gather your things. If he comes back we may need to be ready to move.”
Hannah nodded and spun back toward the chamber. Vorenus stood at the doorway for a moment longer, measuring the Ark with his eyes.
“Vorenus!” Pullo called out, pointing from one door of the courtyard across to one he hadn’t yet reached. It was opening.
Though Vorenus had long since lost his uniform as a Roman legionnaire—it was far safer to appear to be a common man these days—he hadn’t lost his gear. Beneath his loose-fitting robes he still had a chain shirt, and at his side he still had his bone-handled gladius. As he spun through the dirt and began sprinting for the doorway, the blade was in his hand with hardly a thought. Old habits died hard.
The door creaked, opening slowly as Vorenus closed the distance to it. A hand appeared, fingers tentatively curling around the wood, and then—just as Vorenus was preparing to barrel himself into the wood and shove it backward—Madhukar’s brown face appeared in the gap.
Vorenus pulled up, catching himself. “Madhukar!”
The Therapeutan man looked relieved as he stepped inside and helped Vorenus push the door closed. “We are under attack,” the monk gasped. “It’s Nubians, from Kush.”