Caesarion let go of his leg, scrambling up to his feet. He started to go back for the Nubian sword, but he heard more shouts of alarm in Meroitic, the language of the Kushites. Footsteps were pounding, too close.
Caesarion leapt up onto the scaffolding, clambering board to board, grasping at ropes, pushing himself in a mad rush.
Below him no one followed, but he heard voices and recognized a few words, now that he knew the language being spoken. He’d never spoken Meroitic, but he’d once heard it in the palace, when his mother was holding a diplomatic meeting to resolve a dispute with their southern neighbors. A farmer from Kush had been killed by Egyptian soldiers. Caesarion remembered how, because it was the same way these men intended to kill him: archer, he heard them say. And arrows.
The scaffolding around the obelisk reached the height of the Khnum temple, and so Caesarion jumped across to its roof. He’d planned to make his way over the roof, but flames were licking it in spots. So instead he began to make his way along the flat stones that had been set across the tops of the pillars that traced the perimeter of the temple.
He couldn’t fly over it all, he thought with a smile, but a walkway above it would do just as well.
Fires began to rise in ferocity to either side of him, and he had to raise his wet sleeve before him like a shield as he ran through the smoke and heat, but he hurried on as fast as he could, eyes to the stone as he balanced one foot before the other. He took one turn, and he was heading now directly toward the temple of the Jews.
The Kushites hadn’t expected him to gain that path, and he could hear their shouts of confusion and rage from behind and below him. Then, to his displeasure, he heard it from in front of him, and the arrows began to fly.
He crouched down, making himself as small as he could while he kept moving, kept his eyes to the stone. If it was destiny for him to take an arrow and fall, so be it. But he wasn’t going to have his last thought be cursing himself for a missed step.
He carried on, arrows clattering against the rock below his feet or whistling as they carved the air around his body. One caught on his sleeve that he held before him, tearing through the cloth before it sailed off into the fog, but none struck him.
Ahead, his stone path turned, and he turned, too, looking down off the edge now at the King’s Road below, which was bustling with attackers and the men, women, and children that they were dragging from their homes. Everything was screams.
None of it mattered.
Hurrying on, Caesarion saw the corner of the Jewish temple form in the darkness as the road below constricted. The doors had been broken and Kushites were streaming inside. He heard the clash of swords and the shouts of men.
And he heard, unmistakable, the screaming of his love.
Caesarion took two more strides to bring himself above the broken doorway, then he pushed hard against the high stones and launched himself off into the fog, over the King’s Road, over the wall, and down into the courtyard of the Jewish temple.
It was no leap into the forgiving waters of the Nile this time, and Caesarion hoped that his fall might be broken by the Nubians who were entering the sacred space.
He was not disappointed.
Screaming, he crashed into the backs of the dark-skinned men, tumbling them and himself into a heap.
Even as he hit the ground, the lessons learned so long ago in hours of training with Pullo and Vorenus in the courtyards of the Alexandrian palaces kicked in as an instinct, a single, overriding thought: Keep moving. Don’t stop. To stop is to die.
He heaved his weight and rolled, ignoring the pain of sudden bruising. Bodies pushed and fought beneath him, but his feet finally gripped and he scrambled up and over them.
Somehow the Shard had been moved into the open out of the shrine. There was a cart, and his friends had clearly been trying to load the canvas-covered Ark up onto the back of it when they had, apparently, simply run out of time. Pullo and Vorenus were valiantly holding back the oncoming Kushites. Pullo had been defending the door that Caesarion had jumped over, and Caesarion’s slamming into the mass of men there had bought him time, but there were too many of them. Vorenus was on the far side of the courtyard, and he was staggering back, step by step, being driven ever closer to the Ark. His face and body were smeared with blood.
They needed help.
Hannah screamed again, and Caesarion at last saw where she had crumpled down beside the Ark that her family had sworn to protect. The canvas covering the artifact was partially pulled away behind her, so that her back was against its gleaming side, and the symbol of the Shard that was inlaid upon the acacia wood made a kind of circle about her head. Her face, framed by that thin curve of metal, was pale and contorted with agony. Her legs were drawn up, and she was holding her hands against her belly. Madhukar was on his feet beside her, the wiry little monk grappling with a Kushite who’d somehow made it past the former legionnaires. The Nubian had a dagger in his hand, and Madhukar was holding on to his wrist, trying desperately to keep the blade away.
Time, he thought. I need to give them time.
For a second Caesarion stood, hesitating, choosing among his love, his friends, and the Ark.
Then he felt the icy touch of a blade sinking into his back, just below the ribs.
Time.
He took in the smoky air with a short lurch of his lungs, which sent a jolting shock of pain down through his body.
The blade pulled free with a sudden, sharp jerk. What had been a cold finger became hot and terribly wet.
Time.
Caesarion gasped. Somewhere he heard screams. His. His friends’. Hannah’s.
Time.
He crumpled down to his knees. His eyes fluttered for a moment. The world seemed to slow.
The end, he thought. No time.
A blade bright with blood—his blood—passed in front of his eyes, lowering to draw across his neck and speed the death that his wound had made inevitable. When it passed, he saw beyond it, across the courtyard, that Madhukar had been thrown backward against the Ark, and he was falling to the other side of it from Hannah. The canvas—now stained with sprays of crimson—was falling away with him, exposing the rest of the artifact. The two angels standing upon its top shone brightly in the firelight.
No, his mind whispered. No. No. No.
And then the whisper was a shout, and the voice that cried it belonged to Titus Pullo, whose gladius jabbed into the shoulder of the man holding the blade across Caesarion’s neck. The man screamed, the blade jerked for a moment, and then it fell from his hand.
“Move!” the big man shouted. He filled Caesarion’s field of vision, and the fist of the Roman’s free hand swung overhead.
Caesarion blinked. Move. Move.
Another Nubian tried to take Pullo in the side, just as the legionnaire’s gladius pulled free from the flesh he’d stuck it into. With no time to turn the weapon, Pullo just swung his arm backward, slamming the heavy pommel of his sword into the attacker’s face. “Get up!”
Caesarion began to rise, and he realized that Pullo’s fist must have gripped the back of his robes. The big man was lifting him up, trying to pull him out of harm’s way.
Move. Time.
He gasped, and as the air filled his lungs Caesarion was aware that behind the pain there was still life to be had. Not long. Seconds, perhaps.
But it could be long enough.
His muscles twitched as Pullo pulled him, jerked him back into motion. Then his feet were underneath him, and he was stumbling forward toward the Ark.
Pullo was shouting behind him to run, to get away, but Caesarion knew there wasn’t time enough for that.
And where would he go?
The Nubian who’d killed Madhukar was standing in front of the Ark, and the knife with which he’d killed the monk was still in his hand. Caesarion pitched into him, his lowered shoulder pushing the man off-balance even as his right hand reached around him, wrapped around the man’s knife hand, and jerked it up and into his chest.