The headmen came running, eyes wide, scrambling up the stair to see what was wrong. They were the town elders, mainly merchants, and a couple of priests. "Eliyahu," gasped Simon, the elder of the council, "what is the meaning of this? If you are drunk I'll have your-"
Wordlessly, the watchman pointed south. The others crowded onto the platform and there was a great silence. "Are they Egyptians?" someone said at last.
"No army comes through the desert," Simon said quietly. "They may be from Arabia. From India, even."
After a while a little knot of men rode forward. Their faces were as fierce as any desert bandit's and their bearing was that of kings. One rode right up to the gate and looked up at them with amazing blue eyes. He wore a splendid cloak and had a helmet in the form of a lion's mask. "Does anyone up there speak Greek?" he asked. One of the priests assented and translated.
"Who are you?" Simon asked.
"We are soldiers of Rome."
"What's Rome?" Simon asked the others, quietly. Nobody knew. Then, to the man below: "What do you want?"
"We've been in the desert for a long time and we want to make use of your town, on your terms or ours."
The soldiers kept arriving in blocks of a hundred or more. The mist was almost gone now and they stretched almost out of sight on the land beyond. They were hard-looking men, burned dark, gaunt and ragged, but with their Weapons and gear in perfect order. They maintained an incredible silence as they went about their evolutions, wheeling and maneuvering to the muffled tones of trumpets.
Simon smiled so broadly that his face looked fair to split. He threw his arms wide, "Welcome, my friends!"
Norbanus and his officers took their ease in the town's bathhouse. Apparently it was devoted to some sort of ritual bathing, but as far as they were concerned it was a bathhouse and they hadn't seen such a thing in a long time. They soaked and sluiced and rubbed down with olive oil and scraped it off with strigils.
"Here is what I've been able to learn," Titus Norbanus said, relaxing in the steaming water. "This country is claimed by the Seleucid ruler of Syria, but their presence is very weak. A family called the Hasmoneans have been in charge as subject-kings, but at the moment two princes are contending for power, one in the South and one in the North. I'm told that this is the usual state of affairs here. The major city is called Jerusalem and it's said to be rich."
An officer snorted. "These people think a man with two cows is rich. I've burned German villages richer than this place. The capital isn't likely to be much."
"That's yet to be seen," Norbanus told them. "Our primary objective is to get back to Italy, not to plunder."
"You're the one who brought up the supposed wealth of this Jerusalem," Cato said.
"If a little gold falls our way," Norbanus said, "so much the better."
Niger and Cato looked at each other. Just moving such an army through someone's country was cause for offense. If Norbanus turned this march into a giant bandit-raid, they would impeach him before the Senate for provoking war without the Senate's approval.
Norbanus caught the look. He knew perfectly well what they were thinking and he knew how to avoid the trap they foresaw. He had brought his army across the desert with a minimum of hardship and few losses, most of those to heat stroke and serpent bites. He had the esteem of the legionaries and was giving them a few days to rest and recuperate. They had confidence in their leader now. They would follow him anywhere.
He sat back and scooped water over his head with the greatest satisfaction. There was a great, rich world ahead of him and he intended to return to Rome having subdued much of it.
"From here," he said, "we march fast."
"Their religion is incomprehensible," Aulus Fimbria said. He was a member of the college of pontifexes and served as augur to the expedition. "But they display great piety in matters of ritual law. In this they are as observant as any people we have ever encountered. They have a great many laws and taboos, which they honor faithfully. Unlike most people, who have many gods and a correct procedure for worshipping each of them, these have a single god but they differ bitterly over how his worship is to be conducted."
"What a peculiar people," Norbanus said. He rode at the head of his legions, but he dismounted from time to time to march along with them so they would not think him soft. They were in cultivated land now, and water was readily available if not exactly abundant. The people here cultivated the arts of irrigation, since rainfall was so infrequent. They were first-class farmers and squeezed fine crops from their acreage. Grapes grew abundantly and they made excellent wine.
Everywhere the Romans went, the people gaped at this unwonted apparition. Some fled, but more came to the camps in the evenings to trade. They brought provisions of all sorts, and the soldiers had plentiful Egyptian coin to pay. Norbanus strictly forbade any mistreatment of the natives. He could not afford ill will at this stage.
"I cannot say that I understand their religious differences," Fimbria went on. "But some seem to think that sacrifices should be carried out one way, others say another. A few like to ape Greek culture and give their god only the most cursory observance. There is a sect that live in all-male communities in the desert and devote their whole lives to ritual. Their god interferes in and regulates the people's lives in ways that civilized gods do not."
Norbanus shrugged. "A man is born with his gods; he doesn't pick them. I suppose this odd deity suits these people. I am more concerned with their political situation, in any case."
They were nearing the major city. It would have been enjoyable, Norbanus thought, to appear before the walls of Jerusalem as a complete surprise, as they had appeared at Beersheba, but this was not to be. They had been spied, and fast-riding horsemen had pounded toward the capital to give warning. Even a Roman army could not outpace a galloping horse. Even so, he was sure that they would arrive before expected. Whoever was in charge would assume that the approaching army would be moving at the pace common to most armies.
He had learned that southern Judea, the district locally called Judah, was under the control of a prince named Jonathan. The northern region, called Israel, was under Jonathan's cousin, named Manasseh. The northern kingdom was larger, its men more numerous and its religious practice more fanatical. The southern was more sophisticated and its king, while militarily weaker, had possession of the holy city.
The Romans had questioned informed men in Beersheba and along their route of march and knew that this north-south split greatly predated the current dynastic dispute. In fact, it dated from before the unification of the country nearly a thousand years earlier, when a king named Saul had forged a nation out of a collection of tribes.
This nation, they were told, had flourished under a succession of brilliant kings, but for barely three generations. Then it had split once more under rival claimants, and that had been the situation for much of the time since. The land had fallen to a succession of conquerors, with Egypt dominating briefly, then Babylon, then Persia. Like everyone else, they had been conquered by Alexander, and then his Seleucid successor had taken over. One of the Seleucids had tried to suppress the local religion and institute the worship of Greek gods, and the whole region had erupted in furious rebellion, led by a family called the Maccabees. The two contending for rule at the moment were descendants of the Maccabees.
"Why so much fighting over this little place?" Lentulus Niger wondered. "It's decent farmland but I've seen better. The natives are sullen and have an outlandish religion. I doubt they'd even make good slaves."