“You’re going to let the Golden One play out his game at Jericho?” Ares was wide-eyed with incredulity. “You’re going to feed his madness?”
“I am going to trust Orion,” replied Zeus. “For the time being.”
All three of the others started to speak at once, but I never heard what they said. Zeus smiled and nodded at me, then moved his right hand slightly.
And abruptly I was in the utter darkness of the tunnel’s end, under the foundation of the main wall of Jericho.
I stood there trembling for several minutes. The end was in sight, I knew. They might not be able to track down the Golden One, but they certainly could keep track of me. The instant our paths crossed, they would jump and seize him, kill him, before he had the chance even to try to revive the goddess I had loved.
I forced my body to calm itself. The bitter perversity of the situation was almost laughable. I wanted to destroy the Golden One. They wanted to destroy the Golden One. But I had to protect him until he had made his attempt to revive Athene. I doubted that I could do that. And the more I thought about it, the more I despaired of his ability to bring her back to me.
Yet — he was clever enough, powerful enough, to elude their grasp. They could not find him, even though they knew that he was at work here at Jericho. They were in fear of him, in fear for their lives. Perhaps he was truly the most powerful among them. And, while they were trying to find him and destroy him, he was scheming to destroy them. I was caught in the middle of their Olympian struggle.
A faint sound startled me. A hooting, bleating noise. The ram’s horn trumpets! Blinking, I realized that thin gray pencils of morning light were angling down into the cavern where I stood. Joshua had started up his parade again. It was time for the final stroke against Jericho.
I struck the flint and lit the torch, then put it to the piles of brushwood stacked against the wall’s foundation. Dry as the desert in this season of heat, the bare twigs and branches burst into flame instantly. I backed away from the sudden heat, then realized that I had better get out of the tunnel as quickly as I could.
I ducked into the lower part of the tunnel and scuttled along like a four-limbed spider, the heat glowing at my back, reaching for me. I wondered if the fire would take the timbers that shored up the tunnel roof, trapping me in its collapse. I was crawling on my belly now, much slower than I wanted to be going. Dimly I remembered other lives, other deaths: in the boiling fury of a volcano’s eruption, in the blazing maelstrom of a runaway nuclear reactor.
Smoke was making me cough. I kept my eyes closed; not that I could have seen anything in the pitch-blackness of the tunnel. I snaked forward, driven by the heat behind me and the hint of fresh air ahead.
Suddenly a pair of strong hands grabbed my wrists and I felt myself being pulled along the scrabbly ground. I opened my eyes and saw Lukka, tugging, grunting, swearing as he pulled me into the daylight and safety.
We got to our feet, surrounded by the Hatti soldiers. They were fully armed now, with shields and armor ready for battle.
“Is it working?” I asked Lukka.
He smiled grimly. “Come see for yourself.”
We went together outside the tent and looked toward the city. Thin spirals of smoke were rising from the base of the wall. As I watched, they went from whitish-gray to a darker, more ominous color. The smoke thickened.
“The timbers must have caught,” said Lukka.
Off around the curve of the wall, the Israelite priests still blew their horns, thumped their drums, clanged their cymbals. They chanted the praises of their Lord, and the people of Jericho stood atop their doomed wall, watching the display, jeering or laughing as they pleased.
I turned my gaze back toward the tents of the main Israelite camp. The men were forming up in ranks. They wore no uniforms, had precious little armor among them, but every man carried some sort of shield and either a sword or a spear. They were ready for battle.
As the procession of priests rounded the curve of the wall, Joshua gave the order for his men to march. I estimated there were several thousand of them, from teenagers to graybeards. They marched in step with the priests, although their parallel circuit was much farther from the wall, out of bowshot range.
The priests came within sight of the smoke issuing from the base of the wall and turned away, heading back toward the camp. The armed men turned toward the wall, as if expecting it to fall at their feet.
And it did.
As the army of the Israelites approached the wall, the smoke became even thicker and blacker. I could hear strange groaning sounds, as if some creature trapped beneath the earth were moaning for release. The people up on the parapets were pointing and gesticulating now. I heard screams of sudden terror.
Then, with a great grinding, thundering groan, the whole section of the wall caved in, collapsed in on itself in a roar of falling bricks. Clouds of red-gray dust blotted out the smoke and rolled out across the plain toward us.
A single trumpet note rang piercingly clear through the shuddering thunder and screaming shouts from the city. With a roar that shook the ground, the army of Israel charged across the field and swarmed across the pile of rubble and through the breach in Jericho’s wall.
Chapter 32
I held Lukka and his men back for half the day, not wanting to risk them in the fighting. We had done our job, the battle belonged to the Israelites.
But by the time the sun was overhead Jericho was in flames, and even the imperturbable Lukka was quivering to get in on the looting.
I stood by the tent where our tunnel began and watched as clouds of ugly black smoke spread across the cloudless sky. Lukka’s men sat or stood in what little shade they could find, casting questioning looks his way. Finally he turned to me.
Before he could speak, I said, “Be back at our tents by nightfall.”
He gave me one of his rare grins and motioned for his men to follow him. They sprang up like eager wolf cubs, happy to be on the hunt.
I went with them as far as the demolished section of the wall, to see for myself what our work had accomplished. The wall was more than nine meters thick, where it still stood. The pile of tumbled bricks and rubble on which I picked my way felt hot, even through the soles of my boots. The fire was not out, it still smoldered deep below. Thin gray smoke issued from the lower cross-timbers in the sections of the wall on the other side of our breach. The fire would burn away at them for hours more, perhaps for days, I realized. Other parts of the wall would fall.
Inside the city, it was Troy all over again. The Israelites were like the Achaians in one way: they slaughtered and raped and pillaged and burned just as the barbarians of Argos and Ithaca and the other Achaian kingdoms did, on the plain of Ilios. The frenzy of bloodlust was in them, and no matter which god they worshiped or what name they gave him, they behaved like beasts rather than men.
Perhaps Helen is right, I thought. Perhaps in Egypt we will find civilized human beings, order and peace.
I clambered back over the hot rubble and made my way to my tent. To my surprise, Helen was holding court there, sitting outside the tent surrounded by more than two dozen of the Israelite women. I got close enough to hear a few of her words: “They will be filthy and bloody and filled with lust when they return. You should have scented water prepared to bathe them and soothe their raging blood.”
“Scented water?” asked one of the women.
“In a tub?” another wondered.
Helen replied, “Yes, and let your servants bathe your husband…”
“Servants?” They all laughed.
Helen seemed nonplussed.
“But tell us,” said one of the older women, “how do you use kohl to make your eyes seem larger?”