The Seven Hills (8 page)

She liked Marcus. She was grateful to him and she had
conceived a genuine affection for him. Still, she gave occa
sional thought to having him done away with. Personal af
fection was one thing, politics another. When he had arrived, she had been an insecure princess, constantly threatened by
her brother and his conniving courtiers. Now she was a
queen. She owed it to Marcus, but now her first concern was Egypt and Egypt's security, not her Roman companion.

She had some decisions to make soon, but her situation
was very precarious. She wanted the support of Rome, needed
it, really, for without the Romans as allies she would soon be under siege again by the Carthaginians, or else the desperate
Seleucids would have a try at Egypt, or the Parthians might take it into their heads to add the Nile to their expanding
empire, as had the Persians in their day. As had Alexander.

It was wonderful being queen of the richest nation in the
world. It was also perilous, owning the one thing coveted by
all the grasping, rapacious powers on earth.

The cold of the desert nights came as a surprise to everyone. Roman soldiers were inured to cold after so many years campaigning north of the Alps, but it
seemed strange to encounter it here. The sentries stood muffled in their woolen cloaks, and the men not asleep gathered
close to fires built with the skimpy brushwood that constituted the only available fuel.

The ground was hard and stony, but each day at the end of their march the legionaries got out their pickaxes and spades, their baskets for moving earth, and they dug their rectangular ditch, heaping the soil into a low rampart that they topped with the long, pointed stakes carried by each man. Only after they had accomplished this did they go within to erect their tents. Each fortified camp was exactly as it would have been on the Rhenus or Danubius or on some other nameless river in the northland. In all probability there was no enemy for many days' march in any direction, but that made no difference. Everywhere a Roman army stopped for the night, it erected just such a camp.

"Here we are," Cato said sourly, "fortified against jackals and foxes, when we could be camped in Sicily." He sat in a folding chair before one of the brushwood fires, a cup of watered date wine in his hand. Their wine was already souring from the heat of the days on the march, but it made the even
fouler water drinkable.

"I don't care," said Lentulus Niger. "Sicily will take a year or two. As long as we're in on the finish, when we besiege Carthage, I'll be satisfied. The tale of this march will make our names, even if it doesn't bring us riches."

"You sound like a man trying to convince himself," Cato
said.

"What's this?" The voice came from beyond the firelight.
"Do I hear grumbling in the ranks?" Norbanus came into the firelight and held his hands out close to the flames.

"This isn't the ranks," Niger said. "It's the praetorium." He and Cato had both plodded their way up the ladder of office. Each had been military tribune, quaestor and aedile, each had put in years on the staff of a higher-ranking man and was ready to stand for the praetorship. It still rankled that Norbanus had what amounted to a proconsular command without having done any of that.

Besides, his was one of the new families, while theirs dated from before the Exile. In fact, their ancestors had been praetors and consuls when his were illiterate savages painting their backsides blue. The only thing that made him tolerable was the deadly enmity between Norbanus and Marcus Scipio, whom they detested even more. Scipio was more aristocratic than either of them and they resented that, too.

Norbanus smiled. He knew how little he was loved and
was not at all disturbed by it. The envy of lesser men was a
part of greatness. Men like Lentulus Niger and Cato were destined to be used by him and to be sacrificed for his advantage, at necessity. A great man needed supporters and followers. He needed few friends.

"We face only a few more days of this," he told them. "I've just interrogated those locals from the caravan. They say that their people call this place the Wilderness of Zin."

"It's a fitting name," Cato granted. "I couldn't have come
up with a better. So where are we?"

"About two days' march west of a town called Kadesh. It's a caravan stop and like all of them has its own spring.
We can restore our water there and graze the animals. After
that, we swing north."

"Out of this desert?" Niger said hopefully.

He grinned at them. "Any direction we go takes us out of
the desert, if we just go far enough."

Their march had taken them through the blighted land
scape from oasis to oasis, each of them yielding scarcely
enough water and forage to keep the army moving. They had passed by incredibly ancient turquoise mines, watched over by statues of the cow-eared goddess Hathor, who for
some reason was the deity of such places. Herders of goats
had fled before them, and they had seen few humans other than these herdsmen. The desert was crossed by a network
of caravan routes, but these were little traveled and the caravan they had met that afternoon was the first they had seen
in several days.

"What's north of Kadesh?" Cato wanted to know.

"Another five or six days of marching should bring us into a cultivated district," Norbanus told them. "Its principle town is called Beersheba. It's a small place, but from there on we will be in civilized country."

"Who runs it?" Niger asked.

Norbanus grinned again. "We do."

Eliyahu the watchman climbed to his post atop
the town wall, above the main gate, scratching in his beard, grumbling. He was getting old and his knees protested at the climb, though the mud wall stood barely twenty feet higher than the ground surrounding. He stood on the little platform just beside the gate and gazed out over the peace
ful fields beyond. Not that he could see much, for there was
a heavy ground mist, as there was many mornings. Just beyond the wall, in the midst of a small pasture; there was a little lake fed by an underground spring, and it was from this that the fog arose.

From below came the patient exhalings of asses and the ill-tempered snorts and groans of camels. These were the
beasts of caravan traders waiting for the south gate to open. Eliyahu looked about and saw no sign of robbers. "Open the gate," he said to the boys below. They were his youngest son
and a few grandsons, for charge of this gate had been in his family since Moses. Not that there was much to watch for,
save for bandits in unsettled times, desert raiders and such.

He was about to sit in his chair and rest his bones when he thought he heard a sound from out there in the mist. It was not a clopping of hooves, but rather a great rustling noise, with many clinkings and scraping sounds. Then he heard a rhythmic tramping. What could this portend?

The mist began to disperse in the morning sun and from
it stepped a vision from a nightmare: a hundred men, then a
thousand, then many more, all marching in step, all dressed in glinting metal, bearing shields, spears sloped over their shoulders, all marching in perfect lockstep, as if the host were a single animal.

"Close the gate!" Eliyahu said, trying to shout but producing a strangled gasp. Then, more forcefully: "Close the gate!"

"What?" called his son, the slow-witted one.

"Close the gate, then run and bring the headmen! An army marches on Beersheba!"

Stunned, he watched as the host before him began to split up, rectangles of them swerving off to right and left, some to secure the lake, others to occupy the fields where the caravans picketed their beasts. Mounted contingents went right and left as well, riding around the walls out of sight. He guessed that these rode to prevent anyone from escaping town by the north gate. Beersheba was to be surrounded.

He hobbled to the old alarm gong by the gate, used to warn of bandit attack and not heard for many years. He seized the stubby bar and began beating vigorously on the
brazen plate. At least it was something to do. Beersheba had perhaps three thousand inhabitants of all ages, and how they
could defend the town from such an army he had no idea. They kept materializing from the mist like Pharaoh's army emerging from the Red Sea.

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 in
credible 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 obser
vant 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 pro
cedure 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.