Unholy Night Page 10

  The sun had finally pushed its head above the crest of the eastern hills—beginning a journey that would see it reach the pinnacle of the heavens before growing old and dying peacefully in the west. Its orange light spilled onto the wise men’s backs as they looked down from a ridge on the east side of Bethlehem. From here, they could see down some of the wider cobblestoned streets in the village’s center. But where those streets had been full and awake with the activities of daily life, they were now suddenly, eerily empty.

  Empty except for a woman in dark robes, running barefoot toward them down one of the cobblestoned streets. Running faster than she’d ever run in her life, because nothing in her life had ever been as important. From their perch, Balthazar and the others could see why:

  There was a baby in her arms.

  Naked. Tiny. Held to its mother’s breast as she ran from the horse. The black horse galloped after them with a soldier on its back, his armor clanging around him, his sword drawn.

  Balthazar could hear that faint voice in the dungeon growing louder with each fall of the horse’s hooves. He could hear the diseased rants of a king obsessed with power. A king who had once ordered his own wife and children put to death. Who’d turned on his own blood. Why wouldn’t he? If a man could murder his own children…

  The soldier swung his blade and struck the woman in the back. She fell forward, and though she tried with all of herself to hold on, the baby flew out of her grasp. It landed on the cobblestones and rolled for a few feet, too fragile, too new to brace itself against the impact. It came to a stop on its back, lay silent for a moment, then let out a terrible shriek, its lungs doing their work brilliantly. Its eyes shut. The woman responded with a shriek of her own, crawling toward it as the soldier dismounted and walked over to where the infant lay crying. Crying out for its mother’s comforting touch.

  The soldier stood over the baby a moment, then ran his sword through its belly.

  The soldier ran his sword through its…the soldier ran his—

  Stop.

  It didn’t happen that way at all. Balthazar’s eyes had betrayed him. He was back in the world of infinite oceans and distant visions. No, it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Only…the cold, sick water in his blood told him that it was. That familiar feeling. The one that had sent him chasing after the flittering gold pendant.

  The baby’s cries sharpened, then stopped. Its arms and legs flailed weakly for a moment…then it was still. The soldier withdrew his blade. Wiped it on the bottom of his sandal.

  He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead…

  The mother was still crawling across the cobblestones toward her son—screaming her throat raw. The soldier walked back to her casually—you coward, you dog…you won’t do it, I’ll kill—and ran the blade through her back. But she kept crawling. Crawling toward her son, so the soldier ran her through again. Her body tensed briefly and was still.

  Gaspar and Melchyor couldn’t believe their eyes. They were criminals. All of them, criminals. They’d seen their share of murder and cruelty. God knew they had.

  But neither of them had ever seen anything like this. Neither of them had ever imagined it possible. They’d been rendered mute by the sight.

  Balthazar’s teeth clenched so tightly around his lower lip that blood had begun to pool in his mouth.

  This simply wouldn’t do.

  The hell with Qumran. The hell with all of it. He decided to kill them. All of them. He was going to snuff out every one of their worthless lives, stand over every one of their dismembered bodies. He didn’t know how he was going to do this, seeing as he didn’t have any weapons and was outnumbered at least twenty to one, but he knew. His being was overflowing with something. Not rage. Something stronger than rage. Something more powerful and just.

  The woman lifted her head as she lay dying in the street. The black horse was leaving with the man on its back. Riding away. Leaving them both to bleed in the street. She held her head up as high as she could, determined to look at her son one more time before she left this life.

  The sun was rising. Its hard orange light had caught some of the infant’s fine hair. Hair whose color would never change. His eyes closed, his chest no longer rising or falling. His hands. Tiny, delicate, cold. But there was something else. Something above him. Above all of Bethlehem in the early light. The woman thought she saw the shapes of three men on camelback, but it was hard to tell. The sun was directly behind them, creating a blinding halo around their heads. With her last thought, she wondered if they’d come to welcome her into the next world.

  When Balthazar spoke at last, he had to will every syllable into existence.

  “The two of you are in my debt?”

  “Yes,” said Gaspar, “but you can’t be think—”

  “The two of you are in my debt?”

  Gaspar hesitated. He knew what was coming next.

  “Yes…”

  “With me.”

  Balthazar kicked the side of his camel and rode down into the village. In accordance with the law of the desert, but against every one of their instincts, Gaspar and Melchyor followed him.

  Joseph and Mary could hear the screams too. And though they didn’t dare leave the stables to see, they knew. They knew it was happening. Right now. Right here in Bethlehem. They could hear the hooves beating against the road, the clanging of armor as it entered the village. It was too late to run. There were too many of them out there.

  Joseph hurried Mary and the baby into one of the stable’s tiny stalls. A black-and-white spotted goat protested as Joseph shoved it aside to make room for his wife, who lay beside it in the fetal position, the baby beside her. Joseph covered them with as much hay as he could—much of it matted together with dry manure. There was barely enough of it to cover them both, but it would have to do.

  Having hidden them as best he could, Joseph slammed the stall shut and tried to look like he belonged, grabbing his old friend the pitchfork and pretending to clean up the stable. If the soldiers barged in, they’d see a man going about his work, nothing more. They’d leave him alone and look elsewhere. But if they didn’t—if for some reason they decided to look around, God forbid, he could use the pitchfork to buy Mary a little time.

  Joseph waited and prayed. Prayed that the soldiers wouldn’t bother with the stable at all. Why would they? It doesn’t make sense. Stables are for animals, not infants. He prayed that the shepherd who’d taken pity on them—who’d given them their lodging in the first place—wouldn’t give them up now. Mostly, Joseph prayed that the baby wouldn’t start crying. So far, remarkably, it had stayed happy and calm as it had been covered with hay and manure.

  A lone soldier chased a twelve-year-old boy over the cobblestones near the village center. Not to slaughter him, but the baby brother he held in his arms. The baby he’d snatched away from his mother, certain that he could ran faster than she could. And he’d been right to do it. He was faster than she could have ever hoped to be. But he wasn’t faster than the black horse with the clanging man on its back.

  The soldier drew his sword as he closed in on the boy’s back, unaware that three men on camels were currently chasing him down the same street. Unaware that the Antioch Ghost was almost on him, kicking the side of his camel harder than he’d ever kicked anything in his life. Harder than he’d kicked his ill-fated camel in the Judean Desert. Faster you piece of shit. Gaspar and Melchyor riding close behind him…

  The camel responded, galloping across the cobblestones and pulling up just behind the black horse. Close enough to strike with a sword, if he’d only had one. Balthazar settled for the next best thing: He grabbed the back of the soldier’s collar and yanked him off his saddle and onto the cobblestones, where he was promptly trampled by Gaspar’s and Melchyor’s camels. They hadn’t meant to run him over—they simply couldn’t stop in time. But now they did, pulling up on their reins and circling back to inspect the damage.

  Balthazar stopped his own camel and watched the soldier’s horse
gallop on for a hundred more feet, stop, then trot in a circle, unsure what to do with itself. He watched as the boy kept on running with the infant in his arms, unaware that the menace behind him was gone.

  Run, boy, and don’t stop running until you drop from exhaustion.

  The soldier was lying motionless on his back, a deep dent in his breastplate where a camel’s foot had struck his chest. He was older than most men of his lowly rank, a tinge of gray at his temples. He was coughing up blood, the result of a splintered rib cage and torn organs, Balthazar guessed. Good. His left arm had been mangled beneath another camel foot, flattened below the elbow and rendered useless. He writhed, moaned.

  Good…I hope it’s the worst pain you’ve ever known.

  Balthazar jumped down off his camel and walked toward him. He walked calmly, like the dead man he was. He stepped on the soldier’s wrist, leaned over, and took his sword away. It wasn’t much to look at. Standard issue for a low-ranking Judean soldier. But it would do.

  Balthazar held the tip of the sword over the soldier’s throat.

  “P-please,” said the soldier, struggling for breath. “D-don’t—”

  “Don’t what?” asked Balthazar, cupping a hand to his ear.

  “Don’t k-kill…”

  “Don’t kill you? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Don’t k-kill me…”

  The soldier was sobbing. Balthazar was almost embarrassed for him.

  “And if you’d caught up with that boy and baby, would you have shown it the same mercy?”

  “Ple—”

  Balthazar pushed down until he felt the “pop” of the blade going through the soldier’s Adam’s apple. The man clutched at it with his right hand—the blood bubbling up on either side of it. He tried frantically to pull it out of his throat, but Balthazar only pushed harder and twisted the blade, tearing an even bigger hole open. There was that same shade of white…that same mask of fear…that same dreadful realization that he was going to die.

  Good, thought Balthazar. I hope you’re afraid.…

  Gaspar and Melchyor had dismounted behind him, watching the soldier die on his back. His limbs moved weakly, then not at all. Balthazar lifted his eyes from the dying soldier’s face, drawn by a renewed clanging of armor in the distance. Looking up, he saw five Judean soldiers emerge from a house at the far end of the street, their swords stained with blood, a mother’s and father’s screams coming from inside. The soldiers were halfway to their waiting horses when one of them caught sight of Balthazar standing over the body of their dying comrade. Upon bearing witness to this tragedy, the soldier and his four companions reached the same conclusion that Balthazar had only minutes earlier:

  This simply wouldn’t do.

  Balthazar watched them charge—so incensed, so focused on righting this injustice, that they’d forgotten to bring their horses with them. If the wise men mounted their camels now, they could escape, no question. But Balthazar hadn’t ridden into Bethlehem to run. He’d come to kill every last one of them, or die trying.

  He pulled the sword out of the dying soldier’s throat and walked to the middle of the street to meet them. The Judeans had every advantage. Numbers. Armor. But Balthazar didn’t care. He would stand his ground. He would take them all on.

  “Give me the sword,” said Melchyor.

  Balthazar didn’t flinch. His kept his eyes fixed on the approaching men.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Give…me…the…sword.”

  There was something about Melchyor’s voice. A different quality. Those words hadn’t come from the quiet simpleton he’d met in the dungeon, or the harmless cherub who cooed and made stupid faces at the infant when they’d left the stable.

  Balthazar looked to Gaspar. Is he serious? Gaspar nodded.

  “Give him the sword,” he said.

  Balthazar didn’t exactly know why he handed their only sword to the shortest, fattest member of their group. But he did. Somehow, it just felt like the right thing to do. Melchyor gripped it in his fingers. Swung it from side to side, getting a sense of its weight. He ran his fingers along its blade, getting a sense of its power. Speaking to it. It wasn’t much of a sword, but it would do.

  After all, there were only five of them.

  When the soldiers were almost upon them, Melchyor held the sword out in front of his body and charged. The Judeans were taken aback—even amused by the sight of the little Greek coming at them all alone. The soldier who was farthest out in front of the pack planted his feet and readied his blade, turning his body to the side in a classic fencing stance. He was ready for anything. Especially the mad charge of a little man.

  A second later, his left leg was gone, and he was crying out from the ground.

  The little Greek had rolled forward at the last second and swung his blade across the soldier’s firmly planted lead leg. He’d never even gotten a chance to fight back. And as the soldier lay there on his side, feeling for a leg that was no longer there, his four comrades weren’t getting their chances, either.

  One by one, Melchyor spun and struck his way through the soldiers—cutting them down as if they were following his instructions: striking him when he wanted them to strike, leaving themselves defenseless at exactly the moment he was ready to attack.

  The second soldier twisted his torso, winding up for a ferocious swing. But with his side momentarily exposed, Melchyor shoved the blade through the space between his front and back armor plates, upward through his intestines.

  His sword was still in the second soldier’s gut when the third came at him, swinging for his head. Using his short stature to his advantage, Melchyor ducked beneath the blade, yanked his sword free, and struck back at the off-balance opponent, cutting the soldier’s throat with such force that only his spine stopped the blade from going all the way through.

  The forth and fifth soldiers attacked together, bringing their swords down on Melchyor’s head in unison. Melchyor used his own sword to shield himself, then did something incredibly stupid. Something that ran counter to everything anyone had ever been taught about sword fighting:

  He dropped to his knees, as if in prayer.

  The soldiers kept striking. But their blows were different. Weaker, clumsier. And now Balthazar saw the brilliance of what Melchyor had done. The Judeans wore large steel breastplates to protect their organs. Plates that ran from their necks to their belts. And while these were great for protecting their innards during an upright assault, they made it difficult for them to bend forward and robbed any strike below the waist of its power. All Melchyor had to do was keep blocking their awkward blows and wait for one of them to make a mistake.

  The fourth soldier made just such a mistake, leaning too far forward and falling on his face to Melchyor’s left. A second later, he paid for that mistake with his life, as Melchyor drove the sword into the back of his neck, severing his brain stem.

  Now it was just one-on-one. The last soldier wasn’t quite as hopeless a swordsman as his companions, but he wasn’t particularly good, either. After becoming the only man to make contact with Melchyor’s body—landing a graze across his shoulder—he went for the kill, thrusting forward. But his sword was too far out in front of his body, his feet too far apart. Melchyor knocked the soldier’s weapon out of his hands and thrust his own forward. The fifth soldier held his hands up in an attempt to block it, but Melchyor’s sword simply went through his left hand, pinning it to the soldier’s face an instant before the tip of the blade lodged in his brain. Melchyor held it there until he felt the soldier’s full weight hanging dead in the air, then pulled it out, letting his useless body fall to the ground.

  Now it was Balthazar who’d been rendered mute.

  The little Greek was the best swordsman he’d ever seen. Quicker, more powerful than any man had a right to be. There couldn’t be a doubt about it. Criminals were a bragging breed, but this had been no boast. This was fact.

  “I told you,” said Gaspar. “Best in
the empire.”

  A second ago, there’d been five soldiers bearing down on them. Now there were five men lying in the street—two of them dying, the other three dead. There were so many questions. So many tricks to learn. But they’d have to wait. The screams of women and children were still coming from every corner of the village.

  Balthazar and Gaspar each grabbed a sword from one of the dead soldiers, then mounted their camels and rode as fast as they could.

  Joseph’s prayers weren’t answered. There were soldiers outside. Dismounting. Any second, they’d cross the threshold.

  Had the shepherd been forced to give them up? Had the criminals sold them out for a reward? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. Nothing but the plan. Joseph was a simple shepherd, cleaning up his stable. No, everything would be fine. They’d question him; they’d leave. What use was there in looking around unless you enjoyed the smell of goats and their filth? All he had to do was stay calm. Not come off as nervous or jittery. All the baby had to do was stay quiet.

  There were three of them. Two younger, one older, the latter with a more intricate helmet and breastplate. An officer of some kind, if Joseph had to guess. They entered and took in what little there was to take.

  “Who are you?” asked the officer.

  “A simple shepherd, sir. This is my stable. These are my goats.”

  The officer examined Joseph’s face for a moment, then looked around again. It wasn’t much of a stable. Hardly worth his time. There were a thousand places to hide in Bethlehem. Almost any of them would’ve been more appealing than this one. What would a baby be doing in a stable, anyway?

  Satisfied that only the lowliest forms of life would stoop to sleeping in such a place, the officer motioned to the other soldiers to follow him out.

  Joseph felt a wave of relief wash over him. He’d done well. He hadn’t come across as nervous or jittery. The baby hadn’t—

  “What was that?”

  The officer spun around. He’d nearly been out the door when a squeal had filled the little stable. Not the bleating of a goat. Something different.