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.
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.
“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
“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
