Lee and Chaz kicked a few to their feet and hustled them against a wall of the escarpment away from their weapons. The men kept their gazes on the ground, terrified of even looking into the faces of their tormentors.
“These fuckers were badasses when it came to pushing slaves around,” Chaz said, slamming a boot into the back of a leg to bring a weeping man to his knees.
“Down, pussies!” Lee said and motioned for the others to do the same. They dropped as one. The Rangers sniffed at an ammonia stink. These dudes were pissing themselves with fear.
Chaz walked beside Bat Jaffe into the heart of the quarry. The slaves, well over a thousand men, stood all about as though too riveted to react. All that could change in a heartbeat. Chaz had his M4 easy in his fists, but his eyes were wary. It wouldn’t be the first time he had been attacked by someone he came to rescue. People reacted every which way but sane when there was blood being spilled.
Bat raised her arms. She didn’t need to. She already had, for a variety of reasons, everyone’s attention.
“You are free!” she called in the language she hoped at least some of them understood. From the look of them, they were not all Jews. She saw black Africans and a few men with blond topknots. Certainly, there were Greeks and Arabs and who-knew-what-all here too.
“The Romans are gone! Your masters are cowed! We have come to set you free!” She saw some of the men repeat her words to the others, who in turn spoke to others.
“Who are you to free us? By whose authority do you do this?” A rail-thin man with a mane of white hair stepped forward.
Bat was unprepared for this. She didn’t expect to have to answer questions. She turned to Chaz for help, but he was standing transfixed and searching the faces of the men about them.
“They’re your people, honey,” Chaz said.
“What does it matter to you?” she said, turning to the old man. “You are free! Go and be free!”
“You give us a gift that is not yours to give. Only those who enslaved us may free us. We may not simply leave this place. Without their word that we are free, we will be hunted like rabbits,” the old man said, and it was repeated around the men ringing them in.
Bat was losing ground here. This guy was reminding her of her Uncle Joel. And her Uncle Joel loved to argue.
“What’s the holdup?” Lee asked, striding to her side. “We’re on the clock here, baby.”
“They say we don’t have the authority to free them,” she said with a shrug.
Lee plucked the staff of the Roman banner from her hand and held it over his head.
“Who has the authority? I have the fucking authority!” Lee shouted. All stood around blinking at him uncomprehending.
He raised his M4 in the other fist and let rip with a long burst on automatic. The men flinched and wailed, eyes round in terrible wonder.
“I am the baddest son of a bitch in the valley!” he roared. “Now get your asses moving!”
The slaves ran now in a rush for the quarry opening. They eddied around the Rangers, eyes averted in fear.
“You just have to know how to talk to people,” Lee said, turning to Bat.
“Can’t get my head around this.” Chaz watched the quarry slaves hare off down the roadway. Some fell to their knees and bounced right back up to sprint away.
“All those Sundays in church singing and listening to the pastor,” Chaz said mostly to himself. “And the guy that all that singing and preaching was about was standing right here in front of me. I mean, I might have been looking right at the son of God.”
Lee patted his brother Ranger on the back as Chaz let out a sigh.
“Let’s hope it’s a long time before you see him again.”
The two men and the woman moved out at a trot to follow the fleeing mob, leaving behind the slaveholders to piss and moan.
35
The Fury of the Tetrarch
Valerius Gratus had his most plush couch brought into his office. His upright chair had become too uncomfortable over time, so he now reclined as he officiated the duties of a provincial prefect.
That was not the only change in his palace. No longer was he attended by his staff of young slaves. Gratus had lost all interest in pretty boys and sold them to a slaver, who took them away weeping in their new chains. The prefect’s daily needs were now seen to by soldiers of the Twenty-third, giving his residence a martial air that he found comforting. And the prefect was concerned only with comfort these days.
He lay alone in his office except for the chinless wonder serving as his lictor in Titus’s absence. The spotty clerk was pestering him for decisions on an endless list of tiresome demands and entreaties from local Roman officials and Jews alike. Merchants. Cheats. Pimps. Damn them all.
Gratus found it all too tedious. He wished only to lie in the dark and indulge in his own private Elysium. Was he a slave to be burdened? Were the troubles of his subjects his troubles to share?
He lay wrapped in a thick woolen cloak despite the heat. He was always cold now, it seemed. His skin was sallow and clung to his bones and shrinking muscles like damp paper. He ate nothing but honeyed sweets and drank nothing but leaded wine. His bowels troubled him, and he struggled to void them. His teeth were loose in his gums, and his mouth seeped as much blood as spittle.
Like all vices, there was a price to be paid for embracing the charms of the mysterious morphea. More like embracing a diseased whore, Gratus thought bitterly. Yet he drank a portion of the wine each night, even as
