difficult and dangerous descent that the Romans clearly didn't think any of the Sicarii would be foolhardy enough to attempt it, and so the number of sentries they'd posted there was small. And until that night, they'd been right.
Ben Ya'ir led the men to the foot of the massive wall that guarded the edge of the Masada plateau. He handed over two cylindrical objects, each well wrapped in linen cloth and securely bound with cord, and two heavy stone tablets, again wrapped and padded with linen. Then he embraced each of the men for a few moments before turning and walking away. Like ghosts in the night, the four men climbed the wall and vanished silently into the tumble of boulders that marked the start of their perilous descent.
The assembled Sicarii, 936 men, women and children, knelt in prayer for what they knew would be the last time, then formed a line at a table set against one wall of the fortress to draw lots. When the last person had taken his straw, ten of them moved forward from the multitude, returning to the table where Elazar Ben Ya'ir stood waiting. He ordered that the names of the ten men be recorded, along with the name of their leader, and a scribe faithfully wrote them down on eleven shards of pottery, one name on each.
Then Ben Ya'ir led the way to the northern palace, the building that had been erected by Herod over a hundred years earlier as his personal fortress when he was appointed King of Judea by his Roman masters. There, he directed that the fragments of pottery be carefully buried, to act as a kind of record of the end of the siege.
Finally he walked back to the centre of the fortress, and issued a single command, a shout that ran out across the citadel.
Around him, all the fighting men, except the ten chosen by lot, unbuckled their weapons, their swords and daggers, and dropped them on the ground. The clattering sound made by hundreds of weapons tumbling onto the dusty soil echoed thunderously off the surrounding walls.
He issued a second order, and the ten men prepared themselves, each standing directly in front of one of their unarmed companions. Ben Ya'ir watched as one of the first victims moved forward to embrace the man chosen to be his executioner.
'Strike quickly and sure, my brother,' the man said, as he moved back.
Two of his companions gripped the unarmed man's arms and held him steady. The armed man unsheathed his sword, leant forward, gently pulled aside the victim's tunic to expose his chest, then drew back his right arm.
'Go in peace, my friend,' he said, his voice choking slightly, and then with a single strong blow he drove the blade of his sword straight into the other man's heart. The victim grunted with the sudden impact, but no cry of pain escaped his lips.
Gently, with reverence, the two men laid his lifeless body on the ground.
In the small clusters of men around the square, the same sequence of actions was repeated, until ten of the defenders lay dead on the ground.
Elazar Ben Ya'ir issued the order again, and once more the swords hit home, this time one of them felling Ben Ya'ir himself.
About half an hour later, all but two of the Sicarii lay dead on the ground. Solemnly, the last two men drew lots, and again a short, powerful thrust of a sword ended another life. The remaining warrior, tears streaming down his face, walked around the fortress, checking every motionless body to ensure that none of his companions still lived.
He took one last look around the citadel, now deserted by the living. He muttered a final prayer to his god asking for forgiveness for what he was about to do, reversed his sword and placed the point against his chest, then threw himself forwards onto the blade.
The following morning, the battering ram began its work on the wall at the western side of Masada, and quickly broke through. The Romans were immediately confronted with another bulwark, clearly raised by the Sicarii as a desperate last-ditch defence, but smashed their way through that as well in a matter of minutes. Moments later the soldiers began pouring into the fortress.
An hour after the wall was finally breached, Lucius Flavius Silva walked up the approach ramp, past lines of legionaries, and through the gaping hole in the wall. Once inside, he looked around in disbelief.
Bodies lay everywhere, men, women and children, the blood that caked their chests already blackened and solid. Flies swarmed, feeding greedily in the afternoon sun. Carrion birds pecked at the soft tissues of the corpses and rats ran over the bodies.
'All dead?' Silva demanded of a centurion.
'This is how we found them, sir. But there were seven survivors – two women and five children. We found them hiding in a cistern at the southern end of the plateau.'
'What do they say happened here? Did these men kill themselves?'
'Not exactly, sir, because their religion prohibits it. They drew lots and killed each other. The last man' – the centurion pointed at one of the bodies lying face down, the tip of a sword-blade sticking out of the man's back – 'threw himself on his blade, so he was the only one who actually committed suicide.'
'But why?' Silva asked, almost a rhetorical question.
'According to the women, their leader – Elazar Ben Ya'ir – told them that if they took their own lives, at a time and in a manner that they chose for themselves, they would deny us victory.' The centurion pointed to the northern end of the citadel. 'They could have fought on. The storerooms – those that they deliberately didn't set on fire – are full of food, and the cisterns have plenty of fresh water.'
'If
The centurion smiled politely. 'The women and children, General. What are your orders?'
'Have the children taken to the nearest slave market, and give the women to the troops. If they're still alive when the men have finished with them, let them go.'
Just outside Masada, the four Sicarii waited, hidden behind a rocky outcrop a few hundred feet above the desert floor. Once the Roman troops breached the wall and entered the citadel, orders were sent down to the other sentries to leave their posts. But even after the legionaries had moved away, the four men still waited for darkness to fall before they completed their descent.
Three days later they reached Ir-Tzadok B'Succaca, the hilltop community that two millennia later would become famous as Qumran. The four Sicarii remained on the plateau for a day, then resumed their journey.
They followed the west shore of the Dead Sea for about five miles before striking north. They passed through the towns of Cyprus, Taurus and Jericho, before stopping for the night at Phasaelis. On the second day they turned north-west for Shiloh, but the going was much more difficult once they left the town and trudged north along the eastern slopes of Mount Gerizim, and they only made it as far as Mahnayim as dusk fell. The next day they walked as far as Sychar, where they stopped to rest for a further day, because the most arduous part of their journey was about to begin, a ten-mile hike over very difficult terrain to the west of Mount Ebal to the town of Bemesilis.
That trek took them the whole of the following day, and again they rested for twenty-four hours before resuming their journey further north to Ginae. They reached the town almost two weeks after leaving the fortress of Masada and there purchased additional provisions in preparation for the final section of their journey.
They set off the following morning, trekking north-west through the date-palm forests carpeting the fertile lowlands that stretched from the Sea of Galilee down to the shores of the Dead Sea, heading up into the Plain of Esdraelon. The track they were following meandered left and right, skirting obstacles and avoiding the higher ground that lay between them and their destination. It made for very slow going, and was all the more exhausting because of the relentless heat of the sun, their constant companion.
It was mid afternoon before they saw their objective, and almost dusk before they reached the foot of the hill. Rather than attempt to climb the slope and carry out the task they'd been given by Elazar Ben Ya'ir in the dark, they decided to rest for the night.
When the sun rose the following morning, the four men were already on the plateau. Only one of them had been to the place before, and it took them over eight hours to complete their task.
It was late afternoon before they were able to descend the steep path to the plain below and almost midnight before they reached Nain, their journey made slightly easier because now they were no longer carrying either of the two cylindrical objects or the stone tablets.
