Immortal (14 page)

They rested a few hours, then Krampus nudged Agios awake and muttered, “They leave.” Joseph and Mary had risen before the sun and continued to make their way southward. The sun rose and shone hotter and hotter until again they were forced to pause and snatch a few hours of rest.

Their route eventually led them toward Gaza, where they would find the Sea Road that would lead them down and into Egypt. Ahead lay the long stretch of Sinai, the southwestward-curving eastern shore of the Mediterranean. The weather grew so dangerously hot that by the middle of each morning they always rested in shade, emerging only when evening brought cooling breezes. Agios and Krampus took care to keep them within sight—but to remain inconspicuous themselves.

They traveled faster in the early hours after sunset, stopping when full darkness fell, when they camped or stayed with hospitable, humble folks—Melchior's network of helping families, Agios supposed. They resumed the journey in the hours just before dawn until the sun climbed high enough to become an agony.

Agios thought they were almost away from Judea and from Herod's grasp, until one evening as he saddled his own mule, two men came riding horses into the village where they had passed the night. It was the hour of the evening meal, and few people were out—but even they retreated indoors at the sight of the two armed men.

Joseph and Mary had already started on their way, but the two riders had their eyes on the couple. They paused near Agios, and one of them spoke to him in Latin, the language of the Romans: “Is that a Jewish child?” He pointed at the couple ahead, Joseph riding slowly to keep pace with the little donkey, far too slowly for two soldiers on horseback to worry about whether they might get away.

Agios, ready to mount his own mule, acted stupid: “What child?”

The guard pointed. “That couple has a child! Male, is it?”

“Oh, them,” Agios said. “A girl child. They're Egyptian, those two. Nice young couple. They had to make a pilgrimage; one of their relatives died near here and they—”

Herod's soldier insisted: “We don't need the whole story. Might the child be a boy? We have orders to return all Jewish male babies to Jerusalem.”

Agios still tried to delay them, standing and holding on to the reins of the soldier's horse. “It's a girl,” he insisted. “I don't speak Egyptian, but I know a girl when I see one.”

“Drop the reins!” the commander snapped.

Agios pretended not to understand. “The inn a mile ahead has good red wine, gentlemen, if you're thirsty—”

The older man leaped from his saddle, drew his gladius, the short Roman sword, and tried to shove Agios aside.

Agios seized his arm, grappled with him the way he had once grappled with a dying bear, and with the same desperation. The man seemed surprised by his iron grip—Agios looked older than he was, and no one could guess that a heavy man like him had so much speed in him, so much muscle and so much determination.

“Let go!” the angry soldier spat. “I'll have your head! Absalom, help me deal with this fool!” He tried to bring his sword up, but Agios kept him in too tight a grip, and he had no room, no chance to stab.

The second, younger soldier dismounted and strode forward, drawing his own sword, and danced as Agios spun the other man. The younger soldier's face showed his confusion and distress.

His commander shouted, “Kill him!” as he twisted savagely in Agios's grip. Agios put a foot against the man's left heel, pivoted, and swung, and the younger man's sword chopped into the back of his senior's neck with a sickening sound.

The body went limp, the spine severed, and the man, his eyes wide in anger and shock, did not even cry out. Something invisible left his body, and suddenly Agios held dead weight.

Agios feinted, avoiding another sword blow, and then thrust the body forward, using him as a shield. The second man panicked at the sight of the dead soldier, tried to push the bleeding body away from him, forgetting about the sword in his hand.

And then Krampus stepped from the shadows and seized the man's sword arm, immobilizing him. Agios landed a solid blow in his face, one that cut his forehead and sent him stumbling backward. He tried to rise—

But Krampus hauled him up instead, grasping the straps of his breastplate, and he lifted him as easily as Mary would have picked up her child. The frightened young soldier squeaked, his heels dangling.

Agios said in a language the man could understand, “You've killed your captain. For that they'll cut your guts out! These people and their baby are nothing to you. And look—no villager has come to help you. They don't like you here, you know? I'm taking your weapon—do you understand me? Ships pass this way all the time. If I were you, I'd board one of them heading to Greece or to Rome. Better that than to face the anger of your king Herod! Krampus, put this man down.”

Krampus did, and the soldier looked up into the big man's twisted face, the mouth agape, eyes glaring. The soldier screamed.

“Shush,” Agios said. “When you wake up, think over what I told you.”

He struck one more sudden blow, one that sent the second man into a sleep from which he'd wake with an aching head—and maybe a wiser one. Mary and Joseph were already out of sight. Agios collected both swords, tied them into place on his mule's burden, and mounted one of the soldiers' two horses.

With Krampus leading the other horse and the mule, they hurried after the family they were guarding, but when they came within sight of the sea they stopped. Agios dismounted and slapped both horses on the haunches to send them running, and then waded into knee-deep water and threw both swords spinning as far as he could. They splashed into the Mediterranean and sank.

He had blood on his hands, broken skin on his knuckles. The salt water burned as it washed the traces away. Agios wondered what Caspar might think of this. He had killed one of Herod's men— or at the very least had been present at his death, which would amount to the same thing if he were caught.

He was committed now. He could not go back, not through Judea. Nor could Krampus, who would, in Roman eyes and those of the king of Judea, share his guilt.

They hurried on their way and soon came within sight of a distant Joseph and Mary. When they reached the frontier, they saw none of Herod's men. Only Romans guarded the way. If they'd had any orders from the Jewish king Herod, they didn't seem to think they were serious enough to worry about. They waved the travelers through.

One moment they were on the fringe of Herod's realm, the next they had stepped beyond his reach. Agios gave a sigh of relief.

It was still a long way to Egypt, but now, Agios thought, they had at least a good chance of making it there safe and alive.

Neither Joseph nor Mary knew of the soldiers.
Let it be my burden
, Agios thought.
They have more than enough trouble of their own
.

He and Krampus drew ahead of the family. They entered the land of Egypt on a burning hot day that made the air shimmer so that the buildings and palm trees ahead seemed to writhe and dance. The people's language was strange, but Agios was able to understand and be understood. Balthasar had said that Joseph and Mary were to find a man in Alexandria, the port city founded by and named for Alexander the Great. He would have received letters and money by now, and he would be able to help them.

When Joseph and Mary crossed a wide river, they did not seem to notice Krampus and Agios watching on the far shore. But the two men didn't stop following the couple and their baby until they had found the man Balthasar had told them of. From there the little family traveled south to Memphis, a city filled with great temples and brightly painted tombs dating back into the earliest memories of mankind. Though Agios couldn't take full credit for their escape, he took some solace in knowing that Jesus would have a chance to grow into a boy and then a man.

Caspar had hinted that in helping the family Agios would find solace.

He felt none of it. True, he had seen the infant Jesus to a place of safety, but he felt no relief in the fact.

For what he had done for another child was more than he had done for his own son.

W
ith Mary and Joseph safely in Egypt, Agios found himself at a loose end. It was hard to believe the path his life had taken, and even more incredible to imagine going forward. He had no home, no wife, and no son. And any fledgling hope that had sparked in the light of the star they had followed for so many sleepless nights was already pale and fading.

However, he had Krampus.

The simple man wanted to stay close to Jesus, but Agios wouldn't hear of it. Instead, he found a place away from the city where they could settle for a time to get their feet beneath them while Agios decided where they would go from here. Whether he liked it or not, his days would be filled with the burden of Krampus. Their lives were bound together.

Some distance away from the broad river that Mary and Joseph had crossed lay a wide, shallow valley surrounded by sandstone cliffs. Here and there the rock had been worked, carved by ancient hands: bas-relief gods or kings gazed out toward the Nile. In other places, water trickling for eons had worn caves into the stone. A cluster of these gave home to lepers, outcasts who suffered from a terrible disease that ate through flesh like slow fire.

Hermits occupied other caves, men who contemplated the stars or the gods and who seized time alone to do their thinking. A half-day's walk south from the city of Memphis, near a village of boatmen and farmers, Agios had found one empty cave, not a very impressive one, that served as shelter for him and for Krampus. With money that Caspar had given them, Agios bought some goats. Krampus delighted in them. He learned the simple tasks of leading them out to pasture and later returning them to the cave, where Agios had built a pen for them.

The days blended into one another until a full year passed. Then one day in the village marketplace, Agios overheard an agitated man's voice: “It's true! It's terrible, but it's true. All of them! Scores, maybe hundreds!”

A woman asked, “Herod killed
children
?”

Agios shouldered through the crowd. A cluster, mostly women and a few men, stood around a man dressed in the clothing of Judea, his expression grim. “Yes!” the man, short and scrawny, said. “He was afraid of some prophecy—one of the children was to grow up and overthrow Herod or something. Herod sent his soldiers in and they hacked them to pieces, every single boy born in Bethlehem for two years past!”

Some of the women were sobbing. One of the Egyptian men said, “The Romans won't let him remain king. They can't. That's the act of a madman, a barbarian!”

Sick at heart, Agios turned away.
Scores, maybe hundreds
.

Every victim a child, a boy. Like Philos. Like Jesus.

Agios felt his heart grow stone-heavy. For many days he did not return to the village but stayed in the cave, staring out toward the Nile, though seeing nothing. His hands, as if working on their own, carved at a small piece of sandalwood. He hardly even glanced down. The knife shaved the wood tenderly, as though it were a living thing, as if the knife itself knew what must be taken, what had to remain.

The figure that his blade released from the bit of wood was not much bigger than his thumb, but it grew perfect: a tiny sleeping baby, curled up in a manger. A symbol. Perhaps it represented one of the children who had suffered and died, one of the victims of evil.

He will be King of Kings
.

Agios closed his eyes, though his hands did not cease their work. If only it were possible for a king to offer mankind the way out of such cruelty, such wickedness. The three scholars had believed it would be so. They had faith.

No
, Agios thought.
I can't share their confidence, their belief. I've seen too much of men and know too much of their twisted hearts. What can one small child offer against such hopelessness?

Agios had no appetite and neglected to prepare meals, so each day Krampus cooked, after a clumsy fashion, and brought Agios scorched meats that he ignored. The big man tried to comfort him, even cutting the meat into bite-sized pieces. To placate him, Agios occasionally ate a mouthful or two.

At nights Agios lay sleepless, afraid to give in to the darkness of his dreams. Still, time began to wear away at his fears, as the Nile had carved itself a bed over unimaginable centuries. Gradually he began to recover, and he and Krampus resumed their quiet way of life.

One evening when Krampus returned with the goats, Agios gave him dinner. The big man ate gratefully. Afterward, as they had done over the past months, Agios encouraged Krampus to talk.

That evening Krampus surprised him. “You sad,” he said. “Who you miss? Who die?”

“My wife. My son,” Agios said quietly. Tears came to his eyes.