WILDERNESS OF ZIN—497 BC
The poor traders never saw it coming.
Granted, they were heavily armed with the latest Egyptian bows and leather shields. And they were certainly on guard, for the region they were crossing was a notorious haven for marauders. They were even being escorted by a contingent of local guides, who in addition to steering them through the impossible maze of gullies and ravines known as the Wilderness of Zin, pledged for their fee to offer protection from attack.
The guides’ leader halted the camel caravan as the path ahead traced a fork-shaped split. His dark eyes darted above the folds of his scarf as though he was probing the craggy rock face for their proper route. But then a pair of vultures noisily took flight from a perch just ahead, and he abruptly lifted his arm.
Suddenly all six of his men gave a shrill shout and violently kicked their camels into a trot. Before the traders could respond and follow, the guides had disappeared around the first rightward bend. The travelers had no time to dwell on the abandonment, for as soon as their betrayers were gone from sight, a rain of flaming arrows began to pour down upon them.
Although one of them fell shrieking from his saddle with an arrow piercing his neck, the rest were well shielded. But the arrows’ true purpose soon revealed itself. One of them landed to the side of the one hapless trader’s body, and with a soft thump its flame shot forth in a thin sheet of fire a cubit or so above the ground.
The vapors, thought Majiir Sunwadi, the group’s leader. He had smelled vague odors and seen a faint reflection of sunlight wafting above the path, sure signs of a nearly invisible cloud of fumes, another of Zin’s notorious features. He had heard of these strange mists igniting the night fires of the careless, but he had never heard of their strange properties being used in attack.
Sunwadi cursed loudly as his camel groaned in terror and reared backward in an attempt to escape the flaming veil. He fell, reached forward and pulled his sword from its sheath. He hit the ground and his ankles roared in pain, first from the impact of the high fall, then from the singe of the flame upon his skin. But the fire only lasted an instant, its fuel just as quickly consumed.
He rolled over and came up on his knees, holding the sword with two hands beside his face. The trained stance.
He needn’t have bothered. He looked up into a wall of lances. His band was surrounded by a veritable rampart of hard leather, razor-sharp blades and eyes even harder and colder than the weapons themselves.
Amalekites, he told himself with a flood of fear and resignation. The remnant spawn of King Agag’s once mighty people.
He dropped his sword. He motioned for his men to do the same, and the clatter of falling swords echoed across the rocks. One thing he knew: the first rule of survival in these situations was complete and abject surrender. The Amalekites were superb warriors, so fluent in killing that Sunwadi had often inwardly confessed a perverse admiration for their skill. They were swift and expert in their craft, and no one in the Fertile Crescent dared deny it.
The line of pirates shifted forward, and Sunwadi found himself standing, back amidst his dismounted men and their animals.
They were marched in a tied-up huddle for several hours. Eventually the ravines played out and they climbed atop Zin’s treacherous terrain, tracing a narrow summit with the desert splayed out for miles beneath them. Sunwadi had just allowed himself his first furtive glance at the land’s beauty below, when they abruptly turned down into a ravine sheltered by a surprising grove of palm and olive trees. Its soothing shade canopy soon blocked out the oppression of the sun, and he could sense his men’s mood lifting. Even their captors began a lively jabber in their strange language, and their gestures grew more animated.
He briefly allowed himself to think of his wife and son, back in Palmyra. Now, walking into the cluster of tents that marked the raiders’ hideout, he wondered if he would ever pick up the boy again. The Amalekites were known for being maddeningly fickle captors. They might torture and kill you or just as easily treat you as an honored guest and merely ask for tribute upon your return.
I’ll be glad to offer tribute on my next time through, thought Sunwadi. Especially since there won’t be a return trip. This disaster had sealed his resolve to stay off the road. His dead companion was the young nephew of a close friend back home. He’d have a hard time explaining that the hard-headed young man had refused to don the proper armor, complaining of the heat, and that his stubbornness had cost him his life.
A short, fat man with a glistening black beard sauntered forth from the main tent, energetically probing his teeth with the tip of a thick tongue.
“Who is the leader of this band?” he shouted in accented Sumerian, their native dialect.
“I am,” Sunwadi replied in a voice made gravelly by the dust.
The man said nothing but motioned inside with a jerk of his head and led the way into the tent. Sunwadi followed him onto a shadowed carpet of rugs and matched his cross-legged pose. As his eyes adjusted he spied a staggering array of gold and silver adornments, as though the tent were some sultan’s gilded palace. Chains hung from the tent’s seams and support ropes. A small ebony pony stood behind him, inlaid with lapis and jade and filaments of gold. In the far background shone the sulking eyes of a beautiful woman dressed in the provocative clothes of a concubine. He looked away, not daring to indulge his eyes. There was no surer way to be killed than to be caught ogling the head man’s woman. Of that he was certain. He turned at the sound of the man’s voice.
“My name is Haman. Haman the Agagite. Have you heard of me?”
He nodded. “Your legend stretches across the land, sire.”
“And what is your name?”
“Majiir Sunwadi, sir.”
“And where are you from?” asked the fat man.
“Palmyra,” Sunwadi answered.
“What are you carrying?”
“The usual. Spices, medicinal herbs, silk swaths, jewelry, foreign trinkets.”
“Hmmm. Why have I never seen you before? You avoiding me?”
“Oh no, I am not. In the past I have hired guides who must have regrettably avoided your acquaintance. For whatever selfish reason, I do not know.”
The man narrowed his eyelids and grinned in response. He obviously liked Sunwadi’s answers. Then, just as quickly, his countenance changed: his eyes grew into bright and beady sapphires, and his teeth clenched reflexively.
“Tell me, do you conduct business with the Hebrews? You passed through their country. I won’t stand for that.”
“Oh no. As you said, their land is a passage through which I must cross. But my men and I do nothing more than buy the occasional bit of provision or the right to water our animals. No, we’re headed to Egypt, where the premium prices are.”
“We’ll see.” The man leaned over, hate and some other unidentifiable emotion undulating in waves across his features. “My men are taking a sample of your wares. If I see anything Jewish-made, I’ll kill you where you sit.”
The man shouted in another tongue to someone outside. A flap opened and one of the bandits brought in an armful of Sunwadi’s merchandise. He leaned forward and let the baubles fall onto the carpet with a long tinkling sound. Haman began to poke through the pile with a coquettishly wandering index finger, as though only mildly interested in the haul.
“Nice quality,” he said, although his gaze was only half fixed on the items. “Hah. What is this?”
He had held up a piece of rosewood inscribed with a curious symbol, a square cross with its ends twisted at right angles to each other.
“What do you call this insignia?”
“It has many names, sir, for it is revered by many nations, including Greece, Troy, Egypt. It’s said to have originated in India. The Greeks call it the gammadion. It is the most ancient and powerful emblem known to mankind.”
“Really. Powerful, you say.” The bandit’s eyes seemed to glitter the more he stared at the sign. “You know, my friend, I have been looking for a suitable icon to adopt as the insignia of our . . . tribe here. This one—well, it intrigues me.”
“It is yours,” Sunwadi said abjectly.
“Of course it is. Hey, Oman, what do you think? The Riders of the Twisted Cross!”
“I like it,” said deep-voiced Oman, a massively shielded warrior standing near the tent entrance. Haman stood and turned to him.
“Kill the peddler,” he said, without even a look back at Sunwadi. “I don’t want anyone else but us to know where we obtained this.”
A hand pulled Sunwadi painfully from his seated position by the knot of rope on his wrists. He was yanked to his feet and shoved outside.
As the blade whistled downward, Sunwadi thought of his wife and son and silently bade them good-bye. The last thing he heard in this world was Haman’s laughter filtering out from the tent’s interior. Then the ground rose up and struck him beside the face, and his world went black.