HIM by Geoff Ryman

Author:Geoff Ryman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781915202758
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2023-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Miltiades barMiltiades went with them.

He said because the women needed protection. He carried a long staff that was also a cudgel and he organized the trip like a military campaign. They would be carried in biers; they would take food and wine with them, so they would need protection. He hired armed guards to defend them against thieves and to scout the terrain.

The morning of their departure, Maryam watched him. Chest out, he scowled, looked serious, and nodded to his mercenaries. He folded his arms to make them look bigger and stroked his fine black beard. Maryam found herself smiling. He really does fancy himself a soldier.

They could have easily taken the road through Cana to Magdal Nunya, but Tiberias was only two miles further south along the lake. It was a new city, only ten years old, and Herod Antipas’s capital. It had a theatre! Miltiades wanted to see the modernity of it.

Since Miltiades was going, Yudeh joined. Shem stayed behind – he had a new girlfriend – and Tara said the travelling would be uncomfortable and that she’d rather stay. Tara was right – it was uncomfortable.

Maryam would have been so much happier walking. Anything, even the hot sun was better than being jostled, cut off from God’s clean air by curtains, sweating and cramping on couches, and smelling everybody’s sweat including your own, while knowing the bearers could overhear any conversation.

The caravan took a full ten hours of jerks and thumps, with stops for the men to rest and everyone to drink water and ease themselves. It was sunset by the time the biers were lowered in front of the two stone towers of the main gate of Tiberias.

Maryam groaned as she swung her legs out of the bier. One leg had gone to sleep and was weak and numb. One of the porters, thick with sweat, steadied her and helped her stand.

Yudeh flipped himself out of the bier and ran towards the gate. The soldiers looked like piles of melons wearing armour. They glared at Yudeh with flat dead eyes. He was waving his arms and shouting, “Are there games? Will there be games today?” From the way the soldiers growled, the answer was probably no. The bas-reliefs over the gate looked crude and lumpy.

Maryam thought the town looked tiny, not grand at all, raw, new, and stark. Tiberias was jammed against a hillside so that less than half of it needed to be surrounded by defences. Along that hill ran a long wall of cut stone – Antipas’s palace. It was low and big but not a wonder.

They found their inn, stabled the bearers in a kind of barracks next to it, and ducked into their tiny rooms that smelled of sweat and damp stone. They splashed water on their faces and rubbed off the dust of the road.

The inn’s beds doubled as dining couches, and they broke out their own bread and pickles. The innkeeper kept running in to ask if they wanted any more food.

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