"Another five or six days of marching should bring us into a cultivated district," Norbanus told them. "Its principle town is called Beersheba. It's a small place, but from there on we will be in civilized country."
"Who runs it?" Niger asked.
Norbanus grinned again. "We do."
Eliyahu the watchman climbed to his post atop the town wall, above the main gate, scratching in his beard, grumbling. He was getting old and his knees protested at the climb, though the mud wall stood barely twenty feet higher than the ground surrounding. He stood on the little platform just beside the gate and gazed out over the peaceful fields beyond. Not that he could see much, for there was a heavy ground mist, as there was many mornings. Just beyond the wall, in the midst of a small pasture; there was a little lake fed by an underground spring, and it was from this that the fog arose.
From below came the patient exhalings of asses and the ill-tempered snorts and groans of camels. These were the beasts of caravan traders waiting for the south gate to open. Eliyahu looked about and saw no sign of robbers. "Open the gate," he said to the boys below. They were his youngest son and a few grandsons, for charge of this gate had been in his family since Moses. Not that there was much to watch for, save for bandits in unsettled times, desert raiders and such.
He was about to sit in his chair and rest his bones when he thought he heard a sound from out there in the mist. It was not a clopping of hooves, but rather a great rustling noise, with many clinkings and scraping sounds. Then he heard a rhythmic tramping. What could this portend?
The mist began to disperse in the morning sun and from it stepped a vision from a nightmare: a hundred men, then a thousand, then many more, all marching in step, all dressed in glinting metal, bearing shields, spears sloped over their shoulders, all marching in perfect lockstep, as if the host were a single animal.
"Close the gate!" Eliyahu said, trying to shout but producing a strangled gasp. Then, more forcefully: "Close the gate!"
"What?" called his son, the slow-witted one.
"Close the gate, then run and bring the headmen! An army marches on Beersheba!"
Stunned, he watched as the host before him began to split up, rectangles of them swerving off to right and left, some to secure the lake, others to occupy the fields where the caravans picketed their beasts. Mounted contingents went right and left as well, riding around the walls out of sight. He guessed that these rode to prevent anyone from escaping town by the north gate. Beersheba was to be surrounded.
He hobbled to the old alarm gong by the gate, used to warn of bandit attack and not heard for many years. He seized the stubby bar and began beating vigorously on the brazen plate. At least it was something to do. Beersheba had perhaps three thousand inhabitants of all ages, and how they could defend the town from such an army he had no idea. They kept materializing from the mist like Pharaoh's army emerging from the Red Sea.
The headmen came running, eyes wide, scrambling up the stair to see what was wrong. They were the town elders, mainly merchants, and a couple of priests. "Eliyahu," gasped Simon, the elder of the council, "what is the meaning of this? If you are drunk I'll have your—"
Wordlessly, the watchman pointed south. The others crowded onto the platform and there was a great silence. "Are they Egyptians?" someone said at last.
"No army comes through the desert," Simon said quietly. "They may be from Arabia. From India, even."
After a while a little knot of men rode forward. Their faces were as fierce as any desert bandit's and their bearing was that of kings. One rode right up to the gate and looked up at them with amazing blue eyes. He wore a splendid cloak and had a helmet in the form of a lion's mask. "Does anyone up there speak Greek?" he asked. One of the priests assented and translated.
"Who are you?" Simon asked.
"We are soldiers of Rome."
"What's Rome?" Simon asked the others, quietly. Nobody knew. Then, to the man below: "What do you want?"
"We've been in the desert for a long time and we want to make use of your town, on your terms or ours."
The soldiers kept arriving in blocks of a hundred or more. The mist was almost gone now and they stretched almost out of sight on the land beyond. They were hard-looking men, burned dark, gaunt and ragged, but with their Weapons and gear in perfect order. They maintained an incredible silence as they went about their evolutions, wheeling and maneuvering to the muffled tones of trumpets.
Simon smiled so broadly that his face looked fair to split. He threw his arms wide, "Welcome, my friends!"
Norbanus and his officers took their ease in the town's bathhouse. Apparently it was devoted to some sort of ritual bathing, but as far as they were concerned it was a bathhouse and they hadn't seen such a thing in a long time. They soaked and sluiced and rubbed down with olive oil and scraped it off with strigils.