The following is a sequel to my earlier story Arrows at High Noon, starring the characters Alara of Kush and his companion Ismail.
10 AD
Alara brushed the lichen off a leaning pillar of stone. The inscription he revealed, weathered by centuries of rain and wind, was chiseled in the old Hebrew alphabet which he had never learned to read. Something above the text that he did recognize was the symbol of a six-pointed star surrounded by six dots within a circle. They called it the seal of Solomon, the king of old Israel.
Studying the map of yellowed papyrus he had inherited in his youth, Alara compared the terrain it depicted with the hills of wheat-brown grass and scrub that surrounded him. The match was impeccable despite the passage of nine centuries since the map’s drafting. With a smile, Alara returned to the dirt path where young Ismail awaited with the donkey carrying their supplies.
“We should be almost there,” Alara said. He pointed to an edifice of cliffs poking up from the hills to the northeast. “My bet’s on the treasury lying there.”
“Praise all the gods,” Ismail replied as he treated himself to a drink from his waterskin. “The less we need to walk, the better for my leg.”
Nine years had passed since Alara found the orphan begging on the streets in a town along the northeastern coast of Arabia. In that time, the boy had grown tall and lean, with a leg of wood taking the place of the one he had lost. Of course, as Ismail grew, his wooden leg had to keep pace, and those wooden legs were not cheap in Alara’s experience.
Ismail turned his head around with a hand hanging over the dagger under his belted sash. “What if the Jews catch us stealing from their old king, my sayyid?”
Alara scanned the hills with his eyes as well, noting a cluster of square houses glowing white from the sunlight within a distant valley. “They shouldn’t. It’s been nine hundred years. Even the people of Kemet are known to dig into their own tombs from time to time. As do some of my fellow Kushites.”
He squinted at a tiny brown shadow that dashed within a patch of carob trees between them and the village. It must have been a gazelle. These hills near the Galilean Sea in Judaea teemed with the little antelopes. Still, one could never be too careful out in the countryside anywhere.
The shadow did not appear again. Alara shrugged. “If any of the locals do have a problem with us, we can’t stand out here forever. Let’s head on to that treasury!”
Up and down the dirt path they hiked, with the joints of Ismail’s wooden leg clacking while he limped. More pillars with Solomon’s seal inscribed into them stood strewn along the way. Alara wondered if any of the Jews were still able to read their ancestors’ old writings, given that Aramaic had supplanted old Hebrew as their main tongue in the centuries since. Could they even recognize the seal of Solomon themselves? Alara’s knowledge of it had been an ancient family secret like the map that had led him here.
A patch of bushes rustled along the path. Out pounced a youth around Ismail’s age in a dusty brown tunic whose carpenter’s knife glinted sharp in the evening sunlight. His lips curled into a doglike snarl within a bronze-skinned, black-bearded face.
In Aramaic the young man growled, “Give me everything you have, or else!”
Alara unsheathed his iron sword, the blade of which ran so much longer than the youth’s makeshift weapon that it wasn’t funny. “You don’t want to do this, trust me!”
The Jewish youth brandished his knife. “I have no choice!”
“Why not?” Ismail asked. “Why must you do this, my Jewish friend?”
“That’s none of your concern, you Arab heathen! I won’t ask again. Give me everything or I’ll skin you and that dusky companion of yours alive!”
Alara smirked. It would always amuse him how the Jews, Arabs, and other peoples in the west of Asia loathed one another, given he could barely distinguish their appearance or language. Then again, given how his own Kushites had fought with the Kemetians and other neighbors on their own native continent, perhaps he was in no position to judge.
He jabbed the tip of his sword into the skin of the Jewish youth’s neck, just shy of drawing blood. “I admire your ferocity, if not your wisdom, young man. Consider, though, that we outnumber you two to one.”
Ismail pulled out his dagger. “And just because I lost a leg doesn’t mean I can’t fight back.”
The boy retreated a step with his face a shade paler. The knife shook in his loosening grip. “Listen, my family and I have lost everything we had. Without this, we’ll all die.”
“Lost everything?” Ismail asked. “Sounds like myself when I was little. What, may I ask, happened to your family?”
“Times have been bad for many people in my village over yonder.” The youth directed his gaze to the village in the faraway valley. “We turned to the priests for help, but that only made it worse in the end. If we do not pay back what we owe them, they will have us all put to death.”
Alara felt a warmth melt his heart inside. This young man’s struggle was all too familiar to him, bringing up memories that had tormented him since he had to leave Kush. “Your priests are much like ours, I see. I daresay they are the worst robbers of all.”
“Thank you for your sympathy, but it won’t buy them off,” the Jewish youth replied. “I ask one more time. Give me everything you have, or—”
Ismail’s eyes lit up. “What if I told you where we are headed? You’ve heard of the old king Solomon, haven’t you?”
“Yes, my father and father even claim we descend from him, but I never believed that. What of it, Arab?”
Alara withdrew the sword from the young Jewish man’s neck and pointed it again at the cliffs to the northeast. “We believe he hid his most precious treasure somewhere over there. I imagine even the smallest cut would more than cover your debt.”
The youth lowered his knife with a cock of his eyebrow. “How would you know where it would be? I’ve heard of that secret treasury, but nobody knows where it is.”
“Nobody here in Judaea, maybe, but my family does.” Alara unfolded the old map before the Jewish boy. “Our ancestress the Kentake, or Queen, Katimala had this drawn nine centuries ago. They say she not only met Solomon himself, but became his lover. Even bore him a son.”
The young man’s eyes widened as they ran up and down the map. “My mother has told me the queen of a place called Sheba was our ancestress, but again, I never believed it. But considering nobody knows where Sheba was, other than somewhere in the far south…”
“Could it not be Saba in the south of Arabia?” Ismail asked.
“It matters not in the end,” Alara said. “Solomon, I understand, had many wives and other women. What matters is that, if you put away that knife of yours and come with us to the treasury, you won’t need to rob anyone ever again. Is that an offer you’ll accept?”
The young Jewish man blinked twice in a moment’s pause. He slid his knife back under his tunic’s girdle. “I accept your offer. Please forgive me for attacking you.”
Alara smiled. “As they say, forgiveness is divine. Now, may I have your name? I am Alara, and my Arab companion there is Ismail.”
“Shlama to you both, and call me Yeshua. But we must hurry. The priests’ men come to collect their debt before sundown today. If we are not able to pay them in time…”
Alara patted Yeshua on the shoulder. “Even if we are late, I’m sure we can take care of those brutes.”
Yeshua turned to look at his village again with a gulp. “I sure pray that you are right, Alara of Kush.”