Irene sat cross-legged on
her bed and watched the late afternoon sun cuddle the ancient town through the
fluttering cloth Jude hung above the window.
He was asleep in the bed
across the room. Her instructions had
been to stay inside until the meeting with the shopkeeper.
She glanced back and
forth between the window, the door, and her sleeping guardian.
Keeping her eyes firmly
on Jude, she slipped out of bed and gingerly made her way out the door, closing
it ever so carefully.
The narrow dusty streets
outside looked much different at dusk than they did in the morning, the swell
of merchants, shoppers and animals had all gone home for the day, and the few
that wandered the streets looked penniless or shady, or both.
As she turned the corner
she saw two men with daggers leaning up against a wall and conversing softly.
They watched her every
step, and one grinned at her with yellowing teeth.
“Where are you going?”
called the one with yellowing teeth as she passed by. He motioned a bony hand for her to come back.
She quickened her pace,
and skipped a little, thinking of turning that skip into a sprint.
At the other end of the
alley came three more men. They stalked
towards her.
“I heard you were looking
for Yēšûă,” called the man behind her again.
He and the man he was conversing with were now following her up the
alleyway. “A silly woman shouldn't talk
so loudly in the market about such things.”
The five men closed in on
her.
“What do you know about
Yēšûă?” another man with reddened eyes and protruding ears snarled.
This man pulled her arm
with a meaty hand and ripped off her head scarf that covered all but her
piercing eyes. “What a pretty little
woman we have here,” he chuckled.
Irene threw a fist at the
man that clocked him on the side of the nose.
Blood trickled down his big lips.
“Do you need a lesson in
respect?” he growled, wiping the blood with the back of his sleeve.
A dark figure appeared at
the end of the alleyway.
The man with the
yellowing teeth called out to the figure.
“If you know what's best for you, you will keep walking.”
The group of men
sniggered, but the figure did not keep walking.
The figure instead moved towards them.
The man with the bleeding
nose put a dagger to Irene's throat and motioned for the other four men to see
what the figure wanted.
When they reached him
they began taunting him but he did not respond.
Two of the men went to grab him, however he maneuvered out of their
grasping hands. He grappled one man and
put him in an arm bar, while breaking the other assailant's leg with a kick.
He then used his forearm
to knock out the man in his lock, and let him collapse to the mud.
The other two men moved
forward to hit the figure, but before they could touch him, he pushed one of
them back into the side of a building, and round-house kicked the other guy in
the head.
The attacker who was
kicked in the head staggered to the ground.
The other man leaned
against the building put his hands up to try to block an attack from the shadowy
figure, but was collected by a series of hook punches that dropped him beside
the others.
Irene squinted at the
muscular man who had single-handedly reduced the number of bandits to one. The clouds in the night sky covered the moon,
and in the dark alleyway, it was hard to make out any features of the shadowy
figure.
As the figure moved
closer Irene recognised the man. “Jude,”
she gasped.
“Do not move any closer,”
growled the man with the dagger, “or I will slit this lady's throat.”
Irene translated the
sentiments of the armed man to Jude.
The soldier gave the
bandit a half smile. “Doctor Hadar, tell
him that if he doesn't let you go, I will kill him very slowly. If he lets you go, I may let him run away
like a little girl.”
She translated the
message to the man who snorted and moved backwards, keeping the doctor at knife
point.
Jude swaggered forward
and shrugged. “Option two, I guess.”
With lightening quick
pace, Jude leaped forward with a spinning kick and knocked the knife out of the
bandit’s hand (missing Irene by centimetres).
The attacker dropped
Irene and began sprinting down the alleyway.
Jude picked up the man's
knife and threw it at him. It hit him in
the calf and he crashed to a heap.
Jude knelt beside
Irene. “Are you alright, doctor?” he asked.
“I am okay,” she
whimpered. “Thank you. Sorry for leaving. I won't do it again.”
“I don't blame you. I would have left too if I were you. I however should have stayed awake and made
sure you didn’t go wandering. So we’re
both at fault.”
Jude took her shaky hand
and they strolled towards the man who had held her hostage.
The bandit writhed on the
ground holding his leg.
When they got close, the
man pulled out the knife from his leg and waved it at Jude from the
ground. Irene decided to stay a few
paces away.
The soldier kicked the
man's waving arm to the ground, and stamped on it to pin it down. Then, before the man could move his other arm
he stamped on that arm too. Jude knelt
over the bandit.
“Doctor Hadar, can you
ask this man why he attacked you?” the soldier asked. “And tell him that he'd be wise to give me
the right answer.”
Irene translated this to
the man and he began chattering and sobbing.
“He says the Romans pay
him to hunt down revolutionary groups and uncover their hiding places. He said one of his men overheard us talking
at the marketplace. Apparently there are
others looking for our scalps too.” She
let her eyes drift onto Jude's. “Don't
kill him.”
“You don’t get to make
those decisions, Doctor Hadar.”
“Please. He is the result of his upbringing.”
“We all are.”
“Yeah, but…” She paused.
“You can’t just kill people in the past without giving it a second
thought. You kill him, and he might end
up being a descendant of mine, for example, and I will be wiped from history.”
Jude grimaced.
After a few moments pause he said, “Why do I get the feeling I'll regret
listening to you?” With that, he planted
a fist through the man's right temple, and the bandit's eyes rolled back in his
head.Click here for Chapter 7...
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