Someone must have seen what was about to happen because a cry rang out from across the court and a rush of feet approached. I paid it no mind. Priests were a spineless group for the most part, worrisome and punctilious, but the assassin chanced a glance in their direction.

I struck.

To his credit the warrior sidestepped, lightning quick and swept his sword out. He swung, a single exquisite stroke that hissed passed my jaw. But I had wanted him to evade my first blow. I wanted him to think he had an advantage. I pulled my strike short and reversed the motion, turning the thrust into a back-handed slash. I used the micron-thick silicate blade of my spear like a sword. It struck the assassin just above the right knee and without a sound took his leg neatly off. He fell in a shrieking heap, his life gushing out with the measured beat of a frantic heart.

I lowered my spear. It was done.

God’s will.

My knees turned to water.

It was only then that I felt the hot sheeting of blood coursing down the side of my neck. I reached for the source of the flood and found an almost imperceptibly thin cut just above my high collar. The assassin’s micron-blade had struck with surgical precision. My spear slipped from my fingers but I did not hear it fall. The world swam and I found myself kneeling, clutching at my wound and listening to the thick patter of my draining blood. Somehow that sound was louder than the screams of the maimed warrior and the shocked cries of the priests.

Blood pooled on the crystal floor under me slowly obscuring the view of Jerusalem, hundreds of kilometers below. The priests gathered around the dying assassin trying to silence his screams and impede his thrashing. Solomon had vanished. No one seemed to notice me. Perhaps they knew I was already dead.

The last of my strength failed and I fell forward onto the ground, my brow touching the floor as if I were praying. I turned my head away from the blood that began to gather around my face and a surreal sideways view of the Temple Court came into focus. Blood-spattered attendants scurried about, unable to do anything but hold the wounded warrior while a ring of priests looked on with grief and horror. What did they have to grieve over? The warrior went suddenly still and silent in the arms of a frantic attendant. It was the stillness of death. I had seen it hundreds of times. I knew it was coming over me.

Why, God?

He did not answer. Perhaps, He waited to speak until I had passed beyond the veil?

My heart gave a final weak flutter and like a thin tendril of smoke seized by the wind, all I was, all I might have been, slipped silently from the universe.

The End

~SJA

Tags: bible, death, flash fiction, Joab, scifi, space opera

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