Free The Last Sacrifice by Sigmund Brouwer Page A

behind him.
    Vitas half turned. He wanted to keep the crew leader in the corner of his vision.
    “I’m the captain,” the voice continued. “Drop the knife. Speak to me now.”
    The captain, a large man too, spoke with an accent that clearly placed him from Sicily. Beneath sparse dark hair, he had a narrow face with the surprising juxtaposition of a flattened nose, obviously broken more than once, obviously healed badly.
    “You will let your men commit murder?” Vitas said. He lowered the knife to his side but did not drop it. “Knowing the Roman court holds a captain responsible for the actions of his crew?”
    The captain smiled, his arms crossed, posing for his crewmen. “Tell me, my friend. Who arranged for you to be on this ship?”
    Vitas did not answer because he could not answer. He did not know who had arranged for his escape from the amphitheater. Or why. The answer was in the scroll, which perhaps lay somewhere in the captain’s own quarters.
    “Who arranged for you to be on this ship?” the captain repeated.
    This was a question Vitas wanted answered far more badly than the captain did. He glanced to his left at the crew member with the stick. The large man had dropped the stick to his side, seemingly no longer a threat.
    “You should know,” Vitas said. He wished he could think more clearly. He felt dizzy, and his thirst made it difficult to concentrate, but it seemed too dangerous to reveal that he could not answer who had placed him on the ship to escape Rome. He continued his attempt at a bluff. “And you’ll have to answer for the actions of your crew.”
    “I’ll have to answer for your safety,” the captain said. “If my crew is happy, you’ll reach Alexandria. That’s far more important than the life of a Christian whose presence aboard my ship puts me at the risk of Nero’s wrath.”
    The captain nodded at the man with the stick. “Hit this Roman. Not hard enough to seriously hurt him. But enough to keep him from stopping you.”
    The movement from Vitas’s left was a blur. The blow across his left thigh, just above his knee, was a crack of agony that sent him sprawling across the deck.
    Vitas rolled twice, losing the knife and tumbling to the side of the ship. He bit back a groan and tried to struggle to his feet. He made it upright, balancing on one leg. The other was numb. The bone felt shattered, but Vitas knew better. He’d broken bones before.
    “No,” Vitas said as the men moved the cross closer to the side of the ship.
    The captain merely shrugged at Vitas and winked.
    Before Vitas could take a step, the captain nodded at the men holding the cross balanced across the railing. They lifted the end up and over.
    An instant later, the cross splashed into the water.
    Vitas clutched the rail and looked downward.
    The cross had landed with John beneath it, and it bobbed in the ship’s wake. It receded from the ship with the man bound, trapped facedown in the water.

    “I am Crito,” a disembodied voice said from the steam. “I am here about the Jew from Patmos.”
    This was barely moments after the little man from the senator with gambling debts had stepped outside.
    “The one named John, son of Zebedee.”
    Damian, who had hunched forward for an Ethiopian slave to scrape his back with a bronze strigil, eased upright again. The Ethiopian immediately stepped away and disappeared. Over the previous months, this slave had learned quickly to read Damian’s body language for signals that indicated he wanted privacy. Jerome, of course, stayed.
    “Why should I care about your name?” Damian put boredom into his voice. “And why should I care about a Jew from Patmos?”
    Jerome stood and loomed over a man who in other circumstances would have appeared large.
    Jerome’s bulk, however, did not appear to deter the visitor. Although it was difficult to make out his features in the steam, his appearance suggested a young street thug. Dark, well-groomed hair. Solid muscles. The