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She was eight years old, a bright, lovely slip of a thing, alert and white-faced now, her dark hair plaited in two long braids down her back. In one quick, calculated motion, the captain of mercenaries drew his sword and thrust it into the child’s throat, and with never a sound she fell in the spurting pool of her blood.
    No one moved; only the anguished wail of the mother, the cry of the father—but no one moved. What Apelles wanted was only too apparent. Then a noise came from the people. Then Apelles climbed back into his litter, and the mercenaries, swords and spears ready, gathered around it. Then the slaves picked up the litter, and Apelles left Modin.
    The screaming of Deborah’s mother followed him, pitching itself higher and higher and higher.
    ***
    It was strange to see Lebel in his house of mourning, rocking and lamenting where the body of his daughter was laid out, this little pinch-faced man who for so long had taught me the aleph, the bes, and the gimel, driving in his lessons with a rod—a rod that fell so often on Eleazar that he grinned with embarrassment if a morning went by without it—this little man bereft of all his dignity and power, twisted and mutilated with grief. In another room, his wife wept and the women wept with her, but Lebel sat among his sons, his clothes rent and torn, ashes streaking his face and beard, rocking and whimpering…
    â€œThe Adon will be here for min’cha ,” I said.
    â€œThe Lord has abandoned me and abandoned Israel.”
    â€œWe will hold services then.”
    â€œWill it bring back my daughter? Will he breathe life into her?”
    â€œWith the sundown, Lebel.” What else could I say?
    â€œMy God has abandoned me…”
    I went to the house of Mattathias, and he sat there at the big table of cedarwood which had been the center of our family’s life for as long as I remembered, where the morning bread was eaten and the hot milk sipped at night, where the Passover was celebrated and the fast of Atonement broken; there he sat, his head in his hands, still mantled in his long striped cloak. Eleazar and Jonathan crouched by the hearth, but Judas paced back and forth, tearing bitter music out of himself.
    â€œHere is Simon,” the Adon said.
    â€œAnd Simon knows!” Judas cried, whirling and facing me, stretching out his hands toward me. “Is there blood on my hands, or are they clean?”
    I sat down, poured milk from the pitcher, and broke bread.
    â€œBut you held me!” Judas cried, standing over me. “When that dog struck my father, you held me! And when the girl—”
    â€œWould it be any better if you were dead?”
    â€œIt’s better to die fighting!”
    â€œYes,” I agreed, eating out of ravenous hunger. “There were eighty of them, armed and in armor, and there are less than eighty men in Modin, and no spears and no swords—and no armor except what we took from the mercenaries. So it would have been short and sweet and the blood would have been enough to cover the village. We have knives and our bows and arrows—” I chewed and gulped milk, and the bitterness poured out. “And the bows and arrows are buried, because we, who were known not so long ago as the People of the Bow, pay with our lives if a bow is found among us.”
    â€œSo we live on, this way,” Judas said.
    â€œI don’t know. I’m Simon ben Mattathias, a peasant, a farmer; not a seer, not a prophet, not a Rabbi—I don’t know.”
    His arms spread, his hands flat on the table, Judas stared at me. “Are you afraid?”
    â€œI’ve been afraid—I was afraid today. I’ll be afraid again.”
    â€œAnd someday,” Judas said, slowly—and I began to realize that this nineteen-year-old brother of mine was something different from other men—very slowly, “I’ll ask those who aren’t afraid to follow me. And where will