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onto the tail of the horse below. The horse he was riding backward .
    This was immediately followed by a chorus of cackling and harassment on all sides. And though Balthazar couldn’t see the men who were laughing and hurling insults at him, as his eyes were still only half open and flooded with the involuntary tears of his involuntary purge, he had a pretty good idea who they were. Just like he had a pretty good idea where he was, and how he’d gotten here.
    He’d been knocked out with a blow to the head. That much was obvious, thanks to the blurred vision and the skull that throbbed in a way he’d never thought skulls could throb—the pain broadcasting all the way to the tips of his fingers. And while he wasn’t able to check at the moment, on account of his hands being tied, Balthazar also suspected that the hair he felt clinging to his scalp was glued there with dried blood. He was dizzy and nauseated from the force of the blow and from dehydration—judging by his maddening thirst and cracked lips. His neck was too stiff to turn more than a few degrees in either direction.
    No, they’d cracked him on the skull, no doubt about it. And while he’d been off swimming through the infinite, Balthazar’s unconscious body had been lifted onto a soldier’s horse, their waists tied together so he wouldn’t slip off. Why they’d put him on backward was a bit of a mystery. He could only assume it was some kind of insult. Something the Judean cavalry had dreamt up for its prisoners maybe. But whether it was tradition or an insult improvised at the last minute, it was effective. Besides being generally disorienting, it gave the soldiers behind him a clear shot at his face, which they used to mock him with words and gestures.
    Also, having one’s nose directly above a horse’s ass wasn’t pleasant either.
    But obscene gestures and the persistent smell of manure aside, Balthazar was alive. For the moment, anyway. He was almost certain they were headed toward Herod’s Palace in Jerusalem, where he’d be presented like the prize that he was and then killed in any number of terrible ways before the day was out.
    If he could only turn around, Balthazar was sure he’d find Captain Peter riding at the front of the pack, grinning ear to ear, silently rehearsing his grand presentation to his king and counting the reward money in his head. Herod would do a little gloating, and then order Balthazar executed on the spot—that was, assuming the festering wound on his scalp didn’t kill him first.
    As the sun baked the last drops of moisture out of his body, Balthazar replayed the day’s events in his aching head—a forensic accounting of every action and reaction. A study of what had gone wrong. Had it been the attempt to calm the bathing women instead of running away and finding another place to hide? Should he have taken on the ten soldiers behind the bathhouse instead of climbing up the side of the building? Stolen a horse instead of a camel? Should he have given Flavia that knock on the head when he’d had the chance?
    I never should’ve gone to Damascus.
    That had been the real error in judgment, hadn’t it. That was the decision that had ultimately led his nose to a horse’s ass. If he’d never gone to Damascus, he never would’ve heard about Tel Arad and its corrupt governor. But he had gone, chasing down his one weakness. That one elusive piece of treasure…the same piece he’d been chasing for years.
    The pendant…
    Balthazar had followed rumors of its existence all over the empire, and those rumors had always— always —proved to be a waste of time. He should’ve known Damascus would be the same. He should’ve stayed put in Crete, which had been good to him in so many ways. But whenever that old rumor found him, no matter how unsubstantiated or far away it was, Balthazar dropped everything and chased after his little flittering gold purpose in life.
    That was the real tragedy here. Not that Balthazar