In His Authority, Nissim survives the Battle of the Teuteborg Forest, the massacre of three Roman legions he plotted to bring about. Despite his hatred of Rome, he is a friend to the General Gemanicus, who has him guide him through the same forest unaware of his place in the scheme of things.

Roman cavalry now led the legions as we broke out of camp on a smilingly sunny morning. Even the woods, often so somber and menacing, seemed cheerful as there was a play of light from the rising sun shifting through the trees. As there was no rain and no blockades of fallen logs, we moved easily ahead, the engineers cutting back the foliage before the main column. Evidently, the pioneers had run into a few corpses as there were fresh mounds of earth here and there along the side of the trail.

“This does not appear to be a fearsome place,” he said to me as he rode forward.

“It was,” I replied.

“Well, we get through this and we make for the final camp of Varus. From there, we’ll scout around and…” He got no further. In front, a Roman cavalryman was riding alongside the tramping infantry, rushing toward us. He drew up his lathered horse on sight of Germanicus.

“General,” he said, his voice a rasp.

“What is it man, an attack? Do we sound the alert?”

“No sir, but you must come and see. The scouts await you at the head of the column.” The troops had by now halted and we rode through them as they eased off to the roadside to enjoy the break.

After a while, we came to the head of the column where the cavalry leader was waiting. On approach I could see he was upset and nervous. “What has happened?” demanded Germanicus. “Is the enemy near?”

“No general,” the soldier replied. “But please, come and look.” His voice trailed off. “You have to see.”

“Where?”

He pointed ahead. “Just on the other side of that rise.”

The rise was not abrupt. It was long and of shallow slope. In the mud, it probably had been an obstacle, but it wasn’t anything now. I rode along with Germanicus and his staff, following the lead of Roman riders until we slowly came to the top of the rise. We stopped, the cavalry officer gesturing to all of us, saddled, straining, and mute. There before us, were bones.

“By the gods of Hades,” one Roman muttered, breaking the silence. And silent it was. Although the sun still dappled the woods around us with light, there was no breeze at all, and there was not a single animal sound to be heard: no scurrying of rodents in the fallen leaves, no birdsong, no cries of enquiring feral dogs. Nothing. Even our horses, sensing the mood, were still.

The bones were scattered up the road and to each side. Many were loose, mere sticks and ribs and disjointed pieces, while here and there were skeletons, seemingly intact. A half-dozen skulls were lined up alongside the road, empty eyes staring across it to the rise of the hills to our left. Here and there were animal bones, marked by the skulls of oxen and donkeys. The bones were everywhere, mute and fearful in their sheer count and mass.

Germanicus broke the tableau. “Go on alert,” he ordered his senior officers. “Get burial squads on duty, now!” The men rode away. “Let’s go,” said the general.

“Sir,” one of his officers exclaimed, “you are in the priesthood. You cannot go onto the field of the dead.” Germanicus did not move, but still stared ahead.

“I shall not have my legions see this,” he finally said. “I will not leave these dead unburied.” He rode down the road and into the boneyard.

The forest became more profane and savage as we rode deeper into it. Not only were there the scattered bones of the slain littering the ground, but groups of dead huddled together, their skulls missing. These were found nailed with spikes to nearby trees. “Sacrifices,” said a cavalryman. There were more skulls placed in the branches, grinning down on us. There were skeletons fallen to the base of spike-tip saplings where the men had been impaled, living or dead. The flesh was gone after these six years, but there was a bone-smell, a disquieting heaviness of the senses beyond muted sound and cheerless light. I felt I could taste the foulness of the air and touch the hands of evil in this place.

And I had helped to bring it to this. My lust for vengeance had resulted in a sullen forest full of dead men, destroyed souls, and the tatters of my reckless desire to have my will over those who wronged me. Perhaps I should have gloated, but the wreckage of so many lives, the sheer horror of knowing what had befallen these men, none of whom had ever personally harmed me, cast a deep shadow into my soul.

Germanicus was on foot now, walking back and forth in the woods, looking at each grisly site. Officers with him looked nervously about as if expecting a ghost army to rise against them. O, Ezekiel was this something you saw in your horrifying valley of destruction? But these dead would never be reclothed in flesh and animated by the breath of divine power.

Germanicus was walking over to me. The strong features of his face were set. “So this is why there were no bodies at the camp.”

“Yes, I think so. They took the dead and scattered them here.”

A legatus rode up. “General, we cannot spend the time to bury all…all the dead,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, alright. We move out in one hour.”

The pioneers and burial parties fanned out ahead, to clear the battlefield of the unhonored dead. “I didn’t want the men to see this,” Germanicus said to me. “But perhaps they should.” He watched

It took longer than expected to pass through the Forest of the Teutoburg. There was just that much to be done clearing away the dead, even with over a thousand men doing the cleaning up. But the camp had to be established and there was no possibility of a fortified place within the woods, so military necessity clashed with Germanicus’ desire to honor the dead of legiones XVII, XIIX, and XIX. Soon the woods began to thin. We came to the edge of the forest, somewhat above the plain where the Felsenfeld camp was located and looked down. We stopped cold, the emerging legionaries shifting and spreading out as their front ranks, too, slowed down or even halted. A few centurions tried to move them along with sharp blows from their vine-sticks until they saw what the others had seen and stopped, struck with wonder. “The fields honor our dead,” one said.

In the meadow ahead of us, filling it to the far forest was a blanket of deep red flowers moving fretfully in the indifferent breeze.

Nissim soon returns to Judea where he becomes deeply involved with Herod Antipas, Pilate, and John. The entire story rotates around Christ, but He is never on scene. In time, through Christ, Nissim helps change the world.

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