The Last Disciple by Sigmund Brouwer Read Free Book Online Page B

letters?”
    “There are precious few copies. And they are badly needed to comfort the believers in Rome. It is faith in the resurrected Christ that gives us hope through all tribulations.”
    She gestured at the prison cell. Helpless. Hopeless. “Even through this?”
    He was emphatic and looked her directly in the eye. “We willingly face brandished steel, the lion’s gore, the tunica molesta because we follow the Christ and we are utterly convinced that we, like our Master, will one day rise from the grave in resurrected, glorified bodies.”
    Leah bowed her head. Rubbed her face. What was it about her brother’s faith that made him so resolute yet so joyful?
    She lifted her eyes to his again. “The letters?”
    “Someone will come soon for the letters. He will identify himself by showing you a Greek word, and he will tell you this as a password: ‘The lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world shall destroy the beast.’ Understand? Unless he gives you the password and shows you the Greek word, he cannot be trusted.” He continued to speak, more to himself than to her. “We must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”
    The floor of the cell was dirt. Nathan knelt and used his forefinger to scratch a three-letter Greek word that Leah could dimly see. “Here is the word,” he said. “Remember the symbols, because it is Greek and I know you only read Hebrew.”

    Leah was about to ask what it meant when a rough hand grabbed her shoulder, and a sudden tug spun her around. She found herself facing a man of almost unnatural thinness, a man dressed in ragged clothing that smelled so strongly like cat urine that even in this dank passageway filled with so many terrible smells, the power of the stench overwhelmed Leah.
    “Leave her alone,” Nathan cried from behind the bars, trying to reach for the man.
    “You must talk to me,” the man hissed, pulling her back from Nathan’s grasp.
    “No,” Leah said. “I’m here with—”
    “Listen to me,” the man ordered. He pointed at the prisoners inside the cell. “And I will give them hope.”

    The tavern’s beer was almost rancid and dotted with flecks of gristle that Vitas could not and did not want to identify. Vitas had surreptitiously dumped each of several mugs beneath the table, confident that no one would notice the extra liquid on the filthy floor.
    It wasn’t a delicate stomach that compelled Vitas to do so. He had lived through months and months of field conditions, where a soldier learned not to inspect any food or drink too closely. He was afraid of alcohol, for he’d learned it no longer brought him pleasure. And he’d learned that too much alcohol no longer brought him temporary pleasure. Instead, losing his inhibitions unshackled pain he worked so hard to keep secure in a prison deep within his stoic facade.
    Ever since the second and final revolt of the Iceni a few years earlier when the Roman soldiers had massed on a hillside under the leadership of Suetonius . . . Vitas did not allow his thoughts to stray much further. Because with those thoughts would come the searing images that—even after four years back in Rome from Britannia—sometimes brought him bolt upright in the middle of the night.
    Images would bring questions, magnified now by the challenges that a teenage boy named Nathan had thrown at Vitas during what was supposed to be a routine arrest.
    Vitas did not want the images or the questions.
    Much better to think of duty. Duty to the empire, the only thing in this world that had permanence, a cause much more noble than the feeble graspings of any individual. Better, especially here in Smyrna, to think of duty to his father, of the deathbed promise Vitas had so recently made, unsure even if his father had been able to hear it in the final moments of life.
    So Vitas had watched Titus drink with enthusiasm and watched Maglorius watch Titus drink.
    Maglorius was one of Rome’s most famous gladiators. Vitas had