Chapter 1: Not how it was supposed to end
This was not how it was supposed to end.
Crack! He stumbled, his burden heavy on his back tied there by the soldiers, as the whip hit him squarely across his thighs. A rough laugh from the guard, and then a rotten fig smashed into his chest, thrown by one of the women watching and taunting him from the street side.
Fuck! He was more powerful than these people! This couldn't be happening. He strained his hands, but they were bound too tightly.
Where were his followers? Where was his mother?
The line of prisoners marched onward, toward the killing hills.
He had some time. He would figure something out.
~o~
The Prefect had rubbed his eyes. He looked so tired, not that the crowds noticed. They were screaming for blood. If they didn't get the magician's blood, they would start calling for his own.
Why was this damnable magician causing so much trouble?
He was not a novice to the magician's claims. His own mother, back in the far northern highlands, was a magician, too, although weak.
Oh, she'd hidden it from his noble father on their rare meetings, when he brought money for his bastard's schooling, when he'd brought weapons for his training, even when he'd come to send the child away to Rome. Pontius had inherited nothing of her skills, but he'd seen her perform wonders when he was a child. He could have used those skills, but instead he was merely good with a spear, good on a horse, good with words.
He'd done well, for a half-Pictish bastard in Rome, but now this magician could ruin it all.
"Why do you have to be so difficult?" he had asked the man.
The man had merely smiled. "It's destiny. I should rule these people. I give them what they want, what they need, what they crave. They love me and so I love them. They follow me and so I lead them. What has your king ever given them?"
What, indeed? Tiberius was a good ruler, as rulers go, but he couldn't match this man's seeming miracles. Magic, witchcraft, tricks, godhead. They couldn't tell the difference.
"Your own people hate you," Pontius had countered.
"I frighten them because they see my power and they don't want to believe," the magician said serenely.
"You should never have shown so much. Why couldn't you just live a quiet life? You're going to die. You know that."
The man had merely smiled again, and turned his eyes away, looking into the distance. So arrogant. So powerful.
Pontius had just shaken his head, finally. "I can protect you no longer. I wash my hands of it. You made this happen. May my own mother forgive me for killing one of her kind."
If this revelation had startled the man, he showed no sign of it.
~o~
At the killing hill, he and the rest of the prisoners had been strapped up to uprights, a little taller than a man, planted in the ground. So many men had died here; he could feel it all around him. The others were insensitive to it, of course, but here were a few ghosts, men like him who had died on the hill. They hovered around, watching him.
"No use fighting it," one said. "They won't suffer us to live."
He just glared at them. Ghosts were useless.
When all the prisoners had been strapped up on their uprights, the main body of guards had moved away again, leaving a few to keep the crowd in check. Sometimes, a family member would attempt a rescue. But mainly the crowds were there to taunt and shout. The people swelled closer now, but they were not showing their usual level of bloodthirstiness, especially toward the murderers who usually got the worst of it. Word had spread that there was a magician on the hill, but they weren't sure who it was yet.
It was only time before someone recognized him through his bloody and swollen face, or before one of the guards pointed him out.
Where the fuck was his mother?
Where the fuck was his wife?
Why weren't they rescuing him, as they'd planned?
~o~
It had been hours, and the sun stood overhead. The other prisoners were weak, dying now. He was weak, too, and acting weaker to hide himself. Magicians were stronger than normal people.
The guards had kept quiet about him, so he guessed Pilate had ordered them to keep it to themselves. Maybe these didn't even know. But now the crowd was figuring it out, realizing that alone among the prisoners, he was still more aware than the others. Maybe he had moaned too loudly; aware though he was, he was not as coherent as he would have liked to be.
The crowd moved in, and a woman lobbed another rotten fig. He tried to ignore it, and slumped his head, but that pulled on the ropes around his wrists and it hurt his shoulders. He winced.
Another rotten thing hit him, this time an egg. The crowd surged forward, and then the shouting started in earnest, although he tried to block it out. They'd found him.
Lifting his head, he looked at them, catching an eye here and there, stopping those who looked at him in their tracks. He was getting angrier now, his weakness ebbing as fury filled him. "Leave me alone, you savages," he snarled.
Another egg hit him, right on his chest. He screamed, and as he did so, he felt something snap in him.
Normally, he couldn't do magic wordlessly. He had always been about the ritual and the grandiose gestures. Waving a staff around and calling on the God of his fathers to assist him always impressed upon people that his gifts were god-given. He neglected the magic that sometimes came unbidden; he had little use for it. But now his weakened, dying body fought back. Above him, clouds began to swirl, dark and angry as he was.
"The sun! The sun! He's blotting out the sun!" he heard people shout. There were a few more half-hearted thrown vegetables, but the sudden darkness scared them now, and they backed off, afraid of more reprisals.
He blacked out, then, as exhaustion swelled over him.
~o~
Notes:
Pontius Pilate is sometimes thought to be the bastard son of a Roman nobleman, who was sent to Scotland, and a Pictish woman. His name suggests he was a good spearman and/or a good horseman. I've made him a half-blood squib, essentially. By most accounts, Pilate was very reluctant to condemn Jesus, but did so due to pressure from the people.