The Last Temple Read Online Free PDF Page A

had been there for up to three days, even four. Men died slowly on a cross, most often from dehydration.
    Vitas had supervised an occasional crucifixion during his military time, and he knew that fighting the soldiers was not only useless but would result in more injury. Still, it took all his willpower not to jerk away and struggle as four of them pushed Vitas flat on a cross on the ground, his arms spread. He wore nothing but rags wrapped around his midsection. The hole for the base of the cross was a couple feet away. Once the impaling spikes secured him to the cross, the soldiers would heave his weight upward and slide the base of the cross into the hole, leaving his feet only inches off the ground.
    A fifth soldier held a spike with tongs, the point of the spike centered in Vitas’s left palm. The tongs were a safety measure. It was common for a hammer to miss the spike and smash a prisoner’s fingers. No sense putting a soldier’s hand in the same danger.
    A sixth soldier lifted his hammer for the first blow. Vitas took a deep breath. In the hours alone in his cell, clinging to memories of his wife, Vitas had believed he’d prepared himself for the pain.
    The hammer came down, ringing on the spike. Vitas flailed as the iron spike went through the center of his left palm. He bit completely through the strip of thick leather that the soldiers had provided him to clench between his teeth. The leather had not been provided out of mercy but because the soldiers were long weary of the screams that came with each hammer blow.
    Pain shuddered through his entire body. This was infinitely beyond the dread he’d already suffered. Ahead were two or three spikes for each hand, then spikes through his anklebones. How could he endure it? Or the hours of agony ahead in the sun? What insane impulse had led him to defy Dolabella in the market?
    Another spike placed against his palm, held by the tongs.
    Another swift upward motion of the hammer.
    “Stop!” The order came from the centurion.
    Damian, Vitas thought, sagging in relief. His brother had returned in time. Or nearly in time. While the first spike had not gone through any of the bones in his hand, it was going to leave a nasty hole.
    “No more spikes,” the centurion said, standing above Vitas and the soldiers who crouched over him. “No spikes for him or the mute one. Ropes instead.”
    Vitas slumped. Damian had not arrived. The crucifixion would proceed.
    The soldiers bound one of his wrists, then the other, to the horizontal beam of the cross.
    They pounded spikes into the vertical beam, near the base, where the spikes should have gone through his ankles. They bent his legs sideways, so that when his feet were immobile, his thighs would cramp without any chance of respite. They bound his feet in such a way that the weight of his body on the spikes would make the iron bite cruelly into the arches of his feet.
    When Vitas was in place, they lifted him and secured the base. Arms wide, his body weight held by the tight ropes around his wrists and by the one spike already in his hand, he pushed down with his feet to support himself. Within seconds, the spikes tore into his skin. To find relief from it, he sagged against the ropes bound tightly to his wrists, against the spike in the center of his palm, and new pain flared into the skin there. The weight of his body tore against his arm muscles.
    That, however, wasn’t the worst of it. Without his feet to support his weight, he was unable to expand his diaphragm with any effectiveness. Unable to draw even a quarter of a lungful of air, he began to suffocate. The sensation led him to unreasoning panic, and he pushed downward on his cramped legs, driving his torn feet into the spikes. He endured that pain as long as he could, then whimpered as he let his body hang from his arms again until suffocation drove him to push against his feet.
    Flies settled on his face, darting to the moisture of his eyes. He blinked repeatedly,