'That's your choice, my brother,' Elazar Ben Ya'ir replied, looking down at the young man who had spoken. 'But you'll still face slavery or crucifixion.'
'So what can we do, if we can't fight and we can't surrender? What other choices do we have?' 'There is one way,' Ben Ya'ir said, 'just one way, that we can achieve a victory here that will resound for all time.'
'We can defeat the Romans?'
'We can beat them, yes, but not in the way you mean.'
'Then how?'
Elazar Ben Ya'ir paused for a few moments, looking round at the people with whom he'd shared his life and the fortress for the last seven years. Then he told them.
As night fell, the sound of construction work outside the ramparts died away. Inside the citadel, teams of men made preparations for what would be the final act in the drama of Masada.
They stacked wood and containers of flammable oil in all the storerooms at the northern end of the fortress, except one group of rooms that Elazar Ben Ya'ir specifically told them to leave untouched. Then, as the last rays of the sun vanished from the peaks of the surrounding mountains, they built a large fire in the centre of the main square of the fortress and lit it. Finally, they set fire to the wood piles in the storerooms.
Their preparations complete, Elazar Ben Ya'ir summoned four men and gave them explicit instructions.
The creation of the ramp had focused the attention of the Romans on the western side of the citadel; that was where the majority of the legionaries had gathered, ready for the final assault. There were guards posted around the rest of the fortress, on the desert floor far below the rocky outcrop, but far fewer than in previous days and weeks.
At the eastern edge of Masada, the cliffs fell some thirteen hundred feet. It was not a sheer drop, but such a difficult and dangerous descent that the Romans clearly didn't think any of the Sicarii would be foolhardy enough to attempt it, and so the number of sentries they'd posted there was small. And until that night, they'd been right.
Ben Ya'ir led the men to the foot of the massive wall that guarded the edge of the Masada plateau. He handed over two cylindrical objects, each well wrapped in linen cloth and securely bound with cord, and two heavy stone tablets, again wrapped and padded with linen. Then he embraced each of the men for a few moments before turning and walking away. Like ghosts in the night, the four men climbed the wall and vanished silently into the tumble of boulders that marked the start of their perilous descent.
The assembled Sicarii, 936 men, women and children, knelt in prayer for what they knew would be the last time, then formed a line at a table set against one wall of the fortress to draw lots. When the last person had taken his straw, ten of them moved forward from the multitude, returning to the table where Elazar Ben Ya'ir stood waiting. He ordered that the names of the ten men be recorded, along with the name of their leader, and a scribe faithfully wrote them down on eleven shards of pottery, one name on each.
Then Ben Ya'ir led the way to the northern palace, the building that had been erected by Herod over a hundred years earlier as his personal fortress when he was appointed King of Judea by his Roman masters. There, he directed that the fragments of pottery be carefully buried, to act as a kind of record of the end of the siege.
Finally he walked back to the centre of the fortress, and issued a single command, a shout that ran out across the citadel.
Around him, all the fighting men, except the ten chosen by lot, unbuckled their weapons, their swords and daggers, and dropped them on the ground. The clattering sound made by hundreds of weapons tumbling onto the dusty soil echoed thunderously off the surrounding walls.
He issued a second order, and the ten men prepared themselves, each standing directly in front of one of their unarmed companions. Ben Ya'ir watched as one of the first victims moved forward to embrace the man chosen to be his executioner.
'Strike quickly and sure, my brother,' the man said, as he moved back.
Two of his companions gripped the unarmed man's arms and held him steady. The armed man unsheathed his sword, leant forward, gently pulled aside the victim's tunic to expose