Nonetheless, he maintained the nagging suspicion that, either, there was nothing left for him at home, or that Warick was no so far gone as he had previously assumed.
There was something telling him to go south, then east. There would be more awaiting him there than anywhere else. There was fulfillment waiting for him at whatever place he was meant to be, but, here, with Warick or not, there was nothing for him to see, eat, dream of, or be pleased by. Emptiness was the only guaranteed companion he would share were he to chase his brother or return home.
Why, why must I go to those strange lands? He asked, silently.
“Because I am waiting for you. Do not mistake hard-headedness for courage. Only sadness awaits you where you travel. Come, take up your cross, and follow me. I will bless you greatly and will make you fruitful. You will find your family, starting with a woman, to where I call you. Trust me, believe in me, and I will keep my promises.”
“Did you say something?” Hermun asked, looking at Glaan, who was riding on the horse next to him.
“No.”
Hermun was highly puzzled. He knew there was a voice, a real voice. It was kind and good and defied the ages.
“But, where would I go?” he internally asked the voice.
“The city where I was condemned and crucified.”
“Who are you?” Hermun asked.
“I am your Rock, your Redeemer, your Father, and Friend. I am the Alpha, Omega, and the Beginning and the End. I was, am, and will be.”
“But who are you?” Hermun asked frustrated.
“You will know me in time.”
The brush with such raw power left Hermun nervous and speechless, and, oddly enough, rather confused. Some huge important entity had chosen to speak to him. Well, why?
However, the most important question was who.
The look on his face obviously gave him away because Alan rode up next to him and asked, “What’s got you thinking so hard? I could swear, you’re contemplating so deeply I can see smoke coming out of your ears.”
Hermun let a small smile twitch at his lips. There was something profoundly true about what he had just said, “No, you just have sap in your eye and can’t see anything clearly anymore.”
“Oh, is that so, Hermun?” Alan said in mock shock.
“Absolutely.”
“Well, I don’t have anything I can say to that, especially because I tend to get sap in my eyes often.”
“Then don’t say anything at all.”
With that, their travel was widely uneventful afterwards.
Hermun had helped start the fires, set up the tents, and catch game for dinner’s stew. When dinner was over, he retired to his smaller and more practically sized tent. There was a simple cot inside with a chair for a guest to sit on, and that was it. He took off his clothes and crawled under the blankets. They were warm and heavy. Hermun was utterly exhausted so it took him only seconds before his vision went black.
There she was, Warick’s prized possession of the crusade: Nayeli.
She would be his in only a few moments. She was so… beautiful.
Hermun was so jealous. Every time he and Warick would go somewhere at their father’s request, everything was always the same as it was now. He wanted to make Warick never want her again. She didn’t deserve what he would do to her.
Warick was a cruel man. Ever trip was the same as this: he’d earn her trust, he’d ‘protect’ her from Hermun after he did something, at Warick’s request, like he was now, to drive the girl in to Warick’s arms. This time, however, was going to be different. Hermun was going to save Nayeli’s life, whether it was through his infliction of pain or not, Hermun had to save Nayeli, she didn’t deserve to die because of Warick’s sick lusts and whims. There was something seriously wrong with that man and how he worked.
“Now, don’t forget any of the lessons I’m about to teach you, there may be a test later,” he said, putting his form on top of Nayeli.
Her body was firm, she was so soft and her natural musk sent his senses whirling. There was something incredibly mysterious and alluring about this enrapturing, amber-eyed girl. Her eyes were clenched shut and he wished he were not forced to do what he was already, to save her life or not: to inflict more pain on this already bleeding heart.
The screams she gave were heart wrenching and he wished he could stop. It felt as though, at that moment, there was some dark and sinister entity possessing his every orifice. It was a seductive lust and craving for something to go wrong.
Hermun felt a deep longing to tell her why she had to endure so much pain. This was so unfair to Nayeli: yes, she would live; no, she would not be the same again. She may have endured worse, however, she never should have to endure this same pain, after being torn away from everything and everyone she loved. She had nothing left, Hermun was well aware of this, except her life and her humanity, which was slowly slipping away from her. It was falling through his fingers, as though he wanted to catch oil in a net, his own ferocity being the net.
She was screaming again. She was lying on her stomach, and Hermun was trying to spirit her away. Then disaster hit. Warick came in. He had his sword raised and it fell. The blow was a tiny fraction of the power he was capable of wielding. He missed his intended target: Hermun, and hit Nayeli’s back. It severed the skin, but not the spine.
“Look what you did, Warick! Now she’ll never be well enough in time before we reach home. In that case, she’s no use to you,” Hermun said, trying to hide his victory.
“Hermun, you’ve never had a problem before, what is it now?” Warick growled in his face, his sword against Hermun’s throat, grabbing his tunic, Nayeli’s blood dripping on to his clothing.
“Then isn’t now, and you know this! You’re a leader, you can’t act like this anymore!”
“Try me. I’ll do as I please. No one else objects either. Who is to care if one slave girl dies, hmm? No one will claim her. She is completely mine, Hermun.”
He consciously enforced this statement until Warick had figured out that Nayeli was in the line to be empress of Rome. Warick changed rapidly then. His supposed feelings became real and she really did take his brother away from him.
The scene changed. Nayeli, she wore a snow-white gown, in the Egyptian fashion. She wore a simple Roman necklace that was gold. The necklace had pearls hanging and, with each pearl in sequence toward the middle of her chest, there was another pearl added. Nayeli had two to three golden bracelets on each wrist, which jangled every time she took a step. She was walking toward Hermun. Nayeli’s long black hair was tied back into an extravagant braid that was pinned in a spiral around the back of her head with golden pins that had precious stones on the tips. She looked like a princess of the Nile who lived in the Roman Emperor’s palace.
As she walked toward him, Nayeli signaled him over with a single finger. She was enticing him. Her hips swayed with elegance, back and forth, as she paced toward him. She was beautiful.
Continuing toward him, Nayeli’s free hand went up to her hair. She undid each pin with exaggerated grace. As the last one was pulled out of her hair, the braid fell. Nayeli shook her head and the braid came out of her long, cascading hair. Just as she reached him, a breeze picked up her hair and flurried it about. The sight left Hermun breathless.
She put a hand on each of his shoulders and then slid them up so they rested on either side of his neck, limply.
“Hermun, I love you. I am yours as much as you are mine.”
With that, her lips met his.
Hermun’s eyes shot open. There was a twig that snapped, only about fifteen feet away from his tent. There was rustling and, then, it just stopped. Hermun knew it must be fairly large.
Or worse, a Roman raiding party, sent to bring me back as leverage on Warick… great… he wouldn’t even care anyways, I’ll end up a slave, or worse, knowing my luck, a gladiator.
The thought of being forced to fight for his every breath, for the sport of the Roman citizens, made him cringe. There was no dignity in killing another slave who’s forced to do the same to you, if you give him the opening.
His assumption was proven correct when he heard the jangle of what were, unmistakably, weapons.
“You go over there. Remember, we need to know what they want before we act in violence,” a voice whispered. The voice spoke in German.
How are there German tribesmen so near to us? More importantly, how did they find us? Hermun thought silently.
Hermun knew the answer to his second question immediately. They were the Germanics and they knew the lay of their land better than any other. That meant that Hermun and his men had intruded on the tribal grounds of one of the Germanic tribes in the area.
With that knowledge, Hermun bolted out of bed. He opened the flap to his tent and found himself face-to-face with one of men. He fell to a knee, casting his face downward.
“We mean no harm and did not intend to wander on to your lands. If you would be so gracious, allow us to sleep the rest of the night here and we will leave everything which we have touched exactly as it was before we arrived,” Hermun said submissive.
“You’re German! You know the ways of this land and you knew the signs of how to tell if you were entering another’s lands, and yet you stepped forward!” The man exclaimed, furious.
“I have been gone for many long months, with every man you now see. We are wanted by the Roman Empire and we were seeking refuge from the roads,” Hermun winced. He knew the German man was right, he did know the signs, but with the lengthy amount of time that he had spent away from his homeland, he was embarrassed to admit, he had become lax in his surveillance of his surroundings, roaming in to unwelcome territory.
“But that still does not explain why you are here right now! Why are you here? Have you come to gut me and all of my fellow tribe members?” the man spoke in suspicious tones.
“No, bruder, that is not why we are here at all. We had no such intention. It is my own fault. In my many months away from this nurturing land, I have become negligent in my examination of my surroundings. I, alone, forgot to look for the signs and will pay whatever you demand for my horrendous actions.”
Hermun secretly hoped that it would never come to such a faceoff and that he would live to see his home again.
There was a long, impending silence after he spoke. Hermun knew that the worst was coming when the man finally broke the silence.
“You will sleep, wake, eat, and leave! No more!” the man said stubbornly, and with no room for negotiation.
“We will do as you say,” as Hermun spoke, he raised his head, but the man had already disappeared into the chilly night air.
“Even though we have been permitted to stay on this land, I want someone on watch at all corners of the camp, understood?” Hermun said, quietly, in Alan’s ear.
He nodded in response and went to see to his new duty.
* * * *
Warick was in shock. All at once, the weight of the fact that Nayeli was no longer part of his life had crashed down on him a day or two after he had denied her his comfort, over something she could never have controlled. But, he wanted her. Lest Marcus, the Roman legionnaire, have the opportunity to taste of her body’s sweet kiss before he.
That I might have let myself love a weak slave girl like Nayeli is beyond me. There was no reason behind my feelings. I should have gone through with my original plan, Warick thought with vehemence.
There was something so wrong with the fact that Marcus, whether or not if he is related to the Roman emperor, he had no right to take the prize that Warick had fought long hours over, and for what?
Nothing.
That really was the answer.
“You know that she is, rightfully, yours, Warick. Why don’t you go claim what you know to be yours?”
The voice was not imagined. But, every quality he heard in the voice was undesirable and carried the sound of impending doom. It did not merely emit its resonance; it slithered and crawled into existence. The very essence of the voice was pure malevolence. There were no upright or honest intentions that came with that serpent’s tongue.
The way it sounded almost provoked Warick with the want to enact evil intentions. There was so much wrong with the ideas that came to his head and the ways in which he played them out. Every idea that went across his mind held nothing but evil in it. It was a putrid blackness that came, like a hand that chased him, seduced him, and once it got a hold of him, Warick could never be rid of it. The sheer malice that coated the tongue that formed each of the words was endless; the snake’s voice, as treacherous and wicked as it may be, held a terrible beguilement which, no matter how hard Warick tried to forget it, was always there. There was no room for virtuous behavior. Every intention, which it spelled, out was foul; no good could come from listening to such an insidious tongue.
“Come on, Warick, you know what you want. Isn’t she beautiful? She is yours; claim her, as Apollo suggested. She is yours for the taking. Enjoy it, savor it; retrieve your prize.”
As the voice spoke, Warick’s bile threatened to come up; however, it was right.
Why not savor and enjoy what is rightfully mine? She is nothing special. You are right, Warick thought, and, even now, devising how he would do it.
“We will do it together, Warick, I promise, I will help you.”
As the voice spun a fantastic and terrible web in his mind, Warick heard as someone called his name.
“Warick, what is wrong with you? You look as though you are speaking to a ghost,” Neorah said concerned.
Something, then, came over Warick, as though he was covered in a blanket, enveloping mind, body, and soul, of pure evil, and he loved it.
“What business is it of yours, Neorah?” Warick almost spit out her name as though it caused bile to rise in his throat.
A pained look crossed her face; it didn’t even vex him, “Forgive me for caring.”
With that, Neorah turned and hobbled away.