Shepherd’s Awakening (Books 1-3)

by Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla

  “I’ve got to go back to work,” he said. To save myself from this misery, he said to himself. Those bare words did not satisfy Ferlohren, who got up and walked over to her husband. She kissed him. Through those lips, she was giving him mixed emotions: a bomb of love, hate, desire, and passion. The man became angry.

  “I can’t. I told you,” he said, breaking loose and rearranging his coat of chainmail. He pushed her gently but firmly, as if she were nothing more than a dead body, then turned his back on her, without a gesture or any emotion. He had managed to survive another day in the house.

  ***

  Ferlohren could not stand it anymore. This indifference was reaching the limit of what she could stand. After several years of feeling she was invisible—one more piece of furniture in the house—she had convinced herself that the situation could not go on like that. Someone should be enjoying that flesh which was going to waste.

  She was a pretty woman—many colleagues had hinted it to her—but she was no traitor, least of all to her marriage. But her husband’s nostalgia, along with her desire to be possessed, was driving her to want to break the promise she had given the Gods to respect her conjugal vow, and because of that, she could think of nothing but a man possessing her lustfully.

  “I have to confess,” she scolded herself at the confessional. She had come to the Décamon in search of a solution, although now she wanted something more than that.

  “Are there still problems in the marriage?” asked Vurgomm, the priest. Besides spiritual relief, he dispensed another type of comfort—a more physical one. He had broken his vow of chastity several years before when a temptress had offered him her maidenhead. Since then, he had been unable to avoid temptation.

  “Yes,” Ferlohren replied. She had dressed for the occasion. She was not wearing any underwear. She had also gotten drunk, so she could count on that pinch of disinhibition she would need in order to give way to her passions. Of all the men in the military town, she had chosen the one she most loathed, but with Vurgomm it would be easy, and her secret would be safe. Through the grid, the woman could already feel the priest’s voracious stare straying along her thighs and breasts. Her nipples were erect under her cotton blouse.

  “Have you come to hand your sins over to me, Daughter of the Gods?”

  “Yes, Father. I’ve heard that several women have handed over their marital sins to you; they say you redeem quickly. That you’re efficient and that… you can keep secrets buried,” Ferlohren replied. The priest opened the door and invited the woman in. She gave a start.

  “Oh, excuse me,” she said, blushing. “I only came because I needed to talk to someone.”

  “Well, my child, don’t worry. You can come and tell me your sorrows whenever you want.”

  Vurgomm was a short man, skinny, with eyes dark as night, thick eyebrows, and a triangular chin. “When you come back, the Gods will receive you with open arms,” murmured the priest. His gaze devoured Ferlohren’s hips as she ran out of the sanctuary as fast as she could.

  Chapter V – Hunting the Hunter

  It did not take long for the wandering traveler to realize that his pursuers were an incompetent band of brigands. They shouted all the time as though they were insulting each other, they chewed with their mouths open, and they spat. The Wild Man did not understand a single word of the deserters’ language, but they exuded pain and the desire for cold revenge.

  The members of the group were deeply degenerate; they might have spent decades suffering in oblivion. The women only looked like women because of the lumps on their chests; their faces were emaciated, they had missing teeth, and they gathered up their dull, dry hair in buns. The men, deformed and ill-begotten, were no more agreeable to the eyes.

  The Wild Man shuddered to think he had felt a certain connection with those people. They were even more miserable than he was himself. They had lost all honor and were without hope for glory or fame. By luck or misfortune, fate has made me cross paths with these people. Mother, I only ask that you have shown me the right path.

  He stayed hidden as he went on watching their crude behavior and their abandonment of morals and manners; they were more like pigs than humans. He was hiding in an old cedar tree and had concealed his odor with a layer of mud and aromatic herbs, which he knew well.

  The Wild Man guessed the band’s intentions when he discovered the chains and a pair of heavy metal shackles. They wanted to take him prisoner. The natives of his land were much valued as slaves, and the nobility were always ready to pay a good price for them. A shiver ran down his spine when it occurred to him that perhaps Mother had sent that band to capture him and take him back to Devnóngaron so that the forest spirits could execute him.

  No, Mother would never resort to these kinds of men, so lost, so damned. Calmer, he turned his gaze back to the group, which did not stop eating.

  “Something’s strange, guys. Something smells wrong,” said a man, long-haired and shabby, with a repulsive voice.

  “It was Garamashi,” another replied as he took a bite out of a lump of dried meat. “That bitch is always flatulent, spewing gas like a damned fumarole. I can’t stand her,” he added with a hostile glare at the woman.

  “Grono! Grono!” said the giggling fool.

  Garamashi gave a violent start, and in a moment, she raised her balloon of a body. She said loudly, her voice like the squeal of an old cat being tortured, “Look who’s talking, the nancy boy who likes the spear up his arse! Ill-begotten, I’ll kill you if you keep insulting me,” she screamed. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you scum. You bastard. If I ever have you in my hands, I’ll crush you once and for all. Ofesto! I’m talking to you! Listen to me carefully: I’m going to shove my fist up your ass and bring it out through your mouth to pull your tongue out. So that’s quite enough from you.”

  The woman had raised her fist and mimed putting it between her legs. The others burst out laughing, although the quarrel might have ended in a duel to the death. Some were chewing frantically, drinking spirits or kusha—a kind of alcohol produced after fermenting cow dung and organic compounds like fruit peel, vegetables, or the remains of vermin.

  “Your father’s the nancy boy. As for talking about putting things in the arse, you’re the only one who can talk, you fucking bitch,” Ofesto replied. “Look at you. You look like a cheap whore. We ought to kill you and bury you well so that life itself doesn’t get insulted by your breathing.” The man laughed scornfully. “Your abominable body would make good kusha. We’d be drinking for months! Wouldn’t we, boys?”

  More laughter. Some were already drunk.

  “Silence, you morons!” ordered Mérdmerén, the leader of the band. “You never seem to learn to be quiet, and it’s the only thing that matters. Have you forgotten we’re chasing after a Wild Man, and he’s left his usual path?”

  The leader had managed to silence them. He was glaring at them with his angular face, hooked nose, and a fierce stare. His hair was black and came down to his shoulders. He was dressed in black leather with a sword at his belt. His general appearance gave the impression that he had once belonged to the nobility. He appeared to be in his thirties.

  The other woman in a stained dress stepped in. “Mérdmerén, listen: if that Wild Man’s left his usual path, we need to hurry, or else we’ll lose him once and for all. This forest is so thick we won’t be able to stay on his trail if we don’t hurry. You know those Wild Men are clever and slippery. We can’t let him get away. That son of a bitch might mean our salvation. Any feud would give up to a hundred crowns for his skin.”

  Mérdmerén nodded. “Comrades, Nárgana is right. We’ve got to go on in search of the wanderer, even though it’s nighttime. It’s not every day we find a lost Wild Man, ready to have the shackles put on him. Let’s get moving. Time flies, and every night we lose means another night without the loot from other people’s carts and carriages. I’m getting tired of eating leather! Hell, we need supplies right away. Move on then, you ve
rmin! And you,” he said, pointing at Ofesto and Garamashi. “I swear I’ll make a salad out of your guts if you don’t stop bickering.”

  He turned and set off into the darkness of the night. The others followed him without a word. The full moon lit up the paths.

  Without a sound, the wandering traveler set off after them.

  ***

  The Wild Man came and went without fear of being discovered. At one moment, he was barely a few inches away from Mérdmerén, who never even noticed. During the darkest nights, he even acted like one more of them. For example, he would light a fire to cook the leather stew. Nobody suspected it had been the work of the Wild Man.

  Sometimes, he joined the hunt and captured game that tasted like heaven for the poor wretches. He cleaned the camp when the band had taken up the search again. In these chores, the traveler found a distraction to stop him from endlessly turning things over in his mind.

  Of course, the band gradually came to realize something strange was going on. They had never been so efficient and quick at lighting fires, they had never eaten so well, and so much cleanliness felt alien to them.

  Mérdmerén was the first to suspect. He guessed that an invader was stalking them. It might be one of their eternal enemies, those accursed politicians who had banished him from the Council of Kings, such as Don Cantus of Aligar and Don Loredo Melda. One day he would have his revenge, he had sworn it.

  One evening while he was chewing dried meat, it occurred to him that the invader was the very Wild Man they were pursuing. If he could hide as well as that, he could not be just any Wild Man, but one capable of molding the elements in his favor: a shaman. Then, he considered the possibility of giving up the mission. To confront a shaman was a big deal, although he soon remembered the number of coins they would be given for a man of that size. He would carry on with the plan.

  Chapter VI – Entelechy

  The sun was warm but did not burn. The rays shone with a powerful light but did not blind. The surface was rigid, yet at the same time, it possessed elasticity. Every once in awhile, there was an eruption that produced a wake like a divine bow. Tiny particles of light floated around him like stardust.

  To the young man, it seemed odd that one of those lights never left his side, as if it were protecting him from something, someone, or himself. It had a pair of tiny wings that fluttered rapidly.

  He tried taking a few steps on the sphere with the tiny light as a companion and found that the surface changed with dark prints wherever he put his feet. He walked and walked for a long time, but never reached any destination. He was going around the orb.

  He stopped to admire the horizon. A multitude of lights shone in the distance like a field at night colonized by a sea of glowworms. The twinkling of the stars made him wonder. It was as if they were telling secrets to each other.

  He set off again and came to realize that the sun was not very large because every time he took a step, he came to a new part of the horizon. He lay down, noticed the rounded shape, and saw that his body curved as it lay there. He felt himself to be lord of this sphere, star, sun, or luminous being. He felt it belonged to him. It’s mine, just mine, he said to himself.

  Something inside him answered. No, it’s not yours. It is a part of you, so you’re the same; an indivisible entity. He accepted it. An idea occurred to him: to dive into the sun.

  The sphere swallowed him, and he saw himself floating in an amber liquid. The little seraph was still by his side. Time doesn’t go by, he thought. But then, what is time? If I expect changes and change is called time, then time is change, he concluded and then began to search for changes around him.

  He could not see any, which meant that in this dimension, time did not pass. Past, present, and future were the same. Something awoke in his mind. He gave an order without saying a single word. The sun began to move effortlessly, suspended in the void. It traveled through the unknown at increasing velocity.

  Chapter VII – The Shapeless Animal

  Two months had passed since her visit to the Décamon and her interview with the priest, which still disturbed her even now. She wanted him between her legs. She dreamed about him and woke moist and restless.

  She heard a metallic noise: a belt being tightened and a sword sliding into its sheath. Trumbar appeared in the shadows in all his massive solidity.

  “Tomorrow, I’m off on a mission. A platoon of soldiers has been slaughtered near the border. It looks as though Némaldon is back to her old tricks, but before we retaliate, we have to investigate to be sure.”

  The man did not seem bothered about having to leave; in fact, he looked excited.

  After her husband had left, without either hugs, kisses, or smiles, the woman put on an old corset and arranged her breasts to show off her bust. She dressed in fiery red. She felt inflamed, ready to go on the hunt. She did not want to think about what she was doing, but she wanted it desperately. Before she went out, she drank a whole bottle of spirits even though it tasted rank.

  In the street, she walked while swaying her hips from side to side. She told herself she was beautiful, sensuous, and attractive. Men turned their heads as she passed, whistled, and left their tasks so as not to miss the sight of that well-publicized flesh.

  After several indecent proposals and some buttock-grabbing, Ferlohren felt dirty and abused. She ran with her tail between her legs in search of the only place where she would be safe. She reached the Décamon in haste and went in through the doors, which were watched over by a pair of very tall statues—the venerable Slegna Flamon, the ancient soldiers of the land of Flamonia where the Mandrakians came from.

  She passed by the oratory and went towards the cupola. Under the stained glass window of the ten essences of the Décamon, she felt safe. The light in the holy site lost intensity.

  There came a great noise as if something had torn the fibers of time and space. One reality seemed to dislocate, and another pushed its way violently in. The air parted, and through the cracks appeared the maddened eyes of a rapacious demon, croaking and hungry for a soul. It was thick darkness, relentless and terrifying. Ferlohren assumed her death hour had come when a force swept everything away, and she found herself standing before Father Vurgomm. They were both naked. What on earth was going on?

  The man approached her unhesitatingly and thrust his tongue into her mouth. He began to touch her, brushed her private parts, and played with them. She let herself be carried away by pleasure.

  Chapter VIII – The Inadequate Brigade

  Unsettled dreams haunted him. Sometimes Eutasia, the dominant alpha female of his clan, appeared in them. Naturally, he had lost her after his fall from grace. That night, he was dreaming of her beautiful face. Eutasia’s smile was like a bunch of roses and her eyes, full of life, hypnotized him. Her skin might have been burnished gold, and yet she was more attractive for the strength of her character than for her looks.

  He came out of his dream with a lump in his throat. He blinked several times, sighed deeply, and rubbed his eyes. Yes, he was still alive. A sunbeam pierced the foliage and lit the clearing where the band of outcasts slept. The wandering traveler soon heard their complaints. The new day was about to start. He had decided to show himself to those wretches; he had still not chosen the precise moment, but today he was ready to take the first step toward a new life.

  Garamashi was washing her breasts with black water. She was a very solitary woman, hated by many. She had so little hair that you could see her scalp. The Wild Man looked at her limp, pallid flesh. Rather than fat, she appeared bloated, as if she had drowned and were now parading her puffed-up corpse through the world. Even her dark eyes were dull and lifeless, like her thin lips. Her nose was very short, a button in the center of a round, swollen-cheeked face.

  Ofesto had woken up in a querulous mood. “Do you always have to show off those disgusting tits? Don’t you realize how loathsome they are? Hey, boys! That butt could only have come from the sting of a whole swarm of wasps!”
r />   Garamashi took out her knife.

  “Girl, don’t pay attention to that bastard,” Nárgana put in. She was a gaunt, black-haired woman. “We all know he’s a no-good man and a scoundrel. He’ll soon be rotting in some deep trench or other, where the Goddess of the Night will refuse to give him the kiss of death and stop him reaching the Deep Azure of the Heavens. Don’t do anything stupid; it’s not worth it. Relax, girl.”

  Nárgana put her hand on Garamashi’s fleshy shoulder, and the woman dropped the knife.

  There were sixteen members of the band—or almost. One of them, Godforsaken, had lost an arm and leg during his stint in the army. He still had an arrow stuck in his mutilated shoulder, and he scratched the ground with his wooden leg. He had earned his exile for his behavior.

  “Listen, mates,” Mérdmerén began. “Today’s the last chance to hunt down the Wild Man. If we don’t come across his flesh, may he rot in the forest.”

  “Fuck you, Mérdmerén!” Godforsaken shot back in his hoarse voice. He scratched a sore on his face and revealed a mouth full of rotten, yellow teeth. “We should never have gone after that wretch. If we’d done something else instead, we might be eating some shepherd’s flock of sheep by now, or else have our pockets full of the loot of some cart. We should stop the search right now. There’s no guarantee we’ll find him, that we’d be able to catch him if we did, or that he wouldn’t get away from us afterward. We may be poor and unfortunate, but we survive. I have a feeling this Wild Man’s going to bring us trouble, and we’ll end up even more fucked than we already are.”

  Some of them nodded. There were voices of protest, but Mérdmerén, who was experienced in matters of leadership, silenced their debate with a shout and a snap of his fingers. “By the Gods! Shut up, you rabble! I’ve already told you what the plan is, and we’re going to see it through. You’ll see how the Wild Man’ll bring us the fortune we need to get our revenge. Let’s go!”