She was surprised to see her music had drawn a crowd. Over a hundred men sat around the general’s tent quietly listening. When she stepped out, one soldier rose to his feet as an act of respect. Others saw and did the same. Soon all the soldiers were standing. She didn’t know what to do at first and was hesitant to keep walking, but as she took a few faltering steps, they started to part like Moses’ great Red Sea, each man nodding respectfully, some even bowing slightly, with looks of gratitude and appreciation on their faces. She had calmed the general, the soul of the army, and the soldiers, the body of the army as well. As Miriam looked at the young faces of the men who surrounded her, she noticed a familiar one. Decemus was among the soldiers gathered to listen. Tears were streaming down his face, and she wondered, Is he okay? She did not have the opportunity to ask him.
Nachum was also among the crowd. He stopped her. “Wonderful! Great job. I think you made an impression on him, his officers, and everyone in hearing distance.”
She smiled tiredly and replied, “Thank you. I think I will go to my quarters now and check on Issur.” Nachum bowed slightly and moved out of her way. The rest of the soldiers continued to part respectfully, many nodding to show their appreciation of what she had done.
I enjoyed that, but I am also glad it’s over now. Maybe I can get back to healing the wounded, and when this is over, who knows… At the moment, she was just glad to be going to bed and didn’t care.
Chapter Twenty-One
An hour before Miriam entered Regulus’ quarters, Decemus lay sweltering in the hospital tent. After sunset the bees that perpetually hovered over his honey-dabbed wounds drifted back to their hives, but other insects had moved in, taking the night shift and continuing to plague him. His physicians had told him to stay still and not put weight on his leg so as not to break open the stitches they had so painstakingly applied. He didn’t want to risk breaking open the wounds, but he was suffocating. He had almost decided to man it up and endure the heat when he was distracted. Listening, he realized he heard singing.
A woman’s beautiful, melodic voice, accompanied by the haunting tones of an instrument he did not know, drifted into the hospital tent. That settled it. Decemus got out of his cot, hobbled out of the hospital tent with the aid of a cane, and followed the sound. As he walked, he noticed several other soldiers were also moving toward the music. A short hike later, he found himself seated on the ground along with a hundred other men quietly listening to Miriam’s alto voice and the sad tones of a stringed instrument floating from the general’s tent. The music came from the ancient kinnor Miriam played in an incredibly new way. It was like an attending voice, lush, delicate, rich, and sorrowful weeping for the unspoken sadness of a hundred lives. Decemus could not hear all the words, but the haunting strains mesmerized him as he sat listening with his eyes closed and his heart open.
As he did, old memories of a time he had tried to forget stole back into him. Listening to those memories, he could hear his mother’s voice. She had been his clan’s Nabi, a singing prophetess who mixed her songs with prophetic messages. Decemus realized he was listening to someone with very similar gifts. For a several minutes she sang in her own tongue, and few among the soldiers seated in the makeshift amphitheater outside Regulus’ tent understood the language, but almost all understood the spell it cast. Decemus had tried unsuccessfully for years to forget those songs and particularly the prophecies his mother had spoken over him from his earliest childhood. The songs and her prophecies had ambushed him frequently throughout the years, each time causing him to grieve her loss and the miscarriage of her words over his life. She had spoken one particular prophetic word so many times, it was branded across his heart, and no matter how he tried to drown it in alcohol or smother it in debauchery, it always crept back to condemn him in vulnerable moments.
Her prophecy was: You will cast down kingdoms, raise up the destitute, and revenge the burned ones. He remembered her words again, and then it struck him. His breath caught, he grew dizzy, his heart pounded like it had broken loose from his chest. It couldn’t be possible! And yet it was. He was the enlisted commander of an individual combat operations team that had just rescued a woman and her child from a sacrificial altar. And he was pretty sure he would soon be assigned another mission to assassinate the leader who had burned hundreds of infants to death!
Decemus panted, his whole system in shock. It was happening just like his mother said it would. Now that memory had been driven back into his heart by the song of another prophetess, the song of the “destitute” one his team had “raised up.” As he struggled to gain his composure, he realized the singing had stopped, and saw Miriam walking out of the commander’s tent. She had a surprised look on her face and seemed astonished and uncomfortable at the large crowd her music had drawn. She looked his way, and for an instant, their eyes met. Her expression changed. Decemus was embarrassed when he realized she had seen the tears. He quickly moved away, glad to hear the Jewish physician Nachum’s enthusiastic voice distract Miriam’s attention.
****
Regulus slept peacefully for the first time in weeks. He listened to Miriam’s songs until he could no longer hear them and was conscious only of the image of the green pasture. He actually thought he was awake and deliberately guiding his imagination, not realizing he was having another dream, only this was not a nightmare. It was incredibly vivid, and that surprised him. It was so peaceful. There must be something in that drink other than honey. And then he heard the same voice that told him there were no prickly thorns in the pasture.
“There wasn’t anything in the drink,” the voice said.
This time he realized someone was actually speaking to him.
“Now, I hear voices in my dreams?” He spoke aloud in the dream, sincerely hoping no one would respond, and he could pretend it didn’t happen and just rest in the pasture grass.
But the voice continued, “You can lie there and rest if you like. When you want to talk, I will be here.”
Regulus thought, Well, that’s not going to happen, and sat up, looking around. “Always something, no rest for the weary,” he said aloud, only to hear a voice behind him politely say…
“Well, that depends on the person and the type of rest they need.”
Regulus rapidly turned around and jumped to his feet. In front of him stood an old man dressed in a tan, homespun robe. He had a long beard and a bald head crowned with wisps of white. His eyes seemed to shine, and his whole face had a gleam to it. He was shorter than Regulus, had his middle bound by a wide leather belt, and carried a staff in his thick, calloused hand.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, son. All is well. I am not going to hurt you.”
Regulus laughed, and it didn’t hurt. He reached for his face, but the scar was gone.
“It’s a dream, son. You’re whole here. You can rest here. In more ways than one.”
“This is certainly a vivid dream,” Regulus answered, confused. “And just who are you supposed to be?” he demanded sternly.
The old man answered, “Well now, I don’t know who I am supposed to be, but I am pretty sure who I am. Eliasz is what I am called in your native language. I am called other names in other tongues, but Eliasz will work.”
“Well Eliasz, why am I here?” Regulus asked.
“Well son, I think that pretty lady of yours sung you to sleep and gave you some fermented honey and earth apple. It seemed to work.”
“Just what I needed, another smart ass. I can’t escape them even in my dreams,” Regulus grumbled.
Eliasz laughed so hard he almost dropped his staff and had to sit down in the grass. He beckoned Regulus to do the same. As he wiped his gleaming head with the back of his sleeve, he said, “Oh son, that was good. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. Thank you! But seriously, I heard your little army is having a little dragon problem and thought you might need some help.”
“A little dragon problem? I would hate to see what you call a big problem. A
nd what do you mean, my little army? I command 30,000 soldiers and almost 200 ships!”
“Little by way of comparison, Regulus. Your army is large if you compare it to some, but I was thinking of another army. When compared to it, well, I spoke appropriately.” Eliasz attempted to explain tactfully.
“What army is that?” Regulus asked, interested.
“Hmm... why does this sound familiar to me?” Eliasz mused... “Better to just show you, son.”
With that, he stood, wiped the grass off his robe, and pointed his staff toward the sky slowly waving it. “Open his eyes,” he spoke softly. Suddenly, the sky parted like a curtain and Regulus jumped back. The heavens were crowded with warriors clothed in light. Hundreds and thousands of huge, armored warriors, their golden shields gleaming, stood in perfect ranks. Chariots pulled by flaming creatures stood row upon row as far as the eye could see, and then brilliant behind them, standing like blazing mountains, were giants. They looked like men but were not. Regulus fell to his knees gasping, his mouth agape, but no words could come out.
Eliasz did not have that problem. “Do you see what I mean, son? Little in comparison.”
Regulus nodded, stunned by the sight of the celestial army.
A little more humbly once he got his voice back, he asked Eliasz, “Are you their commander?”
Eliasz chuckled. “No, son. I’m not, you are.”
Regulus’ head whipped around like he had been struck.
“What? These aren’t my men! I don’t even know if they are men. What do you mean I command them?”
Eliasz waved his staff across the sky, and the army of light slowly disappeared until only the sky and the original clouds remained. He offered his hand and pulled Regulus to his feet. “These beings are spirits of fire, holy fire. They serve the servants of the living God. And now for this season, they serve you.”
Regulus bristled, “I don’t know your living god. And I have no use for gods. They are all conceived by hypocritical men who use the fear of others to manipulate and take advantage.”
Eliasz listened and paused, “You know, Regulus, you are right. Men have created gods, made them in their own image, actually. But I am not talking about them. As for you, you know way more than you think you do. And I can assure you the living God, or the unknown God, as Xenophanes calls him, knows you. But you know what, son? It really doesn’t matter. You have a battle to fight with a demonized high priest, a conjured beast from the ancient past, and the army of Carthage, and I am here to help you win your battle, not change your theology. Theology is adaptable. We use it like a warm blanket on a viciously cold night to keep us alive. But when the weather changes, we tend to wrap ourselves in a less cumbersome bundle. Truth is different from theology. So, I will lay aside the question of deity, for the moment, and ask you: Do you want the help of that army or not?”
Regulus sighed. “Even if I desire it, what good would it do? This is a dream. You freely admitted that, and dreams are not true. So even if I said yes, I would love to command that army, what good would it do?”
“It is a dream, Regulus... but consider this. Your nightmares were consuming you. Were they real? You had Nachum bring Miriam to you to stop a dream. Now you have no faith in them?”
Regulus swore. “You know what I mean! Dreams are reflections, echoes of our own heart, of our wishes or our fears. They are not tangible. You can’t reach into a dream and draw out a sword!”
Eliasz smiled as he listened. “Now that is a word, tangible, a gift of the Greeks no doubt, the scholars of the Roman world, who taught all who would listen that only what is tangible is real. But forgot it is the intangible that makes the tangible worth enduring. How tangible is beauty? How much substance does love have? Can you measure courage with a line? What about honor? Who holds the key that can unlock it? None of those things are made from tangible substance. Yet they are much more valuable.”
Regulus, not ready to give in, answered, “The dragon is tangible. The men it killed were tangible. What it did to my face is tangible.”
“You are absolutely right, Regulus. The dragon is tangible. But it’s the intangible that brought it back to life. And this intangible army of fire I am offering you, can kill it.”
Regulus sighed. “I am not a skilled debater. You twist words and thought like a potter does clay.”
“You are wrong, Regulus. I untwist words. I speak the truth that destroys facade and exposes the lie of fear. You are dealing with three worlds. Three battles face you. First, the obvious, the dragon and Carthage’s army. Last, the unseen world that controls the first two. You have to defeat the enemy in unseen world before he falls in the visible one. Do you understand?”
“I hear your words, and they seem to fit. But what you have not answered is the greater question. How do I defeat these enemies?”
“One nap at a time, general.”
“What? Eliasz?”
The old man disappeared, and Regulus was staring at the top of his tent as the morning sun awoke the camp. For the first time since he was wounded, he had slept the whole night through.
Chapter Twenty-Two
With a bitter taste of blood lingering on its lips, the dragon gained the skies and calmed down. Asdrubal was able to reassert control and guide it back to its berth in the courtyard. It landed, bloody and loud. Its screams of frustration and anguish could be heard all across the city and faintly in the Roman camp. Asdrubal held it in its stall by his force of will. It wasn’t as difficult as when he actually possessed the animal but still taxing. Once again, he knew he had to feed it and put it to sleep while it healed.
He was also disturbed his attempt to destroy the Roman fleet had ended in defeat. How had they been able to shield themselves from the dragon’s flames? Where did they get the black-tipped missiles that pierced the dragon in so many places? And what was he to do now? As he pondered these things, his associate priest came and bowed before him.
“Master, your spies in the Roman camp have news.”
Asdrubal motioned to the priest to come forward and report. “And what news is that?” he asked, interested.
“The Roman legate was wounded in the first battle with the dragon. He was burned and is recovering. His second is in command, a barbarian from the East.”
“Hmmm....” As a man, Asdrubal had been a brilliant discerner of opportunity. It is how he became the high priest. Now empowered by the mind of darkness, his craftiness was serpentine. So, the Roman commander is wounded. What better time to make a focused strike? Cut off the head and the body falls. His eyes closed, and a grim sneer cut across his face. He placed his hands on his temples and concentrated on the idea of attacking Regulus. He slipped into the realm of imagination that opens doors into the realm of reality. His body shook, and the dark, smoke-like essence that formed his spiritual frame traveled outside the walls of Carthage and toward the Romans. He could see their camp. He focused more, and his sight led him to the interior of the camp, and then to the commander’s tents, and then through the curtains and into the commander’s quarters themselves.
****
As Regulus lay exhausted on his cot, staring at the ceiling and thinking about calling Miriam back, he suddenly felt a cold presence enter the room. The hair on the back of his neck rose, and a chill ran through his body. He felt like he was being watched. He looked up and scanned the room quickly, searching for the intruder. He couldn’t see anyone, but intuition that had saved his life on several occasions screamed at him. He could not see an intruder, but he felt him, and could sense the part of the room he was in.
Asdrubal laughed. “So, you can sense me, Roman. Well now, you are more perceptive than I thought. No wonder you lead the army. Can you hear me, Roman? I am coming for you. I am coming for you. I know who you are. I know you are hurt. You can’t hide from me. I will consume you!”
Regulus stared at the section of the tent where he felt the presence. Then he jumped up as he heard a faintly rasping, craggy whisper, evil to the core, e
manating from the cold. He didn’t understand it and thought it might be Carthaginian but could not be sure. He did know it was terrible, evil, personal, and threatening. His body reacted, he couldn’t breathe. He started to choke and began to shake.
****
As Regulus’ fear grew, so did Asdrubal’s power. He forced his projected essence into focus and hovered around the Roman. Knowing Regulus could hear him now, he reached his hands around his neck and began to squeeze. Regulus choked, gasping, terrified and weakening. Asdrubal channeled more dark energy into squeezing the life out of the Roman.
Suddenly, a lightning flash pierced Asdrubal. He cried out and lost his grip on Regulus, who fell to the ground, wheezing. “Do you remember me, dark one?” A powerful force shook the demonized priest like a dog would a rat. “I remember you! Can you feel the power of holiness? Piercing you, withering you, reminding you?”
A young man glowing like a fiery coal held a spear of pure light that pierced the dark priest’s chest and pushed all the way through him. Agonizing pain gripped Asdrubal. With a lurch, he pulled back from the blazing spear, felt it wrenching through him, and finally ripped his spirit body free from the lance. In a frightened whirlwind, Asdrubal blew through Regulus’ tent and raced back to his physical body seated on the throne in the high priest’s council room. He eased his spirit back into his physical form and retched. The pain was horrific. He grabbed his chest and screamed, and slowly the pain eased as his remarkable recuperating powers channeled their strength to his wound. When he finally settled, he was shaking, soaked in sweat and heaving. He placed his hand on his chest where the shaft of light had pierced him. It was bloody. He battled for control of his breathing and gradually began slipping into a healing trance.
His stewards had come running at his first scream and trembled before him as they observed his stricken condition. “I am fine, fine. I don’t need your help!” he rasped at them. “Get out of here before I feed you to the dragon!”
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