by Linda Mooney
Muam reacted automatically. Pulling the newly-made dagger from his belt, he raised it overhead as he rushed toward the soldier. A heartbeat before he reached the man, Kolis turned his blade around and pointed it at Muam.
Gova screamed as the ragged point slid into Muam’s chest. Unable to stop his momentum, Muam gasped as it went all the way into his body, up to the hilt.
For a long moment he stood there, blood draining from his face. He coughed, and blood bubbled around his lips. His legs went out from under him, and he collapsed on the rug in front of the altar.
She shrieked his name and tried to free herself from Kolis’s grasp, but the man’s fingers gripped her so tightly, she felt her arm come out of the socket. He said something to her, but his words were unintelligible. Whirling around, she tried one final time to escape. Her hand hit the side of his face, and she instinctively curved her fingers, digging her nails into the man’s cheek and outer eye. Kolis roared with anger and slammed his fist into her chest.
Pain enveloped her body as she dropped to the ground. The sound of angry bees filled her head as she struggled to breathe. Peering up into the shaman’s blanched face, she softly pleaded, “Save us. Condemn him.”
Teyhas threw his hands into the air, giving Kolis a black stare. “You dare enter this temple and take two lives.”
“He attacked me first!” the man proclaimed.
“You attacked the woman first!” the shaman shot back. “Muam was protecting the woman!” Turning to the stunned crowd, he pointed to Kolis. “Take him! Show him the same kind of mercy he gave Muam and his bride!”
The crowd converged on Kolis, overwhelming the man who tried to flee without success. With the man’s shrieks ringing in her ear as the people dragged him out of the tent, Gova bowed her head, her vision quickly fading. Crawling over to where Muam lay, she dropped beside him. Somehow he found one of her hands and weakly squeezed her fingers. Drawing what little strength she had left, Gova pressed his hand to her lips. “I will love you eternally. This will not be the last of us, Muam. We will continue.”
A figure knelt between them, and a warm hand rested on her cheek. “So be it,” the shaman pronounced softly. “This will not be your final death. You will love again in another life. I promise you that.”
Muam coughed. “I will love you forever, Gova. I do not care if we have to endure a thousand lives. At the end, we will find each other…and we will have…our time…to love.”
“A thousand…” Teyhas sounded aghast. “Muam, no.”
With her final breath, Gova sent forth every ounce of sorcery she could summon.
The last thing she heard was the shaman giving them his blessing.
“A thousand lives. So be it.”
Chapter 10
Constantinople, AD 542
Muam stared at the face reflected in the shield he held in his hands. He paused, blinked in astonishment, then slowly raised his face to look around him.
He felt as if he’d awakened after a long sleep. His thoughts remained foggy, scrambled, and distant. Nothing looked familiar. Yet, it did. The smells were all wrong, but they weren’t.
Before him, a group of men sat around small fires. Some were laughing. A few were drinking. Several passed by, on their way to and from some unknown location. Their clothes were strange and different. And this place…
Casting his eyes upward, it appeared he was inside some sort of citadel. Walls towering higher than three men standing on each other’s shoulders surrounded him. Statues of people wearing more strange garb sat at intervals atop the walls.
A horse went by, led by a man in a shift belted at the waist. He kept his face lowered in the manner of a slave. Muam watched the man take the animal to a stall at the far end of the open area where he and the others were sitting.
“That shield is not going to polish itself,” a voice teased from behind him. Turning around, he saw an older man standing there. Before he could reply, the man threw a leg over the bench where Muam was sitting and parked his sword on his lap. “Mind if I join you? If we look busy, they may not call on us to do pick up.”
Pick up?
Who was this man?
Muam looked down again at the metal shield he’d obviously been polishing, a bit of rag still gripped in his hand. It was his image in the somewhat distorted patina. The same face with the same light brown eyes. Eyes his mother had once referred to as being the color of the seasonal moon, when on rare nights it went a pale golden orange.
The nose, the jaw, the mouth—all unchanged. He reached behind his head. But his long braid was gone. Other than that, he was himself.
Memories slammed into him. Thoughts that were more nightmarish than pleasant. Gasping softly, he placed a hand to the center of his chest and glanced down. There was no fatal wound there. Not even a scar to show where it had healed, if indeed he’d managed to survive it.
“Samanus, what is wrong with you? What is the matter?” The man gave his arm a nudge. “Are you all right?”
The words were distant and unfamiliar. A language he didn’t recognize. But, oddly, he understood what the man was saying.
“Samanus?” From the man’s intense stare, it was clear he was speaking to Muam.
My name is Samanus?
“I…I had a moment of dizziness,” Muam replied. More puzzling was the fact that he responded in that odd language. Although he could speak three tongues, this one was completely new to him.
“Want some wine?”
“No. I am fine.” Muam gave him a quick smile.
The man snorted and continued polishing his sword. “It is a wonder we are still walking upright, with so many others dropping all around us. Every morning, more dead litter the streets.” He coughed and spat in the dirt. “I do not care what the general tells us. We are not here as a defense against that black death. We are here to protect the emperor. We are here to be his sacrifices to the gods. To appease them so they will spare his life.” The man waved an arm to indicate a section where several large pots were lined up. Smoke billowed from the fires built inside them. “I do not care how many urns they burn, or how much incense is put to the flame. It will never be enough to erase the stench of death that daily fills our lungs.”
At the man’s remark, Muam breathed deeply, and caught a strong whiff of what the man meant. The air was thick with the unholy smell. Why hadn’t he noticed it before now?
“You there! Guards!”
A man strode toward them. By his bearing and the scowl on his face, Muam knew he was an officer of some type. Automatically, he rose to his feet and glanced over to see the man who’d been sitting next to him give a salute, which he quickly copied.
“You two. Report to the front gate immediately.” Without waiting for a reply, the man left.
Muam’s companion gave a sigh. “The gods must have overheard me, and sent the commander over to make sure we do our duty.”
Rather than ask the man any further questions, Muam gave a nod and followed his friend into what looked to be barracks. While he wondered which area was his, some residual memory guided him over to one. He propped his shield against a low-slung bed and grabbed the helmet sitting on the blanket. He was already aware of the sword sheathed on his right hip, and a long dagger on his left. Even though he was sorely tempted to draw and examine both weapons, he restrained himself for the moment. Hopefully there would be time later to do that.
They left the barracks and headed down a small street where they encountered more men dressed as guards. Muam checked the few men and women they passed, the ones who had to be ordinary villagers, by their simple clothing. That, or slaves. None of the townspeople dared to look directly at the soldiers striding through the town. Many scurried away at the sight of them.
“Can you believe it? This is the third day in a row I have been ordered to remove carcasses,” one of the other soldiers griped.
“Better to remove them than to be one of them, Toriset,” Muam’s companion quipped, earning him chuck
les from the other guards.
Toriset threw the man a dark look. “Go ahead and make light of it, Ramestes. But you no more care to be covered with the stench you bring back to our quarters than we care to smell it coming off of you.”
They soon arrived at a pair of tall metal doors embedded in the wall. Four guards slowly opened one of the doors, and the squad of soldiers filed outside. Two wooden carts sat nearby, just outside the gate. As there were no horses attached to the carts, Muam figured they would have to pull it using manpower.
The squad automatically split into two groups, each taking a cart to begin trundling down one of the streets. Muam hurried to join Ramestes, along with three other soldiers. They hadn’t walked very far when Muam paused in shock.
Four bodies lay in their path. Bodies which had been dumped there, arms and legs akimbo, as if hastily discarded. But it wasn’t the sight of the bodies which repulsed him. It was the sight of their bloated and blackened skin, which turned his stomach. Muam clenched his teeth to keep himself from retching.
“What are you standing around for, Samanus? Bend your back like everyone else!” Toriset ordered.
Not knowing if the man was his superior or not, Muam chose to obey. Reaching down, he grabbed one of the corpses under the arms as Ramestes snagged the feet. They hefted the body into the cart, then made their way down the street to where the next one lay.
The task was appalling and sickening, but Muam managed to shut his mind off, making his movements automatic. He quickly learned to hold his breath against the stench. If there was anything to be grateful for, it was the fact that the bodies were freshly dead. In spite of their grotesque appearance, they didn’t reek.
They had gathered six corpses when Toriset called a halt. “Let us dump this load.”
Grabbing a side of the cart, Muam helped to push it through the streets until they reached what appeared to be the outskirts of the town. A large cloud of dark smoke rose from the horizon, and as they walked directly toward it, the putrid smell became more pervasive. Muam soon discovered they were taking the bodies to a large pit which had been dug into the ground. There, they dumped their load. As they departed, several slaves scurried over to throw burning bundles of dried grass onto the carcasses.
He was numb inside, barely aware of the work he performed. Flashes of light kept appearing in his mind, teasing him with glimpses of things that had been. Places he’d been. People he’d known.
Gova.
He slowed, and Ramestes gave him a shove from behind. “Let us get this over with,” the man remarked. “The sooner we are done, the sooner we can return to the barracks.”
Muam picked up his pace, but the vision of her beautiful face continued to haunt him. Now that he’d remembered her, more of his past returned. He recalled with vivid clarity the day they were to be married. He saw Teyhas standing before them as he gave his blessings. He saw Kolis interrupt the proceedings, declaring that the marriage was unlawful, then claiming he was taking Gova back because Muam had sold him a defective sword.
Muam flinched. The memories were as fresh as if they’d happened yesterday. Kolis grabbing Gova and threatening her with the broken sword. Muam had tried to save her, but the soldier had turned the weapon on him at the last second, and the shattered blade had pierced his heart. He fell, unable to stop the man from slamming his fist into her chest. He’d heard the crack of bone, then watched in horror as she fell.
He had no memory of what happened to Kolis. His vision dimmed and his body grew cold as Gova managed to crawl next to him. He heard her whispered confession of love. Then the shaman had bent over them, promising them that they would meet again in the afterlife. That they would have their moment of love. Muam had promised Gova he would love her, no matter how long it took. No matter if…
A thousand lives.
A shudder went through him. A thousand lives?
“So be it.” The last words he’d heard, spoken by Teyhas.
And then…oblivion.
“By the gods, I will be glad when this plague is over,” one guard grumbled.
“If you live that long,” Toriset countered.
They reached the outskirts of town just as another loaded cart pulled by soldiers passed by on their way to the burial pit. Toriset instructed them to head down another avenue, which they took.
Muam turned his thoughts and his vision inward. For some reason, he had awakened here in this strange time, in this strange body, in this strange land. He had no way of knowing how he’d gotten here, or what had led up to his being here, yet one thing was certain. He was no longer Muam Kai. That man, that body, had died, killed by Kolis’s broken sword.
Why am I here? For what purpose am I serving?
“Heads up, men.” The warning jerked Muam back to the present. Ahead, a man was dragging a body out of a building. It was evident this was another dumping.
As they drew the cart closer, the man threw an arm up to cover his face and tried to hurry away, but one of the other guards drew his sword and ran after him.
“Defiler!”
Ramestes also pulled his sword, but it was unnecessary. The first guard brought his weapon down, striking the man, who screamed. Blood poured onto the street as the guard continued to hack at the man.
Muam raced up to join the others. The guard casually cleaned his sword on the dead man’s dirty and ragged clothing before sheathing it.
“Why did he…” He glanced over at Ramestes. The man took the tip of his sword and flipped the man’s shirt away in order for Muam to get a good look.
“He was already among the dead.”
One glance at the man’s face explained it all.
“Estiard spared him an agonizing death.”
“By chopping him to pieces?” Muam argued.
Ramestes frowned at him. “What is with your sudden change in attitude, Samanus?”
Pressing his lips together, Muam forced himself to swallow the words he’d meant to say. Instead, he gave a single nod. “Like all of you, I am sick of this.”
“Have faith, Samanus,” his friend remarked. “Hopefully the gods will have also had enough of this pestilence, and will remove their curse soon.”
They piled both bodies on the cart. Not seeing any corpses further down the road, they took the corner to go down the next avenue. Rounding the corner, Muam spotted another body being removed from a building. This time, it was a female who, too weak to pull on the dead weight, had resorted to rolling it.
Estiard drew his sword again as they neared the couple. Hearing them approach, the woman glanced up, and Muam felt his knees go weak.
“Gova!”
The words were out of his mouth before he could think.
Her beautiful violet eyes widened with shock. “Muam?”
He rushed over, enveloping her with his arms, and holding her tightly against him.
“Soldier, what is the meaning of this?” a voice roared in anger.
Muam glanced over at where Toriset stood, face flushed with anger. The sight of the man reminded him of Kolis, and a sick dread began to infuse him.
“This is Gova. She is my wife.”
“Your wife?” Ramestes countered. “You have no wife, Samanus! What is wrong with you? Why are you making such a claim?” He waved a hand at Gova. “She cannot possibly be your wife. She is a slave.”
“And she is marked!” Estiard exclaimed. He reached for Gova’s arm, but Muam blocked his way.
“Leave her be! She is mine!”
“She is dead!” Toriset tersely exclaimed. “Look at her! She is cursed, and so shall you also be cursed!”
“Then let me end her,” Muam asked, humbling himself in tone and posture. He bowed his head at Toriset. “Allow me to end her life.”
“Muam, what is happening? Why are we here?” Gova softly whispered. Her feverish body trembled, sweat beading on her skin.
“Then end her. Now,” Toriset ordered.
Muam looked down to see her staring at him beseechin
gly. “My love?” Her words were barely audible.
He turned to Toriset. “I will end her. You have my word. But give me a moment first to say goodbye.”
Toriset hesitated. Muam couldn’t tell if the man was torn between doing his duty, or the obvious fact that the couple clutching each other were truly husband and wife as Muam had claimed.
It was Ramestes who ended the standoff. “I will stay behind and make sure Samanus fulfills his obligation.” He stared calmly at Muam. “Either he dispatches the female, or I will.”
Knowing he had no other choice, Muam bowed his head. “So be it.”
“So be it.” He barely heard her whisper, but behind it he detected a sense of understanding beginning to dawn on her.
Surprisingly, Toriset agreed to the compromise. “Do not take long.”
As the men went to continue pushing the cart down the street, Muam turned to Ramestes. “I beseech you. Let me have a few words alone with Gova before I put her to the sword.”
The man acquiesced. “I will be over here. Watching.”
Muam understood.
He lifted her face to taste her lips, hungry for their softness. She clung to him. When he lifted his mouth from hers, he spoke hurriedly. “When we died before, when Kolis killed us, Teyhas swore we would meet again.”
“I remember. But he said we would have our moment to love.”
“This may not… This is not that time,” he told her. “Remember what the last thing was I said? That I did not care if it took us a thousand lives? I believe… I believe we will have to endure a thousand deaths before we can finally love.”
“No!” she weakly protested. “I do not want to die again! Not now! Not when I have found you again!”
“We have no choice, my beautiful Gova. We both must die over and over, until we have fulfilled our own prophecy. It is our only chance at happiness. Do you understand? This life, this moment, is all we are given this time, but we will meet again. We will.”
“And when we do?”