by Aaron, Blair
“Rollus, tell me what's bothering you--”
“Honestas, or Respectability. Our first hunting season, when all the other guys wanted to bed the girls instead of making the hunt, you spent that time alone, preparing your hunting gear. No one knew you never went to the brothel like the other guys did, except me. Pietas, or loyalty. No matter how little I could offer you, you protected me as your best friend.”
“Yes, of course, my friend. You're my true comrade. We have been together since we were just kids.”
“Yes, of course. And after reading all those virtues, I had not one of them. None. Truthfulness. Sternness. Health. Prudence. Industriousness. Frugality. All these and more, I lacked, while you were blessed with an overflowing supply of.”
“You have a virtue I will never have, Rollus.” Zamir wanted Rollus to value himself more.
“And what's that, my Grace?”
“Auctoritas, Spiritual Authority,” Zamir said, his words strong and forceful to Rollus' ears. This was the one virtue he indeed lacked but which Rollus had more than anyone. “You knew from such a young age, what it meant to suffer. The grief of losing your family to the enemy made you stronger.”
“It made me pitiful, my Grace.”
“No, stronger. You had an empathy and compassion for those who were mistreated long before I knew it. Do you not remember all the times you reminded me how important it was to pick the smallest kids for play first? Have you forgotten the times you showed me how much my sternness and strength could hurt others, even when I was not aware?”
“You would have learned that sooner or later. I was not of much use. But now it's time to quit this talk. I want to thank you for all you have given me. And I want to say--”
“What is this?” Zamir asked, utterly confused about his friend's direction of the conversation.
“I want to apologize for my actions.”
“Rollus, you've done nothing wrong.” Zamir grabbed him by both shoulders and pulled him close to embrace him, hoping to remind him yet again that Rollus need not feel guilty for failing to live up to Zamir's image. But Rollus didn't hug back, and his words rang out in Zamir's mind, as he saw shadows move from within the forest. Zamir realized that, yes, Rollus had in fact been speaking with someone in the forest. Not just one person, but many people, and as the Obotrites emerged from within the woods, one at a time, Zamir's heart broke for the betrayal he ultimately knew was coming. He let go of Rollus, to speak directly to his face. The man seemed to go limp in his hands, as if all his life-force had suddenly been sucked from within him, and only a shell of a person was left. “My dear friend. You have betrayed me,” Zamir said in a matter of fact tone, unable to process the danger he was now in. Without thinking further about the matter, he turned to the main camp, his thoughts on saving many of them as he could his top priority. He screamed into the still tents, full of sleeping warriors, as hard and loud as he could. “My men! Awake yourselves! The battle has found us unprepared this night!” Almost immediately, Joslyn emerged from the tent, his face weary from sleep, looking around for the alarm Zamir had just sounded. He jolted back into his tent and re-emerged with his sword. He locked eyes with Zamir. “Joslyn, my friend has betrayed me! Remember this if you remember nothing else!” Before Joslyn could respond, his face showing signs of a continued effort to piece together the night's events, Zamir felt a violent grip of a Obotritian warrior on either shoulder, sending a familiar pain shooting through his torso. He looked down at the warrior's dagger buried deep within his abdomen. He immediately pulled it from his body and used the same weapon to obliterate the Obotrite who put it there. He waved the dagger across the man's neck, and as Zamir turned to face him, he could see a lock of confusion run across the man's face, whose goatee was smothered with mud and whose matted grey hair hung down over his eyes. He fell down onto the ground, blood spilling from his neck. Holding his side, Zamir turned to the crowd of his men now emerging from the tent. “Fight, my warriors. Fight with all you have got! We have been betrayed!”
And fight they did. All the men, rushing to arm themselves with their freshly sharpened axes and whips and ball and chain flail, banded together, and Zamir could see the training he put them through finally pay off. They organized themselves into a circle of men, the strongest on the outside slicing and dicing through the Obotrites with vigor, making their way over to Zamir's location, as he continued to tear each and every Obotrite that came his way into pieces. Had anyone been watching, Zamir's efforts would have appeared that he had not been wounded, so easy a time he had tearing the warriors apart. He was almost twice as big as those warriors, but they were many, far outnumbering his men by the thousands. They spilled from the edge of the forest in droves, wave after wave of them pouncing, slicing, stabbing, and beating their way onto Zamir. At least 20 Obotritian warriors piled onto Zamir's body, tearing at his clothes and stabbing his legs with their makeshift weapons. The adrenaline made it easy for him to ignore the pain, at least at first, but he could only hold them off for so long.
“My Grace! Fight for your honor,” he heard Rollus say. “He has betrayed us, men!” Rollus shouted through the noisy fighting. Some of the men responded by hovering near Rollus, and around him to protect him getting injured.
“Lies! You scoundrel!” Zamir yelled, looking through the crowd for Joslyn, who reached him from behind, backing him up.
“My comrades, ignore Rollus! I saw the whole thing. He lies!” Joslyn screamed through the crowd as he and Zamir stood against each others' backs. The fought their way to the high ground, to where they were in a safer spot. Eventually two groups of Zamir's warriors formed, one flanked by he and Joslyn, with the other featuring Rollus as the center. Amidst the fighting, the men managed to already form an opinion as to who was telling the truth.
But they were losing the battle, and quickly. Despite their extensive training and more sophisticated weaponry, Zamir's four hundred warrior could not handle the two thousand Obotrites. He watched as his men, one by one, dropped like flies, in only a matter of minutes.
“We're losing, sir,” Joslyn said to him, under the barrage of fighting. “We're not going to make it.”
“Don't speak like that, or the God's will give you that wish,” Zamir said, rubbing the mud from his brow.
“The God will do what they must,” Joslyn said. “But so will I.” The two groups of fighters grew smaller by the second, and they migrated closer together, as Rollus and Zamir fought the smidgeon of Obotritian warriors between their two groups. As they got closer together, Zamir made eye contact with Rollus, and his expression spoke volumes. Rollus turned to the two groups, which were at this point merging into one.
“My friends and compatriots!” Rollus said. “Stay with me, and Odin will reward you with handsome riches in the afterlife. There is a traitor in our midst! Make me your General and Supreme Commander, and I'll decide the proper fate for the traitor Zamir. The lesser one!” They responded in acceptance.
“He lies!” Joslyn continued. “I was there! Do not trust him. He will betray you as well. Zamir cares for you men. He cares for your families and your children. Do not toss him to the wolves which you currently surrounded by. You will regret it to the end of your days.” Zamir said nothing, as he was busy fighting the blockheaded Obotrites, one of whom was tall and strong enough to pick up a large boulder to throw into the dwindling crowd of Zamir's army.
“Take this, weaklings,” he said, pushing the block above his head and into the air. The other Obotrites followed suit, picking up the largest rocks they could find and tossing them high into the air, so that they rained down onto their enemies heads. The center of the single group, which Zamir could not see, as he protected it from the outside ring, suffered blows from the boulders, smashing eyes and cracking skulls.
Then, Zamir saw another Obotrite warrior drink a swing of fluid from a canister, then spray it from his mouth onto a sack of cloth. Other enemy warriors stripped some of Zamir's men naked, using their clothes for a
mmunition, spraying that cloth with fluid as well. The Obotrite warrior used a sharp sword to scrape against a rock, making a small spark onto the cloth, which then ignited into a violent flame. He continued doing this, circling around Zamir's group of men, which now numbered less than 50. Never would he have thought that his mighty arm could be reduced this quickly to something this small and pathetic. In some ways, he wished this reality was the nightmare, and the dream which had awoken him was his real life. He preferred becoming a werewolf to this situation. The fire grew in size around Zamir's group, and he could feel the heat. Some of his men started screaming from their burns.
“Rollus, I can't believe you!” he said, and as if he had magical powers, he turned around to face Rollus himself. Rollus no longer hid his hatred for Zamir, and the hurt and pain Zamir felt had no comparison to any experience he had heretofore in his life. “Why, my friend?” Zamir asked him.
“In case you haven't noticed, my Grace, I'm not your friend,” Rollus whispered so the other men could not hear his true intentions. “When all this is over, and I'm the only one left standing, I will make sure to kiss your wife on your behalf, if not much more,” he said, a vicious twinkle in his eye. Those words stung Zamir to his core, and in that moment, he became two people. His old self began its long journey to atrophy away, and his new self was left, full of red-hot anger and fury. Something in Zamir came to life, a piece of himself he was not familiar with, something not even the most violent wars and ugly deaths he had witnessed brought out. His animal nature emerged, as he stared with an eagle's concentration on his former friend. Zamir was oblivious to the growing red light which bubbled over the group of men, like some supernatural crystal cocoon, coming from deep, wild nature, to save Zamir from almost certain doom. Rollus looked up into the air, as the red crystal blossomed over the group of men, cooling their burns and shielding them from the barrage of rocks and weapons tossed at them by the Obotrites. They were safe, but none of them knew why. Zamir's last 15 men dropped their weapons and looked about them, at the red crystal in which they found themselves, the walls glowing fire hot in color but not in touch. Rollus' eyes wandered around the tiny area in which he found himself, trapped with the military men he betrayed, and their leader, who still stared at him with murderous rage.
“What is this?” Rollus asked, looking around the red crystal structure. Zamir stepped toward him, anger and rage building to its exploding point. Rollus finally noticed the sword in Zamir's hand.
“Listen, my Grace. You are not the kind of man who murders.”
“You betrayed me,” Zamir said, “Betrayed all of us.” He looked around at the few men left alive. Joslyn was one of them. He stepped forward, addressing the other 14 men.
“This man here, as Odin is my witness, has put all of you in this situation. He alone is responsible. Look at what's he's done.”
“What is this thing? How do we get out of here?” one of the men asked.
“The real question is,” Zamir said, “what should we do with this traitor in our midst?” He picked up Rollus by his collar, his feet hanging off the ground almost six inches. “Tell me my friend, what should we do?”
“Please,” Rollus said, trying to look away from Zamir's glare. “I don't wish to die.”
“And do you think these men wished to die? Look around you, at all these dead bodies. These were my boys! I trained them. You didn't even give them a chance! What is it you wanted? What were you after?”
“Nothing, my Grace. I just wanted to help you, to serve you.”
“You wanted my position didn't you, good friend? Why should I spare your life, when you gave almost no consideration for the lives of these men, who are now gone forever?”
“Please, don't kill me. I was only trying to help. Zamir, my friend, I love you.” And these three words, even though he now was certain rang hollow in Rollus' heart, even though nearly every last one of his warriors lay essentially murdered, and even though Zamir knew full well his former friend's true intentions, all this was still not enough to kill the affection and loyalty he had bestowed on his friends for so many long years. There was no one whom he had adored more or loved longer or known more in terms of time length. Zamir was a man of truth and character. Whatever affection or compassion he showed was genuine. He could not morph himself into artifice or trickery. His granite soul shone bright through the violent times in which he was born, all the way into the future, to a better time, a time when humanity could focus on creation, rather than destruction, cooperation, rather than war. He saw all this and more when he looked into the eyes of the man who had betrayed him so deeply, and it was the better, softer, higher, more noble parts of his soul he grieved for, rather than the betrayal his friend had given him. And yet, when Zamir raised the mighty sword only a true High Commander was worthy to hold, and slid the sharp tip into Rollus' throat, he was thinking of other things, of that very future he had long dreamed of and which was now dying away forever. Gone, permanently. After he dropped Rollus from his hands, now a hollow body, void of life as well as compassion, Zamir hunched down onto the ground, his will to live deflating him to a heap of hulking mass on the ground. Joslyn patted him on the shoulder, but Zamir didn't notice, nor did he move. The 14 men stayed quiet for several minutes out of respect for Zamir's loss.
“My Grace, what should we do?” Joslyn asked after several minutes. But Zamir didn't answer. “My Grace,” he said again, pushing on Zamir's back a little harder. “Are you okay?” The men could see the Obotrites knocking on the crystal from outside, laughing and waiting for their chance to get the last few men left alive.
“We gon' eat yoo.” they said, their voices muffled through the thickness of the red and glowing crystal. Joslyn shook Zamir harder, thinking perhaps he had died of a broken heart, right then and there.
“Sir, we must do something, or they'll find a way in,” Joslyn said. He waited for Zamir to answer. Zamir's shoulders started shaking again, trembling with grief, and his pain shook his whole pain, growing with intensity with every passing second. The walls of the crystal cocoon shook as well, vibrating with the strings of Zamir's devastation. They shook harder and harder until a loud explosion sent shards of crystal in a radial sphere, shredding every last one of the Obotrites. It was a sight to behold, the first supernatural event the men had experienced. When Zamir raised his head, his face flushed hot with red anger and fury, and some men, years later claimed they saw his eyes glow green. He looked around at the massacre, the bloody mix of Obotritian men and his own, shards of red crystal impaled some of them. Others were dismembered. And the site all made Zamir very sad, that such destruction should come needlessly to his people. Winning, this time, came at such a cost to him.
CHAPTER 37
Zamir rode on his horse, alone, flanked by the last of his men. Joslyn tried to ride alongside him. “My Lord, do you need anything?”
He took a deep breath. “I'm fine, dear Joslyn. Please leave me be.”
“My Grace, I've spoken to the men, they've promised me not to speak of what happened today. Not about Rollus or whatever the red crystal was.”
“My men may betray me, that much I know. We all know this now, don't we? Let them do what they may,” he said, continuing on, his blank stare forward, without acknowledging his true friend Joslyn.
“As you wish, my Lord,” he said, falling back into line. They rode onward, toward the town, back to their families, ready to deliver the harsh news of near failure.
CHAPTER 38
“Daddy!” Zamir's son said, once he could be sure the man riding on horseback, flanked by a curiously small army was in fact his father. The child ran from the porch of their home, right into the oncoming horses. Zamir slid off his horse, embracing his toddler son, trying to hide his pain and grief. His son kissed Zamir on the cheek. “You've been gone so long, daddy,” he said, putting his small hand on his father's furry cheek. “I've missed you.”
“And I you,” Zamir said, squeezing the tiny human as hard as h
e was able. He stood there, holding his only child for as long as he could, before his wife emerged from within their humble house. She stood in the doorway, her green eyes glistening in the setting sun, her smile creased subtly, attempting to hide her sheer joy. Zamir let his son down and stepped toward his wife.
“You told me three weeks, boy,” she said, raising her arms anxiously for his embrace. He placed a kiss on her mouth, running his hands through the back of her necks, listening to the pulse beating from her neck.
“You smell of lavender, my wife,” he said, smiling as best he could.
“You noticed,” she said, thankful for the complement. But her smile faded once she saw the pain in his eyes. “What's wrong?” she asked, and before he could answer, she knew. “Where's Rollus?”
“My wife, we must have a brief talk. Come inside with me,” Zamir said, taking her by the hand into the home. He told her the full story, and her exasperations and the covering of her mouth indicated how much she absorbed of her husband's betrayal.
“And you think this dream was somehow an omen?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, lying back onto his bed, his arm softly stroking her black hair. She lay her head on his bare chest, tired. “And what do you think this red crystal was?”
“I saw something bright and red in the forest, in my dreams. What would be the coincidence?”
“I'm not sure,” she said, looking up at him for a brief second and then breaking eye contact. Zamir could sense something had happened. Something was wrong.
“What happened when I was gone?” he asked her.
“Nothing at all. It's just that--” she stopped.
“What?” But his wife's face indicated she was reluctant to confess something to him.
“What is it?”