Chapter 4

Cold surrounded everything even in the temperate climate. It seemed impossible, yet only chills filled their body. Even the company didn’t add any warmth. Each second just froze more until the body felt like ice itself.

Night fell over the small group with the sea breeze coming over the Greek lands. Even without it in sight, she could smell the achingly familiar scent. She had never lived in their homeland, but it almost seemed burned into all of them, the familiar call of the sea. A siren call to a home lost and burned by war. Something that she could never return.

Around her, sat several unfamiliar faces, those that survived the execution. Next to her the ever cheerful spirit, Korina. Yet further away she saw the back of Aniketos still covered in blood. Flashes of the horror came to her every time that she looked at him. Yet in spite of the fear, she clearly felt something else kept her eyes on him. She wanted an answer to why it didn’t so completely horrify her as to run away.

She helped him bring everyone away to safety. Though what safety that might be remained a question for them all. An invisible weight hung or pressed on everyone. Grateful as they were all for the moment of freedom, how long would it last?

Gunai stood up finally with the strength to press forward. She gave a comforting nod to Korina as the woman pulled on her hand. Released, she walked around the small gathering toward the isolated back of Aniketos. ‘He looks so different…feels so strange…’ Even with the strength to move, doubt carved weakness into her bone with each step. Shaking feet pressed on until she finally stood in his shadow.

The scent of metal hovered in the air and painted her tongue. She tried to swallow to get the taste out of her mouth. It remained. Swallowing until she choked did nothing to change it. A grimace pressed into her lip as she just dealt with it. “You should get cleaned up.”

“Not sure it’ll come off…”

She hadn’t heard him speak with such an empty and cold voice before. It made her step away a little as the chills sapped away more of her body temperature. This wasn’t the same man she talked to and exchanged barbs with in the pit. She tried to lift up her hand towards him, maybe anything human would bring him back. ‘What do I say? I need to think of something…anything! Please someone!’

“Heyyo! Going keep bathing in the blood of your enemies?”

“Korina…

“No…she’s right. I’ve got to keep moving…”

“Aniketos?”

He took in a deep breath and held it. After a few seconds, he gasped letting it free and walked away. The dark cloud that burdened him followed with no amount of levity breaking the fog.

Gunai stared at him, feeling her body leaning towards him. However, Korina stepped in her eyesight. A warm smile stretched over her face as she patted her shoulder. “I can’t…”

“Let’s get back to the group, Gunai! People are getting a little antsy.”

“What do you mean?” She looked back towards the gathering. It was easy to forget that it wasn’t just Aniketos that she escaped with. More people than she found comfortable to be around. She shifted behind Korina and looked around at the group.

“They’re not Greeks, no need to be scared of them!”

She looked again over Korina’s shoulder at the group of strangers. “I don’t know them.”

“Neither do I! But that’s the exciting part, you get to make new friends!”

“I…don’t have any…”

“Aren’t we?” The woman half turned around staring back into Gunai’s eyes looking for an answer.

“We are?” She looked back in the vague direction of her prison. “We just met…”

“Does that matter? We’re friends!”

Gunai stammered and froze up without a response. The pace of Korina was nothing like she had known before. Though as she realized, she knew very few people. Even as a slave, she did little with any of the others.

While her mind tried to figure out Korina, someone dragged her body along. It wasn’t until a slap on the back that she snapped back to reality to find far too many eyes looking at her. Gunai stepped back into Korina. “What’s going on?”

“What are we doing?” asked one of the strangers, a young man. Like everyone, he sat in barely held together tunics dirt caked from their imprisonment.

‘Why are you asking me?’ She looked back to Korina for an explanation.

“Why did you take us?”

‘Because I didn’t want you to die? Is that hard to understand?’

“What are you doing about the Greeks? They’re coming for us!”

“We don’t have anywhere to go! Our masters won’t take us back!”

All the questions slammed against her without reaction. She looked stone cold to all the strangers, while she completely seized up. ‘I can’t answer questions I have myself! I don’t know what I’m doing!’ Gunai grabbed onto Korina’s wrist reflexively thinking it was Aniketos. She squeezed tightly not even thinking about her action. ‘What do I do? What do we do?’

“But we’ve got a Mother’s Blessed!”

“That’s right! Maybe we’ve got a chance.”

“With him, we can…”

Their almost hungry manic voices dragged Gunai back to reality. She caught their gaze, all demanding answers from her. As the one attached to the man, she clearly had to know. The promise of a Blessed channeled an unnerving intensity from them. “What? What do you want?”

Silence came from them with some surprise as though what they said required no thought. “To live.”

A simple answer. She felt similarly hearing the crunch and pound of metal on metal. The echoes of her words stabbed into her mind. Emotions that she didn’t even know that she possessed surfaced. And through some miracle, they lived.

One more day, they lived.

It had to be more than that though, right? They, she wanted more than to live, right? That was what she wanted. That was right to ask for, no? This was a normal feeling she had?

“But there’s nowhere in Greece where we can live…”

“Why did you free us if you’re just going to let the Greeks kill us?!”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“What do you want from us?!”

“Who are you?”

“I-I…” Gunai stepped back into Korina as the whiplash of the change in mood nearly took out her feet. So many emotions covered their faces and each one only had questions. Each pressed heavier on her than the last. She looked back towards the fort with a morbid longing suddenly.

Korina patted Gunai, feeling her shaking body against her. She looked at the strangers. “Do you know the song about the Egyptian Prince and Corthinian farmer?”

She received a series of confused looks and tilted heads. They all sort of froze and exchanged uncertain looks between each other. Given the limited time with the woman, they knew she liked to joke, but her face gave nothing away. It felt almost uncharacteristic for her to have such a stoic expression.

“Korina?”

The jokester turned to give Gunai a grin and pulled away, motioning to her. She then stepped forward to the gathering becoming the focus of attention. “She had to find a good rhythm for plowing!”

Gunai quickly backed away hoping not to pick up their attention. She gave silent thanks to the woman as she reached for the ridge they stopped on. Looking around, she noticed a dark shape near the edge of her sight, alone. Her mind immediately knew who it had to be without question. She walked around the edge finding the safe way down.

“Tough crowd…” Korina commented, her voice fading out with distance.

As she approached the dark figure that even the moon couldn’t illuminate, a pool of water came into sight. ‘A lake? No, a pond, I think…was it always here?’ She didn't know the area or even remember much of it as they ran away. Yet something about it felt a little out of place, like the water should have escaped somewhere else.

Without care for her step, her bare feet snapped a branch alerting Aniketos. He snapped around on guard only to see that it was Gunai. “Gunai! What…” A sigh came out of his mouth as he looked away from her.

The longer she looked around at him, his tunic clung to his body soaked in water and blood. Despite how much he seemed to be covered in water, the stains wouldn’t leave. Splotches of blood on his face and arms flashed her back to the murderous scene once more. It slammed into her making her body shake out of instinct.

She clutched her face in her hand, stepping back for a moment. Aniketos quickly rushed through the water to her side. “I’m sorry…bad memories…”

The blood stained man paused and half turned away from her. “I can’t…I don’t understand what came over me. I shouldn’t have done something like that, but I felt so much rage… I lost control of myself…”

Gunai reached out for him. “No…you felt normal…I felt the same… I didn’t know I could still feel like that. All that death…” She started to shake again as her memories recalled it, but left something strangely off putting in her. Something was missing, she blinked trying to find it. It didn’t make any sense to her. “I did…but it’s gone…what’s wrong with me?” The confused woman looked up to Aniketos as she dropped to her knees.

He quickly snapped out of his turmoil and rushed to her side. “Gunai! Are you hurt?” Aniketos hugged onto her feeling the shaking and panic through her body. “What’s wrong?”

“Why? Why don’t I feel it anymore?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The rage, hate…I remember it. When they were going to kill you, I remember the colors of emotions. But I can’t feel that anymore. I’m just scared…what does it mean?”

Confused, he held her close in silence. Words seemed pointless and useless for her, not that he had a clue what to say to her. Each thought came to a deadend before he could even form words. Rubbing her back and letting her cling to him was all he could do. His jaw clenched as his teeth rubbed together.

Once she calmed down, he helped her back up and checked on her. Her face remained covered in twisted wrinkles of emotions, a multitude of conflicting reactions. Even as the extreme carved lines softened, he could still see it there, hiding instead. “Gunai…”

“I’m sorry… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Gunai. You’re just frightened. You saw…” The blood raining around and painting his body flashed to him. “...something horrible. Something no one should. You’re normal. It’s me, that’s not…”

She shook her head feeling the loop start again. “No, you can’t feel that way.”

“It’s all I feel…rage…hatred…I never knew I had such violence in me. Maybe all it takes is one act of evil, one push and we’re no longer human like they say.”

“We’re all human!”

Aniketos withdrew from Gunai. He could still see the blood on his arms and he tried to rub it off. His hand dipped into the water and tried again, but it remained, always. “You saw what I did. I’m not anymore! I’m what they all fear… Reason we fought and why we’re slaves. Why they watch us so closely! Because the damned gods won’t end this curse of ours!”

“But you don’t have to be…you can be anything!”

He stopped trying to get the blood off and looked back at her. Stretching out his arms calling to himself, he shouted, “What can I be!?” Aniketos pointed at Gunai as his emotions took control of him. “What do you want to be? That house you want?”

“I don’t know…” Gunai searched around her like looking for an answer, but not finding anything of help. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been a slave since I was born. What do I do? You told me to think about the future and have hope! What do I do, Aniketos? Tell me! Every step I take is unknown to me and frightening! I don’t know where I’m going. Everyone’s asking me what to do!? What do I do!?”

She panted, having unloaded everything pent up. A bit of relief that might have even given her a smile had she not felt so miserable. Gunai dropped down in the water again, though this time more sitting. It rippled around her, chilling her body. “What are we supposed to do?”

Suddenly the water disappeared along with the wet tunic. The chill almost felt like an illusion now as she looked around in confusion.

Aniketos approached her, kneeling down. “I made the water. The blood…”

“The Blessing…”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have shouted at you. This fire in me is so unfamiliar…”

She reached out cautiously for Aniketos touching his cheek. “For both of us…I don’t know what to do with this freedom. I look for a path, but it’s not there. It’s just a blank emptiness.”

“Then we should fill it in with things, right?”

“Like what?”

“That house, whatever you want. Anything can be yours!”

“Anything?” She was reminded of when he asked her about what she would do when they got out. A pointless question at the time and not ironically important. Gunai stood up, guided by Aniketos. Her body calmed seeing him smile. Though he still felt a little out of reach, the smile grounded him more than she had seen today.

She nodded to him.

“Let’s go back to the others.”

They climbed back up to their campsite, for as much as a gathering of people around an empty mound might be called a camp. The more than a dozen individuals gathered didn’t look nearly as scary, though they also weren’t focused on her yet.

She squeezed onto Aniketos’ hand for strength as they approached. Korina didn’t look to be near. She looked around if the woman sat off alone. Nowhere along the edge of the moonlit darkness could she be found. Gunai tried one more time before focusing on the direct problem ahead of her. ‘She’s probably around somewhere…’

Several of the people stood up seeing them return. It signaled the others to join them and rush over to both of them. Once more expectant eyes fell upon them.

“What are we going to do?”

“Can you keep us safe from the Greeks?”

“Do you have a plan?”

Gunai looked up to Aniketos briefly before coming back to them. With him, the questions didn’t seem as intense as before. She wished that she had a better answer for them. She wanted a better one for herself, but it felt impossible for now. “I think we need to leave. Find somewhere safe out of the reach of the Greeks.”

“But where can we go? They control nearly everything!”

“Then we’ll find somewhere they haven’t been! Beyond their reach where we can have freedom and time to find what we want to do.” She nodded to herself as she spoke. It felt like the right answer to her. Though she still didn’t know where to go. What land was beyond the reach of the Greek’s power?

Looking at the strangers, they still felt a little uncertain about her answer. Some gave slow nods in agreement wanting freedom. None of them knew this sort of uncertainty of what tomorrow brought. They all had the same life and birth as her. No one in her generation knew anything else.

However, Aniketos squeezed her hand tightly, painfully. She nearly yelped looking up at him in a little confusion. She could have swore that she felt his hand on fire as his body seemed to shake. She tried to reach out for him to ease his pain. The emotions rose out of control.

He broke away from her and then pulled away. Aniketos straightened out almost like he grew an extra bit of height. The sight of his back changed to a harsh intensity. There was something familiar about the presence she watched as everyone almost drew to him like he had his own attraction. They wanted his words, his voice to be their bread.

Aniketos looked down to the weak and needy strangers. The ones that would place all of their problems on someone else. “I’ll do it,” he whispered to himself. It acted like a charm to him, infusing his body and brain with assurance.

His foot stamped down at the ground as a ripple shot down. The tunic disappeared from his body molded into leather armor. All of the strangers wearing tunics changed given similar protective leather attire. “We will free our enslaved brethren and kill any Greek that stands in our way! They won’t take our freedom again!”