by JB Michaels
“It all started when the first set of Roman priests and soldiers entered the land to teach us the ways of Yeshua. The sanctuary tree became engorged with spiritual activity, much more than usual as the hearts of men have begun to favor Yeshua. A singular, all-powerful force rather than the traditional Danus, Zeuses, Jupiters, etcetera. The priest went to destroy the idols in the sanctuary, and the spirits didn’t take kindly to his intentions. I do not know where these particular spirits hail from, but they are certainly not indigenous to our land.”
“The trees act as roads for these spirits? You imply that they have come from somewhere else?” Michaela asked.
“You said they began to haunt these parts upon the initial Roman party’s arrival,” Magnus said.
“Yes, centurion. Your people seem to have attracted these malcontents. I am brewing this drink in the hopes that it will aid you in seeing them.” Hutch jumped up from the stool and began to stir once more.
Michaela shook her head and let him stir the pot. “How do we go about defeating them, Hutch? How do we send them back into the sacred tree from whence they came?”
Hutch put up one finger as his other hand stirred. “I know not how to defeat them. I do know that the worship of Yeshua has power. Perhaps Yeshua is the key. His teachings of humility and a better life than the toils of our everyday slog has caught on.”
“You are saying that these spirits feel threatened by Yeshua and have attacked, murdered, stolen children, and destroyed villages! What are we to do? Defeat them with blind faith in a criminal of the empire who was crucified centuries ago?” The Roman centurion’s chest heaved.
“What is this destruction you speak of? Children?!” Hutch threw the stick he used to stir the brose. “It’s worse than I thought! You must go now. Have your men drink this immediately!”
“Warriors! In here now! Grab a cup and drink from the cauldron!” Michaela ordered.
“You must hurry to the sanctuary as soon as you have imbibed the last drop! The spirits will most likely take them there!” Hutch scrambled around his cave dwelling for more cups.
Magnus balked. “I will not have men drink this vile waste.”
“Trust him, Magnus. If he says it will help, it will,” Michaela gently urged.
Magnus looked into her large blue eyes. Her sincerity and his unadmitted desperation urged him to change his mind. “What have I to lose? Romans, you too!”
The Pict warriors and Roman legionaries made a natural single-file line as the cave’s shape dictated to drink the brose.
Magnus dunked his cup into the cauldron and drank from it. The heavy drink tasted of oatmeal and honey. It also burned his throat and warmed him considerably. It tasted better than he thought it would.
“At least it’s good, men. Drink up, as the Druid says.” Magnus continued to drink.
The line moved rather quickly.
Hutch handed Michaela a leather pouch. “Michaela, you need to take this. I am afraid, Roman. I only have enough of this for one person. She is to have it.”
“What is this, Hutch?” Michaela grabbed the pouch.
“It is our traditional blue war paint. Use it only in an emergency.” Hutch nodded his head at her as if she would acknowledge his meaning.
“I will save it for when I truly need it. Thank you, Hutch.”
Chapter Sixteen
The search party reached the sanctuary just as dusk hit the open area. There was little light remaining. The dead Romans were still driven deep into the ground. The great tree loomed large, and the stream flowed with a strong current. The area remained eerily dormant of any paranormal activity and the cries of the village’s children.
Magnus stood ready for battle, his helmet on, his hand on the hilt of his gladius. He truly looked the part of his centurion role. “We must make torches and set up a perimeter. Also, if your men could help remove our dead? I would be in your debt.”
“We shall help, then I shall take my men and split off from you and your men. There are a few places I can search that are big enough to hide that many children. A valley beyond the stream and caves in the mountainsides. Hutch was right to have us come here. The spirits have come from this tree and will most likely have to be forced to return to it.”
“I still don’t know how we are to fight an invisible and spiritual enemy. Shouldn’t we just come with you on the search for the children?”
“You heard what Hutch said. They will bring the children here. In fact, it is best you leave your dead for now and hide in the brush and observe the area. Set up an ambush.”
Magnus lowered his head. He wished he’d thought of the smart, obvious tactic. “You are right. We can hide and wait for them. Should they come with the children, we save the children.”
“The moonlight will show this open area. Let’s hope Hutch’s drink works and we can see our enemy,” Michaela said.
An hour passed. The pink and purple sky signaled evening’s fast approach.
Michaela led her warriors down a ravine formed between two mountains. The valley lay ahead. “I promise we will find your children, Sean. I promise.”
“I do hope. I have prayed to Yeshua as you have said to do. I hope so.” Sean, a tall and stout warrior, walked next to his queen. He held a massive mace.
“I hope the children will be in this valley ahead.” Michaela carried her crossbow and readied a bolt.
“I shall keep prayin— AH!” Sean keeled over, held his stomach, then fell to his knees.
“Sean! What is it?” Michaela put a hand on his back.
The other warriors called out to him.
He raised back up. His eyes glowed bright blue. He pushed Michaela down the ravine. She tumbled a few meters. She spit out a leaf and looked up to her men.
The other warriors readied their weapons.
A thin warrior approached him. “Sean, what is the matter?”
Sean swung his double mace. From the thin warrior’s head burst a cloud of blood and teeth. The thin warrior rolled down the ravine to Michaela. His left eye protruded from the socket. His bottom jaw had been forced sideways. Blood poured from his cracked nose. He was dead.
Chapter Seventeen
Michaela pushed the dead warrior to the side. She stood up on the incline of the ravine.
Sean continued to swing his mace wildly. The remaining warriors had no choice but to defend themselves against one of their own, driven mad from evil spirits with a drooling mouth and glowing eyes.
Michaela found it hard to believe the sight. Sean’s large stature felled three more of her warriors with similar blows to the head. They rolled down to her. Michaela shook her head then aimed her crossbow at him.
The possessed warrior kept his rage fueled like a berserker from the North Seas. He lifted his double mace over his head. Another Pict warrior stabbed his belly while Sean left himself open to the blow. Sean brought down the mace on the back of the warrior’s neck. The stab didn’t faze him. Blood poured from the wound, yet still he continued to battle.
Michaela shot a bolt from her crossbow. It hit Sean’s neck. The wound caused him to hesitate for a brief moment and gave the other warriors enough time to swarm him.
Michaela looked to the sky. Night had fallen over the land. She looked farther down the ravine. The moonlight showed the valley where she’d hoped to find the children.
Michaela realized in that moment that Hutch’s brose had worked. Her heart thumped.
“Oh, Iehova, be with me.”
Instead of children, she saw at least fifty ghostly soldiers marching toward her and the rest of her warriors. They glowed a similar blue to Sean’s unnatural eyes. They wore armor as the Romans did, but their helmets were different and came to a point at the top, some with hair spewing from the point.
Hutch was again correct. They were not of this land and had died in some foreign land, yet somehow lived again in some sinister, otherworldly form.
The sight caused her temporary paralysis. The shock proved too great. She
did not acknowledge the sounds of gruesome death just up the ravine from where she stood.
“Michaela! My queen! I have brought you prizes as we have done in the past before your pitiful fascination with Yeshua!” Sean stood higher up on the ravine. His eyes gleamed bright white and blue, and blood poured from his neck and stomach. In his large hands, he held the heads of six more Pict warriors.
“You slaughtered all of them!” Michaela grabbed for another bolt in her quiver.
“Muahahahahahahaha!” Sean laughed and laughed. He raised the heads of the warriors.
Around him were other warriors who lay wounded, but they still clung to life.
Michaela locked the bolt into place and turned. The ghostly soldiers were closing in on her. They neared the bottom of the ravine and started to march toward her. She found herself in the middle of two evil forces.
Magnus set his men to hide behind the trees surrounding the sanctuary. There were two archers left. He positioned them in the branches of two trees on opposite sides of the sanctuary. The Romans waited patiently for some action. They would not wait long.
The cries of children both very small and more mature, male and female, sounded from somewhere beyond the stream and behind the great oak.
Romanus stood next to Magnus, his shield and spear at the ready. Together, they were set back from the sanctuary a good twenty meters.
“Here they come.”
Michaela aimed her crossbow then thought better of it. She would have no chance.
Sean’s incessant cackling annoyed her. The ghost army closed in.
She fled and ran a straight line that cut parallel through Sean’s position and the army’s.
“Oh, my queen, where are you going?!” Sean laughed.
Michaela knew the real Sean was long gone.
She ran on the awkward angle of the ravine as fast as she could. The moonlight helped make the ground between the trees visible. Still, she could lose her balance easily. Her confidence in her movement was marred by the cover of night. Every step, every footfall, she hoped she wouldn’t fall and be overtaken by the evil spirits.
“She went that way!” Sean yelled.
Chapter Eighteen
Magnus squinted. Did his eyes betray him? Or had Hutch’s ale worked? The children were dragged in a single-file line by partially transparent blue soldiers. Magnus couldn’t quite identify them. They were not Roman, but they looked familiar. The ghosts then put the children in the center of the sanctuary before the tree and atop the dead Roman solders. Magnus counted at least ten children and ten ghostly menaces.
“How are we to fight spirits?” Romanus asked in a whisper.
“I haven’t a clue. We shan’t let that stop us from protecting the children. Legionaries, attack!” Magnus ordered.
The Romans converged on the open sanctuary from all sides. The blue and transparent warriors simply disappeared.
A few of the children began to cry.
“I can’t believe what I just saw,” Brayden said.
A few more soldiers reiterated his sentiment.
“That was far too easy. I am afraid we have much to learn about the nature of our current enemy.” Magnus still held a warrior’s pose, his shield in front and his sword tucked behind it. “Form up around the children. Archers, come down from your post. We need you down here. Cassius, see if you can’t calm them down.”
“We are here to protect you. All will be well.” Cassius patted a girl’s back. She couldn’t have been more than four years old.
Twenty Romans formed a square around the center of the sanctuary. Four sides of five solders. The ten children were in the middle. The moonlight provided some visibility but not enough to comfort Magnus.
“Stay vigilant, men. They will most likely be back.”
Michaela struggled to continue running at a speed comfortable enough for her to feel safe. She turned to assess the distance she’d made from her assailants. They were at least two hundred meters away. Sean ambled to the front of the ghostly division of foreign soldiers.
The forest grew thicker the farther she traveled, and the angled ground of the ravine began to give way to level ground. The sound of rushing water filled her ears. The warrior queen kept weaving between the trees and over the sticks and leaves. She labored to breathe. She ran hard. Survival instinct kicked in and propelled her forward. Her men had been wiped out. She had to make it back to Magnus and his small band of legionaries somehow. Some way.
The sound of water grew louder. She looked to the right. It must have been the same stream that bordered the sanctuary. She still couldn’t see it. Only hear it.
Pain struck her left toe and shot up the rest of her leg. Her utter shock seemed to soften the hard fall she suffered. The wet texture and smell of leaves blanketed her face.
Sean and the spirits must have gained on her.
“She is somewhere in these trees! Fan out! We will find her!”
Michaela stood up and limped forward. She quickly grabbed a low branch to prevent yet another nasty fall. Only she would have fallen much farther this time. Off a cliff and to the bottom of a rocky waterfall.
“Yeshua. Be with me.” She looked behind her.
The pursuant ghost army neared.
Chapter Nineteen
“Magnus, perhaps we should escort these children back to the safety of the village,” Brayden suggested from his west-facing position among four other soldiers.
Magnus agreed. “We can move as one together. Two of you help guide the children.”
“Look! Look!” A young boy of eight years or so pointed to the ground below him.
A rotted hand emerged from the dirt. The earth below them vibrated.
“Cassius, get the children out of there now!”
Cassius and three other legionaries broke the line and pulled the children back toward the great oak tree.
The dead Roman soldiers moved the soil that buried them and stood once more. Their eyes glowed. Some of their limbs indicated the force that had crushed them and drove them into the ground. The flattened and shattered body parts were encased by the blue ghostly spirts. They were a terrifying mix of corporeal, damaged flesh and a blue, supernatural form.
Their deathly, rotting smell sickened Magnus.
The blue spirits powered the dead Roman bodies. Other patches of straw burst into the air. Twenty living Roman soldiers were soon surrounded and confronted by many undead soldiers. Magnus was far too nervous and shocked to count. The priest had even risen from the impacted soil.
“Fight to the center first, men! We are stronger together!” Magnus crouched low. His shield protected him from his chin to his shins. He moved to clear the center of the sanctuary and former haphazard grave.
Together with his four men, he pushed forward. Eight undead soldiers armed with only swords and no shields threw caution to the wind and charged.
“Stop! Hold them, men! They can’t be too powerful!” Magnus dug into a stationary position.
The men next to him did the same. The force of the charge hit their shielded position and caused them to shift only slightly.
“Let them have it.”
The four Romans created a tiny space between each other, and together, they stabbed the enemy then pushed forward with their shields in concert. As one. A force of imperial nature.
Magnus could feel his sword push into the gut of his unholy enemy. He pulled back and thrust his sword forward once more. The undead soldiers fell to the ground. The centurion and legionaries stepped over them and took the center.
“Men! Form up! With me!”
The clanging of swords and the grunts of Magnus’s living legionaries signaled the battle underway as the other fifteen legionaries fought their way to the center.
Michaela weighed her options. Jump into the shallow rocky stream or stay crouched behind the last tree to take root on the top of the cliffside. Both options would likely lead to death.
She closed her eyes and prayed once more.
/> “Oh, my queen! There was a time when a collection of enemy heads would have pleased you and your royal family!” Sean yelled. He sounded as if he were close. Very, very close. Heavy steps crunched the leaves behind her.
Michaela opened her eyes. Hutch’s pouch!
The sound of rustling leaves grew louder and louder. A stick broke on the other side of the tree she crouched behind.
Michaela held her breath.
She reached for the leather pouch attached to her right hip. She froze. Her lungs beckoned for relief. She moved her head slightly forward.
“A cliff! I wonder if my queen jumped off a cliff?” The possessed Sean spoke a few paces away to the right. Closer to the stream. Then he stomped away from the cliffside.
Michaela opened her mouth and took a deep breath. Her heart pounded. She stood up, opened the pouch, and applied the blue war paint to her face, arms, and legs. Every bit of exposed skin.
Chapter Twenty
Magnus and his full charge of remaining legionaries took the center once more. This time the ground they stood on was clear of the crushed dead. The ten children were secured in the center once more. They comforted each other. The older ones held the younger. They displayed tenderness and compassion in the most horrific circumstances.
The battle ended for now. The dead bodies of Roman soldiers were felled once more, this time by their own countrymen, in an unholy simulation of civil war.
“Perhaps now it would be safe to get back to the village,” Brayden said.
“Best to wait here for Michaela and the others. We risk being overtaken by this evil should we march,” Magnus declared.
“Magnus, their eyes still glow.” Romanus pointed his sword at a dead Roman bent over a Pict ceremonial stone.
“They do not remain dead men.” Magnus readied his shield and sword.
