Ruin and Rebirth

by Michael Whitehead

  The sight that greeted Garic was both wonderful and horrific. On one side of him were hundreds of bodies, men and women torn apart with horrendous wounds. On the other, the field was grey with a layer of ash-like dust. As if something had happened that had instantly burned the Risen to cinders. Nowhere was there an undead to be seen.

  A man close to Garic began to laugh. There was no humour in sound and the man looked shocked to have made it. He clapped a hand to his mouth and then allowed another bark of laughter to escape around it.

  All around him he saw the living, shaking off the idea that they were to die and beginning to live again. There didn’t seem to be anyone who was willing or able to give orders to the milling men. The legionaries in particular, looked lost without a leader after years of the ingrained routine of military life.

  He had lost sight of Ursus and Numarius almost as soon as they had all entered the fight. He turned to see the legate standing, covered in a layer of dust and he understood that the man must have been surrounded by undead when their end came. Bewilderment and shock were etched on the commander's face, but he smiled when he saw Garic.

  To one side, the body of Ursus lies twisted and broken. He is soaked in blood, both red and black. A grimace of defiance is carved onto his face. The two men lock eyes over the body of the fallen prefect and they nod understanding to each other. They don’t know what has happened, but they know what it means. They have stared into the face of evil and they will never forget it.

  A few feet from the fallen Prefect, Garic sees the body of the young man who had persuaded him to join this fight. Julius lies among a pile of dead legionaries, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Garic hobbles toward the young man’s body, feeling the agony of his broken ankle with every movement. He leans down and rolls his eyelids shut with his thumb. It seems only right to do so.

  The first of the gathered men began to walk toward Rome. Garic watched grey dust kick up from beneath their feet as they crossed the field, toward the road to the city. Other men began to follow them, as if their decision had given them something to focus on. Garic noticed that all but a few of them walked around the field of grey ash. Had he been able to walk, he would have done the same.

  Someone placed a hand on Garic’s shoulder, and he turned to see Hakor looking back at him. The big man looked pale and in pain, and his wound had been dressed but Garic noticed his hand was shaking as he stood before him.

  “I thought I’d seen the last of you, my friend,” the Egyptian said, a slight quiver to his words.

  Garic had thought that he was in control of his emotions, but hearing the hitch in his friend's voice brought everything to the surface. The battle, the death, the surety that he would not survive and see his family again, everything rushed toward him and he began to cry.

  Hakor stepped forward and took Garic in his arms, and he rested his weight against the big man, aware that the African was hurt himself. The two men stood on the field of the dead and every emotion they had came flooding out of them. Around them men of all ages gathered their own thoughts and dealt with their own shock, and paid the two of them no mind at all.

  They walked from the field, numb and spent, Garic being helped to walk by his friend. Hakor lowered him onto the trunk of a fallen tree and found a medicus to examine Garic’s ankle. He declared it broken but not badly damaged. He wrapped it tightly with strips of cloth and two pieces of smooth wood, and produced a heavy wooden staff for Garic to use as an aide. Around them the other injured lay waiting for help. The enemy might be gone but the wounds they had caused still remained.

  Someone passed Garic a drink. He swallowed wine through bruised and painful lips. The dark red liquid eased his dry throat, washing away the taste of the dust and the battlefield, at least for a while.

  The afternoon was drawing toward evening by the time the two friends walked into the city of Rome. To one it had been home, all of his life, to the other it had been a place that had made him a slave.

  As they walked they passed a skin of wine between them. It was not enough to numb the pain of their injuries or the memories of the day. They would find more later and hope for oblivion.

  The streets were deserted, only the men who had fought the undead walked in the city and their number was lost in the size of the place. So many of the buildings were damaged or destroyed by fire. It felt like a city that had been left empty for years rather than weeks.

  They walked in silence, numb shock washing over them at the desolation of the city, smelling the smoke that still wafted out of the arena and settled over the streets in the still evening air. Garic led the way, not really knowing where he was heading, just allowing his feet to find their way.

  After a while he understood that he was walking back toward the house he had lived in with Atia and Tulius. It no longer felt like home to him, and as he saw it he realised that this was no bad thing.

  The small row of terraced houses was no more than a blackened wreck. The walls were holding up the bare skeleton of a roof and every surface was smoke and fire damaged.

  They tried to remember the countless days that had seen him return to this place after a day at the market. The joy of opening the door and hearing Atia singing to Tulius. The smell of food on the stove, the first cup of wine in the evening.

  Spring had been the best time, before the heat of summer turned the city into an oven. They would sit on the terrace at the back of the house, drinking and enjoying each other's company, never dreaming that it could all be torn away in the blink of an eye.

  Now he understood that it was the people that made a city what it was. Rome was no more than a collection of stone and wood. You could rebuild those things anywhere. Family and friends were what made a place special.

  “Life goes on,” Hakor said to him, without taking his eyes off the houses.

  Garic turned away from the place he had called home, “My friend, I still don’t understand how, but you’re right.” He smiled at the Egyptian and saw the smile returned to him. The two men turned away from the burned wreck and into the city.

  Lucia and Vitus walked back into camp at the head of a ragged band of survivors. The shock of the fight in the pine forest was etched on their faces. The days between then and now had been a dream where nobody seemed to speak, and nobody wanted to. Had Regulus been there, he would surely have been the one to bring them all out of the stupor they were feeling, but he was not.

  They passed through the gate of the camp and Vitus helped Lucia find her room, where the matronly Rosa was waiting anxiously for news of the woman she had raised since she was from a baby. He watched looked on as they found each other's arms and dissolved into what would be the first of many tears. He watched them for a moment, a little jealous at the comfort they could give each other, then he left them.

  He wandered the camp, allowing his mind the time to be blank and numb after everything that had happened. In the days and months to come there would be work to be done. So much had been lost, so much that could never be regained. They could, however, start again. They could build, they could live once more.

  The world had emptied but it had not died. Despite everything, there was still hope. He let himself remember the friends he had lost, and those he hoped to find again. Regulus, Antonius, Domitius, Garic, and even young Lee. He would travel to Rome, calling in on those friends he could find on the way, hoping and praying that they were still safe. He would gather them to him and move on to the city.

  After that, who was to say? Each day would bring a new challenge, a new obstacle. Life would be hard for those that remained. Everyone who had gone was a missing part of life as they had known it.

  Still, he thought, at least there was still life.

  Epilogue

  He is a watcher, a guardian and a protector.

  He knows that he was once one of them, but he can’t remember who he was. He sees their world from a different realm. He guards the doorway that protects their world from doom. There is death he
re, and he is all that stands in its way. He does this because it is his destiny. He has a vague recollection of love.

  His eye is drawn to them, those to whom he once belonged. The living, the vital. His heart no longer yearns to be one of them as it once did. His memory of his life before is fading. He is becoming, he is fulfilling his fate.

  Until he forgets his life completely, his eye is drawn to a group of people. He feels like he knows them, but he can’t be sure. He has an idea that they might remember him. They might once have called him friend, may even have loved him.

  He watches them from this great distance. They were once scattered but now they are together once more. They love and laugh, they mourn and they cry, they live. They have gathered together in a place he once called home, but that knowledge is lost to him. He watches them eat and drink together, those who have survived the plague of the undead.

  They remember the dead, they celebrate the living. They have all lost someone, and so they cling to those who remain all the harder. They know the gift that is life and they refuse to waste it.

  He watches them together, from the oldest grey haired statesman to the youngest child who still totters and falls if he tries to walk. Each one of them understands the gift he has given them.

  There is one among them who means more to him than all the rest. She is a wonder to him. When all the world is lost to his recollection, she will be burned into his heart. He knows she is in pain and his last mortal wish is that he could take that pain from her, but he can’t.

  He watches them and understands, this will be the last time. He is moving on to something more than this fragile world. He has his own line, his own family. Those that came before him are once more at peace, and now he will await his turn to join them. In the meantime, he will perform his duty.

  There are those who would destroy this thing of beauty, this world of wonder, this life that he watches. He understands that he is all that stands against them. He is not afraid and he will not falter.

  He is a watcher, a guardian, a protector.

  He is Viddus.

  There follows a sample of Mersey Dark, a new book by this author

  A sample chapter from Mersey Dark – The Templeton novels – Book One

  By Michael Whitehead

  Prologue

  Saint Helena 1826

  Clouds passed over the moon, darkening the estate as the slave was dragged before his master. Many of the men around him carried torches, and a bonfire was banked up high, adding a new layer of ash to the scorched circle on the scrub grass lawn. Outside the flickering orange light, the night was black.

  He did not cry out as he was thrown to the ground. His hands were tied behind his back and his face scraped against the packed earth. A small trickle of blood caught the torch light, blackening the corner of one eye. The look he gave the men who stood over him was defiant and proud.

  “Where was he when you found him?” The master asked.

  Sir Thomas Richmond was a portly man, accustomed to fine dining and little in the way of exercise. Given a fair fight the man on the ground could have bested him in a heartbeat, which was entirely the reason that Sir Thomas did not fight fair. He had the might of The East India Company behind him and that was a force strong enough to mean he never had to fight again.

  This man was his property, at least until Alexander Walker, the governor of Saint Helena, finally got his way and forced the emancipation of brutes like this. That day would see Sir Thomas Richmond show these abolitionists what he thought of them. They would not tell him what he could and could not do with his own property.

  The plantation grew the best coffee outside of the Americas and it had made the Richmonds wealthy beyond measure. Still, it was a sorry state of affairs when the rights of heathens were put before those of the British aristocracy.

  “He was down by the dry river bed, Sir Thomas,” James Whitchurch, the estate overseer, answered. He looked nervous and rightly so, he was responsible for the security and punishment of the slaves, especially runaways. The man on the ground had run before and should have been under close watch, still he had been allowed to escape a second time. His back was striped as punishment for his first offence, the white scars plainly visible even in this low light. Evidently that had not been lesson enough.

  “What exactly do you suggest we do with him, Mr. Whitchurch?” Sir Thomas asked, giving the man the chance to recover some of his former standing, both with the men and himself.

  “Twenty lashes, Sir Thomas. That is the normal punishment for a second offence.” James Whitchurch sounded confident as he passed judgement.

  “Not for a second offence of absconding, Mr. Whitchurch,” Sir Thomas answered. He looked about him, at the gathered men who held their torches high. He was fully aware that parliament would soon be bringing nights like this to an end. The apologists and weaklings were running scared, unwilling or unable to fight back against the local populations that had risen up against the ownership of slaves.

  “I’m sorry, Sir Thomas. I will have to defer to your good self. What would you like us to do with the man?” Whitchurch said, his subservience making the hairs on the back of Sir Thomas’s neck rise.

  The estate owner looked down at the man on the ground, he still wore a defiant expression. Really, thought Sir Thomas, these men were treated far too well. Did he not give them enough food for two meals a day? He allowed them to live as married couples, even allowing them to breed. The last part had of course been more than a little self-serving. Men with families did not run away and the children could be put to work as soon as they could walk and pick crops.

  “What is your name?” Sir Thomas asked, speaking to the slave directly, not something he usually chose to do.

  The man answered with a name that sounded so foreign to Sir Thomas’s ear that he didn’t even try to understand it, instead he turned back to Whitchurch for an answer.

  “We gave him the name David, sir.”

  “David? Very well, a biblical name at least,” he said turning back to the man on the ground. “Tell me David, why did you try to run away tonight?”

  David’s chin actually rose a little as he looked his master in the eye. Far from being frightened by this situation, he seemed to be drawing strength from the chance to show his distain.

  “I run, because I run,” David said from his place at the feet of his captors.

  Mr. Whitchurch stepped forward and swiped a backhanded blow across the slave’s cheek.

  “Call the master, sir,” he said, then stepped back to allow Sir Thomas room.

  “Really? You just decided to run away, knowing you would almost certainly be caught and brought back for punishment?”

  David stared back at Sir Thomas, his mouth tightening into a thin line of defiance.

  “Very well,” sighed Sir Thomas. “Throw him on the fire.”

  The defiant look disappeared off David’s face the moment the words were out of his master’s mouth. They were replaced by fear and panic, the exact look Sir Thomas had hoped to see there from the beginning.

  “My child is sick, Sir! My child is sick!” the slave shouted as he struggled on the ground, trying to free himself from the clutches of four of the estate men. Sir Thomas waited, letting the tussle go on long enough that David was close to the flames. The slave put up a good fight, showing what years of work in the fields could do for a man’s physique. The estate worker who held one of his arms was forced to let go, allowing David the chance to scramble back a little of the distance they had managed to pull him toward the fire.

  “Wait,” Sir Thomas said, almost lazily.

  The men who were now fighting with David, stopped and turned toward their employer. David continued to struggle, close enough to the flames that sweat was standing out on his face and bare chest.

  “What is wrong with your, son?” the estate owner asked.

  “He has a fever, sir. I was going to get help.”

  “Why did you not ask for the estate do
ctor to see him?”

  “Sir it is not part of my beliefs, I wanted the doctor in the village to see him. ”David said, trying to step toward his master but being pulled back to stand near the fire.

  “Against your beliefs? Have you not been attending the Sunday school? You should have been baptised by now, are you not a Christian?” Sir Thomas could feel the anger rising in him. These savages and their blasphemous religions were enough to make the blood boil.

  He turned to the gathered men who were standing and watching as if this was fine entertainment. The nearest was a young man of about twenty with the pitted face of a smallpox survivor.

  “Go and fetch this man’s son. In fact, fetch his wife and any other children as well.”

  “Sir Thomas, David’s wife died when his son was born and he only has one child,” Whitchurch interrupted.

  “Very well, bring the boy to me,” Sir Thomas said, losing patience.

  Four men ran off into the darkness, carrying their torches. The slave quarters were not a place men liked to go alone, even in the day time. At night it was tantamount to suicide. A knife in the dark, and a man could disappear. On a night like tonight, with the master’s men combing the estate, the quarters would be rife with rumour and intrigue.

  After a few moments they came back carrying the prone figure of a twelve year old boy. He was naked from the waist up, as was his father. A sheen of sweat coated his body and face despite the cool evening air, and as he was carried into the circle of men a low moan escaped him.

  “So you tell me that you don’t want Doctor Venables to tend to your son, David? You would rather risk being caught running away?” Sir Thomas asked, looking down at the boy from a distance.

  “Sir, the doctor in the village has tended to my family for years. He knows the spirits that would sicken my son, he can keep him safe,” David answered.