Warlock of Omaha Cubed
Chapter 14: More Bad Dreams
Yumi had brought me a substantial breakfast. I might have not eaten, I was pretty tired and stressed out. I don't like to be in fights and physical confrontations. Any of the confrontations I'd had in the last twelve or so hours would have qualified as a bad year. That included Rabbi Kaitzman being shot and having to resist the Rebbetzin's questioning. They had also mostly happened after bed time, which made them worse.
On top of those moments, I still had the stress of not knowing what to do about what was on that chip in my deep safe. How many more contenders would arrive? Since I was still alive, how many would take another shot? Probably all of them. Yes, I could give the chip back to the White Council, but who would believe I hadn't made a copy? Opened it at least once and looked a little bit? Pretty much every major magical power on the planet wouldn't be satisfied until they had tortured everyone to whom I had ever even shown a glimmer of affection, along with me, to death to find out. Maybe worse.
This was exactly the sort of situation I had always wanted to avoid and now I was in it. The water was above my head and it was hot. Worse, I had no idea of a way to get out from under.
So, I didn't really feel like eating. However, it had been over twelve hours of stressful action with nothing to eat. My body didn't handle fasts that long very well anymore. More importantly, the Wolf inside needed to eat.
So mechanically I put away the breakfast that included a 22 oz rib steak, a big pile of pancakes and a heaping bowl of apples and raisin oatmeal. I washed it all down with a whole pitcher of my was oranges in the last 20 minutes orange juice.
When I was done eating, I repaired to my shop office. I found myself getting sleepy. I checked my bedroom by security camera, Tamar was still asleep.
I spoke, "Novi, please come here."
I could say that anyplace in the house and Novi would just show up.
A few seconds later, a perfectly fresh Stephanie from that calendar more than twenty years gone by walked through my forge office door. Novi/Stephanie was wearing that fishnet thing that she knew was my favorite.
"Yes Master? What can I do for you?" She asked ever so politely in a way that, despite my stress and fatigue, was like a chord being played on my libido.
"First of all, thank-you very much for saving the home and myself from the ant things this morning." I began.
"Of course." She replied.
"Secondly, please let me know when Tamar awakes. I need to talk to you both together. Some things have come up."
"Of course. Will there be anything else?" She continued.
"No nothing for now." I replied.
"Then I'll be about my duties." Novi said as she backed out and closed the doors.
I was thinking of doing something on the forge. Instead, I fell asleep in my forge office chair.
I was in the land of Israel, some two thousand years prior. "How pleasant," I thought to myself, "I so enjoyed my trip to Israel."
As I sunk deeper into the dream, I realized I was a Speculatore in the service of Rome. My job was to seek out resistance to the rule of Rome and crush it. I had been born to a family of minor nobility whose fortunes had diminished in the last few generations. My grandfather, in particular, had squandered the family wealth on whores, collecting pretty slave girls and gambling.
As the child of minor gentry, it was fairly typical that I would serve some time in the Legions.
"Let them make a man of you. Teach you how to handle yourself in a fight. Command men in action. Carry yourself in a way that commands respect." Was advice I had heard as a boy from my Uncle Flavius given to my cousin Tertian as he reached his sixteenth birthday. It was advice one might have heard anywhere in the Empire and more believed because it was such common wisdom.
The Empire always needed the officers it drew from families like my own, the seed corn of the Empire, to ride herd on the plebeians, rabble and barbarians that were used to fill out the enlisted ranks.
Left unsaid by my Uncle Flavius, but perhaps whispered later, was the corollary, a good military career, a few victories in the service of the Empire and one could expect shares in the plunder. Maybe find a few pretty bits oneself and forget to throw them in the common plunder. Such wealth could be used to buy lands, income and property back home, restore the family fortune. With fortunes restored, one might be able to attract the hand of a young lady of good family who would come with a considerable dowry and, perhaps, even an inheritance.
I tried to be a good lad. I studied my classics, martial arts and, when I became a teenager, I only lay with the family cook slave. Yes, she was old and ugly, but it was very thrifty. I saved my drachmas rather than wasting them on whores. My father thought me very virtuous.
As I turned fifteen, my talent manifested.
A healthy, patriotic lad like myself could look forward to a career in the Legions. A lad like me with talent, I was recruited into the Speculatores. I know my Pater Familias was paid a substantial finding fee for me. I could have resented it, but I knew my father would invest the funds in income and, as his only son, I would eventually inherit. So, what was the harm?
In war, the enemies of the Empire had endless shamans, hedge witches, sorcerers and necromancers. Speculatores were the counter force. As Rome gained advantage on the battlefield by equipping and training her men, so did Rome gain advantage in magical conflict, by recruiting and training those with talent.
In peace, the Speculatores were also the secret police of the Empire. We rooted out treason, disloyalty and rebellion. All the more feared for our magical prowess.
The Speculatores trained me in all the skills I would have learned in the Legions. I could handle a sword and myself in a fight. I could take command of a century of legionnaires at a moment's notice and lead them through fire. They also trained me to hunt the Empire's enemies and use my talents.
Of course, the Empire always had many trouble spots, but if you asked where there was the most rebellion, one answer would always come back, Palestine.
Palestine, the recently renamed province that had been Zion but a short time before. Their recent revolt, led by the "Son of the Star" had been crushed and their oh, so holy Temple had been burned. So many Judeans had been slaughtered, it was said it would be enough to paint the entire land red. Only one Judean had been captured and enslaved for perhaps every ten murdered, but it was still enough to collapse the Imperial slave markets with vast oversupply.
One would think the Judeans had learned their lesson. One would be wrong. They clung to their faith fiercely. It should have been obvious that their God had either forsaken them or was weak! Yet they clung to him. As they clung to the faith that Rome had wisely banned, it was, after all, their faith that had driven them into the Son of the Star revolt, they became traitors and rebels. Traitors and rebels had to be rooted out, lest another such rebellion ever emerge. The Son of the Star revolt had been a disaster and had tested the Empire down to her very roots. No one wanted to see another such revolt emerge.
I remembered, an experienced Speculatore had come and lectured us at our Academy about conditions in Palestine.
"Most lands, if you kill the local lords and chiefs, the people will buckle right under. These Judeans, they don't fight for their lords or chiefs, they fight for their God. I think they would keep fighting to the very last one. This would be bad, but it's worse. I can't count how many incidents where one weak, untrained Judean with a stick has slain an entire century of seasoned legionaries and that's not the worst of it. Their sages and holy men, they call themselves "Sons of God," and are called 'Teachers' by the people, they have a presence. It's hard to describe. They can make a thousand disciplined soldiers turn and flee. They can make a fortress unconquerable. They can become unfindable. Worse, it's completely unpredictable how this presence will manifest. That is what our task is. We are the counterbalance to these so-called Teachers. We lead the regular soldiers and root out their treasonous clinging to their religion. Remember, all they have to do is give up their God, and we would accept them as citizens of the Empire. They are completely unreasonable."
In my time, I was posted to Palestine and I began to carry out my duties. I found it quite disappointing. In the stories of my youth, service to the Empire was a constant adventure of glorious battle, the favors of beautiful women and mountains of golden plunder. The reality was far less glamorous.
With the Son of the Star revolt long put down, there was no more glorious battle, just ugly little skirmishes in the corners. My job was very boring and predictable. Each day I would seek out new informants, question my existing informants and root out the little clusters of treason their testimony uncovered. A hidden school where young children were still taught the ways of their forefathers, a woman and her daughter still lighting candles on Dies Veneris, someone hoarding scrolls of their ancient writings. Once I caught them hiding the scrolls in jars and putting the jars in hidden desert caves. It was an endless, thankless task.
The Judean women were even more committed than the men and spit on us when they thought we wouldn't see. Unlike other provinces where the local women offered themselves as wives and mistresses to soldiers of Rome seeking advantage, the Judean women would have nothing to do with us. Many lawful rapes resulted in the Judean woman slipping a concealed knife or spike into the legionaries' stomach.
Even when a group of legionaries would take a single woman, tie her up and use her for their common enjoyment, the story all too frequently ended with the woman getting loose when they all slept, stealing a sword and killing many soldiers before she escaped.
There were some women who sought our favor, but they were generally grasping hags.
There were some whores, but they were expensive and not very motivated to please. I also noticed the women seemed to self-select themselves to be whores when they realized they carried a pox. You could tell which they were fairly easily, they would offer Officers a discount.
If I saw such a whore, it would create an awkward situation for me. If I did what I should, run the whore through, the officer would become incensed.
"I was about to get a discount you fool!" The officer would yell.
Often, it would then mean I would have to kill the officer myself.
I could do what was practical, let the stupid officer sleep with the whore, then die of the pox. Perhaps I was serving the Legions by weeding out the incompetent and stupid. Still, that would mean I would have to go back later and how much time was I supposed to devote to hunting down poxy whores?
The worst of it was plunder. I was hardly accumulating any. Yes, I had got a pouch of coins here, a bracelet there, a child I could sell into slavery one time. Still, that was hardly enough to pay for some minor luxuries day to day, much less save anything for my days after service, so I could buy some land and restore my family name.
The problem was when it was Zion, it had been the wealthiest province in the Empire. After the Son of the Star revolt, the legions that had been sent in to quell the revolt had done an excellent job looting and pillaging so there wasn't much left. Even the slave market of the Empire had been depressed by the dumping of vast numbers of slaves into the supply. "Sending slaves to Palestine," had become a new phrase which implied a waste of time or a fool's errand. The child I had torn from its mother and sold was hardly worth the effort.
I had put most of my meager loot into burnishing my armor. Gold plate on my Roman Eagle, silver on the backs of my gauntlets. It was allowed for a legionnaire to dress up his armor, as long as it remained reasonably practical and the armor was still recognizable. It made the appearance, perhaps false, to my superior officers that I was a success, and as such, ready for a promotion.
Still, my days dragged on. What I did was no glorious battle, just the tedious business of Empire. Find the informer, grind useful information from the informer, weed out the embers of rebellion before they grew again into flame. I might as well have stayed in Rome and become a vigile.
One day I got a lead that the notorious Teacher, Judah ben Bava was in the process of defying Imperial law by insisting on continuing to worship his God. Hadn't we made it clear to these stubborn mules that worshipping their old God was forbidden? Why couldn't they do what people in every other province did and just fall in line?
Worse, Judah ben Bava was about to ordain more Teachers! That was just what we didn't need. The Teachers would do everything I had been warned in that lecture long ago as they continued to inspire the populace to resist Rome's lawful decree.
I had only to use my talent to torture with fear the location of this meeting from an informer, a young girl who cleaned the school.
I summoned a century of legionnaires and led them into the hills where the ordination was to occur. As we approached on a narrow mountain path, I found ben Bava red handed, ordaining other scholars as Teachers.
I heard ben Bava say to the others, "Flee, I will hold them here by the will of the One true God. Preserve what you have learned, teach the next generation."
The others begged, "No! Please! We can't lose your great learning and wisdom!" And, "How you will you stop them?"
Ben Bava replied, "I am a Son of God. By his will, I will hold them. Now Flee!"
The others fled. I felt optimistic then that we would be able to run them down and then they would all suffer ben Bava's fate, but the Teacher turned and looked at us then pronounced in a voice that echoed down the valley, "I am a Son of God! If it is the will of the One True God, you may pass."
I wanted to race forward, arrest ben Bava, then run down his students. Then I would take them all down to Aelia Capitolina where they could be tortured to death as a public lesson. It would be no easy crucifixion for them!
Instead, I found each step forward became harder and harder. It was like a wind made of light came up and started blowing dust in our eyes. I could hardly see. We were all trapped on that ledge. I started hearing legionnaires scream as they fell off the side. My training let me keep my head as all about me lost theirs.
I yelled back, "It was the young girl who cleaned the school who gave up your meeting and now you will all die for it!"
"You lie pagan deceiver!" ben Bava replied.
"She died screaming in terror and agony!" I yelled back, and I could feel ben Bava's will quaver.
"Her name was Rivkah!" I yelled back to prove my point.
With those last words, ben Bava could no longer deny my words and I could feel his heart break. I realized, the girl had been his beloved only child, his daughter. No doubt why she had struggled so hard.
With the realization, I could feel ben Bava's heart break and his faith failed. There was a split-second break in the wind and I yelled, "Legionnaires, throw your javelins!" While I pointed with my sword.
The disciplined legionnaires hurled their javelins and ben Bava was impaled many times.
I came forward and found ben Bava, lying on his back, run through in many places, blood dripping from his mouth. He shouldn't have been able to talk. However, he looked at me and there was fire in his eyes.
"You are empty and without merit. There is no authenticity in you. You will be cursed that all who look upon you will know, and the world will be as empty for you as it has become for me."
Then ben Bava looked to the sky and said in ringing tones, "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad!"
Then he expired.
His last words were like being caught in a massive bell. I tried to cover my ears, but my hands pressed to my ears meant nothing. What the words did to my head was terrible. With the last, I collapsed to the ground unconscious.
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