The fate of our union, p.13
The Fate of Our Union, page 13
“I never thought anyone would defeat that monster.” Rufus sought the virtue in Sunu’s fame-seeking deed. “But you defeated and disarmed the disemboweler.”
“Feeling merciful, I didn’t behead him.” Sunu handed Rufus the tri-bolted half-trident. “Here’s a memento.”
The legionaries stepped back, still looking onward in disbelief. Three of them fell into the river, and in their place their general appeared, pushing them off in a rage.
Rufus grabbed the Fetter of Awe, urging, “Encircle the common people.” The noose plunged into the river as the three legionaries sank from the weight of their armor and the feeling of betrayal. As they drifted apart, their anxiety ceased, for they felt something tighten around their bodies, pulling them together.
The noose emerged around three iron bodies, lifted toward the flying white stallion. On opposite shores, the legionaries and the tribesmen joined in awe, watching the three men ascend with raptured faces.
Rufus directed the Fetter toward the tribesmen’s side; they stepped back, leaving an open space for the three legionaries to land. “By Hospitable Thunderer,” Rufus entreated, “show friendliness to these guests.”
“they’re someone’s father and son!”
On a Roman merchant ship, a deaf man and a blind boy were being forced toward the gunwale by an Agrippinensian slaver. “Maybe the Rhine will find them of some value.” He pushed them closer to the edge.
“You imperialists are so shallow.” A Tencter leader snapped the chains that bound his wrists, watching his deaf and blind tribesmen drag their feet toward a dehumanizing fate. “You have no respect for family or moral community—no sense of real integrity!”
“On the contrary, barbarian,” the slaver sneered as he paced by his captives, three hundred Tencters whose home lay east of the Rhine. “We ensure that all our slaves are of the highest quality before we sell them to a family.” He sized each of them up. “And those two didn’t meet our standard.”
Seeking comfort in despair, the blind boy patted the deaf man’s leg, searching for his hand. “I’m scared.”
One of the slaver’s colleagues raised his gold ring and wine glass to the face of the Tencter leader. “He’ll get a taste of progress, like it or not.” The leader turned red-faced. “And we’ll be selling his tribe our vices.”
The deaf man looked down at the river sullenly, squeezing the blind boy’s quivering hand, thinking how quickly they had gone from ancestral liberty to tyrant’s property. As he pondered their injustice, something forced a change of thought, and his expression changed when he looked to the heavens.
Something was coming toward them.
The swift blur slowed, then the man saw a waving red cloak and beheld seven white horse heads and outstretched wings. Awestruck, the deaf man cried at the blind boy. “If only you could see!”
He heard its hooves hit the deck, feeling the vibration. “What is it?”
The crewmen recoiled from the thundering horse.
Long Ears wheeled and kicked hind legs, dashing the oppressor of the deaf and blind.
“Freedom!” The deaf man exhaled his distress, squeezing the boy in shepherd’s arms as their oppressor flailed in his descent to the Rhine.
“They’re not the ones who’ll be booted off this ship.” Atop the spectacular stallion, wings threateningly raised, Sunu hollered at the other slaver. “You are!” He hurled his horse mace—knocking him into the river, then waved his magic noose, loosening the Tencters’ bonds.
“Follow us!” Rufus raised his right hand, now protected by the Gauntlet of Truth, gripping a tri-bolted mace.
Riding the stallion, Sunu and Rufus led the Tencters, like prodded steeds, against the ship’s crew. With their chains of bondage, they began smiting their oppressors, bringing hate to their enemies and hope to their friends. With weapons of the fallen, they dented plate armor and pierced mail coats. Trading piercing spears for stabbing swords, broken helms for shattered shields, bloody limbs for fractured bones, the exchange of arms was far from peaceful, the price of slave trade far from prosperous.
Rufus leaned to the right, piercing helmets with his bolted mace, while Sunu leaned toward the left, landing blow after skull-crushing mace blow. As Long Ears carried them through the battle, he shielded them with his wings, deflecting all sharp edges.
“Surround them!” an Agrippinensian ordered as he stood near the gunwale.
Long Ears lunged—dashing him into the river—then leapt onto the gunwale and cantered toward the stern. Another soldier ran toward the stallion, raising his shield to ram its riders overboard. Sunu lassoed the shield, whipping it to a defenseless tribesman; Rufus snatched a spear and vaulted the soldier into the Rhine.
Riding the gunwale, Sunu and Rufus sat back-to-back, hammering heads like Thunor, bolting helms like Jupiter. “I knew you had fight in you, Rufus,” Sunu cheered, ringing an enemy’s helm.
“Good thing I didn’t promise no fighting on your horse.” Rufus punched a soldier’s helmet with the Gauntlet of Truth, leaving a fist impression in iron. “I hate lying.”
Upon reaching the stern, Long Ears leapt onto the deck, landing by a woman in great distress. “What happened?” Sunu clasped the woman’s withering shoulder.
Hot tears streaming down cold cheeks, her quivering lips endeavored, “The Agrippinenses”—her face was pale white, and her black gown looked as though she had just given birth—“they took my newborn twins and tossed them onto the ground,” she stammered, tears soaking her lips, “like they were pieces of trash!” The mother collapsed onto the deck, a ravaged doe, slender hooves trembling, bleating piercingly for her fawns.
The heroes’ hearts were spurred. “We must bring them back!”
“Unless that horse flies, you’re finished.” The soldiers were closing in, casting their weapons at the riders.
Long Ears whipped his wings, deflecting the weapons back to their wielders. “I know where the twins are,” the stallion’s side-left head revealed before the soldiers resumed their attack.
“Be afraid,” Sunu announced to their enemies, “we’re not fleeing.” While the Tencters continued fighting the Agrippinenses with their chains and seized weapons, Sunu and Rufus left the ship. By Long Ears’s wings, they glided over the Rhine to the river’s bank, where the stallion’s hooves landed beside two crying infant boys. They flailed their tiny hands and feet as the little ashes lay helpless under an oak.
“How could they treat babes that way?” Sunu had never seen anything so sad. “Heartless wolves.”
“A wolf.” The animal entered Rufus’s mind as he related to the twin boys, crying wildly for their mother. “Where’s that magic udder?” Rufus picked one of the twins off the ground.
“In my purse.” Sunu picked up the other twin and placed the udder in his mouth.
“The poor cherubs are probably starving.” Rufus consoled the crying babe, pacing the shore for gentle vibrations. “Like the twins Romulus and Remus, Rome’s legendary founders, when they were left by the Tiber’s floodwaters.”
His words recalled Sunu’s vision of the man beside a river feeding from a cow, then morphing into twins. “Then a cow came to their rescue, right?” Sunu assumed as he fed a twin with the Udder of Renewing Life.
“In truth, it was a wolf,” Rufus admitted. “The she-wolf fed them, then a herdsman found them and took them to his hut, where his wife nursed them.”
Sunu passed Rufus the udder. “Did Romulus and Remus ever learn the truth of their origin?”
“Their adoptive father eventually told them the truth: their mother was a Vestal Virgin who’d been raped and birthed them consequently,” Rufus recounted as he fed the other twin with the udder. “According to her, the war god Mars was their father, but that didn’t spare her from being imprisoned by a heartless king, who’d ordered the twins to be drowned.”
“No wonder their father withheld the truth,” Sunu sympathized, burping the babe like one of his siblings. “Far from easy to tell his sons what happened to their mother.”
“With our help.” Rufus gladdened at the twin boys, whose cries were now happy coos. “Their father and mother can tell them the whole truth.”
Sunu and Rufus flew back to the ship, where they saw the Tencters mounted on their horses. They’d released them from the ship’s hold after vanquishing its crewmen, who now lay at their hooves.
“They trampled our freedom—we trampled them free!” the twin’s father proclaimed. He was still standing on deck, comforting his wife in his arms. Her wet face buried in his firm chest, his inner sorrow was allayed when he saw two heroes on a seven-headed stallion flying back on glorious wings. “I can’t believe it—Irminthieda, look!”
She turned around to see the Red Stallion and Black Sheep, each with a babe in his arm. Irminthieda whisked toward them with yearning heart, yearning hands.
“They appear unharmed as if Dawn had cradled their fall,” Rufus allayed the heartbroken parents.
Sunu eased their fears. “And well-fed as if the Sacred Cow had quelled their hunger.” The heroes placed the babes, who were no longer crying, in their father and mother’s hands.
“Bless you!” Holding them tenderly against their hearts, Irminthieda kissed her newborns’ foreheads and beamed at her husband. “These two brought back our twins, Ahton.”
“Indeed, they did.” Great amazement and gratitude filled Ahton’s heart. Love kicking his insides, the father raised one of his sons over his flushed face. “Thanks to these heroes, we didn’t lose them, too.”
Sunu’s curiosity was raised. “There were others?”
“Our three daughters.” A moment of silent fury fell over the Tencters. “They were abducted by the governor of Germania Inferior and two of his fellow city colonizers. After I rejected their marriage proposals, and our tribe banned the sale of their corrupting merchandise, they attacked.”
“And our daughters were taken in another ship.” Irminthieda tried to purge the memory of them sailing away.
“These patricians sleep with all the women, men, and children that their bacchanal hearts desire, yet they expect their brides to be pure as doves.” Ahton shook his head in revulsion. “They had a challenging time finding a dove in their city, so they turned to our forests.”
Rufus investigated, “Do you know where your daughters were taken?”
“To Colonia Agrippinensium, a fortified city with a powerful army,” Ahton spoke as if he were suggesting that the heroes not try to be heroes. “A task for more than two.”
Rufus turned his head westward. “I know about Colonia.”
“What do you know?” Sunu couldn’t see what Rufus described.
“It’s a Roman-built city on the west bank of the Rhine whose indigenous tribes were German.”
Sunu laid eyes on a dead soldier of German origin, wearing Roman armor and holding a jeweled Celtic sword. He and his colleagues were dressed like legionaries, for they hailed from Colonia Agrippinensium. Sunu leaned down from Long Ears and took the fallen man’s sword while the Tencters threw the Agrippinenses overboard.
“That’s correct, and as their father, I’ll assemble an army to punish the governor and his vice dealers.” With the air of a proud father, Ahton adjusted his stand. “You’ve done more than enough to help us today, but if you wish to join us, it would be an honor and advantage.”
Sunu was ready. “When?”
Suddenly, there was a cry, “I can see!” The boy who had seen black his whole life was now standing before Long Ears, marveling at his heads. “Seven days.”
Upon hearing the first words of his life, the man beside him awkwardly repeated what he had heard. “Seven.”
Long Ears’s front-left head revealed, seeing Sunu and Rufus’s speechlessness, “When you loosened the Tencters’ bonds with the Fetter of Awe, it also cured his blindness and his deafness.”
“Miraculous!” Their fellow tribesmen gathered around them, astonished.
The boy who now had sight continued relaying what the stallion’s back-left head whispered. “The Romans call Eostre’s month Aprilis, which is sacred to a goddess of love and weddings. On the last day of this month, one week from today, the abductors of Elleandâd, Trewa, and Liof plan to marry them against their and their parents’ will.”
Rufus turned to Sunu. “In seven days.”
Sunu turned to Ahton and Irminthieda with a gift from his spindle purse. “We will deliver three more eggs.”
9
Fireproof
“father, what is wrong with this world?” In her pursuit of external order and internal peace, Keresaspa followed Father the Yogi’s aura of equanimity out of the Bohemian market and found him sitting in an ash grove, surrounded by five fires. Amid their reaching flames, she could see the side of his gray-bearded face turned eastward.
Father remained quiet and still, calmly beckoning Keresaspa.
Holding his bamboo gift, she approached him full of questions. Why did he give me this staff? How do I silence these hounds? What do I make of my drama ceaseless drama? Her mind was restless, yet as she neared his fires, the warmth dispelled her anxiety. Father lowered his raised hand, thus shortening one fire and revealing his white-ragged body framed by orange flames.
Keresaspa stepped barefoot into Father’s circle, past a wave of purifying heat. On a spot of green earth amid dead underbrush, she sat facing his gracefully aged and undisturbed face, mimicking his hero pose: one foot on the opposite thigh, one foot under the other, spine straight.
“There is nothing wrong with this world,” Father spoke candidly in a kind tone. “How men handle this world is wrong.”
The urgency in Keresaspa’s voice remained. “Tell me.”
“Injustices, while men prefer they not exist, they’re an inevitable part of existence; they were for your ancestors as they are for you and will be for your descendants. As you’ve armored your body, you should armor your mind for any adversity, at any time; strive for evenness of mind. Make yourself alike in pleasure and pain, profit and loss, victory or defeat.” Father laid his palms on his thighs, ears attentive amid the crackling fires. “Now tell me, With Lean Horses, what is disturbing the peace on your pasture?”
“An unrestrained king, who brought division among my tribe and brings tyranny to the steppes, fatally attacked me for declining his marriage proposal. Ever since, I’ve been hearing his galloping horse, barking dogs, and howling wolves in my head, impelling me to claw my face and tear out my braids.” Keresaspa shuddered, distress returning. “Because of this, I now find myself away from my homeland, mother, and sister—and I fear they may have been attacked by the king’s retainers—I couldn’t foresee with this hounding.”
“First, we’ll address the galloping and barking, which are the surfacing of deep impressions wrought by your trauma.” Father extended his arms, palms down. “Imagine your mind as a pasture, and these impressions are wolves harming you as they invade. The wolves dominate the pasture at their worst, covering every green space that brings you peace.”
“I’ve had this happen.” Keresaspa laid her hands on her temples, pain on her face. “I feel helpless.”
“There is help.” Father clasped his hands prayerfully. “When these wolves, these negative impressions, invade your pasture, envision Indra as a white bull standing in their midst and give him your single-object concentration. This will force the wolves off your pasture, as if the Bull were fighting them into the forest, outside your mind. Then you will see green and have peace.”
Keresaspa asked with creeping anxiety, “What if the wolves return?”
“Without consistent meditation, the wolves will return, and you will experience the cycle of death and birth. Therefore, when you are undisturbed concentrate on the Bull of Detached Action who keeps the Wheel spinning, envisioning his white body on a green pasture—merge yourself with him as if he were your armor—As you face the day, remain As One with the Bull so no thoughts, words, or deeds can harm you, praying His help to conquer the five obstacles: ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and clinging to bodily life.”
She laid faith in his words. “I’ll do everything you’ve instructed, Father.”
“Handling your aversion once and for all will not be easy, considering the severity of your trauma and attachment thereto. But if you truly wish to conquer these demons, you must face their source courageously and forgive.”
“Forgive?” Keresaspa winced. “I cannot forgive the king’s misdeeds.”
“I understand your reasoning: he forced himself on you and your tribesmen. But understand that retaining anger at those who may deserve it transfers to those who do not deserve it, and the transgressor is not suffering the pain of your bad thoughts—you are.” Father’s eyes squared, undeterred. “Unforgiveness is like a sword that remains in your body long after the attack. It keeps harming you; it harms your friends and family: you are no help to them, and you’ll not allow them to help you. But you need each other to help humanity.”
Keresaspa acknowledged his reason, yet she was unsettled by the thought of forgiving a tyrant. “But Father—”
The Yogi’s tone firmed. “Neither your friend Sunu nor your enemy the King can see the Evil Will—You must help them see it to save the Sons of Man.”
“But how do I forgive the unforgivable, forget the unforgettable?” Keresaspa ran her hands uncertainly over her golden braids. “For me, it seems impossible.”
“Can you remember another time when you were consumed by anger—then something happened that completely removed it?”
“I’ll never forget my first horse, that beautiful golden body, flaxen mane and tail. He was born of the sun!” Keresaspa lit up, displacing the darkness. “After all I went through to catch and control him, my sister took him as if he were hers. Since she couldn’t control him, he escaped.”
“How did you feel?”
