Beyond Doubt: Whispers of the Unseen - Chapter 54

Welcome to my seemingly endless journey.
A trip that will take you to places I might have visited many moons ago.
It´s a tale that came back to me when I meditated on one of my past lives. A life I told you about in my unbelievable true story.

As promised in that story I will now share this story with you.

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Chapter 54

Dear Reader, Do you look at the world around you with disdain?

Do you judge and condemn others? Do you do that unconsciously because you do not think you are good enough?

Or consciously, to feel better about yourself, superior and blind to all your shortcomings.

It should not be clear that we are looking for answers.
We are all blind and quickly convinced of our own right. But that conviction only exists in the eye of the beholder.

"How we will find the city is a great mystery. Once there, we can, of course, act curious about what happened there, but we should not dig too deep. Keep your wits about you, use your eyes and ears. Every piece of information can help us."

Remo had now woken up and joined us. I briefly explained to him what was going on. He remained silent, his eyes focused on the smoldering coals. Then he spoke softly. "Can we leave? I need to know what's going on, and if I can offer help. If there is anyone else to offer help."

We understood his need, and despite the fact that we had hardly slept, and in my case not slept, we decided to clean out the camp and leave.

Whatever we expected to find was certainly not what we found. There were no fires or smoldering remains. There was no smell of blood anywhere, there were no wounded people scattered across the fields surrounding the village. There were also no deeply sad women and children looking for their slain husband or father.

The village was quiet and just woke up just as we arrived. Yet we were certain that the fighters had been here. The many horse tracks made this clear, and even beyond the wooden fence that protected the city, the tracks could still be found.

What had happened here? Were the riders friends of this village, I couldn't imagine. Not when I pictured Remo's reaction and he was well known here.

We walked quietly into the village. Remo broke away from the group and walked towards an older man who was leading a pack animal with a bunch of branches on his back. He asked him something in that strange dialect, what he asked was unintelligible due to the fast pace. His eyebrows furrowed, and a heated argument ensued that lasted a few minutes, then he returned.

Questioning eyes looked at Remo expectantly. The frown that had appeared on his forehead earlier had not yet left. His look betrayed uncertainty. "That was Jafas; he is trustworthy. When he was young he worked for my father. Now he has his piece of land. He told me what happened."

“Two nights ago, hundreds of black riders thundered into the village. The guards even saw no point in closing the gates; such an overwhelming majority could not be stopped."

"Our soldiers, who realized what was happening, fled. A few took their own lives to prevent the terrible torture that they heard of in the stories going around. The band of horsemen rushed through the streets, occupied all entrances and exits, and finally stopped in the square."

"All doors and windows that could be closed were closed. People hardly dared to look through the cracks to see what was happening outside. Those who could hide did so. Others awaited their fatal fate with tears in their eyes and loved ones in their arms."

"Mothers and children cried without a sound. There was total desperation in complete silence. No one dared to make a sound, especially not a sound that would be heard above the tramping and snorting of the horses."

"A small group of the black horsemen had entered the house of the Sato, he is the lord of the village. The village held its breath, but the expected groans did not materialize. The house also did not go up in flames."

"Then the Sato appeared on the market square, walking behind one of the riders, apparently undamaged. The rider mounted his horse, the Sato bowed and sank to his knees. He bowed further until his forehead touched the ground, as a sign of submission."

"Then they left, at least most of them. Some riders remained behind; they had captured some houses whose residents had left 'voluntarily' and not out of fear of possible reprisals."

"This afternoon the Sato will make a statement about the circumstances surrounding the visit of these riders, but I don't expect anything good. Although the situation is, of course, much better than what I expected to find," Remo swallowed for a moment.

Thousands of questions immediately ran through my head. What was going on here; these riders were clearly not the murdering and plundering band of misfits we were looking for.
Would my vision have been incorrect?
Was I relying too much on my belief that there is more than what meets the eye?

That was hardly possible; they would have warned me via Numico, or during one of my meditations. No, we didn't start this journey for nothing. That just wasn't possible. The feeling that we are needed to change something is too strong.

It couldn't possibly be the wish to be needed, could it?
That we have turned something we wanted so badly into a quest. In order to authorize our need for ourselves.
Had we created these monsters; had Cabilah's memories been so colored by the passage of time?
It all didn't seem logical to me. Too many coincidences had come our way to have staged this quest ourselves. There had to be more to it.

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