The God Reborn

Chapter 8

Naomi was constantly gasping for breath, and the cramps in her legs were becoming unbearable. The acolytes moved much faster than the human war party had. Or perhaps her injuries and exhaustion had weakened her to the point she could barely hold a normal pace.

She was still bound hand and foot with lengths of rope that allowed her to walk but not to run. There was no sign of the bound and weeping acolyte girl she had seen at the battle site, but there were acolyte warriors ahead of and behind her, walking in a long narrow file through the swampy wilderness. She had caught glimpses of scouts to her left and right. She did not know if they were there to warn the main party of any impending threats, or to recapture her if she tried to run away. Perhaps both.

Even if she had not been bound and guarded so closely, she would not have known which direction to run. Her head still pounded with every beat of her heart and she struggled to keep her footing on the slippery ground. She had long ago stopped trying to keep track of how far they had walked or in what direction. She believed this was the second day of marching since the night of the attack.

But she was sure they were walking away from her village, away from the other human settlements along the coast to the north, away even from the Marble City. They were heading in a direction she'd been told since childhood never to head.

About twenty feet ahead of her, two acolytes carried Ben in a makeshift stretcher made of reeds thatched between two spears. Naomi did not remember much about the night she had been captured, but it was evident that Ben had been injured more seriously than she had. Her spirits had been warmed to see him finally wake up from his stupor last evening, yet he still struggled to walk under his own power. Instead of waiting for him to recover, the acolytes had constructed the stretcher to allow them to begin their march as soon as they had buried their fallen comrades.

No matter the cost. Had her father known how high the cost would be for her, for Ben, for the others who lay slain in the swamp? She remembered the evening before the attack, when she had struggled to defend her father's faith. But now that last thread of her faith had snapped, its power to support her was broken, and she was falling into despair.

The acolytes sang energetically as they marched, and Naomi listened to their beautiful voices to distract herself from her hopelessness.

In her village, Naomi had occasionally seen travelling traders and warriors from other human settlements to the north, south or west. As a rule, the further away the traveler had arrived from, the more difficult to understand was his dialect. But Naomi had never heard anything as strangely beautiful as the acolytes' songs.

Now after two days, she was beginning to understand bits and pieces of their singing. "Golden" and "god" were among the words she had made out several times. She was realized that the acolytes' language was a distant cousin of the human language she knew.

***

For a brief moment, Daniel focused in disbelief on the girl's blue eyes, lithe figure, and bound limbs. He had been foolish for doubting the reborn god. The god had protected Naomi, had returned her to him unharmed, bathed in golden sunlight, as repayment for Daniel's faith and loyalty.

But after his short-lived euphoria, before he had managed to fully form his mouth into a smile, he realized that this girl was not Naomi.

She was taller, with paler skin. Where Naomi's face was round and her hairline was even, this girl had high, angular cheekbones and a widow's peak. And beneath the mud that discolored it, this girl's hair was blonde, not black.

He stood there dumbly amidst the dead, while the girl faced him, half exposed and half hidden behind the tree, for a long moment. The fact that she was present somehow sharpened the reality that Naomi was not. He trembled as the world around him faded from gold to ashes, and he felt his faith dying inside his breast.