“Konro, son of Wethil and Pora,” Shepherd Murosa said with a deadly, vibrant cadence to his voice, “I now Judge thee by the power given me as a Shepherd. I know thy doings and feel thy sins within thee.”
At a pause Konro began to tremble. A torrent of pain welled up in his head. A storm raged. He grimaced, but remained silent, remained ready.
“Thou knowest well the sins thou hast committed, thy faults,” Murosa said, eyes again shimmering even behind closed eyelids. “Nothing more than what hath been done can be done. I leave thee Marred as thou hast been, cursing thee with misfortune and shame in all thy doings. There shall be no end to thy descent, fallen son of Noshevish.”
Memories, horrible memories flashed through Konro’s mind in mere instants, and he quaked and breathed out in tearful pain. He was acutely aware of almost everything wrong he had ever done, and it was overwhelming.
Beyond his ability to bear.
At last Shepherd Murosa released his hand from Konro’s head and he fell back on the dirt, face slick with sweat. The pain slowly drained away.
He knew nothing about his appearance had changed. His head swirled with that knowledge, and all the world tumbled around him.
Murosa’s eyes did not open for another few moments. The soldiers looked on at the fallen Konro in bemusement. A pitiful figure beneath a veritable god.
Shock glimmered in Murosa’s eyes as he said with a low voice, “You…are…a specimen, indeed.”
He returned to his chair, gradually collecting himself. He allowed what he had seen to wash away before he continued, “You may doubt those words I spoke, think them only the sensibilities of one man, but you would only be lying to yourself. To pretend otherwise would be to pretend your skin is not ill, your body whole. Nay. I saw within you exactly what you heard from my mouth. If I were you, I would go back to wherever it is you came from. Take up a new trade. Wed a Marred woman. Bring yourself some happiness.”
With weary eyes, Konro slowly sat up, still on his knees, to look at the expressionless, comfortably seated Shepherd. Then he put his hands together and nodded. “I thank you for granting my request, Shepherd Murosa.”
He stood up and shifted into a solid, powerful stance, staring fiercely, indomitably into the eyes of the Shepherd.
Murosa frowned. Then he looked to a couple of the soldiers and barked, “Gather this man’s things and get him off my battlefield.”
Konro was escorted promptly off the bluff and toward the encampment. They saw to him gathering his possessions together, speaking few words to him, and then turned him loose with a strike from the butt of one of their spears at the edge of the camp. He was pointed toward the rocky hills southeast.
They spoke bitter, insulting words to him, but wearied Konro barely heard them. He shifted the large pack on his back and made his way weakly into the hills. The surging, awful memories drudged up by Shepherd Murosa made him numb as they always did.
When he got crested a few hills and reached a bushed area, he fell to the ground and drank a swig of water from his pouch, feeling a shake in his body. He did not feel right. An anger ate away at his insides, and in spite of himself he felt a stinging moistness in his eyes. He wanted more than almost anything to fall to the ground and never get up again.
But he wanted to go on just a little bit more than that. So instead he stood up, throwing each of those memories and thoughts of giving up on a mental bonfire, and then trudged defiantly onward.
Shepherd Murosa was in the past, now. Konro sought the future.
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