Five soldiers gathered around a side door leading into a church and in their defensive positions, their rifles were aimed at the ready. The lieutenant slowly unsheathed his sword and held it beside his face as he leaned his ear against the door but he heard no noise come from within and all was quiet. Just as his translator had said before their operation, the church had been undergoing renovations ever since the beginning of the war and that the people would never come pray lest they sow suspicion. The only persons given permission to even set foot inside the church was a section of soldiers and nobody else. Arminius withdrew and held the tip of his sword against the door, reaching out his hand to shake its handle. It was locked. His breath steadied, thinking that he was worrying too much about nothing, and told himself not to hesitate any longer. He kicked open the door into the sanctuary where he and his soldiers rushed into like water. On high alert, they spread themselves across the vast hall, covering every corner and potential cover that they could see and find, checking their flanks and rushing into every room there was, searching for even the slightest signs of the enemy. As his squadron performed the search, Arminius marched deeper into the church, hoping to find some clues in the main hall, but as he looked around, he could not help but admire the dedication that the artists and architects had put into designing the interior of the holy ground. Classical architecture imitated millennium-old styles, shone upon by the light of a setting sun illuminated parts of the roof painted with a scene that reflected an interpretation of an ancient story. As if the gods were watching over him, perhaps in image alone, his soul felt serene in being there, warmed by the colors of stained glass panes which were still being fitted. But its scaffolds had long been abandoned and some poles had collapsed. For years, this church had stayed this way, unfinished, incomplete, and empty. There was not an idol nor a candlestick telling that anyone had ever come to pray however in the time it has been abandoned for, the fiends of hell may have already called that place home.
Moving closer to the altar, his allies and his own footsteps resonated on the whitish stone that imitated marble. Holy as the sound may have echoed, there was an ominous truth waiting for them. The recruits reappeared from their search, shaking their heads, having found nothing, and were recalled to the lieutenant’s side who signalled for them to rally on him. They ascended the few steps towards the altar where there was a door behind. Knowing where it led, they prepared for combat as if they were holding in their last breath, waiting for Arminius’s order, but he himself approached it courageously and from cover, he opened the door, his squad’s rifles aiming at the entrance. When it swung awide, nothing came to scare them, except that there was a stairwell leading up into the heavens. Arminius gestured for one of his volunteers to take the lead and although he was easily frightened by the darkness of the stairwell, he advanced on behalf of his comrades with the lieutenant following closely behind him as the remainder trailed on. Cautiously, they snaked up the tower, listening for any movement above them. The light from the slits in the walls brightened their journey the higher they went until they were dozens of paces up in the air from where the rooftops of the city could be seen. The hike was winding, but before long, having endured the silence and the tiresome ascent, the squad approached the summit where another door stood in their path as if it had been a consistent warning in their endeavor. But this one had been half-opened. The last man to arrive patted his comrade’s shoulder and his signal was conveyed to the scout in the vanguard. With a gulp and a hurried heart, he advanced, pushing the door awide and taking a stride. Together, they charged onto the floor where the tower’s watch was supposed to be, and as feared, their remains were all that was left.
Their throats had been slit and their backs had been stabbed with some whose hearts had been pierced from their flanks. In every manner implied, there was a struggle, but the Dnaner were not victorious. One was slumped by the door and another was on the floor, his face buried. A third laid facing the door having attempted to flee whose eyes were drawn awide by shock. Whoever dealt the killing blow to these three men was a clean killer whose victims were hardly mutilated as if they had been gently put to sleep. There were no blood stains on the floor nor on the walls, except for the patch that had seeped out of their wounds. This was the work of an assassin but they were more than that.
Crouching beside one of the corpses, an unafraid volunteer analyzed their wounds and faces. “Das reskængen wil arbæded sdundne inged. (Looks like they’ve been dead for hours.)” The recruit judged, poking their skin that sunk.
Skin blue, their bodies cold, the blood on them had partially froze. Disgusted by how he was able to get so close and interact with the dead, his comrade reeled back, his hand placed over his mouth as he gagged, disturbed unlike the youngest recruit whose first time seeing a corpse or three, he hardly reacted. He was perfectly still, trying to endure his thoughts, when he noticed how the lieutenant’s expression went unchanged. If only he had seen the sights that Arminius had witnessed which were a thousand-fold worse, he would not have questioned his reaction. Scanning the scene around him, Arminius attempted to recreate the scenario of what might have happened in his mind and he arrived at a conclusion that the dead were surprised by the attack even as the assassin was already in their midst. Their rifles were still slung on their backs and only one’s knife had been unsheathed. Oddly, nothing had been looted from their bodies, not even their ammunition, but just as when he deemed that there was nothing that appeared particularly suspicious, he caught sight of a glint of a metal piece on the floor. His attention drawn, Arminius moved closer to it and knelt down, discovering that it was a single brass casing. He picked it up and found that its touch was still warm, only reinforcing what he could confirm. The killer was there but the round they used was unlike any he had seen before.
Turning to his translator, he held up the irregularly large shell. “Have any of you ever seen this kind of round before?” Arminius asked for him to translate.
Having snapped out of his blankness, the recruit repeated the question for his comrades’ answer and they gathered around the lieutenant, taking the casing from his hands. It was passed around the squad but even the ones better-versed in weaponry shook their heads.
The last soldier to see it returned the casing to the lieutenant. “Nej, dad jeg kannej erinner rænneren. (No, not that I can remember.)” Rubbing the back of his head, he wondered. “Aben jeg denken et musses en Konfœd’isk. (But I reckon it must be a Confederate’s.)” The recruit said what they should have known by then.
They muttered among themselves in Danner, wondering what and how a soldier of the Confederacy could have been deployed in the heart of their kingdom without having heard about any rumors of an infiltrator, but they knew that no one should know of this incident. For a city as heavily guarded as the royal capital was and for an enemy to have performed a successful assassination, word would spread across the alliance like wildfire and harm the army’s morale. However, even if they wished to hunt down this marksman, they left no clues and left no trace. It was like the work of a ghost that disappeared into the wind. As Arminius stared at the casing, thinking what other sources of evidences the killer might have forgotten to erase, he was disturbed by a sharp crackling sound that had haunted him since that afternoon. A second gunshot rang out, echoing across the skies. Everyone was startled but he was more perplexed. He stood up, baffled, as the recruits rushed to the tower’s edge, looking out into the direction of where the gunfire had come from. It sounded distant but it was within the distance of travel by foot yet that was not most concerning but that the rifle which fired that shot sounded exactly like the one that took the life of the mayor and he feared that it may have taken the life of another.13Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoIL8y5wGBn
