Chapter 397 - 280: Chenxi Village

"Give me a break, old man. If we were here to rob you, you wouldn’t have time to be chattering away at us. The Normans are all about efficiency."

Belem, tired of Old Haike’s incessant chatter, caught the staff the old man threw and tossed it even farther in the other direction, ensuring he wouldn’t be able to reach it for a while.

"We have answered the call of the Emperor of Constantinople, representing the Western Church to extend a helping hand to our brethren in the East. For this, we have each taken up the Cross in the name of Christ, that His love and righteousness may once again descend upon the East—this land where Christ and the holy Apostles first walked."

Eric led Priest John before the crowd.

"His Majesty Gregory, in his supreme mercy, has crossed the Alps to save our brethren in the East," Priest John announced, bowing to the crowd. "He has mobilized the entire Catholic World. Knights have crossed the Mediterranean Sea and traversed mountains, all so that the East may know the name of Christ."

Priest John’s attire eased the crowd’s tension. Although the vestments of Latin and Greek Priests differed considerably, a member of the Clergy always had a certain approachability that armed men lacked.

"The Turkic People swarming the Empire are like locusts..." Old Haike voiced his doubt.

After all, Eric’s contingent numbered only a few hundred men at most.

"We are merely the vanguard," Priest John explained. "Our King commands our main army from Cyprus. For now, we have made Cilicia the first target of the Holy War. If you can help us, you will soon return to your former way of life."

Yet Old Haike merely shook his head.

The other villagers showed little enthusiasm, as if they had seen this sort of thing many times before.

Laila sensed the atmosphere growing rigid and stepped forward to ease the tension. "After the Empire’s disastrous defeat against the Turkic People, they swarmed into Anatolia like locusts. Cilicia, the Empire’s most remote region, was almost immediately abandoned.

But even if the Emperor didn’t care, some people did. A few members of the Armenian Nobility rallied men to resist the Turkic People. That was a good thing, but not entirely.

In the secular world, there is no such thing as a perfectly good deed. True joy is found only in Heaven.

Any man taller than a wagon wheel who could wield a weapon was taken, along with everything else they could get their hands on.

They moved as swiftly as the wind, as if the Turkic raiders had come through themselves."

"The Turkic People are still roaming this area," Eric said.

"Yes, and that’s why we despise them. They never show up when we need them. But when we don’t, they always appear at the worst possible time to take whatever last little thing of value we have left.

Sometimes we have to deal not only with the Turkic raiders, but with our own people, too. We even think that if the Turkic People acted a little more civilized, we might be better off just surrendering to them." Laila retrieved the staff for Old Haike.

"They took my son!" a woman wailed, her voice choked with sobs. "My boy isn’t even fifteen. They just carried him off. He gets winded just from carrying firewood, how is he supposed to fight the Turkic People?"

"My uncle is disabled—he has a lame leg—and they dragged him away too."

"They stole everything they could find—every head of livestock, every last bite of food. They took anything they could carry and then set my storehouse on fire."

"They even stole the food we’d saved for the children. They left nothing. If it weren’t for Miss Laila, I don’t know what we would have done..."

"They even smashed Master Fahad’s residence—Miss Laila’s father’s home—to bits."

"..."

The scene grew tumultuous. The floodgates had opened, and the villagers began to complain endlessly.

They complained about the Turkic People, and they complained about their own countrymen.

The Normans, completely unfamiliar with the Armenian language, felt a headache coming on. They urged Eric to find a place for them to rest, as they had been traveling for a long time.

After Eric assigned some Knights to reconnaissance and watch duty, the rest were billeted in the village’s empty houses. A few Knights even quickly found themselves companions and moved right into their rooms, whether through a small payment or out of sheer, unbearable loneliness.

After settling the Knights, Eric went with Priest John to the village Church. Old Haike led them there; Laila had disappeared somewhere.

The path was lined with scenes of desolation and decay. The village fields were completely wild. Although it was the harvest season, the fruit was no bigger than a thumb. Many vegetable leaves had been devoured by beetles and caterpillars, leaving only skeletal veins.

Unnamed weeds grew in the vegetable patches, rising higher than the crops. Beyond the neglected gardens lay an oat field, now choked with shoulder-high pokeweed and poison sumac. As the mist burned off, the faint, pale silhouette of the mountains emerged on the horizon above the fields and pastures, looking not like mountains at all, but like their ghosts.

In these chaotic times, it was pointless to tend the farmland too well. Obvious signs of cultivation invited danger. Lush fields were an open invitation to both Turkic raiders and Armenian warlords, declaring the village an ideal target for plunder.

The Church was also in a sorry state. Having been untended for a long time, moss crept silently over the stones of its outer walls. The once-smooth facade was now riddled with cracks. The great iron door was half-open, its rusted hinges groaning as if weeping softly.

Crows circled the Church’s bell tower, their caws unsettling.

Stepping into the chapel, the air was thick with musty dampness. Wooden pews were still arranged in neat rows, and sunlight streamed through the high windows, casting a soft, golden glow upon them. Dust motes drifted gently in the sunbeams.

However, a thick layer of dust coated every surface. The Holy Images of the Saints were shattered and faded. The Cross on the altar leaned askew, as if it had lost the strength to hold itself up. An occasional breeze whistling through the broken window frames made the musty smell sharp and choking.

Priest John and his Attendant began cleaning the Holy Images and the murals on the walls, mournfully chanting hymns as they worked.

Eric, however, did not stay with him, instead wandering around the Church.

The Church was not small; in fact, it was quite large for a village chapel. Eric meandered through it, eventually kicking open the door to what looked like a storage room.

It was a confessional.

Inside, Eric found Laila. She was bent over, seemingly rummaging for something.

Laila jumped, startled, and her posture became awkward.

"What are you doing?"

"I... I-I... I was praying."

Her knees suddenly felt weak, and she dropped down with a thud.

She was kneeling directly toward Eric.

"There are no Holy Images here. You should go to the chapel to pray," Eric said with a smile.

"Er... It’s... it’s Mecca. This is the direction of Mecca.

I’m not an icon-worshipper," Laila added quickly, as if just remembering.

"Aren’t you a Christian?"

"I get nostalgic sometimes. Besides, a few extra bows won’t kill me." Laila performed three perfunctory bows and stood up.

"Where’s the Priest here?"

"Dead."

"Killed by the Turkic People...?"

"No, killed by his own musical instrument."

"You mean your father? He was part of the Clergy?" ’Even though Laila had mentioned her change of faith, the idea of a Bedouin becoming a Priest was rather absurd.’

"Actually, it wasn’t him at first. But the previous Priest was thoroughly disliked, even though he’d studied theology at the University of Constantinople. In fact, I think that might have been the reason." Seeing she had captured Eric’s attention, Laila breathed a sigh of relief and quickly launched into her story.

"This village is called Chenxi Village. The villagers are almost all illiterate. In fact, their historical knowledge is limited to God’s early miracles in the Book of Genesis. ’Let there be light’ is about the last thing they truly understood. They even treat the Bible like a Magic Book, using it the way a gypsy fortune-teller would.

They’ll pick up the Bible, let it fall open to a random page, and jab a finger at a word, struggling to interpret the esoteric meaning behind it. They treat that word as a divine oracle and act on its instructions, as if it were the direct will of God.

If God said ’go,’ they would go. If God said ’stay,’ they would stay. If God said ’kill,’ they’d grab an axe and find a little hen to slaughter.

Despite their ignorance, life was good before the Turkic People arrived. They owned a large farm in the valley at the foot of the pass, where the black earth was so rich it practically oozed oil. The sweet potatoes they grew were as long as a man’s arm, and all they had to do was pull a few weeds.

This new Priest, a graduate of a Divinity School, tried to correct their understanding of the doctrine. The young, learned Priest would often visit the villagers to discuss theological questions, and they would lean in and listen intently. But old habits die hard.

The erudite Priest stubbornly insisted on explaining the true mysteries of Christianity. When he spoke of the Holy Trinity, one villager sat up straight and said, ’Three in one, like a chicken’s foot.’

And so the Priest from Constantinople began to hatch a plan for how to teach the villagers correct doctrine and save them from their unenlightened state.

The Priest’s condescending attitude of ’saving the ignorant’ was so obvious it offended the villagers from the moment he first walked through the door.