”Have you not seen enough of them?” He asked with a tired look, his eyes barely able to look at me and they were wet with tears, “Have you not seen their lives? The way they talk, the food they eat and whatever they reject to eat but still insists to sow and what cattle to keep? Brother, have you abandoned our cause?”

Mine eyes darted away from his and out to the field, as if to find a point to fixate on, but there was nothing. Instead, I looked across the village we had run into. Onto the men crucified and the women slaughtered, some still alive being dragged screaming across the street to be thrown down a well. He gently grabbed me by my arm insisting, “Brother, answer me!”

As I pulled away from him and cleaned the blood from my sword on the lower half of the surcoat, “I have not.”

“Then why are there seeds of doubt, I can see it in you and hear it by the campfire. Your lust for justice and sense of right has dissipated like water in this forsaken heat. Has the lord truly put your faith on trial in these lands?”

“No, no.” I muttered, “I think I’m in need of some introspection. All of this. I know what is expected of me and what I believe in… but all of this…”

“Look at me” he said, “I too want to go back home. I too want to see my wife and remember my baby boy? He was just eight when we left, and when I, no, when we come back home, he will already be a man. Don’t you remember how he used to call you his uncle?”

“Yes, I remember… uncle El” I smiled, “and yet…”

He spat at the ground by the mere thought, “I would be ashamed not to come home with you by my side, or that you return home alone either. We shall endure this trial the lord has burdened us with and only then, when proven righteous, shall we return home from the holy lands.”

“We shall, I just need some introspection. In my mind I wish to be a monk and sit down in silence to contemplate unlike the duty of holy warrior I was assigned to be.”

“Then I shall aid you in prayer brother,” he said and gently shook my shoulder, “I shall light your candles and prepare your altar to which you will have dialogues with god. I shall be by your side if you so wish and shoulder your burden until we can return home. You aren’t alone brother; we are all walking together through this trial.”

I didn’t quite know what to say so I closed my eyes and looked up to the heavens, for long had I searched for his voice and his face, wanting for God to reach out his hand or at least whisper to me. I had called out so many times into the darkness and he remained silent, perhaps there just was nothing there? There small sandy village was silent. The flag carrying a long red cross fluttered in the wind and beside it a priest held a true cross of gold calling the many crusaders to him like a shepherd to his flock, they kneeled down in prayer. Already behind the priests a tent was pitched in the sandy dunes, and the priest took a step back into the shade and became surrounded by many more of his kind, their voices rang high as they blessed god’s warriors and forgave them for their sins. To the fallen the priests remarked on their atonement through sacrifice. The fallen crusaders in their bloodstained garb made martyrs to the crusade and restauration of the holy lands. Every available brick from the abodes in the village was torn down to build outlines for the many graves of the fallen, and they were many graves indeed, but it would never seem to be enough stones to fulfil the need for a final resting place as their valiant party cut their way through the ever-shifting land of dunes and prophesy.