Once again you had best be sitting down if you were getting to like the main character of this sordid little tale. It doesn't get any better after this much either
Not every one waited for death to come claim them. One man I remember very well had been a soldier and had learnt the value of a tactical withdrawal. When I arrived in his home village he was nowhere to be found. I sought out the elder and he told me with a friendly attitude that the man had left the previous evening heading north. The only path in the north that he could seek sanctuary was the caravan route that went as far as Egypt. I hurried away from the town and headed north seeking him out. It was as if he had left no sign of his passing at all. No trace of his feet remained on the desert floor. No sign of anything he had dropped on his way. No one I saw on the route had seen him and by the time I reached the oasis that was used as a way point for the merchants I realized that I had been had. I returned to the village and went back to see the elder. When I got there his friendly attitude had changed. He was still trying to be friendly but now that my suspicions were aroused I could see the lies through it. He glanced to a small house a couple of times and taking my cue from him I marched over to it and drew back the door cloth. Inside sat a family of three. A woman and two children, who drew back at my entrance. The woman started babbling and the elder hushed her. I punched him through the door way and he sprawled in the sunshine outside the mantle sleeping. I turned back to the woman holding her children to her chest and bid her tell me what had happened. She said that the man who I was looking for had been here the previous day when I had questioned the headman who apparently was her father. He had held her and her two offspring at knife point while the elder fed me the false information about his whereabouts. After I had left he had headed south in the opposite direction of travel to me to put as much distance between him and his allotted destiny as he could. I sat with her and pointed out that however scared she had been the man would have dropped his tough stance the second he had been revealed to me. He had gambled and won with her and she had allowed him to do so conspiring with her father to enable him to escape. This vexed me greatly, these people should always fear me and my god more than any old soldier with a knife. I decided to set an example to teach these people the true value of things. So I killed the little girl in the traditional matter and I castrated the boy with my knife. His screams of pain woke the elder and he came running back through the door screaming his own noise to add to that of the child. I ran him through the stomach with the entire length of my sword and left him there to die in agony at the door of the house. As I left I told the woman that she could always have more children. His screams of pain accompanied me as I strode south in search of my quarry. I was quite a long way away when I heard his voice suddenly still. Someone must have finished him for I had expected him to scream for hours and hours. Still no matter for now I was concentrating on the matter in hand and this time I could see the man�s footprints in the sand as he had run away from the small village. He was out of condition and even though he had more than a days head start on me I knew I would catch him. The truth of this sat on my soul as I increased my pace ignoring my physical aches and pains. Walking through this environment sword in hand was what I had been born to do and I loved doing it. I expected that the man who I was pursuing didn�t feel so confident. He wasn�t equipped for his flight either physically or mentally. My mind was like granite. His was water.
After just a day and a half I saw his figure in the distance and I slowed my march to keep pace with him so I could observe his actions and so that he could be aware that there was no escape, no refuge, no answer but me for his crime. I allowed him to know I was there and followed him in this manner for half a day taunting him from a distance and enjoying myself immensely at this game. Finally I tired of playing cat and mouse and increased my pace to catch him. He was babbling when my hand finally came down on his shoulder, talking to himself. The terror of me had unhinged his mind. And I knew why. This man had been a captain in the regular army the day I first went into battle. The first time I had seen this man I had been sheathed in blood from head to toe having feasted on the inadequacy of the Hittite forces. This was a day that we had slaughtered over ten thousand of the enemy and had been seen doing so by the regulars who had always been in awe of us. Now we were on different sides, this man no longer held me in awe. Just blind terror . He had seen what had become of the wounded that day as we went around systematically slaughtering the survivors lying on the battlefield crying out for help. Slaughtering them in a way that made their blood spurt high into the air, so that we may be covered by the descending spray . We used to like that sort of thing. I looked into his eyes and saw the madness there. This man was very ill. His madness wasn�t recent. He had refused to work guarding the workers in one of the many fields that supplied the city. But sentence had been passed and rather than slaughtering him messily to set an example as I had back in his village I took pity on him and stabbed him in the stomach with the spear point. He went to the ground bent over holding his guts in and I reversed my sword and struck him briefly in the temple. His pain was over. My job was done and I returned home. My superiors approved of the methods I had used and agreed that the woman was at fault. So she took the burden of knowing that she had caused the slaughter of her female child and the ruin of her boy.