Chapter 311: What Kills You Cannot Be Seen

The night passed with the drum of Yuri, dance of Anjelo, the jeers and cheers of every one else. In the after a few hours of drinking the gang dropped asleep inside the tent together, until day break which Antonius became the first one of them to wake up hearing the horn from the infantry camp they are in resembling the dawn of a new day. The regular soldiers have gotten up from their blankets starting their work, and as their commander in charge of course Antonius in order to show a good example to his men around the camp by waking up at the exact same time as them. 

Although it has almost became a kind of daily practice for him, but Antonius is not really in a very good shape. It is widely known among the crew that their admiral has a rather poor alcohol tolerance which is why he refrains to low alcohol level wines for the most of the times. But for last night he successfully over done himself gulping down cup after cup of fresh alcoholic beverages getting drunk for the first time of the year. One cannot blame him, as the victory of this battle is like a grand price that came crash landing right on to his head making him feel more buffed with esteem and self satisfaction for the first time. This battle, together along with the name of the victor, shall definitely leave a page on the history books of kids six hundred years later. 

With a dizzy head feeling like the entire world is spinning around him Antonius woke up following the horns among the group of people laying every where messily on the ground snoring. He masters his head trying to soothe his headache, but it is to no avail, and he found himself to be slightly out of breathe having a hard time breathing. It took him awhile to find out the cause of this- it is the hairy leg of Abdullah place right on top of his chest. Antonius gave the still snoring Abdullah a look of dismay and laid the later's leg off his chest. This drunkard has nothing on his body except for his under garment, God knows what was he up to last time. 

With a bright smile and a pleasant mood Antonius got up from the carpet stepping carefully through the people laying around. Feeling a bit humid Antonius decided to have a walk outside the tent but the moment he opened the curtain of the tent that bright smile on his face soon disappeared to nowhere along side with his mood. 

The situation outside the tent is even more unbearable than the inside, with the temperature being abnormally high for mid winter, a rather toxic smell lurking around in the atmosphere, pillars of black smoke every where in the air rising up to the sky giving it a pale colour, soldiers and workers walking around wearing white cloths as masks and carrying bags of body with them to the different pits. The source for all of these.is clear, it is from the massive burning of corpses from both sides in these pits.

With countless people and animals dying in the last month getting scattered around the plain providing a feast to the rats, birds, worms and flies, and their mucus and flood sipping in to the water bodies it provides a suitable condition for a plague to start spreading. Thus, it is no longer the appropriate timing to care about any customs or traditions that prohibits the burning of bodies. All shall return to the hug of the Mother Nature in their initial nature of dust leaving not a trace in the world of the livings. 

Seeing this sight the pleasant mood vanished in Antonius mind, he shook his head and decided to have a face wash in a winter pond near by to freshen up his brain make it go back functioning again. He found the pond, by god's grace it is still flowing not freezing in to ice. Antonius dipped his head inside the chilling water with his eyes shut shaking his head making the freezing temperature trigger up his nerves making his blood start flowing again ending the torturing headache that has been haunting him since morning. 

Feeling refreshed and energized once again Antonius even took a mouthful of the cold water and gulped it down giving his face another wash. Then after he wiped his face clean, he looked through the reflection of himself on the surface of the mirror, counting how many new strings of white hair and how many new wrinkles has formed up on his head, sighing about the impact with each day staying over night working and worrying about various issues has taken a toll on his body health making him age faster. 

Then his eyes caught the glimpse of some thing floating beneath the surface of water causing some confusion as there is not supposed to be any fish inside this pond in this winter time. Caught with curiosity Antonius dipped his hand in to the pond and reached for that thing, it feels like some thing soft with the texture of skin, squashy and smooth when pinched and a little bit hairy on the top. 

Antonius wiped his eyes for the second time with his sleeves and took the creature in the water out from a closer inspection. And upon getting a closer look he was appalled out of his souls – that round thing he was holding is not a creature! It is a head that has been chopped off from its body and was tossed in to these waters! The entire head already has its eyes bulging out, skin enlarging in to a slump making it look like a giant and the skin turning from a healthy red to a pale slimy green in colour with a weird smell that instantly filled up the nostrils of Antonius, making him want to puke and almost blacked out thinking that he has just drank a mouthful of water from these waters. 

The admiral let off a shriek leaping back wards off the water body panting heavily with his chest bulging up and down breaking in to a cold sweat. The head he just threw on the ground rowed a few rounds in circles and then went back to him with that pair of frog like pair of eyes looking at him with his jaws dropped revealing the already rotten mixed with some greenish mosses as if he got some thing to tell him, tell him the tale and stories of the battle that this person has went through when he was still alive. 

…

The next day news spread over the camp saying that their invincible admiral, made from iron and steel has fallen ill to the curses of their pricky foes. Some rumors even started spreading around the camp reaching all the way back to Thessaloniki, saying that their admiral Antonius is infected by a wound, or fell ill due to not wearing mask in the middle of a plague, some rumors even say that Antonius is shot by an arrow dipped in… you know… dirty stuff, and this rumor even escalated to people describing that they saw this arrow being shot on to the admiral from the back. 

These rumors are indeed right, as Antonius is really sick after he came back from that encounter. Of course, it is not that glutting giant head that made him sick since he has saw hundreds of bodiless heads in his life before, but he believe it ought to be some thing else, some thing he cannot see, cannot touch and cannot feel. Though he do not really have any more energy thinking about all of these now, as he is currently lying on the bed powerlessly sneezing coughing and shivering in his own cold sweat. 

Following the rumors about an arrow on the admiral's back, the captains took shifts to guard the side of Antonius patrolling around with halberds and fasces rod taking a full awareness on any suspicious personnel approaching the tent of the Admiral, while Abdullah and Fahim, being the probably two most intellectual people here with some basic knowledge of herbology took turns studying the symptoms of Antonius trying to browse through the medication books they never laid hands on for almost a decade and figure out what the hell is causing a havoc inside Antonius' body. 

The medics in the entire camp too has not a single solution on their admiral's disease, as they are trained with basic knowledge to allow them to bandage casualties and stop plagues, but they definitely does not have the skill to diagnose an illness. The cavalries are dispersed following the end of the operation to go around paying attention to any renowned physicians on the monasteries on the mountains, while the rest just stayed there doing their part, what made it even worse is that no one is allowed to spread the news that admiral is sick in these times of war which will cause a dramatic effect potentially able to flip the table of victory to the other side.