Ramah: A Light is Dawning in the Darkness - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert Munday=============

Rob Munday was born in Switzerland in 1950 and studied Dentistry at Guy’s Hospital, London. For a number of years, he lived with his family among the Wichí Indians of North Argentina, and later, in UK, worked as a Special Needs Dentist. Now retired, he lives with his wife Tricia on a narrowboat in the travelling boater community at the western end of the Kennet and Avon Canal. They have three married children and nine grandchildren.

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The door to the guardroom burst open with such ferocity that the men instinctively jerked into unobtrusive postures to avoid attracting the attention and wrath of the obviously furious centurion.“Come on! Let’s be having you! Sharp now!” yelled the officer. The men tumbled to order, hastily making themselves presentable, pocketing dice and pushing the jars of wine under the bench.“What’s got into him?” growled one soldier, adjusting his belt so that his wine paunch sat more comfortably over the top of it.“Silence! Now get fell in like the brave soldiers that you pretend to be.” “Optio!” he barked to his second-in-command.“Sir!”“Lances and short swords, mounted and ready!”He turned on his heel and strode up the short steps, flinging the door back so that it crashed against the wall, then disappeared into the darkness.The men quickly gathered themselves together, grumbling under their breath but knowing the centurion was not to be messed with tonight. Several had drunk a skinful of wine and so they were grateful when they eased themselves into the saddle, glad to be sitting down and able to rely on the clearer minds of their Arab horses, who would instinctively follow the rest of the troop. The door to the guardroom burst open with such ferocity that the men instinctively jerked into unobtrusive postures to avoid attracting the attention and wrath of the obviously furious centurion.“Come on! Let’s be having you! Sharp now!” yelled the officer. The men tumbled to order, hastily making themselves presentable, pocketing dice and pushing the jars of wine under the bench.“What’s got into him?” growled one soldier, adjusting his belt so that his wine paunch sat more comfortably over the top of it.“Silence! Now get fell in like the brave soldiers that you pretend to be.” “Optio!” he barked to his second-in-command.“Sir!”“Lances and short swords, mounted and ready!”He turned on his heel and strode up the short steps, flinging the door back so that it crashed against the wall, then disappeared into the darkness.The men quickly gathered themselves together, grumbling under their breath but knowing the centurion was not to be messed with tonight. Several had drunk a skinful of wine and so they were grateful when they eased themselves into the saddle, glad to be sitting down and able to rely on the clearer minds of their Arab horses, who would instinctively follow the rest of the troop.They were still milling around, adjusting reins and stirrups, when the centurion burst through from the officer’s stable, breaking into a canter as he reached the gate. Anxious to keep up, the soldiers urged on their horses, jostling and wheeling while some of the more fuddle-headedlurched alarmingly, barely staying in their saddles. In a ragged line, they headed through the gate and into the night after the officer, the younger soldiers spurring their horses on to keep up with the centurion.Short swords and lances! They were going into action! After weeks of hot dusty routine guard duty along the wide-open approaches to Jerusalem, the last few days had seen some real soldiering; searching the hills and valleys of the Judean desert for infiltrators from the East. And now there might be combat! A nighttime raid! Zealots maybe!Once the optio had ensured that all the troops were in a vaguely respectable formation, he drew his horse alongside the centurion.“Just routine patrol, sir?” he ventured.The officer did not answer but stared on ahead, and the optio might have thought that he had not heard, except that he repeated through his clenched teeth, “Routine patrol ... routine patrol!” Suddenly, he barked, “Are your men drunk, optio?”“We don’t permit drinking on duty...” started the optio, but the centurion shouted him down.“Liar! Your men are constantly drunk. May the gods help any that is sober tonight!” He reined his horse in and the troops came to a halt, the horses shaking their heads, blowing and shifting their feet after their brisk canter. The centurion sat for some time, looking at the lights of a peaceful Bethlehem settling down for the night on the hill opposite. He turned to the soldiers.“This is the sort of night’s work I am sure some of you have already excelled at.”“Women is it, sir?” quipped a voice from the dark, and a rumble of laughter passed through the ranks.“No, soldier.” The officer spoke quite calmly. “It’s not the women... It’s their babies.” And then his voice raised in anger. “Did you hear? Babies, I said! Baby boys! Every baby boy under two years old is to be killed... in case he has designs on the throne!” he spat out disgustedly. “Those are our brave orders!”The optio cleared his throat.“Now sir, some of us are old campaigners, and sometimes in the course of war we... Well, what I mean is...”“Optio!” roared the officer. “If you’ve not got the stomach to face the babies, consider if you have the guts to face Herod in the morning for disobeying his orders! Do you understand?”The soldiers hesitated for just a moment and then, in the mindlessness of soldiers down the ages who were ‘just obeying orders’, they launched themselves on the unsuspecting village in the ever-increasing frenzy of men committed to an evil senseless errand.All over the village, innocent babies lay dying or lifeless in their distraught mothers’ arms; numb fathers tore at their hair in helpless anger, frustration and disbelief; and brothers and sisters cowered in terrified confusion. At the barracks, the old soldiers drank themselves into oblivion, and the young recruits retched and vomited in the darkness. At the palace, a drained centurion delivered his report to a smug and callous king, who sipped his wine while the world turned sadly through yet another night of pitch black evil and waited for the light that would surely dawn one day.