THERE WAS no gasp, no outcry, only a heavy silence. None of them was a stranger to violence. But among the Circle, taking the life of another, Scab or albino, was strictly forbidden.
This . . . this looked to be the result of an execution. Carried out by his own son. For a moment, all Thomas could hear was the pounding of his own heart.
Vadal, son of Ronin, one of the very first to drown, stumbled out to the severed head and stared, disbelieving, for a moment. Any hint of celebration in the wake of Thomas’s salute was gone.
He swiveled to face Samuel. “Are you mad, man?”
“The head belongs to the man who hung Richard, son of Sacura. We seized him, tried him, and found him guilty. The punishment was death.”
Vadal thrust his finger at the head near his feet. “Don’t be a fool. You kill them and you might as well be them. This is your idea?”
“This, you blithering fool, is doing the work of Elyon,” Samuel said calmly. “Ridding the world of those who mock him.”
“Only to become them?” Vadal shot back.
“Do I look like a Scab to you? Am I—having defiled the love of Elyon himself as you claim—now covered from head to foot with the disease that marks unbelievers? Has he taken away his healing from me?”
Thomas held up his hand to bring some order before the whole thing got out of control. “You’ve made your point, Samuel. Now take your prize, bury it somewhere far from here, and return to our celebration.”
“That’s not what I had in mind.”
Thomas felt his own patience thinning. “Get off of that horse. Pick up that head. Get back on your horse. And leave us!”
A crooked grin crossed Samuel’s face. “Now, there’s the father I once knew. Commander of the Forest Guard. The world once quivered at your name.”
“And now it quivers at the name of another.”
“Does it? Elyon? And just where is Elyon these days?”
“Stop it!” Chelise snapped. She released Thomas’s arm and took a step toward Samuel. “How dare you speak of your Maker with such a callous tongue?”
“I’m only stating what is on the mind of us all. Love the Horde? Why? They hate us, they kill us, they strike terror into our camps. They would wipe out this entire gathering with one blow if they could. We are the vomit on the bottom of their boots, and that will never change.”
“You were once Horde, you insolent pup!” Chelise shot back.
Samuel nudged his horse around the severed head. His posse stood their ground, a group of mind-numb fighters who’d tasted just enough bloodlust to give them a thirst. “Do we not believe that a time will soon come when Elyon will destroy all of this land and the Horde with it, and finally rescue us to bliss?”
Silence.
“Ten years have gone by without one indisputable sign that Elyon still hovers nearby, preparing to rescue us. You’re too busy running and hiding from that Horde beast Qurong to ask why.”
“That beast is my father,” Chelise cried. “I would die for him. And you would kill him?”
Samuel paused only a moment. “Kill Qurong, the supreme commander who has sworn to slaughter our children? The Scab who paces deep into the night, poisoned by bitterness against his own daughter because she betrayed him by drowning? That Qurong? The one you are obsessed with because he gave birth to you?” He spoke in a soft voice that cut the night silence like a thin blade. “You love your father more than you love any of us, Mother. If it were his head on the ground now, we might finally be free.”
Samuel had always been bitter about Chelise’s love for her father, but he’d never voiced it so plainly.
Vadal spoke for Chelise, who was swimming in so much fury at the moment that she didn’t appear to be able to form words.
“This is heresy! You have no—”
“I took this Scab’s head in a canyon twenty miles from here,” Samuel announced, ignoring Vadal. “We ambushed him, and my sword cut cleanly through his neck with one swing. It was the most satisfying thing I have done in my life.”
“Samuel!” This from Marie, who glared at her brother, red-faced.
Thomas fought a terrible urge to leap upon the boy and whip his hide until he begged for mercy. But he remained rooted to the ground.
Samuel blurted out, “War is permissible. I say we wage it. I’ve been out there slipping in and around the Horde since I turned fifteen, and I can tell you that with five thousand warriors we could make them regret the day they ever killed one of ours.”
“Elyon forbid!” Vadal gasped.
“If Elyon will kindly tell me I’m wrong, then I will step down. We say that evil is on the flesh, that the disease on the Horde’s skin is Elyon’s curse. So why am I still disease free, having committed this terrible evil by killing this Scab, unless Elyon approves? Until he makes my error clear, my heart will cry for the days when we took them on, twenty to one, and turned the sand red with their blood.”
“It’s sacrilege!”
“What’s sacrilege?” Samuel threw back. “What Elyon tells us himself, or what we have been told he says? Have any of you heard this specific instruction from Elyon lately? Or are you all too drunk on his fruit and water to notice his absence?”
“This . . .” Vadal was trembling with rage. “This is utter nonsense!”
“It used to be that we celebrated the passing of every soul, believing that they had gone on to a better place. Now our celebrations at the passing are filled with mourning. Why? Where is Elyon, and where is this better place?”
None of them could deny the subtle shift in their treatment of the dead.
“We used to long for the day of Elyon, clinging to the hope that any moment he would come swooping over the hills to rescue us once and for all. Now we long only for the day of the Gathering, when we can drink the waters and eat the fruit and dance ourselves silly, deep into the night. The Great Romance has become our elixir, a place to hide from the world.”
“You’re speaking rubbish.”
“I say bring back the days of our glory! Hasten the day of Elyon’s return. Fight Qurong the way the Eramites do.”
“You’ll have to fight me first,” Vadal said.
Samuel pulled his horse around on its rear quarter to face the man. His mount snorted in protest. “So be it.” Loudly to the whole gathering, he said, “I’m told the followers of Eram also respect the challenge as we once did. I challenge Vadal of Ronin to combat as in the days of old. It is still permitted.”
Was it? Thomas felt his gut churn.
“I accept,” Vadal snapped.
“To the death.”
“Stop it!” Chelise cried. Then, in a softer voice, “I warned you about this, Samuel.”
“Did you? Our prevailing doctrine denounces violence against the Horde,” Samuel said, “but what does it say of the challenge? We speak all night long about tales of the heroics that preceded us: Elyon this, Thomas that . . . I say let the heroics be seen in the flesh. Elyon will save the one who speaks the truth as he once did.”
His argument contained a thread of truth that turned Thomas’s blood cold. Before their very eyes they were witnessing the greatest threat to all truth. And from the mouth of his own son. But Thomas was too stunned to form a response. This was his own son, for the love of Elyon!
Chelise whispered his name urgently, and he saw that she was staring at him, begging him to stop Samuel.
Instead, Thomas looked at Ronin and Johan for support. William, Mikil, Jamous—any of them. They all stared at him for guidance. Were they, too, growing tired of waiting for an imminent return that had been imminent for longer than any of them cared to think? Could this be the source of their hesitation?
Samuel wasn’t the only one to wonder if Elyon really was coming back for a “bride” anytime soon. After all, he’d allowed them to take beating after beating without so much as lifting a finger. What good was being disease free if you lived in ridicule and on the run?
Thomas caught Ronin’s stare. “Ronin?”
The spiritual leader of Thomas’s clan frowned, then studied his son Vadal and Samuel.
“No one in the Circle has issued a challenge for a very long time. Never, that I know of. It’s utterly foolish.”
“But was it outlawed?” Samuel pressed.
Chelise flung both arms wide. “This is so much nonsense, this flexing of the muscle to prove a point. And to the death?” She turned to the others. “Come on, Mikil! Johan, surely you can’t think this is permissible.”
“It’s absurd,” Mikil said, and Johan agreed, but neither was demanding. The fear in Thomas’s gut spread. Why weren’t they rushing out and dragging Samuel off his horse in protest? They harbored a small vessel of doubt themselves? Surely not all of them!
Samuel took advantage of their inaction. “Didn’t Elyon once condone our use of force? Has he changed his mind? Does Elyon change his mind? Well, well, by the heavens I’ve made a dreadful mistake, I will change the way it is done! Is this a perfect Creator?”
He let that settle.
“No. Elyon knows that it is better to love, that everything rests on the fulfillment of the Great Romance, like the union of bride and groom after a night of dizzying celebration. But sometimes love can be expressed by defending the truth. Vadal has that prerogative. No, Mikil?”
The famed fighter shifted her eyes to Thomas, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Samuel, but by this very deflection she had endorsed him. Didn’t she realize what she was doing? Supporting this ludicrous assertion before the entire Gathering could only bring ruin!
But the fear cascading down Thomas’s spine rendered him mute as well. A dozen years ago he would have cut this challenge to the ground with a few well-placed words. Those days were gone, replaced by a wisdom that now seemed to fail him entirely. Smothered by dread.
“Does this Gathering cower from the truth?” Samuel called out. “Let me fight as the Eramites fight!”
Thomas had risked his life on a hundred occasions to love the Horde, to win Chelise, to follow the ways of Elyon, no matter how dangerous or brutal the path. Now that path had doubled back and was running straight down the middle of the Circle itself. The greatest danger was from inside, he always told the others. Tonight it had finally bared its teeth for all to see.
And there was no outcry from the Circle against Samuel’s demand.
Thomas looked up at the thousands regarding him. “Who says so?”
No one shouted agreement, as was their right. But after several beats a younger man from another clan—Andres, if Thomas was right—lifted his drink.
“So says I.” They looked at him, and he stepped forward into the orange firelight. “There is a time for peace and there is a time for war. Maybe the time for war has come. Didn’t Elyon once wage war?”
A hundred ayes rumbled through the night.
So then, Samuel was tapping the unspoken sentiment of many. This attitude was practically epidemic, a cancer that would eat them alive from the inside.
And this from his own son . . .
Thomas tried to swallow, but the fear now swelling through his head prevented the simple action. He’d faced that devil Teeleh himself and bested him in the blackest forest; he’d hacked his way out of thirty encroaching Scabs with a single broad blade; he’d marched into the city to the cheers of a hundred thousand throats shouting the praises of Thomas of Hunter, the greatest warrior who’d ever lived.
But at the moment, he was only a terrified husk. Useless against this enemy called Samuel, son of Hunter.
It occurred to him that Samuel was speaking again, demanding more from the crowd. “Who else?” he was shouting. And hundreds were agreeing.
“Don’t be so thin headed!” William cried over them all. “We’ve always agreed that we were shown a new way by Elyon, apart from the sword. Now our impatience changes that? Our way is to love our enemies, not wage war on them.”
A thousand ayes and shrill cries of agreement shook the canyon.
Finally! Finally some sense!
“But I am within my rights to make this challenge, am I not?” Samuel demanded. “And Vadal is in his rights to accept.”
“Aye.” The agreements peppered the gathering, but all eyes were now back on Ronin and Thomas.
Ronin must have noted the concern that had locked up Thomas, because he addressed the crowd.
“Yes, I suppose it is right what Samuel says. Nothing I know of has outlawed his prerogative to challenge my son. And Vadal has the right to accept that challenge or reject it, which would be the wiser by far. Frankly, I’m appalled that there isn’t a protest among you all. Have you decided to feed your bloodlust?”
“He’s right,” Chelise said. “This is the kind of thing we might do as Horde.”
“Or under the old Thomas,” a lone voice called.
“All things may be permissible, but not all are beneficial,” Ronin said, cutting off any further dialogue that might mire them in their own violent history. To Vadal, his son: “Surely, you see the madness in this.”
“I see the madness in what tempts Samuel and half of the Circle,” he said.
Samuel slid out of his saddle and landed on the ground with a slap of boots on rock. He slipped his sword from its scabbard, thrust the bronzed tip into the shale, and rested both palms in its handle.
“What is it, O favored one? Shall we test the truth?” The fool wasn’t taking any of this seriously! Or worse, he was drunk on his own power and took Vadal’s death very seriously.
“I accept,” Vadal snapped.
“No!” Marie, Thomas’s eldest child and Vadal’s betrothed, stepped out, ripped a sword from the mount closest to Samuel’s, and twirled it once with a flip of her wrist. “I exercise my right to take the place of any other in a challenge.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Vadal said. “Step back!”
“Shut up. If you have the right to throw away your life, so do I. Those are the rules.”
“That was a long time ago. Get back, I’m telling you!”
Marie turned to the elder. “Ronin?”
The spiritual leader nodded. “It is her right.”
Samuel grinned, whipped his sword through a backhanded swing, and circled to his right, inviting Marie into an imaginary fighting ring.
“Stop them!” Chelise was glaring at Thomas, whispering harshly. “Do something.”
He did nothing. He could hardly think straight, much less trust himself to do something he would not later regret. He could not stop them; they all had the same freedom to make their own choices.
The grin had faded from Samuel’s face. Surely he wouldn’t use his sword on his own sister. This was Marie’s ploy. She knew that Samuel would back down. This was her gamble, and Thomas could see the wisdom in it.
“So, Sister. It’s you and me, is it?”
“Looks that way.” She walked closer, dragging her sword casually behind her. Not to fool a soul; they all knew she was a devil with that thing.
Samuel glanced at the blade, leaning on his own with confidence. “I’m not the young pup you punished the last time we played this game.”
“This isn’t a game,” Marie said. “You’re playing with the fate of our people.”
“You’ll get hurt,” he said.
“Then hurt me, Brother.”