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The first step of any successful plan is to plan.
-Musings of the Historian
––––––––
NIGHT HAD ALREADY FALLEN by the time I returned and the square was abandoned. I hid in the remains of the fallen house and waited for morning.
The sun's first rays were beginning to peek over the far mountains when I heard the unmistakable clatter of an approaching army. I left the rubble and worked my way over to one of the other buildings. I was sure that the broken building would be Saddhan's first stop. I was right.
The army filled the town. Sadavir had been right; it was indeed a vast army for this people. Saddhan obviously had pulled from all the villages on the Creators' side and the army easily pushed five hundred men strong, all armed with the new weapons. From what I had seen from the Destroyers' villages, each village could have mustered a maximum of about thirty fighting men on short notice. It would have been a slaughter.
No sooner had the army entered the town than Padam came running to meet his father, yelling, even at a distance, the news.
"They escaped! Aric held the whole village hostage and they escaped!" Saddhan cursed bitterly and spat on the ground. He started giving orders to the villagers, ordering them to gather their tools and follow him to the gate to break it down.
Baldev, the one who had stood up earlier from among the crowd, approached Saddhan and spoke.
"Saddhan, several of us believe that there should be a representative appointed, by vote, that should go with you and counsel with you concerning your decisions with the army. It is our futures too, after all."
Saddhan viciously backhanded Baldev across the face. He reeled from the blow and raised a hand to his bleeding lip.
"I will not allow my actions to be questioned!" Saddhan screamed. Composing himself, he shouted out to the villagers, who looked on with wide eyes. "If there are several leaders, it won't be long until we get too tied up in our own bickering that we lose our effectiveness. We need to be able to act quickly, and that means a strong central leadership. Do you want your children slaughtered by Destroyers? I certainly don't, so we must be strong and act now."
Not pausing to see what effect his words had, he resumed yelling orders. When no one moved, he grabbed a weapon from the man standing next to him.
"What is wrong with all of you?" he screeched. "The Destroyers will kill us all! Now we finally have a chance to destroy them and you balk? Perhaps I'll have to convince you of how serious the situation is."
He grabbed Baldev, who still stood in front of him, fingering his torn lip. He whipped him around and kicked at the back of his knees, causing him to fall into a kneeling position in front of him. He held his weapon up to the back of Baldev's head.
"Now move! I don't want to hurt anyone, but if I must take one man's life to save hundreds, I will make that sacrifice. Move!"
He screamed. This time he got results. The people sprang into action, gathering supplies and tools. Baldev, rather than writhing in fear, was trembling with rage. A tribute to the personal courage of the man, he rose from his knees and turned to face Saddhan. The weapon was pointed straight at his chest, but Baldev started to yell at Saddhan as if he didn't notice the imminent danger he was in.
"Aric was right! You are the villain here, not the Destroyers! And I will die before I spend another moment on my knees while you..."
There was a sickening thud as the stone fired from Saddhan's weapon and tore through Baldev's chest. He coughed hard, pulling hard for breath. He sunk to his knees and fell over in the dust. The whole village was silent, watching. As Baldev's breathing slowly stilled, Saddhan grabbed another weapon from a nearby soldier.
"Are there any more traitors in our midst? Let them speak now! Our people can never be strong if we allow such lies to be spoken to tear at our very core. No one? Then be quick about your preparations, we must leave immediately."
"Father, if I may?" Padam's squeaky voice spoke at Saddhan's side.
"Yes, son?"
"They didn't go by the gate, Sadavir was the one who blocked the gate from the other side, they went to the south. I think there is a hole in the wall there, we can catch up to them faster going that way."
"Good work, son. You serve your people well," Saddhan said proudly.
The final preparations were made while a nameless woman wept quietly next to the still Baldev.
Just as the blue sky has still not lost its magic and wonder, the tears of grief in the eyes of a new widow have not lost their horror in my mind. How many such tears had I seen in my wanderings? More than I liked to remember. The causes and the many reasons for those tears had long been forgotten, however, and only the agony of the moment remained.
Pain always outlasted causes. The scars always outlived the crusades.
Such were my thoughts as I raced along, just out of sight of the army. I had stayed as long as I could, then ran out of the village, trying to circle my way around the army so that I could reach the hole in the wall before they did. I almost succeeded.
I had nearly reached the wall when I was spotted. A chase ensued and already I could hear stones hitting behind me as I approached the wall. Lauria's face appeared in the hole in the wall, her hand beckoning to me frantically to hurry. In my detached way, I wondered what plan they had to stop this army once I was through.
My wonderings soon had their answers as I stepped through the hole. Only two women stood there, Lauria and a woman I had not met before, a Destroyer. Lauria raised her hand, which held two light blue Stones, her own and the Stone of the nearby Destroyer.
The Stones shone with a pale blue light and the rocks that littered the ground started to shift and move. As the army drew near enough to be firing stones through the opening, the opening closed. The new section of wall shaped and fitted so tightly together it was as if it had formed there from the birth of the planet. Lauria smiled triumphantly. After seeing her son and husband taken from her, she now held the power to stop an entire army from threatening her family. It was a good day for Lauria.
"I'm glad you made it. Hurry, we must join the others." We turned and walked away from the wall to the sound of Saddhan's vehement cursing from the far side.
Lauria's course took us directly north. We traveled for most of the day before I saw the reason why.
A staging area had been set up around the north gate. The Creators had set up some crude shelters there and a few of the women were bent over small fires, fixing an evening meal. We weren't the only ones arriving in camp.
"Sergei, good to see you again!" Ivan boomed. He was walking into camp from the east as we walked in from the south. He was followed by several of his fighting men, including Vova. I was surprised to watch as Vova approached Sadavir and greeted him warmly. The others also moved through the camp greeting old acquaintances from Andre's village, who were already there.
For the most part, the Creators watched on, openly uncomfortable and afraid in their new circumstances. They had chosen to follow Sadavir and Aric, but a lifetime of living in fear of Destroyers couldn't be overcome in a mere moment of decision.
For their part, the Destroyers reacted to the Creators' presence by acting as if they weren't there at all. They had come to fight off a threat to their home; that was all they cared about.
I wasn't surprised to see Olya at Sadavir's side. He had finally found some time to wash the blood from his face and he looked a good deal more human than when I had seen him last. He was talking to some of the other Creators, but he broke off their conversation abruptly when he saw us approaching.
"Where is the army?" he yelled out to us even as he was walking to meet us.
Lauria answered for our small group.
"As of this morning, they were at the hole in the wall. We sealed the hole and I think they will now head north to the gate."
Sadavir nodded. He paused, then nodded again, this time more to himself. He took a deep breath and turned around.
"Everybody listen to me!" he announced. His voice was shaky and I smiled. Even the most confident man in battle can fall apart when faced with the horrors of public speaking. Sadavir seemed to understand his role fairly well, however. He was the only one who was known and somewhat trusted by both peoples.
If something was to be done, he would have to start it. He stepped up to his task with determination.
"The army is going to be at that gate tonight or in the morning. We have to be ready. To do that, we must work together."
Several of the Creators nodded, while the Destroyers, for the most part, looked disinterested. They had fought with the Creators before and saw no reason to worry. The Creators were cowards. Sadavir grabbed one of the launcher weapons from his father.
"This is what they will be carrying, more than four hundred of them!" So saying, he turned and fired at a nearby tree. The hard stone embedded itself deep within the trunk. Suddenly the Destroyers looked more alert.
Ivan was the first to speak.
"Sadavir, we know the power you wield when you hold both Stones, can you destroy this army and save our people?" His tone was hopeful.
"Yes, Ivan, I can." Sadavir's eyes flashed as dark as the Stone that hung around his neck. "I can butcher them all in their tracks. I can then walk through the carnage and carcasses and face the crying eyes of their wives and the wails of their children as they go hungry in the night. Is that what you would have me do?"
Ivan's eyes dropped to the ground.
"What choice do we have?" yelled Vova. "We did not ask for this war! We did not ask for any of this! What would you have us do? Our wives still wait for us at home, our children still need their fathers. What of them? Would you have us face down their weapons? Are we your sacrifices that you may be merciful to your own?"
Not having a wife and children of his own, Vova spoke for his people. His voice choked with bitterness, but he still listened for Sadavir's response.
"I'm saying that we should find a way so that no children will cry tonight," Sadavir responded simply.
"How is that possible? If there is a way, please tell us now."
This time it was Ivan that spoke.
"Gladly. Papa, if you will?" Aric nodded. Andre stood next to him, grinning idly.
"Vova!" Sadavir called out. "If you would, could you please pick up a rock and throw it at me?"
"Again?" A rare smile crossed Vova's face as he remembered their first meeting.
Sadavir smiled in return. "Yes, again."
Vova, confused, but compliant, picked up a stone and threw it at Sadavir.
A collective gasp erupted from the watching crowd as a pile of scrap metal no one had noticed at Sadavir's feet shaped itself instantly into a shield that covered him. The thrown rock bounced harmlessly off the hard shell. The blue light that shone out of Aric's fist faded and he handed both Stones to Andre, who then held his hand out to where Sadavir stood in his steel covering. The shield shrunk and fell away. The next time Sadavir spoke, there wasn't another sound in all of the camp.
"The Stones were meant to work together," he proclaimed. "If we work together, we don't need to kill them to stop them, and we certainly don't need to be killed."
Spontaneously, the two masses, Creators and Destroyers, meshed, each person searching for someone who had a match for their own Stone. In some areas, rocks were being shaped into strange designs. From the far side of the meadow, a green light grew in the hand of one of the Destroyers as trees and brush were removed out of his path. Ivan shouted excitedly to Sadavir.
"We can make the wall unbreachable, we don't have to fight them!"
Sadavir reclaimed the attention of the crowd.
"We must face them! Don't you understand? This wall should never have been built in the first place. We should not be two separate peoples. We must face this army and defeat it. And we must defeat it without killing anybody."
He paused to let the effects of his words ripple through the crowd.
"Our fears and our hate will be the undoing of both our peoples. We were meant to work together, that is the true purpose of the Stones. It has always been the ultimate destiny of our people. We must begin today."
A few of the people, mostly the older ones in the crowd, were already nodding, but others, including Vova, still looked troubled.
"Sadavir, if you order us to stand against this army and not kill them, I will follow you," Vova spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. "But I do not understand why we should risk our lives and the future of our people to preserve these invaders. They are the ones who have attacked, don't we have the right to defend ourselves?"
All eyes turned back to Sadavir, awaiting his reply. I took a moment to reflect on the odd scene that lay before me. Sadavir was barely over twenty years of age. Vova was his senior by many years. Glancing around the crowd, I guessed that, discounting the children, Sadavir was the youngest in the crowd, and yet all looked to him.
There was a quality that was sometimes found in certain men. Those who studied such things called it charisma. I have always believed it to be something deeper. Certainly, charisma did not apply to this youth with tousled hair who stood nervously in front of staring eyes. But men could feel his courage, they trusted in his wisdom even before he spoke.
Sadavir did not wish to be a leader; he hadn't sought it. At that moment, he was certainly wishing that he could have been anywhere else in the world. But as hard as the task might be, no matter what it took from him, he could not back down if the victims of his cowardice would be truth and right.
Action in fear, integrity in despair. Such is greatness.
"What will happen if we do kill them?" Sadavir spoke softly, but his voice was heard clearly by all. He didn't wait but answered his own question.
"We will make more bitterness on their side. How long before new weapons are created? How long before they come up with new ways of killing us or sealing us out of their world?
"I've seen how you live here. If the weather is hard, will your wives be cold? If there is drought, will your children go hungry?
"You are the ones attacked, it is true, and you have every right to defend yourselves and your families. But even in their deaths, they will defeat you. For their widows will cry themselves to sleep in stone houses out of the weather. Their children will grow up fatherless in streets among neighbors who have the means to share.
"You have the right to kill them, it is true. But will you? Knowing what it would mean to your families? Will you? Vova?"
Sadavir directed his question directly at Vova, a daring stroke. Vova's heart held more bitterness than almost all of the others. His would be, by far, the most convincing testimony, one way or the other. Vova knew it too and paused to think before he answered.
"No, Sadavir, I will not. I don't know if the Creators will ever share their world with us. But if my death would buy us a chance, I would give it freely."
Sadavir continued Vova's line of thought. "Victory could be gained cheaply enough. But I offer all of us a chance to start a new age. A brand new era where none are slaves, none are outcasts, and there's enough to go around for everyone."
The rest of the crowd offered no further objections. It was Faisal, one of the Creators, who voiced the next question.
"So how will we defeat them without killing them? They do have a lot of weapons."
Sadavir's expression spoke of his relief as he passed the attention away from himself.
"Actually, Andre has a plan, and I'll let him explain it to you."
Sadavir gratefully melted into the crowd as they all huddled around Andre, who was already drawing in the dirt. I smiled as the plan unfolded.
I liked Andre.