Tahn (17 page)

Tahn looked at him in question. But why not? He had rescued her. If he wanted to carry it through till he saw her home, let him. He smiled. Vari and his God. Perhaps this young man could do anything. If Tahn were as certain of the strength of the rest of the children, he would have no fears for them when he was gone.

They rode through the trees, following the stream. Tahn was not particularly anxious to meet a family of strangers. The girl woke again, and Vari whispered, “Be home soon. It’s all right.”

She leaned her head against Vari’s chest and watched the trail ahead of them. Tahn shook his head, thinking it strange that she should feel comfortable with them. Soon he could hear a dog bark.

“That’s Socks,” the girl said. “We’re home.”

A teenage boy was the first to see them. “Papa!” he shouted. A man came out from the humble cottage, followed by five children and a woman with a baby.

“Leah!” the woman gasped. She gave the baby to a girl about Stuva’s size and ran toward Vari and her daughter. “Lord o’ mercy!” she cried. “What has happened?”

Vari handed Leah down to her father and brother. “Mud slide on a slope, I think,” he said. “She fell in the stream. Struck her head solid.”

The man was looking at him. “Did you pull her out, son?”

“He did, Papa,” Leah answered for him.

“God bless you,” the man said. As he took Leah to the house, the woman turned to Tahn.

“Won’t you get down?” she said. “Let us give you something for the trouble. We owe you all such thanks.”

“No, ma’am,” he told her. “You owe us nothing.” He looked over at Vari. “He did what a man should do.”

“You traveling?” she asked. “You got no bags. Can we give you a meal? Roy Lin! Get a chicken!”

“Really, ma’am,” Vari said with a smile. “You don’t have to.”

“You can eat it here or take it with you,” she said. “Papa! Is she all right?”

A voice came from the house. “Yes, Mama, she seems to be fine. Bunged up and shook.”

The woman smiled with relief. “We’ll give you something, truly. Would you rather have a goose?”

The man looked out the door of the house. “Come in,” he said. “I would that you sit a while.”

It wasn’t a big house or in any way rich. But Tahn could tell that Doogan was fascinated by all that he saw. There had been a lot of things at Valhal. But that was different. This was a home. Two little girls asked if Doogan could come and see their puppies.

“Go ahead,” Tahn said when he saw the boy’s eyes light up as never before.

Leah’s father insisted they stay and eat. He kept Tahn and Vari at the table with him to talk while his wife was busy cooking.

He introduced himself as Kert Wittley. “You from around here?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Tahn replied.

Mr. Wittley accepted that without a word of explanation. “We’ll have a new priest before long,” he said, obviously welcoming the opportunity to talk a while.

“Merinth?” Tahn asked.

“Yes, God rest the last father. But Lord forgive me, I’ll not miss him.”

His wife turned around from her pot. “Kert! What a thing to say! And in front of strangers!”

“They’re not strangers, Abby. Leah says this boy saved her from drowning. That makes him the same as blood kin. That’s what my father used to say.”

Tahn and Vari looked at each other. Neither of them had been in a situation like this before.

“Besides,” Mr. Wittley continued, “the Lord’d have us tell the truth. And that last priest did God no service in speaking in favor of Baron Trent as he did.”

“We can’t stay long,” Tahn told them in discomfort. Perhaps it was good to acquaint Vari with these people, in case he ever needed help quickly. But this was not a safe subject.

“Oh, your wife’ll give you no grief when she sees what we send you home with,” Wittley declared. “Men need to share news, so we know what to do and how to pray. The two of you brothers?”

“Yes, sir,” Vari answered. Tahn could figure what he was thinking: If Vari were blood kin to Leah, then he and Tahn must be that indeed.

“We don’t favor the baron around here,” Wittley talked on. “Don’t know how you feel, but I don’t fear to say so. I pray God he doesn’t claim the throne. He’s no Christian man, though he would have us believe it to be so. You are God-fearing people, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Vari answered for them again, glancing up at Tahn.

“I thought as much of you. Be glad to have you come by any time. What brought you to the Lindy stream? Come out often?”

“Fish,” Vari told him.

“Good fishing here, true enough.” He turned his eyes on Tahn. “You never told me, you don’t be favoring the baron, do you? With all that’s happened?”

“We do not.” Tahn’s discomfort was leaving him. An instinct told him the man was sincere, and perhaps he could be helpful. He allowed himself to be drawn into the conversation willingly.

“’Course you don’t.” The man smiled. “He’s rich as King Solomon, but despite all that, he can’t get the favor of the people, for all his trying. Not now, especially. We all know he’s responsible for the slaughter of the Triletts. But he’s heard such an outcry on that, he’s seeking him someone else to blame.”

“Who else
could
he blame?” Tahn asked. He knew the baron had hired Samis for the deed. That was, after all, what Samis did—sell the services of his killers. But such work would not be possible if there were no men like the baron to finance it.

“There’s talk of a mercenary trainer in the mountains,” Wittley told him. “A hard sort. The baron would like nothing better than to make the deed his fault and make of himself a saint.”

Betrayal,
Tahn thought.
Perhaps the two shall slay each other.
“May they meet at night,” he said aloud.

The farmer looked at him oddly, recognizing the common saying. “You think the baron would be so foolish as to duel a fighting man?”

“One can hope.”

The man was shocked. “You’ve a bold tongue, young man. I know men who would be pleased to meet with you. Christian men who don’t wish to bow to a murderer on the throne.”

Abby Wittley turned and looked at her husband with alarm, but he waved her back to her cooking.

“Oh, there’s not so many,” he went on. “And we’ve no schemes against anyone, I promise you. But we’d do what we have to, to protect our families, at least. Tell me. You’ve no love for the baron. Who would you have on the throne?”

“I care not,” Tahn answered. “So long as it’s not him.”

“Ah, my heart exactly!” the farmer said. “Except that I pray for a Christian. We do well to do that.”

Tahn was content with the discovery of these neighbors. In a desperate situation, the children and the lady might get help from Kert Wittley and his family. A grateful friend was a wonderful thing for them to have.

After the meal, he and Vari rode home with a goose and two loaves of fresh bread.
Now I know that the children would survive,
Tahn told himself,
if I were to die tomorrow.

11

T
hat night, Tahn stayed with the children in the main chamber as they ate. He watched Netta’s lesson but remained across the room from them, leaned against the far wall.

He was thinking how little he was a part of what Netta and the children seemed to have. She had taught them a hymn, and they sounded like angels singing it together. She was doing what he’d told her and sowing her seed of faith in them.

The lesson in letters went quickly, and Netta pulled worn pages from the pocket of her cloak. But she did not seem to be reading as she spoke to the children in a solemn voice. “The prophet Isaiah said, ‘Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?’”

At first her words made no sense to Tahn. His mind warred so that after just a few more lines he was ready to get up and walk out. But she continued, and before he could rise to his feet something powerful in the words stopped him and held him.

“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

It stuck in his mind so that he scarcely heard the rest of what she said. Suddenly she had stopped, and Stuva was asking a question.

“That’s about Jesus, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Netta answered. “Remember he shall justify many. That means we can have peace with God, knowing his mercy has washed away our blame.” She glanced at the children. Tahn knew she was aware he was still listening, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Let me read a little on that,” she said.

She turned to her pages of Scripture and read from Romans 5. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”

Tahn stared down at the rock floor. Her words were tearing a hole in his soul. But she just kept going.

“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son …”

He could take no more of it. In an instant, he was on his way outside. He drove Smoke at a fierce pace through the wooded hills, not even sure what he was trying to distance himself from. Vari’s words were echoing in his mind.
“I pray for you.”
It hurt Tahn to think about it. The children would expect their teacher to share their trust. They just didn’t understand.

When he finally stopped by a mound of rocks, he was tense with emotion. “I know how you feel about me!” he shouted toward the sky. “I have heard you say it in my dreams. I am worthless to you.” He left Smoke at the base of the mound and started climbing. “Burn him, you always say! He is not worthy of life!”

He stopped on a rock and looked out over the valley. “I am glad for Lady Trilett,” he said slowly. “She gives the children hope. Perhaps one day they’ll be able to do more than hide or fight. She’ll make of them proper gentlemen, and a lady, given the chance.”

He pulled the bottle of tincture from his pocket and looked at it. “If I were a child at her knee, it might be that hope I’d be drinking in, instead of this.” He took a long swig of the stuff. Too much, he knew, but he didn’t care.

“She says you would not turn me away. She doesn’t know, does she? She doesn’t know all the blood that feeds those flames. She couldn’t wash away the blood of one night, God! How can she expect you to wash away a lifetime?”

He stared at the bottle again. Why wasn’t he feeling its warming lull?

“I envy you, Vari,” he spoke into the night. “To have never dreamed, never killed—”

Suddenly he stood and hurled his bottle into the moonlight. Far away it crashed against the rocks. “What need do I have of it further?” he said. “I am no good with my life as it is. I’ll bear it one night more, God, and in the morning give myself to the flames unless you show me I can have a hope in what the lady speaks.”

He started walking slowly down the mound. He hadn’t slept since Netta and Vari were put at risk of his dream. He had drunk so much of the tincture that it should be making him tired. But it wasn’t.

He whistled.
I’ll just ride tonight,
he thought.
I’ll find a pretty place, by water, to greet the sunrise and give my head a last cool dip. Then I shall part this world as so many have, by the blade in my hand. I can’t see the lady or the children again, God. I can’t hear any more of it. I am eaten up with longing for what I can’t touch.

Smoke was beside him, and he mounted quickly, still brooding.
Each day adds fuel to the flames, doesn’t it?
But he smiled.
I can’t be sorry. If I had not lived this long, each of them sitting in that cave would be dead or in torment.

He sighed and looked at the stars above him. “Thank you, God,” he whispered. “For giving me that much. It was worth it, I think. Please care for them. I can’t do it anymore.”

He rode at a walk for at least a mile as Netta’s words tossed about in his mind.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows …”

“When we were enemies we were reconciled to God …”

“He was wounded for our transgressions … bruised for our iniquities …”

“Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him …”

All the things she said were tugging at him. He drove Smoke to a run but couldn’t get away from his thoughts. What was happening to him? Instead of the opium lulling his mind, God was reaching for him, clutching at his heart.

In his dreams, God rejected him. But Netta had said God would not turn him away. God so loved the world that he sent his Son, Jesus—the One who prayed for the forgiveness of those who killed him.

Tahn swallowed hard. The Son of God had prayed for killers. Murderers like Tahn Dorn.

A peculiar sensation began to spread through him, and he stopped, shaking, at the bank of a stream. He could not explain what was coming over him. He only knew it was God and it was an awesome, fearsome experience. God was all around him, possessing this forested plain and the incredible sky stretching above it. God, far past his mind, was taking a deep hold on his scarred and wounded heart.