They came from the forest and the outlying villages. They came with their own clubs and spears, their own knives. They came with the weapons and gold of their masters, the small landholders whose stronghold might be a single round tower overlooking a single poor village in a deep and remote valley. These men and their families were cut down in the night, by surprise, and left to rot. Their villagers left immediately, abandoning the shacks and huts to which they had been consigned, and going out across the land.
To the free village.
The giant prayed in the empty remains of the old fort, and his prayer sent the call out across the land to the acolytes of the living Wood, the Old Believers. They whispered in their hidden dens, in moments where they did not fear, that a new fire had come into the land. In many places the Old Believers rose immediately and came at the enemy with knives. In others they whispered and prayed, and they kept the news among themselves. They walked in darkness, under the dominion of the traitor lords and the false church, and behind everything was the laughing blue face of the overlord. Should there slip any sign that they were loyal to the Old Belief, to the old lords, they would burn in the village square while their cowed friends and allies watched from behind the line of pikemen. The Witness knew this. In holy visions he saw the faces of the Old Believers who awaited him in places where the enemy was strong, he saw their silent loyalty. The visions came in dreams, and his prayers sent out the call.
From the free village.
He had been touched by the Wood, by the spirits of the forest, and the land-toilers knew this to look at him. The villagers of Scoms were the first to pledge themselves to him, and he gathered the young men around him and they took up the weapons from the fort and the dead. They took up swords and spears, arrows and axes, and their courage was unquestionable. They watched the approaches to the village, and talked bravely of how they would fight the armies of all the great dukes and lords. The Witness laughed with them and drank wine from the stores of Lord Famm, and he held counsel with the elders of the village. They blessed him and his enterprise, and they said that they had seen him in their dreams long before the transformation. They revealed that the whole village had been loyal to the Old Belief even during his tenure as a priest of the false church, and he was amused by this. It did not disturb him to see through the veil of lies. It was part of his enlightenment. He walked among his new friends and rejoiced in true company. They buried the bodies of the dead according to the old way, consecrated in tribute to the Wood, and the Witness led them in a dance of the Wheel, and the women were in one circle with their hands interlocking, and the men were in another, and outside of that circle was another and another and another. They had eight circles of people, all rotating within one another, and all sang the old chant while a hubstone pyre lit up the night. The Witness stood at the center of the wheel, drunk with wine, singing and waving his hands with the song, and the singers were suddenly possessed by the spirits of the forest. All their voices rose to a single sustained note, the rotations of the Wheel became more intense, more hurried, and then the Witness floated up into the air, high off the ground, and the rest of the dancers and singers also floated up. They spun their of their own accord, high above the bloody earth and the buried remains of their men, and their joy was unencumbered by the world. Wheels turned within wheels, filling the sky, and at the hub of all of them was the Witness. He sang and sang the song of the world, and the night seemed to last forever.
In the free village.
* * *
The children followed the giant Witness wherever he went. He came down from the empty ruins of Famm's fort alone. He had prayed through the night, and his prayers had been like waves in a still pond, radiating outward to the silent fish who waited beneath the water, who had waited forever for the first stone to fall from the sky. He had prayed in the ashes of the manor house, in a Wheel that he had built from the rocks of the house itself. He had kneeled and prayed all through the night. For wisdom, that he might know how to lead his people. For courage, that he might lead again in battle, and that his men might follow. For vision, that he could see the end of this enterprise, that he could understand the final shape of the world after his remaking of it.
The children awaited him at the foot of the hill. They looked on him with fascination and fear at his size, which was far greater than any other man. There was a dirty-faced boy and girls whose long hair was matted and stringy. They smiled shyly at him, and he stood there for a while to look out at the land. The long fields, the village in the distance beneath its stand of trees, the long columns of cooking-fire smoke, the far line where the forest took up, and the green hills and mountains.
Where would he lead his people next? To the south and southwest lay the dominion of the Lord Sabodisho, whose own cruel hands begged cutting, and whose own villages would rise as soon as the Witness's men came to them. He knew this already, by the whisper of the forest spirits. He had heard the whisper in the night, lost in a long musical tone, emanating like his own soul.
To the east lay the poorer lands of Lord Bruns Bramlett, whose raiders went often into the northern lands, the mountain range that loomed in the north, and who would be a cruel opponent. The Witness envisioned the tree-limb on which he would string the man up to die.
To the north lay only the mountains, and the hills and valleys that came before them. There was no Thanian lord there, and the mountain people were lawless and cruel themselves. The Witness had not seen an attack in his brief tenure as priest of Scoms, but he had heard of them. The secret attacks in the dead of night, the kidnapping of women and children, the trading of slaves among the chieftains of the mountains. He had heard all the tales, and he knew that Bruns Bramlett had just recently taken to warring again with the mountain people.
The Witness was deep in thought as he passed the long encampment of those who had come to follow him. They waved and cheered, and their dirty faces were hopeful and young. They gathered around fires and awaited the Witness's command. There was nothing to say yet. He waved at them as he passed, but he had no words or inspirations to give them. He had only the visions, the prayers, the strength of one hundred men. The day was long and bright, and he went down into the forest. The children left him alone at the forest's edge, and he was not ever at peace.
The Witness met with the elders of Scoms and the surrounding villages. These were old men and women whose true roles had been hidden from him while he had been their priest. They gathered together around a lonely fire, and they wrapped themselves in shawls and robes to keep out the chill of the morning air. The Witness came down into their glade and sat with them. He was not cold, and the morning air felt like nothing to him.
"The lords will come, Witness. They will bring an army to destroy us. Our people have followed you, they have made themselves known. This is the worst mistake. We have struggled to remain hidden from the lords. We have kept our people silent, our ways secretive, our souls unseen behind opaque eyes. The lords have mistaken our strategy for their own success. You know that."
"Yes," The Witness said. He himself had thought the heresy largely routed from this place.
"What will you do? Lead them into the mountains? Where will you go? The secret of Famm's demise will only last a little longer. It cannot go on. When Sabodisho finds out, he will sound the alarm. Or perhaps it will be Bruns Bramlett. Or perhaps an envoy from Visselno, who comes with word for Famm and finds the fort in ruins. How can we ensure that the single rider will not be our undoing?"
The Witness sat quietly and listened as the others debated the danger, the threat. He sat in the shady glen, in the warmth of the fire, and he let the words of the elders flit about him. He could not think how to address their concerns, their worries, with reason and logic that they would understand. They were the product of the old way, the quiet and hidden way that the Old Believers undertook when they were weak and the night was their only shield. He knew in his heart that those days were now just a memory.
"I will free all the land," The Witness said finally. "I will see the Devils driven from Thane and the traitor lords with them. I will cleanse this land."
"How?" said the old woman who was called the Widow. She sat in the center of the group of elders, and her face was haunted and ancient. She had seen the past too, The Witness knew as he looked at her. Her useless eyes seemed to stare at cross-purposes, but she craned her head toward him. "Tell us how you will free the land when you have at your disposal only the tired and poor land-toilers. Tell us how you will capture all the land between the rivers, how you will storm the forts of the lords, how you will take Visselno and Mesto-on-Leva, how you will besiege Riadom and last out the winter outside its great walls while the Devils come from across the plains to relieve the city. Tell us this! I want to hear your plan."
The Witness tried to speak, began to formulate words, but realized that he could not answer the questions. He could see, but he could not articulate. He saw in his heart that he could make the land free with fire and blood, that he could be the hand of the Wood, that his visions were real. He could explain nothing.
"Tell us!" Cried the Widow as the Witness stood up. He walked to the edge of the glen and stopped. Then he said, "What I have in my heart is straight from the Wood. What I see is straight from the Wood. I cannot tell you why or how, I only know that the truth is in me. I say that I will free the land. The Wood has told me to go ahead. Look at me! I am a warrior now. The Wood has made me that!"
She called after him but he did not turn around or stop. He left the woods with his hammer and his faith, and he went to the men who had come to follow him. He raised the hammer before them, and they did not ask for confirmation. They saw, they knew. And he himself only saw and knew. It was called faith. The Wood had made him a warrior. He could not explain why.
* * *
The Witness set out before dawn with his brothers behind him. They were the poor and the lost, and their families they left behind. They left behind also the cooking fires and animals, and the homes that all had known. They set out along the path they wound through the woods to the estate of Lord Sabodisho, whose land encompassed a dozen villages. The Witness and his men would show Sabodisho the harvest of what he had sown: blood and fear.
The older men had craggy faces and rough hands, the leathery complexion of long years under the sun, and the pitiless eyes of laborers. They bore their weapons like they were holy objects, and this seemed right to the Witness. The holy war would now begin. They were the tools of the servants of God, of the spirits of the wood. The younger men walked proudly. Their faces shined when they held their weapons, their excitement was like a spirit itself, illuminating and energizing, turning their focus together to the single goal of freedom. The Witness harnessed that spirit and the young marched with him. He would not deny any man a chance to strike a blow for freedom.
He led them through the clear morning air on that bright day, when the year Zero approached to within shouting distance and the end of the old world had already begun. He waved the hammer high when they came to the edge of Sabodisho's lands, where the trees broke and the fields were filled with land-toilers. The Witness raised his hammer and called out to his men:
"For Thane!"
At village after village they joined him. Their seers had seen him in visions.
* * *
He recalled much later how they stormed the fort of Sabodisho. How their spies had opened the gates. How like a dream it was as he entered the yard of the enemy. Then the world of thought and rationality faded away and he saw only long images, spectres that danced before him with a sense of vague threat, and just as quickly vanished. He felt drunk with power and rage, and the faces that he saw he smashed with the hammer. They were young and old, men with swords and with other undefinable objects in their hands. He smashed everything that he could find, drunk with rage, a killer with the strength of a hundred men. He cried out "Thane! Thane! Thane!" as he killed, and no wound seemed real, no opponent too quick.
Soon the yard was still. The Witness stood alone in the center of an open space, and his hands with slick and hot with the blood of the dead who lay around him. Their brains and skulls were smashed and beaten in. Their arms were snapped off, their faces still twisted in fearful cries.
The land-toilers stood at the gate, staring in at the giant, who now hung his head and stared at the dead.