39
Resurrection
They made an extraordinary sight, but there was no one to see them as they made their way through the forest, toward the stricken village.
At their head, a fat, red-cheeked man rode a stocky white horse. The rider and horse formed the point of an arrow, as behind and to each side walked his friends. His son. His dead comrade’s brother and daughter. Others of their kind, maybe twenty in all.
They saw no one, and no one saw them.
They reached the village.
They walked down the long main street that led to the square and still they saw no one. Not a word was spoken, and the silence in the streets was absolute.
They arrived in the square, and stopped.
And now they came.
From every alley and street, they came. Those whom the Shadow Queen had brought from the ground.
They did not come slowly. They ran, they hurtled toward the man and his horse.
“Sing!” he shouted.
They sang, twenty voices in unison, with full lungs and loud voices. The hostages began to falter and hesitate, slowing in their great number. But still they came on. And there were scores of them.
The rider knew the moment had come.
He looked down to his son, and smiled.
He kicked the horse into action.
“Sultan!” he cried. “Hah!”
Away he rode into the fight. Behind him, the singing voices lifted higher and higher, reaching out to protect him as he darted this way and that through the crowd, the sword flashing in the failing light in the square.
Bodies began to pile all around him, bodies that lay still, that did not wish to leave the ground anymore, and as he fought on through the grappling hands and the clawing fingers, he saw that he would die.
There was nothing for Tomas now.
Not the singing.
Not the square.
Not the dead.
Not even Sultan.
Just the sword, which flew so fast that the air itself was cut in two.
But the hands grasped and grappled and there were too many. He was pulled from Sultan’s back, landing clumsily in the mud.
From a seemingly vast distance, he heard a cry.
“Father!”
Peter. It was his son, sprinting to be beside him in a moment. Dimly, Tomas saw Peter snatch the sword from the ground and begin to swing it wildly about him. The hostages faltered, shocked by the fluid energy of the boy, by his strength.
Tomas’s eyes were closed now, but in his mind he could see Peter twisting and stroking the blade from side to side.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s it. Feel it!”
In his heart, he heard Peter’s reply.
“Yes, Father. My swordhand is singing.”
Tomas found himself staring at nothing but a bright white light that seemed to open in the sky above him, pouring down onto the blade, bathing him in joy.
Joy that he had been good, one last time.
That he had given.
That he was a good father, with a good son. It was the joy of completeness.
Even as Peter swung the sword for the last time, and gave rest to the last of the hostages, and fell to his knees by his father, the joy was irrepressible.
As Tomas died, his heart was singing, and a smile spread across his face.