Tahn

by L. A. Kelly

  Netta thought of all Tahn had told her about that night. It was a devil’s world he’d come from. Because he hadn’t slaughtered them both, he went home with wrath to face? Had he ever known a kindness?

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. Carefully, she helped him remove his shirt, and for the second time, she saw his scars. “Oh, Tahn.” She ran her hand gently over the stripes on his back. Tears filled her eyes. “Is that what these are?”

  Tahn didn’t answer. He was listening again suddenly, to a new commotion beyond the wall. He pulled away from her and stood.

  “What is it?” Netta asked with fresh tension.

  “Lucas, I think. With the guards again.”

  “He wouldn’t come back for you, would he?”

  He shook his head. “Not Lucas.” He was in the doorway before she could stop him.

  “You’re not going out there! What if there are others?”

  “Something’s wrong, Lady, or he wouldn’t be back.” He saw the fear for him in her eyes, but he went for the door anyway.

  “Father?” Netta turned to Benn.

  “I’ll go with him. It’s all right, little girl.”

  Josef and Jarel went for the gate as well, but Tahn was ahead of them. The guards were sounding angry, but there was desperation in the other voice.

  “Let me see the Dorn!” Lucas was pleading. “All I want is a healer!”

  “A healer?” one of the guards questioned. “Go to the town for that!”

  “Lucas?” Tahn called out.

  “Tahn! Help me!” the warrior yelled in response. “The master is fallen!”

  Tahn pulled open the gate. Three guards had hold of Lucas, one of them with a drawn sword.

  “Mr. Dorn, sir,” said one. “You told him to be gone. It’s trickery, I say.”

  “Release him.”

  At the nod of Benn Trilett behind Tahn, the guards shoved Lucas roughly away.

  But the warrior turned back. “We need a healer. Please.”

  “What happened?”

  “A spell—I don’t know. But it’s worse this time.”

  Tahn’s heart suddenly was pounding. Instead of gladness at such news, he felt heaviness. He had prayed that Samis somehow hear the words of God calling to him. Now there seemed to be very little time left for that. He turned to Benn. “Please allow us to send for the healer quickly.”

  “You’re sure you can trust these words?” Benn looked at Lucas skeptically.

  Lucas turned to Tahn without a word spoken.

  “He would not lie to me, sir,” Tahn said. “It is an old understanding.”

  Benn sighed. Such a world he couldn’t grasp. If the stranger valued his own word, then how could he value his conscience so little that he continued to ride with a cruel killer of men, women, and children?

  “He will die,” Lucas said solemnly.

  “Take the guards with you,” Benn told Tahn. “Josef, go and find Amos Lowe.” He turned back to the gate, leaving the matter in Tahn’s hands.

  Tahn looked gravely at Lucas. “Show me where.”

  They went together into the trees with guards following.

  “He couldn’t stand,” Lucas was saying. “He couldn’t speak.” He hurried through the woods, but when the old tree was just ahead of them, he slowed, suddenly afraid of what he might find. Tahn took his arm and pulled him forward. Together they found Samis lying almost as Lucas had placed him. But blood still oozed from a wound to his throat. The knife lay across his chest, and the bloody left hand was back at his side.

  “No.” Lucas stared down at him. He had thought to protect him from others, but it was Samis himself to do the deed.

  “He’s gone,” Tahn said, the words soaking over him like water.

  “He shouldn’t have done this! I would have cared for him.”

  “Surely he knew that.”

  “But he didn’t want it!” Lucas shouted in anger. “Just one man serving him willingly! I tried to do him good! And he didn’t want it!”

  “Lucas—”

  “He would rather have dragged me here as a slave, unwilling. He would have rather beaten me into doing the things that I volunteered to do. He loved it when we feared him. He couldn’t stand me just to offer my hand.” He turned away.

  Tahn bowed his head, understanding his pain too well. “I remember when we were small. We wanted to call him Father, you and I. We wanted to love him, from the start. I never managed. But you did.”

  Lucas shook his head. “He called me the weakest sort of fool.”

  “We were all fools in such a godless daze.” Tahn put his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “But you were not the weakest sort.”

  The warrior looked at Tahn and then down at the body at their feet. “I don’t want to take him to Valhal, or anywhere else. I don’t want to travel with the body.”

  “We’ll bury him here, then. You choose the place. I will gain Benn Trilett’s permission.”

  Lucas swallowed hard. “Right here. Right where he lays.” He knelt.

  “I’ll get the diggers in the morning.”

  “No,” Lucas told him. “I’ll do it. As soon as I have a shovel. And don’t tell me you’ll help. I know you’re hurt.”

  “I have a friend—a priest,” Tahn ventured quietly.

  “It’s too late for that now.”

  “I didn’t mean for Samis,” Tahn told him. “I thought he might talk to you.”

  Lucas looked up at him and their eyes met. Suddenly Lucas’s brimmed with tears. “You never forgot?”

  Tahn reached his hand to the man’s shoulder. “The little boy who idolized the priest at Alastair? And went to sleep with the Lord’s Prayer on his lips? It was torture to me! How could I forget that?”

  “I outgrew such things,” the warrior said with a sigh. “And I hear that it is you now who speaks the holy Name.”

  Tahn smiled. “I thank God for it, Lucas. You know what he saved me from. And I know what your childhood dream was, before you met this dead man. The priest is Father Anolle. He and his merciful God have embraced this once-dark angel. They have room for another.”

  Lucas stared at him. “Send a man for a shovel.”

  Tahn turned to the guards. He nodded, and one of the men left for the tool.

  “By the time you’re finished, you’ll need breakfast,” Tahn told Lucas. “There’s a pond, with benches not far from here. And a woman named Hildy who would be pleased to bring us a hearty tray.”

  “I can’t fathom your reasoning, Tahn. But I tell you, I will not stay.”

  “Then allow me to be your brother before you go.”

  Lucas buried Samis’s weapons with him, and his own. “Do not mark the grave,” he said. “Let his memory be in the wind.”

  He accepted the offer of food and gave Benn Trilett his thanks when he learned he’d agreed to let him leave.

  Tahn and Lucas walked together to the horses. Leviathan stood pawing the ground.

  “I guess he’s yours now,” Lucas said.

  “No. You have the right.”

  “I don’t want the awful beast.”

  “Then we’ll sell him,” Tahn offered. “And the money is yours.”

  “All right.”

  Tahn took a deep breath. “You’ll not be alone. Remember that.”

  “You really think God’s still with me?”

  “Yes. Just waiting. And nothing’s holding you back now.”

  “You’re incurable, Tahn,” Lucas told him. “I never imagined such an outlook from you. Those nightmares—are they gone?”

  Tahn smiled. “Yes. I dream of my family here. Even the church.”

  Lucas looked past him, toward the morning sun. “You are proof there is a God.” He smiled. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not alone. I should have been dead by the master’s hand years ago. I was nearly as useless to him as Vari.”

  Tahn clasped his hand and then hugged him.

  Lucas stiffened. He would never have expected an embrace f
rom Tahn. Not in a hundred years. “Or you might have killed me in your sleep,” he said quickly. “I used to think you surely would.”

  “Forgive me for that torment, my brother,” Tahn told him.

  “I’m just glad it’s over. I should be going.”

  “Where, Lucas? You’re my friend. I’d like to know where to find you.”

  “Alastair. It was home once. But I know you, Tahn. You’ll not be visiting me there.”

  Tahn bowed his head. “I’d like to keep you here.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Let me get you the money for the horse, then.” Tahn was troubled for Lucas, but he knew he couldn’t hold him. When Lucas had provisions and the price of a strong horse in his bags, Tahn hugged him again before he mounted. “You told me about Burle, but you left your sword in the dirt with Samis. Are you sure you’ll be safe?”

  “I don’t really care right now.”

  “At least promise me you’ll go to the church if you get in trouble,” he told him.

  But Lucas only saluted him and rode away.

  When he was gone, Netta put her arm around Tahn.

  “You’re all right?”

  He nodded. “More than that, Lady. I can see how richly I am blessed.”

  32

  A week later, they were all at the site of the Triletts’ first estate. Netta had filled a wagon with bundles of dried flowers and twelve carved angels.

  Hildy and Ham walked with the children as Benn and his daughter and nephew moved in silence over a row of seven stone crosses marking the graves of their slain family members. Just beyond those were five more, servants and friends who fell the same night. They decorated each of them with Netta’s flowers and a single wooden angel.

  Jarel hugged his cousin and then turned away in tears. Benn went after him, and they walked together the entire way from this place of memories to their current home. Netta watched them leaving but turned to find Tahn. He sat alone against a piece of the damaged wall he’d once so easily climbed.

  “I am sorry,” he told her as she approached him. “Would God that I had known a way for all of them!”

  She took his hand and knelt at his side. “They are rejoicing,” she said. “They know the bliss of our Holy God. And you, Tahn, are part of the blessed gift that he gave me in their stead.”

  She touched his cheek with a gentle smile. “We will live our lives now to honor him, my friend. And join them in heaven one day.”

  He leaned and kissed her softly. In a moment, he helped her to her feet. Seven little ones and a boy now as big as a man clustered around them. And together, they went home.

  L. A. Kelly is a busy Illinois writer who is active in the ministries of her church. She works at home in order to spend time with her husband and two beautiful children.