“So much for that,” Bryahn said, eyeing the unmoving carcass, and then hard gray eyes came up to fasten themselves to Lisah. “As for you, my girl, as soon as we leave this place and return to our camp, there will be a number of words exchanged between us. There was no need for you to expose yourself like that, and once I have you past our kind hosts it will be time to describe my displeasure to you in detail.”
Lisah flushed at the tight anger Bryahn had spoken with, but nevertheless turned with him to face the knot of people who stood staring in shock, their eyes on the hacked and bloodied body of the beast. Some of the women wailed softly and some of the men wept, but the man with the dirty red sash simply shook his head as he looked at the two intruders.
“Killing and killing and killing,” he intoned, sounding as though he were trying to condemn. “You savages are all alike, knowing nothing but killing and destroying what comes past you. You spurned purification through God’s Instrument, damning yourselves for all of eternity, but the terrible sin of what was done will not be ours. We and our intentions are pure in a way you can never know, and heaven will be ours as it can never be yours.”
“What makes you all so pure?” Bryahn demanded, his anger now reaching out to those who were nearly responsible for his going to Wind before his time. “The fact that you fed that thing, extending its life beyond the time it was able to hunt for itself? What did you feed it when there were no strangers around to victimize? Carefully selected members of your own people?”
“Those who gave their lives for our community were purified of all residual sin and forever blessed!” the man returned stiffly, his bearded head coming up. “We have devoted ourselves to a life without violence, a life without the killing and destruction your sort revels ii\. We can none of us be completely free of sin, but we stand so far above you and yours that we are closer to godhood than you could ever dream of being. To slay a dumb beast of the forests can be accomplished by any barbarian; to accept the embrace of death instead, and through it to find eternal life, is an action only the truly chosen are able to rise to.”
“You consider dying an accomplishment?” Lisah asked with a snort of disdain, her own anger pushing words out ahead of Bryahn’s. “Dying is simply done and requires no skill of any sort, which is what undoubtedly attracts you to it. To remain alive and succeed in that life is what you find beyond you, you and those poor specimens of humanity hiding behind your fine words. You refrain from violence out of fear rather than piety, and think to hide that fear by calling it a virtue.”
“There is little virtue in refraining from doing what you cannot do,” Bryahn added with savage pleasure, disallowing the man with the red waistband an immediate retort. “You all feared that beast, but rather than facing up to it despite the fear you chose to make feeding it a sacred privilege. How much easier it is to die rather than fight, how much safer for a leader to send his people one by one to death rather than advise a battle which could take more lives than his people are willing to give up at once. Such a leader knows he will be safe from needing to feed the beast, and what power he exhibits when his followers go one after the other to waiting, slavering jaws! Deep, exhilarating power that makes him feel like a god himself.”
“How typical for one of your sort to denigrate the efforts of a man you have no hope of understanding,” the bearded man with red waistband said, shaking his head haughtily as though he heard nothing of the faint muttering of the people around and behind him. “I am a man of God, chosen to lead these people up the path to heaven, a far harder and more arduous journey than the slide down to hell. Of course, you sneer at the thought of peace and nonviolence—agents of the darkness could do no other thing. We are above you, and will continue to be so no matter what words you attempt speaking to the contrary.”
“If you people are so wonderfully holy, how do you explain and excuse kidnapping a stranger to feed your fear-beast?” Lisah asked, still unimpressed with the filthy man who thought so much of himself. “You used violence to take him, and cowardly violence at that. If you hadn’t come up on him from behind, you never would have been able to capture him.”
“Our God, in His infinite mercy, at times allows us to give up a stranger in place of one of our own,” the man replied, his tone pure condescension as he looked down on the girl, who was physically taller than he. “Such a stranger is forever blessed, and for so excellent an end we are allowed what means are necessary. We accept the small sin of violence on such occasions, in order to provide a share in our own good fortune for one who would otherwise never reap such sweet fruit. It is for their sakes rather than our own, and such generosity is a blessing in itself.”
“In other words, you dishonor your own beliefs in order to occasionally get out from under,” Lisah said flatly, finding nothing admirable in the man’s doubletalk. “If something is wrong once it has to be wrong all the time, otherwise you have nothing but pure nonsense being spouted. And why should the road home be harder than the road away from it? Isn’t going home always faster and easier than leaving it? I think you tell these people how hard it is so that you can control them and make them do what you want them to do. Sacred Sun demands no more than the best we can offer, whatever that is. Is it your own god who demands more—or a man who joys in running the lives of others?”
“And how admirable is it for a man—or woman— incapable of violence to refrain from violence?” Bryahn asked, pursuing the man, who had finally noticed the muttering going on about him. “If I were the sort of barbarian you named me, I would now be in the midst of committing violence against people who first offered violence to me. As I am a civilized man instead, a true, full, capable man, I offer you my disgust rather than my blade, my disdain rather than my arms skill, knowing, as I do that you will none of you survive despite the death of your fear-beast. Those like you fear life itself, and will find another fear-beast to offer yourselves to in place of the first. If you fail to find one for yourselves, your—leader—will surely find one for you.”
“After all, he needs your sacrifice in order to feel his power,” Lisah pointed out with a small smile, enjoying the way the man she goaded now pretended to hear nothing from his followers. “If he fails to make you do what you would never do without him, his wonderful feeling of godhood will be no more. He could, of course, have forced you to face up to the life you fear, but if he did that then you might have sought to follow another, one who would cater to your fears. Or, worse, you might have listened to him and grown beyond your fears and therefore your need for him. Far better that he speak lies you all choose to believe, and then neither you nor he will miss what you so obviously prefer—lives spent enslaved to the lies of a fool spoken for fools.”
“Get out,” the man in the red sash said in a choked voice, his hand curled into a fist. “You are the ones who speak lies here, and we will have no more of it. Take your filthy animal and get out!”
“Our cat sister would rather remain in the company of that beast than in yours,” Bryahn offered back with a grin, knowing the man wanted them gone so that he could try taking over the minds of his people again. “We feel the same, so we will go, with this one last parting thought: if you willingly believe what another tells you, what befalls you because of it is your fault, not that other’s. No matter how hard you try, you can never escape the responsibility for your own life. If peace is what you truly seek, seek it from a stance of strength and skill, not one of weakness. Peace can be stolen from the weak with the flick of a sword, not quite so easily from those who are strong. There is no virtue in weakness and nonviolence; virtue can only be found where violence is possible, but tranquillity is chosen instead. And is peace worth any price? I think not. Consider those who went to feed the beast, feel yourselves in their place, and then decide the question again.”