Fear ruled gentle in the soft glow that surrounded the would-be brigands. “Who is your leader?” Aerendir said.

  There was a long hesitation before one of the conscious men pointed to the unconscious gravely-voiced man and said, “It was Reinhart.”

  Aerendir nodded, then looked at the sword wielding man who cradled his shoulder and controlled his breathing to keep himself from shock. “I would guess you were the second.”

  The man nodded and winced as he tried to speak, “Severin.”

  “And you,” Aerendir looked at the younger man who comforted the boy, “what is your name?”

  The man moved himself between Aerendir and the boy and said, “Gareth.”

  “The rest of you, names.” Aerendir barked.

  There was a confused muddle, but he picked their names up: Richard carried a bow. Valtus and Vastar, twin brothers both with hair like autumn leaves and emerald green eyes, stood beside Jonosh whose dark skin and blue eyes revealed Tarovian heritage. Balteri was a medium sized pudgy man with dark hair and eyes which glanced furtively toward the head of Cymion.

  Aerendir paused and took some time to commit the names and faces to memory, lingering on each for a few moments. Then he continued, “How long have you been at your wicked work?”

  He had addressed the question to Severin, who spoke through gritted teeth, “Some months now. We’re survivors. Urchins like Silas over there.”

  In truth most of the men were quite young, except for Reinhart and Severin. Gareth might have been next oldest, but it was difficult to tell based on the state they all were in,

  covered in dust and ash and caked mud and worse.

  “How many have you killed?” Aerendir’s voice was a threatening storm.

  The men quivered in the golden glow. Severin opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He held his throat with his good hand and squinted his eyes. He shook his head and gaped again without sound.

  “Gareth, Silas, Richard, Valtus, Vastar, Jonosh, and Balteri, witness Severin. You will not be forced to speak, but any attempt to lie will be punished.”

  Severin’s eyes began to go wide and he clawed at his throat and tongue. He wasn’t breathing, and his face grew red. Some of the other men thought to help, but had no idea how. It was Gareth who stepped in, “Please, the warning is acknowledged. Point proven. Have you no mercy?”

  “Mercy” Aerendir said, tasting the word on his tongue as if it were sweet. “Worthy of Apeiron, yes.” He waved his hand in a particular fashion and Severin gulped in air in thirsty gasps.

  “Now, how many have you killed?”

  Severin paused, gathering himself, leaned over, and tried to control his breathing. His heart pounded like a stampeding bull roaring into his ears.

  “Seventeen.” Severin finally said.

  “A life for a life you cannot pay.” Aerendir said, his voice frozen like Boreal tundras. “Personally, or as a group?”

  “Together.” Severin said.

  “How many since you took this boy into your tribe?” Aerendir asked.

  Gareth spoke before Severin could, “He’s taken no part in killing.”

  Aerendir turned his gaze to Gareth and tilted his head, “You believe what you say. Truth is often thwarted by man’s ignorance.” Aerendir scowed and spoke again, “More clearly: how many have you men killed since the boy came under your rule?”

  Severin shot a severe look at Gareth and spoke, “five or six. I can’t be sure. Some we left for dead that may not have died, others we thought dead might have lived.” There was a

  kind of matter-of-factness in his voice, a cold distance from the act.

  “Then the boy, Silas, bears the blood of perhaps five or six.” Aerendir sighed deeply and rubbed his face and eyes. “You wretched creatures! Was it not enough to stain yourselves, but you steeped the boy in blood as well?”

  Gareth stood, with great difficulty, against the weight of the golden glow which pulled at him, and spoke, “He did nothing wrong. He obeyed. He scouted. He fended for himself. We had him take no part in battle nor looting nor…” Gareth did not finish his sentence.

  Aerendir’s eyes flashed, and he guessed what Gareth was about to say. He left it for the moment and corrected, “He helped set the traps, spot the marks, and guide you to them. You cannot absolve him of responsibility, and even had he only sat in your camp and took no part, because you are his ruler he bears your crimes, though to some lesser degree.

  Have you no notion of what authority entails, of what responsibility is?”

  Vastar spoke, “Who are you to pass judgment?”

  Aerendir turned slowly, “Would you rather I took my right of self-defense and slaughtered you all and returned to my quest? Would you wish for power and survival alone to rule?”

  Vastar opened his mouth, then paused and shut it.

  “What will you do with us now?” Severin asked, defeat in his voice.

  “What would be right?”

  Severin looked around at the group and then at Reinhart still passed out on the ground, then to Silas the boy. “Spare the boy, at least.”

  “You state a desire you believe to be right, another failure of the trial, but would that be right? What of the seventeen you murdered?” Aerendir growled the word and continued, “Would that be justice to spare even a single one of you, with more blood on your heads than your heads can pay?”

  “What of mercy?” Gareth asked.

  “Mercy is a gift totally undeserved. If it is shown, that is the will of he who grants it, but it is not the same as justice. By rights, I should execute you all here and now. There is a beast in this woods that better meets its maker’s design and would survive off your flesh if I were to do so. As it is, I will grant you a choice – though you may wish I hadn’t. You may

  choose for yourselves half of your remainder to live, or I will personally choose one who will die for you. It must be unanimous.”

  Chatter broke out among the group as men began to argue with one another over which it should be. Some had already begun to calculate which four should die and which four should live.

  “You have until sunrise. If you will not choose, you all die.” Aerendir left the golden circle with his sword driven into the center as the arguments began in earnest.

  #

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  Aerendir reached his own camp in a few short minutes. Mareth was fast asleep in his wards, but Siegyrd sat up on his bedroll looking at the moon through the trees. There was a small bulge in his lip, and a slight fog slipped between his teeth as he smiled. The smell of snow lilies was everywhere.

  “An adventure, brother?” Siegyrd asked, his voice a low whisper.

  “Of sorts” Aerendir sighed quietly, as he dug into his bag and pulled out a piece of salted meat from his ration sack. He bit into it and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Considering Balmung is not here, I expect there is something more than nothing happening in these woods.” Siegyrd said, puffing on the fog and blowing it into patterns that framed the moonlight in dancing shadows.

  “The blade is holding court” Aerendir said between bites of his ration.

  Siegyrd sat up and leaned forward, “Trial of Truths?”

  Aerendir half-nodded and replied, “A variation. We will see how they do.”

  “Well do fill me in some day.” Siegyrd said wrly.

  “A group of bandits did not well choose their prey.”

  “Yet they breathe? A Trial of Truths, even a variation, is not effortless, why expend yourself?”

  “A boy, not even begun to change to manhood.” Aerendir said.

  “Ah,” Siegyrd said with understanding, “You are far softer than you seem, brother.”

  Aerendir looked right into Siegyrd’s eyes and said, “I have a soft spot for the younger folk, they remind me of a certain helpless little brother.”

  “Helpless?” Siegyrd raised an eyebrow, “Have you failed again in your translation from the old tongue, brother? It wouldn’t be the first time your little brother had to help you with nuance.”

  “Oh, I suppose you are right, Siegyrd, helpless is slightly too optimistic. Hopeless is perhaps the better translation.”

  Siegyrd laughed. He picked up a stick and started drawing a series of symbols in the dust at his feet. Aerendir kept eating for a minute or so more, eyeing Siegyrd just a little, then finally stood up and walked over to look at the symbols. He looked down and took in their meaning in a glance and burst out laughing, spitting small chunks of ration before quickly covering his mouth. He coughed, then began to choke briefly before spitting out another small piece.

  Siegyrd laughed harder and then said, “Why brother, where is your famed stoicism? Where is your regal bearing?”

  Aerendir kicked the symbols with his feet, covering them up and then shoved Siegyrd out of the warding circle into the night. “Come on, I will show you!”

  Siegyrd feigned annoyance, but stepped lightly and let Aerendir lead the way back to the circle just as the rising sun hinted gold at the edge of the indigo night.

  #

  The men sat in a ring still arguing as the sun rose. “We must make a decision! There’s no time!”

  Aerendir and Siegyrd could hear them from some distance away.

  “He could choose any of us!”

  “Four could live, the boy could be certain to live. He doesn’t deserve what we deserve.” Gareth said.

  “Certainly, that man wouldn’t kill the child. He said the child would decide our fates!”

  Reinhart’s gravely voice broke in, “We could bet on his mercy. He could’ve killed us all already.”

  Aerendir called through the morning gloom which was accented now by a heavy fog. “Your time is short. Have you decided?”

  Siegyrd walked alongside his brother now, and felt the anticipation of the event. There was more bickering, shouting, and even, it sounded like, some blows. When

  Aerendir and Siegyrd stepped out of the fog into the golden circle four men stood with weapons drawn. The twins were unconscious and Gareth knelt in front of the boy Silas.

  As Aerendir stepped across the threshold of the golden ring a powerful force pressed all the men to their knees. They dropped their weapons, and his voice carried in, “Wretched creatures indeed who would fight with each other when only collaboration could save any of you.”

  Severin spoke, “Your task was impossible!”

  “Only for a tribe that is no tribe, for a people that is no people, a family that is no family. You could not decide. You will all die.” Aerendir said.

  A rage of resignation swept through the remainder of the conscious men. Gareth though spoke up, “Please, mercy for the boy. If only for the boy. My life is forfeit anyway, but please let it be in place of the boy as well. Isn’t there any way to save him?”

  “None” It was Siegyrd who spoke, stepping out of the gloom and into the circle. The rest of the men looked between Aerendir and Siegyrd and back, seeing the similarities in frame and face and features.

  Siegyrd continued, “The conditions were set, and have been met. Everyone here will die.”

  Aerendir nodded solemnly as he waved his hand and tendrils of light sprouted from the ground and wrapped around each of the men and the boy, Silas.

  Silas spoke in a pleading tone, “I just want to go home. Please send me home.” He began to cry.

  Siegyrd walked over toward the boy. Gareth tried to stand in between, but the downward pull of the circle would not let him. Siegyrd knelt beside Silas and looked him in the eyes, silver into brilliant blue, “you too will die, little one. Though there may be mercy in when.”

  The shining tendril touched the boy’s cheek just below his left eye and a small burn with an ancient symbol appeared there in brilliant glowing moonlight blue. It flashed, and then slowly faded into a small tattoo. There was no pain.

  The tendrils marked all of the bandits thus, though each with different symbols, none of which any of them recognized, and no two alike.

  Aerendir walked to the center and set his hands upon the blade of Balmung, the greatsword he carried, and spoke, “Your trial is done, the sentence pronounced. You are marked. You will die. When your time comes, it will be my blade that delivers you to the Eternal Lands. For three of you, that time is now. For the rest, death is delayed. You live on mercy’s thin thread which can be cut shorter by your deeds. Live well or die soon.”

  He finished speaking and pulled the blade. The golden light faded, and the men felt themselves released. Before the men had even regained themselves Severin and Reinhart’s heads rolled out into the dirt. Their bodies fell slowly to their knees, cleanly and then rested softly in the ashen leaves of the forest floor. All the rest who were conscious, save Gareth and the boy, fled in every direction. Valtus and Vastar woke as the others fled, glanced up to see the brothers and blanched. Fear swept over them and they fled as well.

  Gareth stood in front of Silas, tall, handsome despite his dirtied face. He was lanky, but there was a strength in his firm dark eyes. “I am the third?” He questioned.

  “Your sentence was death delayed, as his,” Aerendir nodded to the boy, “but the trial saw fit to honor your offer, to cover the boy. He too will die, but as all men die, at the time appointed by Apeiron. His sentence is extended by the delay you deny.”

  Gareth turned and looked at the boy, and then back at Aerendir and then to Siegyrd. “But who will care for him?” He looked around at the forest, now empty of his boorish companions.

  Siegyrd placed his hand on Gareth’s shoulder, “We will. It will be our burden and our joy.”

  “How long?” Gareth’s eyes were filled with a mix of terror and tears.

  “None but the Timeless know for sure, but many more years than without your sacrifice.”

  Gareth nodded. “Will it hurt?”

  “I cannot know. You go where I have never been, my friend.” Aerendir replied.

  “Friend?” Gareth questioned.

  “Sacrifice is a rare road. I would be a friend to any who would walk that way.”

  Gareth looked at Aerendir, then knelt down and looked at Silas, “I know we aren’t really close, little man, but please be better than what you saw amongst us. Please. Find your folks. Grow up, protect people and stuff. Just, be better.”

  The boy looked somewhat confused as he wiped away tears, and then looked between Aerendir, Siegyrd, and Gareth.

  Aerendir nodded to Siegyrd. Siegyrd scooped the boy up and tossed him onto his shoulders in one smooth movement, and the startled boy shook his head and then settled. “Steady little friend,” Siegyrd said, “Say goodbye. We will try to get you home, and in the meantime, be a home.”

  Silas did not quite understand, but he waved at Gareth and said, “Goobye Garth.” Gareth smiled sadly and waved back, “Bye kiddo.” Then he closed his eyes.

  Siegyrd turned and bounded away into the fog. The boy looked back but lost sight long before the moment. Aerendir raised his sword and spoke, “take whatever stance you wish to take before you face the True Judge.”

  Gareth opened his eyes and nodded, then knelt down on both knees, setting his hands in his lap and bowing his head.

  Aerendir smiled and said, “Apeiron, grant what mercy your judgment deems fit, but, if a servant may request, be lenient with this one.”

  The sun burned a pathway through the morning fog and illumined Aerendir’s blade sending flashing fire all around as the stroke fell and a man knelt on the threshold of eternity.