by Bobby Adair
Still, they cheered.
Through the open doors into the square, Franklin saw in the growing light a seemingly endless ocean of people, all wishing they were inside. He laid his hands on the lectern. He was ready. He opened his mouth to speak, and he paused to allow a long, last rumble of thunder to pass before he started.
Chapter 84: Tenbrook
Tenbrook ordered Sinko to march the foot soldiers across the square, directly toward the Temple's open doors.
"The crowd," Captain Sinko asked him. "Shall we disburse them or march through them?"
Tenbrook looked at the mass of pig chaser's wives, spinsters, and widows mobbed in front of the Temple and relished the thought of what was to come. "They won't be there when you arrive." He stood in his saddle, drew his sword, and stabbed it at the clouds as he called his orders.
Behind Tenbrook, the cavalry trotted up the side of the square, two by two, past the pyres and along the walls. Two hundred sets of hooves pounded the stones and shook the ground. The rumble echoed off the buildings and shook every door.
Tenbrook watched the mob as they felt and heard the hooves and one by one, each of them turned away from the Temple doors to see the cavalry they were feeling through their feet and hearing over the shrill joy that surrounded them.
The sight of so many wide-eyed wenches and pissing whelps aroused Tenbrook in a way he hadn't experienced before. He hadn't guessed that so much fear from so many, so impersonal, and yet so tangible, would be such a rush.
With the whole of the cavalry following his line and every horse, every cavalryman, every raised sword, visible in all of those staring eyes, Tenbrook ordered his cavalry to follow and he kicked his mount into a gallop.
The thunder of the hooves, powerful and satisfying when the horses were trotting, turned into a deafening roar, drowning out the screams that Tenbrook knew had to be pouring from the mouths of all those women who were now running left and right, panicked, dragging each other, holding the hands of their children, thousands of them, fleeing like stupid demons from the death that was barreling down on them from atop war beasts trained to stomp flesh and break bones with their hooves.
Tenbrook suffered a moment of dissatisfaction when he reached the Temple steps. He'd not trampled a single wench.
He wheeled his horse around and passed the order to send one squadron through the streets to chase the fleeing women and old men until they were locked in their hovels with enough fright stomped into their souls to keep them there until they felt they needed personal permission from Tenbrook himself to come out and tend to their chores. He ordered seventy of his squadron to dismount.
He looked up to see that his foot soldiers had covered half the span of the square. They'd arrived soon enough. Tenbrook turned in his saddle and looked into the Temple's open doors, more than tall enough to accommodate men on horseback, and his eye followed the line of the Temple's central aisle, packed with treasonous women all the way from the door to the foot of the stage.
Tenbrook charged through the door and into the aisle.
Chapter 85: Fitzgerald
Already packed in tight, the people in the aisle tried to avoid the massive horses trampling their way through them. They climbed, clawed, and screamed. Those in the pews along the aisle tried to dodge the steel blades, raised in the air and glinting in the candlelight. Fitz and Ginger were pushed against the wall as people poured into the hall to their left.
Franklin stood at the lectern, watching, frozen, horrified.
"Franklin!" Fitz screamed, trying to get his attention, not knowing what to say, just wanting to reach out to him. Her voice was lost in the pandemonium.
"We have to run!" Ginger shouted into Fitz's ear.
"No!" Fitz shouted back. "We have to stay."
Tenbrook's horse, blood dripping from its legs, hooves soaked in red from having just trampled people who couldn't get out of the aisle fast enough, pushed through the last of the women in the way. The aisle cleared in front of it as it broke into a gallop and leapt onto the stage.
Franklin jumped out of the way as the horse knocked over the lectern at which he'd been standing.
Horse after horse followed Tenbrook's, jumping onto the stage until seven or eight crowded the platform, each turning to face the congregation, snorting and stomping, their blood running hot to do what they'd been trained for.
Franklin stood, silent and strong, facing the riders and their horses.
Up and down the body-strewn aisle, a line of horses came to a stop as soldiers ran in between the horses and the pews.
The Temple echoed with the screams of the injured and the dying, and of those panicked and trying to get away. Many crowded into the hall past Fitz.
Soldiers filed into a line in front of the rows of pews, turning their backs to the stage and raising their swords, facing the congregation. All the soldiers in the central aisle brandished their weapons and stared down the crowded women in the pews.
"Franklin!" Fitz hollered. "Tell The People to fight!"
Franklin did nothing.
Tenbrook sheathed his sword, dismounted, and stepped toward Franklin.
Franklin didn't move; he didn't flinch. He glared.
Fitz was proud of him.
Many stopped screaming, stopped running, stopped climbing over one another in their rush to flee, and stopped to look at the stage.
"Franklin!" Fitz called again. "Turn around! Talk to The People!" Even with the noise starting to settle, Fitz's voice was lost. She begged, "Please!"
Ginger repeated Fitz's shouts with no more success.
Tenbrook was in Franklin's face, towering over him, grinning like a psychopath, shouting orders. Fitz heard Tenbrook's voice, but in the noise, she couldn't make out what was being said.
Still, Franklin said nothing. Still, he stood his ground, looking up with fire in his eyes to match the fire Fitz knew was in his heart, knew had been there all along.
Tenbrook said something emphatic with a finger thrust in Franklin's face. He pressed it against Franklin's cheek, using his strength to shove Franklin's face to the side. Franklin turned and let the imposing finger slip away and thrust his defiant glare back at Tenbrook.
For a moment, both seemed to have become statues, measuring each other, choosing what to do next.
Tenbrook moved first. He spun and took a step away from Franklin.
Fitz threw her hands over her mouth. Was it that easy? Had Franklin won by standing up to the bully, taking all he had to give, just bellicose words and little-man threats?
"What happened?" Ginger asked.
Fitz started to answer, and then the world froze into tiny droplets of time, each terrible, each more horrifying than the last, each leading to a certain, unavoidable tragedy.
Tenbrook's right arm reached across his body, and his gloved hand grasped the hilt of his sword.
A scream peeled out of Fitz's throat.
Tenbrook's face turned from that of a grinning madman to a twisted devil.
Ginger shrieked.
Tenbrook pulled a shimmering, silvery blade out of his scabbard, long and lethal.
A thousand women gasped.
All the air in the room stopped flowing.
The blade cut through the air as Tenbrook spun.
And as Fitz's scream reached its peak, as terror sheared her heart in two, the blade found Franklin's defiant throat and cut as though slicing through nothing at all, not slowing, not stopping. Blood spewed out in an arc along the path of the blade, hitting horsemen, soldiers, clergy, and women in the crowd.
The expression in Franklin's eyes changed from defiance to surprise as his head separated from his neck and spun into the air, coming over upside down and falling out of Fitz's sight. And for that moment, the world was silent, except for the thunk of Franklin's head on the wooden stage.
And still, the blade cut through the air, swinging all the way around, spraying even more of Franklin's blood on the people in front of and around Fitz, across her
face.
Then Tenbrook's arm stopped. Tenbrook stood in a striking pose in front of Franklin's standing body.
Gasps turned to screams.
Fitz felt part of herself die.
Franklin's body folded on its joints and fell out of sight.
Chapter 86: Beck
"I was thinking about what you said the other day. I'm getting overwhelmed by your melancholy," said Beck as he looked along the beach from out the window of the ancient house where they'd spent the night. He'd been hoping to see the sun rise over the water. For yet another morning, all he saw were clouds and rain.
"I'm sorry," said Jingo, turning away from the window and looking over at him.
Oliver leaned through a door from another room. "Melora and Ivory are almost done cooking breakfast."
"Thank you," said Beck to Oliver as Oliver disappeared into the other room.
"I saw my family die," Jingo continued. "The sadness, even after three hundred years, still hurts. I saw a whole world die, right before my eyes. Since then, in the ashes of the apocalypse we brought upon ourselves, I've seen man do nothing but make the same mistakes over and over again and slowly slide toward ruin."
"But we're thriving in Brighton," argued Beck.
"Is that why you burn your children and women? Is that why you sent nineteen thousand to the Ancient City to be murdered by spore-infected men?"
Beck looked down again, unwilling to meet Jingo's eye. The argument he'd used to sway Jingo to come back to Brighton was now being used against him.
"I'm sorry." Jingo patted Beck on the shoulder. "I don't mean to offend you. I simply mean to say that yes, Brighton has grown from the original fifty-seven founders, but over time, you have not progressed. You are a superstitious people. Few of you cherish knowledge or education. Ignorance will deepen with each passing generation until one crisis too many falls upon your doorstep. Then it will not be nearly half the population that you send into the Ancient City to die for your mistakes, but everyone."
"I don't know what to say." Beck stared at the others and bit his lip. "What can I say?"
Jingo sighed. "I had great hope for Brighton."
"You don't anymore?"
"I still do, in a way. Even after what you've told me about the army." Jingo took a break to collect his thoughts before he spoke again. "It will be thousands of years before humans learn to write again, to understand mathematics, agriculture, and engineering, medicine, if this group fails. I hope you won't."
"What does that mean?" asked Beck.
"In the distant past, so long ago that even the Ancients couldn't be certain, there was evidence that man rose to dizzying heights of civilization. You see, our archeologists found things—very, very old things that we couldn't explain. It was assumed that men from all those thousands of years ago were ignorant hunters and farmers. But the evidence changed our thinking. It seems to me and to many others that human civilization had risen and fallen before, perhaps many times."
"If that is true, why do you think that is the case?" Beck asked.
"Perhaps that's what happens when humans get together. They share a fire, hunt, band together and form villages, towns, cities, and countries. And then they find a way to destroy those things."
"I don't want that to happen," Beck said with certainty. "Not to Brighton."
"Neither do I," said Jingo.
Chapter 87: Fitzgerald
Tenbrook stood tall in the center of the stage, a frightening nightmare monster out of the darkest sleep, come to the Temple to petrify the sheepish bed-wetters.
He shouted orders at his men, the only people in the room not in shock.
Soldiers moved to block all the exits.
Fitz was shoved out of the way, and all she could do was flow with those around her as she wailed her pain, wide-eyed, unable to turn away from the beast who'd just taken Franklin's life.
"Do you see this?" Tenbrook shouted in an ogre's scream over the chaos.
He strode across the stage, raised his knee, and stomped, only it wasn't the sound of the wooden stage that caught his foot, it was the dull crunch of bone and soft meat. Blood squirted high over the heads of the men in front of the stage. Tenbrook stomped again, and again, until the crack of bone sounded like the grinding of rocks in mud.
He leaned over as every eye in the Temple watched, many silent, many crying, some screaming as though demons were tearing at their flesh.
Tenbrook worked his arm at something out of sight down on the stage by his hand. Everybody knew it was Franklin's head, but nobody wanted to believe what they were seeing.
Suddenly Tenbrook thrust his hand high in the air above him and stood straight up. His fist was pushed through Franklin's mouth, grasping the lower jaw like the handle of a terribly misshapen basket, spilling gore and blood down his arm.
"This is your silver-tongued savior!" Tenbrook shouted at them, daring anyone in the Temple to do anything but sob. "Not a one of you is worthy of him." Tenbrook reared back his arm with Franklin's head and threw it into the pews halfway back in the Temple.
Women parted like the ripple of a splash in a pond, shrieking as the head came down with the sound of a wet dress on a rock being washed at the river.
Tenbrook pointed a bloody finger across the Temple. "Every one of you will watch. You'll remember. You'll tell your neighbors and you'll tell your children, the whelps you have and those not yet born. I am the supreme lord of Brighton and the three townships and every soul in between. No man, no woman, no child will defy me without suffering the full might of my wrath."
Tenbrook spun and hacked at Franklin's body. He hacked twice more and leaned down to get something off the floor. He showed a severed hand to the stunned crowd, letting them all see it before flinging it at them. He next took a foot and threw it the stunned women, old men, and children.
Fitz was paralyzed, overwhelmed with horror as piece after piece of Franklin flew at the congregation, all in a shower of Tenbrook's taunts, until at last, the organs came, and the intestines, which Tenbrook made a point of flinging at the clergy, sitting frozen along the front row.
Finally, with no more Franklin left, Tenbrook pointed his sword across the clergymen and said, "Put these clergymen on the pyre. All of them."
Nobody moved.
"The pyre!" Tenbrook shouted.
"Sir," a man answered, shrinking away as he spoke, "The wood is soaked from the storm. It won't burn."
Tenbrook looked at the captain for a moment and didn't seem bothered. He glared down at the clergy. "Take their heads, then. Do it now."
The soldiers instantly attacked the clergy, hacking at the begging and screaming men.
It was over faster than Fitz's incapacitated eyes could turn away.
"And the novices?" the captain asked.
Tenbrook frowned and said, "What of them? They're nothing. Take their robes and leave them naked." He stepped up to the edge of the stage. "The Word is false. It was always a lie. This Temple shall be forever closed. No man will speak of The Word. No man will wear the robe of a priest or a novice. I am the only law. I am the only truth."
Chapter 88: Fitzgerald
Fitz stayed in the crowd as Tenbrook's soldiers herded everyone through the Temple doors and out into the square. Women walked over the flat stones in all directions, too stunned to hurry. Some fell to their knees and wept. Some of the injured collapsed. Nobody ran. The soldiers and the horsemen, seemingly satisfied with their victory, no longer coerced anyone except to tell them to go to their homes.
Home?
When Fitz had walked halfway across the square, too dazed to think about where she was going, she heard men chanting behind her.
"BURN IT! BURN IT! BURN IT!"
She stopped and turned. Soldiers in the Temple were piling the pews in the center of the Sanctuary, leaning them on a fire that was already burning. Smoke flowed out of the Temple doors, and Fitz watched, as did hundreds of others in the square.
Most of the soldiers and c
avalrymen stopped to watch, as well. Many of them whooped and cheered as the flames grew, and the men inside who'd been stoking the fire ran out.
Fitz looked for Tenbrook among the soldiers but didn't see him. She hoped that he didn't see her, either. He knew her face, her hair, her dress. If his appetite for mayhem had not yet been sated, she'd be on his mind.
But, no soldiers were searching the common folk. None were asking questions. They were fixated on the flames that burned tall inside the Temple.
The smell of ash floated in the wet wind. The rain started to fall hard again. Nobody in the square paid it any mind.
Fitz couldn't stand to watch anymore. She turned away from the burning Temple and walked, unable to get the horrific picture of Franklin's mangled, ruined body from her mind.
Chapter 89: Fitzgerald
Fitz walked through the streets in a daze, directionless, her only thought to get away from the Temple. She followed a crowd of hundreds, each wandering with pale, frightened expressions, as if they'd forgotten how to get back to their homes.
Fitz had no home left. Her home was the Temple, and now the Temple was gone.
And so was Franklin.
She swallowed the sick feeling in her stomach. Her body moved by itself. She barely noticed her surroundings, and she barely understood the whispers of the shocked people around her. It wasn't until someone tugged on her arm that she snapped to attention. "Fitz."
Fitz turned to see Ginger with tear-streaked dirt on her face. Her eyes were dry and cold.
"We need to find you a place to go," she said.
Fitz nodded absently.
Ginger took Fitz's hand and led her down a side street, whispering as they walked, "There's an empty house just down this road."
Fitz shook her head and pulled her hand away. "The people from the other towns. They've taken every empty space."
