The Sword
Page 1
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“Theologian and scholar Bryan Litfin has accomplished a rare feat—he has fashioned a land and time unique to any reader’s experience.”
JERRY B. JENKINS, author, Left Behind and Riven
“Some fiction is mere entertainment and some fiction is like a mirror in which we see ourselves and our world reflected in challenging and instructive ways. The Sword is a mirror of who we are at the core and what we struggle with in our nonfiction lives. Don’t miss this one. It is a compelling read that is well beyond mere entertainment.”
JOE STOWELL, President, Cornerstone University
“Ever wonder about a world with an ‘almost-absence’ of God? Theologian turned ‘futurist’ Bryan Litfin provides us a compelling tale of the endurance of God’s amazing love—even to a distant remnant. Get your mind around The Sword. It could be the start of something big.”
MARK ELFSTRAND, Executive Producer/ Host, Morning Ride, Moody Radio, Chicago, Illinois
“Pulling us into the future to reveal the past, Bryan Litfin’s great what-if story discovers instead what is, laying bare the tendencies of the human soul, the strategies of our adversary, and the gentle sovereignty of the eternal God. In The Sword discovering truth is as exciting as discovering love, for, as Litfin skillfully portrays, they are one and the same.”
AMY RACHEL PETERSON, author, Perpetua: A Bride, A Martyr, A Passion
“The one-of-a-kind concept for this novel mixes an apocalyptic near-future with an almost medieval past. The thrilling action and romance underscores the necessity of prayer and the power of God’s Word to awaken a people to have hope in a love that supersedes that which they have before known. It is refreshing to read about characters whose struggles are real and whose virtues are worthy of admiration. I cannot wait until the second book in the series hits the shelves next year.”
SETH PARRISH, High School Principal, Yongsan International School of Seoul, Seoul, Korea
“The Sword’s thrilling, fast-paced story line draws you in and won’t let you put it down. It’s a swashbuckling adventure that men will love. And the character development encourages your soul, making it well worth the read. I was fascinated to discover Christianity alongside the people of Chiveis and see them experience freedom and love for the first time. It gave me a new perspective of the privilege of choosing to give one’s self to God.”
STACIA JOHNSTON, Wife and mother of three
“The Sword has something to entice every reader: action, adventure, drama, mystery, discovery and romance. Through a commanding use of descriptive language and character development, Litfin engages his readers to the point that they will feel a part of the journey themselves. Seasoned and novice readers alike will benefit from Litfin’s ability to provide a thrilling adventure while at the same time giving the opportunity to ponder the theological implications and Biblical parallels held within the Kingdom of Chiveis. Boasting of an original plot set in a unique era which beckons its reader into a new world vaguely familiar with fresh twists on life, The Sword will leave you begging for more.”
NARISSA MUIK, Vancouver, Canada
The Chiveis Trilogy:
Book 1: The Sword
Book 2: The Gift
Book 3: The Kingdom
The Sword
Copyright © 2010 by Bryan M. Litfin
Published by Crossway
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.
Cover design: Josh Dennis
Cover image: Cliff Nielsen, Shannon Associates; illustrator
First printing 2010
Reprinted with new cover 2012
Printed in the United States of America
Scripture on page 7 taken from the Louis Segond Bible.
All Scripture quotations are the author’s translation.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-3372-3
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-0926-1
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-0927-8
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2301-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Litfin, Bryan M., 1970–
The sword : a novel / Bryan M. Litfin.
p. cm. — (Chiveis trilogy ; 1)
ISBN 13: 978-1-4335-0925-4
ISBN 10: 1-4335-0925-3
I. Title
PS3612.I865S96 2010
813.6—dc22 2009033930
Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
VP 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Car je connais les projets que j'ai formés sur vous, dit l'Éternel,
projets de paix et non de malheur,
afin de vous donner un avenir et de l'espérance.
Jérémie 29:11
CONTENTS
MAP
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
DISCOVERY
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
PART TWO
COMMUNITY
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
PART THREE
SOVEREIGNTY
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
PROLOGUE
In the year 2042, the world as we know it came to an end. The edifice of civilization proved far more fragile than anyone ever realized. One hard blow, then another—that was enough to shatter it into a million pieces.
The collapse all began with the friendly exchange of a papaya for a photograph. Some Japanese ecotourists traveled to the Brazilian rain forest to get close to nature. Unfortunately, they got a little too close. On their fourth day in the jungle, a gregarious monkey, tamed by his daily interaction with tourists, scampered up to receive a juicy prize. A lawyer from Tokyo smiled for the cameras as the monkey ate the papaya from his hand. An open cut, a little saliva—who could have predicted the devastation about to be unleashed? The deadly moment would eventually be featured on the cover of Time. Six months after the story ran, the magazine, like all others, ceased publication.
What the world did not know was that a malignant virus had infected the monkey population of the rain forest. A few primatologists had begun to notice a problem, but before it could be studied or contained, it made the leap from simian to human, with disastrous results.
The virus was a fatal mutation, so virulent that only a head-to-toe hazmat suit would prevent infection. It could be transmitted by direct contact or through the air. Encapsulated in a protective coating, the virus was unusually hardy, able to survive for weeks on any surface until it could infect an unsuspecting passerby. To make matters worse, its incubation period was two weeks long and symptom free. While a carrier was infecting countless others, he didn’t even know he had it—until the nosebleed started. Within three days, invariably, he was dead.
That was what happened to Ken Takahashi, who had mugged with the monkey for the cameras two weeks earlier. As he sat at his desk in a To
kyo high-rise on the morning of June 20, 2042, great drops of crimson blood from his nose spattered his keyboard. A few hours later, an unrelenting headache began pounding in his temples. The fever and chills started that night. Violent vomiting and cramps like medieval torture followed, making the next two days an agony. None of the ER docs knew what to do, and so the virus claimed its first victim. When the autopsy discovered massive internal hemorrhaging, the coroner was stumped as to the reason. He called in the epidemiologist.
Soon after the Japanese tourists fell prey to the virus’s exorbitant appetite for human life, citizens in capitals around the globe began reporting similar symptoms, all ending in the same horrible way. In the United States, the CDC mobilized its forces, but to little effect. The new virus was its worst nightmare come true.
Such was the beginning of the X-Virus. Though the scientific community eventually gave it a formal name, the media gave it the name that became known throughout the world. “Biohazard levels run from one to four,” an epidemiologist said in a TV interview. “But this thing is just a big X to us. We have no idea how dangerous it really is.”
The X-Virus fell like a spark on a dry forest. The travel boom of those days didn’t help. So many people were moving around the planet that the risk of infection had multiplied exponentially. And exponential infection is exactly what occurred. People didn’t know they had the virus until they had already infected thirty or forty or a hundred other people. Wherever they went during the two-week incubation period, the unwitting X-Virus carriers left a trail of invisible germs waiting for a new host to devour. It wasn’t long until every doorknob, shopping cart, coin, and public handrail held a microscopic colony of death. Any breath might carry a fatal airborne pathogen.
The death toll mounted with alarming speed. In the cramped conditions of lesser-developed countries, the virus slaughtered the poor without mercy. Yet even the rich countries suffered. No one knew how to stop the viral rampage. It made its way to Aleutian natives of Alaska on supply planes. Remote African tribes picked it up from relief-agency workers. In the small world of 2042, nobody was beyond the X-Virus’s reach.
Everywhere people mourned their losses. But in a twisted reprieve, their grief only lasted until their own nosebleed started, and then the mourners had something worse to think about. A macabre ritual developed that came to be called a “nose check.” People habitually put their fingers to their nostrils to look for blood. When their finger came away red, they knew it was time to get right with God. Many chose suicide instead of the inevitable torment that would follow.
Global panic set in. Fear of the virus turned friends into enemies and neighbors into killers. Homes became fortresses guarded at gunpoint. Everyone hoarded food. Murder was often committed over a case of canned goods. And not without reason: food had indeed become scarce. The farmers who supplied the world’s needs were being decimated along with all the rest. The means of production and distribution imploded. The wheels of industry churned to a halt as workers and executives alike abandoned their posts to run for the hills. It was a ruthless Darwinian age. But in the reign of the X-Virus, even the fittest might not survive.
When the pandemic had claimed a quarter of the earth’s population, fear turned into madness. Muslim radicals were the first to go nuclear. Demagogues in Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan—all of which were nuclear countries in that era of proliferation—identified the plague as Allah’s divine judgment on the infidels. Ideologies of hatred running in the veins of these societies coalesced into a new absolutism. The movement called itself Our Greatest Hour. Religious extremists claimed the moment in history had arrived when the superiority of Islam would be recognized. The servants of the Prophet would achieve world domination through conquest of the West. Several already tenuous Muslim governments were overthrown by mob violence and civil war. Now new fingers held the nuclear triggers.
The great powers of the world were in no position to respond with diplomatic restraint when the missiles fell from the sky. China with its Christians, India with its Hindus, the United States with its hedonists, and Europe with its neo-pagans—all were targets for Our Greatest Hour. Beijing. New York. Washington. Paris. New Delhi. The mushroom clouds rose on the horizons over these cities, and many others.
Western governments collapsed. The rule of law gave way to the law of the jungle. In all the upheaval, a few generals from the world’s superpowers seized control with a ruthless will to survive. Their response was swift and violent. Now the Muslim countries, whether or not any missiles had originated there, bore the brunt of the new warlords’ revenge. With the spasmodic fury of a cornered and dying animal, the vast nuclear arsenals of the world were unleashed. No one held anything back. Even the less powerful nations, many of which had pursued clandestine nuclear programs, turned whatever weapons they had on their regional enemies. While their missiles could not crisscross the globe, they could at least exact revenge on a neighbor in some long-simmering feud. In this way, the specter of war covered all the earth.
Many experts had warned that a five-thousand-megaton nuclear war would be sufficient to eradicate human life. But now unrestrained tyrants released more than ten thousand megatons in a global omnicide. The ozone layer was destroyed, vastly increasing ultraviolet radiation on the earth. Soot, smoke, and noxious fumes darkened the sky. A radioactive cloud soared into the jet stream and snowed on the remote corners of the world. Nuclear winter descended on mankind.
Earth’s temperate zones dropped below freezing for months at a time, while the cooler latitudes plunged into lethal cold. The earth fell silent under a suffocating blanket of snow. No plants could survive such extreme climatic change. Few animals did. Humanity received no new food production for two straight years. Mass starvation claimed those whom war and disease had not.
The survival of the human race was in doubt. Pregnant women, if they lived long enough to deliver, brought forth the stillborn or the deformed. Gangs of young men raped and pillaged at will. Survivors banded together to defend tribe and territory, using guns while ammunition could still be found, and clubs once bullets were no more. Genocide became the norm, spawned as it always is by unchecked power, hatred, and greed.
All the great advancements of the world fell into disuse, for who could think about such things when their bellies had been empty for days? No one was left to run the biomass power plants, or to maintain the communications networks, or to manage the companies that had seemed so necessary in the old, civilized world of commerce and trade. Titans of business were helpless against the unemployed day laborer, whose revenge was felt as the stab of a knife or the smash of a club.
The international power grid went down, plunging the earth into a new Dark Age. Night could only be chased away as man had done for all but two hundred years of his existence—by the scant comfort of a fire. Without electricity, the computers that ran the world crashed. Technological know-how was forgotten. The utopian future was not to be.
Even after the nuclear destruction ended, the X-Virus continued its murderous work for another decade or two. At last the earth’s population fell so low and was isolated in such lonely clusters, that the virus could no longer spread easily. It died, fat and full, its hunger satiated.
A tiny fraction of the human race survived those evil days, but the forward march of progress had come to an end. Though the survivors carried memories of their past, the children born to them had no recollection of modern life before its collapse. Their world was an inferno of chaos and brutality and malformation. It was all they could do just to stay alive.
Nevertheless, as the years passed and the climate returned to normal, stable communities began to form. New societies arose, each with its own customs. A few visionaries even founded great kingdoms. The people of those days did not have to begin from square one, like Stone Age primitives inventing the wheel for the first time. Enough vestiges of the former world remained to give these pioneers a head start in the climb toward civilization.
In this ancient-future world, one particular people united themselves under a king and called their realm Chiveis. It was a good and beautiful land whose snowcapped mountains provided protection and whose fields and livestock provided food. Safe in their natural stronghold, the people had everything they needed, so they didn’t venture into the broader world beyond. The Chiveisi also had their own religion: they worshiped four main gods under the guidance of a high priestess. As for the gods the Ancients may have worshiped—well, who could recall such things? The books that spoke of those matters had been lost forever.
Or so it was believed.
CHAPTER
1
The lone man deep in the woods of the Beyond knew a good sword could make the difference between life and death. Now, as the massive brown bear approached, he gripped his sword’s hilt in his strong, sweaty hand and resolved to live. He had just dealt the death blow to a wild boar. Downed by heavy arrows, but still kicking and thrashing, the animal found relief in the finality of the sword’s thrust. With a last squeal, the boar quit struggling and went limp. The hunter pulled his blade free of the carcass and was leaning on it to catch his breath when a rustling in the bushes signaled danger.
Turning toward the new threat, the man felt his heart jump as the enormous bear crept from the underbrush, its ears laid back, its eyes staring, its face contorted in a snarl. The hunter tightened his grip on his sword, discerning from the bear’s aggressive behavior he might soon require the aid of steel. The weapon was decent, and the man was well versed in its use. All his skill at arms would be needed if the menacing bear charged.