The Chronicles of Gan: The Thorn (13 page)

The soldier ground his teeth like a horse
chewing on its bridle, but did not stand down. He pulled the
bowstring fully back, now pointing at Jonathan’s legs.

“If he decides to fire,” Eli whispered, “we
will not reach him in time.”

The tension in the air was palpable. None of
the four men moved.

Pekah decided to try negotiating with the
Gideonite soldier. “I don’t know your name,” Pekah stated with an
outstretched arm, “But I do know that you would probably like to
know mine. If you drop your weapon, I will tell you who we are, and
why we are traveling together.”

Very briefly, the situation seemed to
improve. The soldier relaxed his pull and let the arrow-point fall
farther toward his own feet. But then one of the fallen Danielites,
whom Pekah had assumed to be dead, let out a groan of pain. The
Gideonite started to aim for the wounded man.

His face full of anger, Jonathan advanced,
his crystal sword sparkling in the daylight. Just as quick as a
lightning flash, the Gideonite swung his aim back around and up at
Jonathan’s chest. Pekah reacted out of pure instinct and jumped in
front of Jonathan just as the arrow was let loose. It struck Pekah
squarely in the breastplate, knocking him off his feet. Eli had
already charged, and with all his strength, he connected his
swinging staff with the side of the Gideonite’s head, producing a
splitting sound like a melon falling off a farmer’s cart. The
soldier dropped like a rock into a heap upon the ground.

Jonathan knelt at Pekah’s side and lifted
his head from the ground. The arrow lay in the dirt beside him.

Pekah wheezed. “I can’t breathe,” he said,
nearly choking on the words.

Jonathan yanked the breastplate straps
loose, and Eli helped Pekah sit up. Jonathan pressed his finger
against the small wound to stop the bleeding. “Pekah?”

Pekah gasped, still fighting for air. He
groaned. “Ohhh . . . that hurt!”

“Not as much as it hurt him,” Eli added
gravely as he pointed to the fallen Gideonite.

Once he could breathe without gasping, Pekah
inspected his armor to find that the arrow had not completely
pierced the hardened leather. Only the very tip of the arrow-point
had made it through. The wind had been knocked out of him, but he
was alive, and grateful for it.

“Can you stand?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes. Help me up, please.” He leaned on them
for assistance. “Much better.”

Jonathan patted him on the shoulder, then
motioned to the Danielite soldier. “He is still alive.” Jonathan
led the way to the soldier’s side.

As they approached, Pekah knew the Danielite
would not live. He had been cut through the belly, and the amount
of blood loss indicated that his time was short.

“Can you hear me?” Jonathan asked as he
knelt on one knee beside the man’s head.

The man groaned but did not answer right
away. His head tilted toward the voice, and then upon opening his
eyes, there came a moment of recognition as if he knew who Jonathan
was.

“Do you know him?” Pekah asked Jonathan.

“No.”

The soldier tried to lift his head, but fell
back to the ground. Eli retrieved a wineskin, and Pekah assisted in
holding the man’s head up while Eli dripped some of the liquid into
the man’s mouth.

“Thank you,” the soldier said with
difficulty. He coughed, wincing at the pain. With wide eyes and the
force of a driven purpose, he choked, “The emperor . . . is in
Ain.”

The Danielite then lost all of his strength,
groaning as his last breath left him.

Jonathan laid him to the ground with care,
and arose from his kneeling position. Emotions welled in Jonathan’s
eyes and dripped down onto his beard, and Pekah’s own eyes misted.
Eli was no less somber.

The companions stood there together in
respectful silence for almost a minute until Eli suggested they
take a closer look at Pekah’s wound. It had stopped bleeding, but
still needed attention. Eli pulled a small bandaging cloth from
Pekah’s supplies, and Pekah tucked it into his shirt and pressed it
to the wound, wincing at the pain. Eli grabbed up the breastplate
and examined the small hole, pressing the indentation back out the
best he could. Pekah strapped it back to hold the bandage in
place.

“Did you see where the arrow hit your
armor?” Jonathan asked.

Pekah peered down to see the arrow mark,
precisely at the raven’s eye, and right over his heart. His knees
suddenly felt weak as he realized that without the armor, he would
be dead, just like the Danielite soldier.

“Are you sure you are well enough to
travel?” Eli asked, concerned.

Distracted by what the dying Danielite had
told them, Pekah only nodded.

Eli studied Pekah, but Pekah averted his
eyes elsewhere.

“What’s bothering you?” Jonathan
prodded.

Pekah sighed, but still did not answer.

“Did you know the emperor was going to be in
Ain?” Eli asked.

“Yes.”

Jonathan stepped into Pekah’s line of sight.
“When did you learn he was there?”

Pekah touched his leather breastplate, right
at the tender spot on his chest, before looking up again at his
companions. “In the dream I had last night, I didn’t know where I
was, but Eli stood with me, and we talked to Emperor Manasseh. I
don’t remember what we said.”

Jonathan grabbed his beard and twisted it in
his fingers before tucking his hands under his belt.

Recognizing Jonathan’s pensive reaction,
Pekah felt it best to tell what he was doing in his dream, and so
with soberness he added, “I had the scepter with me. Eli told me to
show it to the emperor.”

“I wasn’t with you?”

“No, but now that I think about it, I didn’t
feel you were absent by accident—you were absent
intentionally.”

Jonathan reached into his shirt. He handed
the purple cloth and rod to Pekah, forcing them into his hands,
clasping them both with his own. “Then you will take it. Show it to
Emperor Manasseh,” he said in a kind, yet stern, tone.

Pekah gaped at the scepter in his trembling
hands as Jonathan released him.

“Pekah, you saved my life today, and I will
be forever grateful. I’m giving this to you in hopes that it may be
used, perhaps as an instrument in your hands, to convince Manasseh
to end his aggression toward our peoples.”

“Will you not need a leather bag to carry it
in?” Eli winked in Pekah’s direction. Pekah shrugged his shoulders
as he followed Eli’s gaze to a small leather sack around one of the
dead Danielite’s shoulders. Eli stepped over to the man and
recovered it, opening it where Pekah could also see the contents.
The bag held a severely damaged wooden spyglass. The ocular was
broken, and the cylinder cracked. Noting that the item was rendered
useless, Eli discarded it, then shook all the remaining fragments
from the bag, and handed the pouch to Pekah.

“Here. Is it just like you remember from
your dream?” Eli asked.

Pekah examined the bag and tested it by
placing the wrapped scepter within. He drew the strings together
and hung it over his neck. “Perhaps,” he responded with
uncertainty. He felt a little strange that everyone was playing
along with the dream he had related.

Jonathan stepped closer and gripped Pekah’s
shoulder. “When we get to the city, I will stay behind on the trail
and find a place to conceal myself.” He cleared his throat and with
a wry smile added, “That way, you won’t have to throw me into the
river to be rid of me.”

Eli laughed heartily. Pekah couldn’t help
but smile, glad to have found friends who were genuine and
trusting. Even though he still felt immense apprehension about
taking The Thorn to the emperor—a man known for his cruelty—he knew
now his dream was real, undoubtedly a gift of prophecy from the
Great King.

The men counseled together about the horses,
the wagon, and the men lying dead on the road, and decided that Eli
and Pekah would take the wagon and team into the city as a gift to
the emperor so they could gain an audience with him. They walked
back to the horses and calmed them with soft words, patting and
rubbing their necks. Then they led the cart to where the dead
soldiers lay.

Jonathan located a soft piece of ground in
the woods where they could dig graves for the fallen men. Using a
shovel they found on the wagon, they turned up the rich soil
beneath two overhanging oaks. They took turns digging until Eli
became frustrated. With characteristic teasing, he used his
bear-like strength to finish the last two holes on his own. The
bodies were retrieved and laid to rest in the fresh burial
pits.

“I want to find their families,” Jonathan
said as he cut a lock of hair from each of the two Danielite
soldiers.

One man had a ring, to which Jonathan tied
the corresponding lock of hair, and the other had a narrow lace
ribbon attached to his quiver strap, surely placed there by a loved
one. Jonathan removed it, wrapping the hair within it. He tied it
off in a small, rolled package, then stuffed both objects into the
pocket previously occupied by The Thorn.

After covering the bodies, Eli spoke a word
of prayer, and the somber men returned to the road to fetch the
cart. None of them spoke as they resumed their journey. Only the
sounds of the horses’ hooves and the grinding of the wagon wheels
filled the air. Like the low-hanging smoke from a doused fire on a
cold morning, Pekah once again felt the heaviness of war in the air
about him. Conflict, death, burial—Pekah suspected the pattern
would repeat many times in coming days.

Although expecting to find
additional soldiers at some point along the road, their travel
during the last of the morning and the rest of the day remained
uneventful. They did not stop to eat their mid-day meal, but ate
most of their own supplies as they traveled. During a momentary
rest, they also raided a few of the supplies they hauled in the
wagon. They found dried meats, a cheese softened on account of the
heat, and a skin filled with water. Markings on the casks in the
wagon indicated that they held wine, beans, spices, fruit, and
olives. A few of the casks were marked
for
the emperor
, which assured the three
companions that the Danielite had been correct about Manasseh’s
presence at Ain.

They traveled the rest of the day with
nervous anticipation, discussing how they might best enter the city
and what they might say to the emperor, disagreeing about how
Manasseh would react to seeing the scepter. Although it would be
difficult to convince him to end the war, they placed their faith
in one distinct hope: Pekah’s dream was meant to tell them what
they should do. Trusting that effective and convincing words would
be given by the Spirit in the proper moment, they stoked the embers
of faith within their hearts, confident they could provide, or
produce, the environment and situation in which the Great Creator
would work out His purposes.

And so they marched on, well into the early
evening, when they came to a place in the road which led sharply
downhill. It descended by way of a few switchbacks and continued a
mile more into the outskirts of the walled city they now saw in the
distance. The thinning tree line still provided enough cover to
make them unnoticeable to anyone near the city who might happen to
gaze their way.

From their new vantage point, they could see
they were in the high hills east of Ain, bordered on both the north
and the south by small mountains. Far to the west of Ain where the
sister moons would later rise, an immense mountain range with high,
snow-capped peaks and rugged valleys formed a jagged horizon. This
range ran in a southeasterly direction, behind the small mountains
on their left, toward the lands inhabited by the Gideonites.
Between those distant mountains and the high hills on which they
now stood was a beautiful valley, filled with numerous orchards and
farmland, all of which lined the road to the city of Ain.

The three of them searched the immediate
area for a place of refuge and saw that the tree line north of the
road led to some rocky outcroppings, which promised a remote, and
yet high, observation point.

“I’ll go up there to wait for your return,”
Jonathan said.

Pekah handed Jonathan the remainder of the
dried meat and cheese from the wagon. “Take the rest of this with
you.”

They both helped Jonathan to load his
shoulder sack.

“Take care, brother,” Eli said, hugging
Jonathan tight.

“I will.” Jonathan let go of Eli and
extended a hand to Pekah. “If I have learned nothing else in the
last few days, your presence here has been quite providential. I’m
convinced you will succeed. You must.”

“We’ll be back soon,” Pekah promised, not
knowing what else to say.

“Eli . . .” Jonathan said with some emotion.
“Please find Rachel and the other prisoners. Perhaps the emperor
will be willing to trade the scepter for their release.”

“I hope so. But I wish there was another
way. What if we never see The Thorn again?”

“The promises are sure, my brother. Somehow,
it will find its way back into our hands. Certainly the lives of
our people are worth more than the glass rod, are they not?”

Eli let out a slow breath. “Yes. You’re
right. I certainly didn’t mean that Rachel’s life doesn’t matter.
May the Holy One forgive us for putting it into Manasseh’s
hands.”

“The One Who Would Suffer will someday claim
the scepter as promised,” Jonathan said.

“I know He will,” Eli agreed.

Jonathan put both hands on the back of his
neck, then let them fall as he turned his head. He suddenly had a
strange look in his eyes.

“What is it?” Pekah prompted.

Jonathan nodded as he spoke. “I just
realized. It may be a good thing to keep them apart for a
while.”