Ted Dekker - Outlaw

“She is incapable of understanding,” the old man said. “She is a woman and she is wam.”

“She is my wife!” Wilam snapped.

They exchanged a long look and the elder finally dipped his head.

“Forgive me.”

I had been told that, compared to most tribes in the region, the Tulim regarded women with respect. But some biases are not easily washed from the hearts of men.

It was the least of my concerns at the moment.

“Sawim has declared our union and our child invalid,” Wilam said.

“And you will tolerate this?” I demanded.

His eyes flashed with hatred. “I will see a thousand Warik die before I see any harm come to my son. The rule of the Tulim must not leave the Impirum clan.”

With those words reality once again settled around me like a thick fog. My value to them was still a matter of political power. We had celebrated as if heaven itself had fallen to earth, but the celebration hadn’t been for me. It had been for my unborn child.

Even more, it had been for Wilam.

For his river of his life that would extend his power for yet another generation. I was but a vessel.

I felt Melino’s hand settle on my thigh. Tears welled in my eyes.

“You have nothing to fear, Yuli,” Melino said. “Wilam will raise a thousand warriors to protect you. Our child will be born.”

“It has been a hundred years since any have taken up the black grease,” the elder said softly. “There will be war.”

“Then let there be war,” Wilam spat.

He turned to me, face stern.

“You will sleep in the spousal hut alone. You may never come or go without my men. There is nothing to fear. My men will protect you. We have heard that Kirutu is only making noise. This will take time and we will be ready.”

His words should have been comforting.

Instead I felt utterly alone.

“Take her to the hut,” he said. “Bring me my warriors.” And then to me, meaning well, I know: “You will be safe.”

Wilam was wrong. I wasn’t safe.

Chapter Seventeen

AFTER BEING delivered to my hut alone it took me two hours to drift into a fitful sleep. When I asked Melino to stay with me, she informed me that she could stay only until I slept and would then be otherwise occupied. It was crucial that I sleep. Nothing must disturb me.

The night was quiet and the three warriors stationed outside my hut spoke only occasionally in soft tones.

I don’t know how the dark ones slipped through the perimeter guard Wilam had stationed around the village.

I don’t know why the three warriors at my door didn’t put up a fight or call out a warning.

I know only that I was in deep sleep when a crushing blow struck my head. I remember thinking that the roof had collapsed before darkness swallowed me completely.

But the moment I awoke I knew that a falling roof was not my problem. My being wam, on the other hand, was.

I was bound hand and foot, hanging from a pole. A bag was over my throbbing head and a gag cut deeply into my mouth. I had been in that position before, swinging a foot off the ground between two Warik warriors who rushed me through the jungle.

I struggled and cried into my gag, thinking we might still be close enough to the Impirum village to be heard, but my resistance only earned me a hard blow to my head and a harsh grunt of rebuke.

“ Koneh .” Shut up .

A hundred thoughts badgered my mind—nightmares of the worst kind. Surely Kirutu would not allow me to live.

If only it had been so simple.

Only one thought gave me a moment’s hope as I hung from that pole and silently cried into my bag: I was alive. I should have died with Stephen in the sea, but I was alive. I should have been executed the day after entering the valley, but I was alive. I should have been given to Kirutu at his wedding and paid him back with my life, but I was alive.

If Kirutu had wanted me dead now, he could have instructed his warriors to kill me in my hut.

But then even that hope was quickly dashed, because being alive in Kirutu’s hut would be only a different kind of death. Whatever his plans for me might be, they could not be favorable.

The vines they’d used to bind my hands and feet to the pole dug into my skin with each bounce as they ran. If we had gone on much longer, my arms might have come out of their sockets, but we were much closer to the Warik village than I had assumed. Indeed, I briefly wondered if we hadn’t gone south after all, but to the house of an embittered Impirum villager.

No more than twenty minutes after I’d awakened to find myself bound, my carriers hauled me into a hut, dumped me on the bark floor, and left me prone with a crackling fire near my feet.

My every thought cried out to God. And for Wilam to come before Kirutu could begin whatever harm he intended.

And yet I knew even as I lay bound and gagged, like one of the pigs my prince had slaughtered to honor the life in my womb, that Wilam could not save me from Kirutu. The man was too shrewd and too angry to allow his enemy another victory. He’d been scorned and mocked, and his revenge would be carefully orchestrated to end his shame once and for all.

If Wilam had failed to keep me safe in his own fortress, he could do nothing here, even if he knew I was missing.

The only thing I could do was play Kirutu’s game with the thinnest hope that I, not Wilam, could foil him long enough to give my prince the time he needed to find me and save our child.

“I have heard it said that the children of some wam have blue eyes because they are evil spirits.” The man spoke in a low tone, only feet from where I lay, and a chill washed down my spine. I could not mistake Kirutu’s voice.

“But when I see your child, I do not see an evil spirit,” he said. “I see only a child who does not know where it belongs.”

The Tulim often spoke of unborn children as if they were already walking about the village, and they used metaphors regarding the ways of the spirit world. But his meaning hardly mattered; I was still consumed with the sound of Kirutu’s haunting voice.

“But if I am wrong and the child is evil, then the mother must also be a demon. Only this would explain how you have escaped my grasp and bewitched the Impirum.”

You must be calm, Julian. For the sake of your child, you must still your mind and think very carefully.

A hand snatched the bag from my head. I blinked and saw that I was inside the same hut I’d visited during my first night among the Tulim, presumably one belonging to Kirutu, perhaps one on the outskirts of the village reserved for liaisons or for hunting.

Kirutu stepped into firelight, unadorned except for a rattan waistband and a necklace of cowrie shells bearing a single boar’s tusk. The scar on his side stood out angrily on his shiny skin covered in black grease—crocodile fat and Sawim’s blood mixed with whatever other ingredients turned it black. He watched me with dark eyes set deeply into his hardened face.

“I should have crushed your skull with my paddle in the sea where I found you,” he said. “But now I have the pleasure of crushing your child’s head as well.”

It was to my benefit that he hadn’t yet removed my gag, for I would have lashed out at him then. Instead I took great pains to calm myself. My sole objective became to stall him as long as I could, even if that meant compromising myself.

He leaned over, grasped the gag with strong fingers, and jerked it over my chin, freeing my mouth. “You will now wish I had left you dead.”

“Then you were foolish for not killing what you could never have,” I said. “Now all the Tulim see that Wilam made what you could not.”

His eyes lowered to my belly. “So they tell me.”