Ted Dekker - Outlaw

So he ran on. They herded him forward. He could easily escape. Kirutu would know that. They knew he could just as easily turn and kill any number of the warriors who trailed him in the bush—perhaps it was why they didn’t attack.

Run, Stephen. Run to your mother. Run to Kirutu. This is your path now. Run.

He ran. Closer. Very close. Close enough to hear a low chant rising from the valley ahead.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

Like a slow drumbeat that pulsed through the trees and reached into his bones. They were waiting.

Stephen did not slow. Neither did he press forward with more speed. He simply ran to his destiny. To whatever awaited, without judging what that might be. For this he had been brought to the jungle.

For this he had been saved.

And then he was there, bursting from the trees out onto the knoll that overlooked the Warik village, which sat half a mile down the wide, grassy slope. He pulled up hard, taken off guard by what he saw.

A thick slab of black cloud hung low over the village, creating a ceiling that no light could penetrate. The ominous sky shifted and flowed, perfectly flat and silent.

It had no reason to shriek or thunder—that power had been passed to the sea of flesh below.

The warning calls he’d heard on the cliff had reached the village long ago, and Kirutu had gathered his Warik into a massive show of force, ten thousand strong outside the main gate. Warriors all, blackened skin glistening in the light of a dozen fires. They formed a wide arc, perhaps several hundred men wide, fifty deep, and faced the hill on which he stood.

Facing him .

Chanting, armed with bows and spears, dressed in bright paint and feathers—the only color besides the light of the fire and the whites of their eyes.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

And with each chant their feet and the butts of their spears came down hard on the earth, ten thousand crushing hammers that sent a tremor through the earth.

A chill rode Stephen’s bones, unbidden by his will.

Before the sea of Warik warriors stood a large pyre of wood stacked around a post. And strapped upright to that post…

His mother.

Ten paces to her right, Kirutu stood tall and broad-chested, glistening with greasy, blackened skin. He stared up the hill at Stephen.

Somewhere at the edge of the inexhaustible reservoir of peace and wholeness, Stephen’s costume began to scream. And for a long moment that stretched out with each rumbling chant from below, he wondered if he could do what he was meant to do, not yet even knowing what he was to do.

Surrender your own understanding. Trust only in the truth. See the narrow path. Follow him. This is the Way.

And that Way would lead him down the hill to that black sea. It was no different from stepping off the shore and walking out on the black waters in the dead of night. Hadn’t the Master been a Water Walker? Wasn’t he still?

Stephen looked over his shoulder. The jungle behind him was lined with a hundred armed warriors, staring at him with fixed resolve. They did not approach, they did not speak, they only stared, and in their eyes he could see fear.

Fear. They knew that if they attacked, he was more than capable of taking any number of lives before vanishing into the jungle.

These warriors were only doing what Kirutu demanded of them.

Stephen faced the gathered host and walked forward, one foot before the other, down the slope, into the reverberating chant.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

Now his breathing was shallow and his pulse deep. And his costume began to ask its maddening questions, innocuous at first, then with an edge of fear.

Why has Kirutu gathered so many in such a crushing show of power?

“Because he is terrified, deep inside, where a voice asks him why even such a skilled warrior would return to certain death in a hopeless attempt to save his mother.”

Did you come to save your mother?

“I came for Kirutu, who holds my mother’s costume in his claws.”

And how will you defeat Kirutu?

“I won’t.”

You’ve gone mad! What can you possibly do?

His mind went blank. One foot in front of the other.

“I will remember. I will surrender. I will be what I am and surrender all else.”

And if you fail to find that place of infinite power inside you, they will kill you.

“They cannot kill me. My life is eternal.”

They will kill me!

“I don’t need my costume.”

I do! I need your costume! I am your costume!

Stephen hesitated. “Be quiet,” he said aloud. “You’re already dead.”

Their chanting, delivered in perfect unison with hammering feet and pounding spears, shook the earth as the slope gave way to level ground. The blazing fires that stretched east and west before the Warik sent sparks to the black-capped sky with each stomp.

He glanced behind and saw that the warriors who’d herded him here followed, fifty paces to his rear.

The only thing Stephen knew to do was walk, as he had once before, this time knowing that he was walking into the arms of a crushing force.

Two others stood near his mother’s pyre. An emaciated man who wore no paint nor dress of any kind. And to his right, one step behind, a frail-looking woman wearing only an old grass skirt. Death had hollowed out their stares. They watched Stephen without expression. He thought it might be the prince of his mother’s story, Wilam, and his wife, Melino. Stephen couldn’t be sure.

Kirutu had strapped his mother to the post at her ankles and bound her arms behind the pole to keep her upright. A dirty brown sack covered her head.

They will burn her.

She is safe.

They will burn you.

I am safe.

There’s no way out!

There is the Way. And it is in , not out. Shaka said I would see it.

Shaka has gone mad!

You are madness.

Stephen came to a stop twenty paces from Kirutu, who stared at him, hand wrapped tightly around his spear. His chest rose and fell slowly as the thundering chant made his power plain. His mouth was flat, his face resolute. But Stephen saw something else beyond his eyes.

Fear.

Uncertainty. Terror, beneath layers of power and years of brutality, but hiding there still, in the deepest caverns of his mind.

A strange calm settled into Stephen’s mind. Who was Kirutu but another deeply wounded man who didn’t know what else to do but protect his costume?

The ruler was used to an enemy who would resist him, and he’d learned to crush any such threat. Now came one from Shaka who walked willingly to his death without fear. Kirutu could not understand this. And what he couldn’t understand, he feared.

Stephen felt the world fall away. The chants faded, the air thickened. He experienced no grievance, no judgment, no blame—these things were not his concern. And in that place without grievance, he saw no threat. Before him stood a child, crying out for what he had long forgotten.

Screaming out for a love he had never known.

Compassion swallowed Stephen whole and a knot rose into his throat. What was inconceivable to flesh and bone became perfectly clear to him. There were no words to explain it.

Kirutu lifted his hand, a casual gesture that was immediately taken as a command. The chanting ceased. The earth stilled, leaving only the crackling of fire and the anguished sound of a woman trying to hold back her sobs.

His mother was crying under the hood.

Stephen held his eyes on Kirutu, pulled by his mother’s fear.

Deditio. Surrender. Remember who you and your mother are. There is no threat. None.