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  The full aerial roundhouse move forced an opponent to guard against a lethal heel to his face, but then morphed into a pirouette, one full rotation to bring the sword, not the feet, around with blazing speed.

  Thomas executed the move perfectly. Justin misjudged it. But he threw himself backward in time to catch the blade as a glancing blow skipped off his chest.

  Instead of continuing into a back handspring, he dropped to his back and rolled in the direction opposite the one in which Thomas’s momentum carried him.

  Smart. Very smart. If he’d gone for the back handspring, as most warriors certainly would, Thomas could have carried his own momentum into another direct attack before the man had fully recovered.

  The crowd knew it too. Their cries had fallen to silence.

  Justin came to his feet in a ready stance, eyes blazing with amusement.

  “You should have accepted my promotion two years ago instead of losing your head to the desert,” Thomas said. “You’re a better warrior than the others.”

  “Am I?” Justin straightened, as if this revelation took him off guard. He tossed his sword on the dirt. “Then let me fight you without a sword. The coming battle won’t be won with the sword.”

  Thomas stepped forward, sword extended. “Pick up your sword, you fool.”

  “And what, kill you?”

  Thomas brought his blade to Justin’s neck. The man made no attempt to stop him.

  “Kill him!” Ciphus screamed. “To the death!”

  “He wants me to kill you.”

  “If you can,” Justin said.

  “I can. But I won’t.”

  They were speaking low. “You deceive the people into thinking there can be peace when at this very moment the Horde is planning a betrayal,” Thomas said.

  Justin blinked.

  “Pick up your sword!” Thomas yelled for all to hear.

  Justin slowly stepped back and to his left. But he ignored his sword and dropped his hands to his sides, stared at Thomas.

  Thomas had given the man from Southern enough latitude; now his antics were infuriating. Thomas attacked. He covered the ground between them in three long strides and swung his sword full strength. The blade would cut the man in two without knowing it had hit anything.

  But Justin wasn’t there for the sword to hit. Thomas saw the man rolling back to his right, snatching up his sword, and too late he knew that he had been lulled into overcommitting himself to this blow he was already halfway through.

  His own words in training screamed through his mind. Never over-commit in close combat!

  Yet in anger, he had. He could have killed the man. Now the man might kill him.

  With a slower opponent, his error wouldn’t have mattered. But Justin moved as fast as he did. His blow came from behind, the broadside of his sword hitting Thomas squarely on the back.

  He landed hard. There was grass in his hands. Both hands. He’d lost his sword.

  He threw himself to the right, rolling to his back. A blade pressed against his neck and a knee dropped into his solar plexus. Justin kneeled over him, green eyes blazing, and Thomas knew that he was finished.

  The breath seemed to have been sucked from the arena along with his own. He stared into his old lieutenant’s eyes and saw a fierce fire.

  Then the man sprang up, backed away, and tossed his sword high into the air. It twirled in the afternoon sun and fell on its side with a dull thump, twenty yards away.

  He strode toward the Council and stopped in front of their platform. “Your challenger has been defeated. Elyon has spoken.”

  “The match is to the death,” Ciphus said.

  “I will not kill him for your sin.”

  “Then Elyon has not spoken,” the elder said quietly. “The only reason you are alive now is because Thomas failed to finish. You were defeated first.”

  “Was I?”

  “This isn’t over,” Ciphus ground out.

  “Live!” someone from the crowd shouted. “Let Thomas live!”

  A chant began. “Live, live, live, live!”

  Thomas pushed himself to his feet, mind spinning. He’d been defeated by Justin in fair combat.

  Ciphus clearly wasn’t up to defying the people under such ambiguous circumstances. He let them chant.

  Justin turned to the crowd. “I will let him live!” he shouted.

  The chant settled and died.

  He paced slowly, studying the people. “I will show you now, since I have earned the right, the true way to peace.” Now he was walking toward the slope that rose to the trees at the entrance. “At this very moment the Horde is conspiring to crush you with an army that will make the battles to the south and west seem like childish skirmishes.”

  How could Justin know this? And yet Thomas knew that he did. They had to get word to the scouts—search the farthest perimeter.

  He spun toward the gazebo, saw Mikil, and motioned for her to make it so. She and William disappeared.

  Justin spread his hands out to calm the confused crowd. “Silence! There is only one way to meet this enemy. It is the way of peace, and today I will deliver this peace to you.”

  He stopped and motioned to the trees. For a moment, nothing. And then a hooded man stepped out.

  A Scab!

  Wearing the sash of a general.

  Justin had smuggled a general from the Horde into the forest. Ten thousand voices cried out. The rest of the crowd gaped in stunned silence.

  The tall, hooded man walked quickly, and Justin met him halfway up the slope. They clasped hands and dipped their heads in greeting. Justin faced the arena and spread his arm in a manner of introduction.

  “I bring to you the man with whom I will negotiate peace between the Desert Dwellers and the Forest People.” He paused.

  “The mighty general of the Horde, Martyn!”

  Martyn! Was it possible? Then who had he killed in Qurong’s tent?

  Thomas glanced back at the gazebo. It was already empty. His Guard would not allow this man to leave the village alive. Not now, with this revelation that the Horde was gathering on their exposed flank.

  Thomas snatched his sword and ran for the slope. The day had seen enough showmanship. He couldn’t kill Justin now, but this general was another matter.

  “I have given him my word that you would not kill him,” Justin said. “His armies are close now and could swarm the forest and wage a battle that would turn the valleys red with blood. But if Elyon’s children all die, then who would be victor?”

  The revelation that the Horde was on their doorstep seemed to have tempered the crowd’s nerve. The people were actually listening. Thomas saw William and several of the Guard emerge from the trees at the top of the slope behind Justin. Rachelle was with them.

  What was she doing? She had no business with them.

  He shoved the thought aside and walked toward Justin and the Scab. The Guard moved down the hill to cut off any possible escape.

  Justin stepped up to meet him. “Thomas, I beg you to hear me. I have proven my loyalty to you. Now you must allow me this!”

  “You are wrong. He has betrayal in his blood!”

  They were both weaponless as far as he could see. Thomas’s men edged down the slope, swords drawn.

  Thomas rushed at the general. Justin seized his arm. “Thomas! You don’t know who he is!”

  Martyn backed up.

  Thomas could see the Scab’s white eyes peering from the shadows of his hood. The rare circle tattooed over the man’s right eye marked him as a druid, confirming the rumors.

  “You think my sword can’t draw the blood of the man who has slaughtered ten thousand of my men?” He directed his challenge to Martyn. “Will your magic protect you from a cold blade?”

  His men were now only a few paces behind the Scab. Martyn sensed them, glanced back, and stopped. Thomas tore his arm free from Justin’s grip and covered the last few steps. He thrust his sword into the bottom of the general’s hood and held him at po
int.

  He flicked the blade. Martyn didn’t respond to the small cut on his neck. Red blood seeped from the surface wound.

  “You think he won’t bleed the way my men have bled? I say we send him back to his Horde in pieces.”

  Justin ran past Thomas, grabbed the general’s hood, and yanked it back.

  Martyn’s face was ashen. A curving scar ran down his right cheek. He blinked pale eyes in the sudden light. He was hardly human, and yet he was fully human. But there was more.

  Thomas knew this man.

  His heart crashed in his chest.

  Johan.

  He yanked his sword back.

  Johan? And the scar . . . Why did this scar surprise him?

  “Johan,” Justin said.

  Thomas saw Rachelle over the man’s shoulder. She was at the crest and she’d heard the words.

  “Johan?” she said.

  Then she was running. Down the slope. She raced around the general and stared at his exposed face.

  “Johan? It’s . . . it’s you?”

  The general showed no emotion at the sight of his sister. His mind had been taken by the disease, Thomas knew. He hadn’t been killed in battle as they’d all assumed. He’d been lost to the desert and become a Scab three years ago. It was why the Horde’s strategies had become so effective. They were being led by one of the old Forest Guard who had lost his mind to their disease.

  Rachelle reached out to him, but he withdrew. She stared at him, grieved. Horrified.

  “You must let us go,” Justin said. “It’s the only way.”

  William edged closer. “Sir, he’s diseased. We can’t let him—”

  “Then wash him!” Rachelle cried.

  “You can’t force a man to bathe,” Thomas said. “He is what he chooses to be.”

  “He will bathe! Tell them, Johan. You will wash this curse from your skin. You’ll swim in the lake.”

  His eyes widened with a momentary flash of fear. “If it is peace you want, I can give you peace.” Thomas recognized the voice, but barely. It was now deeper. Pained. “Otherwise we bring a curse you have never known to this forest.”

  William grabbed the man’s cloak and drew back his sword. “Enough of this!”

  “Let him go!” Thomas ordered.

  “Sir—”

  “Release him!”

  William let the robe go and stepped back.

  “I will not kill my own brother!”

  His Guard would never agree to the terms of any peace Justin and Martyn drew up, but a truce might stall the Horde long enough for the Guard to prepare if truly there was an army in the plains.

  Behind them, Ciphus was silent. Why?

  Thomas faced Justin. “Take him. Broker your peace, but don’t expect me and my men to go along with it. If we see a single Scab within sight of the forest, we will hunt you both down and drain your blood.”

  Rachelle gripped his arm. She was trembling.

  Martyn replaced his hood and turned. William wouldn’t move.

  “Let them go, William.” Then louder. “These two have my personal word of safe passage from our forest. The man who touches them will face me.”

  His men parted.

  Justin and Martyn, the mighty general of the Horde whose name was also Johan, walked up the slope into the trees and vanished.

  19

  THOMAS STARED at the man he now knew had masterminded the virus. A thick Frenchman with fat fingers and greasy black hair who looked like he could stand in the face of a hurricane without batting an eye.

  This was Armand Fortier.

  They had been sedated, Monique told him. Within an hour of him passing out, they’d both been given shots. Men were dismantling the laboratory. They were going to be moved; she got that much from one of them. But to where she didn’t know.

  Then she’d passed out. Neither of them knew how much time had passed since then.

  They’d awakened here, in this windowless stone room with a pool table and a fireplace. They were both handcuffed with impossibly tight cuffs, seated in wooden chairs, facing the Frenchman and, behind him, Carlos. Monique was still dressed in her pale blue slacks and blouse, and Thomas still wore the camouflaged jumpsuit.

  Thomas had tried to deduce their possible location, but he had no memory of being moved, and there was nothing in this room that couldn’t be found anywhere in the world. For all he knew they’d been out for two days. If he was right, the reason he’d dreamed at all was because he hadn’t been drugged for that first hour after Carlos had tortured him.

  That first hour, he’d dreamed of the inquiry where he’d fought Justin and discovered that Martyn was Johan . . .

  “Just so you know, the Americans did try to rescue you,” Fortier said. He seemed to find the fact interesting. “And I know from a very reliable source that they were after more than the antivirus. They want you. Everybody seems to want Thomas Hunter and Monique de Raison.”

  His eyes moved to Monique. “You have this solution in your head. You’d think I would just kill you and eliminate the risk of them finding you. Fortunately for you, I have reasons to keep you alive.”

  His eyes shifted back to Thomas. “You, on the other hand, are an enigma. You know things you should not. You gave us the Raison Strain, and then you inadvertently gave us the antivirus, both sides of this most useful weapon. But it doesn’t stop there. You continue to know things. Where we are. What we will do next, perhaps. What should I do with you?”

  Thomas’s mind returned to the dream of Justin’s challenge.

  Johan. The man who’d led the Horde against them so effectively had been Johan. And Johan had a scar on his cheek. Thomas had watched the duo walk into the woods to broker peace with Qurong, a peace that was somehow entwined with betrayal.

  The crowd had erupted in fierce debate. Thomas had returned to his Guard, and the Council had joined them to berate his decision to give Johan safe passage from the forest. But how could he kill Johan? And hadn’t Justin won the inquiry? They had no right to undermine him now.

  The festivities that night had been more dissension than celebration—a strange mix of exuberance by those who believed that Justin was indeed destined to deliver them from the Horde with this peace of his, and animosity by those who argued vehemently against any such treasonous betrayal of Elyon.

  Thomas had finally collapsed into a fitful sleep.

  “What are you thinking?” Fortier asked.

  Thomas focused on the thick Frenchman. He had no doubt that this man would succeed with his virus. The Books of Histories said he would. And, as it was turning out, changing history wasn’t as easy as he’d once hoped. Impossible, maybe. All of this—his discovery of the virus in the first place, his attempts to derail Svensson, and now this encounter with Fortier—might very well be written in the Books of Histories. Imagine that: Thomas Hunter’s attempt to rescue Monique de Raison at Cyclops failed when the transport he was flying in was shot down . . . If he’d been successful in retrieving the Books from Qurong’s tent, he could have read the details of his own life! But it seemed that the path of history was continuing exactly as it had been recorded, and he knew its final destination if not the precise course it would take.

  The question now was when. When would they finally kill him? When would Monique die? When would the antivirus actually be released to the chosen few? When would the rest die their hideous diseased death?

  “They searched for you with nearly a hundred aircraft loaded with enough electronic equipment to power Paris for a week,” Fortier was saying. “It was quite a spectacle, not all at once or to one region, of course. In circles and to airports throughout the South Pacific. They blocked the air-traffic routes between Indonesia and France. To be quite honest, we barely made it out.”

  His lips twisted in a small grin. “We wouldn’t have if I hadn’t foreseen exactly this possibility. You see, you’re not the only one who can see the future. Oh, your sight might be different from mine based on this . . . thi
s gift rather than solid deductive reasoning, but I can promise you that I have seen the future, and I like what I see. Do you?”

  “No,” Thomas said. “I don’t.”

  “Very good. You still have your voice. And you’re honest, which is more than I can say for myself.”

  He turned away.

  “I need to know something, Thomas. I know that you know the answer, because I have ears inside your government. I know the president has no intention of actually delivering the weapons that are just now entering the Atlantic. What I don’t know is how far the president will carry his bluff. I need to know when to take the appropriate action. We are now fully prepared for a nuclear exchange, you must know. Knowing if and when they might attack would be helpful.”

  “He won’t fire nuclear weapons,” Thomas said.

  “No? Maybe you don’t know your president as well as I do. We anticipate it. Any knowledge you give me won’t change the outcome of this chess match; it will only determine how many people must die to facilitate that outcome.”

  Fortier glanced at his watch. “We are going public in France in three days. Over a hundred less-progressive members of the government will meet untimely ends between now and then. A Chinese delegation is waiting for a meeting with President Gaetan in his office, and I’ve been asked to join them. Evidently news of the altercations with you in Indonesia have leaked and are causing a stir. The Australians are threatening to go public and must be calmed. One of our own commanders is asking the wrong questions. I am a busy man, Thomas. I have to leave. We’ll talk again tomorrow. I hope your memory serves you better then.”

  He regarded Monique, dipped his head barely, and left the room.

  Thomas’s mind spun with the details that the Frenchman had just given him. The world was indeed rushing to its well-known end. While he was off dreaming about the Gathering and how it could possibly be that the great general Martyn was really Johan, complete with scarred—

  Thomas stopped. He stared at Carlos, who had crossed the room and opened a door that led into darkness.

  He turned in profile to Thomas. The scar. Right cheek. Curved like a half-moon, exactly as he remembered Johan’s.