Read Online The Chronicles of Gan: The Thorn by Daron Fraley - Free Book Online Page B

atrocities committed by
his fellow soldiers offended his sensibilities. He squeezed his
eyes closed, but he could not shut out the horror.
    Pekah’s guilt intensified to the point that
he began to feel physical pain, and he groaned under the weight of
it. His chest ached. He rolled from side to side, trying to shake
the horrible darkness settling over him. As he analyzed the events
of the battle, he severely chastised himself at each identified
moment where a different outcome would have been possible. Perhaps
he could have stopped some of the needless death and destruction
that had taken place. But in all of his painful memories, his mind
kept stopping at one particular place in time, a moment that
disturbed him more than anything else. Pekah remembered the smell
of blood as he shuffled past the body of the judge in the Council
Hall of Hasor.
    An unexpected connection then materialized
in his thoughts. Intense disgust poured down upon him like a
breaking tidal wave. Pekah recalled loosening the leather belt of
the dead captain, sliding the gilded dagger sheath off the end of
the belt to remove it, and placing the weapon on his own belt just
before they covered the body of Captain Sachar with branches and
brush. Sachar’s dagger. A weapon used for murder. The same one
which he had sharpened by the campfire.
    His eyes opened in alarm, and his hand went
instinctively to his side. There he felt the handle: smooth, hard,
cold. Revulsion filled him, and he sat up with a start. He stripped
the weapon from his waist, throwing it to the ground before
him.
    There it is.
    Pekah frowned at it with extreme
distaste.
    I have been sharpening a murder weapon.
    The scene of blood roiled in his mind.
    Why did I ever touch the vile blade?
    The detachment’s orders were very specific.
Capture the judge. Bring him alive to the emperor. But Sachar had
not followed those orders. In anger, Captain Sachar had pulled his
dagger from his belt, and like a coward, threw it into the back of
the defenseless old man. Pekah remembered protesting, but the deed
had already been done. There had been no honor in Sachar’s
actions.
    He stared at the sheathed dagger in the
dirt.
    What ever possessed me to touch the
thing?
    Pekah was no murderer. He had no desire to
use the tool of a murderer. As he thought about those ultimately
responsible for the death of the judge and king of the Danielites,
he questioned his own political leanings. Pekah had felt for a long
time that the three tribes should be united as one people. Like
many among his kindred, he also felt the Gideonite leaders were the
best choice to rule over the Three Brothers. These feelings had
provided justification for going to battle.
    Were not the Danielites a rebellious and
wicked people? Were they not in need of strong leadership? From his
youth, he had been taught that the Danielite and Uzzahite peoples
were lazy, weak, and prone to hostility towards Gideon. Manasseh,
the Gideonite emperor, had warned the people that if they did not
attack first, the Danielites and Uzzahites would attack them.
    His people were wrong! By Pekah’s
impressions, the villagers of Hasor were far from lazy. The city
was clean, organized, and beautiful. And from what he could tell
when entering the city, the people there were only defending their
homes, not preparing to attack the Gideonites.
    Was the emperor misinformed by his generals?
Or was the emperor simply devious? The more Pekah thought about it,
the more he could see that what he had been told could not be true.
The emperor. His generals. His captains. They had willfully
lied.
    This realization sickened him. Oh, how naïve
he had been. So eager to do something great—to prove himself in
battle—he had overlooked the great cost of their campaign. Pekah
mentally kicked himself again and told himself he should have known
better.
    Sitting in the dim flicker of a slow fire,
he wondered what he could do to make amends for the great injustice
that had been done at