The giant hurtled through the dark forest as the sun rose over the enslaved land of Thane.  The hills were the same as they had been the day before, but everything had changed.  He knew the Masters for what they were.  And he knew the Thanians too: a people who had once been free. 

    But what of the Church that called itself the True Belief?

    The name was a lie.  The hands behind it were the hands of the conquerors.  All the lords and the masters of Thane, all those who called themselves Thanian warriors, all the wielders of power in this poor land, all were puppets of the true masters.  That was the same on this morning as it was on any other: true and irrefutable.   The pleading captives at Coormo returned to him again and again.  Their hopeless faces, their cries.  Thane was as much a slave today as yesterday.

    Only he had changed, only the one who had been Tare.  But what he had seen.  He could not bear the weight. What mute God would make him witness such horrors and explain nothing.  Why?  To what end did he see the past?

    Perhaps there was no purpose.  Like the academies of the Church and the thousand tiny rituals he had learned as a boy, like the chants and the uniforms and the long days of prayer.  What purpose did those things have in a false religion?  Perhaps the whole world was just as random and idiotic, just as pointless.  That would make every life and death nothing at all, and the pain of the Coormo captives would be nothing at all, and every conviction or dream or hope would also be nothing.  The whole world would be nothing, and The Witness himself would be nothing, and the lives of the poor would be nothing.  They would be dust, and their pain and slavery would be a matter of no more interest or importance than the size of the rocks in the trail that led back to the village of Scoms.

    The giant Witness stopped in the trail.  He knelt down and picked up one of the rocks.  It was grey and did not weigh very much.  It was about the size of his thumbnail, and he gripped it in his fist.  How much more inconsequential could anything be?  A rock in a trail, to be stepped on and forgotten.  But it was also more than that.  It had come from somewhere, and perhaps it had been left here on purpose by someone who was long since gone, like the rocks that composed the Wheel, the pattern of which could go unseen by anyone unversed in the meanings of the Old Belief.  Perhaps this grey rock had its own secret purpose.  It might be thrown at an enemy, or put in a sack with hundreds of other rocks to make a weight, or used to plug a hole in the wall of a hut in the village.  It might have a thousand uses, all unseen at first glance.

    The Witness realized that the rituals of the false Church also had their own unseen use: to perpetuate the slavery of the faithful.  Every prayer, every book, every chant and every fast had as their penultimate aim the domination of the people by those who had sold themselves to the conquerors.  Everything.  Even the good, even the kindness and charity, even the concern for the soul.  All of it came from the same black goal: domination and slavery by control of the soul.

    "Obey your betters"...  How many times had he himself preached to land-toilers about how they should never strive for a greater lot in life?  How many times had he quelled them?  The True Belief exalted slavery and the blue flesh not because it was holy, but because it was convenient for the Masters.

    Had the Hyacinth ever really lived?  If she had, the meaning of her life and her words had been lost.  The shapers of the True Belief had twisted her words -- once treasured and holy to a man called Tare -- to make them the base principles of slavery:  Obey your betters.  Pray for greater faith.  Keep hope.

    The Witness bowed his head and prayed for strength.  How could he have been a part of it?  How could he now bring it to an end?  He placed the rock back in its spot on the trail and stood up again.

    If all things had a purpose, perhaps that rock's purpose had been to rest in this place, on this trail, until a certain angry man picked it up.  Perhaps its purpose was to be reflected upon, to change everything, and then to wait for the end of the world.  The Witness wondered this as he stood over the rock for a final moment, and then he continued on the trail to Scoms.  He had a purpose, and all things had purpose, and his soul hummed like a bell.

*    *    *

    The Witness came down from the hills.   The morning light shone on the forest and the fields.  He hid at the edge of the fields and peered out toward the village of Scoms and the fort of Lord Famm.  Columns of smoke trailed up into the air from cooking fires in the village, and the cows and sheep and goats wandered about the shacks and huts.  The smell of the village came on a waft of air, and he thought of the hanged thief Tallet.  From the edge of the forest he watched the last moments of the old days of slavery in Thane.

    Land-toiler men and women worked the fields.  On their knees, they worked at the ground with small implements, their whole bodies dirty and lean from the job.  Out across the field he saw that one of the Richard's men, on horseback, watched over the land-toilers.  Behind him, the fort of Lord Famm rose up from the flat fields, and the smoke that came from within it billowed and swirled.  The horseman looked lazy and nearly asleep in the morning sun.  The Witness knew his dull eyes, his cruel reputation.  What amount of the Devils' empire in Thane rested on his shoulders?  The Witness saw images in his mind's eye that he could not dismiss as imaginings: the horseman raping a land-toiler girl, stealing tiny valuables from the village elders, and delivering them to his master in the fort.  He saw the horseman in the woods, hunting down the Old Believers with a sword, cutting at old women from horseback as they fled hopelessly, already seen, easily identified if they survived to return to the village.

    The Witness saw such things.

    He had lurked behind a tree on the field's edge, but now he stood up.  He had business with the horseman and the horseman's master.  He had business with all the traitors and thieves, and these would be the first.

    "People!  I come to free you!  People of Scoms!" The Witness shouted as he came out onto the field.  "The Wood has shown me the truth!  We must rise today!"

    He was a towering man now, whose muscles rippled and who stood several heads higher than the tallest normal man.  He was a giant in every sense, and his long black hair and black beard flowed with the breeze.  He was barefoot and wore only the rags of his priestly vestments as a loincloth.  He called out to the scattered land-toilers in the field and to the horseman, who now looked at him and seemed quite awake.  The land-toilers, fearful, backed away from him.  Even those farthest across the fields seemed to move away from him.  The closest ran.

    "I was your priest!  Do not run!  You know me!  I was your priest but I have been to the hills!  I saw the Wheel!  I have come back for you!  I am your Witness!" 

    They did not listen to him.

    The Witness marched toward the horseman, clenching his great hands into blocklike fists.  The horse bucked and kicked.  Backed off fearfully as the horseman drew his sword.  Protecting the villagers as they ran.

    "Rider!" The Witness said.  "I know you. Will you fight me?  Do you have a drop of courage in you?"

    The horseman wheeled his mount around and set off across the field.  He looked back over his shoulder as he rode.  The Witness shouted out to the running land-toilers, but they would not listen.  He walked the old familiar path from the field into the village, and found the place shut up and fearful.  Chickens and goats wandered about lazily, and did not shy away from him.  It was only the people who hid, and he understood their reasons.  They were afraid, and he might once have been afraid himself.

    He tried to explain to them.

    "People of Scoms, I was once your priest.  But now the Wood has shown me things I did not know.  You know.  Many of you.  You are its children.  You are Old Believers, are you not?  Now I have joined you.  The Wood has made me its warrior.  It has shown me that we are not animals.  We were free once!  We stood and fought like men against the Masters.  We were not always their dogs.  Nor dogs to men like Richard!  Or Lord Famm!  I will not be a slave anymore!  To no one!"

    He looked toward the old stone house that had been his.  It lay at the edge of the village.  Clustered all around him were the tiny shacks, the windowless huts, the dark and cold places where the land-toilers made their homes.

    "I touched the Wheel!"  He told the hidden listeners.  "I have changed!  I embrace the Old Belief--"

    Those were the words of the heretic.  With them he sealed his fate.  Any who heard him might testify against him before the Judges at Riadom, or before Lord Famm and his executioners.  The Witness did not care.  He repeated them once softly, then shouted them as loud as he could:

    "I embrace the Old Belief!"

    They would come for him.  But first he would share what he knew.  He stood in the middle of the village and asked the villagers to come out.  To listen to him.  He swore that he would exculpate them of blame.  He would die alone if he had to.  But first he wanted to share with them.

    The Wood.

    The altar and its song.

    What strength the Wood had put into him.

    And they came out to listen.  One by one.  First it was the younger men, who ignored the pleadings of their elders.  Their wives, who put down their children and came out into the dusty road, who lingered near the trees within earshot, who let themselves be seen.  Soon they were joined by those very elders, by their wives.  The Witness knew that others remained hidden.  Fearful.  He feared for them too and did not take offense.

    "We have only the Wood to protect us," he told them when he saw the riders approaching from the fort.  "Otherwise we must fight."

    The villagers said nothing.  They melted away as the Sheriff and a half dozen of his men entered the village.  They carried lances and swords and flaming torches.  The Witness stood alone in the street.  He thought for a moment that this might be the end.  He had made his peace with the spirits of the Wood.  For this they would burn him.  The grey skies were silent and the Wood was far off across the field.  He had been a priest once.  He had touched the Wheel.

    Richard and his men confronted The Witness.  Surrounded him in the center of the village.  They kept back away from him.  He turned in a circle.  Staring at their eyes.   These were the same criminals who had hanged the thief.  In their glorified slave garb.  With their swords.

    "Where have you come from, giant?  Did the heretics summon you?" Richard demanded to know.

    "I was the priest here, Richard.  No one summoned me.  Call me the Witness.  That is my name now.  I shall not move for I have seen the truth.  I shall not rest until Thane is free."

    "Really?"  Richard looked around for the villagers.  Peering from their shacks.  "Do you stand with him, toilers?  Or does he stand alone?"

    Then without warning he kicked at his horse and lurched forward and jabbed at the Witness with his long lance.  The Witness reflexively raised his left hand to defend himself and the point pierced it slightly.  Richard snarled and plucked the point away.  Blood leaked from it, but the pain was no worse than the pain of his transformation. In fact it was not too bad.  It distracted but did not incapacitate.

    He stepped backward.  The horsemen behind him moved back too.  Richard came after him again.  Jabbed at him.  The Witness retreated again.  He had no weapon, and Richard followed him like a cat.  The lance came after him again and he dodged it.  Richard cursed him and jabbed again.  This time it struck him solidly in the thigh.  The Witness cried out and Richard plucked the lance free.

    "Now get on your knees, Churchman!  They might have made you bigger, but I think this will still fit you!"

    One of the horsemen unrolled a rope.  On its end was a noose.  The Witness cried out and lunged backward between two surprised horsemen, who pulled their horses aside instead of striking him.  He retreated and Richard followed him, jabbing at him with the insurmountable lance.  Richard kept his horse at a walk.  Keeping pace with the Witness, who struggled on his knees.  The other horsemen kept pace with him too.  The Witness waved off the lance again and again with his bloody left hand.

    Well-practiced hands now flung the rope and ensnared him by the neck.  The noose closed tightly.  Choking him. The lance struck him again.  This time it was a deeper wound.  In the  ribs.  He cried out.  Took the rope by one hand.  Struggling to stand.  Jerked it out of the rider's hands.  Richard closed in again on him.  The bloody point of the lance just missing him.

    He backed up again, not seeing where he went.

    Dodged the lance again--

    Punched through a wall--

    And fell into the smithy's shop.  Collapsing the wall into splinters and boards beneath him.  He opened his eyes.  The smith's fire glowed red in the brazier beside him.  The smith's tool lay all about the dirt floor.  The Witness sat up, his wounds almost forgotten, glowering at the riders who looked down from their mounts at him through the hole in the broken wall.  Richard now began to dismount.

    The Witness reached across the floor.  The tools lay scattered.  He took the largest hammer and felt its weight in his hands.  It felt good.  It felt strong.

    The blacksmith's shop was one of the wealthiest in the village.  It was covered by a wooden roof, though which the stone chimney protruded, and wooden walls on three sides.  One of these walls had crumbled beneath him.  The brazier stood in the center of the shop.  The Witness now stood up beside the brazier.  He emerged from the smithy and Richard was there to challenge him with his sword drawn.  The look on Richard's face as his looked up at the giant betrayed his fatal surprise.  The Witness slung the hammer in a great and sudden arc that ended on one side of Richard's head.  Blood and brains sprayed out from the place of impact and Richard fell dead on the spot.

    The Witness looked down at the dead man at his feet.  A cockeyed expression marred his face.  Blood leaked from his eyes. 

    The other horsemen backed off with curses.

    The Witness stepped over the body of Richard.  The hammer clenched in one fist.  "Will you run now, you cowards?  Will you?"

    "What whore birthed you, giant?"  One of the riders shouted.  "You should have been strangled."

    "I won't be a slave!"

    "You're a fool!"  The rider started down the path at full speed.  Lifted his sword to strike.  Clumps of mud flew up behind him.  His fellows joined behind him uncertainly.  When the first horse was a few steps away the Witness started toward it with a great arrogant step.  The hammer swung in a wide horizontal arc.  And brained the horse.  It dropped into the dirt with its rider falling hard with surprise. The rider held his sword over himself protectively, struggling to free himself from beneath the horse.  The Witness stood over him and landed a single blow that broke the sword and the arm that held it.  The hammer landed with full force on the center of the man's chest. With a final blow to the head the Witness killed him.

    Then he looked up at the other riders.

    They had stopped short in their charge.  Confronting the giant with two of their number dead already.  He could see that these were not men who often found a fight.  He challenged them, but they backed off from him, and with some indecision they retreated from the village.  He walked out to the edge of the village as they sped back to the fort.  Watching them fly along the rutted path between the fields.

    What had he now set into motion?  He could not let it stop.

    Back in the center of the village the toilers gathered.  He told them that the age of miracles had now begun.  That these were only the first to die.  That the people would be free.  One by one the men of the village took up their scythes and clubs.  They gathered to him. 

    "We are all Old Believers," they told him. "We have waited for you, Witness.  The spirits told us you would come.  They visit us in our huts at night.  They permeate the land.  Yes, we will fight with you.  The whole land is ready."

    And with that they set out to war.  The Witness raced at the head of them.  Waving the hammer over his head.  Urging them forward.  The visions burned in him, the horror of the field of Coormo, the screaming captives.  The monstrousness.