Outlaw by Ted Dekker

Author:Ted Dekker [Dekker, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Adventure, Adult
ISBN: 9781599954158
Google: e1wgQZdEldcC
Amazon: 159995415X
Barnesnoble: 159995415X
Goodreads: 17607384
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2012-12-31T18:30:00+00:00

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.

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