The demon turned back to Pogue Kray. “Do you doubt me still?” He turned to the frightened people around him, to the vast crowd that had begun to shrink away from him. “Do any of you doubt me? Would you test me further?”
He saw doubt flicker in the big man’s eyes as he turned back, but then Pogue Kray took another step toward him. “It will take more than fire tricks and charlatan magic to make anyone follow you, Skeal Eile. I should have put an end to your games a long time ago. But it is never too late to correct an obvious mistake. Stand down from this platform!”
“It is you who should stand down,” the demon hissed at him.
Pogue Kray reached for the Seraphic, but the other caught his wrists and held them fast. The members of the village council backed away in fear as they saw their leader rendered helpless in a grip Skeal Eile should not have been capable of maintaining against a man who was ten times his better in any test of strength.
The demon bent close to his captive and let him look into his eyes. Pogue Kray thrashed helplessly, his face twisting with frustration. “You are a fool,” the demon whispered. “But you will serve as an example of what happens to those who doubt my calling!”
The eyes burned into those of the village leader, and suddenly Pogue Kray could not make even the tiniest sound. Even though he tried to scream aloud his rage, he was rendered silent.
“This man has blasphemed against the Hawk!” the demon screamed to the assembled, who were milling like frightened cattle and trying to find somewhere to go but were packed so tightly together they could barely move. “This man would pretend to be your leader, but he is weak and helpless in the face of the power given to me. Which would
you rather have to protect you against the things that wait without the walls of this valley? Upon which would you rather depend? Speak, now! Say it quickly and clearly!
Which path will you follow when this is done?”
Then he picked up Pogue Kray as if he were a child and held him aloft, dangling over his head. The feat seemed effortless, and suddenly everyone was staring at him, standing there with the village leader hoisted like a doll stuffed with straw.
“I am the right hand of the Hawk!” the demon screamed. “I am charged with the responsibility of saving you, and unbelievers will not be allowed to obstruct my efforts!”
Then, letting out a terrifying roar, he threw Pogue Kray from the platform and across the clearing, over the heads of the people assembled, into an oak tree’s massive trunk.
The council leader struck with an audible crunching of bones and dropped in a heap to the ground. Blood leaked from his ears, nose, and mouth and from a dozen other places where his body had been torn open.
He lay still, his eyes open and his gaze fixed, and he did not move.
“Pogue Kray failed to believe in the power of the Hawk and in my duty to save you, his people. So he died for his sin. If there are others who choose to follow his path, they will die, too. Not by my hand, but by those heathen who wait without and seek to come in. They will die by tooth and claw and hunger and disease because they failed to heed.
Death comes calling, my brethren. It comes to consume us.”
He straightened, completely at ease. “But I will not let it touch you. I will not let it even get close. Do you believe me? Shout it out, if you do! Make your belief in the Hawk a clarion call to action!”
Scattered shouts rang out amid a larger number of uncertain murmurs and cries.
“Louder!” the demon screamed at them. “If I can’t hear you, I can’t help you! Tell me you believe!”
Then, suddenly, everyone was shouting and howling their support, all of them joined in the wild rawness of the moment, caught up in the demon’s demonstration of strength and their need to be reassured that there was someone who could help them. Their shouts rose to wails and screams, and at the demon’s beckoning they pressed forward toward the platform, begging him to help them, to stand with them, to give them the benefit of his protection.
Of the Hawk’s protection.
Even the council members were with him now, coming close enough that they could be heard above the crowd’s roar, but not close enough that he could touch them. He smiled benevolently and nodded his approval. They were his now, all of them.
They were his to do with as he chose.
Except for one, who quickly melted away into the darkness.