The shot that exploded through the darkened forest sent Ishmael leaping from sleep. The fire had died and he found himself surrounded by blackness, the only light the low, red coals of the dying fire glowing like Satan’s heart. He scrambled to Walt and began to shake the old man’s body in an effort to rouse him. A second shot cracked the night and Ishmael heard a sound like the rising of countless birds from sleep to panicked flight.

"It’s this way!" he shouted as he bolted into the darkness.

He ran through the forest in what he thought to be the direction of the gunfire. The paths twisted and turned as the branches of trees reached out like snagled fingers, hooking flesh and ripping clothes. Thorns as sharp as brass cut his forehead and blood poured into his useless eyes already blinded by the blackness, yet he kept on. In the dark above he sensed movement, flight, fear, as flocks of birds circled the forest in confusion.

Another shot rang out.

Number three, Ishmael thought to himself.

He continued to run, now headed in the direction of the sound of hundreds of beating wings. He followed that sound, sure it would lead him to the three. He only hoped that the shots he had heard had not been the sound of their executions.

Suddenly, a sharp blow to the side of his head sent him spinning to the earth. He hit the hard ground, rolling and thrashing, trying to protect himself from the unseen attacker that had struck from out of the murk. Looking up, he saw a tall man with long and greasy hair moving towards him, eyes flaming red with madness. The madman moved towards Ishmael, holding a huge sword, its blade warped and blackened as if by fire. Ishmael raised an arm in a useless attempt to stop the weapon from cleaving him in two.

The swordsman towered above Ishmael like a statue of a warrior about to kill a foe. The only thing that moved were flames of madness that flickered as if they burned inside his skull, visible through glass eyes. The sword dropped. Its point pierced the ground by Ishmael’s feet.

"The wolves." the swordsman said, pointing down an adjoining path. "The wolves are there."
Ishmael rose to his feet, his eyes clasped to the mad eyed swordsman. Slowly he backed away as the madman continued to point down the trail. Then, as another shot crashed through the blackness, he turned and ran in the direction the stranger had pointed. Looking ahead he saw what seemed to be a crumbled rock wall blocking the path. As he reached it he scrambled over and found that it completely ringed a dark glen. Away in the darkness he could just see a man, three bodies laying on the ground before him.

"No!!" Ishmael shouted as his feet hit the ground. He ran towards the man, desperate to prevent what he feared had already happened, what he feared would destroy the faith he had found on Shepherds’ Knoll.

"No! Remember the angels!"

The man who stood over the prone bodies turned. He seemed to hesitate, as if Ishmael’s words had touched something inside him. But then something roared out of the darkness from the other side of the dell, a thing massive and hateful and filled with power. The other shepherds, now turned to wolves, surged over the wall and fell upon their prey.

They snatched up the helpless figures and hauled them towards a thick and crooked tree that stood at the center of the glen, punching and kicking the three as they went. Ishmael saw that one had been shot. This one held his shoulder as he stumbled on, propelled by the blows of the mob. Dark blood poured over his hand. The other two men, even as they were kicked and pummeled, tried to protect their wounded friend. They fought back fiercely, striking out blindly, bellowing with rage and fear. One succeeded in knocking a man down and latching onto the hand of another with his teeth, bringing a howl of pain from his attacker until a powerful blow to his stomach doubled him over. Another blow knocked him to the ground and the angry men would have beaten and stomped him to death but for the darkness and confusion that caused their blows to fall on each other as much as on him.

Ishmael continued to run towards the mob.

"No! No! You’ll destroy it!!" he screamed in anguish, sure that were these men to kill the three that somehow neither the angels nor the child would ever return.

He reached the mob and began to force his way through it, seizing one man and then another, shoving them away in his desperate effort to save the three. In the darkness and confusion the mob mistook him for one of their own, and it was this fact alone that saved him from being hanged from the tree, side by side with the others: three wise men and a fool. Strange fruit, indeed.

Three ropes snaked up through the darkness and then fell again, looping over a thick limb of the crooked tree. The wolves noosed them around their victim’s necks, grabbed onto the other ends and pulled as if engaged in a three way tug of war, hauling the men up to the tips of their toes. Ishmael continued to shout out his scream of warning, but he could not be heard over the bellows of the mob. He stepped forward to free one of the victims but felt himself seized by powerful hands.

"Hold him!"

Ishmael tried to struggle, to break free of whoever had recognized him as a stranger, but a blow to the head sent him reeling. He lay on the ground as the dark world swirled around him. Then an arm wrapped around his throat, clamping him in a choke hold.

"He ain’t goin’ no where."

"Who is he?"

"Must be a friend of their’s. We’ll deal with him after the others."

Nando came out of the crowd, the pistol still in his hand. The three stood before him, noosed, stretched to the tips of their toes by the pull of the ropes, already gasping for air as the hemp squeezed their throats. He looked into the face of the first.

Nando spoke not a word.

He stepped to the next, the wounded man. He looked into eyes that were filled with fear and pain. He saw the blood still flowing from the open wound. He’ll pass out and choke himself to death, Nando thought, save us the trouble of hauling him up.

He went to the third. Merle stared fiercely back at his tormentor. His eyes too were filled with fear, but anger mastered it and a furious hatred burned within them.

"I remember you!" said Merle. "You were with the child!"

"Yes."

"Then what’s this for?" Merle cried. "You show us hospitality one night and worship by our side, and then you track us down and hang us from a dead apple tree!"

"You know what this is about. Your lies won’t save you."

"Lies? Lies about what?" shouted one of the others. "You shoot Frank in the dark and then string us to this tree! We don’t know what the hell’s goin’ on."

Nando stepped past the wounded man and came face to face with the speaker.

"I remember you too. You were there."

"Of course I was there, you damn fool! I’m Goldstein!"

"You were interested in the kids. Sat on the trailer steps and carved little toys for them. I saw you make a flute out of bamboo."

"Yes! You know us! So why is this happening?"

"They came and took our children."

"Who? What do you mean?"

"Our children. All of them. Two nights after you left, Sheriff Rodman and his men rode in and took every last one of them."

"You think we had something to do with that?" cried Merle. "Hell, we saw Rodman for the bastard he was the first time we set eyes on him! He told us how to find Rachel and asked us to come back and let him know about the child. But we didn’t! We knew he was up to something. But we didn’t put him onto you! For God’s sake, we were there with you, with the child. We saw that miracle together!"

The man in the middle began to choke. The sounds of strangulation rose from Frank’s throat as he passed out from blood loss and pain and the noose tightened. The men at the end of his hope held him, but his legs went limp and the rope became taut.

"For God’s sake, let him down!" Ishmael shouted, struggling against the hands that held him.

Nando turned. Slowly, he stepped up to Ishmael.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I was there! In your village! I saw the trailer, I saw Shepherds’ Knoll! I know what happened! You can’t do this!"

"We don’t know you."

"I came the night after the raid!"

Nando turned to the circle of faces that surrounded him.

"Any of you know this one?"

The faces stared silently. Only the weakening sounds of strangulation broke the silence.

"You with Rodman?" Nando asked.

"I don’t even know him." Ishmael said

"You with them?" he asked, motioning towards the three.

"No. I’ve been tracking you."

"Tracking us? Why?"

"I’ll tell you everything you want to know, just let that man down!"

Nando looked at the now limp body of Frank, hanging from the taut rope, his face slowly becoming blue.

"Sure. I can do that.” Nando said.

He turned to the men on the center rope.

Let him down." he ordered, "and put this one up in his place."

Frank hit the ground like a sack of grain and was hauled off into the darkness. The men dragged Ishmael to stand between Goldstein and Merle, noosing his neck and stringing him to the tips of his toes.

"Now what we want to know" Nando said in a voice as calm as the dead of night, “is where our children have been taken.”

Ishmael raised his eyes and looked up into the tree. The birds he had heard rising like a storm had returned. Large black birds that perched in the crooked limbs, almost invisible against the dark sky.