The 193rd council meeting of Windfelld began well enough, with virtually the entire village crammed into the circular shale structure they used for a village hall. Old Man Herbert welcomed everyone as he always did. Started his usual boring speech about the lack of water, the ongoing tragedy of death on the Great Cliff, the increased attacks by the crevassers during the night, and the scrawgulls during the day. All the standard fluff.
Then it all, as they say, went over The Cliff.
“This is why the council has unanimously voted to send a small expeditionary force to attack the crevassers on their own ground, taking back the inner sanctum that our ancestors held generations ago, deep within The Crack. The sacred cave, known as ‘Temple View.’”
A dumbfounded pause hung in the air for a beat before the crowd of sixty-odd villagers erupted in chaos.
“This is insanity!”
“Have you lost your minds!?”
“Just throw our lives over the cliff, why don’chya?”
The councilman gestured his arms forward and moved them up and down to appease the angry crowd. “Now, let’s not be hasty!”
“It’s a fool’s errand, I say!”
“It’s criminal! I move to vote for a new council!”
Suddenly, a bold baritone voice rang through the crowd. “We have NO CHOICE!”
The villagers silenced immediately. The old barkeep, Medthin, had the trust and respect of every person in the village. He rarely spoke, but when he did, you’d better listen.
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“We are almost entirely out of water. You might think your little moisture nets are working fine, but you forget that we’ve subsidized everyone’s personal moisture allowance for months from our reserves.” The crowd was now utterly subdued, hanging on his words.
“We will run out of water in ten days,” he said.
The villagers froze in disbelief.
“How could this happen?” said an elderly grandmother, shaking her head.
Before the voices could begin to clamor once again, Medthin resumed. “If we can take back Temple View once more and hold that position,” he turned in a circle, looking as many villagers in the eyes as possible, “then the crevassers can’t get to us and we can go back to using the main moisture net.”
Nell was one of the few villagers skilled in mental magic and hadn’t missed the trace amounts of mana underlying Medthin’s words. It wasn’t nearly enough to be considered mind control. Rather, it was barely enough to season his words with an unmistakable hint of amenability, transforming the most outlandish statements into ones that the weak-minded would interpret as common sense.
But not many in the crowd were so easily swayed.
“This is suicide!” said Dungall Ward, the baker that made loaves of fluffer seed bread for the village.
“We will pay in lives, either way,” Medthin admitted. “As one of the oldest adults in the village, my time remaining is limited. This was my idea, and as such, I volunteer to be among the team’s vanguard.”
That comment shut some mouths. There was a good reason Medthin was respected. For all his other flaws, he was a man of action. There was no question that he was doing this for the long-term benefit of the village and not for himself.
“So I ask you, what will it be? A few lives now ...?”
Nell finished his sentence for him, for all to hear. “Or all lives later?”