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The stuff about the renewal of the earth, of the spirit The nonsense about what it meant to a warrior to be on this very spot at the ed peaks of Blackwolf Mountain, shone its light between the two enormous stony slabs on the rocky shelf soround, then centered on the spiral the Old Ones had etched into the horizontal stone between them

The idiocy about hoing this particular rising sun could change a man’s life forever

Jesse gave a bitter laugh

His father had believed in all of it, as had his grandfather, his great-grandfather and, most probably, every Blackarrior whose DNA he’d inherited

For most of his thirty years, he’d believed in it, too Not all of it—a twentieth-century ree under his belt wasn’t about to buy into y

What he had believed in was respecting the old ways Respecting the continuity of tradition And, yes, he’d even believed in honoring, if only a little, events like the solstices

What harm could there be, even if a s occurred?

His father had brought him to this place when he elve

“Soon the sun will rise,” he had said, “and the light of time past and time yet to come will fall on the sacred circle The vows a man takes at the summer solstice will determine his true path forever Are you ready to make a vow, my son?”

At that age, Jesse’s head and heart had brimmed with stories of his warrior ancestors His father had told those tales to him all his life; his mother—born in the East, to parents who had never met an Indian until they met their new son-in-law—had read them to him from the children’s books she wrote and illustrated

And so, of course, Jesse had been ready

As soon as the sun began its slow rise into the heavens, he’d tilted his face to its light, arift of brilliance and war he was, to the spirit of the warriors who had gone before him

His father had smiled with pride His mother, told of his vohen he and his father rode hoan to understand that the old stories were just stories and nothing lad his father had included him in this ancient tradition

But by the tied There was a war taking place in a distant land Boys he’d grown up ere dying in it He would not be drafted; college kids were not going to be put in harm’s way

It see, hiding away in stuffy classroo everything he believed?