His words were met with boos and hisses. Shocked, as though the catcalling had a physical force, Mal took a step backwards. Someone, a hatchet-faced woman with a lazy eye, grabbed his arm and held him still. The chorus of ill will rose in volume, buffeting him like body blows.
This is insane, Mal thought. It’s like I’m public enemy number one. What in tarnation is going on?
Then Toby raised his hands for silence. Gradually the din died down.
“Ladies, gentlemen, comrades one and all,” he said to the crowd, “it’s been a long time coming, but I have done what you asked and what I promised.” He thrust out his arm, pointing at Mal. “I have brought to face justice the man who conspired with the Alliance and stole victory from our grasp. I have brought you the traitor Malcolm Reynolds.”
At the word traitor, which rolled off Toby’s tongue with great emphasis, a fresh barrage of boos and shouted curses flew in Mal’s direction.
“String him up!” someone yelled over the din. “String him up!”
It quickly became a new chant, not “Trai-tor! Trai-tor!” now but “String him up! String him up! String him up!”
Mal’s brain strove to process this turn of events. On either side of him, his captors grinned and nodded to each other, as if seeing him humiliated was a rare and memorable treat.
This can’t be right, he thought. It ain’t right. I must be asleep on the floor of my shuttle, still dopey from that gas Covington spritzed me with.
But he wasn’t. And now that his eyes had completely adjusted to the dim and shifting light, he picked out a couple of other faces below that he recognized. Other Browncoats whom he had fought alongside in Serenity Valley. Sonya Zuburi, her raven hair prematurely streaked with white, looked like she wanted to take a bite out of him. Her husband David had his hand wrapped firmly around her arm and was holding her back. Mal had saved both of their lives at the risk of his own, advancing into the teeth of an enemy barrage, laying down covering fire so they could retreat from a burning barn. The expressions on their faces said his selfless act was long forgotten and had been replaced by something other than eternal gratitude.
Sonya raised her fist and shook it at him as she chanted along with the others.
David must have loosened his grip on her, because she suddenly broke free, pushing away, shouldering between two burly men, one of whom stood aside to let her pass. As Sonya rushed towards the foot of the wall below the ledge, she bent down and picked up something from the floor. In the process, she sideswiped a fellow veteran, knocking him onto his back in the dirt.
Her face contorted with rage, Sonya flung the rock at Mal. The men flanking him dodged the projectile, but Mal stood his ground, and he felt the breeze as it zinged past his left ear, missing him by millimeters.
“Enough of that,” Toby Finn shouted at the backs of the crowd. “Stand down, Sonya. We aren’t a gorramn rabble. We’re soldiers! We will be disciplined about this.”
Mal turned to the man standing beside him and said, “What is it that you think I’ve done?”
A blank stare was his only response, as if Mal had spoken in a foreign language. For one weird second he wondered if the man was a robot with a malfunctioning neural cortex. The sense that this couldn’t actually be happening, that this was all some feverish dream, welled up inside him again; yet he couldn’t deny the reality of his predicament. Not ten minutes ago, his biggest problem was a full bladder. Death by lynch mob was looming larger as a source of concern.
A peal of hurrahs rose up as a bald man scrambled up the front of Toby’s platform with a coil of rope. He stopped near the top and held out his arm, dangling a hangman’s noose from his fist. To roars of approval, he tied the end of the rope to the handrail and let the noose drop free.
The crowd’s frenzy bubbled up, soon on the verge of boiling over. And when it did, Mal was pretty sure they were going find the courage to stretch his neck.
Mob mentality. It could turn so quick. During the war, Mal had heard tales about noncombatant folks weeping at the sight of the Browncoats arriving in their town to help them, then dry those tears when it came clear that as hard as the Independents fought, the town was going to fall to the Alliance. Heard that they blamed the men and women who had taken up arms to keep them free and turned on the exhausted soldiers, offering them to the Alliance commanders, even begging for them to be killed, as tears streamed down Browncoats’ war-worn faces. Sometimes folks went crazy with despair and did the killing themselves.
They blamed us because they believed in us and we failed, Mal thought. Is that why I’m here?
“String him up! String him up!” the crowd continued, surging to the foot of the wall.
Tightly spaced gunshots rang out, sharp and deafening in the enclosed space. Armed men stepped forward, moving in front of the dais, their weapons shouldered and aimed at the spectators.
“We will have order!” Toby bellowed at them. “We will follow the rule of law. The accused will get a fair trial and be judged by his peers. I know you’re eager to see justice done, but we are not thugs. Malcolm Reynolds will get his day in court.”
“And then we’ll string him up!” shouted someone in the crowd.
“Due process,” Toby Finn reminded them sternly. He gestured to Mal. “We are not criminals. We are not like him. A traitor is the worst kind of bad man there is. No allegiance to flag or brigade, no allegiance except to save his own stinking skin. Lock up the prisoner. Guard him well. We don’t want nobody taking it on themselves to do anything unlawful. Do you all hear me?”
“Toby, just listen to me for one moment,” Mal said. “Please.”
Toby could scarcely hear him over the tumult. He beckoned for silence. “Fella wants to say something. You’ve got a moment, Mal. Speak.”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Toby,” Mal said, “but I’m minded to think it’s something we can work out. Let’s sit down together over a drink, you and me, just like we used to at the Silver Stirrup back in the day, and talk it over. We were friends. Still are, to the best of my knowledge. I realize things on Shadow didn’t end as we’d have liked, ’specially where Jinny Adare’s concerned. That… That is one of the real tragedies of my life. But I always thought we’d put it behind us. Leastways that’s how you always acted during the war. What’s changed since?”
“What has changed, Mal?” came the reply. “Why, only everything. I’m not the naïve kid you used to know. I’m older, wiser. I’ve learned things.”
Mal sensed he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Toby, not in the time available, so he addressed himself to the crowd in general.
“I don’t understand what’s happening. We’re all Browncoats here, am I right? We all fought in the war, fought the Alliance. I’m one of you. You must appreciate that. I’ve never done anything could warrant such treatment. Whatever crime you think it is I committed— and I would surely love to someone to tell me — I am innocent.”
“Fine words,” Toby said, “from a lying tā mā de hún dàn.” He jabbed a finger in Mal’s direction. “You know what you did. And all this time you’ve gotten away with it, until now. Now, at last, your sins are catching up with you. How’s it feel? Maybe it feels like all along you’ve known this day was coming, and now that it’s arrived you’re glad, almost relieved. Your life of skulking around, of passing for honorable, is at an end. You can finally face up to who you really are.”
Baying cries rose up as Mal shouted, “That’s bullcrap, Toby. If anyone’s guilty of being dishonorable, it’s you with this here three-ring circus of yours. You’ve got this bunch of morons all whipped up into a lather with your pandering and your speechifying, but you’re the one who’s lying, and they’re gonna realize it sooner or later, and then where will you be? Huh?”