Whether the cages were designed with bars wide enough apart to allow the birds to reach into them or not, the aliens couldn’t escape. Each cage was only a foot and a half cubed—barely enough room for the victim to stand, let alone flee. The victims would be eaten to death. I tightened my grip on my new ax and heard the green wood groan under the pressure.
One of the guards used an oddly shaped key to unlock the cage. The remains fell to the ground with a wet thud. The guard kicked and shoved the skeleton toward a small pit in the center. When the head fell away from the rest, the other guard gave it a hard kick, and it landed in the pit. The guard smiled to show it was pleased with itself. I wondered what expression it would make when I buried my ax in the top of its bald head.
I was no stranger to capital punishment. Some people were too dangerous to leave alive. Some crimes were too egregious to punish any other way. However, torture was not only unreliable for the extraction of intelligence, but it was also unnecessary and inhumane. I reminded myself that the word “torture” might not fit the situation, as the creatures before me were clearly not human.
Martians, the religious ones, believed that torture soiled the soul of the torturer. Even the non-religious citizens found it distasteful and understood the long-term harm it caused the people who performed the act. I decided then and there that the goblin, the vrak, must not be tortured. I would either kill it myself or set it free.
I shivered with realization. Vrak. The word had come to my mind like an old memory, long forgotten. These things, the goblins, were vrak. That’s what they were called. It’s what they called themselves. I hadn’t heard any of them speak, yet somehow I knew their kind by name. The same had happened with the creatures halfway up the hill. The teloc.
You will be granted strength of our strength, memories of our memories, and knowledge from beyond.
This all came back to the Lakunae and my short interaction with them. I wondered if the colonel had been right all along. I wondered if he knew he worshiped a bunch of giant squids. I wondered if one of them was his favorite, or if he liked them all equally.
I watched the guards drag their prisoner toward the now-empty cage. I began counting heads. I wasn’t sure what they were capable of. From the expressions on their faces, the spectators appeared to be numb to it. They hadn’t so much as blinked when a rotting corpse had been kicked into a pit in front of them. Torture, then, was a part of their everyday lives.
The birds began to circle closer, and two alighted on nearby torture devices. They cocked their heads and watched the guard shove the giggling vrak into the cage, push the victim back when he tried to escape, and slam the gate shut.
The rest of the birds landed and began dancing back and forth on their perches. They were excited, expecting a fresh, screaming meal sometime soon.
The spectators seemed dazed, exhausted, and beaten. I sensed no passion or spark of individuality among them. It was as though they’d lived their whole lives in their current condition. I was afraid I might be correct.
The six carrying the fat vrak slowly lowered it to the ground. It stood, waved to a passive crowd like some kind of holovid celebrity, and walked toward the prisoner. The birds tapped their short, black claws against their perches, dancing back and forth in anticipation. One, then the rest, began scraping the sides of their beaks against their perches as if the little creatures were sharpening knives in preparation for their meal.
The fat vrak stopped in front of the cage, smiled a toothy grin—it had a lot of short, pointy teeth—and waved again at the crowd. The crowd waved back. The fat one began to gesticulate, thrust its hips, and wave its hands in an intricate pattern. The crowd began to do the same. Still, none of them spoke. The only sounds were their foot-stomps in the dirt and the rustling of their filthy clothing.
The sharp crack of two sets of hands from each vrak clapping once in perfect unison sounded like an old powder-type gunshot. Whatever had just happened was over. The fat vrak got back on his vrak-powered carriage and, along with its guards, left. The crowd wandered away a short time later, still acting like they were in a daze.
The birds took to the air two at a time and swooped-in, landing on top of the cage. The prisoner wasn’t laughing or making noises any more. It attempted to duck to stay out of their reach but couldn’t bend its knees far enough in the narrow cage. When two more landed on the ground nearby and came running at it, the vrak made a horrible hissing-gurgling sound that caused all the birds to scramble away.
The flying scavengers didn’t go far, though. They seemed content to sit nearby and wait for their prey to either fall asleep or grow too tired and weak to hiss at them any more. Three of the dozen black creatures closed their eyes, puffed their feathers out, and looked as if they’d decided to take a nap. No need to worry; dinner wasn’t going anywhere.
There were still two vrak milling about at the edge of the clearing, so I waited. The caged one watched them, and when the pair finally wandered away, slumped inside the cage. It appeared that the sour expression and slumped shoulders of someone who felt defeated was universal.
A scavenger bird shrieked at the caged vrak. The goblin turned its big, flat head to the offensive creature and made a hand gesture that was obviously meant to be scathing and offensive.
I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do, but
