They were the last words Michael heard. He moved as he had been taught to move. For a moment or two he thought he might prevail, except that the dark figure was never where he thought it would be. The blade that slit his throat came from a direction he was not even looking.
Silence fell.
Somewhere in the woods a bird made a sleepy sound. Far off on the plain a coyote yipped and was answered by a chorus of others. Beside the fire several black-clad figures moved, looking at the carnage three of them had made.
“Now,” said Morgot softly. “Leave Patras here. The coyotes and the magpies will make meat of him. The other two still have their heads. Two will be enough to stir the garrison.”
“I wish you had let me fight him,” said Corrig.
“I needed to do it,” said Joshua, as others came quietly out of the woods to pack the two corpses upon donkeys and lead them away. “In Women’s Country we learn not to have jealousy, Corrig. They teach us and themselves to be calm, to take joy in the day, to set aside possessiveness. And yet, despite it all….”
“Despite it all, you needed to kill him.”
“Yes,” said Joshua with a shamed face. “I did.”
THE REST OF THAT NIGHT and a day and a night went by.
As chance would have it, it was Chernon who was first on the parade ground, near dawn of that next day. He had not slept well since he had returned to the garrison. All day, every day, men asked him about the Holylanders and how they lived. Chernon had seen Resolution Brome with half a dozen wives; he had not noticed how many men there were with none. He had not seen much of the women, and it was not his intention to tell the whole truth in any case. What he had seen was enough. It was proof, proof enough that men could do what they pleased, that men could have their own ordinances, run their own society, make the women do their will. This he said, over and over, speaking mostly of those he had seen who had many wives to wait on them, to do their pleasure.
He should have been elated, but he could not sleep well after he had finished talking. Whenever he drifted off, he saw Stavia’s face, as it had been when he had first seen her, as it had been while they had been together, as it had been when he cut out that thing, whatever it was, as it had been when he had seen her last, white as bleached linen, bloodless, the eyes shadowed like skull eyes. Four faces. Excitement. Joy. Horror. Death. Those eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went, whatever he did. Interest. Delight. Anger. Death.
He had a good mind, as Tonia and Kostia had noted. It was not beyond him to draw inferences. Was what he had seen what he really wanted? In all his dreams of journeying, all his dreams of heroic quest, he had not seen faces like those last two faces, and yet there must have been many faces like that when Odysseus was finished with his quest. He had killed and ravished everywhere he went. It sounded well in the sagas. They did not talk about the women’s faces. Why was it that the sagas never spoke of the women’s faces? Odysseus said, “The wind took me first to Ismarus, which is the city of the Cicons. There I sacked the town and put the people to the sword. We took their wives….”
“Put the people to the sword.” That meant they’d killed the men, killed the children, too, likely. And then they took the women, but Odysseus didn’t say anything about their faces. Nothing.
Why? Why didn’t Odysseus say how the women felt? How they looked? Why didn’t any of the sagas talk about that?
The questions plagued him, kept him awake at night, wakened him early in the morning to go out onto the parade ground and stalk about, trying to tire himself out so the faces would go away.
And as he strode by the victory monument, he saw another face, a bloody face, upside down, and thought for the moment he had dreamed it. But this was Michael’s face. Michael’s body, and Stephon’s body, hung by the feet from the victory monument, dead.
His harsh scream, half shock, half stomach-wrenching panic, brought the men on guard duty, and within minutes every man in the garrison knew what had been found.
As for Chernon, he was in his dormitory, huddled under his covers, sick with fear. It had something to do with Stavia. He knew it did. And if it had something to do with Stavia, he would be next.
By noon, the Heads of Council requested audience with Centurion Hamnis, the next highest in command, and informed him that they had discovered who had committed the atrocity. Spies from Tabithatown had done it, to render Marthatown helpless against an attack, to destroy morale.
The garrison raged as it prepared itself for war.
IT WAS BENEDA who brought the news to Stavia.
Stavia’s hair had grown out into a wavy crown, mostly hiding the scars where Cappy had hit her with the shovel and where the doctors had drilled holes in her skull. The lash marks on her back had faded, leaving only a few vague stripes to show where they had been. She had been able to leave the hospital and was back in her old room at Morgot’s house.
Beneda was in and out of that room almost every day, bringing a few flowers, bringing freshly baked cookies. Sometimes Sylvia came. No matter how often Stavia tried to pick other topics of conversation, they always wanted to talk about Chernon. Now they wanted to
