The ceiling was smoke-blackened stone, glistening with moisture, supported by a forest of great stone columns. A jostling crowd of shouting, excited Scalers surrounded us, holding their torches high. Our captors continued chanting, dragging us through the water, the crowd splashing alongside, poking at us curiously with spears and tridents. Filthy Scaler children and fragile Scaler girls and the horrible walking corpses of the incurably aged all prodded and probed at us for a reaction. Metal axes banged off our armor. They wanted our blood. Priestess whimpered. My terror was complete but I did not want her to know.
“Thinker! Is that you? Who is that?” Merlin, the object of our quest, called out to us. But his voice wasn’t on our tacnet. The Scalers had stopped dragging us and now five or six of them sat on my chest, cutting the net away from my helmet. I still couldn’t move my arms. They fumbled at my helmet, trying to get it off. They would find the links soon. The other Scalers crowded around, torches held high.
“Merlin! It’s Merlin! We’ve found him!” It was an absurd statement, considering the circumstances. I craned my neck to see him. There! Merlin, out of his A-suit, chained to a massive stone pillar, blood streaking down his chest.
My helmet popped open and the Scalers wrenched it off. They swarmed all over me, knees and elbows and hands. The screams and the fetid stink of the place hit me like a physical blow, cold and wet and dead. A bloody haze, by flaming torchlight. I still couldn’t move my arms. I could feel nothing, running on straight adrenalin. About ten of them sat on me. Knives at my throat, a knife sticking into an ear, another forced into my mouth. Hopeless! I was as good as dead. They were after the armor, now. They had gotten Merlin out, so they knew how to unlink the suit.
They got our A-suits and litesuits off, stripped us naked and trussed us up like newly caught mumpups, the cords biting into our skin. I may have been in shock. There were hundreds of them. Bleeding heavily from the mouth, I wondered how we would die and hoped we would make a good death.
A roar suddenly erupted from the mob. A Scaler warrior stood over us, brandishing what I assumed was Priestess’s E. Small and wiry, his eyes glittered red in the torchlight and his hair was matted with dirt. He held the E aloft, waving it around, screaming harshly to the crowd.
“Priestess, is your E still on safe?” They had tied my hands behind my back and I could not see her.
“Yes.” I could barely hear her through the noise of the crowd. But why should I worry? Now they could only crush our skulls with rocks, instead of zapping us with the E.
Priestess screamed and I wrenched myself around enough to see what was going on.
The leader had Priestess by the hair, forcing her to her feet, her hands tied behind her back. The leader continued exhorting the crowd, forcing her head back, waving the E around with his other hand. War trophies. The sub! Priestess was absolutely lovely, even with blood trickling down from her head wounds. Her body appeared phosphorescent in the dark against all those dirt-caked Scalers. The torchlight flickered and flared and her skin glowed red and golden in the dark. An unexpected hush fell over the gathering. The sputtering of the torches underscored the heavy breathing of the mob.
Priestess was slim and lovely, incredibly beautiful, a child-woman, a starflower in the night. To the Scalers, her beauty must have seemed almost supernatural. Even the leader became silent, holding Priestess at arm’s length by her hair, staring at her in awe.
Then the Scaler women reached out to touch Priestess. I wondered if they thought they could have some of her beauty by touching her. Some of the men reached out to touch her as well, their hooded, evil eyes burning with lust.
The first warrior who slid his hand between her legs was rewarded with a sharp, perfectly executed front snap kick to the crotch. His face turned white and he collapsed without a sound. The crowd roared. The Scaler leader bellowed and pulled at Priestess’s hair, brutally yanking her off her feet, wielding the E like a club, striking out at the other warriors. Was he angry with them for touching his trophy?
Priestess fell to the floor, face contorted with pain. The Scaler women shrieked at the men, some of them beating at the warriors with their fists. Their meaning was clear: Hands off the alien girl!
Sloshing through the water, the leader dragged Priestess by her hair over the flooded, slippery stone floor. Another great shout went up and my captors hauled me away by my feet. I caught a glimpse of Merlin, being undone from his chains. A whiff of smoke hit my nostrils.
“Thinker! Thinker! Do something, for God’s sake! Deadman, help me!” Priestess was desperate and terrified. I struggled, but to no avail. I could not even see her anymore. A moving forest of Scaler legs surrounded me. Then the forest fell away, and I saw.
A metal grate, blackened by the fires of many centuries, rested over a deep, dark stone pit, its depths already smoking from a newly lit fire. The Scalers pulled away the blistered, crisp-blackened remnants of a giant exoseg from the grate, and chanted an evil song. The exoskeleton collapsed as they pulled, stiff black legs snapping off from the thorax as if from dry rot, showering the Scalers with ash. The filthy grate was covered with charred rot from the exoseg.
They dragged Priestess onto the grate, and fastening her wrists to the bars with chains. Merlin and I were next. Here the Scalers roasted their enemies, and we were the newest addition to the list. This was our fate, a slow, agonizing death, a long slow burning over an open fire.
The Scaler leader and two other warriors brought a bucket of dirty, oily liquid over to Priestess and began rubbing it onto her body. They started on her face and worked their way down, taking their time, exploring her body thoroughly. Priestess shuddered and cried out, twisting her legs to get away from them. The Scaler girls started in again, screaming angrily and pelting the warriors with rocks. They moved away from Priestess reluctantly and she collapsed, glistening with oil.
Merlin and I were then tied to the grate as well, and the warriors threw the rest of the oil on us contemptuously. They retreated and the crowd hushed. They surrounded the grate, a huddled, torch-lit, silent mob, warriors and women and children and the living dead, a whole Scaler city, come to see the aliens die. The fire flared up below us and someone threw a bucket of oil into the pit and the flames burst to life, searing our backs. We lay in the filth of the last victim, the bars of the grate now heating up and burning into my naked flesh.
Priestess moaned beside me. Merlin moved restlessly, raising his bloody head to look around. My fate roared in my ears, the spectators laughed, the torchlight flared over the shadowy ceiling, the heat rose from the fire pit. I remembered Gravelight’s words: “They will roast you slowly over fires…you will die slowly.”
There was no avoiding our fate this time. We would die, immortal or not, burnt to black crisps. The Legion would find our bodies, and many Scalers would die in revenge. We would be buried under cold skies, side by side beneath the strange stars of this new world. Generations of schoolchildren would chant our names, the First of the First, Thinker, Merlin and Priestess who died for you in the first assault. We would not be forgotten, and I would lie beside my lovely Priestess for eternity. I began whispering the chant of the Legion, our death song.
“I am a soldier of the Legion.
I believe in evil,
The survival of the strong…”
The grate burnt into my flesh, now. Smoke rose all around us. I raised my voice.
“…and the death of the weak!”
We were weak, to have been trapped like this. I was weak, to have thought of the Scalers first and of my comrades second. Priestess had stopped whimpering. She joined her words to mine.
“I am the guardian
I am the sword of light…”
And now Merlin joined us, in a strong, clear voice.
“In the dark of the night.
I will deliver us from Evil!”
The Scalers surrounded the fire pit, silent phantoms in the torchlight. And now we would die, with the chant of the Legion on our lips, until the pain overwhelmed us.
“I accept life everlasting…”
Life! Life everlasting. It only meant death, in the end. The Legion promised life, and delivered death. A fair bargain. To us, death was the final frontier, the final mystery, the final, holy glory.
The Scaler leader leaped onto the grate, screaming at us, waving the E over his head. We defied him, raising our voices so that everyone could hear us clearly. We knew we were going to die.
“I will trust no Earther worm,
