John Norman (46 page)

It was now late at night.

Hamilton lay in the kennel, stripped, the wooden device within her.

This morning her head had been again shaved. So, too, had been that of Ugly Girl. But this time the older women had not hurt her. They had only shaved her head.

Hamilton could tell by Ugly Girl’s breathing that she was awake, but she did not speak to her. She seldom spoke to Ugly Girl. Ugly Girl was stupid. Hamilton wondered why Ugly Girl was awake. She wondered why the insects had become quiet.

There had been a full moon.

Hamilton, with Ugly Girl, had participated, in their way, in the ceremony. They had stood far back, with the children, holding, like them, two bars of bronze, which, repeatedly, they struck together. The moon had bathed the fields in white light. There had been incantations and chants. In the fields, turning, twisting, leaping, holding up barley shoots to the sky, to the moon, had been the tall, gaunt man. The gaunt man had then cried out a command, his arms lifted. To Hamilton’s amazement the villagers had then put aside their clothing and, openly, lying in the furrows of their fields, engaged in sexual congress. While this was occurring, the tall, gaunt man, with great solemnity, had cast barley seed about. Something similar, four days ago, had been done with her. In the sheep pen, before the rams and ewes, under the supervision of the tall, gaunt man, the leader of the Dirt People had stripped her, placed her on her hands and knees, removed the wooden device and used her; it had caused her only pain as she was sore from the wood which had been within her; after he had been finished with her, two of the older women had again reinserted the device, thrusting it in and thonging it more tightly than ever, again knotting it behind the small of her back; they had then made her hold her arms up and had pulled the long, tight garment again over her body; she had then been set to work carrying water. In the ceremony of this night, however, neither she nor Ugly Girl were involved, other than, as the children, in striking the bars together. Only one suitable female of the village, strangely, was not put to her back in the dirt, her face to the moon. That was the young village beauty, the saucy, dark-haired girl. She, white-faced, sat alone on a wooden stool in the fields. No one touched her. She wore white wool. Her hair was combed. A white flower was put in her hair. She seemed frightened.

When the couples rose from the furrows, Hamilton regarded them closely. She saw nothing of the shame, or furtiveness, which she might have expected in them. One older woman suddenly ran to the girl on the stool but, before she could touch her, the tall, gaunt man, with a wave of his arm, warned her away. The older woman began to weep, but a man took her by the arms and pulled her away. The young girl on the stool, so beautiful in the white wool, the flower in her hair, said nothing to the older woman. White-faced, she stared across the barley fields.

When most of the villagers had returned to the compound, Hamilton, Ugly Girl, and the children, had accompanied them. The tall, gaunt man, and certain of the other men of the village, had remained behind in the fields, with the girl in white wool.

Hamilton could not sleep. Ugly Girl, too, for some reason, was not asleep.

Only one of the villagers had been kind to Hamilton, a young man gangling, little more than an adolescent with long hair; he was tall, but not powerfully built. While she had worked in the fields he had once brought her water. Another time he had given her a small flower. She smiled. Had he been a bunter, he would have torn the wood from her body and forced her to serve his pleasure. He had given her a flower. He had wanted her to like him. He had tried to please her. He had put himself at her mercy, and she only a shaven-headed, forbidden, shamed slave girl. How naive he had been, so sweet, so foolish. Did he not know that he was a man, and she only a woman? Why did he put himself at her mercy, not her at his? The males of the Dirt People, she conjectured, had forgotten their manhood. It had been mislaid in the ceremonies. The tall, gaunt man, perhaps, had taken it. But she had not wished to hurt the young man. Moreover, she was touched by the sweetness of the gesture. But how could she tell him that she was a woman, and, truly, could love only a man, not a boy in a man’s body? She had taken the flower, and had thanked him as she could, nodding her head, and smiling. Too, she had said thank you in English, and expressed gratitude, as well, in the language of the Men, that words might be uttered. He had smiled, reddened, and turned away. She had watched him go. She fixed the flower at the neck of her garment. An older woman, working near her in the field, took the flower from the garment and threw it away.

Ugly Girl made a sudden, soft noise, of warning.

Hamilton tensed. But she heard nothing. Ugly Girl took the scent of the air. Hamilton could imagine her, crouching in the kennel, the nostrils in that wide, flat nose distended, the eyes half shut, concentrating every fiber of her awareness on the still, night air.

Then, after a moment, she heard the sounds of footsteps, soft, furtive, outside.

Then there was the sound of fumbling with the leather that bound the door bolt in place. The door of the kennel swung open. Hamilton could see the poles of the sheep pen, the stars, framed in the small square opening, and, too, silhouetted in the opening, dark, the horns of the painted bronze mask.

She shrank back on the straw. One of the sheep bleated, softly. The man was then quiet, motionless, as though listening. But there was no other sound.

He whispered to her. She did not respond. Then, again, more insistently, more harshly, he repeated himself. She had learned in her days with the Dirt People certain words of their language, simple commands, expressions for common objects, the name by which she was addressed, which expression was also used for a ewe. “Come forth, Ewe,” said he. She crept back on the straw. She felt Ugly Girl behind her. The man, his frame filling the doorway, crept forward. She felt his hand close about her ankle. His grip was unusually tight. “Make no sound,” he said. He dragged her on her belly from the kennel. Outside the kennel, holding her by the arm, he dragged her to her feet. Holding her, he dragged her to the door of the pen, which he opened, and then closed. She was helpless. Over her shoulder, with a sudden start, she noticed Ugly Girl slipping from the kennel, swiftly, silently. The man thrust her along, stumbling, with him. “Make no sound,” he said again to her. His grip, above her elbow, on her left arm, was tight. He took her from the compound, slipping through the gate. The fingers of her left hand began to feel numb. He pulled her toward the barley fields, away from the compound. Soon she knew her screams would not carry to the compound. “Make no sound, Ewe,” he told her. Silently, dragged sometimes losing her footing, she accompanied him. He took his way across the fields. In the center of the fields was a large, rectangular stone. Hamilton had seen it before but had thought little of it. They took their way near this stone. Before it, he stopped. Near the stone was a small wooden stool. On the stone, on her back, arched over it, her arms over her head, bent back, elbows bent, a wrist fastened on each side of the stone, lay the young girl. She was stripped naked. Her ankles were tied widely apart, knees bent, an ankle fastened on each side of the stone. Between her legs, its point facing her, lay a long, bronze knife. The white moonlight streamed down upon her. She struggled, and whimpered. The gaunt man regarded her for a moment, holding Hamilton. Suddenly Hamilton felt sick. The girl, she understood now, for the first time, was being raped by the moon. She was intended as a virgin sacrifice. The girl struggled, and regarded the gaunt man wildly. The bonds held her, easily. Hamilton looked at the knife, and trembled. Doubtless, after the moon’s rape, or that of a god, it would not do to return the girl to the village; she would then be different; doubtless she would not then be simply another village woman, to be profaned by the touch of a common digger. In the morning, the moon or god finished with her, Hamilton sensed, the girl, perhaps drugged with beer, would be slain. The knife lay ready. She saw the girl’s wild eyes; surely she was not reconciled to her fate; if she had, earlier, had a belief in the moon, or the god, clearly she no longer held that belief; but that did not matter; in the morning all that would matter would be that others held the belief, or pretended to hold it; she might have lost her faith, repudiating it as her heart detected the falsity of its tenets, but it mattered little if others kept theirs, or pretended to; in the morning it would not be the truth that would matter but the bronze knife; truth, Hamilton surmised, was a feeble weapon, compared even to a knife of bronze. What would the truth matter when the gaunt man, with bloody hands, lifted the heart from her body?

The gaunt man, in the mask, turned away from the girl bound in the moonlight, tied over the altar, and pulled Hamilton behind him, making his way across the furrows, to the grass on the other side of the fields.

The girl on the altar was not a despised person, or a lowly one, saving that she was female, and thus fit for sacrifice. She was the prize of the village. Only the most beautiful, the highest born, would be dared to be offered to the moon or the gods.

Hamilton knew, with mixed feelings, that she was safe from such a fate. She, a despised slave, would not be deemed fit for such sacrifice.

On the other side of the fields, the gaunt man thrust Hamilton down to her belly in the grass, and then knelt across her legs. Even if she cried out she was too far from the village to be heard. She felt the man’s fingers fumbling at the small of her back, in the moonlight undoing the knots. He did not cut the thongs. She realized then that he would, when finished, replace the wooden device. It would be as though nothing had happened. She wondered how often he would come for her, ordering her from the kennel, in the darkness. She lay on her belly, her cheek on the grass; she clutched at the stalks of grass with her small hands; she felt the knots undone; with his fingers he pulled at the device; she felt it slip free. He rolled her on her back; she, opened, breasts, belly, face bared, an exposed slave, looked up at him; he crouched over her; the moonlight streamed down upon her slave nudity; the bronze mask, horned, hideously painted, leaned toward her. She screamed; the body fell forward, struck with great force, the mask lost in the grass.

Hamilton scrambled to a position half crouching, half kneeling, her hands on the grass. Then she knelt, aghast, covering her body as best she could with her hands.

The young man was half crouched down, his hands still on the handle of the bronze ax, the head of the ax buried in the skull and brain of the tall, gaunt man.

Then, with his foot, pressing, and pulling upward, he freed the ax. He stood there, looking at Hamilton.

He was white-faced.

He turned the body on its back. The sightless eyes stared like glass at the moon. The face, Hamilton saw, was mediocre, but ugly; there was something sly about it; without the mask, it seemed not so much forbidding and powerful, as sly and weak, mediocre and vicious. It was the face of a man who had found a way to live, but not by hunting, not by digging.

Hamilton cried out. Two figures emerged from the darkness. Even in the darkness she knew with what sort of men they dealt. They had appeared as if from nowhere, lithe, silent, swift, powerful, menacingly purposive, armed. “Run!” she cried to the young man. “Run!” The strangers had appeared from downwind. They did not speak. The young man, so foolish, lifted the ax. “They are men!” she wept. “You are a boy! Run! Run!” But he was determined to defend her. “Run!” she cried. “Run!” She watched him struck to his knees, and then to his belly. He lay, his head broken, in the grass. “No,” she wept. She was scarcely conscious of the leather strap being tied about her throat. She saw the head of a weasel tied at the belt of the man who secured her. By the strap, his fist six inches from her neck, half choking, she was jerked to her feet. In the distance, across the barley fields, she saw the sky glowing; the compound was being fired. She could see, here and there, a tiny figure, dark against the flames, running. The two men made their way across the barley fields – Hamilton, given some two feet of leash, was pulled behind them. On the other side of the field, they saw some two or three villagers running, but none successfully fled their pursuers; two older women, were struck down before they reached the fields; the other, a man, reached the edge of the fields; it was there where, from behind, the ax, with its head of stone, lashed to the yard-long handle, caught him. Another hunter, carrying a torch, came behind them. Another appeared to Hamilton’s left, he, too with a torch. They dipped the torch to the young barley. Hamilton’s captors made directly for the stone altar in the center of the field. They had well reconnoitered the area. Their strike had been well planned. The barley now, at two edges of the field, was blazing. Hamilton had little doubt that the Dirt People were encircled, and that the circle, like the strings on a trap, was now, the first strike made, to scatter the villagers and destroy the center of their strength, drawing shut. Hamilton’s captors stopped beside the stone altar. They looked down on the girl, on her back, arched across the stone, stripped, tied, on the helpless, virginal delicacies of her body, with the relish of hunters. About them the barley blazed. The girl, bound, looked at them wildly, piteously. Then, to Hamilton’s amazement the virgin, the prize of the village, the intended sacrifice, bound on the altar, her eyes imploring, lifted her hips to Hamilton’s captors. They regarded her eyes, desperate, the sweet, delicate, supplicatory arch of her body. Her eyes, her body, begged piteously to be freed of the stone; her eyes, her body, begged piteously to be permitted to serve them on any terms which they might please. One of them lifted his stone ax, as though to crush her face against the stone. She writhed, screaming, in the light of the flaming barley; he held the ax poised, and grinned, then lowered it; she almost fainted; then, again, desperately, eyes piteous, whimpering, she lifted her hips, begging, to them. They laughed. Each in turn, swiftly, brutally, took her. She threw her head back, screaming with agony and elation; she was jolted viciously, mercilessly, in the bonds; when they had taken their sport, and blood lay on her thighs and the stone, her head, and her shoulders, were back, hanging over the edge of the stone. Flames leapt about the altar. The girl, in her bonds, looked at them, turning her head piteously; were they pleased enough with her? To her joy a thong was knotted about her neck and, with the sacrificial knife, she was cut free of the altar. She was dragged through the flaming barley on her tether, beside Hamilton; she laughed with pleasure; she was alive; she, naked, leather on her throat, regarded Hamilton, unashamed, her face transfused with a brazen joy; she again laughed, putting her head back, screaming with pleasure; she was alive, alive!