Barkus rose from the desk, laughed through his smile, said, “You alive, boy?”
Wodan groaned.
“Looks like I get to keep my slaves,” said Barkus. “You gave us a good show, but I proved my point: Will is nothing compared to brute strength. You want out of here, boy? You hate being a slave? Well, too bad. You’re property, same as the rest of us. The only reason it’s painful is because of your perspective.”
Wodan groaned, rolled on the ground, clutched his poor stomach and gritted his teeth, but could not reply.
“I’m going to let you live because I want to make a work of art out of you. You’re going to become a living monument of disintegration. And first, I’m going to punish you. I’m going to punish you by telling you something. Telling you something about the world.”
Wodan could see only darkness and a halo of light. He blinked, sucking at each breath as if it was his last. Barkus stood over him with Adem and Wallach on either side. Barkus looked at Adem, who smiled and crouched over him.
“I remember you,” said Adem, “and I remember your friend. You remember your friend?”
Wodan’s eyes shot wide open.
“When we caught you on the mountainside...” said Adem, and his voice rose with sick, childish glee. “When we caught you, you were stumbling around like a madman. Me and Wallach saw you, and you saw us. But you didn’t see Fachimundi taking a piss on the other side of a rock just behind you. He got you over the head with a stick, and you went down like a sack of shit. Your friend tried to stop you, but he looked like he got chewed up by the devil himself, he could barely talk or move or keep his dumb eyes open.”
Wodan coughed sandpaper from his throat, said, “What... happened... to... Marlon?”
“He was too heavy to carry and too beat-up to walk,” said Adem, laughing, “so we took turns kicking the guts out of him. We killed him.”
Wodan screamed and lunged at the man’s leg. Adem jumped back, cackling like mad, and a gang of Ugly grabbed Wodan and held him off the ground. Wodan screamed and spit all around, overcome with hatred, overcome by the unfair universe ruled by inhuman men.
As they gathered around him, laughing and jeering, Barkus ran up to the boy with childish footwork. “What are you smiling at!” Wodan screamed. “What do you have to smile about, you monster!”
In a moment of sadistic glee Barkus showed him the secret of his smile, and Wodan’s soul fled into a dark corner of himself. He could hear someone screaming, he could feel someone held tight by a dozen hands, he could feel someone being led back to the other slaves and then dumped on the ground like an empty bag of bones, but it was no longer him. A legion of nerves reported pain to a switchboard that was turned off.
All that was left in him was a vision that repeated again and again, over and over, the image of a red-bearded man who, when he pulled back his mustache, showed that he had hacked off the sides of his mouth into the shape of an eternal smile, a death’s head grin of bare teeth proper for a graveyard world rotting under the black sun.
Chapter Seventeen
No Compromise Between Life and Death
The night was black, with no moon and only a few stars hanging on the distant horizon under thick cloud cover. A terrible feeling of anxiety hung over the crouching slaves because they could hear the Ugly in the distance celebrating the Feast of the Eclipse, laughing, chanting, bullets fired in the air coupled with twitching shadows dancing in torchlight.
Brad sat beside Rachek. He was desperate to get his mind off food. He searched his mind for every subject of conversation he could think of, then said, “You remember those winter pies you said your people made? How do you think they’d taste with some fresh tigo berries sprinkled on top?”
Rachek’s chin was jammed between her knees. She sat in silence for a long time, then said, “I don’t know, Brad. Probably pretty good, I guess.”
He nodded, said, “Yeah… yeah.” He glanced at Agmar. Besides mumbling an occasional prayer, the old man sat in silence. Wodan was even worse, sitting like a statue in the distance, not saying a word or acknowledging anyone since the Ugly had taken him into the tent. Brad shook his head, then said, “Well what if you cooked a big hunk of venison covered in pepper, and you cooked some corn on the same spit right beside it? You think that’d be pretty good?”
Rachek sighed, said, “Listen, Brad, I can’t really think about that stuff right now.” She was almost sure she could hear screams in the distance. She’d been passed over when the Ugly picked girls to attend the Feast with them, but she did not feel fortunate. She felt only tired and desperate.
“Fine! I didn’t wanna talk about food with you anyhow!” He got up, made a big show of brushing sand from his legs, then said, “I’ll just go and see what Wodan’s up to.”
“Don’t you bother him!” said Rachek. “He’s-” She almost said he’s broken, but Brad was gone before she could stop him. She knew that whatever had been good and alive in him was simply no more, and she wanted him to be able to rest and deal with things as best he could.
Brad could feel everyone’s eyes on him as he bumped into them and disturbed the huddled mass. He sat in the area that everyone had cleared around Wodan. He whispered a greeting, then Wodan turned to him – and his world exploded.
* * *
“He didn’t say that!” said Agmar. “Brad, you’re just going to stir up some foolishness with all this talk.”
Many slaves gathered around. “It’s true!” said Brad. “He says tonight’s the night!”
“Tonight’s the night?” said Agmar, screwing up his face. “For what?”
“For some shit that’s been a long time comin’!” said Brad.
“I didn’t hear him say nothin’,” said an older slave. “He’s been done for, ever since they took him and did whatever they did. Just look at him now – he’s still starin’ off at nothin’!”
“Everyone shut up!” said Rachek. “Let’s go straight to the source.”
A large group approached Wodan while others looked on. He sat like a still pool, calm as the vacuum. Rachek knelt down in his field of vision. “Is it true?” she said quietly.
Wodan’s eyes stared through her. She thought at first that he seemed like an inanimate object, a husk. She remembered a story from her childhood about a saint who left the world to gain enlightenment; he left, one thought at a time, until only his shining, empty body remained.
But then Wodan blinked and his smile spread slowly. He was alive!
“We kill them tonight,” said Wodan. “We kill them all tonight, or this nightmare will never end.”
Brad smiled like a madman and clapped the nearest man on the back, almost tossing him to the ground. Shouts and exclamations spread through the mass of slaves and Agmar tried to shush anyone who would listen. Rachek slowly exhaled and felt a thousand pounds of crushing weight lift from her shoulders. She knew in her heart that if Wodan told her to take his hand and walk into a hail of bullets, she would do it. She would die as a human being rather than live on as an object.
Agmar saw that things were getting out of hand. “Quiet, all of you!” he hissed. “We’re going to be shot before we can make a move if you apes don’t quiet down!” He turned to Wodan, then said, “Boy, what happened to you? I thought they broke you the other night!”
“I was broken,” said Wodan, smiling. “But as long as we’re still alive, we can put ourselves back together. Entropy doesn’t apply to living things.” He laughed strangely and Agmar was terrified of the sound. In his mind’s eye he saw hundreds of dead and dying, covered in blood, crying in anguish… and much, much worse awaited the living. Torn between two impulses, he said, “Boy, listen, we… we need a plan… but even with a plan, it’s not…”
“Tonight’s the night!” said Wodan, mania rippling just beneath his words. “We take to the darkness, then smash their world!”
A few shook their heads at the idea, but Agmar could see that the boy’s words were having a powerful effect, a
maddening of the blood that overpowered their forced starvation and crippling march. Finally someone came near Agmar and they nodded to one another; he was very old, with a gray robe and a bushy gray beard like funeral plumage. He had an inconspicuous aura and gave the impression of having always been there, safe and unworthy of attention. Agmar and the older man sat across from Wodan. Brad and Rachek sat on either side of Wodan, looking like bodyguards or personal aides.
Finally the debate settled and all eyes rested on their circle. Wodan said loudly, “How many of us are there, Agmar?”
“Almost four hundred,” said Agmar, “with an even mix of male and female, young and old.”
“And how many Ugly have you counted?” said Wodan.
“About seventy-five,” he said. There was a rush of whispers from the crowd. “There are more than enough horses and guns for all of them. About fifteen of them are black-cloaked veterans, the rest are fairly young.”
“And what are they doing tonight?” said Wodan.
“A lot of them have formed a ring around the camp,” said Agmar. “How many exactly, I don’t know. Enough to watch for slaves getting out and demons coming in. The rest of them... are getting drunk, even more so than usual, to celebrate their Feast of the Eclipse of Worry.”
“Even more drunk than usual, then,” said Wodan. “Interesting. But how many of them are actively watching us?”
“I can only see... about five.”
“That’s it? Why haven’t they made us be silent yet?”
“They’re drinking heavily.”
“Interesting,” Wodan repeated. “One cannot serve two masters. And what about the lighting? Does the weather favor us?”
Agmar looked down rather than up, then said, “It’s a masked moon. The night is almost completely dark.”
“Perfect for going unseen,” said Wodan. “Especially when your enemy is either holding a torch in the outer ring, or dancing like a savage around a bonfire.”
Agmar nodded slowly, but his mouth melted down into a slow frown.
Wodan grew silent. He knew that he stood on a great precipice. He could not see the bottom, but he felt absolutely no fear. When the slaves began to talk again, Rachek said loudly, “Everything is in our favor. We can’t lose!”
Suddenly the bearded old man who sat beside Agmar coughed, or gave the impression of having coughed, and Agmar patted him and sat back. “Okay, Wodan,” the old man said. “I hope you’ve got some kind of a plan, son, ’cause if you’re not careful, you’re going to get a lot of people killed.”
“Here’s what I think,” said Wodan. “We’ve all been scared because the Ugly are armed - but I think that they are actually over-armed. Our captors sometimes have two, even three guns apiece. I even saw guns lying unattended in the tent! We know for a fact they keep ammunition in the truck, boxes of it, and I bet there are probably extra guns in there as well. Not a single demon has attacked us this whole time, but the Ugly still pose and act as if they were moving through a battlezone. So here’s what we do: We move as one body, jump the five or so guards watching us, then take the truck and get the guns, then blast through every drunk that stumbles in our way until we get to the horses that are tied on the far side of the camp. And since we outnumber our captors more than four-to-one, I think the most difficult battle will be standing up in the first place. The battle itself will be easy.”
Agmar’s eyes moved from the ground to the bearded old man. The man cleared his throat, then said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know. What if we rush the truck, and there’s nothing but food for the horses stored inside? What will you do then?”
“The Ugly are drunk, disorganized, and outnumbered,” said Wodan. “If we rush the truck and the guns are all in circulation, then we take the big crates that they keep the “horse food” in, and we rush the area where the others are dancing like idiots and we bash their skulls in. Even in a worst-case scenario, we still have strength of numbers. What’s your name anyway?”
“My name’s Hari. I’ve been watching you... and I think you’re trouble.”
“I am trouble,” Wodan shot back. “Now you can either help, or get out of the way.” Wodan could tell that Hari was dangerous, and he knew exactly what he was after. Wodan tried to end the debate with a killing stroke, and said, “There will be an uprising tonight. You can’t stop it. Everyone must choose a side, and when the smoke settles, we’ll remember which side you chose.”
Hari’s eyes narrowed into pinpricks.
“Besides,” continued Wodan, “if even half of the Ugly watched over us while the other half rested nearby, sober, then we might have a problem. But the Ugly camp is spread out. There are only a handful of guards watching us, and even those depend on our fear to keep us in line. A lot of the Ugly are spread out in a ring around the camp, and we have the devil to thank for that. Our captors are an incompetent lot of bullies, and are completely unprepared for a large, coordinated, internal revolution.”
“Think about it like this,” said the old man. “It doesn’t matter if there are five or five hundred of them watching over us, because those watchers have guns. If we rush the few watching us, some of us are going to be killed. That’s a fact, boy. We can’t cover the few feet between us and them before they can shoot. The flaw in your plan is that you think of us in terms of numbers! You aren’t considering the fact that every number in your plan is a living, breathing human being. None of us wants to die. And while you might rile up the kids by waving your pecker around and saying, “Die free or live a slave,” you have to remember that every elder in this group has children here. What father is going to throw his boy in front of a gun just so he can breathe “free” air? What mother is going to convince her daughter not to get raped by some killer when, in some sense, a woman is going to be oppressed no matter where she goes in this awful world? You’re young, you’re naïve, and worst of all, you’re an individual with no connection to a community that has to be protected by realistic means.”
Wodan thought for a moment, then said, “Now I see how you’ve lived for so long, and why I never noticed you before. You’ve always crawled under the eyes of your oppressors, haven’t you, Hari? Never gambled your neck to free your mind. You say that there’s no place in this “awful world” where a man can escape senseless death and a woman can avoid rape, but I tell you that there is. It’s in the north, across the sea and away from these mad men that live like demons. We’ve been walking through the waste for so long that I know we must be close to the coast, and if we can just shake our oppressors now I know I can lead us there! You just have to believe!”
Hari bowed his head, and debate raged among the slaves. Many slaves understood the rationale behind Hari’s argument, and they shook their heads and chastised foolish behavior that could only lead to an early grave. But many young people were drawn to Wodan’s words. They were not used to speaking out against their elders and making decisions that would determine their fate, but they had lost all patience with timidity and the mindset that had gotten them enslaved in the first place.
A long time passed and Wodan could see no end to the arguing. “Alright, Hari,” he said. “You’ve stated your point. Neither logic nor heartfelt words are going to sway either party, but if we sit here and debate all night then the Ugly will have us marching again in a few hours, and you will have won. I know you fear the few guarding us because they have guns and we don’t, so let me make you a deal. If I go out, alone, and bring back a few guns, will you convince the others to move, all at once, and overrun the Ugly?”
“Depends,” said Hari. He paused and scratched his cheek for a long time. “If you sneak away to get some guns, I certainly wouldn’t do anything more to convince the others to stay…”
“And you probably wouldn’t mind if I was caught and killed, right?” said Wodan, laughing harshly. Wodan looked at the others, then stood up. “I’m going out. When I come back with guns, I want everyone to be ready.”
Brad stood up immediately, sa
id, “I’ll go with you. I’m ready to rock out with my-”
“No,” said Wodan. “I need you to stay here. While I’m gone, people like Hari are going to start spreading fear. A few might even think about going over to the Ugly and alerting them. I need you to make sure none of that happens! Besides, I’ll need stealth for something like this. Nobody’s going to see me out there if I’m alone.”
He patted Brad on the shoulder, then Rachek grabbed his free arm. “Just come back alive,” she said. “Don’t worry about the guns if it looks too dangerous!”
He laughed and thought, It’s too late for that. He gripped her hand on his arm, then saw the concern in her face and turned away so she would not see him blush.
An object passed from hand to hand, a small thing wrapped in rags. The thing passed to Wodan. He took it and removed its covering. It was a short, narrow piece of sharpened steel attached to a wooden handle. Wodan looked at the slaves and nodded respectfully.
What they must have gone through to hide this thing! he thought. This blade is the will of the people, and it’s in my hands now.
“Boy,” said Agmar.
“Yeah?” said Wodan. “You got some advice for me?”
“I’ve got more words of wisdom than you could ever stomach,” said Agmar. “You know I think this is a bad idea, but I guess that’s the last thing you want to hear.”
“Pretty much,” said Wodan. He laid a hand on Agmar’s shoulder and shook him, then extricated Rachek’s hand from his arm. He looked at the fires in the distance, gave one last look to his friends, then walked in a crouch through the mass of slaves.
* * *
The night swallowed him. He slunk towards the five sentries, low to the ground, heart racing. When Wodan drew near he clung to the ground and watched. Their eyes were glazed and they passed around several bottles, each man speaking over the other. They had radios clipped to their waists or jackets and Wodan could hear the static and voices of the men in the outer ring either checking in or arguing over whose turn it was to check in. Wodan cursed Hari under his breath, for the drunks were completely engaged in their gossip and their weapons were slung on their backs or holstered securely. They did not see the pale, skinny, half-naked outlander creeping past them.