“Strike!” cried a voice from the massed ranks. The Hour-Whistler sounded.
“I can’t do it,” Nahkri said, lowering the axe. “I won’t do it. A fuggie, yes. Not a human, not even a Borlienian. I can’t.”
His younger brother lurched forward and grasped the instrument. “You coward—making us look fools before everyone. I’ll do it myself and shame you. I’ll show you who’s the better man, you queme!”
With teeth bared, he swung the axe up on his shoulder. He glared down into the stark face of the victim, which stared up from its depression as from a grave.
Klils’ muscles twitched, appearing to disobey him. The blade of the instrument signalled back the rays of sunset. Then it was lowered, and rested against the stone, while Klils leaned over the shaft, groaning.
“I should have drunk more rathel… .”
An answering groan came from the crowd. The sentinels now had their discs entangled with the unkempt horizon.
Individual voices made themselves heard.
“They’re a couple of clowns… .”
“They listened too much to Loil Bry, I say.”
“It was their father stuffing them full of head learning—the muscles are weakened.”
“Have you been on the nest too much, Klils?” That coarse shouted question drew laughter, and the sullen mood was broken. The mob closed in as Klils let the axe slip into the trampled mud.
Aoz Roon ran forward, breaking away from his fellows, and seized up the instrument. He growled like a hound, and the two brothers fell away from him, protesting feebly. They stumbled back farther, arms raised protectively, as Aoz Roon swung the axe above his head.
The suns were going down, half sunk with glory in a sea of dark. Their light was spilled like yolk from two goose eggs, drab gold, as if phagor and human blood were mingled over the stagnant waste. Bats flittered. The hunters raised their fists and cheered Aoz Roon.
Sun rays converged on the pyramid, and were split into bars of shadow by its peak. The divided lights ran precisely along the flanks of the worn stone on which the victim lay, defining its shape. The victim himself was in shadow.
The blade of the instrument of execution swung in sunlight, bit in shade.
After the clean clop of the stroke came a united sound from the crowd, a kind of echoing stroke from lungs exhaling in unison, as though all present also gave up the ghost.
The victim’s head fell severed to one side, as if kissing the confining stone. It began to drown in blood, which gushed up from the wound and spread, trickling down into the earth. It was running still as the last segment of the sentinels drowned below the horizon.
Ceremonial blood was the thing, the magic fluid that fought non-life, precious human blood. It would continue to drip throughout the night, lighting the two sentinels among the vents and passages of the original boulder, seeing them safe to another morning.
The crowd was satisfied. Bearing their torches aloft, they made their way back through the stockade to the ancient towers, which were now smoulderingly black against the cloudscape, or mottled with phantom light as the torches grew nearer.
Dathka walked by Aoz Roon, who was given respectful clearance by the crowd. “How could you bear to lop your own slave?” he asked.
The older man shot him a contemptuous look. “There are moments of decision.”
“But Calary …” Oyre protested. “It was so frightening.”
Aoz Roon brushed his daughter’s objection aside. “Girls can’t understand. I filled Calary full of rungebel and rathel before the ceremony. He felt nothing. He probably still thinks he’s in the arms of some Borlienian maid.” He laughed.
The solemnities were over. Few doubted now that Freyr and Batalix would arise on the morrow. They moved in to celebrate, to drink with extra cheer, for they had a scandal to whisper about, the scandal of the feebleheartedness of their rulers. There was no more delightful subject over mugs of pig’s counsel, before the Great Tale was retold.
But Laintal Ay was whispering to Oyre as he clutched her in the dark. “Did you fall in love with me when you saw me ride in on my captured stungebag?”