Vashanka’s name the “traitors” who had impersonated them with such partial
success. They were evidently particularly enraged about dogs being kept in the
barracks. Harran didn’t understand it. What was Vashanka’s problem with dogs?
Had one bit Him once? In any case, when Harran fled to a Maze-side garret to
escape the sack of the barracks, he made sure to take little brown Tyr with him.
She was yipping and howling unseen behind him now, as that sword descended, and
there was nothing he could do. It hit him hard in the temple, and there was
surprisingly little pain. He was faintly horrified to feel the top of his head
crumple and slide sideways; and out of the corner of his left eye he saw half
his skull and its contents come away clean on the edge of the sword. Harran
fell-he knew he fell, from feeling his face and chest smash into the bloody
dirt-but his vision, until it darkened, was frozen on that sidewise look. He
became bemused; brains were usually darker. Evidently the typical color of the
other ones he had examined was due to clotting of blood in the tissues. His had
not yet had time, that was all. The next time he … the next time … but this
was wrong. Where was Siveni? Where was Mriga? They always said that when … you
died, your god or goddess … met you….
… and night descended upon Harran, and his spirit fled far away.
Tyr didn’t know she was a dog. She didn’t know anything in the way people do.
Her consciousness was all adjectives, hardly any nouns-affect without
association. Things happened, but she didn’t think of them that way; she hardly