The wooden frame was in the shape of a square; two diagonals made an X inside the square. He was naked, his hands and feet lashed, one to each corner of the frame, which was propped against a wall at about forty-five degrees. A thick hide strap secured his waist to the centre of the X, and all over his body were markings of blood and paint.
He relaxed his neck. ‘Oh shit,’ he heard himself croak. He didn’t like the look of this.
Where the hell was the Culture? They ought to be rescuing him; that was their job. He did their dirty work, they looked after him. This was the deal. So where the hell were they?
The pain came back, like an old friend by now, from almost everywhere. Straining his neck like that had hurt. Sore head (maybe concussion); broken nose, cracked or broken ribs, one broken arm, two broken legs. Maybe internal injuries; his insides felt pretty sore too; the worst, in fact. He felt bloated and full of decay.
Shit, he thought, I might actually be dying.
He shifted his head, grimacing, (pain poured in as if some protecting shell on his skin had been cracked by the movement) and looked at the ropes lashing him to the wooden frame. Traction was no way to treat a fracture, he told himself, and laughed very briefly, because with the first contraction of his stomach muscles his ribs pulsed suddenly, as though they were at red heat.
He could hear things; distant noises of people shouting now and again, and children yelling, and some sort of animal baying.
He closed his eyes, but heard nothing more distinct. He opened them again. The wall was earth, and he was probably underground, for there were thick sawn-off roots sticking into the space around him. The light was composed of two nearly vertical shafts, slightly angled beams of direct sunlight, so… near midday, near the equator. Underground, he thought, and felt sick. Nice and hard to find. He wondered if the plane had been on course when it crashed, and how far from the crash site he’d been carried. No point in worrying about it.
What else could he see? Crude benches. A coarse cushion, dented. It looked like somebody had sat there, facing him. He assumed it was the owner of the hand he had felt, if there had been one. There was no fire in a circle of stones set underneath one of the holes in the roof. Spears leant against the wall, and other weaponish things were strewn about the place. They were not battle-weapons; ceremonial, or maybe torture. He caught a whiff of something awful, just then, and knew it was gangrene, and knew it must be him.
He began to slip over the edge again, uncertain whether he was falling asleep or really going unconscious, but hoping for one or the other, willing either, because all this was more than he could handle just now. Then the girl came in. She had a jug in her hand, and set it down before looking at him. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. Maybe he hadn’t really spoken earlier when he’d thought he said, ‘Shit.’ He looked at the girl and attempted a smile.
She went out again.
He felt somehow heartened, seeing the girl. A man would have been bad news, he thought. A girl meant things might not be so bad after all. Maybe.
The girl came back, with a bowl of water. She washed him, rubbing away the the blood and the paint. There was some pain. Predictably nothing happened when she washed his genitals; he’d have liked to show signs of life, just for form’s sake.
He tried to speak, but failed. The girl let him sip some water from a shallow bowl, and he croaked at her, but nothing distinguishable. She left again.
The next time she came back with some men. They wore many strange clothes, like feathers and skins and bones and wooden tiles of armour laced with gut. They were painted too, and they brought pots and small sticks with them, and used them to paint him again.
They finished and stood back. He wanted to tell them he didn’t suit red, but nothing came out. He felt himself falling away, out into the darkness.
When he came to again, he was moving.
The entire frame he was strapped to had be lifted and carted out of the gloom. He faced the sky. Blinding light filled his eyes, dust filled his nose and mouth, and shouts and screams filled his mind. He felt himself shiver like a fever victim, tearing pain from each shattered limb. He tried to shout, and to raise his head to see, but all there was was noise and dust. His insides felt worse; skin taut over his belly.
Then he was upright again, and the village was beneath him. It was small, there were some tents, some wicker and clay dwellings and some holes into the ground. Semi-arid; an indeterminate scrub – stamped down inside the perimeter of the village – vanished quickly beyond it, into a yellow-glowing mist. The sun was just visible, low down. He couldn’t work out if it was dawn or dusk.
What he really saw were the people. They were all in front of him; he was up on a mound, the frame tied to two large stakes, and the people were beneath him, all on their knees, heads bowed. There were tiny children, their heads forced down by nearby adults, there were old people held up from collapsing completely by those around them, and every age in between.
Then in front of him walked three people, the girl and two of the men. The men, one on either side of the girl, lowered their heads, knelt down quickly and arose again, and made a sign. The girl did not move, and her gaze was fixed on a point between his eyes. She was dressed in a bright red gown now; he could not remember what she had worn before.
One of the men held a large earthenware pot. The other had a long, curved, broad-bladed sword.
‘Hey,’ he croaked. He couldn’t manage anything else. The pain was getting very bad now; being upright didn’t do his broken limbs any good at all.
The chanting people seemed to swing about his head; the sunlight dipped and veered, and the three people in front of him became many, multiplying and wavering, unsteady in the waste of mist and dust before him.
Where the hell was Culture?
There was a terrible roaring noise in his head, and the diffuse glow in the midst which was the sun was starting to pulse. The sword glittered to one side; the earthenware pot gleamed on the other. The girl stood directly in front of him, and put her hand into his hair, grasping it.
The roaring noise was filling his ears, and he could not tell if he was shouting and screaming or not. The man to his right raised the sword.
The girl pulled his hair, yanking his head out; he screamed, above the roaring noise, as his broken bones grated. He stared at the dust at the hem of the girl’s robe.
‘You bastards!’ he thought, not sure, even then, exactly who he meant.
He managed to scream one syllable. ‘El -!’
Then the blade slammed into his neck.
The name died. Everything had ended but it still went on.
There was no pain. The roaring noise was actually quieter. He was looking down at the village and the crouching people. The view swung; he could still feel the pull of the roots of his hair straining at the skin on his scalp. He was swung round.
The slack, headless body dribbled blood down its chest.
That was me! he thought. Me!
He was swung round again; the man with the sword was wiping blood from the blade with a rag. The man with the earthenware pot was trying not to look into his staring eyes, and holding the pot out towards him, the lid in his other hand. So that’s what it’s for, he thought, feeling somehow stunned into an eerie calmness. Then the roaring noise seemed to gather and start to fade at once. The view was going red. He wondered how much longer this could go on. How long did a brain survive without oxygen?
Now I really am two, he thought, remembering, eyes closing.
And he thought of his heart, stopped now, and only then realised, and wanted to cry but could not, for he had finally lost her. Another name formed in his kind. Dar…
The roar split the skies. He felt the girl’s grip loosen. The expression on the face of the youth holding the pot was almost comically fearful. People looked up from the crowd; the roar became a scream, a blast of air swept dust into the air and made the girl holding him stagger; a dark shape swung quickly through the air above the village.