“For what?” she asked.
“For the gift of song.”
“Oh, that.” She looked around first, searching for those who might overhear. Then she whispered, “And I thank you for my victory, sweet one.”
Just as I thought, said the boss, who had often observed their sneaking off together.
He ordered her to leave, and she tightened her face to hold back the tears and she left.
Now we shall see, the boss said.
When they were finished with him, the boss hid some scraps of man flesh in the flesh of a bovin, and bid her come eat. She preferred, as did most mans who were not feral, a diet of vegetables and grain. In the mines, however, mans were made to eat whatever was put before them, despite their stomach’s revulsion to it.
She took a bite of what she believed was a slice of bovin, but her stomach reacted to it with a different type of revulsion. She said to the boss: “It does not taste the same as it did before.”
He burst into laughter. The female man lifted her eyes from her bowl and spied atop the table of the oafs, the well-cooked arms and legs of her great opponent. Her stomach heaved and surrendered all that was in it.
The boss and his companions around the table shook with laughter at the new champion chucking up the flesh of the old.
The boss was first among poets and he led them in song: “Great lord Red Man, oh mighty Red Man.”
The others chanted, “Wel-come to the Village of the Oafs! The Vill-age of Oafs welcomes you!”
And the bard did sing: “Out here in this blackness, this loneliness, this place of barrenness, horror, and stone, the bitter tears of Red Man began to flow.”
Someone touched her shoulder. It was her companion in music, Yellow Fellow!
They embraced, and the boss heard the man man say: “It was a joke they played on you, sweet one. Wipe your tears away. Oh, but I’m glad to be alive.”
“You’re glad to be alive?” The female man did not wipe her tears away, but continued to weep.
The boss came to her and petted her head. “Red Man, Red Man, why do you weep? It was only done in fun.”
She winced at his touch and he pulled his hand away, fearing her teeth which were bared.
“He is just glad to be alive,” she said, pointing sadly to the table, “but there is still a well-cooked man on your plate. Why can Yellow Fellow not understand this? How can he be so selfish?”
Her tears continued to flow.
“Out here in this blackness, this loneliness, this place of barrenness, selfishness, and stone, the bitter tears of Red Man continued to flow.”
And here the bard did end his song.
6
The Bridge
The sun still rested in its dark bed when the boss was awoken by a jangling as of much metal. He quickly opened his eyes, for he thought someone might be troubling his silver. At the entrance to his tent stood a wide oaf in a scarlet tunic of brass.
He announced, “Today, you shall not go to the mines, but to war.”
“Huh?”
The boss still had much sleep in his eyes. He wanted to roll over on his cot, but in the face of this visitor with the sword at his side there was only seriousness. The boss, accustomed to being the one who barked the orders, was reminded of his manners.
“What am I to do?” he implored with all due politeness.
“Gather your oafs and your mans,” the soldier said, and then he explained to him what and why.
Afterward the boss ran into the tent of his red-haired female man and shook her awake. She looked around. “It is still dark.”
“Early-morning darkness is the best time for war, it seems.”
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What is war?”
“War is like a battle in the fight yard, a battle with all of your companions against all of the other’s companions, but with blades that chop and much more blood.”
She nodded as though she had understanding. “And we chop them in order to gain collective victory. I have heard many oafs talk of this war thing,” she said. “But don’t people fall in war?”
“Yes. Yes,” he said, and he thought, Oh great creator! but she is a clever little man.
He continued: “And if your companion is to fall, then you are to chop whoever did fell him. In other words, if I am to fall, you must set upon whoever felled me, you understand?”
She said, “Oh, so now I am your companion?”
“Yes!” he insisted. “Are we not companions?”
She hesitated. “I guess.”
The memory of the trick played on her with Yellow Fellow was still fresh in her mind. The look on her face asked a question.
“What is it, little man?”
“When you fall, what am I to do then?”
He corrected, “If I fall, and hopefully that will not happen, but if it does… well, I guess you are to join with other mans whose oafs have fallen and set upon whoever it is that is setting upon them.”
She frowned. “All this setting upon and setting upon, what does it really mean?”
He bumbled through poetic, grandiloquent, rambling answers that he could see from her expression she found less than convincing, but as he talked the confusion on her face disappeared and a kind of respectful boredom settled in.
Obediently, she went into each tent of mans, roused them, and they all came out, whereupon they lined up in order to be told what the oafs required of them so early in the morning.
Was the food wagon again to be delayed? Were they all to be eaten? What a grand meal that would be, for every tent had been emptied and every man assembled.
And is that snow on the ground? But it is not even the season. Wait! That’s not snow, though it shines as white. It is the gleam of blades reflecting the light of the moon, blades so unlike the dull gray tools used in the mines. Blades for labor, no doubt. But labor of what kind?
And just what is this thing called war that Red Man told us about when she roused us from our needful slumber?
They waited quietly as they had been trained by the cudgel and the lash to do.
“War,” said the wide oaf in the jangling tunic, “is where you’re going today, because the army said why not use talking mans as soldiers? Why not use them to fill the gaps where soldiers who are dead used to be? They can take orders. They can hold a sword.”
That made sense to the boss, and he nudged his female man, who was standing at his elbow. “Isn’t that true?”
“Yes. We can certainly take orders,” she said.
It took a few minutes of blows to the head and kicks to the gut, but the wide oaf finally taught them to stand at attention. Other oafs passed through the columns of mans and draped over each small body a tunic of brass, which clattered and tinkled musically when the man moved about in it. There was wonder in the eyes of the mans as they looked at the symbol on the breastplate.
The boss draped a tunic over his female man, and she said, “What is this black star?”
The boss silenced her with a finger. “Shhh. Listen to him.”
“That,” the wide oaf announced to all, “is your standard. Your standard is how you know what side you’re on. In war, you can’t go in there and chop just anybody. The goal of war is to go in there and chop anybody not wearing your standard. Now look at that standard. Anybody not wearing that standard, you chop him, and be he oaf or be he man, you chop him good.”
Each man looked at the standard. It was a black eight-pointed star on a scarlet background.