The oafs backed away, and listened enchanted as the female man played their songs.
But her heart mourned. Auutet. Auutet. You shall unsheathe your blade nevermore.
In the early morning when it was still black, the oaf called Gen’rl would awaken and demand a song, and she would play.
She would be seated on his cot beside him, and he would feed her grains and pet her head as she played. He would nod his head, or mouth the words if it were a song he knew. “My children are going to love her,” he would say.
The other oafs would utter their agreement.
Then he would rise from the cot, and with the assistance of the obsequious, low-ranking officer, don his tunic. The standard of the scarlet star on black was larger on his tunic than it was on the tunics of all the others, for he was their leader.
And Luf’tnt Auutet, whoever he was, never did appear with his blade unsheathed to speak with him about it.
At the completion of his early-morning toilet, he would go to the table with the other officers to gaze at the map and discuss the war, which was not progressing as swiftly or as well as they had hoped it would.
On the fourth day he said to the other officers gathered around the table, “We didn’t see that one coming. It was quite unexpected indeed. They are scoundrels to have developed a counterattack such as that! But we proved our courage, I tell you. We took their best. They will never see a day like that again. We will seize the moment from them. We will dump them back on their haunches. We will beat them into submission, for our cause is the right and just cause and the words of great scripture our guide. Curses to the great leader!”
Then he announced that it was time to go check on the war, and he prayed: “Oh great creator, protect us as we do your will. And if we fall in battle, remember us evermore in your kingdom to come.”
And they said, “Verily in your name!”
And he said, “Verily in your name!”
And he left the cave accompanied by his officers. From outside the cave came a great jangling of brass as the host of oafs trudged away. They were going to meet the war and would not return until the end of day.
She remained in the cave with the other captive mans. They were watched over by the one-eyed oaf, who turned out to be friendly and talkative.
And they were watched over by the one with three teeth in his mouth, who would occasionally eat one of them — but not her because she belonged to the one called Gen’rl, though now and again he would give her face a spit’ly lick to get the taste of her.
The one with three teeth in his mouth had a large appetite, a large belly, and a bad smell. He never strayed too far from his cooking instruments and the roasting spit. He always seemed to have a charred leg of man in his hand that he was nibbling on.
On that fourth day, while the one with three teeth in his mouth was salivating as he slowly turned a man roasting on the spit and the one-eyed one told him funny stories about his wife and children back home, she played the small singing harp to entertain them. She heard a whispered voice behind her: “Where can a man who has lost his way find a plate of food?”
Her fingers continued to glide over the strings, but she turned and saw a man.
He was a funny-looking man. He was a talking man, of course, but unlike any she had ever seen before. He was not wearing a brass tunic with a standard on it. He was not wearing colored cloths in his hair or a pouch around his loins. He was not wearing the long gray shirt of the mines. He was dressed like an oaf, in a shirt and pants.
He had shoes on his feet.
She did not know that they made shoes small enough to fit mans. She spent her formative years in a wealthy home and had never seen a man in shoes. Even the mans dressed as oafs for amusement at circuses never wore shoes. She kept looking at his feet. It was too much. She felt herself laughing and suppressed it, never missing a beat in the song she played.
“Well, Red,” the man whispered, “where can I find a plate of food?”
Using her hips, she nudged her bowl to him.
He said, “Now that’s a right friendly gesture.”
The little man man came out from the shadows of the wall, but was careful to remain shielded by her body from the oafs in the cave. He quickly reached into her bowl, grabbed a handful of grains, and stuffed it in his mouth.
As he chewed, he said, “It’s not much, but it will have to do.”
She whispered, “Why are you here, little man?”
He leaned close to her ear. “I’m looking for loot. These fellows in here are loaded with silver.”
“Money? Yes,” she said, “the one called Gen’rl has some in his bag he keeps under his cot. I don’t think the rest of them have anything. They’re very poor. This is a war of the poor. But the one called Gen’rl is wealthy, though he leads the poor.”
“And would you be so kind as to direct me to his cot?”
“You will get yourself killed,” she warned. “You and your man shoes.”
He had a sly look on his face. “You like my shoes?”
“They’re funny,” she said.
“Just point me to the cot of the wealthy one, and I will find a pair of shoes to fit even your feet.”
“I wouldn’t wear such obscene things.”
“Point me to the cot then.”
“Be careful.”
“Point, Red, just point!”
“I’m sitting on it.”
He dove under the cot. She heard jangling and became worried, but none of the oafs seemed to have heard it. None of the ailing ones stirred. The one-eyed one kept on talking, and the three-toothed one kept on turning the blackened corpse on the spit. The little man came back up from under the bed with a big grin on his face and pockets bulging with silver that jangled as he walked back into the shadows of the cave and then vanished from her sight.
Later, when the friendly one had finished talking, she rested the small singing harp on the cot and went to the back of the cave to investigate.
There was a low opening in the cave wall. It looked too small for her to squeeze through unless she got down on her face and completely flattened her body against the ground. But the funny-looking man was thinner than she was. He looked like a hungry one. And his master had taught him to steal. He was the man of a sneak thief. She had never met one of those before. She had grown up in the house of the wealthy and then in the house of the poor, but they were honest poor. And clean, not like these filthy oafs.
It has always been said that the quality of the oaf is reflected in the quality of his mans.
When the one called Gen’rl came back from the war that evening, he was in a dark mood and he demanded song.
So were they all in a dark mood, for it had not gone well for them that day.
They grabbed the mans that were bound by rope, about fifty of them, and swung their heads against the walls or crushed them with rocks or smashed them with clubs as the female man played their favorite songs, and then they did devour them.
She had no real love for these mans that they were devouring. She had never become friendly with them because most of them were weaklings who always cried to be returned to their masters when the work in the mines became too hard — but the smell of their blood made her head swing.
She missed a few beats in her song, which made the oafs gurgle with blood in their laughter. When they opened their mouths she saw pulverized skulls. When they closed their mouths their lips were red and glistening with viscera.
After he had eaten his fill, the one called Gen’rl came to the cot and looked at her with a dangerous fever, and she played the anthem for him over and over again until he calmed himself and fell asleep: “Justice vision, Justice true, fair to the unfair, Justice bleed…”