The others were already bedded down, although Teodorq sat on his bedding against the wall with his nine in an open scabbard and Goodhandlingblade across his lap. “They seem friendly enough,” Donovan told him.
The Wildman shrugged. “Then I lose a few hours’ sleep before Paulie spells me. I’d rather be cautious and wrong than careless and wrong.”
A bench ran along the inside walls of the longhouse and Donovan sat beside Teodorq. “You know, Teddy, I had my doubts at first; but you’ve been a good man to have. The way you handled those Harp warriors showed good judgment as well as bravery.”
“Yeah. I’m good. It’s what we call counting coup back home. The law of least effort. The real bitch is when yuh have to kill a friend. That’s hard.”
“Yes,” the scarred man said after a moment, “I guess it is. But I know one thing harder.”
“What’s that?”
“Betraying a friend.”
The Wildman thought about that for a while. “But sometimes yuh wind up on the other side. Like Arjuna or Cu Chulainn—the Original Hound from way back when. Then yuh got it to do. I’m gonna hate like hell to kill Paulie. He’s been okay, and that was a good trick, cutting the arrow in midair.”
“I don’t understand. Is it that old blood feud between plainsmen and mountaineers?”
Teodorq shrugged. ‘Yuh best get yer sleep, boss. Big party tomorrow.”
Méarana, too, was wakeful, and Donovan went to stand beside her in the doorway of the longhouse, where the blue star was already perceptibly brighter. “End in sight,” he said.
The harper nodded, but said nothing.
“Afraid what you’ll find?”
She crossed her arms and shivered; and Donovan laid his arm around her shoulders. “Maybe you and I, we’ll complete what she started,” he said.
“I don’t care about old Commonwealth tech. Oh, I suppose it’s important, but…”
“I wasn’t talking about that.”
“Oh.” Méarana leaned against him. “Did you ever want something when you were a child, something you wanted so badly but never had, and you wanted it all the more for not having it?”
Donovan could not remember his childhood; but he said Yes because it sounded right.
“There was nothing special about her leaving, Father. Just a note. ‘Back soon.’ It should have been more. She should have said something more.”
“You never know when it’s the last time. No one ever knows. First times, though. That’s different. You called me ‘Father.’”
She leaned closer. “I was never sure before that I wanted to.”
“You almost did, a couple of times. At first, I was afraid that you would. Later, I was afraid that you wouldn’t.”
“I guess this is the time when I go all warm and gooey.”
Donovan laughed and, unlike the laugh of the scarred man, it was a pleasant one to hear. He kissed her on the forehead, and said, “I told you once that I’d always hoped something good had come out of the Dancer affair. I’m glad something did.”
The Sleuth was shaking him awake. Donovan! Fudir! Brute! We have trouble!
Groggy, he opened his eyes a slit. Red dawn was stealing through the open windows. “What is it?”
The old headman said, “We take our most precious treasures and place them in the Vagina of the World to be consumed by his love.”
That means to be incinerated by the power beam.
“Yeah, yeah. And…?”
Chain assured us that the Oorah consider a guest as their “most precious treasure.”
That means…
“Oh, shit.”
“And exceptionally deep, too,” said the Fudir.
«The door is the only way out of the longhouse. The stairs up through the terraces are a maze. We are seven to several thousand.»
“Will they use force?”
For a god of this sort? Of course.
“Armament?”
Billy and us got dazers, both fully charged. Teddy’s nine. Méarana has a pellet gun, and Sofwari has the needier, if he ain’t lost that, too. Knives, each of us. Méarana has three, two in the baggage. Paulie and Teddy have longswords. Watershanks has a knife, but nothing else.
“And all that against several thousand?”
A hefty fee for the ferryman; but otherwise, not a chance.
Donovan closed his eyes….and sees a young girl in a chiton. “There is a way out of this,” she tells him, and her voice is like a melody.
The headman came shortly after the second morning hour. He was accompanied by flower girls strewing their path with spring petals, by a musician playing a morning rag, and by several very large acolytes.
Méarana told him, through Donovan, that she wished to dedicate her most precious treasure to the god: her harp. Teddy agreed and named his best sword. No one else admitted possessing a most precious treasure—Donovan had one, but he was not about to sacrifice her—but they agreed to accompany their friends down to the pile of offerings. And so, flanked by the flower girls—and the large acolytes—and followed by the musician, all of them singing in harmony, they set off in a procession to the path that led down from the longhouse.
Teddy and Paulie were also singing, in their own languages, a jarring dissonance. What words Donovan caught sounded bawdy, but given how the Oorah had conceptualized the power beam, somehow appropriate.
The musician had an instrument that Donovan knew as a steel guitar, but was known here as an ishtar. He played the rag in alap—slow and improvisational—adding each new note of the scale at the right time. The Pedant reminded him that an alap could meander for hours and the Sleuth wondered if that meant they had lots of time. “We don’t know when he started playing,” the Fudir reminded them.
When they reached the base of the path, the ishtarist upped his tempo to jor and a tabla man walking beside him added rhythm. Donovan told his companion in Gaelactic, “When he ups his tempo again to jhala, things will start to happen, fast.”
Donovan could see the statues of all sixty-three saints. The Sleuth told him that these must be the statues of earlier sacrifices. With each new pass of the god, the oldest-but-one of the statues was retired, melted down, and recast in the image of the latest sacrifice.
Their own children. Sometimes, an elder. No wonder they welcome guests.
“Thank the gods,” said the Fudir, “that she came in the wrong season.”
Bavyo must have known; and so had Chain, but Donovan wasted no breath cursing them. The Emrikii had likely interpreted their eagerness to find Oor as a willingness to be sacrificed. It may have saved an outlying farmstead from a bloody mesa-top raid.
The offering pile was large, but given the size of the ring-village, not terribly so. Donovan was reminded of the sacrifices to Newton he had witnessed, in which a bull was dropped from a leaning tower to smash on the flagstones below or—in more humane settings—was felled by a weight smashing his skull. (It was important only that gravity killed the beast.) The offal and tripe were burned to the god; but the tasty meat—the rump, the flank, the loins—were butchered and distributed to the poor in the temple’s district. So a child of Oor might offer a beloved toy—but one that was worn out after much play.
A mongrel dog had been pegged into the ground by its leash. Seeing the harper’s distress, Teddy turned and cried out for Donovan to translate, “I dedicate this sword, Goodhandlingblade, to the god!” Under his breath, he added, “to the Chooser of the Slain.” Then he tried to stab it into the earth. In doing so, he accidently severed the dog’s leash, and the animal, sensing its freedom, tore immediately from the bowl.