He marched up to the edge of the zone of death that led to the Free Female quarter. His eye scanned the fortifications ahead. He saw no one, but he knew they were there, watching him. He stood defiantly, contemptuous of them, his hands on his hips.
"Enemies of God!" he shouted, or at least tried to. With his left cheek missing he had trouble with any sound that required lips. Enemies came out sounding like "enaweesh."
"I auw Luther! I auw here on a wission of God!"
An arrow sizzled on a flat trajectory and hit him in the chest. All but the feathers went through him. Luther did not even bother to break it off, nor did he move his hands from his hips.
A Free Female hurried out to the bridge, a torch in her hand. She threw it on the oil which had been spread at the first rumor of Luther's band in Bellinzona. A wall of fire sprang up between Luther and the Quarter. It began consuming the bridge. The woman hurried back to cover.
"A child was vrought to thish blace wany ... sheveral revs ago. God hash need of thish child. God will schwile on she who tells we the whereavouts of thish child. Cuf forward, cuf forward, and resheive God's grashe!"
No one sprang forth to receive any grace. Luther had expected it, but it still enraged him. He began to howl. He shouted obscenities at the burning bridge, he turned in quick circles and stamped his long leg up and down on the planks of the dock. Soon blood was running from his eye and a mixture of spittle and black phlegm from the open side of his face. The front of his cassock darkened near his hips. The power was on him, the power was building. He flung himself to his knees, extended his arms to heaven, and began to sing.
"A whitey for-or-tresh iih our God!
A sword and shield victorious;
He vrakes the cruel offressor's rod
And wins salvation glorious!"
Verse after verse, the tone-deaf Priest shouted the hymn in a fractured, sibilant bass, bellowing when he forgot the words. It was not the words that mattered, anyway, but the Power, and he felt it on him as he had few times since his resurrection. He reached out, remembered the days when he had preached sermons from his pulpit. He had been something of a thunderer in those days, but nothing like he was today. God would be proud of him. Behind him, even the worm-eaten zombies were moved. They whimpered as if trying to sing, their slack tongues hanging from their horrible mouths and wagging as their bodies swayed.
And here she came, a single Free Female, standing and throwing aside her weapon. Her smile was a chaotic rictus, her eyes bright and empty as moonies.
The Free Females were screaming. They had started when Luther began his feculent hymn, and now they redoubled their efforts. They did not scream from fear-though they were all terrified to the depths of their souls-but as a tactic, to drown out the Power. It was a many-throated, astonishing warble, after the manner of Arab women in victory or mourning. Many had jammed cotton or wax into their ears, like Odysseus's crew, to protect themselves. Luther laughed at that. He knew it was a mistake. With their ears plugged they were more vulnerable, as they could not hear the communal shout, the sound of solidarity that was the only real defense against Luther and his kind.
She came forward. An arrow followed her, but the hand that loosed it had trembled too much for it to fly true. It missed, and so did a second. The third sank into her back. She shuddered, but kept walking.
The Free Females were not shooting out of contempt, or because they thought her a traitor. They knew too well the Power of Luther to cloud women's minds. They shot at her because death was the merciful alternative.
"The old evil foe, sworn to work us woe
With dread and craft and wight he arms himself to fight.
On Earth he has no equal!"
She walked into the flames.
Two more arrows hit her. She fell to her hands and knees as her hair went up like dry tinder. She continued to crawl, blackening. She struggled to her feet, hearing nothing, blinded, and a burning board broke under her. She fell backwards and rolled off the bridge into the water.
Luther stopped singing and stood up. He watched, smiling as half a dozen Free Females broke from their hiding places and ran forward, shielding their faces from the heat of the flames and his own awful presence. Several of them made horns at him, which amused him even more. Did they really think sticking out pinkie and index finger would protect them?
They caught their sister's body with a rope and pulled it onto the deck. She still lived, but that was a minor point. Had she been dead, they would have gone for her with even more determination. Now she could die and have a chance to stay dead.
"God will funish you!" Luther shouted, then turned to his troops. "Andrew! John! Thaddeus! Phil ... Judas!" Five zombies stepped forward, including Philip, whose dim awareness had been unable to decide if he, too, had been called. Luther waved him back impatiently. It was always these four when Luther wanted something done, and the reason was not mysterious. The other eight had a b, m, or p in their names. The names of two-thirds of his disciples were unpronounceable tongue-twisters to Luther.
"Advance uffon the unvelievers," he commanded them. "Swite the sinners! 'In flabing fire taking vengeance on they that know not God, and that ovey not the goshpel!' Firsht Thesshalonians! One! Eight through nine! Go, wy discifles!" Luther watched them march into the flames. They were goners, but they would do some damage first. Already they bristled with arrows, which they utterly ignored, as they ignored the fact that they were burning. Since they were already dead, it hardly mattered.
The former Pastor Lundquist turned away from it. He could no longer feel pain, nor anything very much like doubt, but sometimes a feeling crept in that made him grope in the dark much as a man who had been blinded, deafened, and had all four limbs amputated might grope. For one thing, it was annoying to see Judas march away to destruction. This was possibly the twentieth "Judas" he had lost. Something always made him choose the biggest, strongest, least decomposed recruit to be Judas. He didn't know why.
And something else. Try as he might, he couldn't conjure the foggiest recollection of what a Thessalonian was. It was habit that led Luther out of town on the path leading by the old graveyard. He didn't expect to find anything.
He got lucky.
There were six funeral pyres waiting to be lit, and there was even freshly turned soil. Luther's approach had apparently scared off the undertakers before they could torch the corpses. And could it be that someone had actually been buried?
The two things that almost everyone agreed on in Bellinzona were death and insanity. The insane were left alone as long as they were not violent. And the dead were promptly burned. A truce prevailed in the face of death, and the only example of community spirit Bellinzona had ever known showed itself. Everyone cooperated to get the dead to the graveyard, where they were disposed of in ceremonies taken from the Hindus of the Ganges.
It had not always been that way. In a town where ninety percent of the population had no relatives, bodies had been ignored. They might rot for days before someone got so disgusted as to kick them into the water and let them sink.
But then the bodies began to rise again, and climb over the sides of boats and lurk in dark corners. After that, the Vigilantes and Free Females organized burial details.
Burial proved no better. The dead clawed their way out of the graves. Cremation was the only sure answer.