The gaunt man, in the mask, turned away from the girl bound in the moonlight, tied over the altar, and pulled Hamilton behind him, making his way across the furrows, to the grass on the other side of the fields.
The girl on the altar was not a despised person, or a lowly one, saving that she was female, and thus fit for sacrifice. She was the prize of the village. Only the most beautiful, the highest born, would be dared to be offered to the moon or the gods.
Hamilton knew, with mixed feelings, that she was safe from such a fate. She, a despised slave, would not be deemed fit for such sacrifice.
On the other side of the fields, the gaunt man thrust Hamilton down to her belly in the grass, and then knelt across her legs. Even if she cried out she was too far from the village to be heard. She felt the man’s fingers fumbling at the small of her back, in the moonlight undoing the knots. He did not cut the thongs. She realized then that he would, when finished, replace the wooden device. It would be as though nothing had happened. She wondered how often he would come for her, ordering her from the kennel, in the darkness. She lay on her belly, her cheek on the grass; she clutched at the stalks of grass with her small hands; she felt the knots undone; with his fingers he pulled at the device; she felt it slip free. He rolled her on her back; she, opened, breasts, belly, face bared, an exposed slave, looked up at him; he crouched over her; the moonlight streamed down upon her slave nudity; the bronze mask, horned, hideously painted, leaned toward her. She screamed; the body fell forward, struck with great force, the mask lost in the grass.
Hamilton scrambled to a position half crouching, half kneeling, her hands on the grass. Then she knelt, aghast, covering her body as best she could with her hands.
The young man was half crouched down, his hands still on the handle of the bronze ax, the head of the ax buried in the skull and brain of the tall, gaunt man.
Then, with his foot, pressing, and pulling upward, he freed the ax. He stood there, looking at Hamilton.
He was white-faced.
He turned the body on its back. The sightless eyes stared like glass at the moon. The face, Hamilton saw, was mediocre, but ugly; there was something sly about it; without the mask, it seemed not so much forbidding and powerful, as sly and weak, mediocre and vicious. It was the face of a man who had found a way to live, but not by hunting, not by digging.
Hamilton cried out. Two figures emerged from the darkness. Even in the darkness she knew with what sort of men they dealt. They had appeared as if from nowhere, lithe, silent, swift, powerful, menacingly purposive, armed. “Run!” she cried to the young man. “Run!” The strangers had appeared from downwind. They did not speak. The young man, so foolish, lifted the ax. “They are men!” she wept. “You are a boy! Run! Run!” But he was determined to defend her. “Run!” she cried. “Run!” She watched him struck to his knees, and then to his belly. He lay, his head broken, in the grass. “No,” she wept. She was scarcely conscious of the leather strap being tied about her throat. She saw the head of a weasel tied at the belt of the man who secured her. By the strap, his fist six inches from her neck, half choking, she was jerked to her feet. In the distance, across the barley fields, she saw the sky glowing; the compound was being fired. She could see, here and there, a tiny figure, dark against the flames, running. The two men made their way across the barley fields – Hamilton, given some two feet of leash, was pulled behind them. On the other side of the field, they saw some two or three villagers running, but none successfully fled their pursuers; two older women, were struck down before they reached the fields; the other, a man, reached the edge of the fields; it was there where, from behind, the ax, with its head of stone, lashed to the yard-long handle, caught him. Another hunter, carrying a torch, came behind them. Another appeared to Hamilton’s left, he, too with a torch. They dipped the torch to the young barley. Hamilton’s captors made directly for the stone altar in the center of the field. They had well reconnoitered the area. Their strike had been well planned. The barley now, at two edges of the field, was blazing. Hamilton had little doubt that the Dirt People were encircled, and that the circle, like the strings on a trap, was now, the first strike made, to scatter the villagers and destroy the center of their strength, drawing shut. Hamilton’s captors stopped beside the stone altar. They looked down on the girl, on her back, arched across the stone, stripped, tied, on the helpless, virginal delicacies of her body, with the relish of hunters. About them the barley blazed. The girl, bound, looked at them wildly, piteously. Then, to Hamilton’s amazement the virgin, the prize of the village, the intended sacrifice, bound on the altar, her eyes imploring, lifted her hips to Hamilton’s captors. They regarded her eyes, desperate, the sweet, delicate, supplicatory arch of her body. Her eyes, her body, begged piteously to be freed of the stone; her eyes, her body, begged piteously to be permitted to serve them on any terms which they might please. One of them lifted his stone ax, as though to crush her face against the stone. She writhed, screaming, in the light of the flaming barley; he held the ax poised, and grinned, then lowered it; she almost fainted; then, again, desperately, eyes piteous, whimpering, she lifted her hips, begging, to them. They laughed. Each in turn, swiftly, brutally, took her. She threw her head back, screaming with agony and elation; she was jolted viciously, mercilessly, in the bonds; when they had taken their sport, and blood lay on her thighs and the stone, her head, and her shoulders, were back, hanging over the edge of the stone. Flames leapt about the altar. The girl, in her bonds, looked at them, turning her head piteously; were they pleased enough with her? To her joy a thong was knotted about her neck and, with the sacrificial knife, she was cut free of the altar. She was dragged through the flaming barley on her tether, beside Hamilton; she laughed with pleasure; she was alive; she, naked, leather on her throat, regarded Hamilton, unashamed, her face transfused with a brazen joy; she again laughed, putting her head back, screaming with pleasure; she was alive, alive!