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"I wonder. You have the face of one who has lost a bet. You look like-what is the phrase you swamp-trotting crackers use?-you look like the 'bottom of the barrel.' And not a good barrel at that."
"Where's Captain Nowak? Why hasn't she returned with your terms:" Jolla asked.
As the mouthpiece dipped, Valentine noticed a golden-handled curved blade with an ivory sheath resting in his lap.
"Oh, but she has."
He worked the joystick and swept his chair around the front of the truck, removing the silver serving cover. Nowak's head was spiked, literally on a platter, her insignia, sidearm, personal effects, and identification arranged around her head like a garnish.
"She chose not to let her womb be a nursery of my greatness. As in her arrogance she took the counsel of her head rather than that of her body's blessed womanly nature, we took the liberty of ridding her of its burden."
He swung his chair around, turned the winged leather. Valentine saw gold leaf painted on the exposed wood at the front and tiny Moondagger symbols painted precisely on the nailhead trim. The mouthpiece fixed his eye on Ediyak.
"I trust others will not be so foolish."
"You killed a soldier under a flag of truce?" Jolla said.
The mouthpiece laughed. "What new folly must I expect from men who would have women do their fighting? I made her an honorable proposal of motherhood. Let that be a lesson to you. Do not send women to speak in a man's place again. Besides, she is not dead, just free of the body whose duty she refused in the first place. Tell them, sexless one."
Valentine saw him press a button next to his joystick. Nowak's eyes opened.
"I live," Nowak's head said. "If you want to call it that." Valentine noticed her voice came through the speakers. Clearly Nowak's, though the words sounded forced.
Some of the soldiers backed away. The more ghoulish craned their necks to get a better view.
Nowak's eyes rolled this way and that. "Well, hello, Jolly. You look intact this morning."
Valentine searched for the mechanics of the trickery. You needed lungs, a windpipe, to speak. A head couldn't just talk. This was some bit illusion by a Kurian or one of their agents.
He just wished real-looking blood wasn't slipping out of the corner of Nowak's mouth as she spoke.
"Tell them our terms," the mouthpiece said. "You must remember. I whispered them to you often enough on the ride up as you rode in my lap. First, obedience-"
The eyes in the severed head blinked. "First, obedience to the order to lay down your arms and a solemn pledge to never resist the gods again," Nowak said. "Second, a selection of hostages, one taking the place often in assurance of future good conduct. Third, a return to the squalor of our bandit dens on the other side of the Mississippi, taking only from the countryside such as needed to sustain the retreat."
Her voice broke. "This is your only alternative to horrors and torments everlasting. The grave that gives no rest is my fate, for my willfulness," Nowak's head said, bloody tears running from the corners of her eyes.
The Kurian Order always provided plenty of evidence for your eyes. After a lifetime spent trusting your senses . . .
"You men may save your families by giving up your arms." A faint, low drumming carried up from the town. Must be some massive drums must be to make that deep a noise. "Women, shield your children from Kur's wrath by offering up your bodies to our commanders."
Valentine wondered at that. Was the mouthpiece so used to giving his last-chance speech that he failed to notice he was in a camp full of soldiers?
"Listen to him!" Nowak shrieked.
"You've got a long drive ahead of you, prance, if you want my boy," Cleo Bloom called from the back of the crowd. "He's six hundred miles away."
The chair rose and spun toward the sound. The mouthpiece fixed her with a baleful eye.
"No matter. We'll simply take one from a town between here and Kantuck. We will let the mother know the willfulness, the arrogance, the insolence that demanded his sacrifice."
"Twisting tongue of the evil one, begone!" a commanding voice said in a timbre that matched the amplified speakers. Every head turned, and Brother Mark stepped forward.
Brother Mark stared at the head on the front of the hood and Nowak's features fell still and dead, the eyes dry and empty.
The chair descended again, sweeping forward just a little. The men next to Brother Mark retreated to avoid being knocked over. The two stared at each other, the mouthpiece's hand on the hilt of his dagger. Valentine sidestepped to get nearer to Brother Mark.
"Don't let this one fill your ears with pieties," the mouthpiece said. "He's expecting you to die for a cause. Futility shaped and polished to a brightness that blinds you to the waste.
