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"Sorry, men," he said, a handkerchief tied around his face to keep him from breathing ash that might be wood, clothing, or human flesh. "The brigade can't march through this."
Brother Mark rode up on muleback to have a look and say a few words over the departed.
"This is their method, men," he told the parties at work moving the bodies. "They talk you into giving up your guns, and without your gun what's to stop them from taking whatever they want? Resistance is a guarantee of dignity and an honorable death."
"Come down here and help pick up these charcoal briquettes that used to be hands and feet," a man said to his coworker. "We can have a nice little talk about dignity."
"Enough of that, there," Patel barked.
Company scouts caught up with a disheveled trio, hobbling bootless up the road toward Kentucky. Glass sent Ford galumphing back to request Valentine's help with them.
They made a pathetic sight. One's eyes were bandaged, as were one's ears, and the third had dried blood caked on his chin.
"We are the blind, deaf, and dumb," the blinded man said. Valentine saw a light band on his finger where a wedding band had been. The Moondaggers certainly weren't above a little theft.
"Testament to ... er-."
The tongueless man tugged on the blinded one's sleeve and said, "Ebbatren ob ah'oolisheh."
"Yes, testament to the foolishness of those who deny the evidence of their senses as to the supremacy of the Ever-living Gods. The Moondaggers did this for the good of others we might meet."
"You were with the Mammoth?" Valentine asked.
The tongueless man gave a groan, and took the deaf man's hand and squeezed it.
"There are only two kinds of people," the deaf man said loudly. "The graced and the fallen.
We are warning to the fallen."
"Cutting them up's not enough," Glass said to a Wolf scout. "Had to take their shoes too.
Cruel I understand, but that's just mean."
The Moondaggers probably wanted to make sure we caught up to them, Valentine thought, just as the Wolf voiced the same sentiment.
"Webb ub uss," the tongueless man said.
"Let us pass," the blinded one said. "We've said our words. Let us pass."
"First tell me what happened," Valentine said.
"Did you not see?" the blind man asked, his voice cracking.
Ediyak wrote something on a sheet of paper and handed it to the deaf man. He read it and looked at Valentine.
"We surrendered. We followed every instruction. They made us cut down trees and smash our guns on the stumps. Then they bound us in a line, and that's when they started working on the cages," the deaf man said, loudly and a little off key. "They laughed as the fires started. I can still hear the laughter."
"Why did they pick you three?" Valentine added on to the end of Ediyak's note.
The deaf man took it and read. "We were chosen because we all knew the Kurian chatechism."
"What's that?" Tikka asked. "I never had much to do with the Church."
Brother Mark cleared his throat.
"Who are they?"
The wise old gods of our childhood.
