Chapter 18

I did not wake before sunrise the next morning, and in fact I barely made it out before noon. It was a good thing I'd left the other half of the antibiotic with the healing woman and asked her to give Shaton half of it after about six hours, and the other half six hours later.

My mates were not with me when I woke and I wouldn't have expected them to be. I dressed and made my way outside and toward the central fire. I hoped food could appear from somewhere soon. It did.

It was nearly as if Shaeta and Katia had been waiting and watching the hut to see when I'd come out. They had a bowl of food ready for me before I could even get seated in our normal spot. I thanked them and started eating, and I'm pretty sure my table manners, or bowl manners, were not the best.

"How is Zakat?" I asked, after I'd stuffed it all in.

"He looks much better this morning than he did last night. He doesn't even seem very weak," Katia said.

"Are you sure he was as sick as you thought?" Shaeta asked.

"Yes, the medicine we took from my trunk is very powerful. I'm sure it is what is helping him. He was not doing very well even though the other healing woman did her best," I said.

"There is another healing woman?"

"There was one being held captive by the men that attacked us. I'm sure that Zakat would have died if she hadn't helped him as soon as we found her," I said.

It was only a beginning on the explaining I was going to have to do and I knew it. I didn't blame them a bit because I knew that this type of thing just didn't happen very often. I cheated though and told them about the two men that fucked each other, and that sent them to their mothers right away, leaving me in peace for a while.

They weren't gone very long though, and they returned with their mothers in only a few minutes. I was surprised that most of the questions were about the two men lovers, and I was pretty glad I didn't know much about them.

"You will just have to wait until the women get here. That reminds me of something I'm wondering about. Will we take the women in?" I asked.

"If they want to stay with us of course we will. Didn't you say that these attackers killed all their men?" Caloe asked.

"Yes. One of the women told me they even killed all the boys, down to the youngest."

"I don't understand how any man could do such," Caloe said.

"I think they were confused by the one they called their Zakat. He was not really a Zakat though because they didn't have a real Calak. How can you call it a Calak if the women have to be held against their will?" I asked.

"You can't. That was no Calak, and the women they were holding knew it I'm sure," Shata said.

"But this leader they had, what makes you think he caused it all?" Caloe asked.

"He was easily big enough to have made his way into a Calak if he'd tried. He was either rejected when he tried or he never tried. He was a dangerous man though. I am glad he is dead," I said.

"It is better. They can worry about him in the next world," Caloe said.

"I don't think they will worry about him much," I said.

"Why do you say that?"

"I took his hands and feet before I sent him off. I cut them off with my saw and we burned them after he died. The only thing I see him doing in the next world is begging," I said.

"It is good enough for him. I hope he has a long life there," Shata said, and Caloe seemed to agree, but I could tell that she was disturbed by it.

That wasn't the end of the powwow though. Caloe had a lot more questions for me. Many of them I couldn't answer because I just didn't know. She asked so much about the ways of the faux Calak and its leader that I couldn't tell her. I knew it was frustrating for her, since I knew that she would be the one deciding on the fate of our former attackers.

On the face of it things would seem simple, but they weren't really. These were not grown men, even if they were larger than most grown men I'd ever met. Their ages probably ran from sixteen to nineteen. Old enough to leave their birth Calak but only coming old enough to try to join another one, and certainly not old enough to know better.

Kaglao was older. I don't know how old and probably we'd never know, but he was old enough and smart enough to sucker the young men he ran across into joining his Calak that wasn't a Calak.

In a way I felt sorry for them. They were turned out to make their own way and suckered in by Kaglao. He must have seemed knowledgeable and no doubt he had a strong personality. The trouble was, he was a piece of shit. On one hand it was hard to blame the young men he gathered to him, but in another way it didn't matter.

The knowledge couldn't be unlearned now. Growing up is a process, and when you learn something that makes it easier for you, you're likely to fall back on it later if need arises. They had learned to kill and take. Could we teach them that type behavior was wrong, and insure they wouldn't backslide? I doubted it but thought we should try. Not because I felt that they had some mystical right to live. That's horseshit.

Every life is not precious; in fact, babies are pretty damned easy to come by, and with a little organization they're easily raised. I know the mothers don't think like that but it's the damned truth. On the world I came from there were a hell of a lot more people than it could safely support and the numbers were growing all the time. If I didn't think I could drive the shit Kaglao put in these heads out, I'd shoot every fucking one of them myself.

That didn't mean they couldn't be useful, and if they lived they were going to be useful. I didn't intend to make slaves of them, but I was going to end up in charge of them and they were going to do things I wanted done, if they got to live.

Caloe and Shata finally decided they had all the information that I had, and they left me in peace. I was glad about it. I didn't mind telling them what I knew but I didn't know enough about it to matter. They kept coming up with questions that I couldn't answer and there was no point in my helping them speculate.

Going over to where Denac was still guarding the attackers, I decided that there was no sense in letting them sit on their asses all day. We were going to have to feed them, for a while anyway, and we might as well get something out of it.

"Denac, do you think the two of us can keep control of them if we take them to the burned out place to make them work?" I asked him.

"I don't see why not, they haven't been causing any trouble," he said, and damned if one of them, the one I'd made tell me Kaglao name, didn't open his mouth and prove Denac wrong.

"We are not going to work unless you let us join the Calak," he said, in a defiant voice that made me wonder where he'd found the courage.

I shot him in the abdomen as soon as I could get the Glock out.

"You just couldn't wait to see what it feels like when the Glock stings your belly, could you. Are you happy now that you know?"

He didn't seem very happy. He had a hand over the entrance wound and was screaming as loud as he could stand to. I asked Denac to keep an eye on the others while I went to my trunk, where I fetched one of my few plastic ties.

He was still screaming when I got back and by now there was a crowed around him, a crowd from our camp.

"What has happened?" Caloe asked, when I got back.

"That one," I said, pointing out the obvious culprit, "decided he didn't want to live much longer. He said that he was not going to work unless we let him join the Calak. There is no need for us to feed him and let him live if he isn't going to work."

"I can see the sense in that," Caloe said, and seemed to realize that the rest of the show was for the benefit of the prisoners left alive.

I went over to the howling one, slit his trouser's waist cord and then pulled them off him, leaving him naked below the waist. Of course this brought another question from Caloe and I was glad to have it.

"What are you doing now?" she asked.

"Matatu warned every one of them that they would be leaving this world without their hands, feet, eyes, or manhood if they caused more trouble. It seems that they think our Matatu was not telling them the truth, as if that were even possible," I said, and then looped the tie around the base of his penis and top of his scrotum, pulling it as tight as I could.

"I have to do it this way so he won't bleed to death before I am done," I said.

"Very well. If Matatu has spoken we must not fail to keep his word for him," she said, and then left.

I kept hoping that this would get nauseating for me, but as I'd feared, it wasn't as bad as last time, even though I had the additional gruesome tasks. At least Denac helped me with the hands and feet, and his way was better.

After I'd removed the balls and dick, I stabbed his eyeballs. They were harder to penetrate than you'd have thought, or they were harder than I thought they'd be anyway.

Denac was sure he didn't need to tie off the hands and feet to keep him from bleeding to death before it was finished. He used his axe, which was the biggest one I'd seen here so far. It took him one stroke each for the offending appendages and he was done. It was probably easier on the patient too. At least he died a lot faster.