“Well then,” Donald Farris grumbled, “it seems like that’s more or less settled. I’m going to get us another round. I think we’ve all eaten enough guilt for the–”

He stopped. His jaw dropped.

“Oh no.”

Sasha turned back to the screen to see that the roll of the dead had started to increase again. These men were running too, but most of them weren’t dying to ranged weaponry. They were being grabbed from behind, ripped apart or clubbed to death by something moving far too fast for human eyes to focus on.

“Roland,” Manny said in a dull voice filled with sorrow.

Sasha scanned the faces of her tablemates. Manny looked almost overwhelmed with guilt. His eyes were watery and he just kept shaking his head and muttering to himself. Nana Yazzie’s mouth was closed. Her face looked tight and frozen in horror. Donald Farris was quite clearly furious. His face was so red Sasha worried his heart might give out.

And yet she felt nothing.

That’s weird, isn’t it? Sasha could remember how angry she’d gotten as a girl, when she read some story about anti-Christian brutality in Turkey or Illinois. She remembered being horrified by the executions she’d witnessed. But she could only picture her emotional state in those moments from a great distance, as if she were staring at it through the fogged up lens of a telescope.

Why am I not angry? Why am I not horrified? Her concern over this fact actually generated a stronger emotional reaction than anything happening out on that battlefield.

Sasha stared out at the cameras and the continuing parade of violence. She heard Manny cursing under his breath. She heard Nana Yazzie fight back a sob. But Sasha felt nothing. Save, perhaps, a bit of jealousy.

Roland.

The scene out by the Brazos felt less like a battlefield and more like a playground. This might be the highest I’ve ever been, he thought as he broke a man’s neck with the back of his hand. Bullets whizzed by as a few of the braver soldiers tried to cover the retreat of their comrades. Most of them, even the drivers, had abandoned their transports. Hundreds of men were already wading into the river, tearing off their armor and tossing aside their weapons as they plunged in.

The Heavenly Kingdom’s army would not rally anytime soon.

A Martyr turned and drew his knife in a feeble attempt at resistance. Roland caved in the man’s sternum with a fist and squashed his heart like a junebug. Ten meters ahead he saw three soldiers, preparing to make their stand behind an overturned flatbed truck. As he ran, Roland grabbed a discarded rifle off the ground. A Thompson submachine gun, he realized. It didn’t feel like a reproduction either. Roland brought the gun up to his shoulder–