The drum lures the villagers from their hovels and huts. They congregate before the platform as the guards drag out the latest woman to be convicted. She squints, for the sun undoubtedly pains her after such a long span in a windowless cell. She does not utter a sound, not even as she is guided up the scaffold steps and her head is pressed against the block.

The drummer goes still, and the mob falls silent in anticipation of the Headsman’s song.

The Headsman assumes His stance, adjusts His grip on the handle of His weapon. It is customary for the Headsman’s Trust to avert their gaze out of respect for the condemned, but something, some impelling force, inspires me to lock eyes with the woman on the block. I know the blade will fall at any moment, so I wring every detail I can from the sight of the woman’s wide, lunatic eyes. Her lips are peeled back over her misshapen teeth. She trembles, though not from fear. Her body quakes with silent, mirthful laughter.

Then comes the Headsman’s song: the crisp flit of the axe swinging downwards, the briefest of squawks from the victim before her neck is parted, the muffled thump of the wetted iron edge sinking into the block. The crowd gasps.

Along with its song, decapitation has its scent, one that chokes the air like a swollen cloud. It stinks of copper and mud and yeast.

The head lops forward, like some sluggish creature. It wobbles down into the basket. Wordlessly the Headsman reaches down and grips it by its mane. Like Perseus, He holds this morbid trophy aloft. The drained face has already assumed a ghostly shade of white. Gore dangles from the halved neck like ruby pendants.

Occasionally the heads manage to retain a wisp of their original awareness. The eyes will shift and blink in frantic confusion, the tongue may wriggle as it gropes for speech. However, this does not happen today.

The Headsman drops the spoil back into the basket, pushes it to the edge of the scaffold with His boot.

Like crows, the villagers swoop in to grasp at the carrion. There is arguing and shoving as they slink back into the village in a messy procession. The dripping basket is held above them. Different villages put these ruined heads to different uses. Some give them a burial in alignment with their native faith, others preserve them in brine where they are said to become a divination tool.

What they do with the head is of no concern to me or the Headsman. Our mission is markedly different from this.

A boy named Matthias worms his way to the headless corpse. He holds up a stone bowl to the raining neck.