He pulled away abruptly and The Which looked at him askance. “But not yet, my queen,” he murmured in explanation. “Sadly, not yet.”

“I am holding on to hope with all my might, Olaf,” she replied, looking longingly into his eyes. “Because of you.”

He nodded slowly, grateful for her faith in him but unable to offer any other assurance. One more kiss, and then they boarded their birduns and departed. Kohl’s masterless birdun watched but didn’t follow. He huffed worriedly, stamped his hooves impatiently, and turned to stare at the ancient building where he last saw his master.

* * *

Everson jerked upright from a dead sleep in the bed of the Manolithic truck. He had been dreaming fitfully of battle and suspected that the pervasive smell of dried blood must have prompted his subconscious. He was still surrounded by a clutter of corpses, none made the fresher from a night in the open. He also realized, with more than a little trepidation, that his bed was no longer moving.

A furtive glance to the front of the truck confirmed that the driver was no longer present. Everson slowly extricated himself from the tangle of dead warmen, no easy task given the stiffness of his bunkmates. He crawled quickly, but gingerly, over the bodies and hazarded a peek over the side of the transport.

Everson’s vehicle was still last in the line of the now parked trucks. Two of the large laborers stood at the open tailgate of the truck in front of him and were nearly finished off-loading the bodies there. The warmen’s corpses were being loaded in handcarts and wheeled toward a large gathering of people who stood in stark silhouette to the rising suns.

Between Everson and the crowd rose a long line of forged metal frames. Everson felt a twinge of sadness and compassion as he realized that the crowd of Manoliths waiting somberly were mourners here to honor their dead. Atop each metal scaffold lay the body of a warman awaiting, Everson could only assume, immolation. At least they were receiving a warrior’s send-off, though it must be little consolation to the widows and children in attendance. At any rate, Everson’s escape definitely did not lie in that direction.

He scurried to the other side of the truck to see what lay behind him. Here he found a meager orchard, vast in area but populated by spindly trees that stretched in long uniform rows away from him for some distance. Lumbersome bodies cast long shadows beneath the skeletal branches, and Everson observed that the laborers were carting barrows of ash from the recently cremated, transporting their loads from the pyres to the orchard, where they spread them on the ground around the trees, ostensibly as fertilizer.

Everson tried to recall if he had ever seen his grandfather Aziz the Cultivator engaging in such a practice. Then again, the soil of Indira was replete with life and did not need to have life imposed upon it, as the barren land of Mano obviously required.