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to come stalking down the little street, his Silver Bow in hand, deal-ing vengeance right and left against
the desecrators? In the boy's current mental state, some such demonstration seemed a real possibility.
Once again the bandits were laughing at the old man, and now they watched him crawl and slowly regain
his feet and stagger for a while before they clubbed him down again. Even now he was still breathing, but
he no longer tried to raise his head.
Jeremy, on the verge of trance, could no longer hear either the laughter or the breathing.
Blood splashed upon the shrine, making a new noise that did get through. Jeremy's left ear could hear
the liquid spattering, though there were only a few fine drops, striking as gently as soft rain. The tiny
sound they made, much softer than the end-less litany of prayers, so faint it ought not to have been
audible in all the uproar, did not end when the blood had ceased to fly. Rather, it seemed to go on
vibrating, vibrating, endlessly and ominously into the distance.
It blurred into the old droning noise, which even now was only faintly audible. No one else was paying
attention to it as yet, but it was now growing ringingly distinct in Jeremy's left ear.
Looking up, the boy saw that a strange cloud had come into being in the western sky. It was almost too
thin to see, and yet it was thick enough to drag a shadow across the sun.
TWENTY-ONE
Three or four of the girls and young women of the village had been seized by the bandits and dragged
into the com-paratively large central house the raiders were making into a kind of headquarters. Jeremy
and the other hostages who had been stuffed in here for safekeeping could hear the sounds of mumbled
threats, hysteria, and tearing cloth.
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 One of the girls had been somehow selected to be first. Four men were beginning to abuse her, one
kissing her, others' hands being thrust inside her clothing.
One of the young men of the village, who seemed to have a special interest in her, stood looking in a
window and called out in mental anguish: "Fran!"
And the local youth essayed at least a symbolic struggle, as if he would interfere with what was being
done to Fran but when one of the bandits glared at him menacingly and raised a weapon, the young
man fell silent. He turned away and hid his face, and in another moment he had left the window and
van-ished into the street outside.
The girl he was worried about screamed as the bandit leader and two of his cohorts held her down and
forced her legs apart. Again there was the sound of ripping cloth. When the girl con-tinued to struggle
fiercely, one of the men struck her several blows.
Another one of the attackers had brought a jug of honey from the kitchen in the rear of the house and
was pouring it over the victim's exposed body, while others held her arms and legs. The act amused his
comrades greatly, and their laughter roared out.
Arnobius, who had been jammed down beside Jeremy on a kind of couch, with Ferrante on his other
side, was leaning for-ward in a way that put a strain on his bound arms. He kept cursing the bandits, in a
low, savage voice, an effort to which the men were taking no attention at all. Now the brigands began to
take their turns between the young girl's legs.
And all the while, the strange new noise continued its slow growth. Jeremy was intensely conscious of it,
more so than of the atrocities being performed almost literally under his nose. In an-other minute or two,
despite the continued laughter and the screams, the unidentified sound had grown loud enough to force
itself on people's attention. One after another noticed the dron-ing and looked round, puzzled. It was not
really loud not yet but the volume was steadily swelling. And there was a penetrating quality about it
that was soon strong enough to dis-tract even a rapist.
Jeremy was only vaguely aware of the atrocities being per-formed right in front of him. Or of the nagging
pain of his scraped knee and hip, souvenirs of his attempt to run away from Death. Or of the bonds that
painfully constrained his hands and feet. He sat in the place where he had been made to sit, among his
fellow prisoners and sharing their enforced passivity. His bound hands hung in front of him; his eyes were
half-closed. Here under a roof, shaded from the sun, all he would have to work with if he wanted to try
fire making was the indirect sunlight from the windows. Jeremy thought it would probably have taken him
a long time to burn his ropes away. But, in fact, he wasn't even trying to do that. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]