Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

She had never seen a hanged man before. It wasn’t like the movies or TV, where the person still looked like a person, just hanging; the features were distorted, and the body and legs seemed somehow thin and stretched.

That might have something to do with how long they’d been hanging, of course, or with having their guts pulled out. The ale suddenly tasted sour at the thought, and she put her mug down.

She wondered why the three had been hanged; were they murderers? Or rapists, perhaps? Was rape even considered a serious crime here?

Or maybe a crime didn’t need to be serious to merit hanging, here in Shadow’s country. Maybe they were up there because they’d stolen a few apples, or a loaf of bread, or talked back to the local magistrate. Maybe they were hanging there just because Shadow didn’t like them. Had they done anything as serious as Walter and Beth had?

She swallowed, not drinking, but just trying to keep down what she had already drunk.

She had sent Walter and Beth to their deaths at the hands of Imperial troops, and she suddenly found herself imagining the two of them hanging side by side like that, on a gallows, necks twisted, faces discolored, tongues lolling, bodies stretched. She could see just what Walter’s face would have looked like, a parody of what she had seen so often when his features flushed and distorted with anger or lust.

But he was a rapist and a murderer, he had killed that other girl, he had beaten Amy repeatedly. He had known what would happen if the Empire ever caught him. He had brought it on himself; nobody had told him to keep slaves, to rape women, to strangle poor Sheila, whom Amy had never met, whom Amy had replaced. He’d thought he wouldn’t be caught, that he could get away with it forever, but the Empire had come looking for Amy and the other Earthpeople, and she’d told them what Walter had done, and he’d been hanged for it.

Hanged, with his face congested with blood, his tongue swollen and protruding, body limp and lifeless, no longer a human being but just a thing.

Amy shuddered.

That dead thing back on Zeta whatever-it-was had fathered a child on her, too, which only made it worse. What kind of a human being was it who did things like that?

And Beth, who’d been hanged as well, even though she was a slave, the same as Amy had been-the Empire never knew that, had taken Amy’s word for it when she said Beth was guilty, too. Plain quiet Beth, who’d helped Walter abuse Amy, and who had mostly stayed out of Walter’s way the rest of the time. What kind of woman had she been, to help her master, her captor, against another victim?

But then, Amy knew she had heard of such things before. Patty Hearst had helped the SLA, hadn’t she? Amy remembered the name for it, for hostages coming to help their captors-the Stockholm syndrome. It happened all the time.

And it wasn’t new. The Sabine women had sided with the Romans against their own brothers and fathers, hadn’t they? Why should Beth have been any different? Why side with a loser?

Because it was right, Amy answered herself. Because siding with the abuser was wrong, it was evil, it just encouraged more abuse.

Would she ever have helped Walter with someone new? She had resisted-why couldn’t Beth?

But of course, Beth had been there for years, not just weeks. Maybe she had fought at first; maybe she had resisted just as much as Amy had, until it finally sank in that resistance did no good. No Imperial troops came to rescue Beth, the way they had saved Amy. Beth had seen Sheila die for fighting back.

What did it matter, anyway, Amy asked herself. Walter and Beth were both dead, and nothing could bring them back. If Beth hadn’t deserved hanging, it was a little late to worry about it. Beth had given up, and had died for it, and that was too damn bad, but why was Amy worrying about it? So there were three dead men hanging in the town square-nothing could bring them back, either, and what business was it of hers, anyway? She didn’t know anything about it.

She did know that she wouldn’t be staying in this town, though. She wouldn’t stay in a place where those corpses could be left out there. Why hadn’t they been cut down and decently buried?

They were meant as a warning, of course, and as far as Amy was concerned, they’d worked-they’d warned her away from this place, once and for all. Anyone who could stay here would be accepting things like that, would be as bad as Beth.

And, Amy reluctantly realized, the same was probably true of anywhere Shadow ruled. She couldn’t just settle down, not here, not anywhere.

But walking into Shadow’s fortress was suicide, and wasn’t that wrong, too?

There was no way out. There was no right thing to do. She was trapped.

She sipped more ale. She wanted to cry, but fought back the urge-not here, not now, not in this town.

Later she intended to cry, but not now.

* * * *

“What do you suppose they did?” Pel asked, nodding toward the window as he picked at a splinter in the tabletop.

Raven shrugged. “Doubtless they irked Shadow somewise,” he said. “As you’d do, by troubling it in its fortress.”

“You don’t think we should do that, do you?” Pel asked unhappily.

“Nay, I do not,” Raven said.

“But what else can we do?” Pel asked. “It’s our only way home, the only way we can get you your guns, the only chance we have. There are only eleven of us; we can’t fight all Shadow’s monsters and magic by ourselves.”

“Yet that’s just what you attempt, is’t not?”

“No, it isn’t,” Pel insisted. “We aren’t trying to fight them, we’re trying to get past them, to destroy Shadow itself. Like Frodo and the Ring. Or like assassinating Hitler to end World War II.”

Raven shrugged. “These names mean naught to me.”

“Frodo’s from a famous story about a war against an evil magician-a lot like Shadow, from your description.”

“But a mere story?”

Reluctantly, Pel nodded. “But Hitler was real,” he said.

“And was this Hitler assassinated, as you propose?”

“No,” Pel admitted.

Raven said nothing, but his expression was plain for Pel to read. Raven clearly thought both Pel’s examples were silly.

And Pel had to admit that he had a point; this was real life, not Tolkien’s Middle Earth-but then, this wasn’t Earth at all, and the only experiences Pel had ever had with other worlds had been in books and movies, and in all of those, a few brave and determined people could destroy the all-powerful enemy and save the world.

In the real world, nobody had ever assassinated Hitler or Stalin or Napoleon, but how hard had anyone tried? And if he remembered his history right, someone had assassinated Caligula, and who knew how many other tyrants had been destroyed before they had reached Hitler’s level?

Besides, what else was Pel supposed to do?

“Well, what alternative are you offering us?” he demanded. “Just how do you propose to defeat Shadow and send us home?”

“In truth,” Raven said, “I know not. I would have us find shelter, that we might take what time we need in gathering our forces, that we might await whatever opportunity the Goddess might send-for surely, She will not allow Shadow to rule forever, in despite of Her.”

“I don’t believe in your Goddess,” Pel answered. “We have a saying in my world that God helps those who help themselves; those who simply have faith and wait usually wait forever, if you ask me. And if someone does save them, it’s other people who weren’t waiting, not God-or your Goddess, either.”