Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

“How long have you been here, Riba?”

For a moment she seemed not to have heard Vague Henri, then she looked at him as if trying to bring him into focus.

“I’ve been here for five years.” The boys looked at each other in astonishment.

“But why are you here?” said Kleist.

“We came here to learn to be brides,” she said. “But they lied. He killed Lena, that man, and he would have killed me. Why?” It was a bewildered appeal. “Why would anyone do that?”

“We don’t know,” said Kleist. “We don’t know anything about you. We had no idea you existed.”

“Start from the beginning,” said Vague Henri. “Tell us how you came here, where you’re from.”

“Take your time,” said Kleist. “We have plenty of it.”

“He’s coming back for us, isn’t he, that other one?”

“His name is Cale.”

“He’s coming back for us.”

“Yes,” said Vague Henri. “But it might be a long wait.”

“I don’t want to wait here,” she said, furious. “It’s cold and dark and horrible. I won’t!”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Let me out-now-or I’ll scream.”

It was not that Kleist had no idea how to treat a member of the opposite sex, it was that he had no idea how to deal with anyone behaving in such an emotional way. Expressing uncontrolled anger usually meant a visit to Ginky’s Field and a three-foot hole. Kleist raised his arm to shut her up, but Henri pulled him back.

“You have to be quiet,” he told Riba. “Cale will come back and we’ll take you somewhere safe. But if they hear us, then we are dead things. You must understand.”

She stared at him for a moment, looking as if madness itself were whispering in her ear. Then she nodded her head.

“Tell us where you came from, and as much as you know about why you’re here.”

In her great agitation, Riba had stood upright, a tall and shapely girl, if plump. She sat down again and took a deep breath to calm herself.

“Mother Teresa bought me in the serf market in Memphis when I was ten. She bought Lena as well.”

“You’re a slave?” said Kleist.

“No,” said the girl at once, ashamed and indignant. “Mother Teresa told us we were free and we could leave whenever we wanted.”

Kleist laughed. “Why didn’t you, then?”

“Because she was kind to us and gave us presents and pampered us like cats, and fed us wonderful food and many rich things and taught us how to be brides and told us that when we were ready we would have a rich knight in shining armor who would love us and take care of us forever.” She stopped, almost breathless, as if what she was saying were actually happening and the horrors of the last day just a dream. That she stopped was just as well, because very little of it made sense to the boys.

Vague Henri turned to Kleist. “I don’t understand. It’s against the faith to own slaves.”

“None of this makes sense. Why would the Redeemers buy a girl and do all these things for her and then start to butcher them like-”

“Be quiet!” Vague Henri looked at the girl, but she was lost in her own world for the moment. Kleist sighed with irritation. Vague Henri pulled him away and lowered his voice. “How would you feel if it was you who had to watch that happening to someone you’d been with for five years?”

“I’d thank my lucky stars that there was a half-wit around like Cale to rescue me. You need,” he added, “to spend more time worrying about us and less about the girl. What’s she to us or we to her? God knows we all get what’s coming to us, no need to go looking for it.”

“What’s done is done.”

“But it isn’t done, is it?”

As this was true, Vague Henri lapsed into silence for a moment.

“Why would the Redeemers, of all people,” he said at last in a whisper, “bring someone who was the devil’s playground into the Sanctuary, feed them, care for them, tell them wonderful lies and then cut them into pieces while they were still alive?”

“Because they’re bastards,” said Kleist sullenly. But he was no fool and the question interested him. “Why have they increased the numbers of acolytes by five, maybe even ten times as much?” Then he swore and sat down. “Tell me something, Henri.”

“What?”

“If we knew the answer-would you feel better or worse?” And with that, he shut up for good.

Cale was urinating over the edge of one of the Scabland hillocks that had half-collapsed. The screaming yelp of the dogs was close and continuous now. He finished and hoped that the smell would attract them away from his true line for a few minutes. His breathing was labored, despite the rest, his thighs heavy and beginning to drag him down. By his calculations from the map he had found in Redeemer Bosco’s bureau, he should have been at the oasis already. But there was still no sign, just the hillocks and rocks and sand stretching as far as he could see. It was now that he faced the possibility that he had carried with him since the moment he found the map-that it was a trap set for him by the Lord Militant.

There was no point in pacing himself now; the dogs would be on him in a few minutes. That there had been no letup in their noise meant that they had missed or ignored the smell of his urine. He ran as fast as he could now, although he was too exhausted after four hours to increase his speed by much.

Now the dogs were baying fit to kill, and Cale was beginning to slow as he knew that he could never outrun them. His breath rasped as if sand were being scraped inside his lungs, and he began to stumble. Then he fell.

He was on his feet in an instant, but the fall had made him look at his surroundings. Still the same hillocks and rocks, but now the sand had lanky weeds and grass in clumps. Where there was grass, there was water. Immediately there was a surge in the howls of the dogs as if they had been lashed with a nailed whip. Cale raced off in search of the oasis, hoping to God he was heading for it and not just skirting its edge and heading only for more desert and death.

But the grass and weeds became thicker, and as he leapt over a ridge and nearly took a fall, there in front of him on the other side was the Voynich oasis. The dogs were screaming now as they sensed their hunt was over. Cale ran on, stumbling as his body began to rebel. He knew not to look back, but he couldn’t help himself. The hounds were pouring over the lip of the ridge like coals from a sack, yelping and howling and screaming in their desperation to tear him apart, getting in each other’s way and snarling and biting.

He scrambled on as the dogs bounded toward him, all hunched shoulders and teeth. Then he was into the first few trees of the oasis. One of the dogs, faster and more vicious than the others, was already on him. The creature knew its task and clipped Cale’s heel with its front paw, throwing Cale off balance and sending him sprawling.

That should have been that-but, too eager for its prey, the dog had overbalanced as well. Unused to the damper and looser surface of the oasis, it could find no grip and went headlong, tail over head, and crashed into a tree, fetching a hefty wallop to its spine. It screamed in rage, but its desperation to get to its feet only made things worse, as it scrabbled to gain a purchase on the unstable ground. Cale ran toward the lake at the center of the oasis and was already fifteen yards ahead before the animal was on its feet and after him. But it would not be a long chase at four times the speed of the exhausted boy. Quickly the dog gained and was about to leap when Cale leapt before him, a long arc in the air and then a huge splash as he hit the surface of the lake.

A scream of rage from the dog as it stopped shy of the edge. Then another dog found him, and another, all of them baying at him with a sound like the end of the world-hatred and fury and hunger.