Carnifex

11/2/463 AC, Parade Field, Balboa Base, Ninewa Province, Sumer

Two very unlucky men, not brothers, stood side by side on the carefully maintained and watered, very green parade field in the center of the earthen-walled base. One, a legionary of the Legion del Cid, had been accused and found guilty of raping a Sumeri girl. The other was her brother who had killed her afterwards to expiate the shame. The Sumeri wore a dirty dishdasha. The legionary had on the remnants of a uniform, all the insignia cut away, buttons stripped off, and the man's award for valor, the Cruz de Coraje in Acero, lying in the dirt nearby.

Both men stood on short, unpainted wooden stools, about half a meter high. Around their necks were hemp ropes, tightly wound into nooses and leading to a simple wooden frame with cross piece. Both trembled not so much in fear as in shame. This was going to be a hard and, especially, a shameful death, a kicking, choking, pissing and shitting your pants death, and both knew it.

The legionary's cohort was drawn up in formation before the gallows. Under some tranzitrees, planted for shade, the Sumeri's family elders stood witness as well, as did some of the clan's women. Nobody even thought to touch the beckoning fruit of the tranzitrees. Inviting green on the outside, luscious red within, the fruit of the tranzitree was poisonous to any forms of life with highly developed brains. Still, they provided good shade, were immensely hard to kill, and had pretty flowers.

While Sergeant Major Epolito Martinez, a fireplug-shaped, dark-skinned sergeant major with his hair in a severe buzz cut, harangued the cohort on the wages of sin, Major General Adnan Sada, Army of the Republic of Sumer, had some choice words for the family.

"I have consulted with my brigade chaplain," Sada said, "on the question of honor killing of raped females. Mullah Thaquib informs me—and he is an educated man, an Islamic scholar, who has studied in Yithrab—that there is not one word, not one, to permit or condone such a crime. He tells me that it is unIslamic, that it is murder. As such . . . " Sada turned and nodded to his own sergeant major, Na'ib 'Dabit Bashar, standing not far from Martinez.

"Epolito, time," the Sumeri sergeant major announced. Bashar was tall and rail thin and had but a single eye. He'd lost the other in the fight for Ninewa, facing, among others, Martinez's own cohort. It was just business; Bashar held no grudges.

"And furthermore," finished Martinez, "I'm glad to be hanging this son of a bitch who brought shame on all of us, and I'll be glad to do the same for any of you."

With that Martinez executed a smart about face and marched a few paces to bring himself parallel to the Sumeri. There he halted a few seconds until the Sumeri said, quietly, "Forward . . . march."

"Man, I hate this shit," Bashar said. His Spanish had gotten rather good over the last few years.

"Nothing for it," Martinez answered, "but it makes me sick, too." But I deserve it. Who failed to train you to keep your cock in you pants, boy, who failed to train you not to rape women, if it wasn't me?

At the base of the gallows, both noncoms stopped and placed one foot each on one of the stools. Together they looked toward Sada.

Sada heard one woman begin to wail. He supposed it was the mother who had lost a daughter and was about to lose a son. Nothing for it, he thought. If you have more sons, woman, raise them better.

He turned towards the gallows and raised one hand. When he dropped it both Martinez and Bashar tipped the stools over and backed up. The condemned men dropped less than six inches each. Their feet immediately began to flail in panic. The nooses hardly tightened at first.

It was going to be a very slow hanging.

* * *

Patricio Carrera, aka Patrick Hennessey, Dux of the Legion del Cid, forced himself to watch the hanging from the second floor window of his adobe brick office. Though no one was looking, he kept his face a stony mask, even while the two doomed men struggled and twisted at the end of their ropes.

For the slowly strangling Sumeri who had murdered his own sister Carrera felt no pity. You stupid bastard. I'd have paid recompense money and moved her out of the country, married her off to one of my troops or maybe sent her to school somewhere. Even in your fucked up culture there's such a thing as out of sight, out of mind. You didn't have to kill the girl. And I'd still have hanged the man who raped her.

His own soldier was a different matter, for Carrera loved his Legion and loved the soldiers who composed it. Watching one of his own die slowly and disgracefully hurt.

Carrera sighed. But what choice have I, boy? When one of you rapes a girl he drives up resistance and endangers all the others. And it wasn't like we didn't have whores available for you. There was no excuse. And if I loved you, son, I hate you, too, for what you've made me do to you.

* * *

The definition of a bad death could be said to be one in which two or more deadly factors race at a snail's pace to kill the victim. In this case there were three such factors. While gravity pulled the men down, straining their necks and threatening to break them, the ropes tightened slowly, cutting off air and blood to the brain, even while the combination of impeded blood flow and terror promised eventual cardiac arrest. All this the two men suffered until, finally, the Sumeri's skinny neck gave way. His legs thrashed once, twice, and then he went still except for the unconscious rippling of dying muscles and the steady drip, drip, drip of piss and liquefied shit off still wriggling toes.

The choking and gagging Balboan legionary had a tougher time of it. With his much more muscular neck there was no chance of breakage. Nor did the rope cut off blood to the brain or induce cardiac arrest. Instead, his thrashing and his weight gradually tightened the noose until there was no more passage for air. Only then, and even then not for some time, did he lose consciousness and, finally, die.

* * *

All this Carrera watched, unwilling that he should not witness what he himself ordered, however horrible. Only when it was over, when the doctor in attendance placed his stethoscope to the victims' chests and made the signal that they were dead, did the Dux step away from the window.

Even as he did, he could still hear a Sumeri mother wailing.