Carnifex

7/8/469 AC, The Base, Kashmir Tribal Trust Lands

Bashir looked up from his digging, distracted by the apparition of five bound and bloodied men being led into camp by ropes tied around their necks. He recognized the uniforms, despite the blood, and had a sinking feeling that his sole contact with the foreign infidels had just been lost. With it, quite possibly, his family was also lost.

He managed to keep the despair from his face, to feign mere curiosity. When Noorzad invited all the men excavating to come and witness the punishment, he even managed to look cheerful as he walked over, still carrying a heavy sledge hammer in his hands.

A substantial crowd had gathered by the time Nur al-Deen, Mustafa's lieutenant, emerged from a cave to stand on a rock overlooking the scene. He looked down upon the captives and spat, eloquently. Then he began to speak in Misrani-accented Arabic. The Arabs among the crowd understood perfectly well. The Pashtun and Kashmiris were totally lost, most of them.

"He says their punishment in written in Sura Five of the Koran," one of the men standing near Bashir announced. 'Thus be it to all,' he says, 'who bring disorder to the world, who fight against the Prophet,' peace be upon him."

Bashir was no Islamic or Salafi scholar. He wondered, What punishment is given in Sura Five? Then he remembered the crosses.

* * *

Sevilla had picked up a little Arabic in Sumer, but this accent left him completely baffled. It didn't help any that he was nauseous, suffering from a severe concussion, and that he had multiple bits of metal lodged in his flesh.

Through waves of concussion-induced nausea he looked around at the crowd. They looked dangerously cheerful, though not so cheerful as they became once the ugly old man in the turban standing atop the rock stopped speaking.

Rough hands grabbed Sevilla and the other four remaining and half-dragged and half-carried them to a flat spot by the base of the central massif. Others disappeared into caves, emerging in moments carrying large wooden beams and posts. Injured as he was, it took Sevilla long moments to identify the purpose of the wooden members. As soon as he did, he began to fight, to resist. It did no good, a few tugs on the rope about his neck caused it to choke off blood to his brain for a moment, taking consciousness with the fresh blood.

When he awakened it was to find himself tied hand and foot to a rough wooden cross. Looking left and right he saw that his comrades were likewise tied. He struggled weakly with the bindings and to no better result than to chafe his wrists and ankles.

Looking down across his chest, Sevilla saw someone take a sledge hammer from another. This one walked forward, accompanied by a man holding four silvery-gray, six-inch long spikes and a like number of wooden squares in his hands. The sergeant's struggles with his bindings grew frantic.

Both of the approaching men spat down on Sevilla's face before kneeling next to him. He felt a wooden square against the heel of his left hand. The square grew heavier as a fist holding a spike came to rest upon it. Frantically, he looked away as the hammer rose and fell and . . .

Oh . . . God . . . Blood ran from the sergeant's mouth where he bit halfway through his tongue. A few more agonizing blows finished driving the spike through wood and hand, affixing that arm firmly to the cross member of the crucifix.

Sevilla wished he could faint, but there was no such mercy. He was still conscious as his right arm was likewise pinioned. Mustn't scream . . . mustn't cry out . . . don't give them the satisfaction. Oh, God, help me . . .

He didn't scream, either, until the third spike was driven through his right heel. That's when the crowd began to laugh.

* * *

Bashir was sickened. Thank Allah they didn't make me drive the spikes. This? This, was what I was serving?

Guiltily, Bashir spared a glance at the five men hanging on the crosses. Their arms were raised above forty-five degrees when they hung limp. Obviously this impaired their breathing, for they forced themselves to put weight on their tortured heels every few minutes and gasped in air desperately when they did so.

They'd been up there for hours now, with no sign of an approaching, merciful death. Children clustered around the bases of the crosses, poking the men with sticks and throwing rocks, dirt and shit at them. Women stood a little further off. They threw nothing, just stared and pointed and sometimes laughed when the crucified men wept, as they sometimes did.

"How long?" Bashir asked one of his comrades, pointing to the crosses with his chin.

"Two days," was the answer. "Minimum two days. I've seen them—one of them, anyway—last as long as five."

"We do this often?"

"No . . . not often," answered the other, digging in his ear, casually, for grit. "It's been months, actually. The last one was an infiltrator from the government in Peshtwa. He was young and strong like those. That was the one that lasted five days."