Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [142]
The last discovery was the most disturbing: an elderly woman stripped naked, three savage slices running down her torso. She lay in a metal bathtub filled with bloodied water. The stench was overpowering. Todi was sick so he had to leave the room. Again it appeared that some of the bones had been removed from her body, particularly her pelvis and tibia. Her right arm had been totally severed, lying in several pieces that were tossed aside across the room, while her left hand still clung to the rim of the bath, fixed there with ice.
Dartun opened the shutters to allow in some fresher air. The view was of rolling hills in the distance, over which several flocks of birds arced in peaceful flight patterns toward the south, escaping the cold. The air was still as the sun broke through the clouds.
“What d’you make of all this … madness?” Tuung asked, stepping alongside Dartun at the window. There wasn’t a great deal to look at from there, but both men had seen too much inside.
Dartun sighed. “Dark times, my friend. Dark times.”
“What’s caused all this? Why is it happening?”
“I’m beginning to see some shape in these horrors. I suspect that the human population on this island was preyed upon by an alien race of intruders those hunters saw. And they’ve all been rounded up and herded out of this town. Where to and why? Who the hell can say why?”
“It’s all so senseless.” Tuung slapped the windowsill in fury. This was the first time Dartun had seen someone as dogged as Tuung seem so totally frustrated.
Events such as these altered people.
Dartun said, “I suppose that it’s not senseless to them. You’re seeing things from a human-centric perspective. I suspect they don’t think in the same way that you and I would think.”
“I don’t follow you. Are you getting all philosophical again?”
“Listen. Why would they leave the bodies of just the old and the very young?” Dartun said, gesturing at the old woman’s remains.
Tuung shrugged. “I guess they’re the weakest, therefore the easiest to kill? I don’t know.”
“Exactly so,” Dartun replied. “They’re the weakest. The handful of bodies we’ve seen so far have been either young children or the old. Those are the frailest forms of human or rumel. Every corpse has had its bones partially or completely removed. It’s as if they opened them up to examine the bones, and then just discarded the corpses. As if they were not considered good enough.”
“So they’re, what, after our bones or something?”
Dartun snorted a humorless laugh. “That’s a strong possibility. They’ve definitely taken people captive. And appear to be deliberately hunting mankind. Maybe even rumel, too, as we haven’t seen any of them around either.”
“Bloody sick if you ask me,” Tuung muttered.
“That’s life,” Dartun said, “once you look at it from a viewpoint other than our own. They’re just doing what this Empire has done for thousands of years to other cultures, and to other species. Pillaging their worlds for the sake of adding value to our own.” He added: “And we call ourselves an enlightened civilization.”
“It’s all right for you,” Tuung grumbled, running a hand over his head as if to highlight the signs of aging.
The comment, casual though it was, struck Dartun hard as his gaze lingered on the woman’s remains. Death was such a strange phenomenon because everyone went through life hiding from it, fearing it, yet it was the only inevitable outcome. But there was nothing inevitable about the way this woman had died, butchered in her moment of relaxation while lying in a warm bath on a cold day.
Life was never long enough, was it? He understood that better than most.
“Come on,” Dartun said at last, and began to lead them away from the disturbing scene. “We now find the Realm Gates, we investigate my final