Page 121 of Warrior of the Wild
But one figure breaks through the crowd.
“She’s injured. Everyone back off!” Irrenia nudges bodies away with her shoulders in her haste to get to me.
She opens a bag of supplies and starts prodding at the bones in my right hand. People from all villages rush around us, eager to kick at or spit on the god’s body.
“Silence!” A voice breaks through the ruckus, and I recognize the leader of the Mallimer village from the clearing—the one who supplied Peruxolo with a girl once a year for sacrificing.
Those closest to us still, but excitement is tangible in the air, nevertheless.
“I recognize him,” the village leader says. “That’s Cadmael. He was banished fifteen years ago for failing his warrior trial.”
“Yes,” I say. Though I didn’t know the man’s name or where he came from, I did know he was a mortal man. “This is who you’ve been giving your Payment to each year.”
“No,” he says. “I’ve been paying tribute to Peruxolo for over thirty years, and Cadmael has only been banished for fifteen.”
“Peruxolo is just a name. My guess is that over the years, the mantle has been passed down from one banished man from the villages to another so he can collect tribute and silently punish the village that sent him to die in the first place. They’ve been at it for centuries, which is why the tale of Peruxolo goes back so far.”
“No!” the leader says more emphatically. “We sacrifice a girl every year for his blessing.”
“No,” I say, deadpan. “You send a girl to be raped and tortured by a man to satisfy his whims year after year.”
Women nearby start wailing. Mothers of those girls who were sacrificed.
“No,” he says again.
“Naftali,” Father says. “Stop arguing and let her speak.”
“He’s killed entire villages!” the leader, Naftali, says. “Without even showing his face! How do you explain that?”
Father turns to me. Irrenia wraps my fingers while I talk.
“Poison,” I answer. “I’ve been to the seam in the mountain where this man lived. There were barrels of iron fragments. All he had to do was drop them into a well, and the whole village would die.”
“And all his powers?” Father asks.
“All simple uses of lodestones. He’s found those that react strongly with one another in the wild. He has metal buried in the ground and strapped to his feet to make it look as though he can fly. There’s a sheet of iron nailed to that tree.” I point to where my ax still rests in midair.
There’s nothing but contemplative looks from the village leaders now.
That resignation, their failure to acknowledge their guilt—it infuriates me. I rip my hand out of Irrenia’s and stand.
“This is all your fault. The stupid mattugrs prove nothing. All they did was make those banished hate you enough to starve you, to hurt your women, to place burdens on your backs for revenge. You have no one to blame but yourselves.”
“Rasmira,” Irrenia says as a warning. These men all hold my fate in their hands, and I don’t care one bit. I survived the wild. I survived a god. And whatever else they decide to do to me next, I will survive that, too.
“Perhaps,” my father finally says. “But we haveyouto thank for our salvation.”
Father reaches down and hoists me onto one of his shoulders. I nearly lose my balance, because I’m unprepared for the movement. “All hail Rasmira Bendrauggo, God Killer!”
Deafening noise engulfs me. I know Father tacked on my surname so he would receive recognition, so all would know it was his daughter that slew the man who terrorized all the villages.
And for once, I don’t care.
I feel whole.
EVERYONE GOES HOME TOtheir villages afterward. And Peruxolo—Cadmael? The leaders decide to leave him right where he is. For the ziken to feed on, just as he’d doomed the previous leader of Restin. An order, I now realize, Cadmael gave to hide the metallic triangle he used to kill him.
It’s difficult dragging myself away from the crowd. Shouts of “God Killer” follow me all the way from the Payment site to the village. People swarm me, want to talk to me, want to offer compliments up to the goddess on my behalf, thank me for killing the false god.
