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fever victim, tearing pain from each shattered limb. He tried to shout, and to
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raise his head to see, but all there was was noise and dust. His insides felt
worse; skin taut over his belly.
Then he was upright again, and the village was beneath him. It was small,
there were some tents, some wicker and clay dwellings and some holes into the
ground.
Semi-arid; an indeterminate scrub - stamped down inside the perimeter of the
village - vanished quickly beyond it, into a yellow-glowing mist. The sun was
just visible, low down. He couldn't work out if it was dawn or dusk.
What he really saw were the people. They were all in front of him; he was up
on a mound, the frame tied to two large stakes, and the people were beneath
him, all on their knees, heads bowed. There were tiny children, their heads
forced down by nearby adults, there were old people held up from collapsing
completely by those around them, and every age in between.
Then in front of him walked three people, the girl and two of the men. The
men, one on either side of the girl, lowered their heads, knelt down quickly
and arose
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Iain M. Banks - Use of Weapons again, and made a sign. The girl did not move,
and her gaze was fixed on a point between his eyes. She was dressed in a
bright red gown now; he could not remember what she had worn before.
One of the men held a large earthenware pot. The other had a long, curved,
broad-
bladed sword.
'Hey,' he croaked. He couldn't manage anything else. The pain was getting very
bad now; being upright didn't do his broken limbs any good at all.
The chanting people seemed to swing about his head; the sunlight dipped and
veered, and the three people in front of him became many, multiplying and
wavering, unsteady in the waste of mist and dust before him.
Where the hell was Culture?
There was a terrible roaring noise in his head, and the diffuse glow in the
midst which was the sun was starting to pulse. The sword glittered to one
side; the earthenware pot gleamed on the other. The girl stood directly in
front of him, and put her hand into his hair, grasping it.
The roaring noise was filling his ears, and he could not tell if he was
shouting and screaming or not. The man to his right raised the sword.
The girl pulled his hair, yanking his head out; he screamed, above the roaring
noise, as his broken bones grated. He stared at the dust at the hem of the
girl's robe.
'You bastards!' he thought, not sure, even then, exactly who he meant.
He managed to scream one syllable. 'El -!'
Then the blade slammed into his neck.
The name died. Everything had ended but it still went on.
There was no pain. The roaring noise was actually quieter. He was looking down
at the village and the crouching people. The view swung; he could still feel
the pull of the roots of his hair straining at the skin on his scalp. He was
swung round.
The slack, headless body dribbled blood down its chest.
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Iain M. Banks - Use of Weapons
That was me! he thought. Me!
He was swung round again; the man with the sword was wiping blood from the
blade with a rag. The man with the earthenware pot was trying not to look into
his staring eyes, and holding the pot out towards him, the lid in his other
hand. So that's what it's for, he thought, feeling somehow stunned into an
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eerie calmness.
Then the roaring noise seemed to gather and start to fade at once. The view
was going red. He wondered how much longer this could go on. How long did a
brain survive without oxygen?
Now I really am two, he thought, remembering, eyes closing.
And he thought of his heart, stopped now, and only then realised, and wanted
to cry but could not, for he had finally lost her. Another name formed in his
kind.
Dar...
The roar split the skies. He felt the girl's grip loosen. The expression on
the face of the youth holding the pot was almost comically fearful. People
looked up from the crowd; the roar became a scream, a blast of air swept dust
into the air and made the girl holding him stagger; a dark shape swung quickly
through the air above the village.
A little late... he heard himself think, slipping away.
There was more noise for a second or two - screams, maybe - and something
whacked into his head, and he was rolling away, dust in his mouth and eyes...
but he was starting to lose interest in all that stuff, and was happy to let
the darkness wash over him. Maybe he was picked up again, later.
But that seemed to happen to somebody else.
When the terrible noise came, and the great, carved black rock landed in the
middle of the village - just after the sky's offering had been separated from
his body and so joined to the air - everybody ran into the thinning mist, to
get away from the screaming light. They gathered, whimpering, at the water
hole.
After only fifty heartbeats, the dark shape appeared above the village again,
rising hazily into the thinner mists near the sky. It did not roar this time,
but moved quickly off with a noise like the wind, and shrank to nothing.
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Iain M. Banks - Use of Weapons
The shaman sent his apprentice back to see how things stood; the quaking youth
disappeared into the mist. He returned safely, and the shaman led the still
terrified people back to the village.
The body of the sky-offering still hung limply on the wooden frame at the
summit of the mound. His head had disappeared.
After much chanting and grinding entrails, spotting shapes in the mists and
three trances, the priest and his apprentice decided it was a good omen, and
yet a warning at the same time. They sacrificed a meat-animal belonging to the
family of the girl who had dropped the sky-offering's head, and put the
beast's head in the earthenware pot instead.
Five
'Dizzy! How the devil are you?' He took her hand and helped her up onto the
wooden pier from the roof of the just-surfaced module. He put his arms round
her.
'Good to see you again!' he laughed. Sma patted his waist, finding herself
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