Barzula gave a formless scream as he thudded painfully to the cobbles, and raised his arms as if to protect his face.
"Ta muchly," said the old man, and, taking the now curiously pliable arrow, wound it about the Demon's wrists, binding them tight.
Then the man grabbed hold of the loose skin of Barzula's neck, and dragged him effortlessly around the cart over the cobbles to the stand, up the scratchy, splintery steps of the wooden platform, and across to the first noose. There he deposited him in a heap, gave him a painful kick in his ribs, and turned about and shuffled down the steps and towards the cart again.
DragonStar drew another arrow, and handed it to the old man as he came back around the cart.
In turn, the old man hauled Mot and the Sheol out of the cart, bound their wrists with an arrow, and then dragged them over the cobbles, up onto the platform, and deposited them before each of the remaining two nooses.
And each time he delivered a parting kick to their ribs.
Finally the old man came back down, hobbled over to the cart, and clambered up into the driver's seat. There he sat, staring at the platform and the three Demons, each kneeling before a noose, and grinned toothlessly.
The crowd shuffled closer.
As the door slammed shut behind him, Qeteb stopped ...
What had he done?
Before him stretched an endless ploughed field, barren of life.
He turned around.
The wall and the doorway had vanished. Behind him the ploughed field stretched into infinity.
Cursing, Qeteb took a step forward.
He sank into the soft earth to the top of his ankle.
He took another step, and he sank yet further, weighed down by the amount of metal he carried.
From somewhere very, very far away came the baying of hounds.
Qeteb growled, and began to tear off his armour. It fell away, sinking into the earth.
He stood naked and exposed. He was DragonStar warped and warted. His flesh, humped into the strange lumps needed to fill his armour, was pale and bluish, pockmarked with corruption. His belly was soft and flabby, his legs thin and knobbly, his arms disproportionately muscled and weighty.
He had no neck or chin, and his lumpish face seemed to grow directly from his white, hairless chest.
Beautiful coppery curls fell from his head over his shoulders and down his back, merging finally with the feathers of his black and mouldy wings.
Qeteb was a sad mockery of life, and the saddest thing of all was that he did not realise it.
He grinned, and started forward across the field.
"We have here before us," announced DragonStar to the crowd, "the Demons of Hunger, Tempest, and Despair."
His voice was quiet, but beautifully modulated, and it reached every ear in the square.
"Their times," DragonStar continued, "are dawn, mid-morning and mid-afternoon."
He paused, and looked out over the crowd. "You represent the end result of their crimes, which stretch backwards through an eternity to the time of original Creation. They have ransacked the universe, and ravaged the souls of the very stars themselves."
The crowd murmured, its sound a rising swell, and DragonStar gave them a few moments in which to voice their despair.
When he resumed speaking, his voice had the tone and authority of a tolling bell.
"Here they kneel, and now is their time. What are we to do with them?"
Again there was a swell of formless sound from the thronging masses. It surged and billowed forth, engulfing both DragonStar and the Demons.
The Demons cringed. DragonStar grinned.
And the murmuring died. A decision had been reached.
From the crowd stepped three people. An emaciated man, with a distended, lumpish belly. A woman, her eyes roiling with some unknown turbulence. Another woman, dragging behind her a washing line. At the end of the washing line bounced the still form of a toddling girl-child, the line wrapped tight about her plump throat.
The Demons suddenly screamed. Not from the sight of the three people, but because each of the arrows about their wrists had suddenly flamed into life, burning into their flesh.
"Retribution," whispered DragonStar.
The man and the two women slowly climbed the steps onto the platform.
The emaciated man stood before Mot, the woman with the maddened eyes before Barzula, and before Sheol stood the woman who had the body of her daughter dangling strangled on the washing line.
"Your time has come," said DragonStar, and with one motion every person in the crowd raised their right arm and held it high, the palms of their hands turned towards the platform.
There was no sound.
