A Company of Heroes Book Four: The Scientist by Ron Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

or perhaps simply less superstitious, stepped to her side. In any case, Rykkla’s arms were gripped tightly and she was half lifted and half dragged toward the center of the village where there was, she could see through blearily unfocussing eyes, a disturbingly large, black mass. This proved to be a head-high heap of lumber and brush, where the villagers had found this much wood, Rykkla could not imagine, surmounted by a heavy ten-foot pole. A chill vibrated down her spine that she would have welcomed not five minutes earlier. As she was dragged closer, she saw that there were several score torches contrasting luridly with the indigo twilight. When the torchbearing citizens caught sight of the approaching prisoner, a low murmuring arose from their cumulative lips. They’re not waiting for a barbecue, she thought before amending perversely: then again, maybe they are.
    Rykkla’s senses and strength recovered to a degree, but unfortunately far too late to be of any real use to her. She kicked and struggled, but to no avail against the powerful grip of her captors, who were impervious to her flailing legs and held her as motionless as a pair of blacksmith’s vises clutching a horseshoe. Equally impervious were their ears to the curses with which she abused them, curses vile enough to not merit repetition here.
    What angered her to such an uncivilized froth was the coarse, painful and hypocritical grasp of a hand on a breast, buttock or thigh.
    She was hauled with practiced efficiency and no gentleness at all to the heavy vertical timber, where her hands were then tightly bound behind her, her back to the stake. Neither her fear nor her anger knew any bounds, and she wept and cursed and struggled with an impartial devotion of energy. She believed absolutely in the reality of what was going on and the inevitability infuriated her. At the same time, the knowledge that she was about to die, and in horribly lingering pain, drove her to a despair that strained to breaking her not inconsiderable sanity.
    An elderly priest stepped in front of the circling crowd. This was evidently the Father Spranbran of whom the men had spoken; he raised his hands, which shook like leaves at the ends of a pair of skinny twigs, and the mob relunctantly hushed.
    “Father!” Rykkla cried, “uh, Your Reverence! Your Holiness! don’t let them do this! I’ve done nothing to die for! This is insane!”
    The priest looked up at the hapless girl, his eyes glowering either piggishly or in a well-advanced stage of senility beneath exuberant eyebrows that made his face look like a bursting horsehair cushion. Rykkla still had the sheet wrapped around her upper body and where it had not rucked up into a shapeless mass it was fluttering in the desultory breeze like enormous black wings. Below it her long legs kicked and strained at the post; above, her lank face was pale with fury and fright, long strands of black hair glued in meandering zigzags across it, making her countenance look like a shattered porcelain bust. Overall, her appearance did little to dispel the notion that she was in fact the vilest sort of demoness. The priest’s glare silenced her, as though his eyes were pins and she a specimen of disease-bearing insect. The old man’s first words, uttered through a spittle-encrusted beard, evaporated any hope she may have had for succor from the Church.
    “Thou art the vilest of vermin loosed upon us from the nethermost, stinking pits of the Weedking! Thou temptest these good, devout, Musrum-fearing people whom you have had suffer the most degrading sufferings, starvation, drought, disease . . . all that the poor human body can bear, thine evil master has inflicted upon them. Hast thou made their faith waver? Hast thou tempted their true and good hearts from the narrow and uneasy path of righteousness? Nay! Thou hast failed!
    “But for the Evil One this was not enough! Nay! Blasting their mortal lives was not enough! Making their every day a