"You be quiet, sweetheart. We can't be bothered with you."
The Horse said, "Two years from now they'll all be warriors. Here, let
me turn this on them."
Alan closed his eyes and he wanted to retch as he heard the automatic
rifle speak out in five short bursts. In spite of himself he opened
them again. Helen, his first born, Paula, his second. Ruth, Margo and
Jenny, all his children. They were crumbled like rag dolls, fifty feet
from the citadel door.
Now he was able to tell himself that he should have called out a
warning. One or two of them, at least, might have escaped. Might have
escaped to warn the approaching fighters of the trap behind them.
Tradition had been too strong within him, the tradition that a man did
not interfere in the business of the warriors, that war was a thing
apart.
Jenny's body moved, stirred again, and she tried to drag herself away.
Little Jenny, twelve years old. The rifle spat just once again and she
slumped forward and remained quiet.
"Little bitch," the Crow woman said.
The heavy chair was in his hands and high above his head, he had
brought it down on her before the rage of his hate had allowed him to
think of what he was doing. The chair splintered but there was still
a good half of it in his hands when he spun on the Horse woman. She
stepped back, her eyes wide in disbelief. As her companion went down,
the side of her face and her scalp welling blood, the Horse at first
brought up her rifle and then, in despair, tried to reverse it to use
its butt as a club.
She was stumbling backward, trying to get out of the way of his
improvised weapon, when her heel caught on the body of one of the
fallen Wolf sentries. She tried to catch herself, her eyes still
staring horrified disbelief, even as he caught her over the head, and
then once again. He beat her, beat her hysterically, until he knew she
must be dead.
He worked now in a mental vacuum, all but unconsciously. He ran to the
stair bottom and called, "Come down," his voice was shrill. "Alice,
Tommy, all of you."
* * * * *
They came, hesitantly, and when they saw the shambles of the room
stared at him with as much disbelief as had the enemy women. He
pointed a finger at the oldest of the girls. "Alice," he said, "you've
been given instruction by the warriors. How is the Bren gun fired?"