Indictment

He trailed behind the young woman when she left the other three behind her. She appeared forlorn. Her steps lacked surety and she seemed, for the first time and despite the rigors she had recently experienced, tired. Her head drooped, her posture slumped, and she looked more like the others, the broken and exhausted and hopeless, now than ever before. He decided she was not suffering from physical want, but lacking some other, intangible, thing.

As she neared the center of the large room, where the cooking fires still burned and cast light that bit eyes accustomed to the dark, she took note of a number of the strangers in red in the area. There were more than before. They had gathered the populace near the fires in groups of three or four, each watched over by someone who wore a red mantle and carried a weapon in the hands. The only ones who were not broken into clusters like this were the healthier-looking ones that had tended the fires, the handful of residents that had not gone to take part in the scarab tide, and the few individuals who had been taken through the tunnels along with the young woman. These groups kept to themselves, separate from the others, and watched the proceedings with interest at the very outskirts of the illumination granted by the cooking fires.

The young woman skirted around the area until she felt she could rejoin her companions. She spoke with them about the proceedings. They replied in hushed, fearful whispers.

The strangers in red were questioning the residents one by one. They had found a container of scarabs which had not been taken back to the settlement with the others. They were seeking the one who had committed this deed. The ones being questioned were chosen at random from the various groups. They were taken behind one of the walls, out of view of the others. They could be heard but not seen. The ones whose interrogations were finished were taken and held within a larger enclosure some distance away, under close watch by the strangers in red.

He saw the combination of these things served to increase the tension the remainder of the populace felt. Some of the ones yet to be chosen pleaded for clemency. Others sat on the ground, abject and resigned to the worst possible outcome if a culprit were not apprehended sooner. A few were stoic. He suspected their stoicism would break when it came their turn.

The young woman failed to hide her shock at this revelation. Her companions looked at her. One stepped away from the others, turned partway, prepared to speak or to shout. She lurched, managed to lock an elbow around the throat, and cut the sound off. It was reduced to a startled wheeze. He saw her pull that one back to fall together upon the hard stone. The young woman's companions clustered around the two as they scuffled to block them from easy view. One of them reached down to separate the combatants and hissed warnings that they remain quiet, that this was not their affair, that they do not fight each other. The one that the young woman had been fighting heeded these words and calmed down.

He could see that the young woman did not. She was too involved in this event. She had set it into motion. She knew that the red-mantled ones would not be satisfied if all the residents pleaded their innocence. They would select one or two and use their lives as a way to exert fear and maintain control over the population here, and populations elsewhere.

She shook off the restraining grasp of her companions and set her mouth in a grim line. He found her sense of nobility intriguing. He had learned that this place was not a place where sacrifices of this sort were routine. She would receive no reward or vindication if she did as she planned. Her companions would not support her choice. They might even suffer punishment.

They instead prevented her from carrying it out, or apprehended her themselves. He did not care what the motivation could be, as the deed was the same, The one which had separated the young woman and her opponent took note of her expression and grabbed her, keeping her silent in the same way as she had done before. Others assisted.

The fight did not go unnoticed this time. The fire-tenders shouted for the strangers in red. The strangers in red left their tended groups. Some of those held in the groups had the fortitude and initiative to flee. They scattered in all directions. Others remained where they were, despite the guards' absence. Those were conditioned better.

He watched as the leader of the strangers in red, the same individual who had collected the young woman and her companions from their place at the bottom of the stairs, approached. The one who had first grabbed at the young woman spat hurtful words and threats at her. The young woman did not react to those words.

The young woman was outnumbered. The leader of the strangers in red issued orders that she not be killed here. She fought the strangers in red when they came to take her. She managed to wrest away the weapon. She used it. Blood flowed, hers and theirs. Their blood was a darker red than their mantles. She did not die. Two of the strangers in red did.

He watched from a distance as she was taken, in the end. They bore her struggling body towards the large structure at the end of the road which was made of poles which glowed. The populace of this place followed in a vast cloud, more curious than afraid now that the red-mantled ones' ire had a definite outlet. None walked outside the path. The numbers were funneled between the parallel rows of poles. He found it curious that they did not.

He did.