Free Sunspot by James Axler

tell the truth, I can hardly pick up a spoon to feed myself.”
    “Malosh’s army did that to you?”
    “No, no. The gren came from Haldane’s men.”
    “But you were a conscript?”
    “No, I volunteered.”
    “Why in God’s name would you do something like that?” Doc asked.
    “Because I come from the heartland of Malosh’s barony,” Ferdinando said. “To the west of here there’s nothing but desert, unfarmable hardscrabble for hundreds of miles in every direction. It’s a place so worthless nobody has ever bothered trying to invade it. Before Malosh took power in the territory, the people in my ville were always just one day away from starvation. We had to watch our children die of hunger and disease. Malosh freed us from our fate. He realized that even though we could never win total victory over the neighboring barons because of our limited numbers, we could raid their territory on a regular basis and send the food back to our people. He forged us into a quick-strike fighting force. We survive by our wits, our courage and our speed of foot. If we stop moving, we die.”
    “Surely you could pack up and move somewhere else. To greener, more hospitable pastures.”
    “And fall under the bootheel of another baron?” Ferdinando said. “Never. The hard land where we were born has made us who we are. And we are proud of it.”
    “And in the name of that pride you swear allegiance to the Impaler?”
    “Call him whatever you like. He’s a hero to his people.”
    “Perhaps so, but what about the poor souls he has forced to fight and die for him, whose villes he has ransacked?”
    “Wait until you see the baron in battle. Wait until you see the effect he has on every person in this army. Malosh has no equal in valor or in daring. His example as a warrior raises everyone up.”
    “I’ve seen how he raises people up,” Doc said. “He has no equal in brutality, either.”
    “That is a means to an end,” Ferdinando said. “Three die and fifty join us.”
    “You are saying he takes no pleasure from those ghastly public spectacles?”
    “I have fought under Malosh for two years. Because of that mask he wears I’ve never seen him smile. I don’t know what gives him pleasure. I only know I will die for him because of what he has done for his people, for my kin.”
    “No matter what he has done to everyone else.”
    Ferdinando smiled. “Mark my words, when the time comes you will die for him, too. And gladly.”
    “I will die,” Doc said, “but not for the likes of him.”
    Clutching his miserable meal, Doc found Bezoar and Young Crad huddled close to one of the campfires. The elder swineherd comforted the younger, who sobbed bitterly into his palms.
    “She’s in a much better place,” Bezoar assured his friend. After a minute he limped over to Doc.
    “Poor boy’s brokenhearted,” Bezoar said.
    “If you ask me, his attachment to that dead beast seems inordinate,” Doc remarked.
    “The feeling was mutual,” Bezoar said. “That black-and-white hog followed him everywhere he went. They ate cheek to cheek, nose to nose at the same trough. She sat at his feet. She slept beside him in the straw. This is their first night apart since the day she was weaned.”
    A phrase from Victorian times popped into Tanner’s mind. “The love that dare not speak its name.”
    A florid euphemism that originally referred to another sort of socially—and Biblically—condemned behavior. Perhaps he was overreacting.
    Bezoar slammed the door on that happy possibility.
    Shaking his grizzled head, the crippled swineherd shared the boy’s sad secret. “When it come to getting some of the biscuit,” he said, “Young Crad was shit out of luck. None of the norm women in Redbone ville would take him between their legs. And he never earned enough jack to rent out a gaudy slut. Even the ville’s female triple-stupe droolies turned up their noses at him. His piggie dear wasn’t nearly so picky.”
    Doc Tanner shuddered