Chapter 7

When some among them I had recognized,

I looked, and I beheld the shade of him

Who made through cowardice the great refusal.

Dante, Inferno, 3.58-60

Surging ahead through the forest, Dante thought they might have actually slipped through the army’s lines surrounding the town, as there was no sign of anyone else, living or dead, on the road or anywhere near it. After a while, both horses slowed to a trot, and then to a walking gait they could maintain without exhausting themselves.

The soldier dropped back till they were riding alongside one another. “What are your names?”

“Dante.”

“Bogdana.”

“My name is Radovan.” Dante thought that at least the men’s names sounded as bad as the women’s. “The army and the living dead destroyed your village?”

“Yes,” Bogdana answered. “My family is dead. This man tried to help me.”

“I am sorry. I was in the army that did this. I thought we had to, to get rid of the dead and free our land of plague. Killing the dead is one thing – it’s bad enough, since they look just like regular people, some of them even children. But it has to be done. And I don’t think they feel it so much, when you kill them. They seem numb, no longer really human. But the villagers, pleading for their lives – I just couldn’t anymore. So I left during the night. I tried to help those people in the town, warn them, maybe have some of them escape into the mountains at least.”

“What happened, then? Who was that poor woman?” Dante asked.

“You saw them, how crazed they were with all their ignorance and fear. I got to their town early this morning, and they were already dragging that poor, old, madwoman around, screaming how she was to blame. And that little dandy of a deputy, vice assistant, district councilman, or whatever the hell he claimed to be, strutted around like a peacock during all of it, but he was more of a gelding, is my guess.” Dante smirked and Bogdana snickered at this. It was the closest any of them had come to laughter in some time.

Radovan continued. “They kept looking to him to validate everything, and he kept saying he had no authority, no jurisdiction. But then he’d tell them that if he were in authority, this is how he’d go about it, and then he’d wave them away and say no, no, he didn’t mean for them to actually do it. I kept telling them to run, to give this all up, but they ignored me, except to occasionally ask some practical question, like how big was the army, or how far away it was. I’d tell them I didn’t know, more troops were arriving every day, since the plague was so bad. They were close, but it was hard to estimate how long it would take them to move. The trebuchets take a long time to pack and reassemble, and sometimes they break and have to be fixed. Never mind if the army camp is attacked by the dead and they have to fight them off before moving on to the next village. So I kept trying to reason with them, until they were actually ready to light the fire around her. That’s when I drew my sword and thought enough is enough. I’d rather fight them than let them do this. I left the army, and could be killed for it. How could I just let these people do worse than the army was doing? At least the soldiers just kill people. They don’t torture anyone.” He cast a sideways look at Dante. It was not quite as accusatory and condemning as that of the woman with the candlestick, but nearly so, and with more petulant, prideful hurt behind it. “That’s when you showed up. You might have done more, you know.”

Dante wondered how much more blame he would find in this strange land, where so far he had done little else beside try to help people. “I know. I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

“We’d all be dead if he had,” Bogdana said coldly. “And we nearly died again, just now, because you had to try to do more than you can.”

The petulance flared up into real vindictiveness now. “I wasn’t talking to you, woman.”

Dante pulled on the reins. “Don’t use that tone with her. If you want to make up for destroying her village, fine, but stop insulting her.” Even with women who rode astride a stranger’s horse, and beat men to death like they were pounding the wash on a stone next to the river, there were still rules of what things a man was not to tolerate being done or said to them.

“Oh, enough!” Bogdana said. She slid off Dante’s horse, landing awkwardly then falling. She got up and brushed herself off as she took a couple steps away from them, into the woods. “Stop it, both of you, or I’ll take my chances by myself. I really don’t need to hear which of you is more of a man, or who defends helpless women better! Stop with all your morality and honor and shame and guilt. We’re way past those, all right? Can we just agree to work together to stay alive?”

Dante was much more taken aback that a woman would refuse an offer of protecting her honor than he was that a man might insult her. But, as usual, this half-wild woman made more sense in the given situation than the rules he had been raised to follow. He glanced back to Radovan, who gazed at Bogdana, looking just as shocked as Dante had been. The soldier looked warily at him.

“I want her to stay alive,” Dante said. “If there are other people who aren’t trying to kill us, I will try to help them too, but my first obligation is to her. I promised her.”

Radovan nodded. “I will help you two survive. You have my word.” He looked at Bogdana. “I am sorry, Miss. I have hurt you enough by what I did before. I will help you now in any way I can.”

“Thank you,” she said as she let Dante help her back up on to the horse. “You two seem like good men. Don’t let all your rules get in the way of doing what’s right.”

They moved westward along the road. “I suppose we should keep heading west and try to stay ahead of the army,” Radovan said. “Get to the mountains and try to get over them. Do you have any plan other than that?”

“No,” Dante answered. “It was all we had come up with as well.”

“Sometimes simple plans are the best,” Radovan agreed. Dante thought optimism might come more naturally to him than it did to other people, and this seemed to him a good thing at the moment.