Soldiers of Paradise Read Online Free

through music I put a little death into the air, a song called “now it’s over,” but in a complicated rhythm because I could not cover in my voice a small regret.
    The biter listened carefully, tilting his head. With his forefinger, he stroked the underlip of the stone phallus, and his face took on a strange gentle expression. “They murdered him,” he said. “Which one?”
    How I hated him! Him and his past tense. Him and his questions. Yet there was a power in his hawklike face that made him difficult to resist, a keenness in his eye. I dropped my head and muttered part of a song, my brother’s music, the man who had first struck the scholar down.
    He recognized it. It was a beautiful song, spare, strong, proud, like the man himself. At the second change, I heard the biter hum a part of it himself, as if in reverie, frowning. He brought his wrists together, and with his whole hand he caressed the angry stump where his other hand had been. “It is he,” he said softly. “It is always he. Little brother,” he said, and stretched his hand out to touch me, only I ducked away. “Little brother,” he continued. “Don’t you see how men like him can kill us all?”
    I started away, my face full of disgust, but he smiled and called out to me: “I’m sorry. I apologize. No biting. Or at least, only a little. Because I am talking about the future. Don’t pretend you never think of it.”
    I turned to face him, because I was pretending. He was right. He said: “I see you. You are different from the rest. I see you. Before. I saw you. The others cannot think. You can.”
    I stood appalled. He was trying to seduce me, I could tell. It was the biter’s slough of reason, of cause and effect, so easy to fall into, so hard to climb back out. I could feel tears in my eyes, and I bent to pick up a loose stone.
    The biter smiled. “I’m insulting you,” he said. “Listen. Use your mind. We are beginning to starve. There is no meat left in these mountains. Every day the hunters bring in less. There is none left.”
    I listened, hardfaced. This made no sense to me.
    “Don’t you understand?” he said. “We have to do it. Something. All together, for the first time. Not just alone. Together.”
    I stared at him. This made no sense.
    “South of here,” he said. “Way south, there is no snow. There are deer on the hill. Fish in the water. Listen—every day I talk to the barbarian. The dead barbarian. Every day I come here. I listen to his stories. He is teaching me so much. Now he is dead, yet it is still the truth. He was … He told me about it. There is food to eat.”
    “I prefer to starve.”
    “That’s stupid.”
    “Yes,” I cried, furious. “But I am not a slave of my own mind. I am not. I prefer to die. My brothers and sisters are too proud.”
    “But I don’t mean that,” he said. “We are not beggars. I mean to take what we want. Steal it. These barbarians are a race of hairy dwarves. Free men and women would burn through them like a fire. And I can make it happen. He was teaching me a trick. A way of singing—don’t you understand?”
    Bored, I turned away. But there was a peculiar music in his words. He brought his fist crashing down on the tabletop. “But I can force you,” he shouted. “I can force you to follow me. There is a power in this room, if I knew how to use it. There is power in these empty gods.” He came towards me, grinning savagely, and I backed away. “I will do it,” he said. “I hate your stupidness. And I hate myself.”
    He lied. His self-love rang in every word. His voice was like two instruments in conflict, one ferocious, one insinuating. He had been a strong musician, and this music was a storm in him. “Do not laugh at me!” he shouted, and shook the stump of his arm in my face as if it were a weapon. He was a little crazy, too, I thought, with his bony face, his eyebrows, his dark eyes. In the light of the carbide lantern his shadow made a giant on the