Well, to be precise, they weren’t headless—the heads were there, more or less. They just weren’t shaped much like heads anymore, and their contents had been splattered halfway up the rock face against which the bodies had been propped. General Murdock shook his own small head. If he’d been another kind of man, he might have become enraged by the foolishness that had cost him two more soldiers—for it was clear to him that foolishness had been behind their deaths. Their foolishness, to be precise. The pile of frozen animal entrails next to the half-burnt sticks told him that his soldiers had stolen a Khan sheep and tried to make a meal of it; that they’d had their skulls caved in and their bodies ritualistically positioned told him that the Khan had discovered the theft and, being the barbaric savages they were, had retaliated by turning his soldiers into a sacrifice for their bloodthirsty tribal goddess. Truly, if he’d been another kind of man, General Murdock might have become enraged.
