“That big woman who supposedly pierced Councilor Mabin’s heart with a spike–perhaps they are fighting for her.” He paused, then said one more word, but it reverberated in Clement’s scrambled thoughts. “Fanatics,” he said.

Later, they stood together in the scorched garden, looking down at the slender soldier who had run in such glad foolishness to her own pointless death. The soldiers had separated Kelin’s body from the others, had wiped the soot and blood from her young face, and had covered her ugly wounds with a blanket. But they could not put the vibrancy back into her slack face, or the liveliness back into her blank eyes. Clement looked away from the girl’s body. Gilly fumbled for his sooty handkerchief. He should haveknown better than to become fond of a young soldier,Clement thought bitterly. All Sainnite children die in war. As fast as we send them into battle, they die. We might as well just kill them when they’re born and save us all the trouble of raising them.

Part 2

How Raven Became A God

When Raven was young, he had three friends: a grasshopper, a sparrow, and a wolf. They all were restless troublemakers, the shame of their clans and the scourge of their tribes.

One day, the bird gods appeared to Raven and said, “We have been watching you a long time, and we think we might make you into a god. But first you must make something that has never been seen before, to prove to us that you are clever enough to be a god.”

Of course, Raven wanted to be a god, but he had no idea how to make something that had never been seen before. So he asked his friend the grasshopper for advice. The grasshopper said, “Well, I know one thing that has never been seen before: it is the soul of my clan, that lies at the center of the village, in a hut that nobody enters.”

Then Raven went to the sparrow for advice, and the sparrow said, “Well, I know one thing that has never been seen before. It is the soul of my clan, that lies at the center of the village, in the hut that nobody enters.”

Then, Raven went to the wolf for advice, and the wolf said, “Well, I know one thing that has never been seen before. It is the soul of my clan, that lies at the center of the village, in the hut that nobody enters.”

So then Raven called together his friends. He said, “I have thought of a wonderful joke. We will go to each of your villages and make a great noise, and they will think they are being attacked. They will all run about like the ant clan, and we will hide in the woods and laugh at them.”

They all agreed that this was a fine plan. So they waited for the dark moon, and on that night they all met outside the sparrow’s village. They each had brought all the whistles and rattles they could find, and they spread out along the edge of the village and each commenced yelling and whistling and shaking their rattles. Soon, the sparrow warriors came running out of the village to find their enemy, while the sparrow elders and children hid in the huts. The three friends all slipped into the woods, laughing. But Raven sneaked into the center of the village, and found the hut that has no door, and with his claws he cut a slit in the wall and slipped in. There in the hut he found the soul of the sparrow clan.

Now, no one except Raven has ever seen a soul, so I can’t tell you what the soul looked like. But Raven bit off a piece of it with his sharp beak and put it in his satchel. Then he slipped out of the hut and sewed up the opening he had made in the wall, so no one would notice, and he went and found his friends in the woods. “Wasn’t that fun!” he said. “Let’s do it again, this time at the grasshopper clan.”

So they did it again, at the grasshopper clan and then at the wolf clan, and each time Raven sneaked into the village and stole a piece of the clan’s soul. But after the wolf warriors had run into the woods looking for their enemy, they encountered the sparrow and grasshopper warriors, who were all searching the forest. They each thought that the other clans had banded together against them, and a huge battle began.

In the morning, Raven’s friends found him in his camp, where he lived by himself. They all were sick with horror. “The warriors of our people have all killed each other, and now our clans will hate each other for many generations!” they cried.

But Raven didn’t care. He had a pot of stew and he offered each of his friends some, but they were too upset to eat. So Raven ate it all himself, and his friends went away in disgust and never talked to him again.

Now, the stew was made out of the pieces of soul the Raven had stolen from each of the clans. After a while, he started to have a stomachache, but he endured the pain, for he wanted very badly to be a god. And then at last he put piece of leather on the ground and he defecated on it, and there lay a raven’s turd made of the digested souls of the three clans. No one has ever seen a soul‑turd except for Raven, but you can imagine it wasn’t pretty to look at.

Raven packaged up that turd and took it to the gods. “Here you go,” he said. “Here is something that has never been seen before.” The gods all looked at the turd, and then they looked at each other, and finally one of them said, “I can’t believe that you have done this! But we have no choice except to make you a god. Considering all the havoc you have wreaked, I think we will make you the god of death.” And that is how Raven became a god.

As for the turd, it was so disgusting that they buried it. A year later, Raven went back that way, and where the turd had been buried, a new clan had risen up out of the ground, and were living in a new village. They farmed and sang love songs like the grasshopper. They were clever and hardworking like the sparrow. And they were loyal and brave as the wolf. Raven took a special liking to them because his turd was the soul of the clan. They were the first human people.

Chapter Eight

The farm family, having been shouted out of their beds, huddled together as far as they could get from the heavily armed, impatient soldiers that crammed the dark parlor. The farmstead’s many children had been made invisible behind a fortress of resolute adults. But one man, cut out from the crowd with a screaming child in his arms, faced down the hardened fighters that surrounded him. “You will not take the child,” he said.

By the flickering light of the lantern held up by the signal‑man, Clement distantly examined the stubborn father. He did not seem old, but he was desiccated, his hair molting, his eyes set in shadowed hollows, his body sagging as though his muscles were coming detached from his bones. To admire his hopeless courage was a poor strategy, but as a nearby soldier eagerly lifted his club, Clement forestalled him with a raised hand. She said quietly to the man, “Your daughter’s last memory of you will be of your death.”

The man’s hand protectively cupped his daughter’s skull as she hid her face in his shoulder. Obstinately, fearlessly, he said, “You will not take her!”

They had just one night to round up forty children–Clement could waste no time in argument. She began to lower her upraised hand, and like a puppet the soldier again lifted his club.

“Wait!” An old woman stepped into the light, jerking herself loose from the hands that reached out to restrain her. “Take me instead.”

“No!” cried the farmers. But the old woman, trailing a blanket snatched from her bed, gestured dismissively at them.

“Take the old woman,” Clement said to the soldiers.

They laid hands on the old woman; they hurt her until she cried out. A grinning soldier pricked her throat with a dagger.

Now the little girl’s father looked panicked. Good. Clement said, “We’ll kill the old woman first. And we’ll kill the rest of your family, one at a time. And with all of them dead, you’ll still lose the girl.”