"Look around you, Carver. Look at Nalin. " She pointed to where the matriarch lay on a buffalo robe, her breathing shallow and wet. The medicine woman was working on her, but the look on her face said everything. "They came to kill us! " Ayanna shouted. "They came to kill the babies!
And you want mercy? " "I do not want mercy," Luke said, swaying slightly. "I want survival. " He looked at the captured soldiers. They were young, terrified. One was crying. "If you kill them," Luke said, his voice gaining strength, "the army will not stop.
They will come back with a thousand men. They will burn the mountains down to get to you. They will say you are monsters who massacre prisoners. " "They say that anyway," Sani cried. "Make them liars," Luke said. He turned to Ayanna.
"Disarm them. Bind their wounds. Give them water. And then send them back. " "Send them back? " Ayanna looked at him as if he were mad. "Send them back with a message," Luke said.
"Tell them the Apache could have killed them, but chose not to. Tell them that if they leave this canyon alone, you will disappear. Tell them the cost of coming back is too high. " He gestured to the dead bodies littering the pass. "Let the dead be the warning. Let the living be the message. " Ayanna stepped close to him.
She smelled of blood and gunpowder. "Does sparing them erase what they did? " she asked, her voice trembling with the weight of her grief. "Does it bring back my husband? Does it bring back your Sarah? Does it save Nalin? " "No," Luke said softly.
"It erases nothing. It fixes nothing. " He looked her in the eye. "But adding five more bodies to the pile will not bring them back, either. It just makes the pile higher. It just makes the nightmare longer. " He looked at the women standing in the circle.
"You are not them," Luke said. "Do not become them. " The silence stretched, taut as a bowstring. The women looked at the soldiers, then at Luke, then at Nalin's motionless form. Finally, Ayanna lowered her knife. She looked at the soldiers.
"Take their boots," she commanded. "Take their guns. Take their horses. " She turned to Luke. "Let them walk back to the fort barefoot. Let them tell their colonel that the women of the canyon gave them their lives. " The tension broke.
The women moved in, stripping the soldiers of their gear. But Ayanna stopped at the last man. He was a corporal with a thick mustache, the man Luke had seen shooting the older woman at the beginning of the fight, the man who had laughed as she fell. "Not him," Ayanna said. Luke started to speak, but Ayanna held up a hand.