“If they can’t find a tree, order them to choke him with their hands.”
He paces back and forth again. Mariet is laughing quietly.
“Who is laughing?” asks Haggart in fury.
“I,” answers Mariet. “I am thinking of how they are hanging him and I am laughing. O, Haggart, O, my noble Haggart! Your wrath is the wrath of God, do you know it? No. You are strange, you are dear, you are terrible, Haggart, but I am not afraid of you. Give me your hand, Haggart, press it firmly, firmly. Here is a powerful hand!”
“Flerio, my friend, did you hear what he said? He says the sea never lies.”
“You are powerful and you are just—I was insane when I feared your power, Gart. May I shout to the sea: ‘Haggart, the Just’?”
“That is not true. Be silent, Mariet, you are intoxicated with blood. I don’t know what justice is.”
“Who, then, knows it? You, you, Haggart! You are God’s justice, Haggart. Is it true that he was your nurse? Oh, I know what it means to be a nurse; a nurse feeds you, teaches you to walk—you love a nurse as your mother. Isn’t that true, Gart—you love a nurse as a mother? And yet—‘string him up with a rope, Khorre’!”
She laughs quietly.
A loud, ringing laughter resounds from the side where Khorre was led away. Haggart stops, perplexed.