Bled Dry
Up until the very end Athena gave medical care to the Crazy Horns. Her bedside manner had become lacking, admittedly. She no longer told the tribals stories as she bandaged wounds, no longer smiled as she tied splints. She had grown cold and atrabilious, mouth always tight and eyes always downcast.
She no longer taught, as per the Goddess' orders. Now the tribe taught itself, her former students now teaching the new generations of tribespeople, such as the new generations were. The Goddess wasn't interested in teaching the tribes too much. Just enough to exploit, Athena realized. The tribes of the wasteland were not allies to the Goddess, they were resources. Even if Athena had improved the individual lives of the Crazy Horns she was no more altruistic than a farmer tending her crops. Once she'd completely stolen the tribe's future away she would abandon them, let the field lay fallow.
Until that happened she was determined to make sure the Crazy Horns were provided with care. Before the canaanites attacked the Crazy Horns had been pushed further and further to hunt and scavenge in more dangerous lands by surrounding tribes. Cases of tetanus were on the rise, Crazy Horns stepping on old nails or cutting themselves on rusty car doors in places that were once the industrial centers of Salt Lake City.
Athena made a note of it in her report back to Ouroboros. She requested a supply of tetanus boosters and shots. For the first time ever, her requests for supplies were denied. She was not told why, but the official reason was because those most at risk for tetanus were mostly older women who had already given birth numerous times. It was believed that they were unlikely to produce any more fit children. That was the doctrine that the Goddess had created for her Daughters. If they were no longer producing children for the Goddess she was fine with the deaths of some tribals, even wanted it. This system favored male tribals, whose capacity to produce healthy children did not decline as much as a woman's with age.
Athena wasn't told why there would be no medicine for the tribe, but she knew why. The Crazy Horns were no longer valuable. They were getting used up and now that their well was dry they were soon to be left to the wild dogs. Athena shouldn't have cared. She was just as done with the Crazy Horns as Ouroboros was.
If she had never arrived among the Crazy Horns, never given them medical attention or taught them how to survive, they wouldn't be in any better a position than they were now, she told herself. Almost half of all the children delivered were not snatched away like the others, for their failure to meet Hecate's standards. Even more than that half would've never been born at all if it weren't for Athena and the Goddess' help. Athena certainly could've abandoned the Crazy Horns in favor of her true people, the Daughters of Hecate.
She wouldn't, though. There was something that wouldn't let her abandon those people any more than it had let her abandon Longhorn the hunter so many years ago. That fire lit back inside her breast and so she developed a plan. She stayed in Ouroboros much longer than normal, a little over a week. She knew some of the other Daughters who lived among tribes in the waste, and the Daughter she knew the best was Soledad, who was shaman among another Utah tribe. She begged Soledad to fake a tetanus outbreak among her own tribe in the hopes that Soledad's tribe would be deemed fit to receive the medicine. Soledad agreed to Athena's ruse and so in her reports she falsified a tetanus outbreak. She was provided with the necessary medicine. On their trip back through Utah Soledad gave Athena the medicine, so that the Crazy Horns would be provided for, for at least a little longer.