Archive for the ‘Bad Fiction’ Category
When Conspiracy Theories Go Too Far
Yes, but can you ever be sure?
Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 6
A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings.
Here’s Chapter 1 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 2 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 3 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 4 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 5 if you missed it.
Warning: the story involves graphic violence.
From Antonin’s Oddities:
Gudsawr was killed by the sword, of course. Some thief did half of what he had jokingly asked, stealing the sword but then spitting him on it. If he afterwards watched idiots kill themselves with the sword, he watched it happen from Hell.
Chapter 6
For the next two weeks Mikhal rode slowly towards the western mountains, carrying the sword constantly, but always wearing gloves. After one week, his food had run out, and after ten days there were no more people. He was in the true wilderness now. But now the mountain he sought, the mountain Reverend Abbot had described to him, was in sight.
It would have been impossible to miss. By day a long, dark cloud of smoke and ash blew away to the west. By night, it glowed a dirty red, reflecting on the clouds and the smoky ash.
The next day he entered an area where there was an inch deep blanket of ash on the ground. There would no longer be anything for his horse to graze on. Mikhal took off saddle and reins, pointed the horse back to the east and spanked it sharply on the haunch. The horse walked off.
An hour later, Mikhal found a spring. As he bent to fill his water bottle, he saw tracks in the ash around the spring. Horses and people. And one set of tracks, he saw, had only a left foot; the right was a peg.
Mikhal gave a great sigh. Ah, well. He would use the sword’s powers, then, but only to allow him to destroy the sword. He took off his gloves, taking care not to release the sword. Holding the sword in his bare left hand, the sky darkened slightly, and there was that sense that time had changed. He filled his water bottle one-handed, and then walked on up the ashy slope of the volcano.
He followed Reverend Abbot’s instructions and not the tracks, aiming not for the summit but slightly downhill from a notch in the summit. In the early evening, he found the first lava, frozen black rock, all sharp edges and shiny surfaces. Reverend Abbot’s instructions had been explicit. He started across the broken surface. So long as he held the sword, a fall, while uncomfortable, could not hurt him. As the stars started to come out, he sighted along his route towards an island of burnt, blackened trees, marking the route. It was two hours to moonrise, but the moon was a waning quarter. Not much light.
He slowly made his way across the warm rock of the lava field. Just past the burnt trees he saw what Reverend Abbot had described. A red glow, where molten rock ran under the stuff he walked on. The last five hundred feet were very hard to walk, and as he struggled across, the waning moon rose behind him. The rock under his feet was hot now; his feet were sweating in his boots. He stopped for a swallow of water. As he started to drink, Felici’s voice called out from the shadows.
“If you throw the sword in the lava, you are a dead man.”
Mikhal drank his water, put the leather jug away and continued his careful way across the lava the last few hundred feet. There was a rumble in the rock under his feet now, and his shoes felt as if they were on fire. At least four men emerged from the shadows around him. “Felici,” Mikhal said, you have already told me I am a dead man. You told me I was a dead man when I didn’t pay my taxes.”
When he was fifteen feet from the opening, he stopped and looked at the red light. Molten rock was running through the opening, seemingly moving as fast as a horse could run. It was almost silent, only a soft hissing noise came from the fiery light and the faint rumbling through his feet. The heat was very bad. Not wanting to chance missing if he threw the sword from where he stood, he forced himself to move closer. Even the sword in his hand was warm now.
Felici called again. “The moment you throw the sword, arrows will hit you.”
Mikhal looked back into the faint moonlight. Yes, there were at least two bow men. “Felici,” Mikhal called, “Isn’t the Empire enough? Must you have my life as well?”
Felici snorted. “Without the sword, holding the Empire will be too hard. Give me the sword and go away, and I will let you live; destroy the sword and I will destroy you.”
“You know I can kill all of you and that you cannot stop me. I can run on this rock, you cannot. I am invulnerable, you are not. And nothing can stop the sword.” Mikhal saw the silhouettes of the two bowmen look at each other.
“Mikhal, there are men hidden where you will never find them. You cannot kill us all, and if you destroy the sword one of us will get you.”
“But Felici,” teased Mikhal, “Without you Donal will never hold the throne. If I simply kill you I kill your dreams of empire.”
“Without the sword, I, too, am a dead man. As I have told you before.”
“No, Felici, you will merely be less powerful. You are clever enough that, with Donal, you can hold the Empire for yourselves and your heirs without the sword. If you kill me, it will be because of spite.”
“If you destroy the sword, I promise you will never know.”
Mikhal smiled in the direction of Felici’s voice. “As you say.” He dropped to the ground, and in the same motion threw the sword in the molten lava. If the lava showed any sign when the sword struck it, Mikhal did not see. His hands and legs burning on the hot rock, he started to crawl away, keeping his face turned down. If arrows flew at him, he didn’t see them and could not hear them over the noise of the lava. He heard shouting and curses, but made his way on his belly diagonally across the hot lava rock, away from where he had last heard Felici.
He had not crawled ten feet when time seemed to stop completely, and he was nearly overcome by a powerful feeling this had all happened before. The world felt stretched, like a rope pulled too tight, to its breaking point. Then there was a soundless white flash. It seemed to go on for a very long time, but after what may have been only a moment, the feeling passed, the moonlit dark returned and time seemed to move normally again.
Immediately, there was a sudden, brighter light for a few seconds and the shriek of a man being burnt alive. Someone had broken through the crust of rock below the vent into which Mikhal had thrown the sword, and fallen into the lava. By that light, Mikhal saw Felici standing not twenty feet away from him. All of Felici’s attention was on the burning man. Resisting temptation, Mikhal simply froze, waited for the light from the human torch to dim, and then continued to move away. The rock was already a little cooler under his hands.
. . . . .
A wild man, emaciated and scarred, with dirty hair and beard, appeared at the monastery gate one afternoon. His clothes were rags, charred in places, and the hand with which he knocked on the monastery gate was marked with the red lines of recently healed cuts and burns.
A head appeared above the gate. “Who knocks?”
“I beg refuge and the wisdom of the Reverend Abbot.”
“What can you pay?”
“I have nothing. I am sorry.”
“What name shall I give?”
“Please tell the Abbot I have come to apologize.”
“We will not admit those who will not give us their names.”
The wild man stared at the youth. “Take my message to the Abbot.”
“Bide.”
A long while later, the gate opened. “Do you pledge peace while inside these walls?” the young man asked.
“Yes.”
“Then enter.”
They walked in single file to the small building with the trestle table. The young monk knocked, and opened the door. “He is here.”
There was bread and wine on the trestle table in front of the Abbot. Sunlight from a window gleamed brightly on the Abbott, the table and the food.
“Leave us, my son,” said the Abbot.
The young monk looked at the wild man, and looked at the Abbot. “Go on,” said the Abbot, “Leave us.”
The young monk reluctantly left, pulling the door closed behind him.
The wild man dropped to one knee. “I thank you and the mission for refuge, Reverend Abbot, and I thank you for your advice. I apologize for losing your horse.”
“Sit down here, Mikhal of Blackberry Hill, and tell me your story. I am already well paid for the horse.”
“Just my presence endangers the monastery, Reverend Abbot. Felici may suspect I live, and he knows I know you.”
“First tell me your story. Then I will judge if you endanger the monastery. And please, eat while you talk.”
Mikhal ate slowly and told Reverend Abbot his story. “When I came away from the mountains, Donal’s – the Emperor’s – soldiers were everywhere. It took a very long time to get here.”
“And what do you want to do now?”
“Reverend Abbot, I have not the least idea in the world. I had expected to be dead.”
“For a time, at least, Mikhal shall become a brother monk from the northern monastery, under a vow of silence and seclusion. We will see if Baron Felici gets over his fury.”
Mikhal smiled at ‘Baron Felici.’ “I have no vocation, Reverend Abbot.”
“I can always use a gardener. Just live for a time, Mikhal. You have done enough for a while. You have removed an evil from the world. Rest a bit.”
“Thank you, Reverend Abbot. I think I will.”
The End
Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 5
A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings.
Here’s Chapter 1 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 2 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 3 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 4 if you missed it.
Warning: the story involves graphic violence.
From Antonin’s Oddities:
I am uncertain whether Gudsawr intended the sword to drift in time if unattended. There are serious time paradoxes involved; our own history could be rewritten were the sword to fall into the wrong hands in the past.
Gudsawr laughed when he told me of the tricks and traps in the sword. “Perhaps I will let it be stolen,” he used to say, “So I can watch it kill idiots.”
Chapter 5
Mikhal knew nothing until the water closed around him. The water was icy cold, and as he rose back to towards the surface the cold made it almost impossible to breathe. As he rose, he scraped against stone. For a moment he had no idea what had happened; he could think only that he needed to breathe. There was an echoing noise in his water-filled ears, and the meager light disappeared entirely.
He flailed his arms about, trying to find a way out of the water. He struck stone in every direction. He was in a well. He had been asleep in the farmhouse, half drunk on Donal’s wine.
A drug. There must have been a drug in the wine. How simple. He told Felici he was going to throw the sword in a well; Felici had Donal drug him, he had let go of the sword in his stupor, and they had thrown him in the well instead. As these thoughts came to him, Mikhal groped along the edge in the pitch dark, seeking a way out.
Finally, he found a stone that jutted out a bit and braced his foot against it. His back pressed against the other side of the shaft. The rocks were slimy with wet moss. He carefully worked his way up, feet pressed against one side of the well and his back against the other side. Finally, when he felt a stone against his bare foot and another against his back, he levered himself upright with his hands and stood awkwardly, balanced on his feet on stones on opposite sides of the well.
To be so dark, the well must be covered. If it was covered, they had probably piled stones on it to make it harder to get out. Despite the ache in his legs, he must wait a while. And he must be quiet enough that they would think he had drowned.
Mikhal counted his heartbeats. His bare feet grew sorer and sorer, and the muscles of his legs began to tremble. When he counted 1,000 of his heartbeats, he started to climb upwards, searching for stones or cracks in which he could brace himself. Slowly and painfully, he worked his way up the well. After a long time, his reaching hand brushed to wooden cover of the well. He stopped then and listened as best he could. It was quiet, as far as he could tell.
Mikhal braced himself as best he could and tried to lift the well cover. As he had feared, it didn’t move; they had piled stones or something on it to hold it closed. He struggled to a secure position for his feet, pressed his back up against the cover and tried to move it sideways. At least the well walls were drier here, and less slippery. The cover actually moved a bit on his second effort. He tried again, working to slide the cover rather than lift it. The cover slipped enough to expose a bit of light. Blinking in the glare, he rested and listened again. Still no sound. How could it be daylight and there be no sound?
He braced himself again and tried to slide the well cover a little further. It moved, leaving a little more open space. As he let the weight off of his back, the well cover cracked and split. Dozens of rocks and pieces of well cover thundered down the well with a deafening roar. One rock struck his foot and knocked it loose, and he grabbed at the well rim to keep from falling with the wood and rock. His fingers slipped on the mossy well lip, but held and after a long, awkward scramble he pulled himself over the lip and rolled onto the ground.
He laid beside the well for a long time, leg muscles trembling, feet throbbing, blinking in the sunlight. His head throbbed from the wine and drug. His ears were still ringing from the noise and his struggle, but he could hear nothing. The usually noisy farm yard was silent.
He sat up and looked around. He could see no one and no sign anyone was present. He rolled to his hands and knees and levered himself to his feet, wincing at the bruises on the soles of his bare feet and the scrapes on his toes where the falling rocks had hit his foot. He realized suddenly he was naked. Another of Felici’s touches; he was sure he had passed out fully dressed.
Well, there had been piles of clothing, boots and swords in the barn after the fight the day before, pillaged from the dead soldiers. He limped to the barn. The door was shut, but when he opened it the gear was still there. He searched through the clothing for some that weren’t slashed and stained with blood. He found one of the Pretender’s uniforms that fit fairly well, and after looking at a lot of boots, found a pair that matched and fit. The swords were all the same. He found one with a belt. What next? Food.
Although there was still no sign of anyone, he felt exposed and uncomfortable. He went into the farmhouse; it was empty and what food had been there was gone. Sighing, he set off on foot towards the monastery, a long half day’s walk to the east. God only knew what the Abbot would say to him. And he dare not let Simon see him, although Mikhal thought Simon was more likely with Felici. He needed food and he needed to talk to someone about what to do. The Abbot seemed the best choice.
The walk took a long time. His head cleared with the exercise. It seemed to him that there might be a way to get the sword back and find a way to destroy it.
His feet were throbbing when he finally reached the monastery walls. Once again it was twilight. He knocked on the gate and, after a moment, a head appeared over the gate.
“Who knocks?” The voice was not Simon’s. The head was a child’s.
Mikhal cleared his throat. The last words he had spoken were to Donal the night before. “Mikhal of Blackberry Hill. I ask to see the Abbot.”
“Wait.”
Mikhal sat down against the monastery wall. He resisted the temptation to take his boots off. If the Abbot turned him away, he would never get the boots back on.
The monastery gate opened a bit and a very young boy said, “Do you pledge peace while inside these walls?”
“Yes, I do,” said Mikhal.
“Leave the sword inside the gate. The Abbot will see you. Follow me.”
Mikhal followed the child through the gate and across the mission compound. They entered the same windowless building. The Abbot sat at the table.
Mikhal dropped to one knee. “I thank the Reverend Abbot for seeing me.”
“You are back. Mikhal, and without the killing sword. But I have heard horrible stories of slaughter and death. Where is the sword?”
“Reverend Abbot, I don’t know for sure, but I think the sword is in the hands of Donal, Simon’s oldest brother, and that Donal with his father Felici lead a small army to the capital.”
“Mikhal, I think you should tell me the whole story.”
“Yes, Reverend Abbot. Everything you said about the sword was true, and I was an idiot.” Mikhal explained what had happened in the last three months.
“Simon was right, his father is a very clever man. When Donal wears the helm, Mikhal, no one will easily tell it isn’t you. He has made it possible for anyone to be the sword bearer.”
“I have been a complete fool,” Mikhal said. “And I have let Felici use me to use the sword for himself. Donal will be Emperor, but Felici will use Donal.”
“You have been too trusting, Mikhal, and you have let others maneuver you through your fear of dying. But I don’t think you are evil or have truly done evil.”
The Abbot stood. “Will you dine with me tonight?”
“If the Reverend Abbot will have me,” said Mikhal. They walked slowly to another building and sat with perhaps two dozen others and ate bread, cheese and seedcake. There was watered wine, but Mikhal drank water. The talk was of crops and the harvest, and chores the next day. It was, Mikhal realized, the talk he had heard around his table at home all his life.
After supper, the Abbot and Mikhal returned to the small room with the trestle table. “What will you do now, Mikhal?” asked the Abbot.
“I think I must follow after Donal, get the sword and destroy it this time. Before Donal becomes Emperor.”
The Abbot raised his eyebrows. “And how will you recover the sword, Mikhal, from an invulnerable man who can move much more quickly than you?”
“I have an idea. And in any event I must try. Two times, Reverend Abbot, I have felt things strike the top of my head when I was holding the sword. I don’t think the sword protects its bearer directly over his head.”
“Describe the times things struck your head.”
“The first time was when I fought the soldiers outside the Emperor’s tent. Someone grabbed my hair when I was bent over. It meant nothing at the time; I had no idea what the sword was. And you will remember that there was blood on my head when I first came to you. It can only have happened when I held the sword.”
“The second time was in the slaughter at the hayfield. Something seemed to strike my head at one point. A man, I suppose it was the Pretender, was falling toward me from his horse.”
“So I think there must be an unprotected area immediately above the head.”
The Abbot stared into space for a time. “You don’t mean to kill Donal?”
“No, Reverend Abbot. I mean for Donal to be Emperor if he wants. I just don’t want him to have the sword.”
“I am truly surprised, Mikhal. Why do you want Donal to be Emperor?”
“Felici told me the history of the Empire, Reverend Abbot. I think he said nothing less than the truth when he said a quick end to the fight over succession is best. And the Pretender is dead at my hands. Felici will rule in all but name, and he is clever. Together, Felici and Donal will be a better Emperor than any of the nobles and officers I met. And I have no better solution. But Felici and Donal with the sword would create more chaos. Everything you said is true. They won’t need the sword to hold the throne, but they will think they do.”
“Now I am twice surprised, Mikhal. You are becoming wise.”
“Reverend Abbot, I am a fool and a coward.”
“All men are fools and cowards, Mikhal. You are learning what most men do not. But let us give thought to how you will accomplish this task and, more importantly, what you will do with the sword if you manage to get it.”
Mikhal and the Abbot talked long into the night. The Abbot brought out maps. Gradually, they agreed on how Mikhal, if he got the sword, might get away and what he might do with the sword.
“If you are to get to Donal in time, you will have to take a horse. He has a two day head start. Can you ride a horse?”
“I raced horses at the fair when I was young.”
“Then sleep with my blessing. I will have different clothes, food and a horse for you in the morning.”
Mikhal slept like a stone.
The next morning, after more bread and cheese, the Abbot sent Mikhal on his way. “There is one more thing I would have you remember, Mikhal,” said the Abbot. “Felici threw you in the well. He did not stab you in your sleep. Remember that if you meet him.”
“I truly want Felici to be advisor to Donal. It’s the best I can do in the chaos I have created.”
“Go with God, then,” said the Abbot.
Mikhal rode back the way he had come the day before, alternating the horse between a canter and a fast walk. The horse seemed sound, but Mikhal stopped to water him when he could and let him eat grass along the side of the road every few hours.
Before mid-morning, he had reached the edge of Felici’s farmhouse. There still was no one around, so Mikhal took the chance and rode straight through, instead of losing time working his way around the open areas. He saw no one, he heard no one. He turned onto the road north towards the capital.
At least there was no mistaking the trail. Men and wagons had gone this way before him, at least two days earlier. He stopped at noon at a spring. His legs were stiff; there was a difference, he thought, between 20 minute horse races and riding all day. He munched the monastery’s bread and cheese and drank water. Then he remounted and set out on down the road.
At late afternoon, he found a campsite. Among the jumble of footprints, there was the mark of Felici’s stump, surely the only one-legged man in the group. The right trail, then, and only a day behind. If he guessed right, Felici would not hurry to the capital, still three long days away, but would move slowly and let rumor and fear of the sword fight for him before he arrived.
Would Felici have scouts behind his army? Mikhal knew nothing of armies and marching. But surely Felici would think all his enemies were before him, except perhaps the kind of assassin who had attacked Mikhal. Scouts and outriders probably wouldn’t be a lot of help against assassins, although it might make Felici set more guards about the camp.
When it became too dark to ride, Mikhal hobbled the horse within reach of water and grass, rubbed the horse down with a scrap of cloth and then wrapped himself in the saddle blanket under an evergreen. He broke taboo and built a small, smoky fire and carefully held the blade of his sword over it, blackening every inch of the steel. It didn’t take long, and when he was satisfied, he carefully buried the fire.
He leaned back against the trunk of the tree. The thick branches came almost to the ground. It was warm and should stay dry.
He slept well and awoke at the first gray light before dawn. His legs were stiff but he reveled in the feeling of being rested, of having had enough sleep. When he had held the sword, he always woke as tired as when he went to sleep.
He rubbed the horse down as he munched more bread and cheese. He found a saddle bag full of grain and gave three handfuls to the horse. Then he saddled the horse and mounted stiffly. He rode on along the trail.
At mid-morning he came to a ford. The tracks seemed very fresh. He was no woodsman to say how far ahead Felici and his army might be, but he thought they were close. A mile or so further long the trail, he stopped, dismounted and simply listened. There was a murmur of voices and, perhaps, the creak of wagons. He could not tell how far ahead.
For his plan to work, he must join the army at twilight. He left the road then and, paralleling the trail, moved as quickly and quietly as he could north, trying not to be seen. As he moved up alongside the army, he saw no scouts or outriders. Felici must be truly confident of his control. By mid-afternoon, he judged he was ahead of the army. He stopped, dismounted and took the saddle off the horse. He tied the horse on a long line. He tried to memorize the landmarks. After making sure there was water and food, and after giving the horse some more of the grain, he moved on foot through the trees towards the road.
He moved slowly, watching for scouts. He could hear the army south of him but saw no one. He found an evergreen he could climb at the edge of the road. He took a handful of the black mud from the road surface, wrapped it in a scrap of leather, and climbed the tree, sword banging against his leg. He settled in close against the trunk, screened from below by branches and from all but the best eyes from a distance. The Reverend Abbot had given him dark green clothing which blended well with the tree limbs and the trunk. He settled in to wait. It was uncomfortable, but not so bad as the well.
After a time, two soldiers appeared on the road. If they were scouts, they were incautious ones. He let the scouts move by beneath him. Perhaps a half mile behind them came Felici’s army. It looked more like a mob. The army had shown more discipline in the valley by the farmhouse. They walked in groups of men. They were not in ranks, they did not walk in step, they still were not in uniform and they showed no caution. Perhaps his idea would work.
As the clumps of men moved by him, Mikhal eased his way down the tree. Between two of the groups of men, he emerged from the partial shelter of the low-hanging evergreen branches, tightening the waistband on his pants. No one commented as he joined one of the crowds of men.
They walked that way for another hour and then, well before sunset, started to pitch camp. Mikhal wandered off into the trees. He got out the black mud and smeared it on his sword, touching up place where the scabbard had rubbed the soot off. He threw the scabbard into the woods and stuck the blackened blade into his belt. Donal had to be behind him. He moved purposefully south down the road, now full of men pitching tents and building cook fires. He saw Donal, wearing the ugly helm, two hundred feet away. He found a tree he could climb that was close to Donal. Even this far away he could see the weariness in Donal’s posture. He almost felt sorry for him. Standing ten feet from the tree, he drew the blackened sword.
“Donal, you coward and thief, give me back my sword,” Mikhal shouted. Mikhal saw Donal stare at him in absolute astonishment. Felici emerged from a tent that had already been pitched. Felici said something to Donal that Mikhal couldn’t hear, but Donal moved quickly, very quickly, toward Mikhal. Mikhal turned and scampered up the tree like a squirrel. Fifteen feet up the tree, Mikhal balanced on a limb. “Thief, coward,” he shouted. “You stole my sword. Give it back.” All over the camp, now, men were turning and watching, some running towards Mikhal. “Give me my sword, Donal, or I will tell the whole camp how you got it.”
Donal hacked with the sword at the branches and then at the trunk of the tree. As Donal stepped close enough, Mikhal jumped from the branch and plummeted at Donal. As he fell, he cast his sword just slightly to the right side. Donal saw the sword, and was still looking at it when Mikhal struck the top of Donal’s head and his right shoulder with his feet. As he had hoped, Donal dropped his sword, staggered to the left and then collapsed. The fall knocked all of the wind from Mikhal, and for an instant he could not move. Then he forced himself to roll in the direction of the magic sword. Donal was just sitting up when Mikhal stood up, holding the sword, feeling the changes the sword had always brought. Behind him the evergreen, cut through by Donal a moment before, crashed to the ground onto men, tents and wagons. There were shouts and a scream.
Mikhal struggled to regain his breath. He picked up his old sword, still blackened, and limped over to Donal. As he got there, Felici came up to them.
Mikhal pointed with the blackened sword at Donal’s shoulder. “Is it broken?” Mikhal asked.
Donal stared at Mikhal for a moment. Then he moved his arm. “No, just bruised, I think. How did you get here?”
Mikhal interrupted him. “There is no time for stories just now. Take this sword.” And he pointed to the blackened sword. “Take it.”
Donal, sitting on the ground, took the sword.
“Now,” said Mikhal, “Get to your feet and drive me away. Make me confess I was lying and drive me away. Remember to strike only the flat of my sword.”
Donal sat on the ground and stared. Felici shoved him in the back. “Get up, you idiot, he is trying to save us all.”
Donal stumbled to his feet.
“Fight, or I will slice off your ear,” Mikhal told him.
Donal began a sword drill, then, gradually warming to his task. Mikhal closed with him for a minute and said, “Felici knows what I want. Everyone must think you still have the magic sword. Knock me down, make me confess and drive me off.”
Donal gasped, “Then give me the sword.”
“No,” said Mikhal, “I will give you the Empire if you cooperate, but I will not give you the sword.”
Behind Donal, Felici called out, “This man is a lunatic. Make him confess and drive him away.”
Donal pushed away from Mikhal. “You are a lunatic and a liar,” he called out. “Get out of the camp.”
Donal cut at Mikhal with a swinging stroke. Mikhal pretended to stumble back and fell. Donal menaced him with the blackened sword as Mikhal lay on the ground. Mikhal saw the other blade was now showing ordinary steel at a few places but still, overall, was satisfactorily muddy black.
“Admit you were lying,” shouted Donal.
“I was lying. I take back my words.”
“Louder,” demanded Donal.
“I admit I was lying,” said Mikhal, “I take back my words.”
“Now get out of the camp,” Donal ordered. He paused. “If I ever see you again, I will kill you.”
Without another word, Mikhal turned and ran from the camp. “Let him go,” he heard Felici call. “Get some men to lift this tree. There are soldiers trapped under it.”
Mikhal ran from through the woods in the twilight, clutching the sword, marveling that the plan had worked. He had come full circle, he thought, running through twilit woods, clutching a magic sword.
But because he did not trust Felici at all, he ran in a looping circle, and not straight to his horse. After a time he stopped, stuck the sword in the dirt and listened. Those might be sounds of pursuit, but they weren’t close. He pull a pair of gloves out of his belt and put them on. When he picked up the sword again, the sword’s effects did not occur. Reverend Abbot had been right again. While the speed the sword gave him would be handy, he wanted none of the sword’s other tricks. If he could help it, he meant not to touch the sword with his bare hand again.
He found the horse in the near darkness. It was an awkward business, saddling the horse in the dark, even after sticking the sword in the dirt again. Finally, he managed it, picked up the sword and mounted the horse. It was hard to see the stars through the leaves, but he guessed at west, away from the faint sounds of pursuit, and made the horse move slowly that way.
End of Chapter 5
Chapter 6 will be posted next Sunday
Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 4
A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings.
Here’s Chapter 1 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 2 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 3 if you missed it
Warning: the story involves graphic violence.
From Antonin’s Oddities:
One of the more unsavory tricks Gudsawr placed in the sword was an element that recognized when the same person held the sword for a long period of time. The sword would accelerate the time-dilation effect when the sword didn’t move for an hour or two, as when the sword holder was sleeping. At the extreme of the effect, the time-dilation was 5 to 1; one hour for the sword holder was five hours for the rest of the world. Since the effect ceased the moment the sword was moved, it was nearly impossible to detect the trap.
Gudsawr also programmed the sword to react to an extended period of high activity by accelerating the time dilation to as much as 5 to 1. The person wielding the sword would then move much too fast to even attempt to stop in a long battle. And aging rapidly as well, of course.
Chapter 4
The night before the battle, Mikhal woke from a dream in which someone was trying to stab him to an assassin’s knife plunging at him. Before he could react, the knife slid off the shield’s protection and tangled in the palette on which he slept. Still struggling to wake, he brought the sword up in his left hand and swung at the shadowy figure beside the bed. Despite the advantage of speed the blade gave him, the assassin was able to fall backwards and avoid the sword. Mikhal rolled from the bed and cut at the legs of the assassin. This time he cut the man, but only a glancing blow on the foot. The assassin changed tactics then, and threw himself at Mikhal.
The sword protected him again, and the assassin slid down in front of Mikhal, collapsing in a heap at Mikhal’s feet. The noise of the fight had alerted the guards, who came running into the farmhouse. The assassin then tried to impale himself on the sword, but Mikhal turned the blade at a slant, and the man only made a long, shallow cut along this chest and arm. The guards seized the assassin then and pinned his arms. Donal arrived next, followed by Felici.
Mikhal’s arms were trembling. If he had not held the sword as he slept, this man would have killed him.
“An assassin then?” asked Felici.
“Yes, Master Felici, he tried to kill me as I slept.”
“A fool to try to kill an invulnerable man.” Felici turned to the assassin, still held by the two guards. “Who has hired you?”
The assassin spat at Felici, hitting his cheek.
“Take this idiot outside and kill him, Donal,” commanded Felici.
The guards dragged the assassin out of the farmhouse. Mikhal started to object. Felici stopped him with a gesture, saying “We cannot let him live to attempt to kill you again, or to attempt to kill me. And men who stab from the shadows know the risks they take.”
“Who sent him, then?” asked Mikhal.
“Perhaps the Pretender, perhaps someone who knows of the sword and wants it. We will never know. Assassins do not talk. If you torture them, they lie.” Felici shrugged. “The only way to deal with them is to kill those you catch. That way there is at least one less assassin.”
“Then why did he attempt to kill me. Wouldn’t the Pretender, or whoever sent him, know the sword makes me invulnerable?”
“Who knows,” replied Felici. “Perhaps the dead emperor shared some knowledge of the sword with the Pretender. Perhaps they think you sleep without it. Perhaps they think the sword does not work when you sleep. It is pointless to speculate. They tried an assassin and he failed. The world has one less assassin.”
“And now what?” asked Mikhal.
“Now you go back to bed and try to sleep. I think we must see to better guards for those of us who are not invulnerable.”
Felici left the farmhouse, leaving Mikhal alone. Mikhal stared at the palette, looked at the sword in his hand, and shook his head. He was tired to the point of exhaustion, but sleep seemed a long chance. He left the farmhouse to find Donal. Perhaps some exercise might help him sleep. He found Donal just outside the farmhouse door, wiping the blade of his sword on the tunic of the assassin. Blood pooled around the body.
All thoughts of exercise with Donal left Mikhal. “I cannot sleep after that,” Mikhal told Donal, “I’m going to walk around a while.” Donal simply nodded as he instructed the guards to drag the dead assassin off.
Mikhal walked through the camp. With the sword in his hand, he was very conspicuous, and among those who were awake there a trail of muttered comments and strange looks. While he pretended to ignore them, he thought, “They aren’t really muttering about me. It’s the sword. If I matter, it’s only because I hold the sword. The assassin didn’t want to kill me, he wanted to kill the man who held the sword so that he could take the sword. I matter only because I hold the sword and only to the extent I can use it.”
He reached the edge of the camp then. Up the valley were the campfires and torches of the Pretender’s army. It appeared to be much larger than the army Felici had assembled. Mikhal looked at the sword in his hand, almost invisible in the darkness. He thought again of the dead Emperor, and the fight outside the Emperor’s tent when he had escaped. “Ah well,” he thought, “I will know soon enough.”
Donal appeared, with a wine bottle and two mugs. “A swallow of wine will let you rest,” he said. “It will also let me rest. That could have been disaster.” Mikhal accepted the wine and drank it.
“Thank you, Donal,” Mikhal said. “I doubt I will sleep but it may let me lie down.”
He made his way back to the farmhouse, and went in, lying down on the palette for the few remaining hours before daylight. He was still lying there, eyes wide open, unable to sleep, when Felici came to get him at daylight. “The Pretender’s army is assembling for battle. It’s time to fight.”
The battlefield was to be a large hayfield on the west edge of the farm. A small stream meandered through the hayfield, and the ground sloped gently up on either side. The field was dry. A thicket closed the upstream side. Downstream, the stream ran into a swamp. There would be no ambushes or surprise tactics in this battle. A larger army, Mikhal thought, looking at the Pretender’s forces, a much larger army, would fight a smaller force and Mikhal, wielding the sword.
“Mikhal,” Felici said, “You are the leader, Donal will follow behind you, leading our army in a wedge. Remember, you must go where the Pretender’s soldiers are thickest, and strike down as many as you can. Donal and the army will follow you. If something changes, Donal will shout at you. Be sure of whom you attack.”
“We will be in the capital in a week. Fight well.”
Mikhal waited as the soldiers formed up behind him in a wedge-shape. Felici called, “Attack now. A slow walk, you are invincible.”
Mikhal walked slowly towards the army of the Pretender. There seemed to be thousands of soldiers before him, extending up the other side of the shallow valley in rows and to his left and right the length of the stream. A knot of the Pretender’s soldiers came running down the hill at him in a charge. As the first reached him, he swung the sword right and then left, cutting three men in half and maiming two others. He took two steps forward, swung again and gutted two men and cut a sword off at the hilts. The eyes of the men holding their swords stayed in Mikhal’s mind. Disbelief and panic mixed. A step ahead and one to the left, and he killed three more men. He turned slightly left and cut down two men attacking Donal, then back to his right, killing another two. The men behind Donal had pikes, and kept the Pretender’s soldiers from approaching them. Mikhal stood his ground and cut the arm from one soldier and the head from a second.
“Shift ahead and to the left,” called Donal. Mikhal obeyed, and butchered the three men who came near him. “Aim for the leaders, at the flag ahead of you now,” called Donal. Mikhal walked slowly up hill, swinging the sword through soldiers as he would cut grain in his field, leaving dead and maimed men behind. The wedge of soldiers followed him. Ahead Mikhal saw another group of Felici’s soldiers moving from the far right, also headed for the Pretender’s leaders.
The soldiers before him thickened and thinned, but it made no difference to the sword. Once perhaps fifteen soldiers attacked him at once, trying to push him over or bury him, but as he stopped the soldiers with pikes came up alongside him and forced those who attacked to Mikhal’s front. The sword cut them all down.
As he drew closer to the leaders the soldiers attacking him grew more frenzied, and Mikhal swung faster and made longer strokes, moving the sword through a full semi-circle, suicide with an ordinary weapon but, protected by the shielding magic of the sword, safe as anything. Two more times soldiers jumped at him, trying to bury him with their bodies, or to force him down. Each time he continued to swing the sword as the wedge of pikes moved up before him, forcing the soldiers to the front and into the killing arc of the sword.
There was a kind of wall of shields around the leaders, held by soldiers in chain mail and helmets. The sword sliced through the metal shields, cutting arms and chests in the process. Mikhal noticed that in the noise and chaos around, all screams and ringing metal, the sword made no noise at all as it cut shields, mail, helmets, swords and soldiers into pieces.
“One quarter turn left and ahead,” screamed Donal over the noise, and Mikhal complied, moving towards the leaders as the pikes held the surviving shield bearers away. Four men on horseback tried to move away from him, but the press of soldiers and bodies held them where they were. The second group of soldiers, Mikhal noticed, had moved behind the group of leaders, and now turned to attack what was left of the other side of the shield wall. The four mounted men turned towards Mikhal, their faces mostly invisible behind helmets and masks. One man, Mikhal saw, wore a crown on his helmet. Perhaps that was the Pretender? Mikhal moved towards the horses.
Two of the horses charged at Mikhal. He started to flinch away from the spikes on the horses’ armor, but before the first horse could touch him the magic shield shoved the horse to the side. He swung at the rider to his left, and sliced open the horse’s ribs and cut off the rider’s leg. He swung the other way at the horse on his right and cut the horse’s left foreleg off entirely. The horse stumbled and started to fall on him, but fell away down the shield instead. The rider pitched forward in slow motion, and Mikhal spitted him on the sword. As he lifted the sword up, it sliced through the chest and shoulder of the man. A hand seemed to strike his head for a moment, but the blow had no force.
The other two horseman tried to ride away, and Mikhal took three quick steps forward and cut both of them across the waist, from behind. Blood fountained and one man screamed a long, thin shriek before falling from the horse.
“Towards the soldiers to the left,” called Donal, and Mikhal turned that way, cutting another half dozen men and seeing the others before him begin to fall back. Felici’s second group of soldiers forced the Pretender’s men to the left, downhill and towards the swamp. “A full right turn now,” called Donal, “and up the hill.”
Mikhal sliced through another three or four men, moving uphill. There were still Pretender’s men fighting, Mikhal saw, but only in clumps. Under Donal’s directions he moved to one clump after another, killing soldier after soldier. The clumps of soldiers grew fewer and the number of men running downhill and downstream into the swamp grew larger. Felici’s soldiers didn’t follow them, but left them to flounder in the muck and mud. From his higher point he could see men trying to swim in the soupy stuff, and still more bodies of men floating in the water.
“We have won,” Donal said as he came alongside Mikhal. The wedge of men with pikes was moving to the edge of the swamp, pinning the surviving soldiers of the Pretender in the swamp. Mikhal looked back the way they had come up the hill. Dead men and pieces of dead men lay everywhere, and blood flowed in cascades larger than the creek down the hillside. Mikhal had not imagined there was so much blood in the whole world.
There was no blood on his sword, and no blood on him. A little dust filmed him. Nothing more.
Mikhal’s guts spasmed and heaved. He retched and spat the vileness out on the ground. It was invisible on the blood-soaked soil. After a moment, he looked at Donal. He, too, was almost untouched, a few cuts and bruises on his arms. Mikhal watched the blood pool on the valley floor and stain the stream.
In the space of less than half an hour, he had killed perhaps one hundred or more men. He could easily and as effortlessly have killed five hundred.
“We should return to my father,” said Donal, “and see if there is anything else to do.” Wordlessly, Mikhal walked downhill with Donal, red-colored mud sticking to his boots. They crossed the creek that seemed to run now with pure blood, and walked up the other valley side to where Felici waited. It seemed to Mikhal that the sky grew a little lighter and Donal moved a little faster as they climbed the hill. Some trick of the sword, he supposed.
“There will be no organized opposition between us and the capital, and likely only a few guards there,” Felici said. “The Pretender and his army are dead.”
“The Pretender was the one with the crown on his helmet?” asked Donal.
“Yes,” replied Felici. “He was an idiot but not a coward.”
Donal shrugged. “He is a dead idiot.”
Mikhal’s throat tightened and his head throbbed. “Master Felici, I have killed sheep who had more of a chance. This wasn’t a battle; it was a slaughter. The hay meadow looks like a slaughterhouse.”
“War is defeating the enemy as quickly and completely as possible at the least expense to yourself. None of our soldiers were even badly wounded. The Pretender’s soldiers are either dead or drowning. A few are running through the woods, weaponless. Thanks to the sword, we have destroyed a force that outnumbered us seven to one.” Felici paused. “You are displeased?”
“I am sickened. The sword is too powerful. There is no limit to how many it can kill. Master Felici, I am not even tired. I did not even sweat.”
“A weapon cannot be too powerful, Mikhal, it can only be misused.”
“This weapon will never be used in battle again. The day we take the capital, I will throw it in a well.”
Felici gave Mikhal a long look. “As you say, Mikhal. It is your sword. But tonight we must help our soldiers, the nobles and our other allies celebrate our victory.”
“I must get rid of it soon, Master Felici. The sword is eating at me.”
At twilight, Felici gathered the army together. He called Mikhal to come forth and told the soldiers that the one bearing the sword had made the victory possible. He gave Mikhal a helm that seemed to be a metal eagle’s skull with a crown. The eagle’s beak extended as a nose guard, and the eagle’s eyes a kind of mask. Mikhal detested the thing immediately. What good was a helm to an invulnerable man? But the crowd of soldiers cheered like lunatics when Mikhal put it on.
“So this is power and glory,” thought Mikhal as the soldiers screamed and danced. “I want no part of it.”
A few hours later, as Mikhal sat on farmhouse steps, listening to the carousing soldiers, Donal appeared, once again with a wine bottle and two mugs.
“Not to celebrate,” he said as he handed Mikhal the mug of wine, “but to wash the ashes from out mouths. Victory at the cost of too many lives.”
“To ashes,” Mikhal replied. And drank the wine. “Perhaps tonight I can sleep, but only if the wine can put the rivers of blood from my memory.”
“Do not let go of the sword just yet,” said Donal. There are too many chances on the battlefield.”
Is there wine left?” Mikhal asked. Wordlessly, Donal refilled the wooden mug.
“Will you really throw away the sword?” asked Donal.
“Yes. I should have thrown it in a well when the Abbot told me to. It is too powerful, Donal. Too powerful.”
“As you say,” Donal replied, “but it seems a shame.”
Mikhal climbed to his feet. He felt just slightly unsteady. The wine was a warm glow inside him. “I have to try to sleep,” he told Donal, and entered the farmhouse. He laid down on his palette and, it seemed to him, fell asleep immediately.
End of Chapter 4
Chapter 5 will be posted next Sunday
Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 3
A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings.
Here’s Chapter 1 if you missed it.
Here’s Chapter 2 if you missed it.
Warning: the story involves graphic violence.
From Antonin’s Oddities:
Gudsawr embedded in the handle of the sword a small inertia damper, with an effective radius of about three feet, running down the length of the sword as well, but open at the top to allow air to enter. The inertia damper provided power to support a shielding effect and other, less savory uses. The inertia damper necessarily created a time distortion, which in turn reinforced the shield. The combined inertia damper and time distortion made a person holding the sword effectively invulnerable to anything short of a thermonuclear weapon.
Chapter 3
Mikhal woke the next morning still tired, his hand again cramped from holding the sword all night. After breakfast, he went with Donal to the area between the barn and the house, where Donal was to teach him swordsmanship. There was a problem from the start.
Mikhal would not let go of the sword. Donal would not teach him while Mikhal held the sword.
“Mikhal,” Donal finally said in exasperation, “If you do not trust me I cannot help you.”
“Your very father said that whoever holds the sword can make themselves emperor. How can I trust anyone? I mean no offense to you Donal, but how can I know who would not be tempted?”
Finally, on Felici’s suggestion, Mikhal held the sword in his right hand and took his lesson from Donal using an ordinary sword borrowed from Felici. The shield still protected Mikhal, and his movements, even as an amateur with a sword, were much faster than Donal’s, but at least Donal could give a lesson without fear of life and limb.
Despite his initial annoyance, Donal was a patient and careful teacher. Under his guidance that day and the two weeks that followed, Mikhal’s skills quickly improved. To his surprise, he had some aptitude for sword fighting, and Donal told him that with practice he might actually become quite a good sword fighter.
Evenings, Mikhal, Felici and Donald talked about how Mikhal might fight his way to the throne. Felici introduced Mikhal to officers in the Emperor’s army who might be his allies, and to some of the minor nobles of the Emperor’s court. Each time, Mikhal was required to show the guests the power of the sword, and to demonstrate his invincibility. Without exception, each officer and noble scarcely troubled to conceal his scorn for an ignorant peasant. Mikhal could see in the eyes of each the thought of what he might do with the sword, if it were in his hands and not Mikhal’s.
One such evening, after Felici had made Mikhal show the powers of the sword to a Colonel in the Emperor’s army, the Colonel spoke to Felici, as if Mikhal was not present, “Will you take the war to the Pretender or will you wait here for the Pretender to attack you?”
Mikhal interrupted, “Who is this Pretender?” The Colonel stared at him with distaste, whether because a peasant had dared interrupt a Colonel or because of his ignorance. Felici gave the Colonel a look of annoyance.
“Mikhal, the Pretender is Tomas, the late Emperor’s bastard son, and holds some of the power in the empire since the Emperor died. He is one of your obstacles to the throne.”
The Colonel all but rolled his eyes in disgust, “Then you are a long way from being ready for war.”
“No,” said Felici, “We are ready for war. We are a long way from governing the empire. We can win any battle now. With your regiment, we can make the war quick and relatively bloodless.”
“And you will make a peasant Emperor?”
“Mikhal is wiser than he knows, and much wiser than the late Emperor. The Pretender thinks of nothing but his own comfort and wealth.”
“And what do you offer me and my regiment, in return for our support in your war?” asked the Colonel.
“A barony and generalship when Mikhal is Emperor, fair treatment and higher wages for the soldiers you lead, and a better government than you have now.”
The Colonel looked at Mikhal again, a look that Mikhal might give a cow he was asked to buy. After a pause, the Colonel said, “I will give you that support. My regiment will be here in a week. I will have supplies for perhaps four weeks.”
“Talk to Donal,” replied Felici. “He will help with logistics and describe the chain of command.”
The Colonel left the farmhouse then. Mikhal turned to Felici, “You make these bargains with each of these officers and nobles?”
“Yes, Mikhal, it is a part of how we will gain you the throne.”
“It is a dirty business, this Empire. You sell me and the sword like I sell my grain at the market. Except perhaps that in the market the buyer wants my grain. The Colonel tolerates me only for the greed he condemns in this Pretender.”
Felici sighed. “There is truth in what you say, Mikhal, but not all the truth. If we are careful what we promise, and careful about those we pick to help us, we can make an honest and fair government.”
“Master Felici,” said Mikhal, “You speak of making me Emperor, but you will be the Emperor will you not?”
“No Mikhal, you will be Emperor. Like all emperors you will have advisors and ministers. I will be an advisor. You will have the sword, which answers all arguments, and you have both legs, while I do not. I hope you will listen to me, but you will make up your own mind. And you must not call me ‘Master,’ I am just Felici.”
“Then I must understand a great deal more than I do now. Simon told me you were wise, can you teach me wisdom?”
“I will teach you what I can. But I think we should start tomorrow. It is late, we are both weary, and you must train tomorrow as well.”
Mikhal went to his corner of the farmhouse and laid down to sleep. He shifted the sword from his left hand to his right, flexing his stiff fingers and stretching his arm. He thought again of the old Emperor, sleeping in his tent, the sword by his side. He thought of himself, five or seven years from now, as old as the dead Emperor. Would he sleep with the sword beside him, rather than in his grasp, trading the chance of theft of the sword for a night of sleep measured by normal time? Sleep overcame him.
Over the next two weeks, he practiced sword fighting less and talked with Felici more. There was still the endless stream of almost-sneering officers and arrogant petty nobles. A few wealthy merchants visited the farmhouse, too. Mikhal listened to all of the conversations, all of the promises and, each time, showed the powers of the sword. Nearly every day, he would talk with Felici and try to understand the nest of politics and power that was the Empire.
At the end of the second week, the lessons shifted to the history of the Empire. “The first Emperor was a merchant, Mikhal, who controlled most of the trade in salt.”
“Salt,” asked Mikhal, “The sea is twenty miles away, and gives salt to everyone. How can a man be rich by trading in salt?”
“The Empire extends almost three hundred miles inland, Mikhal,” explained Felici, “And what is common here is as precious as water at the southern edge of the Empire. In the wilderness further east, salt is even more valuable. The first Emperor became wealthy selling salt in the east and to the barbarians. With his wealth, he bought the acceptance of the nobles and the army, and so became the first Emperor”
“His son and his grandson did well when they ruled, balancing the army against the nobles and the merchants, until the drought.”
“A drought, Felici?” asked Mikhal.
“Yes, beginning perhaps in your grandfather’s time, no rain fell on the northern half of the Empire for more than six years. The peasants’ farms turned to sand and dust. Men, cattle, sheep and horses all starved. Even manna plants would not grow. Many peasants, in particular, were hard-pressed to survive. Finally, in desperation, a mob of peasants marched on the capital, and stormed the palace. More than ten thousand peasants were killed. Then, with no one to grow manna plants or grain, even where there had been a bit of rain, even merchants began to starve.”
“No one knows why, but perhaps because of all the death and starvation, a plague came then and killed another third of the Empire. And the plague killed the Emperor, the grandson of the first Emperor. Then came a long time of chaos, with no government and no trade and no food. And finally, seven years ago, after thirty years of drought, plague and banditry, a young sergeant in the army chanced upon a sword lying on a hillside. Using that sword, he made himself the new Emperor.”
“The sword I hold,” said Mikhal. It was a statement, not a question.
“The sword you hold,” agreed Felici.
“But the man I killed was an old man, not a young soldier.”
“The sword, apparently, does that. It ages the one who holds it, Mikhal. Look at yourself in the basin. In just the six weeks you have been here, you look a few years older.”
“This solider, he was a good Emperor?” asked Mikhal?
“That’s hard to say. He restored order to much of the Empire, he stopped the worst of the banditry. I think he allowed the merchants and the army too much power, but in part that was because he had to take the army into the country to fight the bandits. He could not balance the power of the army against the nobles. Now most of the nobles have aligned themselves with the Pretender. They see him as someone they can control. And the Pretender controls some of the army.”
“This Pretender is the son of the dead Emperor?”
“Tomas is the illegitimate son of the dead sergeant. Only a few think him the rightful heir. But no one wants more years of chaos. Mikhal, one reason you can become Emperor is that the sword will let you, like the sergeant you killed, quickly become Emperor. A quick end to the quarrel over succession is the best end.”
Mikhal thought a moment. “I created the crisis, didn’t I, when I killed the Emperor to save my own life.”
Felici shook his head no. “Better to say you caused the crisis to happen sooner. The Emperor would have died of old age very soon anyway. He had given no thought to a successor.”
“Felici,” said Mikhal, “I don’t like any part of this. I am the cause of much of the problem, and yet I am to be Emperor. I am to fight my way to the throne, killing as many as I must. I am to sell generalships and nobility, enriching others to make myself powerful. And I am to die of old age in a few years.”
“Have you any better solutions?”
“I would like to find one.”
Felici glared at Mikhal. After a long silence, he said, “I and my sons are committed to your cause now. We have no sword to make us powerful. Our army is small, and would vanish like dew but for you and the sword. The Pretender and those loyal to him would have our heads in a week were it not for the sword.”
Mikhal hung his head. “Felici, I thank you for your work, and your efforts for me. But remember I am a peasant. I think like a peasant. I plant, I grow, I harvest and I sell. I have planted chaos, and I fear how this will end.”
“If you don’t want to be Emperor, you must give up the sword. Give it to Donal. If you don’t want to fight, then run away, but leave us the sword. Likely you will die, but if you take the sword and run away you will kill all of us. You aren’t a peasant anymore, Mikhal. You stopped being a peasant when you ran away rather than pay the Emperor’s taxes. When you were a fugitive, you made a choice and became an assassin. The day we met you made a choice and became a revolutionary.”
“I didn’t understand these things. The Abbot was right when he said I should throw the sword in a well.”
“You have told me many times what the Abbot told you.”
“This cannot be right, Felici.” Mikhal’s voice was trembling.
“You must abide by the choices you have made. You are like the sergeant when he found the sword. Your path is now set.” Felici turned away from Mikhal. “Go and sleep. In three days’ time the Pretender’s army will arrive. There are no choices now.”
End of Chapter 3
Chapter 4 will be posted next Sunday
Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 2
A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings.
Here’s Chapter 1 if you missed it.
Warning: the story involves graphic violence.
From Antonin’s Oddities:
Gudsawr made the sword of a frictionless ceramic, with an edge on both sides of the blade made of a single long molecule of superconducting alloy. The edge, of course, was fantastically sharp, and since the blade was frictionless, it could cut through nearly anything without much effort. It could never dull. The ceramic was nearly unbreakable. I watched Gudsawr cut a stone in half with the sword.
Chapter 2
In the morning, watery sunlight lit the room, shining in his eyes. Mikhal woke, stretched and moaned at the stiffness in his legs. The fingers of his left hand were cramped and sore from clutching the sword all night. He felt as if he had slept only minutes. If Reverend Abbot was right, he had slept only a few hours while the entire night had gone by away from the sword. He thought for a moment of the Emperor, who had been sleeping, his hand away from the sword.
Brother Simon entered, carrying water, bread and cheese. “May I eat with you?” he asked.
Mikhal shrugged. “I am poor company, even if I were not a peasant, but you may join me.”
Brother Simon sat down cross-legged, in the manner of the brotherhood, and divided the bread and cheese. “Reverend Abbot says you must leave when you have finished eating. What will you do?”
“I have no idea in the world.”
“Will you throw the sword in a well?”
“That seems to be one of the ways I can kill myself.” Mikhal did not smile.
“Mikhal, if you trust me, I have two brothers who live with my father half a day’s walk from here. My oldest brother was a sergeant in the Emperor’s guards, until he left them to return to the family farm. Would you go there?”
“Why”
“The Emperor’s soldiers are not likely to look on a farm, or at another peasant farmer. And from what you told the Reverend Abbot, no one knows your face. And perhaps my father and my oldest brother can advise you.”
“And why should I trust you?”
“Mikhal, who can hurt you? While you hold the sword you are invincible.”
“That gives me no reason to trust you.”
“Then try this: you have been a dead man since you did not pay your taxes. The work camp would kill you. The Emperor’s guards will kill you. The sword will kill you. But perhaps my family can find a way that you can live. My eldest brother is clever, and my father is wise.
Brother Simon asked the blessing. They ate their food in silence. When the food was gone, Brother Simon stood up. “Reverend Abbot has given me permission to visit my family the next two days. I will leave for their home in half an hour. If you would like to travel with me, meet me at the gate.”
Brother Simon walked away. Mikhal sat alone and miserable on the palette. His hand ached from holding the sword. His legs ached from running and walking yesterday. He was tired and felt like he had not slept at all. And he had no idea what to do. His fear was in his belly like too much ice. His mind was empty.
After a half an hour, he pulled himself stiffly to his feet. Without really making a decision, without really thinking about it, he went to meet Brother Simon at the gate.
Brother Simon greeted him without comment, and together they started walking west. Almost at once, a problem arose. “Mikhal, you cannot walk so fast.”
The sword again. Maybe this was how he had walked two days’ distance in a single day. Mikhal held out his empty hand. “I will put my hand on your shoulder. Perhaps the sword will make you walk swiftly, too.” With an odd look, Brother Simon took Mikhal’ right hand. It worked, after a fashion, although it seemed to Mikhal he walked somewhat more slowly. The trees and bushes went by as fast as a man could trot. Brother Simon spoke excitedly of the marvel. Mikhal felt too tired to argue, or even to talk. Before noontime, they had come to a large farm, with a fine barn and a two story stone house.
“Father, this is Mikhal of Blackberry Hill. I have brought him to you because he needs advice.”
Brother Simon’s father was a tall man with a left leg of wood from mid-shin. His clothes were like any farmer’s. “Mikhal, my name is Felici and what advice I have I will give to a friend of my son. Simon, get your brothers and we will eat our lunch.
Simon’s two brothers were all tall, taller than Mikhal or Simon. Donal, the eldest, seemed all knotted muscle and sinew. They sat down on the porch, and ate cheese and apples.
Under Simon’s prodding, Mikhal told his story to Felici and his sons. At their insistence, Mikhal threw a rock while holding the sword. The rock knocked a hole in the hen house, and the indignant squawking of chickens filled the stunned silence. They all walked over to a stump that was plainly used as a chopping block. At Felici’s instructions, Mikhal swung the sword at the stump. The sword cut through the stump in a single blow. The grain of the wood at the new cut was smooth and polished.
Felici took a willow wand and swung it gently at Mikhal. More than a half a foot from Mikhal’ head, the willow wand stopped. Felici took a cudgel, and did the same thing. Again, the cudgel was stopped. “It’s not like hitting stone or metal,” said Felici, “the blow is absorbed, like hitting a pillow.”
“Do you trust this sword?” Felici asked Mikhal.
“It has saved my life ten times.”
“Then we will try bow and arrows.
Felici had Mikhal stand by the hay bales. From 50 feet, Donal drew a long bow and let fly an arrow. The arrow, it seemed to Mikhal, traveled slowly, and as it came within a foot of Mikhal it slowed still more and then veered sharply to Mikhal’ left. At the second arrow, Mikhal swung the sword at the arrow. His timing was off. The arrow struck the flat of the sword, and the sword swung at him, and the sword’s tip cut the strap on Mikhal’s sandal. Mikhal said nothing, and neither Felici nor Donal noticed. But plainly the power of the sword did not protect him from the sword itself.
Donal put down the bow. “How would you stop a man armed with his sword?” Felici asked Donal. “Can he be stopped?”
“Perhaps you could dig a pit and trap him in it?” asked Donal. “Or perhaps with a net he could be held, but I do not see what could be done after you had netted him.
“Another test,” Felici told Mikhal, and had him stand on a piece of burlap. Donal and Simon then tried to pull the burlap from under Mikhal as Mikhal held the sword. The burlap would not move.
Felici led Mikhal to a forest of small trees. “Mikhal, pretend these trees are enemies, and cut them down.” Holding the sword with both hands, Mikhal swung the sword back and forth and slowly walked forward. A path a sword’s reach wide opened around him. It wasn’t hard work. He could hardly feel the trees as the sword cut through them. Trees that fell towards him slid away along the invisible shield without touching him or disturbing the slow walk. Underfoot, the trees made the walking awkward but not impossible.
Mikhal stopped when Felici told him to. A pathway extended 100 feet into the forest, filled with waist-high stumps and the trunks of trees.
They walked back to the porch. Felici told Simon to bring wine. “Mikhal,” said Felici, “there is a way you can live, at least as long as the sword will let you.” Simon poured wine for all of them.
“And what way is that, Master Felici?”
“You can make yourself Emperor.”
Mikhal laughed out loud. “Master Felici, I am a peasant. I do not know how to be an Emperor.”
“Wise men will come and tell you how to be Emperor, provided you can become Emperor. And Mikhal, who is there to stand against you?”
“Master Felici, yesterday I was a peasant running from the Emperor’s soldiers because I could not pay my taxes; now you say I should be Emperor.”
Felici rubbed his leg where the stump met the wood. “Mikhal, the sword is a miracle. All miracles have a price. But it is still a miracle. And it can make you as powerful as you want to be. If you don’t want to be Emperor, you can make someone else the Emperor simply by standing at his side. Simon is right to call you a dead man, but we are all dead men. I am dead and my sons are dead for speaking with the Emperor’s assassin.”
Mikhal stirred at the word assassin but did not speak.
“There is no Emperor now,” said Felici, “and there are men quarreling and scheming to take the crown. One or another will become Emperor by force. None of them has the sword.”
“Mikhal,” said Simon, “were the Emperor’s taxes unfair?”
“They were more than I could pay.”
“If you are Emperor, the taxes need not ever be too high again. If you are Emperor, no peasant needs to fear the work camps.” Simon paused. “You can throw the sword in a well, as Reverend Abbot said, or bury it, or throw it in the sea. Then the new Emperor will sooner or later find you, and you will be killed. Or you can save yourself by making yourself Emperor.”
“Simon,” said Donal, “you are wrong on one point. Unless Mikhal throws the sword away, he will become Emperor, or make someone Emperor. The sword cannot hide him, only defend him. Mikhal can die soon by throwing away the sword, or become Emperor and die a little later. Those are the choices.”
“I do not want to die,” said Mikhal.
“That’s not a choice. The Abbot had that right.” Felici turned to Mikhal. “We will help you if you wish. Do you want to fight?”
“If I don’t want to die now, it seems I must.”
“First,” said Donal, “you need to learn how to handle a sword.”
End of Chapter 2
Chapter 3 will be posted next Sunday
Mikhal’s Story: Chapter 1
A few years ago, WC completed a first draft of a novella. It’s not all that good, and publishers have not been leaping at the opportunity to buy it. But it’s likely good enough to blog… So WC will inflict his fiction – well, his overt fiction – on his long-suffering readers. Chapters will posted on Sunday mornings. Warning: the story involves graphic violence.
From Antonin’s Oddities:
Gudsawr apparently created the sword as a kind of practical joke. He set out to create a weapon that demonstrated swords were not obsolete, if crafted with modern technology. Gudsawr built a thing which could defeat any other hand weapon of our day. Unfortunately, as a side effect of one aspect of the weapon’s features, the weapon tends to drift across universe lines when left unattended, and so is now lost. There were other side effects as well.
Chapter 1
Mikhal knew he was about to be caught. The hounds and the Emperor’s soldiers were close; the baying dogs’ voices loud and strong. The low hill country gave him no cover and no way to hide his scent from the dogs. When the thin woods opened into a foggy meadow with a large tent near the edge, he thought his only chance was to hide in the big tent and hope the other scents there might mask his own smell and fear and confuse the dogs.
With his knife, he silently cut a slit in the tent wall large enough for him to crawl through, and clambered into the tent. Trying not to pant loudly, he huddled in the corner. As his eyes adjusted to the dark interior, he saw the tent was partitioned, and that he was in the sleeping quarters. An old man lay asleep on a cot beside him dressed in chain mail and a helmet, a long sword by his hand. Just as Mikhal saw the old man, the stranger began to stir, perhaps awakened by the noise of the dogs outside. Mikhal turned to climb back out of the tent, but before he could more than start to turn, one of the hounds came through the slit in the tent wall, all at once, and lunged at Mikhal.
Desperate, Mikhal grabbed the sword from the awakening stranger and swung it at the dog. The sword cut the dog in half, without more than a trace of resistance. One instant, a snarling dog, the next instant, a dead dog, cut in two. Time seemed to slow for Mikhal, and the light in the dim tent grew even dimmer.
He heard the stranger speak, saying something like “Put down God’s Sword.” When the stranger reached for him, Mikhal menaced the stranger with the sword. Another hound came through the wall of the tent; Mikhal turned to the dog, sliced it in two pieces just as effortlessly as the last, and turned back to the stranger before he could move. The stranger again reached for the sword, and in a panic, Mikhal cut at him. The sword cut down through the stranger’s helmet, head and chest, spraying blood in a fountain. The blow was dream-like. The stranger had no time to dodge, the sword cut through the steel helmet without a sound and without effort. And the stranger fell slowly, much too slowly.
A kind of terror-stricken panic seized Mikhal then. He swung at the tent wall with the sword, two long slashes, and stepped out into the foggy morning. Three dogs and five soldiers stared at him in surprise. In a frenzy, like a man trying to swat at a swarm of bees, he slashed and flailed at them with the sword, cutting at dogs, soldiers and anything else that moved. The soldiers moved slowly, if at all. The dogs’ barking was low and deep. The one soldier who did manage to cut at him with a short sword seemed to miss somehow, and Mikhal’s return blow cut through the short sword, the soldier’s arm, and amputated the soldier’s left leg. Effortlessly, like cutting air. One man seemed to sieze Mikhal’s hair for a moment, and then fell in two pieces as the sword cut through him.
Only blood and bodies lay around him when he could seem to see and breathe again. Somehow, he had killed them all, men and dogs. It wasn’t possible. It could not have happened. Still clutching the sword, he started running again, but this time the fog around him was silent.
Panic and terror carried him through two different streams, running through a series of rolling hills. Gradually, the terror let him go, and when the terror faded away, so did his energy. When he could think again, he was among trees, in gloom and fog, with no clear sense of where he was, or how far he had run. At the third stream he stopped, drank water and tried to think. How far had he run? Was there anyone after him? The sword.
He looked at the sword he was carrying in his left hand. It wasn’t steel; it was dark gray and eerily smooth, glass-like. The grip was firm and large enough for two hands, but balanced for just one hand. The guard was generous and also of some dark gray stuff. He tapped the side of the blade against a stream cobble and the sword rang like a bell, a purely musical chime, crystalline. He tapped the same cobble with the edge, not hard, just a tap, and the sword cut two inches into the stone. It was impossible, the sword cut stone. He did it again, leaving another two inch deep cut, parallel to the first. What was this thing?
He pushed the stone into the water with his foot. The stone fell much too slowly, and when it finally struck the water, the splash was slow, too. He could see the water push away from the stone, and then rush back, colliding in the middle and rising in a column. Individual drops of water fell back like feathers.
He set the sword down, then, picked up another rock and tossed it into the creek. It behaved like a rock, fell as it should, and the splash was like every splash. A third rock, once again holding the sword; again, the rock tumbled slowly, and the splash was slow and fountain-like. What was this sword?
A fourth rock, then, still clutching the sword, but this one he threw the rock at a tree. The rock struck the tree like a lightning bolt, gouging out a chunk of wood the size of four hands, and sending ricocheting bits of wood and shattered rock whining. What was this sword?
He stared in wonder and terror at the sword. There were marks of some kind along the blade, but they made no sense to Mikhal. He had killed six of the Emperor’s men. He had a sword that was a miracle.
Hunger, terror and exhaustion pulled at him. Perhaps at the monastery they could shelter him, and perhaps answer questions. He could find the monastery, maybe, before the soldiers found him. He would try.
The fog thinned as the day wore on, and Mikhal crossed more of the rolling hills and two more small streams before the woods thinned enough to show him where he was. He found a trail. The mission was two days’ walk to the west, three days if he must hide in the woods.
Mikhal walked west, following the trail, trying to listen for anyone else through a haze of exhaustion. Time seemed to move slowly and quickly at the same time, and to his tired senses the surrounding country seemed to move too quickly. In the foggy dimness, he watched his feet, and when he looked up it seemed to him he had walked further than was possible.
To his surprise, he reached the monastery that evening before darkness, dizzy with exhaustion and hunger. Had he misjudged the distance so badly? Had he mistaken where he was? The adobe and brick walls were dark in the twilight, and the gate was shut. When he knocked on the gate it was a long time before a tonsured head peered over the wall in the twilight.
“Who are you who knocks with a sword in his hand?”
“Mikhal, of Blackberry Village. The sword is in my hand because I don’t have a scabbard.”
“What do you want?”
“Refuge for the night, and the advice of the mission.”
“What can you pay?”
“I have nothing but the sword. I am sorry.”
“Bide.”
The head disappeared and Mikhal sat down in the dirt of the trail, too tired to stand. After a long time, when it was entirely dark, the gate opened and the same person appeared. He carried a small candle lantern.
“Do you pledge peace while inside these walls?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then enter.”
Mikhal slid through the partly-open gate and entered the mission compound. It was hard to see. The gray shape of his guide appeared before him, after barring the gate.
“Follow me.”
Mikhal followed his guide into a small, windowless building. Candlelight showed a trestle table with two benches. A heavy-set man, not fat, sat there in brown trousers, cotton shirt and leather vest.
“Reverend Abbot, this is Mikhal of Blackberry Village. He asks refuge and a chance to talk with an elder.”
Mikhal, as he had been taught, dropped to one knee. “I thank you and the mission and God for refuge, Reverend Abbot.”
“Sit down, Mikhal of Blackberry Village,” said the Abbot, “and tell me why you need refuge, why you carry a bared sword, and why you are splattered with other men’s blood.
Mikhal looked at himself. He could see no blood.
“Your head and hair are stained,” said the Abbot.
“Reverend Abbot, I have killed six men this day. This sword comes from the hand of the first man. I believe it is magic.”
“Lay the sword on the table.” The Abbot turned to the other man. “Brother Simon, bring watered wine and bread.”
Mikhal laid the sword on the table. As he took his hand away, he realized his hand was cramped from carrying the sword for hours. The room seemed to brighten as he released the sword. He massaged his hand.
Brother Simon brought a wooden mug of watered wine and half a loaf of dark bread and set them on the trestle table in front of Mikhal. After a glance at Reverend Abbot and a hasty blessing, Mikhal ate and drank. Reverend Abbot watched him.
When the food was gone, Reverend Abbot said, “The whole story now, if you truly seek sanctuary.”
Mikhal explained. “I could not pay my taxes, and the Emperor’s men came to take me to the work camp. I ran away. Men who go to the work camp die; I thought I would rather die running away.”
When he described the fight, and the effects of the sword, Reverend Abbot’s expression grew grim. “I think the sword is magic,” Mikhal said, “and perhaps the Devil’s work.”
“The Devil need not make swords; men work enough evil without the Devil’s help. Take the sword in your hand, but keep the sword flat on the table.” Mikhal did as he was told. Reverend Abbot brought his hand near Mikhal’s shoulder; perhaps a half a foot away Reverend Abbot’s hand slowed and came to a stop.
“The sword, I think, makes something I cannot see, that acts as a kind of shield around you. You say the room darkens more when you hold the sword?”
Mikhal nodded yes.
“And you said things around you seem to move more slowly when you hold the sword?
Again, Mikhal nodded yes. He told Reverend Abbot of the rocks and the stream.
“I think the sword makes time different for you somehow, time runs perhaps more slowly away from the sword; time moves more quickly for you. This makes you much faster than the soldiers you fight. And the time difference somehow makes this shield I feel. Let go the sword now.”
Mikhal took his hand from the hilts. “Reverend Abbot, how can this be? How can a sword change time?”
“I have not the least idea. I do not believe in magic. ‘Magic’ is a word we use for things we do not understand. But it nothing any armorer in the Empire can make, either.”
“How did it come to hand of that sleeping soldier.?”
“You should have asked him before you killed him, Mikhal. But see how the sword is a trap: no sheath can hold this sword, which cuts through metal and stone. You must hold it in your hand, or leave it where anyone can find it. And as you hold it, time moves for quickly for you, or more slowly for those around you. You will grow old quickly, if you hold the sword, while those around you remain young.”
Mikhal was silent for a long time. “Reverend Abbot, should I keep the sword?”
“I think you should drop it in a well, a deep well, and not the mission’s well, either.”
“But without the sword, the Emperor’s men will kill me.”
“And with the sword, you will have to kill and kill and kill. All the sword can do is defend you and kill others. And you will die an old man in a few years. The sword is evil, as evil as any manmade thing I have ever seen.”
Mikhal stared at the sword like a snake. He rubbed the palm of his hand where he had held it.
“You may have sanctuary for the night, Mikhal, and food in the morning. Then you must leave. I will not have this thing in the mission for more than one night. You may ask one more question.”
“Reverend Abbot, who was the man who held the sword, who tried to take it back from me? How can a man have such a thing?”
“Mikhal of Blackberry Hill, the first man you killed was almost certainly the Emperor.”
Mikhal heard the words, but he could not seem to understand them. It was impossible that a peasant could kill the Emperor. He could not make himself respond.
Reverend Abbot called Brother Simon to show Mikhal to a palette in the common room. As they walked, Brother Simon spoke for the first time. “I overheard your conversation with the Reverend Abbot. Is the sword truly so powerful?”
Even tired and shaken, Mikhal worried at the question and Brother Simon’s tone. “I think the sword is as powerful as Reverend Abbot says, and I think it is evil. I will speak no more of it.”
Brother Simon nodded. He pointed to a straw palette on the floor of a dimly lit room. “Sleep here with the protection of the mission. I will bring food in the morning.”
Mikhal laid down on the straw mattress. Exhaustion, terror and wonder whirled in his head. He held a sword that made a peasant the greatest warrior in the Empire. He held a sword that would kill him. He had killed the Emperor. He should destroy the sword. He didn’t dare let go of the sword. Without knowing it, he fell asleep.
End of Chapter 1
Chapter 2 will post next Sunday
Bucks for Blogging: Who Knew?
WC is apparently the last blogger in America to learn that folks will pay – actual cash money – for product placement in blogs. Or at least give away cool stuff. Who knew?
WC may have missed the bus. But in an effort to catch up nonetheless, WC will provide some product placements of his own to see if any money falls out of any pockets as a result.
This morning after finishing reading the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and eating a healthy bowl of Quaker Old-Fashioned Oatmeal, WC decided to go for a walk. A glance at this Oregon Scientific thermometer told WC it was -36° F outdoors, so WC knew he’d have to dress warmly. WC donned his Patagonia fleece long-johns, a North Face fleece top, two pair of Woolrich socks, Apocalypse Design bib overalls, an REI down parka, Steger mukluks, and a Mountain Hardwear Men’s Dome Perignon fleece hat. Your nose can drip pretty fiercely at those temperatures, so WC stashed a handful of Kleenex Puffs in his pocket. To see in the frigid, arctic darkness WC donned a Black Diamond Headlamp. WC then pulled a Turtle Fur Neck Gaiter over his neck and lashed on his Atlas 1035 Snowshoes and headed outside.
WC had forgotten his mittens. So WC went back inside, his snowshoe spikes punching some nasty holes in his Mud-Master Floormats, but eventually found his Marmot Expedition mittens, pulled them on and headed outside again.
The parking lot lights from Home Depot and Walmart reflected off of Fairbanks‘ famous ice fog as WC waded through clouds of exhaust from the dozens of idling Ford F-350 pickups and Chevrolet Silverados, snowshoed past the idling cars in line for the McDonald’s drive-up window and struck off into the woods. The litter of Smirnoff Vodka bottles, Miller Lite and Coca-cola cans and Fred Meyer plastic grocery bags was covered with ice crystals that glistened prettily in WC’s head lamp. The flashing lights from Spirit of Alaska Federal Credit Union‘s very strange sign cast long shadows, as WC approached the Diamond Fence around the area.
But just then the Everready Super Heavy Duty batteries for the headlamp ran down, and WC couldn’t see, so he turned around and headed back, stopping along the way for a Mocha Dan’s 16 oz Mocha.
WC will just sit back and see if the royalty checks roll in.
Irony, folks. Irony.
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Written by Wickersham's Conscience
January 7, 2012 at 6:15 am
Posted in Alaskana, Bad Fiction, Commentary
Tagged with Alaskana, Bad Fiction, Commentary