Silence

Eight months of battle has come to an end. The siege is over, the campaign won. The war transforms from hot to cold with détente on the horizon.

A few tasks remain unfinished. In the coming months, the sally port will be bricked up. Sentinels will be posted and auguries performed to warn of any impending threat. She will stand a five-year vigil in the chapel every evening, lighting a votive like a prayer to ward off the grendel's return.

But these are the duties of a garrison not the deeds of an adventure.

The lists have been disbanded, the debris of battle cleared away. On the bailey tents have been dropped, banners furled and horses readied for the road. Mercenaries have been paid and ride toward their next contract. Friends and allies drift away toward home.

In truth many left long ago, worn by fatigue from endless months of siege. A few never answered the call at all. Some sought answers to unanswerable questions in advance, wanting to know whether the battle would be won or lost before committing their energy behind it. Others waited for a victory celebration without wanting to confront the possibility of defeat.

Only a handful understood that, either way, we endured this adventure with only words to convey our fear and pain, with only words to comfort us. These select were far fewer than I had hoped we when set our feet upon this path. But, like gold, they revealed themselves against the sediment as the water swirled relentlessly around the pan. And remain as cherished as rubies tumbled from a mountain stream.

The dovecote stands empty. All the pigeons have been released, their messages delivered if some unwanted or unread. Only one remains cooing in my hand, waiting for this final missive to be strapped against its leg, waiting for its time to fly. I sooth it with gentle strokes, wistfully remembering its companions before I lift it to the air.

Nothing more to say, I raise her banner one last time and watch the horses retreat toward the horizon. The quietude of night descends like the silence echoing against my ears. Above the gate an armored figure leans upon her spear, her shield slung over one shoulder, her sword still belted to her waist, ready to fight again if necessary but hoping it is not. As twilight deepens and friends depart, she waves farewell and Godspeed. Framed against the battlement, her silhouette sets in my mind as the picture of a hero. A veteran.

A survivor.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Tour

On her final day within the grendel's lair, I tour the laboratory of sorcerer-engineer.

Beyond the entrance, a sacrifice upon the wall in an illuminated style reminds me we have entered another religious enclave. In a simple cell, she exchanges her armor for a rough-spun robe, her weapons and equipment guarded under lock and key.

A choir monk, a sorcerer-technician, walks me through the checklist of spells he prepares while training a novice and replacement. A heavy metal door leads to a lead-lined vault sealed against legions of tiny, conjured demons, nines of millions in number, who can know no escape for the havoc they would wreak upon this world. She is positioned at the center of the armillary sphere that fills this room. It lifts and tilts on ponderous, whirring gears as they align it under mirrors reflecting calibrated shafts of light. A template is fitted to focus the fiendish magic. Numbers and symbols scroll through the air above her head, glowing, scarlet and angry. We retreat to safety before hoards of evil gremlins become unleashed.

The control room is carved to resemble a Norse rune called the Gateway, a thorn upon a rose marking Thor's domain where giants and demons stagger under his hammer blows. Each station faces a different chamber, one for penetrating demons, another for the superficial. Sorcerer-technicians scry upon her through crystal balls to monitor her progress, possessing no wards powerful enough to allow anyone to stand beside her. The demons have eaten through two apparatus with their vitriolic dispositions. Both will be replaced before the moon has turned.

The chamber is darkened, a button pushed, the magical accelerator uncovered and unchained. Its beam is set into motion, its ray invisible to our eyes. No torches dim, no candles flicker. Only a red lantern is raised above the threshold to remind us not to enter. The monks and sisters observe a moment of silent contemplation for the instants that the witching lasts.

And she is free.

She rearmors quickly before we depart. At the gate the lay sister who greeted her every morning from the tollhouse assigns an angel to perch upon her shoulder, a golden reminder of an ordeal now both judged and passed.

On the journey home, concentric rings spread across glassy pools of water with each drop of rain falling from a leaden sky like unshed tears of joy.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

The Lair

We enter the final battle having tracked the grendel to its lair. Fetid air wafts from the entrance, bleached bones litter the darkened grotto beyond like an ossuary.

Before she proceeds, the sorcerer-engineer measures her to ensure she can squeeze through the cleft in the rock, remarking her in woad to reinforce the magic symbols already upon her side. I step back as he floods the cave with the final bursts of his scintillating ray, knowing it is too dangerous for me to accompany her any farther. Only she may enter the cave before us. Only she may slay the beast within. This battle will be settled in the old way, hero against hero, leader against leader. Mano a mano, or literally, hand to hand.

Throughout this adventure, we have been fortunate in our encounters. We pray our luck perseveres until the battle ends. Fortune favors the bold though not always the brave. But, the dice are hot and continue to roll our way.

Many believe their God does not play dice with the world. There was a time when the gods openly diced with men, a time before they retreated into deed restricted communities behind abalone gates where security stations turn away any who might intrude. Then, the gods walked among us, gathering in the agora for a quick game where the stakes could wager a life against immortal fame for no more than entertainment. Now, they skulk the back-allies of the keep, weaving drunkenly between the arsenal and the data mine like homeless addicts searching for a cure.

Perhaps others roam beyond the shadow of the wall, much reduced and mumbling though just as capricious when they throw the bones. I wonder if one watches over her, protecting her like Athena or Apollo shielding their heroes during the ten year siege at Troy. I don't remember doing one a favor, don't remember asking one to load the dice. Just another debt accrued, another payment due, one no dwarven lord with bear.

As she crawls inside and disappears, the dice go into motion, tumbling off the woodwork before they hit the cloth. Time stops. The cubes hang above the table, circling, spinning, deciding.

Alone for the moment, I focus on my surroundings: a shallow bowl, carved from the hillside by some long dead giant's hand, blocked in by a pool both green and stagnant. A narrow path leads around and in with a craggy wall behind like a rising gray crescent moon. A stream trickles from a stone encased well with an adjacent cell for meditation, perhaps a blessing or a baptism, or just rest and refreshment before our hero delves into the fissure by its side. The site is ancient and holy, its floor unexpectedly vibrant and alive. Orchids, white with blushing tips, cling to rough and tumbled walls. I wonder how they survive on only rocks and air, but that is what life does, in expected places, in unexpected ways.

I climb the rude stair that leads to the top of the hill where I can see across the straights to the caers and eyries and snowcapped mountains where griffins dwell. Up here lie the cairns of unnamed heroes shrouded with drooping bluebells that silently toll their forgotten deeds with each passing breeze lifted from the sea. Perhaps a benevolent god pauses to listen as it wanders this headland as it has since time began.

Part of the grendel's magic is induced amnesia. When she emerges from its lair, she will not remember where the dice have settled, whether she has slain the dragon or wounded it into sleeping, passing the years within it own contented dream. Either way, I will show her to this place before we depart for home. From here, we can watch the sun rise and set over water, passing the day in beauty and the peace that stillness brings.

Behind the veil, the dice clatter to a rest beyond our sight. The battle now has been won or lost, and we eagerly await the outcome.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Exchequer

The adventure is nearly over but for the counting.

Deep beneath the data mines lie the stone-lined vaults of the exchequer, pale and patterned gray, echoing and empty. For years we have maintained a contract with a dwarven lord, complete with provisions against bad stars and ruinous undoings, subsidizing his excavations in exchange for his fiscal expertise. Each month we navigate the maze of tunnels that lead to the hall of this mountain king where his agents pay our factors with script and promissory notes until more ore is processed and new coins minted.

From atop his granite dais, he directs an empire of which we are only an insignificant acre, arranging payments, brokering munitions, procuring provisions all discounted in bulk. He negotiates like a miser, mean as a magpie atop its pile of sparkles. He engages a syndicate of mischievous German house gnomes, moneylenders, coin-changers, pawnbrokers, who dole out silver to impatient lines of mercenary henchmen and sorcerers' apprentices. They are immune to threats and coercion, demanding precise protocol in their interactions.

We receive regular reports as transactions are booked and parchment pushed from pile to pile. Every newt's eye is classified, each ounce of bat's wool catalogued. Adders' forks are coded and blind-worms' stings collimated. Golems and trebuchets are itemized down to the eyelashes and strands of hemp. Each herb, each poultice, every potion that boils and bubbles is checked and cross-referenced to ensure the proper procedures and eliminate duplication before it garners the appropriate mark on the appropriate page of his personal Doomsday Book, where even jots and tittles bear a price.

Like a crouching spider at the center of this web of collation, the byzantine Nibelung lord remains still and sensitive to the vibrations of each strand and cross-thread of his financial network, his beard barely twitching as the confetti chaos flies around him, sprinting into action only once gold brushes against his sticky snare.

Practicing a proxy war game, he pits supply against demand on our behalf. His ink-smudged clerks, armed with quill and abaci, perch atop their desks, islands in a tumultuous sea of paper. Singing pirate ditties and brandishing their pencils, they prepare to hop island to island along the archipelago and storm the coastal fortress constructed of account books, their battle-map resembling Kafka's office, if Kafka were Bedlam's official CPA.

Each month we emerge from the maze slightly more befuddled and confused, never remembering the precise progression of tunnels in or out. The surface air clears our heads and slowly brings contentment. No wizards pound the postern gate, no mercenaries tap swords to hands upon the bailey, no pitchforked peasants threaten to storm the castle walls. Somehow the accounts of the exchequer remain in balance with this dwarf's twirling slight of hand choreographed like a ballet company of tiny angels pirouetting on a pin.

Slaying this particular dragon brings no hoard of treasure, no gold or magic rings, only reams of fine-printed, twenty-four pound paper that previously lined its cave.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Fractions

The sorcerer-engineer works in fractions, one of twenty-eight, one of five, one of thirty-three. Each day dawns with a three-percent solution until his magic reaches effulgence. He watches through his crystal ball as shaft of lights whittle at the grendel like wood from a carving or clay upon the wheel until nothing is left but a pile of dross to be buried beyond the wall.

No monument will mark the grendel's standing save the scars across her side. She will never see its body, never touch it, never know it is well and truly dead. Though its arm was nailed to the central pillar of her hall, she will always wonder how the monster could survive such a grievous wound and still drag itself toward home. She remains uncertain whether scattered kin will rise to demand a wergeld, whether its mother will swear vengeance before raising a retributive army of her own.

High in his tower, the sorcerer-engineer drops clear, cold marbles into a boiling cauldron to reflect on the patterns that emerge. Most shatter internally with a resounding crack but do not come apart. The sudden change brings beauty in the imperfections, a spiderweb of fractures refracted through the glass. He reads the sparkling veins like the lines of love and life etched into her palm.

She relies on his assessment. Like the captain-general, she works with her hands and does not practice magic, unless in the way that farmers do as they encourage the earth to grow. Or the Buddhist mage who transplants rather than terminates life, whether newly sprouted, green and out of place or many-legged and wandering astray. Perhaps in these simple actions, she has been buying back her own life one fraction at a time.

Fractions descend like fragments from a shattered ornament. Broken shards tumble from our eyes like the scales of a translucent dragon. Alternating days of war and peace, of mirth and woe, gift and loss flash and circle in the falling light. One by one, they trickle into our hands where we piece them back together to create a whole, a new beginning.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Malaise

Hour by hour, day by day, time slips away in waiting. Waiting for the next day to come, waiting for the battle to end.

Keeping the sentries awake and on the wall requires effort with the battle beyond their sight. Defections have risen among the whites. The reds barely hold their numbers at the level to be called a company. At best the whites would be classified as understrengthed.

Battle fatigue has infected the veterans, pre-post-stress. Without action to engage them, they dwell on the details of what might have been and what might yet be. They think about returning to the routine they left behind, the coming harvest a distraction. The urgency has left them as they try to recall the puzzle of seven months ago, which pieces to pick up, which to leave lie.

Challenges go unuttered, rounds unattended. Orders go unwritten, unread and unexecuted. The discipline of duty becomes more difficult with the quiet of each day. The heat siphons our energy, our vigilance, our will. Dogs of summer have replaced the dogs of war.

The grendel becomes more ephemeral each week its once powerful army remains unseen and unheard. Only the most experienced warn of its specter lurking in the miasma behind the waves of humidity. One lightning raid could see our hasty retreat to the tower keep while the remaining whites conduct a sacrificial holding action in the chapel above the gate praying for an infusion of reinforcements.

But summer beckons with blue skies and long lit evenings. Squirrels chase and frolic on the front bailey, occasionally congregating in strange conclaves. Blue jays splash through sun showers by the water gate before teaching their young to feed. Turtles scoop burrows from cool, dry sand to insulate their eggs until they hatch. Snakes entwine around each other on the flagstones like caducei.

Life breeds life, and we long to forget what follows, as eventually we should. We want to linger in each moment, each sliding instant slicing past from future like a well-stropped razor. Adrift on this languid raft, the sea carries us farther from shore with each backward wave that slowly lulls us toward midday sleep.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Routine of Days

She circles back to where she started, the grendel retreating toward its cave, elusive.

Each morning, she enters the enchanted wood alone and unarmored, her red hood just coming back pale and baby fine. Armed only with a basket scented of butter and fresh custard, she appears defenseless, naked bait hinging the release of the sorcerer-engineer's trap each time the grendel's jaws snap beside her ear while she struggles against its cruel embrace.

From high within his tower, the sorcerer-engineer traces her progress through the simulacrum's crystal eyes, now his familiar, his black cat stalking her shadow on silent paws, his eyes upon the night. Locked outside, housecarls listen intently as each report drifts down. Should the horns sound, we ride with axes shouldered to quickly render aid.

But grendels are cautious, and cunning by nature. It will not approach should it scent sorcery upon the wind. She becomes the lure, the apple, the forbidden fruit whose temptation is too powerful to resist, the betrayal waiting at the end of each day in a sudden blaze of fiery pain that only it will feel.

Like a moth drawn to the flame that devours it, instinct compels it to return. Like the wax of that votive, to provide the light she, too, must prepare to burn. Transformed from fuel to smoke a little more each day, she lights her own way in the darkness, seeking out the path to her redemption and release.

Each morning finds her slightly more sunburned and sore from the previous in the field as her searching slowly spirals toward an end.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Simulacrum

Reborn in a baptism of chemicals and steel, she now exchanges art for applied science, alchemy for wizardry, an artillerist for a technologist. For the final phase of this battle, the mage-general is replaced by a sorcerer-engineer.

Part thaumaturgist, part diviner, his is a science of precision and calculation, of sortilege and scrying, of orphic formulae. Arcane instruments crowd his laboratory, an abacus, a tellurion, an armillary sphere. A clockwork orrery guides him in focusing the power of the sun and stars into a deadly, coruscating ray.

These are his tools in the fight against the grendel. Unlike the mage-general's, his is a push-button magic operated remotely from the safety of his tower. Specializing in the tactics of ambush, he seeks to grind the grendel down through a series of encounters. He preys upon its warring instincts, not dissimilar from our own, to seek its lair when injured but rarely to pass an exposed enemy without a strike.

Numbers dance across Napier's bones while a secret algorithm clicks and whirs through a difference engine until a pattern emerges, a solution. No matter how exacting his calculations, he cannot avoid her with his ray. His magic is lethal, to her as well as the grendel.

In preparation he places his mark upon her, tattooing her with esoteric runes inscribed in woad. Measure by measure, he records her dimensions, slowly crafting a homunculus, a golem shaped from blood-dampened clay, a miniature woman upon which he performs his sibylline rites and computations.

He binds his creation with powerful words and wardings. His ray could spark life within, though it cannot imbue a spirit. Unchained, the soulless construct would rampage within the wall, easily tearing down all she has bled to defend.

Completed with cast-off bits of nails and hair, with crystal orbs for eyes, the simulacrum stands ready to serve in her stead, absorbing what damage it may from the brilliant flash of each attack morning after morning.

The routine of days will bring more fatigue and depredation as the strain of each encounter depletes her reserves and leaves her increasingly short of breath.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Rearguard

She leads the company of White Shields streaming through the open gate, dragoons reinforced by heavy lances with a reconnaissance detachment from the Bloody Reds. These are her few remaining veterans, proud wives and mothers with silver mail and graying temples. Pennants dance from our spears as we ride to harass the retreating grendel, eager for the wind in our hair and reclaimed territory beneath our feet.

We track the grendel by the swath of beaten ground his decaying legion trails behind. Cast off equipment, backpacks, shields, helmets, anything that speeds their retreat, marks the tract like discarded toys strewn along the path of a petulant child. Through the rising dust, we spy the first stragglers strung out down the road. The grendel's forces lack cohesion now, his units dissolving into clumps and clusters. We preserve the discipline of our formation, a column abreast behind a thin screen of advanced and flanking scouts. Shadowing the horde, we maintain close contact, keeping ever-present pressure from barely out of crossbow range.

As the trail descends into the enchanted forest, the scene of so much of our recent fighting, a contingent of heavily armored hemogoblins emerge to form a shield wall across the road, their flanks anchored on well-treed knolls rising to either side. These gnarled and bandy-legged monsters hiss and taunt us, raising a roar of defiance accompanied by the cadence of their falchions ringing against the rims of their tower shields.

She studies their disposition, formulating a plan of attack as our horses shy and skitter at the noise. We could feint to either side, dismount and outflank them, force them to retreat through a series of set engagements. Instead, she chooses confrontation, a battle royal to end the grendel's final organized threat. Forming her heavy cavalry behind a vanguard of dragoons, we advance upon the enemy's line in tight formation, horns and gentle voices raised in a harmonious rendition of the company's battle hymn to counter the cacophony below.

Quickening to a trot, a canter, and finally a gallop, the sound of our hooves rolls down the hills like thunder from a swiftly advancing storm. Hemogoblins brace behind their sturdy shields to receive our charge. Just before the wall, scouts and dragoons peel away to either side, thrusting their spears at any exposed faces to sow distraction. Hemogoblins untense thinking this a probe, a mere demonstration until our hidden, heavy lances crash into their slackened shields, smashing their formation. The cresting wave of steel and horseflesh sends them reeling into uncontrolled flight, easy targets for the dragoons circling back around.

Red scouts stalk the pockets of survivors with sanguine glee. For months, the hemogoblins have predated their numbers, ambushing patrols, assassinating officers, raiding the settlements where replacements gather. While our pickets will skirmish with the dispersed clans for weeks, the war band's annihilation marks an end to the conscription of widows and orphan girls to fill her Red Company's meager ranks.

Though the grendel's remaining forces have melted into the sanctuary of the forest, we celebrate the destruction of his rearguard. Laughing and singing, we return to the keep victorious.

Our revelry is broken by a waiting dispatch from a distant sister in a land of gold and honey, a fellow amazon herself besieged. We read in dismay that her walls have been breached and most of her white company slain in a delaying tactic to secure her retreat to the great donjon tower. She endures six hard days of siege before a relief force can be raised to counterattack and reclaim her fragile walls. The breaches have been bricked over, but her walls remain weakened. How we wish we could spare our veteran column to aid our sister in arms, her allies and family now also under siege. We are reduced to sending messages of solidarity, smuggling through a handful of surplus supplies, exchanging strategies and tactics hard won in the prosecution of this devastating war.

Alone or in twos, our veterans drift away to prepare themselves for the next day's ride with only the crows on the battlements continuing to laugh.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Interstice

The stone-lined pool on the back bailey has transformed from ice to liquid stillness. The sun glances across the mirror of its surface through a narrow wedge between retreating clouds and the horizon, past and future parting, an opening for reflection.

Six months ago, Cassandra stumbled into our camp stammering a prophecy of coming days of darkness, a prelude to the grendel's challenge, a prologue to chapters now read.

The siege has finally lifted. The final round has found its mark. During the night the grendel's army abandoned their camp, some deserting, others dispersing to their caves. Scars mar the hills and fields where fighting raged and army's slept, black reminders that will green and fade with time.

On battlement, the trebuchet lay in pieces, disassembled so the mage-general and his mercenary band can load it onto wagons in preparation for the next battle, someone else's battle. Stacked as unshaved timbers, it looks less martial, less deadly, perhaps a watchtower, a wellhead, the skeleton of a hall. One day.

Though the arsenal stands empty, the fighting has not ended. Hemogoblins still conduct commando raids at twilight. Cackling imps still pilfer her salt, occasionally stealing a memory. Minor elementals still torment her with flame without warning. Sentries remain posted. Pickets patrol beyond the wall. Where we thought to grant leave in the brief respite between phases, our timetable advanced with the enemy's retreat. Even as we clean up the detritus of siege, cloven shields, shattered swords, rent links of chain, we service our equipment for seven weeks in the field.

Wandering through the now open gates it is difficult not to feel a sense of loss. There has been purpose to the months of fighting, our time scripted, spontaneity reserved for sanity and riposte. The narrow spaces between buildings echo with ghosts of that activity, pale specters of the loneliness and fatigue. Shades whose translucent faces mouth a haunting question: is where we were still where we want to be? The answer requires time and contemplation, luxuries that remain in short supply.

With our eyes focused elsewhere, winter turned to spring, spring to summer. And midway to autumn before this campaign ends.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Ghost

I am the ghost that roams the battlements, waiting for the final preparations to begin, waiting for this siege to end.

The battle is not over once the last shot is fired. It takes time for the round to become effective, time for her to recover from its effects. The siege is finished when all our gates to stand unbarred, the main as well as the posterns. Only then will the first phase of our celebrations begin.

I pace the walls in anticipation, wondering how to chronicle this phase of her journey without relating some of my own. Like a child playing hide and seek, I know more of me has been visible than I would care to believe. Though I close my eyes as I write this, it helps only in my mind.

In the yellow light of twilight, I review my equipment one final time. For months, a satchel with provisions has lingered near the postern, easily snatched for fighting. Experience has winnowed its contents to the essentials, a handful of rations, a flask of water, a few squares of chocolate, a tiny apothecary, cotton to shield my ears from the noise of battle, a pad and pencil to note reconnaissance and orders, a book to relieve the inevitable waiting boredom. Tucked through one strap hangs my only armor, a padded jersey emblazoned with the name of a foreign land to ward against the cold. The mage-general's magic strips the air of warmth as did the captain-general's before him. At times its hood lends me anonymity to watch and listen unobserved, a brief refuge from the flurry of activity on the battlements to note my observations. A steaming flagon remains my only weapon, a caffeinated potion that keeps my eyes wide and my senses sharp, a witches’ brew of coffee and cocoa laced with sugar, like the experience, both scalding and bittersweet.

It is hard to know which has been more difficult, the weeks of ceaseless fighting or a break just long enough to restore a few days of normalcy before the battle resumes, shattering the illusion into a cracked and jagged reflection of reality. These furloughs, while welcome, serve as both history and foreshadowing, reminders of what we have lost and what we hope to regain.

I am the ghost that roams the battlements, clinging to living in hopes of being made whole or dispelled and finally allowed to rest.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Lycanthropy

False dawn, a time for reflection. Omens persist, their images breed uncertainty.

Smoke fills the air. Golden-gray light presages wind and storm. The sun hangs in the sky like a disc of beaten copper tempered with blood. A fog obscures our vision, hot and choking rather than cool or soothing. The smell of last night's ashes fades to the scent of a week old camp. Does the grendel burn his wagons in preparation for retreat? Or is this a scorched earth tactic meant to slash and burn our fertile fields?

Yesterday, a crow flew from the forest to the battlement, it's feathers like the night, like the ink I pour upon the page, liquid, black, and flowing, a speckled egg cradled within it's beak. Nesting its treasure in a corner of stone, it pierced the shell and drank the nutrition within. We want to judge this bird, to say how wrong it was to steal some mother's child, to differentiate it from us. Where a crow sees opportunity, humans create an industry.

The People of the Dawnland, the Abenaki people, my people, believe each of us is guided by a creature in nature who reveals itself in a vision. Was this mine?

Often on this journey, we become lost in an enchanted forest. It appears across our path like a Celtic tower rising from the mist, sylvan, dense and Grimm. Here and gone, trapping us within its borders confused and disoriented until it reappears. Deep inside an armored knight guards a holy well, issuing a challenge until he is defeated and we might drink its healing waters.

Each time we enter this tangled wood, we are transformed a little further, more features of the creature guiding us emerge behind our eyes. This metamorphosis is unavoidable, a part of the journey. None escape the experience unscathed, unchanged. We cannot bypass this forest though most sane people do. A few risk the transformation beside us. Perhaps, they bear an amulet warding them against this form of lycanthropy. Perhaps, they do not fear it, perhaps they embrace this change.

Folklore or delusion, disease or just a dream? I am not sure.

By sleepless moonlight, I wonder what creature hides within me. Each has two faces, dual, competing images, one a native son revered in vision, the other a European construct reviled from an age of darkness. The wolf, loyal and devoted, the spirit of the wild, or a bloodthirsty killer, hunted, feared and outcast. The crow, clever and opportunistic, at worst a trickster, or the iridescent darkness, a harbinger of death. Perhaps the cat, curious and silent, a lone not lonely hunter, or a mark of shadow, the servant of a witch.

Each viewer interprets what emerges for themselves. Many fear our transformation, not realizing we, too, remain uncertain of who resides behind the faceplate of the guardian we seek to slay, a stranger or ourselves.

Until we know, we roam this ancient forest tossing breadcrumbs before us. Even with this trail to follow, we must be careful not to cast them too far lest the birds consume our markers and we lose our way again.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Reconnaissance

At dawn we weave spells of fire below stitched canvas, slowly inflating it into a bubble of air. As we climb into the wicker basket, thin lines tether us to the ground. We release the ropes and gently drift into the morning sky, our bodies heavy but our souls light.

Surveying the landscape, it becomes difficult to remember our purpose. In the low light of morning, the castle resembles a unique geologic formation. A thin mist shrouds the grendel's lines, rising from the furrows between the trees as a tract freshly turned for planting.

The canopy obscures the hive of activity our appearance has kicked over. Peering between the branches, archers bend their bows and loose. Gravity claims their shafts long before they near their mark. We drift overhead, unscathed, even their taunts falling short by a whisper. The grendel seems quite angry that we are this close yet remain unaffected by his presence.

Our conflict seems so small hidden among the trees, a charcoal smudge across pastel swells of forest and pasture, a slight mar on an otherwise Lucullan panorama. We sketch the grendel's dispositions on the map of our memory. Units of friend and foe seem so orderly, like illustrations of contests long settled, a game of miniatures, counters on a board. The scene is almost peaceful when viewed from high above, the frenetic activity below no more than leaves dancing in a summer wind.

Drifting beyond the battle, the air is cool and still, almost motionless. Osprey hover above the treetops, hunting the shimmering reflections of lakes peeking through a veil of leaves. Cattle graze lush green fields contentedly, taking as little notice of us as of our distant struggle. Through this tranquil terrain, we track the cavalry racing from the postern gate to trail us, our escort home.

Our magic exhausted, we begin to descend. With a slight jar, we settle back to earth, our canvas bubble quickly deflating. Momentarily, the cavalry breaks from the forest, galloping toward us with a train of fresh horses. The ride home is a blur of trees and fields, chapels and farmer's crofts, our minds still floating in a memory of the sky.

Soon, we find ourselves riding through familiar streets then back inside the wall, awakening as if from someone else's irenic dream.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Countdown

Four becomes three, three becomes two.

Two more rounds before the arsenal is empty and this phase of combat operations is complete. Early on as with any complex task such as construction of a castle, we divided the process into small, understandable parts, separating surgery from siege, siege from radiating magic. Like a military campaign we keep each goal simple and attainable so one is always within sight, then reach, then grasp. Even fatigued and short of sleep we can count from four to one and then move on.

When the siege began and our mage-general wove the incantations around his potions, he instructed us that we only had to count from four twice. Four is easier than eight, less daunting than sixteen or one hundred and twelve. Four and four again, like our fathers counting to ten only less angry, each slightly more patient than our mothers counting to three.

In the stables beside the gatehouse, the horses grow restless. Bays, grays, buckskins and chestnuts shift impatiently in their stalls reflecting the mood of their riders. Once the trebuchet like the arsenal is empty, we will gather them in the courtyard. Knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, our cavalry will charge through the unbarred and open gate, taking the fight to the enemy. Like Alexander’s Companions at Issus, we will charge the grendel's hill first with lances level then with swords, breaking enemy formations while companies of our infantry hold our lines against their pernicious assault, cutting down any enemy who stands in our path until their commander is slain or flees the field.

Destriers and chargers stomp and prance in anticipation, coursers and rounceys toss their heads and snort. No palfreys or hobbies, these are aggressive and energetic mounts bred for battle. It is too early for them to be saddled, too early for their lather. So we whisper in their ears to sooth them, reassuring them with tales of their coming valor when they will leap over walls and hedges, clearing fences and ditches in a perilous steeplechase toward our goal.

They believe our lies, our tales of glory, and settle back to munch their oats, waiting, as we do, through this protracted countdown.

As four becomes three, three becomes two.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Sacrifice

Exploring the basement beneath the chapel we uncover an older alter carved with abstract faces and arcane runes tucked in a vaulted alcove directly beneath the new. Unbidden, a dark and hungry god arises, an ancient incarnation demanding a sacrifice.

We offer it our preconceptions, expectations of a life unlived. From the darkness a vision of clarity emerges as images from a dream.

The walls, the trebuchet, our soldiers in their bright mail, the dark army arrayed against us, the lambs in our folds, the goats in their pens, each waiting to be slaughtered to sustain the next attack, allies and enemies, each possess a grace, all merely follow some inner compass, some voice that they alone can hear.

There is beauty in that simplicity, in that order, that understanding. Even as they clash, dying like a prayer on the lips of an uncertain priest forced to confront firsthand the atrocities of war, that is, prematurely, they embody a connectedness. In their struggle to be free of one another they remain linked, inseparable as sides of a coin. Slice one from the other and you end up with two, each blank face ready to be imprinted with a new darkness to balance its light, a new demon to embrace the angel from which it struggles to be free.

These are the threads that bind us to this life, that hold us to one another. When we close our eyes, they strip their clothes and frolic, chasing each other like nymphs and satyrs through an enchanted wood on Beltane, collapsing in giggling exhaustion to breed the empathy that allows us to die neither naked nor hungry though certainly alone, always alone, embarking on an eremitic journey even in the company of friends. Empathy that makes this life less solitary, less poor, our existence less nasty and brutish, each moment sliding toward infinity as we focus on it exclusively. In that way, less short.

We place our sacrifice on the alter to divide between false mothers. Siamese twins linked by a complex knot we would rather slice through to examine its entrails than spend the months or years to untangle, uncreating it in the process.

Even as we raise the knife, we hope some unseen voice will stay our hand and spare our aberrant child.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Adjusting Fire

Scanning the horizon, our mage-general pinpoints the next target for the trebuchet, a distant hill, a likely command post for the grendel to oversee his assault.

Artillerists adjust the trebuchet, extending its range by loading rocks into the counterweight, reinforcing joints with stout winds of ropes. Each modification is risky. The tolerances are sensitive, requiring constant monitoring after each shot. Alarms are set as assistants constantly survey each cross-member for any sign of stress or fracture.

Our arsenal is half empty, the terracotta pots of Greek fire and wineskins of naphthalene that have created the blasted landscape beyond our walls have been replaced by a new munition, this one encased in globes blown of glass. If the naphthalene was clear, this one is crystal, almost sharp and pointed in its clarity. Less caustic than the Red, more deadly than the Clear, its alchemy is insidious, infectious and mutagenic. The artillerists ease each round into the leather sling for firing.

The trebuchet creaks and sways as we release the catch, increased tensions threatening to tear the machine apart. As each impact rattles the grendel further, our mage-general warns us to expect changes in his operational details.

The grendel's primary tactics remains unchanged, waves of assaults behind a curtain of night followed by harassing fire each day to deny our hero sleep, keeping our forces off balance and fatigued. Shattering glass brings continued queasiness as bitter vapors mingle with the screams of dying partisans trapped beyond the wall. Should the wind shift, that poisonous fog could envelope our position, mutating her own white company into a undead army that heeds the grendel's call, defecting like Genovese crossbowmen gifted bags of de' Medici gold. We sprinkle counter-bribes among her citizen militia, hoping to shore their loyalty with scant distributions of silver.

Necromancers to unleash new spells, imps and familiars. Their elemental magic manipulates the weather, targeting our hero with flashes of stultifying summer that only she can feel. Invisible gremlins dog her heels, bludgeoning her legs and back with shot filled saps and miniature truncheons cored with lead. Between beatings, they steal her salt and sprinkle her food with copper. Giggling maliciously, they release pet leeches to sting and numb her fingers, and rats trained to gnaw her nails or carry them off completely.

After the round, our scouts report a change in the grendel's disposition. The bulk of his forces retreat to a rise at the edge of the trebuchet's range, seeking to draw our undisciplined infantry into the valley. Our veterans are immune to this deception, holding ranks of energetic recruits from surging into a slaughter. Dark cavalry sits astride the roads, congregating on our flanks in ambush, seeking any opportunity for a lightning counterattack. Instead, her housecarls pound spear to shield in resounding defiance that echoes into a taunt before transforming into a song as thousands lift their voice in a unified chorus like Anglo-Saxon partisans in an alto-soprano rendition of "Rule Britannia!" to drown out opposing hooligans at the site of a beautiful game.

As the grendel retires to the relative safety of distance, our forces raise a cheer. Our isolation is broken. Innumerable white-cloaked girls pour through the water gate now perpetually open to visitors and supplies. Her red company remains depleted, the postern their only route for reinforcement until the main gate stands open and the road unbarred.

Despite the celebrations, our war council reminds us that we are neither at the beginning of the end nor the end of the beginning. We stand at the middle time of history, the fulcrum of a battle turning yet unwon. A time when we must redouble our vigilance lest the grendel recapture the initiative and scale these walls anew.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Shadow War

The grendel has opened a second front. No longer content to batter us with the brute machinations of his necromancers, he has enlisted a host of disenchanters and disillusionists, Gothic faeries floating on delicate black-lace wings, miniature Circes with raven hair whose melancholic melodies are difficult to resist.

Some swoop down on silent wings at twilight, night-raptors leaving no trace across the sky. Others creep on cat's paws from the shadows of the data mines, their eyes glowing malignant green across the night. They stalk lone victims, shunning the banes of light and laughter. They hunt the darkness, draw strength from low, gray days.

Their spells are studies in subtlety that exploit our natural faults and weakness like diminutive dwarven wedges tapped, tapped, tapped patiently into stone.

Fear fills the void between the dull monotony of day by day and the dread of a future unknown. Sadistic sprites weave smoky incantations, summoning shadows that cling to our flesh with kitten claws while raking us with tiny daggers that draw no blood but sow an ache into an unseen web of scars.

Spells of insomnia deprive us of sleep yet not the need for nightly dreams. Brain fog rises from dark rivers of undreamt images, their languid tendrils weaving an elaborate phantasmagoria before our bleary eyes.

Some days we feel cloaked in the forgetability of Victorian children, unseen, unheard. Charms of confusion infuse some allies with linguistic misdirection, suggesting that talking about is the same as talking to. Domes of silence mute others completely.

Stalwarts shake off these bewitchments in a spray of color, a misty halo that guides us to the gold within. Veterans lean on prior experience, exposing the diaphanous line drawings of illusion as transparent legerdemain.

Our familiars engage in a proxy war of spell and counterspell, shielding us with the warm curls of their bodies as their soft purrs dispel any lingering sorcery. They lull their prey with this feigned passivity before pouncing, taking perverse pleasure in snapping fragile wings and batting helpless, grounded bodies before consuming their muffled cries. They resume their contented purring, a disguise for bitter fairy breath.

During our isolation, we engage in make-work projects, distractions for idle hands too easily dusted by depraved pixies, enchanted into soulless golems, enticed into a demonic workshop to hypnotically spin their poison thread.

Each night, demon faeries seek to bind us in that twisted spider-silk of emotion. We spend our days untangling the skein before the Norns can weave it into permanency.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Mile 5

I began these missives alluding to a company, a journey, a destination. I return to my allusion reminded of younger travels, more physical than allegorical.

Several spring to mind, mountains, pastures, streams, shores, some successful, some nearly disastrous. Assets and liabilities, each revealing inner details formerly unknown, credits and debits on a balance sheet of experience to draw against as equity of a life.

The first is a ten-mile trek with three days of food and equipment strapped across our shoulders. A company of twenty, we set out from familiar territory. Asphalt, concrete and stucco are softened by the green, suburban view to which we've grown accustomed, schools, churches, neighborhoods interspersed with the semi-wild outskirts of development.

We are young so most start quickly, their exuberance outpacing their stamina. My feet are last upon the path. An elected leader, I ensure the youngest and least experienced are ready for the road ahead. I find myself encouraging stragglers early on only to trail them before the first mile is behind us when a piece of my equipment comes unraveled.

By the second mile, the company is strung out before me. All eyes remain forward with little interest in what, or who, lay behind. Past the highway, trees conceal our ragged line as orchards of houses are replaced by the maintained wilderness of windbreaks, lakes and pavilions that transitions into the pasture, pines and palmettos lining the dirt track near mile three.

By mile four, I achieve the middle of the pack, closing the distance with dogged determination. Cliques of preference have been replaced by groupings dictated by pace. Straps rhythmically rub out any remaining banter as the weight of our journey settles upon our aching shoulders. Breaks become too frequent, too extended. Our timetable begins to tatter with our goal nowhere in sight.

With more miles before than behind, exhaustion drains encouragement into mere example. As I shoulder my pack after too short a rest, an old formula surfaces, pick a point near the horizon, perhaps a mile away, rest a moment beside it, then scan for another.

At each respite stiffness seeps from the ground like clinging Lilliputian vines that fatten the longer I tarry. Ignoring the protests, mental, physical and from others only arriving, I rise, my vision constricting to a pinpoint surrounding each interim destination. The road tunnels to a distant curve, a palmetto brake, a sapling that grows into a tree as I attempt to close on an ever-distant horizon. Fatigue fades to numbness as ten thousand steps narrow to a seesaw rhythm of one followed by another.

By the end, half our number succumb to the temptation of the tailgates trolling our line with water and the equipment our adult leaders can't survive a weekend without. I am not among them.

At the edge of a stand of pines, a shallow stream, no more than a rivulet, marks the boundary of our destination. A dozen paces on, I drop my burden to claim the first unmarked and unadorned campsite chosen from the random wilderness, then return to the water to cool my burning feet and greet the others as they stumble past.

Five years later at dusk in the mountains, I would scout ahead to report the distance left uncovered, then light a hot meal to greet the five behind me. Fifteen, and I would linger to ensure each of the ten who set out made the miles over cobblestones strewn with driftlog timber, extending a silent hand across each obstacle to those trailing while others raced ahead.

But that first day all I had to offer was my back, soldiering on so others could see what was possible. We were children then, incapable of masquerading as adults as we sometimes do today. I wasn't the strongest or the fittest, even the oldest or the most experienced. I was just the one who endured.

Some days on this journey I carry her pack as well as my own. That day taught me there are times when I must ignore the ache, the fatigue, the silence, the miles left untrodden, shoulder my burdens and move on.

Mile 5, and we lever each other from the ground, tottering entwined in a 2 a.m. embrace like derelicts down the Bowery, not looking back to see who still follows.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Fatigue

Fatigue comes in trailing waves of undissipated energy reflected after each attack, each trough an opiate numbing my mind one memory at a time.

Perhaps this is a gift, blank pieces fitted into a puzzle whose picture I wish I could not remember, night and fog obscuring the gothic ruins atop the dark mountain from which the enemy emanates, each missing moment an amnestic victory though the mountain remains unmoved.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Blood Counts

In the quiet between attacks, she reviews her mildly resurgent garrison. Their ranks form into twin companies for the counting, one red, one white. In battle, the white is charged with the outer defenses while the red ferry ammunition and supplies.

We live by weekly muster. Too few reds and our mage-general delays the trebuchet. Too few whites and we stand a night watch against an anticipated counter.

After each attack their numbers dwindle to critical levels before reinforcements trickle in. Exhausted, they appear insufficient to endure the continued onslaught. Each fortnight, replacements appear, mostly women gray before their time and girls too eager to learn, not caring that they, too, could be ravaged by our own fire, casualties of a trebuchet targeted so tightly to the wall.

In the latest assault, the grendel deployed his newest ally. A horde of hemogoblins broke through, loping across the bailey on bandied legs and slaughtering ranks of the red and plundering her energy while cat-toothed shamans wove an evil spell that clouded her thinking in confusion by raising a malevolent fog of war.

Pestilence, the grendel's opportunistic cavalry, lurks in a nearby copse of trees ready to flank her forces with lightning quickness by setting spurs to motley steeds, bacterial, viral, fungal. My job is to root them out and break their formations by scouring the walls and purifying each approach with fire. The first sign of contagion results in instant quarantine.

Our battle plans shredded into tattered pennons at first contact, the contest devolves into a test of wills. Shoulder to shoulder, her companies bridge the gaps, refusing to cede their ground, eyeing the black banner hanging ominously above the grendel's command post knowing no quarter will be offered and none bartered or exchanged.

Battle weary with less than half the siege behind her, she summons her far-flung fyrd with a baritone blast from the citadel horn each week. From deep within her demesne their answer resounds in a crescendo rung from steel trapped between hammer and anvil as blacksmiths reshape plowshares to repulse this evil tide.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III