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

I Have a Dream (reprised)

I have a dream that one day this body will rise up and live out the true meaning of its immune system: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all leukocytes are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the cells of the white hills of granulocytes, the sons of monocytes and the sons of former lymphoctyes will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of lymphedema, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream....

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

In the Mines

On Saturday fortnight, a wizened gnome led a team of craggy dwarves before our gate, itinerate assayers drawn to the craning engines our alchemist erects. Mercenaries, true, but discriminating, their love of gold rivaled only by their enmity for dragons, trolls, and grendel-folk.

Surveying our fortifications, they focus first on the mortar bonds between the fieldstones of the gates, walls and towers, inspecting every joint, ensuring none has crumbled. Eventually, they declare the structures sound, but offer a gem of experience: grendels tend to burrow. Though our foundation appears solid, to their eyes it is full of fractures, veins and subsurface ducting that leave it vulnerable to mining, a perennial of siege. The surface war, while important, will be lost if the grendel undermines our defenses.

This diminutive quartet has a nose for minerals, scenting a thin, quartz fault beneath the overburden, just there within the wall. A trio of test wells are sunk from the sub-basement of each tower. Technetium is poured and traced through every fissure, cleft and crack. We descend the darkness by knotted rope and ladder, delving deep within hidden chambers, spiral stairways, sumps, and crystal caverns, mighty halls to these mountain kings. Finally, we stand at the heart of the stronghold's granite core.

Listening, they each press an ear to a different wall, attuned to the muffled ring of steel striking stone like hammer upon anvil at the distant center of a malignant forge. In silence we watch as they cock their heads first one way, then another, conferring in low tones between, then moving on until the entire castle rock has been assayed. Only after several more whispered moments do they declare the rock is strong, that no mining has begun. But they warn us to prepare the shafts for countermines deep within the fortress, a precaution.

Within the matrix they scatter arcane instruments, invasion drums that amplify the sounds of chisels so even our ears can hear the booming, a multi-headed dragon jar that indicates the direction of subterranean activity by dropping a pebble from one of its many mouths. The venerable gnome warns us not to tarry underground. Trolls lurk in ambush along dead-end tunnels, feeding on ignorance and isolation. Grendels derive power from the silence and the dark. We deny them victory by taking our place among the living, by interacting with life, not dwelling in the cold places beneath the earth.

Ascending a twisted stair, we emerge on the back bailey near the water gate. We read with the cats in the warm spring sun, watching as blue jays splash in a knotwork basin surrounded by blooms of lavender, pink and white, a monument to the familiar friend whose radiance guides us through the darkness, glad for any companions who choose to wander by.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Sentinel

Early this morning, one of three sentinels lit a watchfire, a warning of activity in the distance. Our clockwork mage divines an ambush, a grendel rising to raise an army, marching to avenge his excised mother.

Scanning from atop our well-stocked watchtower, we see engines of war approaching, catapults, ballistae, a troll-headed ram where we thought only a small horde might appear. Instead of enduring a simple siege until relieved by the force of radiation, now we must build counter-instruments, our own trebuchet ensconced atop the barbican to hurl back packets of death in the form of chemotherapy that will target the approaching engines before they have a chance to set, range and loose.

Monday at dawn a surgical strike team will sally from the main gate to scatter the attack before it has a chance to organize, a delaying tactic. We will sacrifice pickets in a blocking action across the winding approach to our castle, trading lymph nodes for time. More wounds to our hero are imminent, but her healing comes behind the stone of our keep as we feast upon the fresh provisions our allies have generously provided.

Our commanders, our mage-generals, are confident if cautious that we will endure this siege given time to prepare proper countermeasures and defenses. Supplies will be gathered, deep basements stocked, the moat cleared, a hoarding erected atop the curtain wall. After Monday's skirmish, there could perhaps be one other minor raid through the postern before our gates are barred, our portcullis lowered, our trebuchets loaded and ready to rain clay canisters of Greek fire upon our approaching enemies. The drumbeat of their impacts will serve as a nepenthe for our hero, inducing forgetfulness, a remedy to her pain and grief.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Eve of Battle

Weapons have been sharpened, supplies have been laid in. Karen's mandated fast for clarity has almost begun. Now is the waiting time.

Were we a physical company, one with a physical camp, I would be performing a ritual I've performed many times before, wandering from fire to fire in the dark, burning restless energy by reassuring those who were apprehensive about the morning, accepting the conversation and reassurances of those who thought I might need them.

Then I was not responsible for the another, merely a leader elected by my peers, the anxiety of the morning the outcome of a competition, nothing of lasting consequence. Tonight, perhaps there would be a pair of us wandering. Or perhaps I would be sitting with Karen by a fire as others wandered by, reassuring both her and me as has been done through the exchange of electronic messages these past several days.

But we are only a virtual company, so tonight is somewhat different, harder in a way. This is my wandering, my burning of energy in anticipation of the dawn.

Three battles with the dragon have been laid upon our hero, one physical, another magical, the final alchemical. Tomorrow is the first time Karen enters the dragon's lair. The morning brings a physical battle, the battle of steel. This battle is the easiest, the most direct. In this one the dragon will be carved from its lair and slain without a doubt.

Naming it a dragon may be granting it too much power. If it is a dragon, it is a small one, not the white, English dragon of St. George or the red dragon of Wales. This is but a small, young thing, Grendel's mother as an adolescent girl, a thing easily vanquished by razor steel if our vision is correct. Unmolested, it would grow into a powerful beast in time. Time is an ally we mean to deny it. Its fertility is more in question than its survival, its eggs a greater threat.

Tomorrow we cast a divination to reveal whether this dragon is attempting to spawn a reptilian brood. A simple sentinel will be interjected into our story, a clockwork mage to alert us if the perimeter has been breached. If the alarm is raised, the eggs will be excised in the lymph chambers where they lay.

Those eggs will the goal of Karen's second entry into this cavern, this time armed with a potent spell for a battle of magic. An enfeebling ray, a word of power that stuns or kills when repeated like a mantra, egg by egg, so that no future grendels grow to hatch. But that encounter is weeks farther down this road during which Karen will have time to heal from the wounds she will sustain in the morning, however minor they might be. That battle will be one of endurance, a fatiguing day-by-day affair, a campaign of weeks rather than mere hours.

The third battle, if required, mandates the greatest power and, as such, the greatest ally. Before that encounter, we will seek out a powerful alchemist, one who can brew us a deadly potion potent enough to seek out and destroy any remaining eggs no matter how deep in the cave they have been secreted. But that is another battle, weeks distant, one we need not prepare for now, one we may never need to fight if tomorrow augers well.

Those are my musing by this electronic fire as Karen chats with kindred spirits online, stroking her familiar cats. The ethereal voices give her comfort. Soon, it's time for sleep: our day begins before the dawn.

I will send out an update tomorrow once we're home and settled.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III