Green War Part 3

(By Bryan)

The duke was met with confused stares and rumblings amongst the folk – a dark rumor spread among them, it was madness they said—and a few of the younger men spoke up, willing to fight at their duke’s side. At their offers the duke rebutted; no man was to stay save him. And after a morning full of the duke’s urging, every family was packed and off just after noon.
A quiet sank the valley, a dim hush that seemed to breathe in its walls and inhabit the dust on the streets. There the duke stood, between two of the larger houses, sword sheathed and fists clenched. He slowly spun about himself once, taking in the sight one last time, as he walked toward the edge of town. It ended in the center of each hill where two great brown-green hills sloped steeply up into white snowcaps. It was under these caps that the duke now saw dark forms. They started small, then grew quickly. They were the armies of the Podrain and the Draymoor, and they descended quickly now down the hills. The duke could see each form clearer now; one was brighter and sparkled slightly more than the other. He saw glints of metal, of pikes and shields made of metals long lost to the peoples of the duke’s race.
Whether this truly was madness the duke could not say. He prayed to his father and to all the men of his race who had kept the valley before him, prayed for strength and bravery and constitution. For too long his people lived under this invisible threat, a prevailing wind that ever blew through the valley. Too long did they go unaware, playing the part of prisoner and captor. No more.
The armies were close to the bottom now, and the duke could see their strange faces screwed up and battle-ready. Some had war-paint, others bore little or no clothes. They chanted as they descended in a language not ever heard in the valley. It was a battle chant, and it grew louder as they approached. But the duke saw each side slowing now, curbing their trots until they were at a slow walk, and as each side approached the duke he saw faces changing. Gone were their bloodthirsty expressions, gone was the hatred. They looked bewildered, confused at the sight of the lone soldier standing before them. They took to murmuring to each other in a common tongue, and soon a hush fell over the valley.
The one that led the Podrain, the one called Clamagh, walked ahead of his clan toward the duke.
“What say you, duke,” he shouted while still some paces away. “Are your people prepared to defend against these rogues, will they stand up and fight this menace?”
“Hallo,” came a cry from the opposing side. It was Dramhain of the Draymoor, now a few paces ahead of his people. “Come to hear more lies, ah duke? Shall we set to rights this scourge?”
The duke raised his hands, an impressive showing as he stood a few heads above both armies.
“Nay, listen to me, people of the hills. My folk have fled this place, gone far away and I am all there is left.” More whispers and cries of betrayal came from both camps. “And before they are summoned back, if ever, I entreat you sirs to sit with me a moment before you let your blades fly.”
The Draymoor were first to respond.
“And what, brave duke? Talk ye of truce?” cried Dramhain. “What business is it of yours to belay this quarrel? I had given yeh chance enough to side with the victors this day, but now we fight and shall roll ye down with the braggards!”
At this the army roared. They flashed their spears and shields, their eyes shone in the dimming light. Again the duke raised his arms, and let a cry so fierce it rumbled the very hilltops. It shook each man in turn, sending ripples through both sides and they were quiet again.
“What man silences armies such as this?” said Clamagh of the Podrain, who until then shared a thought with his enemy, that if the duke shall not choose he should be mowed like the grass of the hillside. “What man indeed? Perhaps we shall entertain him.”
The duke let down his arms and motioned for each leader to come closer to him. From under his breastplate he produced a haggard cloth of green and grey. It was wound tight around something, though what neither enemy could say. When Clamagh and Dramhain were but a few paces from each other, the duke stepped away and spoke to the armies.
“People of the hills,” he spoke, and as he did the hush over the armies grew, as neither realm had ever spoken to the people of the valley except for their chiefs. “I have been visited twice under this moon, first by the Podrain then by the Draymoor. I have been given reason to take up arms against both your peoples, and so I shall. But first I will ask ye: Who is invading whom?”

Dave's Costume Story

NOTE: By way of explanation, sort of: I haven't dressed for Halloween for years, sad to say, so I thought back to the last time I wore a costume: a trip to the Sterling Renaissance Festival, when many Hacks and I dressed as warrior Celts. Ah, but what if an actual warrior Celt woke in my body?

The world’s an inky blur and me tongue is furry and ten thousand shileleighs be pummeling me head. Arrrgghhh. Metaphors aside, that last part may actually have happened.

Not quite sure where I am, other than the cool grass under me back, and the inky blur has yet to uncloud. But I hear voices.

“Dave? Dave? Hey, is he OK?”
“Ehhh. No surprise – he’s not a big drinker and he had like eight honey meads.”
“Uh, no, babe, YOU had like eight honey meads.”
“Oh. Yeah. Need more.”

English. They’re speaking English. When was I captured? How was I captured? How many did I take with me? Why have I no memory of anything since departing County C....

Mmmmm .... honey mead ...

The dark cloud is partin' from me eyes. Tis a sunny, warm day – and I’m clearly on no battlefield. There is no carrion strewn about – just paths and buildings and smiling people milling about in mingled, strange garb – some almost normal yet off just a bit, some garbed as if they came from some far-distant century. The buildings – an ale house, a leatherworker, a potter, a luthier – all look just a touch off, as if they’re not quite real. Not false fronts, quite, but contrived nonetheless ...

Tis a false village. No doubt intended to lure their enemies – my people – into a deceptive security, then set upon them. Such is obvious to one of my unquestioned cunning and sophistication. I no doubt must have let meself be captured to spy out the land. Now all I must do is shake off the effects of whatever treacherous draught they’ve poisoned me with, slay a couple hundred English, and make me way back to the kindred. Such is stark simplicity to one of my unmatchable might and ...

Where’s me broadax?
Where in all the hells is me BROADAX?

Begorrah. Slaying a couple hundred English shall be a mite harder. A mite, mind. Aye ... two mites.

For the first time, I glance around at my band of captors. Two scarlet-tressed wenches, two men dressed, as I, in furs and tartan – like they think they’re fooling anyone – with a third watching an artisan make a bodhran. Ehhh – that drum doesn’t even look like it has ANY human flesh in it. Fools and knaves. He leaves the bodhran-maker and approaches, and I squint at his features – clearly a Hibernian. This “Mahooch,” as his drunken colleague calls him, is clearly a turncoat whose demise shall be slow and brutish. Argghh. Me poor broadax.

A wench speaks. “Ally and I are hunting down the ladies’ room. Stay out of too much trouble.”

“Hey, Dave’s awake.”

I say something in my native speech, but by the time it gets from me bowels to me tongue, it comes outsounding simply like, “Bee–hheeeerr.”

“Always a fine idea,” says Mahooch, and for that he canna be faulted. “Kiosk across the path.”

I know not what a kee-osch is, but the men and I approach a small lean-to of sorts, a makeshift pub with one long slab of wood covered with bottles and glasses and the heaving bosoms of two heaving wenches. What satanic crafter carved their corsets? Not that I complain, mind.

They pour us something that call Whore’s Garden or some like, a sweet yet tangy confection that warms me gullet and eases the pounding in me skull. I set the glass down, and another appears as if by sorcery. The wenches clearly are paying little attention to me; they haven’t registered I’m the same man they just served. They’re clearly entranced by the turncoat Mahooch, their eyelashes fluttering and their fingersa twistin’ their locks as they stare lustfully into his visage. I shan’t tell the ladies that by dawn on the morrow I’ll be lacing me boots with Mahooch’s entrails. Not as long as they keep feeding me Whore’s Garden. A third! A fourth!

“So yeah, this Ren-Faire thing will end up covering board, but it doesn’t dent tuition. So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I dance over at Knockers Pub outside Trumansburg.” Flutters eyelashes and manages to shift her weight so that even more, dangerously more, of herbosom protrudes from her bodice. “Any plans forTuesday?”

I gulp my seventh Whore’s Garden and see the crimson-tressed ladies approaching from a distance. Not yet, not yet – I need another Guard’s Whoredom! Er, Horde’s Gargoyle? Hard Gorgon? I’m finding it hard to care all much about me broadax ...

The one lass – Krull, they call her and sure as that’s a worthy warrior’s name that – returns and links her arm in Mahooch’s. The wenches at the bar contemplate vile acts of torture and homicide – then they look at me and realize they’ve fed me fourteen Hog’s Gargles. Gore’s Wardens. Hoegarten. Whate’er. Sure an it’s been a pleasure, lassies.

We head off lookin’ for turkey legs. And I’m thinkin’ the massacre can wait a day or two. Or five. Must gather intelligence and all. May even spare Mahoochs’ entrails, as twas his sorcery that filled me gullet with Horny Gollum.

I begin to bellow a heartfelt paean to Eire. But instead, I belch.
Tis close enough.

Green War, Part 2

By Bryan M.

The rest did not last. He was awoken again by a presence, a different face than that of the previous night. This man was smaller and older, and his clothes were darker and more earthy. He smoked a long brown pipe, and its scent was unlike those of the pipes of the duke’s land. It was sweeter and yet somehow more bitter. He guessed from the little man’s posture that he’d been staring at the duke a long while, and he continued to do so even as the duke sat up in his bed and lit a candle by his bedside.
“You are one of the hillfolk,” said the duke, though whether it was a statement or question even the duke was not sure. “Why have you come?”
The man took another puff of his pipe and exhaled a long, deep breath. He cocked an eye toward the duke.
“You’ve been visited by the Podrain, haven’t ye?” said the man. “And a lyin’ folk they be. I am Dramhain of the Draymoor.”
The duke sat straighter, trying to muster all the royal blood that pumped in him. The effect worked, for he looked wiser and more powerful than he had in the moments before, and Dramhain took notice.
“I know of your people,” said the duke. “I know what is to be done in two nights’ time. Your people seek to undo what has been done here for generations of my family’s history. You seek to crush the peace we’ve upheld like a boat on the wave. You have drawn us in your war and no it is I who must decide what role our folk play.”
The little man smiled a little, but it was not out of malice or delight. He emptied the bowl of his pipe onto the floor and repacked it with a strange weed before speaking.
“Is that what they’ve got yeh believing? We’re to war on them in two nights?” The man stopped smiling and stood before the duke, mustering all the height he could. “This is the mark of the Podrain, my man. They would conjure a story to make an ally of you and your land, only to turn on all of you in the end and take all of it – the hills, the valley – all of it for themselves. In truth it is they who will strike first. They will waylay our walls with the help of your people, they will tear down our homes and our land. Then they will consume what they can and leave it bare, and rape your land next until nothing is left. That is why you must stand with us. You and your people must be at the ready at dusk the day-after-tomorrow, to fight for your—and our—very lives.”
The smoke grew thicker, and when it faded so did the man, and again the duke was alone. He sat upright until the dawn, when the town below his windows awoke and the wheels of the day began to turn.
That day he walked his streets. He watched as children played at their mothers’ and fathers’ sides, as mothers and fathers worked and laughed with each other indoors and out. He drank each moment in as if it were his last, and the weight of what was to come became too great to bear.
That night he’d reached his decision. He had just one last day before war, though which side was in the right he still could not say. On this night he did not sleep, awaiting another visitor though none came. He greeted the dawn in the same way he greeted nightfall—alone. And cold.
But this day did not start like the others. There was no lazy retreat from slumber for the folk of the valley. Today the duke burst from the doors of his home, clad in the armor of his people. It shone under the winter sun and reflected each house, each door and chimney of the homes of the valley. He came out in force, beating his chest so the clanging scrapes of metal on metal awoke each man, woman and child.
“Arise ye and stand! Arise! Leave your homes and be gone from this place! Arise!”
His shouts continued until every family was out their doors, some still rubbing their eyes from sleep. The clamor woke the livestock as well, and now the duke was shouting over a din of confused animals and people.
“We have lived here long,” the duke said, “and for many years have seen peace in our lands. But a new day comes, and with it a new life for all of us. Long have I hid from you the truth of these hills, for within them live two dark and mysterious peoples; long have they known me and my family, and have enjoyed the peace that we have upheld. But the peace has run its course, and before war brings ruin upon you I ask—nay, I demand—you leave this place and your belongings. Head for the next town where you might stay until it is safe to return. If it is ever safe.”

Green War, Part 1

By Bryan M.

Long ago, long before engines of industry drove magic away from Ireland’s shores and hills, before the webbing of our memories was stretched too thin, there lived a duke who sat upon a satin throne. His lands stretched far between two hills; they were cut by his domain and all who lived there lived in peace. In his many days he sat watching out a narrow window, looking out on the long crevasse, thinking of those who dwelt between those hills and of those who lived within, unknown to the people under his care.
They were the hillfolk, as was their name whispered in the streets of the duke’s place. Never to be seen nor heard, they lived as two kingdoms, on their own, in constant hatred of the other. Where the source of the strife existed no one could say, and they lived apart from the outer land of the valley, spending their days buttressing their defenses in the event the other should ever choose to wander across. This was known only to the duke, the only outsider to ever have met the hillfolk, and he was disturbed by their warmongering and hateful ways. Their appearance to him was strange; they wore clothes of green sewn from the hillsides, and ate nothing but the grasses and mushrooms that grew there. As such their hair and most elements of their likenesses were kissed with a green hue, yet their faces were pale and fair as the moon’s reflection on a river. Indeed, they seemed to sparkle as if imbued with the stars’ light itself.
On the coldest night of winter one of the hillfolk set to visit the duke. He came to his bedside at midnight, waking the duke with a touch to his hand. The duke awoke quickly, angered by the intrusion.
“Who comes to my chamber!?” he spoke to the dark, and to the face that seemed lit from within.
“It is Clamagh from the hill,” said the stranger. “I come to you this night to impart a warning from my people. The folk of the Other Hill, the Draymoor, are to descend upon us three dusks from this. We Podrain do not wish to fight but will defend our home tooth to nail to keep it. We tell this to you, leader of the land between, in hopes that your people might help belay our conflict—that your folk would take up arms against the Draymoor and help drive them back so that the peace might be preserved.”
The duke’s grey face showed more years than it possessed, for he knew that such a time would come under his watch of his family’s lands. He did not wish for his people to turn to war; theirs was a peaceful clan whose lives were given to tending of flocks and sowing of fields. Once a year they cleared their storehouses of leftover grains for the brewing of fine ales and stouts, which would produce such yields that they had enough for a year and more, the surplus of which they traded with neighboring lands. The duke sought to preserve that life, without armaments, and so told the stranger at his bedside.
But the creature responded, “We must have your people ready to stand at the third dusk, else they are run over in the fray and all peace wracked for ever.”
Whether the figure slinked away silently or simply faded, the duke could not ascertain in the dim light. He was again alone, and no quilt could belay the chill now set on his skin. He laid awake for some hours, transfixed on the words, and he spent much of the next day the same as he performed his duties. He had thought of little else when he laid to rest the following night, when his eyes and bones finally succumbed to weariness.

Undecided Voter

By Matt

Man, this president thing is haaarrdd. I didn’t know when is said I was a decider, I’d have to make so many … well … decisions. I thought this war stuff was gonna be easy. Least that’s what Dick and Condi and Rummy said.

“Just go in there and kick a little wimpy dictator butt and you’ll be a hero,” they said. I shoulda listeneded to Colin.

“Now people are makin’fun of me, sayin I talk funny an I’m dumb. It’s the difficultest thing in the world bein’president, but people don’ seem ta care. I tell ya, ma brain hurts …

Whoa wait a minute ... what’s going on here, I fell funny, like some East Coast liberial’s takin over mah body … Oh no, not him!!!!

This wah is a fahlly. Ah nevah shouldah voted fah it.

Now Kahl Rove’s slandering me all ovah the ahrwaves and the Swift Boaters are teahrin apaht my Vietnam Wah recahrd. Whay ah evah say I voted fahr the money bafahr ah voted against it? Whay does everyone say ah look like Lurch? Who is this Lurch fellah anywhay?

Oh look aht tha time. I need to get mah Botox and and mah haih done …

(OK- This probably deserves a little perspective. My last Halloween costume was as an undecided voter in the 2004 election. I took some license with that and entered the bodies of W and John Kerry.)

NTH #1 from NewbieHack Brian

Re: High five?

So here I am, fresh off the long and gritty trail of writing fiction into the void, when I spot an oasis up ahead. Could it be? Is it too good to be true? Can the appearance of witty, casual competence be real?

A heartbeat and I am closer. I lose myself to the timelessly eternal moment meeting someone who I know will become a great friend. The rich aroma of lush green feedback and the glistening pool of refreshing perspective draw me in. “I’m here!” Shout I; belly-flopping into the unknown waters.

And then… immersion in the cooling pool? Or am I suddenly thirteen, awkwardly awaiting the mate to my high-five which never comes?

Clear as mud right? So I probably mixed a few metaphors back there, but this is my way of saying “Hi,” and asking if there are some folks out there who are prepared to give feedback on my fiction. If you post your work I promise to be honest an only bite if that’s what you want.

Please post a comment so that I know where and with whom my writing will land.

Write on.

Brian Arnold
Playonwards@ca.rr.com

Leprechaun Lament

This week’s assignment, by Marcy
(I was a Leprechaun for Halloween ’06)

I stand, leaning against the cast iron pot, in the shimmering light of the end of the rainbow. It’s freezing in the meadow this morning. All I want is a cup of coffee and some warm soda bread, with butter and honey. But the rainbow appeared in the sky and I was next on the list. At least I have a week off before the list cycles through again.

There are only seven of us in County Cork now. The rest moved on to other jobs or other places. A group struck off for the new world a hundred years ago they’ve been doing quite well for themselves. One of them even landed a few TV spots as a cereal spokesperson. None of that’s for me. I could never leave my homeland. I’m perfectly content among the meadows and the bluebells and the forests. Let someone else hock marshmallow treats shaped like shamrocks.

It’s been forever and a day since someone actually found me. When the rainbow calls and my number is up, I go and stand with the gold, and wait for someone to come along. Used to be that three or four folks at a time would fight each other for it. Now I stand alone with an unclaimed prize, waiting for the sun to pass so that I can go get some coffee. I guess people have more options for fortune these days.

The light shifts, the rainbow weakens. I look up to the sky to see the clouds passing. My time is up. I bury the gold back under the earth, sprouting up some bluebells so I know where to find it next time.

Warming my cold hands with my breath, I trudge toward an inn.

Howdy Hack Fans!

Marcy here.

It's the new year, and we Hacks are done hibernating. Our site has a new look and a new purpose. So stay tuned ... there's going to be a lot more activity in The No-Talent Hacks Writers' Den starting today!