Decoy Heroics: Chapter 1

(An unfinished chapter of the new book)

“The king is sick.”

The gathered nobles glanced at any spot on the wall but the speaker. Glanced at each other, uncertainly finding the look in the opposite man’s eyes that echoed, for once, the thoughts creeping into all of their minds.

They felt him move around the table, and when his dark, sure eyes found theirs they looked away, unwilling to commit to the treasonous demand he was about to speak.

“You must have noticed him, in the months following our beloved queen’s death. The rage. The bloodshed.” He didn’t have to mention the incident at Carvelwall. The heads bloodying the block in the bare courtyard, where once flowers had grown. The red, uncontrolled face of their ruler and the signs of slow and inevitable mindloss. The nobles knew all of those things. “The king is unfit to rule. He has quite clearly gone mad.” And after a well-placed pause, the noble whose only voice the chamber had heard this evening spoke again. “I recognize the signs of dark magiks at work.”

The mood shifted. They felt it, and looked to him directly for perhaps the first time. He was smiling. The curve of his thin, cracked lips, the delicately shaded crow’s feet, and the combed dark hair, graying appropriately at the temples: all made him look serious, professional. A man who looked like that always knew what he was talking about.

But dark magiks? Magik of any kind was forbidden on penalty of death, in any case except those of the most desire, solicited under council of law.

And nobody had solicited magikal aid for the king.

Finally, an old, retired knight, given titles by the king himself, broke the icy silence. “How can you be so sure, Rezor?”

Rezor’s fingertips pressed against the table, leaning in to the small gathered group. Begging the challenge. “I have seen it before.”

“Impossible!” the man said gruffly over several surprised and uncomfortable murmurs. He sat forward in his chair. This, too, was a man not to be dealt with lightly. He had seen more battles than the number of years most of these men – and one woman, who had wisely said nothing yet - had been alive. “If you had seen it, you must have irradiated it. Or,” he added, the old battered blue eyes narrowing and making his face a mass of leathery skin and white hair, “taken part in it.”

Rezor straightened at this. The corner of his lip twitched. A smile, or irritation? He more than anyone was aware of the rumors. His comforting brown eyes met the narrowed ones around the table, the raised chins. No one else would have openly accused him, because as much as it seemed improbable – impossible – that (name), a personally appointed member of the Council, was practicing magik under everyone’s noses… All the same. On the slim chance he did… Well. Nobody wanted to take that chance.

“I have seen it before,” he repeated, more firmly, no longer smiling. “Trust me, my lords. My lady.” She in question sniffed, and pretended she wasn’t listening. The pearls on her headpiece glinted dully. “The king is not in his right mind. It is our obligation and our duty to see to the safety of the country.”

“What you are proposing is treason.” A young man with short, fashionably cut hair and a thin, fashionable face and a strong fashionable chin laced with a goatee turned sharp eyes on the man, his back stiff and straight. “What you are proposing is beyond any of us to grant. He is watched too closely. There are laws. There are guards. There is god…”

Yes. Treason and murder. The two laws that must never be broken.

March of the Retreating World

(An unfinished story idea)

Brave men, all. They fought when they should sleep, they fought when they should eat, they fought when they should pray. I was once told that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the facing of it anyway. Whether that’s true or not, didn’t really matter to them. They were brave no matter how you defined it.
It was when the machines replaced them that they were broken.
At first they called themselves Puppets. It was a joke, anything to keep them sane, keep them fighting. It rallied them together, to get the job done they had to get done.
“You’re a goddamn Puppet.”
“We all are.”
And the game became to see whichever Puppet could stretch their strings the furthest without their limbs snapping.
“Hey, Puppet, you’re gonna snap that twine around your wrist.”
“Don’t worry about me. I know what I’m doing.”
They didn’t.
The population took on the names, and some underground rebellion which never amounted to more than a single great battle at the end – which they lost – called themselves Puppets. They were extremists. Terrorists.
They were snapping strings all over the place.

And when the population grew fed up with them the government took advantage of it. The term “Pup” was always a derogatory curse, and the very sound of it could make mothers bring their children in from playing in the streets. Kids were afraid to call their small dogs by their traditional terms. It had become much like the word used for a female dog. Truly a correct term, but not socially acceptable.
Something was changing.

When the Puppet terrorists had been defeated, and the Puppet soldiers came home, a new connotation became associated with the word. The soldiers had said they were being controlled, like puppets. And those who did the government’s bidding – who refused to stand up for themselves, for anything they believed in – was a Puppet.
It was a vague uneasiness in everyone, even if they couldn’t name it. On a Friday someone threw a brick into a window, hitting the side of a girl’s head and killing her instantly. The note on it read “Leave the neighborhood, damn Puppies.” On Halloween a group of teenagers dressed as puppets in uniforms, parading themselves down the street where children dropped bags of candy and ran home, terrified of the sight and the droning chant they sang. The day the President died someone managed to spray paint in big red letters on the White House – PUP.

Things like this had happened before. The Civil Rights Movement. World War II. World War III. The Civil War. Slavery.