Patreon or PayPal Me keeps this site and its author alive. Thank you. |
Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 106: Brown 320
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 34
The man who rode the white horse alongside him in this vision was road-worn and war-weary, and reciting the gallant deeds of the innumerable dead. Derek suddenly knew this about the man as well, that he was a great gentleman. All men everywhere acclaimed him as the greatest man of his generation.
“I thought as much one time too. I thought honor and love bade me go. But perhaps slavery is better than the price of freedom.” The man was quickly gone like a wisp in the sun, or the life in a body ripped by grapeshot.
Derek went up the road and came over a hill, and saw three men on horseback on a field of skulls. All were clad in dark cloaks, and he felt a wrongness come from them. Slowing, he walked toward them. One turned his way, and he saw the man had flaming eyes, grinning at him, and skulls were in his teeth. Yet, he said nothing.
“How goes it?” asked the tallest man on horseback to the other two.
“I have sent the subhumans--the Irish and German immigrants straight off the boat--to the front lines, to their deaths in great numbers,” the third man said. “We win by using their bodies as shields,” and he threw back a cup of whiskey. His haunted eyes suggested why he needed the drink.
“I swore to make them howl, and even now I can hear the songs of the sobs. War is hell, I said, and it's the only true hell, for there is no god.” The man with the flames in his eyes had spoken, and Derek wanted to shout defiance to this lie. But he saw another man coming closer to the three, whom none of them seemed to notice. He held his breath, wondering what the man planned.
Their leader sighed.
“I wished we could have avoided this, but they had the money we needed.”
“They were richer than us. If we did not do something, we’d have been their hewers of wood and drawers of water,” the whiskey drinking man said, and pulled out a bottle, considered pouring a fresh glass, and then threw down the glass choosing instead to imbibe directly from the bottle.
“Traitors,” the man with the flaming eyes said, but their leader shook his head.
“Truly they were not. They were better men than us, which is why they lost. Wars are won by the most horrid.”
The man behind them leapt up, and cried out “Sic Semper Tyrannis”, and shot the leader in the head. After the leader keeled over, the assassin then fell, and broke his leg, and limped off as the other two did nothing until the man with the flaming eyes turned to his companion in butchery.
“Now you get to be President.”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #511: Characters Change. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
