Acting Strange – EP Night on the Tiles

I wrote this!

Hora Douse – EP re-release ‘Crash’

Music review by me. Yup.

Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City

My buddy Crouch an me found a new game to play 🙂

Suppressing Fire

It’s the new miniatures wargame that everyone’s talking about (no, not Age of Sigmar)…and so Suppressing Fire’s Joseph Crouch gives us the lowdown on Frostgrave…

Frostgrave is my first foray into fantasy wargaming proper. Something that I found, or rather stumbled upon whilst on Facebook in one of those handy (or not so handy, depending on the subject) recommended posts. After having looked at the “nickstarter” and immediately falling in love with the miniatures and basic premise I decided that I must take the plunge.

(Models painted by Joseph Crouch and Robert Lindsay. Terrain courtesy of Rochester Games, Models & Railways)

The premise is quite simple. Frostgrave is a long dead city, some Wizards grew a bit too big for their boots and conjured something they shouldn’t have, which leads to the death of its populace, and the destruction of much of the city. Thousands of years later…

View original post 1,004 more words

Simon: Time Displaced Knight – Chapter Three

God this was a struggle. Something that was just supposed to be a stupid bit of fun, and I got really bogged down finishing this chapter.  Pleased with the end result though, the struggle was worth it. Thanks again to Joseph Crouch for helping me write my way out of a corner with a drastic solution. Enjoy…

PART ONE

PART TWO

I sat on the damp soil, watching the sky gradually lighten from the starless black of night to gray, then smouldering orange, hints of it’s eventual blue swirling in over time. The mighty arms of the jungle canopy silhouetted black against the heavens. They were reaching for liberty, as I was.

We who had survived the march through the jungle had been here for uncounted days. Nothing to do but sit behind the chain-link fence the machines had herded us into, joined now by huge mechanical hounds, which had leapt up at them in much in the way a real dog would greet it’s beloved master, while turning on us with barely restrained savagery. They had also been met by a troop of their fellows, who had evidently laboured in the corrosive environment of Meat for some time, as they were now succumbing to patches of rust that spread across their bodies, weakening metal plates and fouling the action of their joints. Now relieved of their duties, this group trudged off into the jungle, perhaps to leave the planet via the place where we had arrived. This was the reason for holding us in bondage, physical labour hastened the process of their physical corruption by the planet’s noxious vapours, so cheap, replaceable human labour was the solution. Many of my fellows seemed to have receded into themselves, succumbing to some sort of catatonia rather than face the abject despair of the situation. From time to time the machines would reappear, emerging from a stone hut that seemed too small to contain them all, entering our corral and taking one of our number, dragging them away, never to return.

“They’re taken to the mines,” Mira Charon had told me, in her language, which I was learning. She had leant closer to me, whispering low, even though our captors were nowhere to be seen. “The machines need the ore from the mine to build more of themselves, it’s why they captured this planet, those poor bastards won’t come out again, we’ve got to move now, before they come for us, or escape will be impossible.”

Charon had been diligently working on a plan of escape for some time now. Obscured by some dead leaves in one corner, was her attempt to scratch out a tunnel under the wire. I couldn’t bring myself to discourage her, although the hole was a sad affair not even large enough for a child, and for all her digging she had yet to get underneath the bottom of the fence, which plunged further and further down into the ground. I aided her with the digging, and concealing our efforts, because at least she was making some effort towards our salvation, whereas for much of the ordeal we had suffered through I had allowed myself to be consumed by despondency.

“You are right captain,” I said, “But I fear we must attempt some other mode of escape than digging under the fence like a pair of hungry foxes. Even the peasants on my father’s land could guard against that.”

“I beg to differ my dear Simon,” she said, “May I present to you the new addition I have made to out beautiful abode. A person of your medieval persuasion might to refer to it as,” She paused for dramatic emphasis, “A sally port!”

Charon threw aside the covering of leaves from where, only last night when I had looked last, had been our feeble scratch in the earth, which was now just barely wide and deep enough for a man to squeeze through, and also, blessedly, finally deep enough to create an opening under the wire. Charon must have laboured alone long after I had given in to sleep, and finally made a breakthrough.

“Shall we monsieur?” she said, pulling up the wire and beckoning me through.

“Please madame, ladies first,” I replied, gesturing for her to go ahead. “You have earned the privilege of being the first to taste freedom.”

I followed Charon through the hole, scratching my way through like a rodent fleeing a predator, clearing the other side and leaping to my feet, charging madly for the edge of the jungle. No sooner had we made the cover of the canopy of trees, and what I had hoped would be the comforting security of the undergrowth, a spindly metal arm snaked up from underneath the mulch and branches and darted towards us, wrapping itself around Charon’s waist. Twisting itself around her like the creeper that had grown around the stones of Father’s castle. A second arm shot from the trees ahead of us, it twisted and choked her until she was wrenched apart in two halves. Each piece being fell to the floor, a ruined lump of offal, and was dragged away into the undergrowth by each of the two hateful arms. As Captain Charon’s body disappeared, so her murderer was revealed, branches and twigs snapping away from its metal form, as if in fear.

This wasn’t one of those smaller ones we had seen patrolling the undergrowth with their steel wolfhounds, this was a great hulking machine, it’s gormless dull red eyes somehow communicating the bitterest hatred. It didn’t make a noise, and neither did I. Instead I stood in awe of the giant, dread knight, as if it had been a statue of our lord, who, as a child, I would kneel before every morning so as to contemplate all at once, my significance and insignificance.

I felt my insignificance.

I knelt, and knew that death must fall.

“Hey. Guy. look.”

From my knees I looked up again. The huge machine was also turning his head, looking for the source of this new voice. Finally he found it, motors in his neck wheezing as his head settled into an odd angle, looking directly at his own shoulder, where sat one of the two-legged lizards who had followed us through the jungle, chattering nonsensically at us. This one was looking at me, it’s claws gripping the rough metal of the machine’s armour, around it’s waist tied with black straps, was a small box, emitting a ticking sound.

“Surprise fucker!” it shouted. Then the world turned white. The tiny beast had exploded, taking with it the head and upper torso of the machine. I was flung onto my back, fragments of metal plinking off my armour. From the stone hut came angry clanks and whirrs of the other machine’s agitation. In a moment they came charging from the hut, weapons raised and running faster than I imagined possible, their great long legs sending them striding across the clear to where I stood. The silver wolfhounds yapping at their heels, razor blade teeth bared in delight.

Finally thrust into combat, with no escape, instinct took over and I drew my sword, holding it forwards in a low guard. Not entirely aware I did so, I unhooked my helmet from my belt and put that on as well. No sooner had I done this than the first machine fired his lightning weapon at me, I was struck on the left gauntlet. I had seen men and women set aflame by this weapon, and the metal of my armour glowed red in an instant, smoke spurted from the leather underlayer and I flinched involuntarily as one does when burned, trying to draw my hand away from the source of the burning heat, only to have it follow me. I fumbled my sword in the mad scramble to rip off my gauntlet, leaving my hand bare, and burned a deep red and brown, the pain made my stomach lurch.

The second bolt of lighting churned up the mud next to me, leaving an area melted into black glass. I picked up my sword again, desperately searching for some protection from this assault. My eye fell upon the corpse of the giant machine, It’s body was blasted open and it’s innards exposed. There was one piece of it’s outer skin totally separated from the rest, with cords hanging from it, much like the straps of a shield, this resemblance was all that occurred to me then, but of course the machine’s own skin would be built to be impervious to their own weapons. I thrust my arm through the loops of cord and cable, that in a way must have been the thing’s veins, my burned forearm sent fresh bolts of agony through me at the touch, and lifted my new shield.

As the third bolt arced towards me and scored a direct hit on the metal, I cowered behind it, crouched into a ball as I would when guarding against a rain of arrows. For the next instant, I was safe, but I could not meet their attack while pinned behind my shield. The machine’s were approaching, I had seen at least four emerging from the hut, but there had been six guarding us, and I must assume there were at least that many facing me now, more perhaps that I had not seen before, like the destroyed giant.

More lighting licked across the edges of my shield, being deflected away into the jungle, setting foliage aflame and striking up clouds of dirt from the ground. I was trapped.

“Dude.” another small voice, at my feet another tiny lizard. This one naked as his jungle fellows had been,. “This me. Gotta go dude. C’mon. Up and at ‘em.” He looked cheerful, and something about his gentle encouragement made me think of my childhood nurse, exhorting my brother and I to rise from our beds and face the day.

“S’easy dude. Look.”  He opened his jaws wide, bearing rows of razor sharp, miniature teeth and let out a small, shrill, shriek, which was answered from all around me, a thousand times over. From every corner of the jungle, lizards emerged. Leaping down from trees and up from under the mulch of the undergrowth, running in massed companies of churning legs and snapping jaws, they fell upon the machines before they could react, swarming up over their bodies, worrying at exposed components between metal plates. The machines stomped around like giants beset by brownies, or gnomes, crushing a lizard with every step, and the wolfhounds chopped them in two with their jaws, but there were always a hundred more to replace the fallen and their courage did not falter with the deaths of their brothers. On they came, chattering and screeching.

One machine, seeking to remove the threat wholesale, turned his lightning gun upon one of his fellows, meaning to shoot the lizards off. Before he could fire I had charged up to him, and swung my blade.

I had no conception whatsoever if my sword would be able to harm it, I doubted I could pierce its hide, but there were areas of exposed innards at its joints, it was these places the lizards attacked, pulling out more of the cords and ropes, sparks of light shooting off them as they came away. I swung my sword at just such a spot, at the back of the machine’s neck, and with a flash of discharging lightning from his innards, the machine’s head was lopped off. Behind it, the other’s were falling, having been taken apart at the knees, the waist, then the shoulders by the tiny, industrious beasts. The last one, legless but defiant, turned it’s gun toward me and fired. I blocked the blast with my shield, took one step forward and brought the sword down on the gun, the blade biting into the barrel and sticking fast as lightning burst from the sundered weapon. I seized a rock from the ground and brought it down on the machine’s head, striking again and again and again, releasing all the frustration and powerlessness I had suffered under in their captivity, every strike a blow for the poor captain, bisected without a second thought, and the others who lay, dead and mouldering on the long trail back through the jungle.

“Dude.” The little lizard had hopped up onto my shoulder. “He dead dude. Stop it. This me.” I did stop, and raised my visor, my arm was as lead, and I let the stone fall from nerveless fingers. I became aware again of the agony in my left arm. I had no water to ease the pain, but I covered the burns with mud in the hopes of keeping it cool, and providing some protection as I put back my gauntlet, an act which caused fresh waves of agony.

The machine’s head had been beaten flat into the ground, one of it’s arms was twitching, waving the lightning gun, with my sword still embedded in it, though the air. I pinned the arm to the floor with my boot and pulled the blade free. At the edge of the clearing, the surviving lizards were chasing down the last of the wolfhounds. It had lost a leg, but was still claiming victims with it’s mighty jaws, though even as I watched, the combined might of those brave little creatures finally bore it to the ground, where it was efficiently dismantled. I saw a troop of a dozen or so proudly bearing the head aloft, and carrying it away as a trophy. The leading lizard, the one who had been addressing me, now stood at my feet, his tiny eyes looking into mine.

“Hey guy. This me. Gotta go now, you coming.” I looked over at the other captives, still sat, unmoved, in the pen, their minds broken.

“Can’t help them dude. Gotta go. Friend waiting.”

“Friend? Who’s friend.” I said,

“Friend of you, guy. He send us. Come on!” He was tugging at my boot with hit little arms now. I stirred myself into action as I heard a noise coming from the other end of the clearing, a sound as percussive as a cannon blast, but constant and thudding, each whump like a punch to my chest. I stopped moving again to peer in the direction of the sound, the lizard protesting and pulling at my leg.

All I saw was the pen, and my fellow captives, consumed by an enormous maroon fireball, engulfed with a crack of doom and a wave of heat that knocked me over. Then, rising over the flame and smoke was some sort of craft, a conveyance roughly the size and shape of a sailing cog from back home, but borne aloft by some devilment. I wouldn’t understand what I had seen for some time yet, but it was a hunter drone, a cousin and ally to the machines who had been my captors, and it carried more of them in it’s armoured belly, seeking revenge.

I turned and ran, surrounded on all sides by a heaving mass of tiny green bodies, weaving in and out of my legs, scrambling without pause from branch to branch above me, and two or three hitching a ride on my shoulders, shouting encouragement. Behind us the jungle was consumed by fire and percussive blasts which shivered whole trees into flying splinters, the whirring of the hellish craft on our heels creeping inexorably forward, gaining on our vain attempts to escape with every boom.

The lizards lead me on a dizzying path. Jinking left and right a maddening and exhausting number of times, I had no idea where they were heading, perhaps nowhere, they could easily have been fleeing blindly as any mere spooked animal, but I didn’t think so. They had arrived, as if by divine providence from some unseen friend, and I had faith they would lead me to him, though as my stamina began to fail me, pounding across the rough ground of the undergrowth, I was not free of doubts.

The explosions seemed to be snapping at my heels now, I could feel the heat washing over my back, and staggered with the waves of air pounding me. It seemed as if I must be taken up by the storm of fire any moment, when up ahead I saw the lizards flowing down into a hole in the ground, a rock pulled aside from the entrance.

I redoubled my efforts and drove forward, as fast as my aching legs could carry me, driving towards the hole, and whatever sanctuary it might offer, with the ground being ripped up behind me as if by the hand of god.

I dove into the hole, head first, plunging into darkness and expecting to meet soil and rock on the other side. Instead I fell into empty air, turning over and over before finally  meeting water, face first with a furious smack that dazed me. I sank immediately, pulled down by the weight of my armour, as I sank into the dark depths I saw fire light up the cavern as the bombardment passed over me. The last thing I felt before lapsing into unconsciousness was a legion of tiny hands and claws seizing me, and beginning to pull.

SIMON: TIME DISPLACED KNIGHT WILL RETURN IN:

SIMON SAYS DIE!

Who The Hell Is Tom Holland?

Got my first article published on Geek Pride yesterday, entitled “Who The Hell Is Tom Holland?”.

*Spoilers* He’s just been cast as Spider-Man

CLICK IT. CLICK IT GOOD

Fridgehenge

Oh, what sights have these mighty appliances beheld in their long years,

standing sentinel over Upper Stone Street?

What mysteries do they contain?

I have seen it.

I have communed with the spirits of this holy place,

felt the power of it’s ley lines and blessed trigonometry.

I know it’s power, but more than that I cannot say.

Awesome, ancient majesty, thy name is Fridgehenge.

Two guys in Maidstone, running a second hand shop and white goods business, decided to build a henge from fridges to mark the summer solstice. I popped over this morning to have a look and take a few photos before the council inevitably take them down.

Much like it’s stone age Wiltshire counterpart, Fridgehenge has an air of grandeur somewhat diminished. A sight still mighty, but now a little worn with age, faded into dotage.

it is a sight that will haunt me for a long time to come.

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/maidstone/news/fridgehenge-constructed-in-maidstone-38901/

The Strange Self-fulfilling Prophecy of The Shaggs.

this is the sound of nightmares.

Dave's Corner of the Universe

Today on DCotU we are going to talk about the rock sensation that is The Shaggs. A band so bad that they are good. No, let me take it back they are a band so bad they are horrible. Yet they have influenced their fans music, fans like Frank Zappa, Kurt Cobain and Bonnie Raitt. But what us here at Dave’s think is interesting is not the gosh awful music but the ancient prophecy that drove them to a musical career. The mutterings of a 1950’s Gipsy grandmother is an ancient prophecies right?

The band was composed of Dot, Betty, and Helen Wiggin (and later younger daughter Rachel). The Shaggs were created by their father Austin Wiggin. His mother a self-proclaimed Gipsy fortune teller said he would meet a red haired woman, and they would marry have daughters who would form a band that would change music history. Since the…

View original post 620 more words

Simon: Time Displaced Knight – Chapter Two

Chapter Two of a continuing serial pulp tale
Click here to read Chapter One

There is a period, of indeterminate length, of which I was completely unaware, having been rendered unconscious somehow.  My dreaming mind ran through recent events in a jumbled, confused fashion.  I remembered my chase across the dusty plain, but the men I unhorsed were now both my brother, and the Great Khan spoke with the voice of Father Anjou, the town priest, reciting canticles in latin as his horde bore down on me.

When I finally regained consciousness, I found myself in a room, small and windowless, like some form of dungeon, though the walls were made of smooth steel, with no joins or rivets, and no door presented itself. The ceiling hung low, so that I could sit up from my prone position, but had no chance of standing upright.  I was still wearing my armour and surcoat, and my wargear was on my person, though the shield I had flung away in the chase was presumably lost. Finnegan was not with me.

I began to bang on the walls, searching for an exit, or hoping to attract attention from outside.  Before long I was pounding with all my might, and shrieking myself hoarse, crying to be let free, for my gaolers to advance and be recognized.  But there was no sign of life, no sounds beyond those I made.

I did discover however, that one of the walls was not truly made of steel as it had appeared.  When I struck it with my gauntlet, instead of the ringing clang of the other, metal, walls, there was only a dull thud.  Upon removing my helm and inspecting more closely I saw there appeared to be a sheet of glass directly in front of the wall.  At least, glass I assumed it must be, but more perfect and precise than anything I had seen a glazier make back home by several orders of magnitude.

What follows here is the telling of my first experiences as what you might call a ‘chrononaut,’ or ‘time traveler’.  If you are reading this then you will know the significance of events heretofore described in ways which I did not understand as they occurred to me.    This will continue to be the case.  As our tale progresses I will behold many objects, events and locations which will seem commonplace to you future dwellers, but to a French Knight Errant plucked from his time these things are not just unknown, but so far beyond my ken as to be totally unfathomable and indescribable.  For the sake of expedience I may furnish my descriptions of characters, objects and events with more detail and background knowledge than I possessed at the time.

For example, the metal prison I found myself in was one of seventy five Reclamation Capsules, used for storing valuable cargo either recovered from space or salvaged from wrecked starships and space stations.  These capsules were contained in the hold of Harvester 110010110010001111, a vessel belonging to The Machine Imperium.  Harvester 110010110010001111 was currently entering orbit around Meat, a planet covered by a vast, densely populated jungle, and the centre of bushmeat hunting and export through this corner of the galaxy as well as the home of a number of rich, but dangerous to exploit, mineral reserves. When a stable orbit was achieved, the Harvester released the seventy five capsules from its armoured belly, like a shark, birthing live young into a cruel, cold ocean.  The metal boxes drifted downwards in formation, friction with the atmosphere of the planet causing their undersides to glow red, then orange, and finally blinding white with the heat of re-entry.

I, contained within one of these boxes and perfectly safe in the computer controlled descent, cowered in the corner, as terrified as a base creature caught out in a thunderstorm.  The metal wall behind the glass was of course, the interior of the spaceship, and had seemed to lift away as my capsule was dropped, revealing the emptiness of the void and the sight of a planet from orbit to my unprepared mind.

So then, that was my first experience of the new world I found myself in, the far future, more than 1000 years hence from my own time, and for some while yet in our tale, set to be a total mystery to me in all but it’s most basic aspects. Though at least my arrival on the planet Meat would put me in a situation that had an equivalent in the past and a dynamic I could comprehend.

Slavery.

Upon landing, coming to rest relatively gently on a cushion of air, my capsule sat for a moment, before opening outwards in sections, much like the petals of a flower.  Leaving me sat, to my shame, in soiled armour, upon a flat surface of metal.

The area around me had once been dense forest, but the trees had been felled at some point over an area of around a square mile, their trunks stacked in great heaps here and there, and the stumps ripped up, leaving potholes filled in with fresh earth.  It gave the appearance of an area beset with monstrous moles digging as they pleased.  What it was, of course was a landing zone for the capsules, which delivered supplies to forces on the ground.  Those supplies, for the most part, were slaves.

There were fifty of us, or thereabouts, scattered about the clearing, along with two dozen stacks of metal boxes and devices, the purpose of which were unknown to me and remain so. We began to rise uncertainly, me most of all, staggering drunkenly, foul liquid leaking from beneath my plates.

No sooner had I gained my feet than I had the first glimpse of my captors, a wonder it is that my mind did not break once and for all at their arrival.  They were all of a height, and as they emerged from the trees my first thought, on seeing the gleaming metal and uniform step as they marched forward, waswhat a finely drilled company of men that is, but as they advanced on us and I saw them more clearly and registered their oddity.  They were, to a man, seven feet tall, with limbs of freakish slimness, so it appeared they should not be able to support their bodies, or hold their weapons, arrangements of long metal tubes which they held as I might have wielded a crossbow.  One of my fellows ran at the sight of them and was met with a bright, concentrated beam of lightning, which seemed to emit from the ‘crossbow’ of one of the armoured warriors, and envelop the fleeing person, a woman I believe, who felt dead and burned to a cinder no less than twenty paces from me.

I started at this immense display of power but before I had time to fully react, a great, booming voice filled the clearing.  I didn’t understand the language, but it seemed to me that the voice was saying the same phrase, over and over in many different tongues.  As the monstrous company approached, I saw more of them coming from the trees behind and to either side of me, no hope of escape. Then suddenly I could understand the voice.

“Puny humans.  You are now the property of the Machine Imperium.  Do not resist.  Non-compliant humans will be obliterated.  Assemble now for decontamination.  Obey without question.” The voice was speaking French, many of the words were strange to me, but I could understand the greater part.

We were herded into a huddled mass, shivering despite the intense humidity and commanded to remove our clothes. I looked up at the ironclad beings surrounding us and knew at last these were no men.  Their metal skins were seamless with no sign of how they could be removed.  The head of each one was occupied with one great eye, which glowed with a deep red light and as they moved they all emitted strange rapid clicking ticking sounds constantly, later I learned that this was their own language.  They communicated extensively to such an extent that they appeared to act and think as one.  The words ‘machine imperium’ repeated themselves in my head, was it possible these were some sort of manufactured man?  Mechanical constructs of gears and levers contained in a shell so much like my suit of armour.

I could not remove my armour unaided, normally a squire would assist me, so I struggled uselessly with it as the other captives stood, trying in vain to cover their nakedness as one of the machines waved a device like an incense thurible over their bodies, the decontaminator. When that was finished another machine threw each captive a plain grey garment, much like a shift or tunic which hung down to the knees and a pair of pair of box-like shoes of the same colour, which shrank to fit the wearer’s feet.  One of the machines stepped up to me, barking a phrase in several tongues until he came to that odd French,

“Remove you coverings and prepare for decontamination. Do not resist.”

“I cannot!” I cried desperately “I cannot remove my armour alone.”  The machine looked me up and down before speaking again,

“Scanning…This human’s covering contains low-background steel.  Radioisotopes nonexistent.  This material will be of use to the Imperium.  This human will be decontaminated unaltered.”

The machine man with the decontaminator waved it over me.  I felt nothing, but afterwards when I examined myself I saw that all the dirt and grime accrued during my journey and subsequent ordeals was gone.

Threatening constantly with their weapons, the machines directed us lift the crates, boxes and other items that had come down in the unoccupied capsules.  I took one end of a long, wooden crate over my shoulder, the other end was carried by a woman with short black hair, I was too wrapped up in my own fear and misery to notice much else about her.  She said something to me as she took the weight but I didn’t understand, I tried to say so in french but I think my meaning was also lost on her.  In time, when we were all assembled and carrying our loads, the machines lead us away from the clearing and into the jungle.

The march progressed for at least 60 days, though I lost the exact count somewhere along the way.  The jungle, as I learned later, covered almost the entire world, from dense bushland, thick with undergrowth and ten thousand different creatures which crawled and hopped and flew, to the vast mangrove glades which encroached on the many rivers, to the mighty floating jungles of kelp and seaweed which dominated the entire expanse of Meat’s single ocean. The land was intensely uneven, and sloped up and down madly, as the ground underfoot alternated between sharp rocks with a thin carpet of rotten leaves and great, sucking bogs and quagmires that sucked hungrily at our woefully inadequate footwear.  Animal life was rampant everywhere, though the larger animals were often heard but rarely seen, smaller creatures always scurried about us, as if curious.  Particularly persistent were a flock of small lizards, much like the kind to be found basking on rocks in the Mediterranean.  These however, ran on two legs, in a similar stance to a chicken, and were often to be found scurrying under my feet, chattering and squawking to each other, and seemingly to me.  In time I came to ignore them as they blended into the routine of the day.

Each day on the march progressed according to a set routine. We slept where we had dropped after the previous day, on the bare floor with the mud and countless crawling, scurrying creatures of the jungle.   We were woken by the bellowing of one of the machines, exhorting us ‘puny humans’ to our labours, with the constant threat of violent, fiery death for those who failed in their task or tried to escape.  As we prepared to set out we were issued with a cube of some foul tasting black jelly substance to eat.  It made me sick to my stomach at first, but kept me and the others alive, just.  Then there remained 12 hours or so of daylight, during which we marched, carrying our loads with a torturous, shuffling step, before stopping to eat another block of gelatinous horror.  It rained almost hourly, and this we drank, tipping our heads back with mouths agape.

My world reduced to the area just in front of my feet, as I focused the sum total of my will on simply placing one boot in front of the other.  Within a few hours on the first day a man had fallen, and when he could not rise after three attempts, the machines executed him, leaving the body where it lay.  By the time I passed his corpse it was already thick with a covering of flies and beetles, feasting.  I kept that image in my mind whenever I considered stopping.

Nor did I think to try and fight my way out, as much as it stuck in my craw.  The machines had left me, alone amongst the captives, with my clothes, and with it my sword.  It in no way resembled their weapons, and so perhaps they did not recognize it as such, but neither did I see how I could hope to harm the metal men with such a weapon, nor how I could hope to even get close enough to try, lest I be cooked alive by one of their lightning guns.

A knight must be brave, and defiant to the last, giving his all to protect the innocent, but in those black days I was no knight, merely an armoured, craven boy, concerned only with my own survival while all around me, folk died of exhaustion, or were callously slain.

I did form one alliance on the march, the woman who shared my load.  Though I had studiously avoided her gaze at first, I came to realise it was in my interest to help her through the ordeal along with me, lest I should have twice the load to carry if she fell, I wagered that she saw things similarly and so, on the third day, as we trudged down a gentle slope and the going was slightly easier, I began my attempts to communicate.  Our captors seemed not to care if we spoke to each other, as long as we continued to make progress, so I tried simply speaking at first in my own tongue.  This she did not understand, so I tried the two other tongues I had any knowledge of, English (what you would call Middle English) and lastly, the few words I had of latin, which I had learned from the monastic scribes who lived near to father’s castle.  At this her head whirled around, an expression of surprise and some delight spread broadly across her face and she responded in the same tongue.  At last!

It took hours, days even, of pointing at things and repeating the woman’s name for them, but I set myself to learning, so I might have some hope of understanding where I was, what was happening to me, and what we could do next.  The first thing I discovered was my ally’s name, Charon, Captain Mira Charon.

She was a woman of some fierce intelligence, I recognized that in her eyes at once.  Her features and build did not ascribe to the conventional standards of beauty as I knew them, yet the confidence and wit within her was magnetic, her wry, knowing smile infectious, even in the fix we found ourselves in.  It felt good to be doing something positive finally, though we never dared to speak openly of escape, she managed to hint to me that she had a plan, that I must be patient.

New York City – 1929

The man opened the window of his office on the twentieth floor and stepped out onto the thin, brick ledge outside, which ran the circumference of the building. As he did he felt the panic and stress that had gripped his heart in a vice for the last week release him and a kind of serenity descend. Everything was so simple now, no more checking the paper for share prices, or raging on the telephone at brokers. No more migraines or palpitations, just a brief sensation of floating, then nothing.  His only regret was not spending more time with his family, instead of chasing those dollar bills all these years, but it was too late to change that now, and he could barely look at his wife and daughter now, knowing he had impoverished them with his avarice.  No, better to go now and free those poor angels of the wretched millstone they called husband and father.

He had one foot off the balcony and was just at the very edge of letting go when a series of crashes, like a silver service dropped down an elevator shaft, followed by coarse, Texan, cursing.

“Do you mind pal?!” he roared into the open window, some of his trading floor pluck returning for a moment, “I am trying to have a moment here!”

“Well shitfire!” replied the Texan, from around the corridor outside the office, “Ah have not the faintest clue where’n the Sam Hill Ah have ended up, but the décor sure is fancy! Hey, what in tarnation are ya doin’ out there?”

A horse had walked into the office. Light brown in colour, with a saddle on his back and reins hanging down from his bridle, and one of those all-round skirt things knights put on their horses in olden day, the man didn’t know the name for it.  It seemed to be the one doing the talking. 

“Woah! Yer not thinkin’ of tossin’ yerself off that are ya?” the horse said, taking a few steps back in astonishment.  He gathered himself, as if trying to remember a phrase he’d once heard. “Think of all that you have got to live for.” He said, looking proud.

The man slowly climbed back into the room, as he got down from the window the couple of bystanders who had gathered on the street below dispersed, disappointed. 

“Thas the spirit!” said the horse, “what’s yer name boss?”

“What?…er…Bailey, Mick Bailey,” the man said distractedly, approaching the horse. “My cousin owns a circus you know?”

“Bully for you!  Ah heard the circus is a hog-killin’ time and no mistake, but Ah need yer help, boss.  Ah got myself in a fine situation and Ah’m a little at sea as to where Ah am now.”

“Sure…sure thing boy,” said the man, edging as close as he dared thinking the horse might bolt or something.  He had no idea how this trick was achieved, but there was money to be made here, maybe enough to resurrect his sunken fiscal fortunes.  He reached for the bridle.

Finnegan saw the sudden movement and, on instinct, reared up as much as the low ceiling would allow.  He kicked out with both his front hooves and struck Mick Bailey squarely on the chest.  The force of the blow broke three ribs and collapsed a lung, and flung the destitute banker backwards out of his open office window.

“That’ll learn ya, tryin’ to apprehend a fella going about his honest business.” Finnegan yelled out the window, sticking his head right out to look at the street below.  People on the sidewalk pointed with equal parts amazement and horror at the corpse on the ground and the animal twenty floors up.

When police officers finally broke into the locked office, with bailiffs dispatched by Bailey’s creditors crowding behind, they found nothing untoward and no sign of a horse, as if such a thing was possible! How would it have even got into the elevator?

One officer thought he had seen an odd blue light beaming from under the door before they had entered, but he was a known alcoholic and was ignored.

Make Your Fortune

When I started this one I was writing for a short story competition with a five hundred word limit, I don’t think I can achieve that level of brevity, or least I couldn’t with this story.
I had the idea at about 1am, sitting up with my fiancee while she marked exam papers, me next to her struggling to write, getting nowhere. Her mum was there too, and she’d turned the TV to Challenge, which in the early hours runs absolutely ancient episodes of Strike It Lucky and The Price is Right. That was enough to set me off on the following nightmare…

As the lights came up I did as I had been told.  I grinned as wide as I could, feeling insincere and openly desperate, and waved as hard as I could, as if the strength of my wave would contribute to my chances of success.  The stage lights had now obscured my view of the crowd beyond, but I could suddenly hear them clearly, or rather, felt the force of their applause hit me in my stomach.  My bolted on smile faltered as my guts rose in one mass to just under my tongue, and I knew with certainty that I would be on YouTube tomorrow:

Woman Honks on ‘Make Your Fortune!’ Blows Chunks On Ken Carthage’s Shoes

Fortunately Ken didn’t speak to me straight away, delivering a monologue to the audience that I assumed was funny, the audience laughed in all the correct places anyway.  I concentrated instead on lowering my rising gorge.  He finished his preamble and turned to me,

“Hello my dear!” He suddenly seemed to fill the whole universe with the triple towering cliffs of his weirdly large double-breasted jacket, shining forehead and ferocious white teeth. “What’s your name and what do you do?” I took a breath and found myself,

“HI KEN MY NAME’S JANET AND I’M A SOFTWARE ANALYST FROM YORKSHIRE” I blurted. Ken made some joke which I didn’t really hear, but I laughed anyway.  My stomach settled and I started to enjoy myself, this was a fun thing to be doing, I couldn’t see the audience but the cameramen and crew people looked friendly they were all was smiling at me, they all wanted me to win.  I would win! Ken was still talking to me but he turned away and delivered his lines straight into the camera,

“Well Janet, as you know I’m sure, this game is very simple. One Million Pounds can be yours if you successfully complete a mental, physical or skill based challenge behind one of these doors.” He gestured to three doors at the back of the studio, featureless except for a coat of TV show sparkles. “All you have to do is pick one, Door one, two or three! The choice is yours!” The crowd applauded again, and I think they missed him add,

“Or Door number OOOOOOOOO”.

That’s the closest approximation I can make to the sound that came out of his mouth. Not a word, but a deep, rumbling sound. I thought I’d imagined it and carried on, letting Ken lead me up to the three doors, I stood in front of them pondering my choice, the crowd bellowing different numbers in encouragement, their words merging into one nonsense sound, repeated over and over,

“Woooeee! Woooeee! Woooeee!”

On and on it went, morphing into a chant, an invocation to the Dark Gods of Television. Oh Great Square-eyed One, we beseech thee, accept this female as tribute. Hallelujah and twiddle-thy-knobs!

It was then I realised there were in fact four doors, the three I had noticed prior, and another. A ten foot, black wooden edifice that seemed to me to have been stolen from the front porch of some gothic mansion. It had a frame of white marble, every inch of it carved into leering, howling maws and despairing eyes. The imprisoned souls of the forever damned, straining for release from the chains of ivy and dead, brown brambles that had grown over the frame. Above the door, at the top of the lintel where the other doors displayed their number, this door had instead the sideways eight that I knew stood for infinity.

At the time, this seemed perfectly normal to me, and if anyone had asked me about it right then, I would have replied that there were always four doors on the show, that I had seen it many times myself on TV, the three challenge doors and the other one, the one nobody had ever chosen. Though in truth I had never seen it before today.

Ken had taken my arm and was shouting, half to me and half to the crowd, pondering out loud over which door I would choose, leading me first to one, then to another. I played along with the pantomime, all the while feeling an irresistible pull from the fourth door, knowing I would choose that one. The one nobody else was acknowledging.

I looked at Ken then, and saw something changing about him. Like a double exposure on an old photo, there were two of him, one laid over the other.  The paler of the two was smiling at a joke he had just made, turned towards the crowd. The other, which in my head I automatically thought of as The Real Ken was looking straight at me, the smile he had worn so easily gone as if it had never been there.

“Enough messing around.” he said. “We both know you have made your choice, the door awaits.”

“But Ken…” I said,

“No! No more talk. No more fun. Seize your destiny. Open the door and pass through to eternity.”

I felt then as if I too were splitting into two forms. I imagined I could see my physical body standing on the threshold of door two, waving and smiling. I could hear the theme music that normally played at this part of the show, but only as a dim echo, each note stretched out to an infinite, perfect drone, filling the whole of time.

My real self turned, as I had known I would, towards the fourth door.  It swung open, welcoming me, and a sound filled the air, a bass rumble similar to the sound Ken had made when naming the door.  A Gregorian chant echoing out of the abyss.

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

Without pause I stepped through the door.

******************************************************************

Stars surrounded me.

When I was a little girl, I would lie on the grass in my Grandfather’s back garden and watch the stars for hours. They always seemed to be painted on a flat surface, suspended up there on the roof of the world, beautiful, but two dimensional. Now I could see them for what they were, some were close, almost as if I could touch them, and others, most others, stretched off into the depths, infinitely distant, the oldest and furthest ones glowing with light from the birth of the universe.

I had never felt so small and insignificant, but it was not a negative feeling. I was delighted to be made so strongly aware of the magnificence of all of existence. I did not feel separate from it, I was part of it, enveloped by it, so my tiny self began to blur at the edges, and merge with it.

“Yes!” Ken Carthage spoke, “Submit to the infinite my child, forget the meagre world of the flesh, and join your friends in blissful oblivion.” I could see him now, floating in the void, rubbing his hands with glee. His transformation half begun, stubby wings pushing out from beneath his jacket, yet he still maintained some of the mannerisms of the Game Show host he had been a moment ago, the broad, big-toothed smile was unchanged.

In the shock and rapture of first experiencing the void, I had forgotten that I too must be floating out here as he was, yet I still felt hard ground beneath my feet, looking down at myself I could see my body was insubstantial, transparent. I lifted one foot, and brought it down hard, and was rewarded with the resistance of the studio floor, and a loud thump. This was all an illusion, a glamour cast by Ken to entice his prey. For all that it was still dangerous, it had nearly worked on me. The time had come to stop playing up to the empty-headed contestant act and deal with this predator.

“Ken Carthage,” I said “you are guilty of holding the souls of at least 40 individuals against their will, you have one chance to release them and in so doing, avoid any sanctions.”

“Oh little girl,” he said, floating closer, his face growing larger, filling my field of vision, “I’m not holding anyone against their will, they all chose this door, just as you did. Mere wealth is nothing compared to a taste of the infinite.”

“One chance Ken,” I said, “and then I’m taking you down.” Most of my colleagues wouldn’t even give them that. Hating Ken and his kind with every fibre of their being and exterminating them without regret. I didn’t hate them any more than I would hate a poisonous spider. They, like Ken, could only act according to their nature, but I liked to give them a chance to rise above that. Some took it, not many, but enough for it to be worth trying.

“Come on now dear,” Ken said, beckoning me forward, “Join me, and reach Nirvana!” I felt again the desire to become one with the comforting blackness surrounding me, but I resisted. If I gave myself to it I would be his creature, my soul sustaining him over long years, gradually diminishing, until nothing remained except a howling face carved in marble.

He would lure me further and further into this construct of his and then contrive to trap me here, in this particular case I reckoned it would be as simple as closing the black door behind us. Looking around I saw it, hanging in space, the bright lights of the studio shining through, and the bombastic theme music and roar of the game show audience just audible over the hum and rumble of this false ‘infinity’.  Trailing through the door were two cords, like wisps of glowing smoke. The connection to our physical bodies. After drawing me in, Ken would have left again, and shut the door on my connection, trapping my astral self here, for him to use at his leisure.

I ran for the door, wondering what running would feel like. Would I float ineffectually, legs pumping in the vacuum? Luckily, my feet pounded on the floor I could feel but not see and I crossed the space to the threshold quickly. I heard a rasping hiss from behind me, the monster that had been Ken Carthage barrelling through space towards me, teeth growing into stiletto points and skin coloured leathery wings ripping through fabric, but he had misjudged.

I had plenty of time to step through the door and throw it shut. The wispy cord connecting Ken to his body snapped neatly with a satisfying snick sound and I felt a sharp tug in my low abdomen, this was me being pulled back into my physical self, which had been play acting a role in the dreadful game show, I found myself knee-deep in green prop slime (what they used to call Gunge in the nineties) with several gold plastic pound signs in my hands; my prizes.

This happened in an instant. Ken, the human Ken, had been standing over the space where I took the challenge, laughing along with the crowd and shouting encouragement, but as soon as the door shut and I rejoined my body, Ken’s soul was permanently severed from his, trapped in a bottle universe of his own creation with no escape. The body’s face went blank, the light disappearing from his eyes as he fell over sideways, knees straight, his head smacking loudly into the floor.

*******************************************************************

I managed to get on YouTube after all, the title was:

Ken Carthage Dies of Heart Attack On Live TV

It’s got a lot in common with the horribly sad one of Tommy Cooper, where nobody’s really sure if he’s joking or not at first.

I’m quite proud of my performance in this one, laughter at Ken’s antics turning gradually to concern, then horror. The last thing you see is my face, looking around at the studio hands, trying to tell them something’s wrong, but not finding the right words. Then the lights go down, pulling the studio into darkness.

Simon: Time Displaced Knight – Chapter One

Short stories are all well and good, (and there will be more before this beast has been fully crapped out) but now’s the time to begin something a bit longer. 

May I present to you the continuing tale of Simon D’Avanché, told in a serialised, pulp fiction style, with about the same level of artistry and depth.

Here we go….

“Dammit boss! Them folks stink worse than a sack ‘o possums!”

“As usual Finnegan, I have no idea what that word means.”  I let my head loll to the left in sheer exasperation as we rode along the dirt track, the trees to either side were arranged in neat rows, as was the way in this part of France, though the pleasing aesthetic was somewhat spoiled by the mouldering corpses of Frankish soldiers, beheaded en masse and thrown from the road, presumably to keep the way clear for the English army I was tracking.

Since being expelled from my father’s household in Limoges I had sought to make my way in the world as a Knight Errant, or less romantically, a sellsword.  Success had not been forthcoming though, as Father had sent heralds far and wide, letting it be known that Sir Guillame D’Avanché would look unkindly on any lord who gave his wayward son employment, presumably hoping to drive me back into the loving, and utterly suffocating bosom of my family.  If that was his hope I planned to leave him sorely disappointed, I would pledge my sword and lance to the hated English instead, they were known to hire mercenaries to bolster their ranks, and Father, who had tilted against them at Crécy, would no doubt spit feathers when he heard.  As we trotted round a corner I had hoped to see a plume of smoke above the trees, a sign that we neared the English encampment, and might reach it before night fully descended, but there was only the darkening sky of a summer evening, and a straight stretch of road, and more corpses.  Finnegan chose this moment of slight despondency on my part to resume his nonsensical soliloquy,“Well sir, far as ah can reckon, though ah ain’t never seen one with mah own eyes, a possum is a small, kinda stinky creature, with four, or perhaps five legs, and a great eye in the centre o’ his head, usually to be found playin’ a banjo on his front porch.”

I leant right forward in the saddle so as I could peer, upside down, straight into Finnegan’s eyes.

“Where, by the name of all that’s holy, do you get this nonsense? Do you make it up? Or did someone else in Father’s stable fill your head with it?”

“Shucks Sir, Ah ain’t never had much o’ that imagination, ah’m just a horse.”

Silently I cursed again at being afflicted with the most stupid of all Father’s horses for my mount. Cloudesly Shovel, my brother’s great black destrier, would have been my first choice, but in the gloom of my midnight departure, he and Finnegan had looked much alike.  The crucial difference being that Cloudesly Shovel had been educated since a foal on the fine art of conversation, literature, history and could sing several hymnals and epic poems from memory. Finnegan meanwhile, had never mastered much more than how to spit into an upturned bascinet from 10 yards distant, and howling some incoherent song of his own invention, which mostly repeated more of his nonsense words, such as ‘railroad’ and ‘Mississippi’.

“Forget it, keep an eye out for a spot free of bodies will you, we must make camp soon.”

“yesum.”

A little way up the road the press of corpses among the trees grew in intensity, about a mile along from where I had spotted the first body, the distribution spoke of a force being caught on the march and fleeing before their assailants, innumerable hoof prints on the road revealing the English men to be mounted, chasing down the fleeing Frenchmen along the track, catching them one by one, until finally, here, their main body elected to make a stand, the great wash of blood on the road a testament to their end. Carefully I negotiated this unfortunate and messy scene. Technically, I suppose these men were my countrymen, but in those feudal days loyalty rarely stretched beyond the people sworn to one’s own lord, and the distant, little known king in far off Paris. War, with the English, and sometimes small rebellious parts of France, was part of daily life, and ostensibly the profession of my class, I was no stranger to death.

I jumped down from Finnegan’s back and stepped off the road, into a patch of wood mercifully clear of bodies, and busied myself with gathering kindling and preparing a fire. An action I had performed many times before and did automatically, my mind a blank. Before I was fully aware of it I was sitting, staring into the flames of a new campfire, it’s warmth seeping into my bones, and soothing my few, minor aches from the road. Finnegan was busying himself cropping down every visible bit of grass and weed with an alacrity and determination he displayed nowhere else.

Suddenly his ears twitched and he raised his head, peering past me into the blackness of the deep wood, his expression unreadable, even for a horse.

“Boss? There’s something over yonder, some sorta ghost light. s’got me about ready to soil ma britches.”

I turned to look in the direction he was indicating and indeed saw a glow emanating from through the trees. It was like no other light I had seen in my life, neither the brilliant pure white of daylight nor the warm orange of candle or firelight, but a strange blue, waxing and waning in intensity like a heartbeat as I watched.

“Can you hear that Boss?”

Finnegan whispered from behind me. I could hear nothing and held my hand up to him for silence, though now he was clearly growing agitated, I could hear his hooves stamping and scuffing the ground and his breath coming stronger and stronger.

“They’re screamin’! So many people, them folks’re killin’ them all! They need our help!”

Before I could react I was thrown sideways and cracked my head against a tree, the sharp branches reaching out and entangling me, tearing my surcoat as I pulled away. Finnegan had barged me aside and run straight for the hellish light, in less than a second it’s glare had consumed him. I cried out and ran after him, stumbling and crashing from tree to tree in my haste to keep pace with my mount. Insane, ill-mannered excuse for a warhorse he may have been, but I was no knight without him.

Shortly I came upon the source of the light, though beyond the fact it was the source of the light I am at a loss to describe it further. All aspects of it were concealed in totality by the blinding light issuing forth. I looked down upon this bizarre scene from atop a small hillock, down which Finnegan was galloping headlong. Heedless of my cries and entreaties he made for the object, the light surrounded him and he was lost to it. Rather than being obscured as before he seemed to have now passed a threshold, as if moving through a doorway. I shouted his name. Getting no response, I continued my pursuit and ran, as he had, straight into the light.

The ground suddenly dropped away and I fell forwards. The drop was a few feet only, but in full armour as I was this was enough for me to stumble. Arresting my fall with my hands I plunged them directly into dry, dusty earth, which was kicked up into my face. Spluttering and groaning from my fall I managed to turn over and get into a sitting position, not an easy task in armour, and looked about.

Several things struck me at once, I was no longer in a wood, the temperature was much warmer, and it was no longer night. I was however still near a road, or rather I had landed in a ditch adjacent to a dusty track. Finnegan was pacing back and forth across said track like an expectant equine father, muttering incessantly about innocent folks in danger, but seemingly less convinced now about where he should go and what he should do about it. Everything here was the colour of old paper, flat and featureless, save for a great, snowcapped mountain looming over us down the road, and a collection of small, distant shapes that could only be a city, though in many ways unlike any city I had ever beheld before.

As a small boy, my father had taken me and my brother with him to Paris, to see The King. To my infantile mind Paris was the biggest city ever built, sitting like a great beast spreading across both sides of the river Seine and the great island in the middle, swallowing up people and animals and supplies and shitting out culture, art, government and money! I had never forgotten the sights and the feeling of awe at the size and my own insignificance at my nation’s capital. Paris would have fit comfortably into one of the sprawls of huts that had leaked from this city’s walls onto the surrounding plain. Even from this great distance I could see, but only dimly comprehend the enormous size of it.

It was also, every inch of it, burnt.

The work was long done and no smoke rose into the air, but everywhere I looked the buildings, from the small huts to larger halls and fanes to some unfamiliar faith were black and charred, many without roofs and with beams reaching into the sky like broken fingers on a charred corpse. Of the strange light that seemed to have brought us here, or people in that city, there was no sign, though we were very distant, perhaps too distant to say for sure. Finnegan seemed to have settled down somewhat now, enough so that he responded when I called him.

“Help me up will you?”

I tried to ask fairly gently, as I did want him to spook him any further. his head was hanging low to the ground, his flanks quivering as he breathed, he seemed very tired of a sudden, but he turned his head to acknowledge me and walked over.

“S…sorry Sir Simon,” He said apologetically, “Ah cain’t rightly say ah got’s any notion where we’re at now. Ah reckon s’all mah fault boss.”

He was standing over me now, with his reins dangling down within my reach, I grasped them in both hands and Finnegan walked backwards, pulling me gradually to my feet.

“It is your fault, but I don’t blame you, moon touched beast that you are.” As I regained my feet I scratched Finnegan behind his ears to reassure him, “Now come on, lets see what can be found around here eh?” and perhaps where here was. The obvious course of action was to investigate the city, being the only sign of civilisation in view, so we began walking towards it, for now I went on foot, leading Finnegan by his bridle, saving his strength after the strange occurances in the woods.

It took at least an hour’s walk before we seemed to be any closer to anything, further shocking me with the size of the features I was attempting to reach. Somewhat perversely, the mountain seemed to be getting nearer at a faster rate than the city itself, I struggle to understand this, peering at it, shielding my eyes from the harsh sun, which sat more or less directly above me. It occurred to me then that I had already travelled for a full day before this, and had been settling down to make camp and sleep, but now faced many more hours trudge before I could realistically stop safely, no wonder Finnegan had tired so easily.

Suddenly something shifted in my perspective as I peered at the mountain, in much the way the ‘Trompe-l’œil’ illustrated manuscripts Father Phillippe produced could sometimes appear as one thing, a leaping salmon for instance, before you realised it was Christ crucified all along. The object that had appeared to be a vast snowcapped mountain, looming behind the city, was actually much smaller, and much much nearer than I had thought. I mounted Finnegan and we galloped over. As we approached I felt a sickness and a tightening of my guts, a few dozen dead soldiers, born and trained to combat and well versed in what to expect, was nothing to cry about, but this was more than the tiny machinations of men, this was The Wrath of God made manifest. The white mountain was made entirely of bones. I knew it was the bones of every man, woman and child that had lived in this dead city, perhaps millions of souls, hewn like wheat and stacked like some grotesque hay bale. As we approached the surface of the road became softer, sodden and greasy with the putrefaction of a populace, running down the sides of the mounds in black torrents. Finnegan picked up his feet like he was on parade, desperate to avoid touching the foul substances leeching into the landscape. He was muttering again now, these were the people whose screams he had somehow heard and we had rushed here to save, yet they had been dead for many years. I was deeply unmanned by this sight, but Finnegan seemed to be losing his grip, skittering sideways, his eyes wide and mad like a young colt not yet trained to battle readiness. I jumped from the saddle and sank ankle deep into the muck, breaking a crust and releasing vile humours into the air. This cause Finnegan to rear up and kick out in such great distress that he seemed to have lost his higher faculties for a time. Luckily I managed to grab his reins and prevent him bolting, bogged down as I was becoming I could never have caught him. I whispered the secret words of my family’s stable hands into the horses ear, the effect was instantaneous and place him into a trance. I placed my hands either side of Finnegan’s head and looked deep into his eyes.

“Enough now. Peace. Be at peace my brave gelding. A man once cut off your balls, is this truly worse than that?”

That got through to him, he laughed, then shuddered as the fright passed over him.

“Ah was awful afeared boss, t’aint right to do that to folks. And it ain’t right to put yerself in a fellas head neither!” he had turned to shout admonishment at the boneheap. “‘Specially when there ain’t nuthin’ to be done for ya” he worked his lips for a second and spat onto the roadside. “Lets get away boss, ain’t no good to be done here.”

“We’ll head into the city for now,” I decided, “ I am bone tired, we must rest awhile before we try to leave, perhaps find some food.”

Finnegan shook his head as we walked side by side toward the city. “T’aint nuthin’ here sir, them’s that done this devilry took all the stuff worth tookin’. Then they did that,” Indicating the bones, “and put the whole dang place to fire.”

“How do you know so much about it? how could you hear those people before?” “Ah don’t have the first earthly idea boss, Ah can…” He paused cocking his head and searching for the right word. “Remember? But Ah don’t remember remembrin’ afore now. Don’t make no sense.” He looked up at the walls “Zhongdu! biggest, finest, damnedest best city inna world! They had a Emp-er-or, and fancy clothes and booze and purty wimmin and everythang you could want.”

His eyes had grown bright as he said this, as if he really did remember all these things, who can say if it was true or not, but Finnegan, the mad gelding, believed with all his heart. As we approached the gates, long since collapsed and broken, but still offering an entrance I saw a lone rider approaching from many miles distant, galloping like the very devil was at his heels. Behind him was a cloud of dust I had assumed he had kicked it up himself but now I saw it was far too large for that. He turned in the saddle, raising a small bow he held and firing back into the dust. I was impressed, Horse archers were known, but rare in my home, most travelled west from far off Hungary, and now I looked I saw the man had something of that race about him, in his clothes and wargear, for he must be a warrior. I mounted Finnegan and we galloped just inside the gate, to observe matters largely unseen. No sooner had we reached cover than the rider’s pursuers emerged from the dust, there were at least two hundred, maybe more and at their head was a truly terrifying figure. His dark brown, almost red hair flowed long down his back and blew wild in the wind of his passage, mingling with his equally long beard. His clothes were those of a savage, animal skins and furs, but he waved a great curved sword about his head, a shining weapon with a golden hilt, a sword fit for a king, he was screaming, I think with delight at the chase, and in that moment I hoped never to find myself in the position of that one lone rider.

As one his men raised their own bows and fired, though the fire was slightly staggered, as each man waited until his horse was at the apex of his gallop, with all four feet in the air, before loosing his arrow. The poor soul fleeing them died instantly, riddled with shafts and bleeding into the dust. Upon getting a good look at the leader of this company, Finnegan again shifted nervously under me,

“Boss! that’s him!” he said in a stage whisper I was sure the men across the plain would hear.

“Quiet! who is he?” I whispered back.

“He’s the murderer of this place, The thief o’ the world, The Great Khan! So mean he’d fight a rattler and give it the first bite! We gotta run, or we’re dead meat boss!”

He made to move off, I gave a sharp tug on the reins.

“No! They’ll catch us by God! I don’t like the look of those arrows.”

“Yer wearin’ yer boiler plate ain’cha? them bows is only little things, a mite too weak to pierce yer armour, and they ain’t brung their bodkins. What Ah wouldn’t give fer a colt .45 about now.”

Finnegan made to run off again but still I restrained him, It was possible the riders might simply leave now their quarry was dead. As far as I could tell they weren’t aware of us. Finnegan remained agitated however, insistent to be off. I threatened him with the spurs if he didn’t behave.

“You wouldn’t dare buckaroo.”

“Test me, then, you are the steed, I, the rider. I make the decisions here.” I held my leg out at a great angle , the pointed spurs glinting in the sun, a threat should he make any more noise or attempts to run. he looked round at me in the saddle as much as his head would allow.

“Sir Simon, we gotta burn the breeze now, or they will find us, they’re coming in here to check for survivors.”

“How could you know? you claim to have much knowledge you should not have. Until proven otherwise I shall trust my own eyes and ears first Finnegan.”

The riders out on the plain had now stripped the dead man of all his possessions, and put his wounded horse out of its misery. They also seemed to be butchering the poor animal as if they planned to eat it later, perhaps they did. Presently they turned towards the city and rode straight for us at a gentle trot, as soon as they did Finnegan protested yet again.

“Tarnation! that does it, we’re goin’.”

He made to gallop away and no pulling on the reins would stop him, in desperation I kicked hard with the spurs. but for my effort I simply made my poor frightened horse neigh loudly in pain. Naturally the riders heard this and immediately began to gallop at full speed for the city. The decision made for us now, we too galloped out of the gate and back down the road we had come from, away from our new enemies.

“Sorry bout that boss, but we’re committed now, nuthin’ fer it but to buckle to and get away.”
I patted his neck as we rode,

“Save your breath, it’s fine, just get us away from here.” I leant forward and held on for dear life as we rode.

This land, open and flat as it was, was perfect country for horsemen, not a fence or hedgerow for a hundred miles in any direction. I quickly realised this would be our downfall. Finnegan was a warhorse, trained to carry a knight in armour across battlefields, while wearing armour plates of his own. He was not currently weighed down by them, only his everyday tackle and so could run faster than I expected, but he was also halfway blown from earlier in the day. Our only hope of escape would have been to find somewhere to lose our pursuers and hide, but on this wide open land, all they had to do was keep up the chase on their small, light, very fast horses and eventually they would gain on us. I unslung my shield from across my back, and drew my sword in preparation for that moment. It was a cheap thing, that sword, bought to replace the one my father had broken in front of me the day before I left. I regretted having no lance then, for if I had I would have turned about and charged these foreigners down, and perhaps put the fear of god into a few of them before I was slain.

Our pursuers grew ragged now, the stronger ones began to leave others behind and gain on us gradually. The first of the arrows fell, many missed but some found their mark bouncing off my breast plate or sticking, ineffectually in my surcoat. I wondered why they were not targeting Finnegan, my best guess being they coveted him as a remount for their king, this Khan, and were confident they would not need to, that they could ride me down without hurting the horse. The two fastest riders were coming up alongside us now, one on either side, one on the right with a curved blade like his king’s, the other, almost close enough to reach out and touch me, standing up in the saddle with a drawn bow, levelled at my unprotected head. By a miracle I caught his arrow on my shield, then rather than chance my luck a second time I flung my shield at him. It caught him in the throat and sent the man falling off his horse into the dust, those following rode over him without a second glance.

Finnegan was going for the horse of the other man, baring his teeth to try and bite, though his opponent was doing the same, but seemed unable to respond to the traditional warhorse taunting.

“Get back ye bastard! Yer uglier’n a burnt boot! If yer brains were dynamite there woulna be enough ta blow yer nose!”
Perhaps he didn’t speak our language.

I thrust my blade straight forward, but the swordsman knocked it aside with a lightning parry at the last moment, so all I did was tear a rent in his fur coat with the tip of my sword. He swung at me himself with a great arc, meaning to strike off my head, I didn’t have time to fence with him forever, so I tried my favourite trick from my days in the melee at tournament. I tossed my sword up and caught it in my left hand, holding the reins and blade in one hand, and grabbed the other man’s swinging sword arm by the wrist, and with one sharp tug pulled him from the saddle. As I did another arrow shot past me, missing my face by inches. It was the Khan, he was at the head of his men now, staring at me with such intensity, as if he could set me on fire with his mind. We were running out of tricks, and time.

“I think this is it Finnegan, well done lad, you’re the best horse I could ask for.”

I moved my sword back to my right hand, preparing to turn around and die meeting my foes head on, when suddenly Finnegan swerved to the left, galloping with a fresh burst of speed right across the face of the mass of men and horses following. I had no clue what he was doing until we leapt. Ahead of us was that Ghost Light once again, it had reappeared and was already enveloping us before I was even aware of it. The last I knew of the Khan and his men was a shout of rage in an unknown tongue, fading into the distance.