Emperor Mordred sat, knuckles pressed against his lips, deeply troubled. One could easily imagine that anyone who was Emperor of the World embroiled in a civil war against your two brothers would have more than their fair share of troubling things on their mind, yet these things – the running of the empire, the planning of how to end the hostilities with him both victorious and neither Ganymede or Bayamon dead – he was able to view dispassionately, from a distance, as his father had taught him to do. The fact that he was trying to puzzle out how to outmaneuver Ganymede, who had the greater military experience, and Bayamon, whose moods often made him so unpredictable, gave him the aloofness required to think of them not as his brothers but as problems to be solved, each with their own parameters and conditions. Mordred had always been good at solving problems.
It wasn’t even the prospect of the war itself that had him mired in discontentment. Though entirely ignorant to what war was and what it meant, he had people around him who assured him that they did and who certainly seemed to know what they were talking about despite the fact that they were as new to war as he was. At best, they had been trained in the military, such as the Knights who protected him, and were also versed in the wars and conflicts of the past, making his best assets historians as well as soldiers and politicians. War was just like his brothers; another problem to solve. From where he sat it seemed to be a rather large and rather complex math equation. The right numbers here, a prediction there, all of the calculus that went into it, changing moment to moment as they learned new information, was just that: an equation to be solved. The complexity of it, he had come to realize over the past couple of months, was the dastardly capability of a war to spiderweb outwards into a larger and larger equation that needed to be kept up on. That made solving the equation complicated, but, with some help, he knew he could do that, too.
It was what Mordred couldn’t get help with that was troubling him so. Mother Harlot was at the forefront of his mind as he sat at the head of the table depicting the entire world over which he ruled, hearing the sounds that others were making but not listening to them. The Imperial Crown sat upon his head, framing his face and giving him a look of focus despite the fact that his eyes were not on the models and totems that defined distant, abstract things that his brothers were up to far away from Damocles. He was staring off into nothing, thinking about what she’d said to him. His last interaction with her. His fingers still smelled like her.
Sex had used to bring such comfort to him. Unlike his brothers, Mordred had always had a seemingly endless appetite for it and had indulged it every chance he could. ‘His one vice’, Emperor Gawain had called it, and Mordred never disagreed, as since the time he had been a young teenager he had experimented and taken pleasure in and with who he could at nearly every available opportunity. Even the night before his coronation he had had a mistress in his bed, someone he’d met for the first time and invited to his chamber for an evening of fun. Such had been his want and privilege as Second Prince.
All of that had begun to change once Mother Harlot appeared into his life. Every visit she paid upon him, her advances growing bolder and bolder and her demands ever more pressing, her memory became more and more pronounced when he went to indulge in his singular vice with others. It didn’t seem to matter whether or not it was a male or female, without fail his mind would wander to her monstrous, seductive form and his appetite for those he wished to play with would be lost. Of course, they never questioned why the emperor couldn’t keep it up. They assumed, and tried to comfort him, often, that the weight of his responsibilities, the repair of Damocles, the war with is brothers, simply made concentrating on something as seemingly comparatively frivolous as sex nearly impossible. Never once did he try to explain to these people, whom he often barely knew, of what was actually troubling him. He was grateful for the comfort and the affection and the last several times he had dismissed his partners without engaging in anything further than heavy petting, parting on good, if disappointing, terms.
Not so with Mother Harlot. Their every encounter had only grown more and more licentious in proportion with the information that she gave him. It was maddening, how this creature, who seemed only to make herself known when he was alone, always seemed to know what he wanted and would relinquish it at the cost of touch he once found so enjoyable. She was robbing him of his vice and giving him nothing in return save news on his brother’s movements and advances which let him plan and set into motion events which would see him victorious. Or so she claimed. But he had begun to wonder if she was even real to begin with, or simply some horrid figment of his imagination? Were it not for the evidence of the undeniably feminine scent on his digits that lingered even hours after the fact he may have given the possibility of her simply being some symptom of his eroding mind more serious consideration. Alas; the evidence of her existence was far too compelling and plentiful, usually left on his person in ways which he was thankful clothes could cover.
As Knights and Lords discussed matters that should have held his undivided attention Mordred thought back to that last encounter they had had. He and her, sat on the edge of his bed. His shirt was opened, allowing her to touch him as he, in turn, touched her. Hand pressed firmly up between her legs, fingers buried where it was wet and warm. Wiggling. Part of him was genuinely surprised that she had such anatomy. Most of him had been distracted by the pain that shot through his arm any time she involuntarily closed her legs around his fingers, clamping his arm between her thighs and biting him with that chitinous armor on her one leg.
“More…” she’d moaned, a sound he still heard echoing in his skull as he sat at the war council. “Give me more… give me more…!”
He’d withdrawn his fingers. Pruney. Glistening with her arousal. She scratched his chest, bemoaning a baleful, “Noooooo…!” in protest. “Don’t stop…!”
“Enough. You’re here, so you must have news about my brothers. Out with it,” he’d told the creature firmly, standing up from his bed and walking away towards the vanity to find something to wipe his hand with. He was equal parts ashamed and disgusted with himself that, like he had done with so many others before, his first instinct had been to lick his fingers clean. He held onto his wrist as he walked as if to restrain himself from giving into that impulse.
“Must you always be so in a rush to be rid of me?” Mother Harlot pouted, throwing herself back on his bed and rubbing her thighs together, her hand quick to dive down between and finish what he’d started (despite him having already satisfied her multiple times, by how she clenched and writhed). Her appetite was seemingly endless. It was frightening to Mordred in tandem with her monstrous appearance.
“The news,” he insisted, throwing down the soiled handkerchief onto the vanity desk. She responded only with further moans, her legs spreading seemingly the exact instant he’d turned to look at her. His face and neck flushed a deep crimson at the sight. Mordred forced himself to look away from her as he marched over to the window that overlooked Damocles. The sun was setting. Much had been done to repair the damage Bayamon and Ganymede had caused in the Struggle, but much, yet, needed done. He tried to think of all of the many ways in which Damocles was being rebuilt through engineering, social programs, volunteer builders, machina assistants: anything to not think about the sounds she and her body were making.
“It’s going to drag on for months and months,” she gasped, arching her hips, settling them back down. “You will lose territory, bit by bit… your brothers will think themselves your betters… They have no idea the power you wield…!” Her caramel sweet voice crescendo and it was an awful sound, at once a squeak and an ugly, vulgar groan as though she were vocalizing with two throats at once. She relaxed on the bed having left a substantial wet spot on the sheets and lay spread eagle, her arms wide, multiple eyes gazing upwards at the ceiling.
“It’s happening right now, as we speak,” she sighed, chest rising and falling heavily. “Bayamon is ceding part of the north of your empire from you, a base of operations and the first step towards independence for all… within a week, you’ll be receiving word of your losses and be making plans to take it back…” She spoke, and her left arm reached up above her chocolate hair and grabbed his sheets in a fistful, her nails cutting through the fabric.
“And Ganymede?” Mordred grumbled, still trying to think of architecture and how relocating those who had lost their homes was going.
“Mmm, big brother’s much closer to home than you’d expect,” she told him, rolling over onto her side and pulling the sheets over herself. “But he won’t do anything yet. I told you before. He’s patient. He’ll wait to make his move. Draw his strength. Pounce when either you or Bayamon seem most vulnerable, but he still believes it will be Bayamon, and for good reason! Unlike you big boys, the littlest prince doesn’t have any Knights at his beck and call!” Mother Harlot’s hand moved to her breast, tracing over her nipple with the tip of her nail midway through her explanation. Her eyes were on Mordred as she let out a small gasp. She’d seen how he tensed up at the sound.
“All those Knights in white are why your older brother won’t do anything directly to you just yet. He understands, better than you do, even, that having even one Knight on your side is a major advantage… and, oh, he’s technically one, too, isn’t he? So I guess that makes it his two against your twelve. Poor Bayamon has to play catch up and Ganymede knows this. That’s why he and his boy toy Gilford are hedging their bets on the youngest to make the first move, while keeping a close eye on you and your vast resources, carefully taking what they can without you noticing, selecting things and places you won’t miss while Big Bad Bayamon comes barreling down all thunder and revolution! The Father of Nations, they’re calling him! Ha! Such a funny title!”
Mordred turned around and gasped, hand clutching at his bare chest, surprised to find Mother Harlot was stood right behind him. His back pressed to the window, she stepped forth and placed her hands on his shoulders, pushing his garment off of them and exposing more of his torso. Goosebumps rose on his skin.
“Leave,” he tried to dismiss the thing that so haunted him.
“You don’t want me to go… I have more to tell you,” she promised, the pale blue light of her gaze visibly wandering over him.
“I’ve heard enough for today,” he insisted, his voice just above a whisper.
“Are you sure? You don’t want to hear about what’s happening on the Black Isle?” she dangled, running her fingers through his long, golden hair and twirling it around them like thread. “Golem’s going to be very, very important in the days to come…”
“How?” the emperor asked, confused as to what the animunculi, who had almost immediately proclaimed their neutrality at the start of all of this, would have to do with the war. He immediately regretted asking as he saw her smile.
She’d lowered herself down in front of him, keeping Mordred pinned to the window with one clawed hand on his stomach, fingers arched just so to threaten the wrath of her nails as she fished out his weakness from his lower garments and took him into her mouth, despite his quiet protests. Mordred had closed his eyes and turned his head away, hating himself for impulsively asking a question. If there was one thing he knew about Mother Harlot, it was that she was a straightforward creature with, seemingly, only one rule: No telling without touch.
And her price had been growing more demanding with each visit.
Once she, and he, had finished, she informed him while still playing with him in her hands, “Before long, you’ll have a visitor. A young man named William, who will come to you seeking answers. Give them to him. It’s very important that you do! Give him what he seeks, and he will show you what Golem has been up to on that island of his…”
She was gone shortly after that, leaving Mordred weak in the knees and clutching the window sill in fear and self loathing.
“Your Majesty?” came the soft voice of Knight Gawain, pulling Mordred out of his stupor and into the present.
Emperor Mordred raised his head and glanced in the direction of his war council. They were all looking at him. The room had gone quiet and he hadn’t noticed. His eyes darted back to Gawain, standing beside him, who held in his hand a piece of paper that he hadn’t a moment ago. A soldier in red stood behind the First Knight, waiting to be dismissed.
“Apologies, Gawain. My mind was adrift,” Mordred mumbled apologetically, straightening up in his chair and looking up into the gentle expression of the First Knight.
“Apologize for nothing, Emperor. We understand that these are difficult matters to attend to,” Knight Gawain excused.
Mordred merely felt disheartened by the Knight’s kindness. “What was it you said just now?” he asked.
“There’s news of your brothers’ movements,” Knight Gawain repeated, holding the paper out for Mordred to take. “Our spies sent us encoded messages over radio, which were transcribed and brought directly to me just now, as instructed.”
Mordred found that one piece of paper was actually two: one for each of his brothers. He pulled them apart and read their contents. One read that Bayamon was stationed in Gasden and was likely to attempt to use the continent north of Fat and Thin as a staging ground and prototype for his vision of a world divided. Secession would likely be announced sooner rather than later. The other held that Ganymede and his rebel forces were growing in number as they continued to sweep southward in the general direction of Damocles but had continued to avoid major settlements, cities, and military outposts for the time being. Despite the estimate of his forces ranging in the hundreds to low thousands, it was as of yet unknown where and how the First Prince was sheltering, training, and feeding his horde. They were last seen on the march just over a thousand miles from Damocles itself.
Mordred’s fingers clutched the pieces of paper tightly as he read them. Once again, Mother Harlot had been right and before his own network of vast intelligence gathering. How did she know? How did she always know?
“What’s being done about this?” Emperor Mordred asked after a tense moment of silence.
“Armies are being mustered and drafts are being pulled from to make it happen,” Second Knight Aimi spoke up from a short ways across the table on Mordred’s left side. His hands were folded against one another and he sat leaning forward over the carved representation of the Wastes and the continent it resided in. “We were too slow to stop Prince Bayamon from taking the northwest, but this way we can put a damper in both of your brothers’ plans going forward. Most of the Knights, save those in this room, have gone out personally to spearhead recruitment efforts. Stir up patriotism in those that have served before; a call to arms from a Knight themselves should get plenty to mobilize for this coming war. Taking away numbers from Prince Ganymede and readying the rest of the world to defend itself against Prince Bayamon.”
“I’ve already sent word to every major city in the world over the radio to get the order out to those living in more remote places to come to the cities for their own protection. Efforts are being made to accommodate the sudden influx of people, but, with the help of the animunculi, it shouldn’t be a major undertaking. The real question is one of time – if we’ll be able to make the arrangements necessary to benignly relocate millions of ningen, or if Princes Ganymede and Bayamon will make their moves,” Third Knight Shiun spoke up for one of the first times this meeting. She, like her fellow Knight Anansi, was dark of skin with even darker freckles across her body, had long, braided hair that she wore high in a bundle, and soft blue eyes. She was tall, the tallest Knight there, and had a physique that might have rivaled Aimi’s if she put more work into it. She wore a flowing satin dress of lilac color and sheer material. Looking at her one would little expect that she was largely considered the sharpest mind and machina expert of her order. “As for the relocation of bloodlings in the same circumstances, they are, predictably, leaving it to their own. Consensus is that those who wish to take shelter in the cities may, but much of the bloodling population has already retreated underground, save for those directly aiding us. We should expect a resurgence of bloodling on ningen assaults and vice versa the longer this war drags out.”
The thought of bloodling on ningen violence, as much as it made Emperor Mordred’s skin crawl, was not enough to distract from Mother Harlot’s latest visit. He found himself wishing it was.
Mordred wished to delay the inevitable for as long as he could. “Set up additional blood donation shelters within the sanctuary cities. Encourage the people to give their blood willingly. Frame it as and effort of solidarity with our Under Empire brethren. Try not to make it seem like a plea to prevent violence. I trust you with the details,” he said with a small gesture of his hand towards Shiun.
She nodded in agreement, having already thought of the same idea herself but was glad that the emperor had reached the same conclusion as her.
Emperor Mordred turned to Knight Aimi, asking for an update. Further delaying while he still could. “How are the preparations for the defense of Damocles proceeding?”
“Well, your majesty,” the Second Knight responded. “Trees are being cleared, trenches dug, and combat drills are being practiced daily. If either of the princes attempt to breach Damocles again, they will be facing a full on siege.”
Mordred disliked the thought of so much of the beautiful forestry outside of the capital walls being torn down for all of this nonsense. This madness. It would take generations for them to regrow and for people to enjoy them once more. If the war came even remotely close to Damocles, the scars from it would be visible for years. He shoved the thought aside. Forced himself to think pragmatically, embracing the necessity of being ready rather than the aesthetics of the natural world.
“If you have not already, harvest any material that can be used for the replacement of the trees you cut down. Try to save any saplings. Dig them up rather than trample them. If it is not possible to harvest seeds, then try to arrange it so that at least a few of the trees are entirely uprooted instead of cut down and transported to a suitable greenhouse so that they can be used to generate a new forest once this war is over,” the emperor dictated.
“Consider it done,” Knight Aimi honored with a slight nod of his head.
A brief silence followed in which Emperor Mordred closed his eyes and breathed softly through his nose. ‘No putting it off any longer,’ he thought to himself, trying to be brave. He raised his hand.
“Knight Gawain, I want you to take a contingency of soldiers and search within a five hundred mile diameter of Damocles for signs of Prince Ganymede and his forces.”
This edict confused more than just the First Knight. Many in the room turned to look at each other in surprise, a few mumbling quizzically in the quiet. “Your majesty?” the First Knight inquired. “Is there… a particular reason for this?”
Mordred responded quickly and thought even quicker to come up with a plausible reason for this order. “For weeks now,” he improvised, “Ganymede has been drawing steadily closer and closer to the capital. He’s been quiet and kept his head low. He’s trying to play it smart, perhaps in an attempt to get close and dethrone me before Bayamon has a chance. We should not be so quick to trust the utter accuracy of these reports you receive on my brothers’ movements. We should assume that they are false and that they are more advanced than when we last had a confirmed sighting of either. Ganymede is the closest, so we can assume that he will be heading this way sooner rather than later. If you encounter him, your orders are to capture Prince Ganymede and Knight Gilford – capture only, Knight Gawain. Cut down anyone else you have to, but make sure the two of them are ensnared, preferably unharmed. Understood?”
“Of course, my emperor…” the First Knight responded, looking away from Mordred and nodding in the direction of Knight Shiun. “In my absence, I appoint Third Knight Shiun to be your personal guard in my stead.”
This caught both Shiun and Aimi off guard, who, simultaneously, looked to Gawain with confusion. “What?” they both asked simultaneously, looking to each other as they echoed each other’s word and then back to the First Knight.
“Should not the Second Knight take up the position, rather than I?” Shiun offered. She knew very well Knight Aimi’s ambitions to one day hold the rank of First Knight and was keenly aware that his prowess in combat surpassed hers. To her mind, it seemed only a logical choice to appoint him over her. More selfishly, she knew that time spent by the Emperor’s side would mean less time that she had to plan and strategize with what machina and animunculi cooperation they had at their disposal, which was her particular area of expertise.
For his part, Aimi was in agreement that his abilities in the field were superior to hers and so it made more sense for him to be at Emperor Mordred’s side in absence of Knight Gawain.
The First Knight explained his reasoning flatly. “Knight Aimi’s position as the head of defense for Damocles and the acting general of the imperial army is too important to pull him away from his post. What’s more, your mind is more prone to forethought than his and I believe this to be an invaluable trait for the safeguarding of the Emperor. I should only be away from Damocles for a few days, so the arrangement will be temporary. I understand your hesitation, but I ask that you arm yourself and don your armor for the sake of His Majesty while I am away.”
Knight Shiun glanced over at Aimi, who returned the look a moment after. He didn’t look happy with the arrangement but said nothing, sitting back in his seat and quietly turning his head away from Knight Gawain. It seemed to her that he could find no fault in the logic and neither could she. “As you say, Lord First,” she replied, leaning back in her seat and looking down at her lap. Her mind immediately went to the conclusion that she would have to withhold imbibing spirits while on this assignment.
“Returning to the matter of the derelict navy,” Gawain continued on, prompting Knight Anansi to begin to explain, in great detail, the state of disrepair that the imperial navy was in and how important it was to fix this issue in the military as quickly as possible, how restoring the navy would be a vital weapon against the other princes, and so on. By this time however Emperor Mordred was beginning to slump in his seat again, the nearly bureaucratic language Anansi used to explain to those around him about a branch of the empire’s war machine that hadn’t been seriously touched in centuries becoming a drone in his ears.
His knuckles returned to his lips and he inhaled deeply the scent of Mother Harlot.
***
Maewa had never been to any official military meetings before. Her entire campaign fighting against Prince Bayamon had been one of improvisation, gut feelings, and burning passion combined with a familiarity with the landscape and the basic knowledge of how to take advantage of it. She hadn’t even been the one coming up with the tactics and the strategies then all those months ago. Her position as “leader” had been a symbolic one more than anything as the original voice crying out for change and action against the empire. In retrospect, that had been practically all that she’d done that wasn’t directly combative. Everything else had been a collective effort of fools and dreamers just trying to gain attention and change the system.
A real war council was different, she discovered, and was, at once, more orderly and more chaotic than she could have imagined.
Since surrendering to the Third Prince, she had been made a general alongside the other, actual generals whose careers had been that of the military from the start. She’d never even enlisted before for a temporary service. Her lot in life had been that of a simple farmhand and mother before her stint as an impassioned would-be revolutionary. She knew this, and she suspected that the other generals knew it, too. There was a heavy feeling in her gut as she sat at the table with them and listened to their talk of logistics, supply lines, recruitment drives, training drills, and marshaling of equipment for garrisons that did not yet exist. She did not belong there but had been granted a seat because of spunk, moxie, and a burning love for her absentee children.
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Maewa, Bayamon, and the other generals of his growing army all sat at a long table inside of an auberge that had been commandeered by the prince as a base of operations while they – the standing army of Bayamon, the ‘Father of Nations’ she’d heard him be referred to with increasing frequency – remained in Gasden, where they had marched to after settling their differences and agreeing to join forces. The auberge was known as the Stay Awhile, was a three story building made of old, creaky wood that, from the outside, always seemed to look damp but was never the less endlessly cozy and warm within. She’d stayed here on more than one occasion when she was passing through with her boys and husband on their way to the Gasden market, a trip they had made fairly regularly on special occasions such as holidays or festivals, and had always liked the large hearth on the ground floor that, no matter the time of year, had some sort of fire crackling in it. The staff were always very courteous to their guests and, despite the enormity of the fire pit, never allowed for soot and ash to taint the floor and walls of the old building. The Stay Awhile was the sort of keystone building that you could believe had always been on the spot and that cities simply grew around it or were built after the fact to surround and protect such a place of warmth and comfort.
Now it was being used, by her and her newly minted comrades, like a fortress. Soldiers patrolled outside it at all hours, rotating shifts, guarding every door, inside and out, and all of the guests had been politely, if forcefully, escorted off the premises and arranged to stay elsewhere at different hotels or with locals who were willing to take them in. For a Prince of the Empire vying to be its next Emperor, she supposed it was reasonable enough to demand a private space for he and his cohorts (her among their number) to safely and privately meet. It didn’t seem so out of the ordinary that someone of royalty such as himself would throw his weight around like that.
Yet, as she sat there, listening and trying to follow along to ningen who were all more studied and experienced in this ‘war’ business, even if it was more theoretical than practical, the removal of people who had come here for shelter felt emblematic of some imperceptible change that she couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around. If anyone had taken the time to explain these things individually to her she might have caught on and understood easier, but, to her mind, the way that Bayamon and the others were speaking, it was as if they were re-orientating the entire world in order to fit their vision. Which, when she thought about it, did align with what they were trying to do. Sitting there and listening to it take place made it all feel so mechanical and distant. Unreal. They suggested how they should acquire ningen of all stripes and those bloodlings willing to help them over Emperor Mordred or how best to extract resources like metal from the land she had always known as her home as though they were discussing the orientation of a garden and what best to plant to one another to yield the best harvest. There was a casualness to it that felt wrong, alien, to the massive undertaking that they were doing.
And there Maewa sat, quietly listening, barely understanding, keeping her mouth shut for fear of making a fool of herself, yet participating all the same by her very being there. She felt an intense loneliness creeping over her like the chill of an autumn night after a hot, sunny day. She didn’t belong there and she knew that they all knew it as well.
“It’s not fast enough,” Prince Bayamon bemoaned from his seat, tapping the arm of the chair impatiently. “We have to speed this whole process up somehow, get sword and spear in the hands of every able bodied ningen and bloodling who wants to fight for the right to have a nation all their own…”
“My Prince, you must be patient,” one of the generals tried to advise the temperamental Bayamon. “These things take time, we’ve all been saying that this entire night, and we’re making our moves as quickly as possible. It’s only a matter of time before everything falls into place precisely as we’ve designed it to do.”
“When?” Bayamon demanded, his leg restlessly thumping against his chair. “When will we be at a point to where we are not behind my brothers in terms of military strength?”
“It’s difficult to say,” another general shrugged, “but we’ve secured passage over Fat and Thin and the mountains form a natural barrier for us from the rest of the Empire. That should buy us ample amount of time to get the industry in the region up and running. Prince Ganymede and Emperor Mordred -”
“Prince Mordred,” Bayamon corrected, who had, of late, refused to honor his brother’s claim to the throne and dignify it with the title of ‘emperor’. If he was to remain a prince along with Ganymede until only one of them was left standing as the victor, then so, too, would his older brother Mordred.
“My apologies,” the general croaked, lowering his eyes. “The other princes have significant advantages in their quantity and quality of rank, but it is important to remember that, as of now, neither Prince Ganymede nor E-Prince Mordred have engaged each other in combat, meaning that our army is the only one with any practical experience on the field. This is to our advantage, and in the coming months as we organize the locals into the appropriate social structures -”
“They’re not ‘locals’,” Bayamon corrected aggressively, growing annoyed at having to do so so frequently. “‘Locals’ implies that they are still part of a collective and not their own independent people. If we’re going to be taken seriously by Ganymede and Mordred about granting people who want their liberation from the archaic structures of the Empire just that, then proper terminology has to be established and used. They are not locals outside of those doors,” he pointed towards the set of double doors in front of which were stationed a stoic pair of soldiers, “they’re the people of this land. Whatever it is they decide to call it, we will honor that and address them accordingly. In the interim, the people will due.”
The general who had spoken up closed his mouth, unsure of how to respond to the passionate outburst save for silence.
“Months, months,” Bayamon tapped his heel against the floor, letting out an irritated sigh. “It’s not fast enough. If Mordred wanted, he could come and crush us and there’d be nothing we could do to stop him! We need something to give us an edge, and we need to get these people on our side within a few weeks, not a few months…”
This felt like an appropriate moment for Maewa to speak up. Bayamon’s impatience was all too familiar to her, and connecting with people to get them to act under a unified cause? That was, apparently, her bread and butter. She opened her mouth to speak but before anything could escape her throat another one of the generals spoke.
“We understand the need for haste, your majesty, but please understand. Organizing the industrialization needed on this scale will take time. Blacksmiths and their forges will need to be first convinced to join our cause and then employed, black market connections made to gain access to resources we lack such as nanomachina. Such things will take time for both Princes Ganymede and Mordred to establish as well.”
“Mordred doesn’t need all of that to wipe us out,” Bayamon commented cynically. “He has his Knights. That’s enough of an advantage that, if he were smart, he could send all of them here and snuff out our little rebellion with little issue! The only reason we can safely assume he won’t is because my brother is kindhearted and soft. He’ll use his greatest advantage for defense and to defend the imperial citizenry rather than be bold and go on the offensive. Even Ganymede has Gilford at his side, and that could be enough to tip the scales in his favor against us…”
Prince Bayamon not so quietly lamented his lack of this particular resource with a bitter scoff, turning his gaze down towards the floor and ran a hand through his hair. He regretted, now, never ingratiating himself to that most elite of orders like his eldest brother Ganymede had. In his youth he would have never imagined his life going the direction it had, and so he saw no point in getting to know any of the Knights personally. They were guards and watchdogs for he and his family, nothing more as far as he was concerned. For the longest time he simply believed that Ganymede would succeed the Throne of the World after their father, and should anything happen to him, Mordred would take his place, then if anything happened to Mordred, and only then, would it be his turn in their father’s chair. Whosoever sat in that most symbolic of seats had the necessity of knowing the Knights, and since he had only recently affirmed his belief in how the world should be shaped… His fingers gripped the loose strands of black hair, cursing his lack of foresight and wisdom as a youth that so vexed him now!
There was a vague wind of mumbling that passed through those generals sat around the table with the Prince and Maewa who once again saw an opening to speak but waiting just a moment longer to make sure that no one else had anything to say to Bayamon on the matter. Briefly did she consider that what she was about to say would likely please him and as the words left her lips she wondered if she thought so because she wanted to please him, or if she were simply trying to mollycoddle him like she would her own sons.
“I can rally the people to yer cause,” she said and all eyes were on her now. “T’would be an easy enough matter I expect, kin it? Lotta mothers such as I, lotta cultural differences between us this far north and the imperial south. I reckon I can shake the right trees and make the juiciest fruits come-a fallin’.”
“And how, exactly, do you plan to militarize so many people?” one of the generals asked skeptically. Maewa hadn’t memorized his name just yet, but she’d taken a disliking to him because he always seemed to have something to say against her or her suggestions. Whether there was some kind of personal reason for this she couldn’t give two wet farts about. It was just damned annoying more than anything that this ningen in particular was the first to jump down her throat about such matters.
She answered bluntly, as was her people’s way. “Speakin’ their language. Look, you lads are all well and good with yer fancy ideas and noble causes for war, but the truth be that we above Fat and Thin have been headed this direction for some time, kin it? ‘Cept none of you southern twats would know a thing aboot that because ye’ve ne’er been so far north in yer lives! O’ course you lot’d think it’d take months of convincin’ and reorganizin’ to whip us all up into a frenzy, when ye dinnae kin that we get that way over an especially frigid breeze on a good day!”
Maewa leaned forward on the table, resting her arm in front of her and reaching out with the other to tap on the thick, warm wood with two fingers, her eyes passing over from one general to the next before settling on the Prince. “Gimme a week to get the folks o’ Gasden on our side, then they’ll take a week to get their neighbors in that same frenzy, and a week after that, the whole regio… whole country’ll be up in arms, ready to fight for ye.”
“Three weeks?” the incredulous general mused.
“Three weeks,” Maewa promised. “But under one condition.”
There was a general uproar at this, not just from the general who didn’t like her but everyone except Bayamon sat at the table. They all simultaneously berated her about how it wasn’t her place to make demands, that she needed to know her place, that it was borderline treasonous, so on and so forth. Whether this was because she was decidedly the ‘outsider’ of the group, the fact that she was female, or something else entirely, like a vain attempt to assert themselves as the more ‘experienced’ generals at the table, she didn’t really care. She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest, turning to look at Bayamon and sticking her tongue into her lower lip. Pain flared up from where the Prince had kicked her in the face not so long ago. Evidently it’d been a damn good kick.
“Enough,” Bayamon spoke up with a raise of his hand, and when not everyone immediately silenced themselves he was quick to slam it down as a fist onto the table. “Enough!” he emphasized, shooting quick glares at the squabbling war leaders who buttoned up their lips and sat back in their seats. The alleged Father of Nations turned to his newest general and opened his palm invitingly. “What condition is that?”
“My sons,” Maewa replied quietly. “Currently enlisted with your older brother, the sittin’ emp’ror, Mordred. I want them back. Ye get me sons to be alive, and I’ll make sure this happens much quicker’an the months this lot’re promisin’. ‘S’all I want out of this.”
“That’s all?” Bayamon asked, his tone even with hers. “No special position in government when the fighting is done? No record of your deeds and contributions to shattering the decadent Empire to make room for the world of tomorrow?”
“Aye, none o’ that strikes me fancy,” she shook her head. “This all started fer me ‘cause o’ a want o’ me boys back. Til I have ‘em in me arms again, safe and sound, I’ll be in it, ye kin? So that’s the deal: ye get me me sons, I help get ye the means to get ‘em. Deal?”
Bayamon smirked, leaning back in his seat and folding his hands in his lap. “You’re a very dedicated mother. I respect that about you.”
“No mother worth her love would be any different, surely you kin that?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never knew my mother, as she died giving birth to me due to complications, I’m told,” Bayamon replied with a shrug.
Maewa immediately regretted asking in the first place. She’d meant nothing by it, but she recalled, after he said it, the news of the death of Emperor Gawain’s consort upon giving birth to their third child. She’d just been a little girl then, and this far north it was little more than gossip, but still. Some gossip was collectively remembered, and she felt embarrassed having forgotten in the moment. “Apologies,” she mumbled.
Again Bayamon shrugged. “Nothing to apologize for. I can’t be sad about a mother I never knew, and so I never have been. That was always the purview of my father and brothers and anyone else who knew her. By all accounts, she was a wonderful lady, but I never had the pleasure. It seems to me a small trade the lives of two ningen for the accelerated birth of a nation. What’re their names?”
“Me eldest is named Thom, me younger Biewa,” she said, relieved that Prince Bayamon was agreeable to this proposal of hers.
“It’s not going to be easy, finding this Thom and Biewa,” Bayamon said, locking eyes with Maewa. “They’re two soldiers out of thousands, and we may never come across them in battle. Ganymede might get to them first, or they might die unexpectedly along the way.”
“Then I suggest you hurry and spirit them away and back home where they belong, lest I be tempted to take another crack at ye life and mine for good measure,” she retorted fearlessly. “If all this amounts to naught and me not reunitin’ with me boys then I’ll have no reason not to. Kin that, yer Majesty.”
“Fair enough,” Bayamon replied coldly, his eyes narrowing. “Now how about you share with us how you plan to get the people of Gasden on our side fully first so we can optimize your strategy and get your Thom and Biewa back to you all the sooner?”
“Oh, ‘t’won’t be so hard,” she replied, giving her own shrug and slouching slightly in her seat as Prince Bayamon did. “Word’ll fly fast. With enough convincin’ o’ the right people, ‘t’will be an an inevitable thing, kin it?”
“Fly?” Bayamon murmured to himself, brow furrowing as he turned his eyes downward in thought. A smile bloomed on his lips, laughter bubbling up from his throat as the heel of his palm pressed against his forehead, his head tilting back.
“My lord?” one of the generals inquired. Not the indignant one.
“That’s it! That’s how we’re going to get ahead of my brothers and take advantage of our lack of military strength!” Bayamon declared with his wild grin flared wide. “We don’t have to waste time trying to match Mordred’s strength of arms or Ganymede’s training! We’re going to take to the sky, and we’re going to do it before either of my brothers get the chance to!”
Fueled with newfound inspiration and a spike of adrenaline, the third prince leaned forward in his chair and began to explain his vision for the future. To him it seemed that a final piece of the puzzle had fallen into place and now the path forward towards the future he envisioned as clear. The way to defeat his brothers was a matter of speed, it always had been, and with Maewa’s promise of a swift resolution to the issue of unification of this country that as of yet did not have its own name, the road forward seemed all too clear to him. For one of the rare occasions in his life, Bayamon felt that he was ahead of his older brothers in a way that well and truly mattered.
Outside of the Stay Awhile, Lieutenant Goman and Corporal Migamo were stood at the door keeping guard as they’d been charged. The rest of their troupe was either resting, as was the case for Lance Bombardier Buoh and Lance Corporal Geugo, or on patrol, the fate of Private Torbek, and would come to relieve them in a couple of hours’ time. Both of them could hear the muffled noises of the Prince and his generals talking inside. Goman pretended he couldn’t hear anything even though all he could hear was the faint suggestion of raised voices every so often. Migs stared ahead and pretended like he couldn’t make out every word that was being said through the relatively thin door.
“Say, Migs,” Goman said after the latest bout of raised voices on the warm inside died down, suppressing a small shiver that ran through him. It seemed like ever since they’d gotten to Gasden the air had just been getting colder and colder. Goman wasn’t agreeable to the cold.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” the bloodling asked without breaking his stare at nothing in particular.
“What’re they saying in there?” the lieutenant asked curiously.
“I’m certain I don’t have any idea, sir,” Migs replied cooly.
“Oh, come on. I’m just curious. Are they going to convert this auberge into the barracks or what?” Goman goaded, turning his head a fraction to look at his subordinate.
“Unlikely, sir,” Migs replied, returning the half look and breaking a small smile with his scarred lips. “They’re making plans for the future. Sounds like the next few weeks are probably going to be busy for all of us.”
“Oh. Is that all?” Goman asked, a bit disappointed. “I thought maybe…”
“Thought what, sir?” Migs pushed.
“I don’t know. That, maybe, getting this far, we’d earned a break, or get stationed here rather than run around a whole lot. I thought, maybe, you know, our part in this might be… done,” the lieutenant admitted, his cheeks flushing a bit. “Bit naive I suppose, eh, Corporal?”
“Maybe a bit, sir,” Mig replied, his eyes flashing in the dark for a moment as he turned them towards his lieutenant before returning back to holding his staring contest with a particularly interesting knob of wood on the building across from the front steps of the Stay Awhile. “I think we might be in this for the long haul, to see it to the end. One way or another.”
“Oh. I see…” Goman said, trailing off into silence as he stared out in the dark and wondered again, as he had done so often recently, if this was the right thing to be doing. It’d been weeks now since that conversation with his squad, and still, he had no definitive answer.
***
It took a small army of hands working in tandem to pull the gargantuan iron mollusk up from the depths from which it had been snared. Heavy was the body of the deep dwelling snail, covered in scales of accumulated iron spewed up from volcanic mineral spouts at unfathomable depths below the seasonally pink surface of Loch Blomst, the rose colored water trickling off of its great layered form in rivlettes. The massive animal yet lived, and if it could scream it would likely be howling in pain from the hooks embedded into its scales and yanking its enormous bulk up onto land, but that would soon change as it was slaughtered, its meat butchered and preserved to feed an army, the pure iron scales used for the manufacturing of weapons and armor for the war to come.
What Prince Ganymede was doing here was illegal and he knew it. Loch Blomst was located within a naturally fortified valley, framed by towering green hills clothed in forestry doing their best impression of the mountains further north (and, indeed, they were, in truth, the most southern vestige of those peaks) and was one of many such lochs that neighbored one another for hundreds of miles. Declared a nature preserve under imperial law decades and decades before he was born specifically because of the massive mostly-aquatic creature he was now hauling up, Loch Blomst, along with several of the other lochs in the range whose waters all turned a fabulous pink color between the waning of summer and the waxing of autumn due to a naturally occuring algae which bloomed during this season and seemed to be the signal, or perhaps catalyst, for the iron mollusks to rise from the depths and move to different, equally deep lochs where their spawning could occur. Each year, for a few weeks at a time, the normally dormant giants would emerge, cross over forested land, and submerge themselves once more upon finding an ancestral spawning pool from which they hailed.
Ganymede thought about these facts with his back turned on the living giant he and his soldiers were going to deny the possibility of passing on its genes and looked south over tree tops towards a not so distant horizon. They needed to eat. Armies marched on their stomachs and this was war. The death of a natural wonder or two would have to be set aside for the sake of a better world tomorrow.
He'd been to this loch before with his family years ago when he and his brothers were all still children and their father's health was stellar. That trip was when he had learned about snails and the seasonally changing lake colors and the deep, deep depths which held within them secrets that could only be begun to imagined by fresh young minds such as his had been. The lake had been a clear blue-green during that week. His father had taken them there in order to appreciate the land over which they ruled for what it was rather than being cooped up within Damocles all their days. Ganymede had always wanted to come back when the waters were pink and had been so terribly disappointed when his father denied him this possibility by citing the law. The law that even the Emperor of the World obeyed.
Now he was grown and he had barely spared a thought for the vibrant pink water – not out of disinterest, but out of pragmatism. They weren't there to sight see. They were here for snails and the metal that clung to their bodies, their thick outer shells. Meat and metal. That's all they were to him now.
“Supreme General?” came the ever present, ever gentle voice of Knight Gilford who strode up behind his Prince with hands clasped behind his back.
“How goes the harvest?” Ganymede asked without taking his eyes off the horizon.
“Well, sir,” Gilflord replied as the sounds of creaking rope and grunting effort reached them. “We should have time to safely capture one more snail, butcher it, and return with rations for the army that should last a couple of weeks on the move at least.”
“They'll have to forgive me for the taste,” the Prince remarked. “Can't say I've ever eaten a mollusk before, but I can't imagine it's very good.”
“It's really not so bad,” Gilford remarked, half turning back to look at the black-coated deep dweller as more of its bulk was hoisted up to shore. “I suspect there will be a metallic aftertaste that will take some getting used to, but, as in all matters of cooking, preparation is key. What matters is that this was an easy source of protein to safely secure. Well worth the trip this far south to obtain.”
“Yes…” Ganymede conceded wistfully.
“Something troubling you, your majesty?” asked the Knight, turning back to his Lord.
“No. I was just thinking about the summer I spent here as a boy with my family.”
“I remember it well,” Gilford remarked. “You were most interested in what lay at the bottom of the lake, if I recall.”
“No, that was Mordred,” Ganymede corrected. “He was frightened of the thought of something from the deep coming to snatch him. I just wanted to swim and have fun by myself as much as possible... I don't remember you being there, Gilford.”
“Nor would I expect you to,” Knight Gilford shrugged. “It was my first assignment as a Knight, along with Knight Gawain and Knight Aimi. Our duty was to observe and guard from a distance. A necessary precaution, but your father insisted that we keep our distance, so we did. You may recall us escorting you here. You wouldn't have noticed our watching over you.”
“Ever vigilant, even then,” Ganymede noted with a hint of a smile cresting the corners of his mouth that immediately gave up under the strain of what his eyes beheld off in the distance. “It seems there was hardly a time in my life when you weren’t looking out for me. How old were you, then?”
“Twenty three, I believe,” Knight Gilford replied, eyes turned upwards for a moment as he did the mental arithmetic to make sure his answer was accurate. “Yes, twenty three.”
“Fairly young to have been made a Knight,” Ganymede noted dryly.
“Not so young, nor the youngest to have held the rank. Knight Gawain was quite the inspiration to me. I can hardly recall a time where being a Knight wasn’t my ambition,” Gilford replied. To him, and many others, most notably Second Knight Aimi, Knight Gawain was a Knight’s Knight. Inspirational. A public figure in ways that few other Knights were. Always by the Emperor’s side. A symbol of strength, protection, virtue, power. Much how Ganymede could scarcely remember a scant few years where Gilford was not somewhere in his vicinity, so too could Gilford hardly recall a time in his life when Knight Gawain was not the white shadow of Emperor Gawain. ‘Monumental’ would be the word Gilford used to describe him.
“Yes. A terrible shame that he has elected to side with Mordred instead of his fellow Knights. If possible, I’d like it if we could spare him in this war. His council would be most useful in reorganizing the Empire into something that’s once more functioning at peak efficiency…”
Gilford sensed that they were veering off track of the subject and let a quiet moment pass between the two of them before gently coaxing it back to what may or may not have been troubling the First Prince. “What do you recall about that summer you spend here as a boy?”
“I remember it fairly well,” Ganymede mused. “I remember father trying to encourage all of us to play together and how I didn’t want to. I remember exploring around the shore and wandering by myself, Mordred and Bayamon following behind me. I was… very petulant then, didn’t want to know my brothers so soon after our mother had passed. I wasn’t mature enough to not blame Bayamon yet, so I resented him for that and wanted solitude. Even though it had been a few years since her death at that point, I spent the most time with her so looking at my younger siblings hurt on some level.”
“You sound as though you miss them,” Gilford noted.
“Of course I do. And I regret how I acted, here, as a child. I wish that I had the presence of mind to know that it wasn’t Bayamon’s fault that our mother died giving birth to him, that we had spent time bonding together instead of me trying to wander off alone. If we had been closer sooner, maybe I could have made them understand my decision to try and wrest the throne back after giving it up to become a Knight. I fear this war is necessary only because none of us know how to properly communicate with one another, and we’re all too stubborn to get out of our own way and realize that each of us need to work together instead of working against one another.”
“It’s difficult to make them understand your perspective when they don’t share your experience,” the Knight said. “We set ourselves on this path because we understand that the military has become a cumbersome, useless weight that serves little purpose. For the sake of the Empire and the world, it needs to be restructured and put to better use than simply being a governmental obligation. A tradition that has long since had its origins forgotten. Bayamon illustrated that point for us during the conflict in Damocles. It simply shouldn’t have been possible for him to lead his little revolt like that in the first place. It’s a glaring weakness that needs to be cauterized, and we have to be the hot knife that makes the brand.”
Ganymede took in a sharp breath, feeling his resolve hardening in his chest. “Yes,” he stated simply, looking away from the horizon to smile at Gilford. “You always seem to know what to say to keep me focused. You’re right. We have to be as a cauterizing blade: Utilitarian. Practical. Wishing the past were different is of no purpose. We’re here now, and the way forward is clear.”
There was a cheer from the people hauling the iron mollusk up as they managed to pull it completely on shore. The Prince and the Knight both turned to look at the small triumph. Both saw the animal for what they would get from it, even as it’s head tried to shrink back into its shell.
“We’d better go and make sure that the harvesting goes smoothly. Assign people to butcher the meat and harvest the iron,” Knight Gilford suggested. Ganymede nodded and the pair began to walk over towards the lake. The Prince stopped after a few steps and gave one final look back at that horizon, where, over tree tops and downward sloping hills one could just make out the tiny dot that was Damocles only a couple hundred miles away. There was his brother Mordred. There was his birthright, the crown and throne. There was their final destination.
Yet for how close they currently were, the two rogue Knights were still far, far away from making the trek to reclaim Damocles. Ganymede turned back and caught up with Gilford, his eyes returning first to the gargantuan snail and then to the airship that they had managed to commandeer from one of the last villages they had brought into the fold by force of numbers and gentle persuasion. It was a small thing, holding at most fifty people. A private ship meant for private usage, but now it was simultaneously a mobile base of operations and a secret weapon for he and his growing army. He knew that Mordred had little to no air power in the slightest and that Bayamon would need weeks if not months to acquire any himself. Small though it was, that airship, which had brought them to Loch Blomst and would carry the meat and iron of the snails back to where it could be of use to his army, was the thing that would give him an early leg up in this war.
Ganymede took a breath, smiled, and relaxed with a surety that only an eldest sibling could have. It was the oldest brother’s duty to guide and educate his brothers, his father had told him all those years ago on the lake. That was exactly what he was going to do. He, unlike Bayamon, unlike Mordred, was a Knight. A soldier, every bit as much as he was a Prince and the rightful Emperor.
In time, so little time from now, Mordred and Bayamon would learn the extent of how much he had to teach them.
