Unbound
- Thread starter the unbound
- Start date
Tambien
Theseus, Duke of Athens
THAT WAS FREAKIN' AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
Keep it coming!
Keep it coming!
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Part I
Chapter IV
I laugh to myself as the envoy comes in wrapped in khadi because I know on some level that India is supposed to be hell and gone from the Mexica. Their corners of the world were in opposite hemispheres, connected only by the irony that the Spaniards were looking for one when they found the other.
"That's the way it really happened," a little voice says to me, but I don't know how I know it. Three hundred and fifty seven years and my mind is still in pieces.
Looking at the emissary's garment, I know I could weave the cloth myself and I could manage a conversation in his dialect--all the muscle memory and unconscious skills I have, but I can't remember the details of the worlds where I learned them.
All I know for certain is that they were legion.
"What answer do you give to the Mexica!" the high priest who acts as my minister of state bellows at the Indian messenger. The two men stare at each other through clenched, black eyes behind taut, sun-dark faces. They could pass for brothers if you stripped the priest of his face paint and headdress.
"The wealth of our land is our own," the messenger says. "We owe no tribute to the Mexica, who live far from here and have no claims in our valley."
"This is the word you bring from your leaders."
"It is the will of all the great ones of the Mahajanapadas that I say this to you and your emperor."
My priest looks back at me. I don't answer, only curl up one corner of my mouth in displeasure.
"Take off their heads," the priest calls out and the Jaguar Warriors step forward from the periphery of our encampment and seize the messenger and his party.
He pleads for reason first, arguing that he came under a banner of truce to negotiate.
"You have brought news that your nation will not pay the tribute we require as a price for peace," my priest answers. "That means the peace no longer exists."
Next he pleads for mercy.
"Mercy?" the priest repeats, shaking his head. "We shall honor you, friend. Even though you have not been taken in battle, we will give you a warrior's death and your blood will feed the pleasure of the gods. There is your mercy. Divine mercy."
His pleas after that are less coherent, muddled by the wailing that continues until the bone knife actually cuts through his aorta.
Chapter IV
I laugh to myself as the envoy comes in wrapped in khadi because I know on some level that India is supposed to be hell and gone from the Mexica. Their corners of the world were in opposite hemispheres, connected only by the irony that the Spaniards were looking for one when they found the other.
"That's the way it really happened," a little voice says to me, but I don't know how I know it. Three hundred and fifty seven years and my mind is still in pieces.
Looking at the emissary's garment, I know I could weave the cloth myself and I could manage a conversation in his dialect--all the muscle memory and unconscious skills I have, but I can't remember the details of the worlds where I learned them.
All I know for certain is that they were legion.
"What answer do you give to the Mexica!" the high priest who acts as my minister of state bellows at the Indian messenger. The two men stare at each other through clenched, black eyes behind taut, sun-dark faces. They could pass for brothers if you stripped the priest of his face paint and headdress.
"The wealth of our land is our own," the messenger says. "We owe no tribute to the Mexica, who live far from here and have no claims in our valley."
"This is the word you bring from your leaders."
"It is the will of all the great ones of the Mahajanapadas that I say this to you and your emperor."
My priest looks back at me. I don't answer, only curl up one corner of my mouth in displeasure.
"Take off their heads," the priest calls out and the Jaguar Warriors step forward from the periphery of our encampment and seize the messenger and his party.
He pleads for reason first, arguing that he came under a banner of truce to negotiate.
"You have brought news that your nation will not pay the tribute we require as a price for peace," my priest answers. "That means the peace no longer exists."
Next he pleads for mercy.
"Mercy?" the priest repeats, shaking his head. "We shall honor you, friend. Even though you have not been taken in battle, we will give you a warrior's death and your blood will feed the pleasure of the gods. There is your mercy. Divine mercy."
His pleas after that are less coherent, muddled by the wailing that continues until the bone knife actually cuts through his aorta.
Tambien
Theseus, Duke of Athens
BEST FREAKIN" UPDATE EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love this story!
Optical
The Fall of the Eleventh
I honestly think that this has the potential to become the PotU of CiV. Keep it coming! 
HammerandSickle
Warlord
I'm speechless
Tambien
Theseus, Duke of Athens
I officially award this Epic Cookie, the only one ever issued, to this amazing story that I now check first and have in my favorites. Keep up the great work!
Optical
The Fall of the Eleventh
I now officially award the first ever Phoenix Cookie 
because, as I believe I said before, and so have others: this story is too brilliant for words. It's also going in my sig.
because, as I believe I said before, and so have others: this story is too brilliant for words. It's also going in my sig.
Tambien
Theseus, Duke of Athens
It already in mine. 
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Part I
Chapter V
I don't participate.
The slaughter unfolds at a distance. The priests and I watch the battle from the slopes of the barren mountainside, comfortable in the shade of a cotton awning. Messengers dash up on worn, bloody feet to bring us news of each advance, each contraction of the enemy force into tighter and tighter desperation.
Across the vast countryside behind us, the Jaguar warriors whet their appetites subduing the periphery of our territory, cowing tiny villages and putting down insurrection. The spearman, though, have pushed ever eastward, driving deeper into India, generation after generation, until now we look over the sweeping arc of our foe's home valley. The high sun makes the river a band of light pointing the way straight into the cradle of their civilization.
"But the Ottomans and Songhai have defied us as well," one of the youngest priests mumbles, staring at the twitching ant shapes writhing in battle beside the river.
"Quiet," his elder barks. The old man looks up at me on the throne they carry from battle to battle as if I might fire lightning from my eye sockets. All these years, and still the awe.
"It's alright," I tell them both, something like a grin on my face. "In time, they will all pay for their insolence. When India's will is broken, then the rest of the world will tremble before us."
They bow.
They actually bow.
One of the commanders kneels before me, an open gash leaving tendrils of gore down the lean stone of his arm. In the shadows cast by the fading campfire, the granite slope of his face dips unnaturally inward, as if the earth had thrust it upward in some jarring cataclysm. In the low light, I cannot help but think that he looks very much like his father.
And his grandfather before them.
Whole family lines born and bred on the march, leagues from the heart of Mexica territory, but enslaved to its pulse, its insatiable need.
"We have failed you, unholy one," he says hoarsely, shame like a muzzle. "The enemy's army has survived us. Though we fell upon them with all our fury, they have tightened their defenses and fortified themselves."
I remember that as a boy, he had hung his head low like this after a defeat in a brawl with another child. I'd stood by when his father had soothed him, urging him to eat several flanks of meat and strike at a nearby tree until his fists had hardened, then go find his opponent again and defeat him. The boy had run away, reinvigorated with a new purpose and his father and I had laughed at his energy and determination.
"Our scouts and spies say they are broken, captain," I tell him, thinking of his father's tone and trying to hear it in my own voice. "The battle is won and India's dominion of this region stands at a precipice from which it will never retire. Fear not."
"Still, my lord," he continued with even deeper strain in his voice. "We have taken only a handful of wounded as prisoners, none hearty enough to journey back to Tenochtitlan to die on the sacred altars. I offer myself, great one, to appease the displeasure of the gods. Let my heart's blood fill their bellies."
I can't help but chuckle. "No, old friend," I say to him. "You've done well today. Patience. You will see our final victory. You and I will see it together."
The boy shakes his head. I swear I see a streak of tears run through the greasepaint on his face. He is sure he must die. Does he weep for the plump little girl who waits for him at the main encampment? Or is his heart broken because he thinks he has failed me?
"Patience," I say again.
"My lord," the eldest priest hisses. "The gods must be appeased." He looks from me to the young priest, whose doubt percolates behind the glassy wall of his eyes, and then again to the prostrate young warrior. "A sacrifice must be made."
The old priest's eyes swing back to me, a fixed truth in each socket:
If the state cannot demand blood, then the state is only shadow. For it to be real at all, it must be more real than the life of any one soul within it. They are just lonely lives; they cannot be measured against the weight of history. And I am history. I am its will. I am the state.
"The honor will be yours," I tell him.
I will go with him, ride across the dry hills and through the soft ground of the flood plains. While we return to the city, the priests will grow fat on sugar and pasty fruits as they bark inane orders at the encamped men who will bear the imposition with gnashing teeth, waiting for me to return with reinforcements.
With the sun fixed high in the blue plate above the temple, I will watch without passion or attachment as they splay open the young man's rib cage and lift, like a mewing newborn, his still beating heart from his chest.
This I will do because I decided it must be this way. I decided he must die four hundred years earlier. I killed him in the woods. That one axe stroke in the jungle was the same blow that killed him, his father's son, four centuries later. It is all my doing.
So I will watch and I will not flinch when the last surge of blood splatters across the floor. I owe him that much.
Chapter V
I don't participate.
The slaughter unfolds at a distance. The priests and I watch the battle from the slopes of the barren mountainside, comfortable in the shade of a cotton awning. Messengers dash up on worn, bloody feet to bring us news of each advance, each contraction of the enemy force into tighter and tighter desperation.
Across the vast countryside behind us, the Jaguar warriors whet their appetites subduing the periphery of our territory, cowing tiny villages and putting down insurrection. The spearman, though, have pushed ever eastward, driving deeper into India, generation after generation, until now we look over the sweeping arc of our foe's home valley. The high sun makes the river a band of light pointing the way straight into the cradle of their civilization.
"But the Ottomans and Songhai have defied us as well," one of the youngest priests mumbles, staring at the twitching ant shapes writhing in battle beside the river.
"Quiet," his elder barks. The old man looks up at me on the throne they carry from battle to battle as if I might fire lightning from my eye sockets. All these years, and still the awe.
"It's alright," I tell them both, something like a grin on my face. "In time, they will all pay for their insolence. When India's will is broken, then the rest of the world will tremble before us."
They bow.
They actually bow.
One of the commanders kneels before me, an open gash leaving tendrils of gore down the lean stone of his arm. In the shadows cast by the fading campfire, the granite slope of his face dips unnaturally inward, as if the earth had thrust it upward in some jarring cataclysm. In the low light, I cannot help but think that he looks very much like his father.
And his grandfather before them.
Whole family lines born and bred on the march, leagues from the heart of Mexica territory, but enslaved to its pulse, its insatiable need.
"We have failed you, unholy one," he says hoarsely, shame like a muzzle. "The enemy's army has survived us. Though we fell upon them with all our fury, they have tightened their defenses and fortified themselves."
I remember that as a boy, he had hung his head low like this after a defeat in a brawl with another child. I'd stood by when his father had soothed him, urging him to eat several flanks of meat and strike at a nearby tree until his fists had hardened, then go find his opponent again and defeat him. The boy had run away, reinvigorated with a new purpose and his father and I had laughed at his energy and determination.
"Our scouts and spies say they are broken, captain," I tell him, thinking of his father's tone and trying to hear it in my own voice. "The battle is won and India's dominion of this region stands at a precipice from which it will never retire. Fear not."
"Still, my lord," he continued with even deeper strain in his voice. "We have taken only a handful of wounded as prisoners, none hearty enough to journey back to Tenochtitlan to die on the sacred altars. I offer myself, great one, to appease the displeasure of the gods. Let my heart's blood fill their bellies."
I can't help but chuckle. "No, old friend," I say to him. "You've done well today. Patience. You will see our final victory. You and I will see it together."
The boy shakes his head. I swear I see a streak of tears run through the greasepaint on his face. He is sure he must die. Does he weep for the plump little girl who waits for him at the main encampment? Or is his heart broken because he thinks he has failed me?
"Patience," I say again.
"My lord," the eldest priest hisses. "The gods must be appeased." He looks from me to the young priest, whose doubt percolates behind the glassy wall of his eyes, and then again to the prostrate young warrior. "A sacrifice must be made."
The old priest's eyes swing back to me, a fixed truth in each socket:
If the state cannot demand blood, then the state is only shadow. For it to be real at all, it must be more real than the life of any one soul within it. They are just lonely lives; they cannot be measured against the weight of history. And I am history. I am its will. I am the state.
"The honor will be yours," I tell him.
I will go with him, ride across the dry hills and through the soft ground of the flood plains. While we return to the city, the priests will grow fat on sugar and pasty fruits as they bark inane orders at the encamped men who will bear the imposition with gnashing teeth, waiting for me to return with reinforcements.
With the sun fixed high in the blue plate above the temple, I will watch without passion or attachment as they splay open the young man's rib cage and lift, like a mewing newborn, his still beating heart from his chest.
This I will do because I decided it must be this way. I decided he must die four hundred years earlier. I killed him in the woods. That one axe stroke in the jungle was the same blow that killed him, his father's son, four centuries later. It is all my doing.
So I will watch and I will not flinch when the last surge of blood splatters across the floor. I owe him that much.
Tambien
Theseus, Duke of Athens
OH- MY- GOSH- I hereby demand that when you finish this you get it published.
the unbound
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 57
Thanks, all.
But I think there's a few things that there's little danger of:
1) This being as long as PotU.
2) This ever getting published.
I'm glad you all are enjoying it, though. I'll *try* to post tonight.
But I think there's a few things that there's little danger of:
1) This being as long as PotU.
2) This ever getting published.
I'm glad you all are enjoying it, though. I'll *try* to post tonight.
Tambien
Theseus, Duke of Athens
If you do not publish this I will declare ARMED REVOLUTION!!! This is just TOO good to be kept from the masses!
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2010
- Messages
- 8,873
Oh dear god no. Please, not another armed revolution.
DragonHead
Warlord
Subbes: Ammazing writing! CRAZY. Wow, this is thebest story yet. I liek how your charecter survives the generations. I've always not liked how leaders passed away in otehr stories every 60 or so years.
