Fiction Friday: I Was Born a Rogue

I was born a rogue. I fell in young with a passel of outlaws, and we dwelt in forest and glen and oft-times upon the highway or the king’s taverns. ’Twas in the time when the white Alban martyr blossomed blood for Lancaster that first we came to the Three Bells. Having grown to manhood in Alban-town, I knew the country thereabouts more than passing well. Our erstwhile leader (or so he fancied himself) had given us shriving of our sins upon the Fens and told us with his guts puffed out, “Boys, ’tis time we had our share of London town and her merchants, taxes, and wealthy lasses.” This played well good with all the boys and up we jumped right then and there to make passage south to Hertfordshire. 

Now you must gather that then, at that hour, our good king Henry was faring less than middling poor. He was a soft one, our king was, and wrong in the head. From child to man, he governed the realm not upon his own more than a handful of years. This suited us fine, our merry band, for while treason was being cast about at the royal court as though a new fashion and heads parted from necks faster than apples from their branches, we lot could do as we liked upon the roads. For who could care that a farmer’s hay rick was stolen or a merchant’s purse nicked at point of crossbow quarrel when noble brows were pressed upon the block and sour sweat of fear mingled well with curdling blood? So Henry’s madness was our blessing and our cloak, which we wore all too well.

Yet I go in haste. I have yet to number the band of murderous jackanapes with which I traveled. There were thirteen of us, as close to twelve apostles and the traitor Judas, who roamed the wood in those days. We carried knotted clubs for bashing, bows for catching game, and knives for playing cross the visages of travelers. ’Tis wondrous fast the speed a man may match when tip of knife touch cheek or bollock. You may cross yourself and cry out, but do not say I did not warn thee: I was born a rogue. And of me fellow rogues there were Long Jack Piper (who no man could best at the pipe or fiddle), Roger Lackhand (what once was a knight and now no longer), Curtis Strongbow, and the right cunning Roger Wormwood what was our sometime leader. Afore ye ask, we called him naught but Wormwood for his game had been poisoning back before he was driven from the streets of London. You see, he was a physik in his time, but one what poisoned patients for the color of their coin.

After Henry recovered and Warwick turned on the old fellow, there was a great row at Saint Alban’s. ’Twas the place for picking off knights and messenger-folk carrying purses heavy with silver. We lived high the hog, did we, at the Three Bells. Each job would see us convene there when it were complete and we would spend our earnings drowning in ale and soft women. Lackhand sang songs of our battles ‘till the whores would pour beer on his head just for a moment of silence. Curtis would often dance a jig, making pretense as though he were the afflicted merchant and we would guffaw ourselves into a stupor at his antics. “’Twas precise how he ran!” Wormwood might chuckle. “Nay, nay, with more fear in his step,” Lackhand replied.

My own fair sister lived in the town, not but a few blocks from the Bells. Yet I never thought to visit her and her mawkish husband. She married a goldsmith when she was but a lass and nevermore did I see her again. While mother and father lived we rare-times would meet upon a Christmas or a Candlemass that I might be home to share some of my ill-gotten wealth. Always a sermon would result from the pious Master Whitman and his wife, my former sister. Once I was made to endure the summoning of a priest so as to exorcize the demons my brother of the law was certain must reside in me to “make me behave so.” I damned them both for fools and told my mother to crawl into an early grave for spawning her. There’s no surprise, then, that I was not eager to see her anew.

It was upon a dark evening when our work was just finishing when the sarjent and his men discovered us. We had dug in haste to conceal our quarry—a knight riding with dispatches out of Lincoln, methinks, but I remember it only poorly. He would not yield the few silvers in his purse at the point of bow and knife, but he had no horse to ride away on. What had become of it I never knew, save it made him short work for us. So into the ground he went. I was cleaning my blade upon the ragged tails of my blouse and Wormwood was hauling the grave earth. Lackhand sat beneath a tree and Curtis played lookout. I remember the mists crawling over his slender frame that eve. He let out a whistling ca-caw, which was a trouble sign. At once I played my dagger into my hand, ready to fight and die. Lackhand sprang to his feet. From the shadowy fogs came there a sarjent and five men, all dressed in plate-and-mail. “Who are you?” grumbled the sarjent in a voice gone hoarse from shouting. I saw mud upon his boots and the fringes of his fine tabard. There were only two parties in the country then, and this near to London it was safe enough to guess who they were.

“We serve the king,” Lackhand boomed. I would have said the same, had he not been as quick to do it.

The sarjent leered. “The king? Is that it? You heard them, boys. They serve the king.” Evidently the man was in the party of Warwick and his rebels, for no sooner had Lackhand realized his mistake than was a blade introduced to the region of his belly. He lowed like a stuck heifer and dropped to his knees. I was out before any more could happen. I trusted Curtis and Wormwood to do the same. Ever was our plan a simple one: split up and convene at the Bells. Lackhand might be dead, but there was nothing I could do for him if he was. And if alive? Well, better I remained quick as well, to help him should the opportunity arise. But when I reached the Bells, I saw more of Warwick’s soldiers lined up at its door. By God, thought I, they’ll take London this night! They didn’t, of course: only melted into the countryside a few hours later. But I was spooked and my back was up. I had nowhere safe to turn, and had just seen Lackhand skewered straight through like a pig for roasting. To whence could I run? My sister and Whitman.

Their house was a fine one, with a workshop and hall, grain stores and servant’s quarters, a stone kitchen and a garden of quinces and well-tended lemon trees. They thought they were lords, I suppose, or at least as good as ‘em. Of course the windows were darkened and the fires long since put out when I arrived. I made no knocking and no fuss but rather jumped over their garden wall and hid myself in the dark of the apprentice’s workshop. Had I known my sleeping quarters were shared with another lout, I would have up and gone to the main hall. For I was not afeard of being discovered by my sister—she would never turn me over to the law to swing, pious hypocrite that she be—but when I woke in the morning it was to the thund’rous roar of blood in me ears. You see, the ‘prentice (Harriman, by name) found me snoring by his fire and proceeded to beat me about the skull with tools more proper used for bending and hammering upon gold and steel.

My sister and her husband came at the hue and cry to find their dim-witted ‘prentice Harriman thrashing me while I rolled about upon the rush mat like a beaten dog. “Harriman, Harriman, get off him! It’s my brother, Harriman! It’s my brother!” This was my sister shouting, of course, the venerable Mistress Whitman. She had grown since her youth, her belly puffing out big where the children kicked from within, her breasts sagging where they’d sucked. Oh my sister, thought I upon seeing her, blood trickling from my brow. What has that Whitman done to you?

Master Whitman was behind her, he in his too-short tunic and skin-tight breeches with the hint of his cock lying beneath. I wanted to grab the tongs from Harriman and rip Edward Whitman’s bollocks off, but instead I put on me best and most pitiful face and moaned, covering my head. “Ohhhh, I think they’ve done me,” I wallowed, rolling to and fro. Certain was I to spread the blood of my brow upon the mat. Let them see what’s been done to poor old me, the family rogue. “By God, this is how I die.”

“Alright, enough,” Edward Whitman said. Harriman drew off. “Why are you here, Harry? We don’t want you.”

“Don’t want me?” moaned I. “I never meant for you to find me, Edward, believe me. I was only here for the night. For the night!” And that much was true; if Warwick’s scouts were gone, I would be as well. “Have some Christian charity!”

“Oh, let him alone, Edward.” Thus did my sister call off her husband and give me leave to stay. But Edward frothed and boiled, accusing her of usurping his household, of making it into a haven for the infirm and evil. Evil was, as I supposed, myself. Yet who could be infirm? “You begrudge even poor Sir Dartmore?”

Edward slapped his head in huge dismay and ground the tips of his fingers into his temples. He stomped and stalked and puffed his cheeks with great anger. “Christ on High, woman, we are nursing, in our home, a bosom enemy to our good and rightful king! I trust you to be more discreet about it than that!” But sweet Olivia, bless her evil little heart, pointed to me and insisted that I be allowed to stay. After all, I had been badly mauled by their prentice. Imagine, if you may, my surprise upon being led into the hall only to be greeted by a visage of death. My breath was held captive, drawn out as though by bellows. For there, lying senseless upon the great trestle table, as none other than the knight me and the Thirteen Apostles of the Road had laid out the evening last and marked for the grave. His face was drawn and gaunt, his stature that of a man in his final hour. The terminal wound, one I had helped deliver, crusted his mail with blood.

The weakness in my legs at seeing his face I disguised as a religious fit. When I collapsed I had presence of mind enough to burble a short prayer of the kind most folk say when they see something awful. This put Edward at unease, I think, for he had not taken me as the kind of man to pray. Capitalizing on this, I grabbed at the hem of his ridiculously fashionable tunic. “Good Jesu Christos, look at this poor fellow! Had I known you were tending to one in such need…!”

“Stop yer drivel, Harry. Yer in at last, and enough of trying to make your way any further in my good graces. Let me assure you—I have none.” No sympathy to be had at that teat. Time to try another. Forgetting, for a moment, my own bloodied features, I bowed my head to my sister.

“Olivia, is there aught I can do to make my stay less trouble? Work you need done anyhow?” I did my best to look as pathetic as I may. “Trouble not the servants, for whether it be sweeping, or—“ But she stopped me there and took me to break my fast, for which I am truly grateful. I had no desire to toil away chopping firewood or whatever it is they have their serving lads run about doing. Drawing water from the well, I suppose. I’ve spent enough time with the charcoal-burners in the wood to know that I’ll have no part of a servile life. I was ne’er born to be a servant, after all.

My sister’s mania for reform had saved me. Yet, I burned to leave, to find out who amongst the Thirteen had survived the ambush laid for us. So after my hasty bread and sops (with a slice of onion, bless her heart) I made for the way out. There, Edward barred my way. “Under no circumstances will you leave this house while that man,” his gesture towards the fallen knight was clear, “is alive. You’ll endanger us all.” No argument could sway him. The longer and harder I fought, the higher stoked the fires of his rage, until I thought he must pummel me or thrust me into the forge to incinerate. Seeing this, I left off and went to sulk in the garden. The ‘prentice Harriman watched me like a hawk and promised he’d give up the shout as soon as I slipped the noose.

Having no desire to find myself arrested in my path and dragged to some manor to await trial (for Edward would surely report me as an outlaw), I bided my time. In fact, I now recall that the wounded Sir Dartmore was indeed on his way from Lincoln, for it was that road we found him—the northward route from London. I fretted about this knight out of Lincoln for what seemed hours. If he recognized me, I was as good as hanged by the neck until dead, and I knew I would never see Saint Peter at the far end of a gallows-dance. While my sister tended the very reaper with cold compress and medicine I but wished I were clever as Roger Wormwood to concoct an unction which would plunge the bastard born knight into the grave. How had he survived? It wasn’t till after Edward mumbled something about “damn soldiers” I realized the truth—Warwick’s men must have deposited the fool here before they left, having found him in the shallow pit we lads of the road meant to be his final resting place. And a fine resting place it would have been, too, alive or no. No man may breathe with four feet of dirt resting heavy upon the nose. Earthlings all, we be, and doomed to return to’t, live or dead.

My chance came when Olivia was called away to pay a merchant for a shipment of white lead delivered in the yard. Edward and the ‘prentice Harriman were both hard at work on some gold trinket or other, crafting jewels for the very lords who ravaged our England and lived off our backs, and I was left unwatched. Oh, not to escape, that was clear, for as soon as my absence was discovered the time of the merry highwaymen in Saint Alban’s would come to a terrifically awful end. No, no, ’twas rather time to creep and slip across the hall to the slumbering Sir Dartmore and plant a dagger firm in his throat. That would do him, and end the chance he might recognize me from the robbery. So soft I went, and drew my knife for sawing. What? Are you surprised, then, at the lengths I would go to keep my neck? Why should I be different from the lords and ladies ye love so? I will do what I must do to survive. I was made no different than Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.

You’ll be relieved then, that as I approached with quiet steps the dying Dartmore opened his eyes. “You’re the husband,” he mumbled through fat lips numb with pain and shock. For a moment I paused. My legs did tense from tip to toe, ready to spring with all speed and stifle a scream. Yet, he did not cry out. “The one called Edward.” The bowstring tension of my form relaxed. He did not know me. 

“Aye, sir,” I said. My knife found its way back into my belt. What was the purpose, now, of killing the fool? I would gain nothing and stood to lose much if the wound were discovered. Let things take their course. The Wheel was turning, perhaps now in my favor. “And you Sir Dartmore, the brave knight out of Lincoln.”

“Lincoln, Lincoln,” he mumbled, “how did you know Lincoln? Is my errand revealed then? It must be, it must.”

“Aye,” said I again. Let the fool spill his guts to me, and the better for it. Secret errands oft have profit attached.

He touched his cheeks with finger pads, as though surprised they were still attached to face and form. “Then the Lord Warwick is lost. All is exposed.” Oho, thought I, what’s this? An errand dire, the failure of which could endanger a rebellion whole? Not oft is it that a chance such as this falls God-sent into the laps of clever rogues such as I.

“Exposed, sir? No, say not exposed. For I have sympathies with the Lord Warwick, though my wife may not. I will keep your secret and take it to my grave, if I needs must. Only…” Here I paused to let him think. Only, only, only what? “Only, tell me plain. That I may know, forsooth, what I conceal. I’d hate to think I’d nurtured a turn-coat beneath this very roof.”

He was aghast. “Turn-coat, friend? Say not so! I have gone south fast as hoof and foot may carry! My horse was slain, my message nearly lost! My God, sir, if you be in the camp of my good lord, perhaps the mission is not yet run. Will you bear the message for me? Tell the Lord Warwick where his treasure lie?”

Where his treasure lie! By the Lord on High, this was rich! Hardly could I suppress a smile, the work to keep my face from bursting light fair strained me sore. But I put on a somber scowl and shook my ragged locks. “Oh, fair sir,” said I in a voice all of honey sweet, “I will carry upon these slender shoulders whatever words ye give me, and straight to Warwick too, else I am a knave.” He leaned in and let drip from groaning lips the resting place of such a treasure in silver that, were I to take but a small sack and hie out to the wood where it lay buried, I would be fat and fed for all my days.

Now, I knew the countryside fair crawled with spies for the rebel force, and that perhaps my face had come to be joined with this dying knight, Sir Dartmore. Care was required, and speed, for as soon as I bolted my sister’s house, the word would spread that I were free and prowling the Alban squares. My one destination, my shining goal, was none other than the Three Oaks where I might lie up in hiding, pull a handle of ale, and find bedding with one or two of the less lice-ridden whores… but only after, I reminded myself, I found the treasury of the rebel Warwick. Still, I couldn’t go half-way to Lincoln on empty stomach or sagging rucksack. I would need my boon companions who were to meet at Alban inn. Thus, that way I stole.

Wormwood was the first that I espied, for light of candle and of lamp glints across his broad and hairless brow and his eyes, all sunken in the waxen mask of his face, stare with black intensity. I sat by his side speedily as I might, and mutter my greetings. “Where ye been, Harry boy?” Wormwood wondered in low and angry tones. “Long Jack hangs as rotting meat above the road. Have ye any part in that?” Long Jack gone! By God, the piper fair with his curly hair of beaten gold, all twisted red and starved of breath with hempen rope for pendant. I gulped air and wiped my eyes.

“Piper and Lackhand,” I said. “Any else in death’s kingdom?”

Wormwood growled. “None else, Harry, though we thought ye’d joined ‘im. What kept ye abroad in the high street?”

I rolled my eyes and told him the tale of my sister. I wondered at leaving out the bit of the ambushed knight, his dying request to tell the rebel Warwick of the treasure, and my subsequent escape. Not out of any interest in actually assisting the Yorkist cause, mind, but merely as the thought crossed me that I might uncover the treasure alone and unaided. Midway through recounting, there came into the commons of the inn a man who bore an uncanny resemblance (or so I thought) to one of the soldiers we’d seen in the misty eve. Fearing for my life more than my share in the treasure, I spilled the story whole to Wormwood. As I spake his eyes grew wider and wider, until at last his face was all open and astonished.

“I’ll rouse the lads,” he said at once. Curtis the Strongbow had returned to the inn, and Lackhand turned out to be wounded but not yet dead. So we four men would comprise the band. I wondered at what a fourth of such a vast treasure might yield. A lordship over the Channel in France, or a lifetime’s drinkings of wine and womanly virtue. Lackhand looked well for his wound, limping only a little when his belly tightened and the linen wrappings seeped with blood.

The trip to Lincoln’s shadow was a short one. We evaded burning rick and farm, skirted by patrols wearing the roses of mad King Henry and hid behind hedgerows when Warwick’s scouts thundered past. There was no more feel of merry comrad’ry as there had been in days before. Each night we ate cold hen and hard bread, fearing to start a fire lest we be spotted by prying eyes. Each noontide or thereabouts we found a hulled out farm where we might retrieve more provisions, filling our skins from broken butts of ale and spoons from still-warm bowls of peas porridge. The scape of land betwixt Lincoln wall and Westminster was a bloody field of unkind battle. Each farm was brought to account. Those who stood for lords loyal to the king were raided by York; those who served the Yorkists, plundered by Lancaster. 

Yet as each day went on and grew longer, I noticed our friend the Lackhand moved with less alacrity and grace. Rising or sitting upon the earth, he groaned and clutched his wounded side. Brown were the linen wrappings, fair soaked and dried with blood, and sweat stood upon his brow. By God, I thought, if his halting steps do turn us over to foemen, I’ll slit his throat myself!

We came to the place Sir Dartmore described in his dying delirium sometime before dawn. It was a vale of pine and gorse. In the gray morning it seemed an Eden, still untouched by war or strife. No parties of burning pillagers looking for easy forage had come this close to Lincoln. Betwixt the sheriff and the bishop, the place lay firmly in the camp of Warwick and York. We crept on softest feet through dawn and mists and passed the outlying farms of the little township. There were maidens newly wakened with white caps and long dresses out to milk the cows in the pre-dawn gloom. I watched ‘em from afar and felt the familiar stirring in my prick, but  now was not the time to push a lass to the earth and hear her laugh. Nay, for there also were young men about the task of chopping wood and drawing water, girls of tender age just up and about to take the swine upon their walks, and lads awake for mucking out the stalls whilst pigs were gone. So we had to fare creep with care, lest we be uncovered.

Now, the spot was a spreading maple by a brook which runs some miles west of the city, and without trouble we reached it. There were no patrols nor eyes this time of morn upon the roads, save for a large party off by the highway where fires burned merrily. Warwick’s men, thought I, and the other rebels sure encamped. We kept our backs to that distant beacon and ensured no soul could lay eye upon us. There were a whole small town and hamlet betwixt us and the road, and beside the place lay in a deep fall of the earth. Without some devil’s art no man could espy us from the gate of Lincoln, this I was certain.

But the rebel men had clear been here in the past. Wherefore, we wondered aloud, and it was I who said perhaps they knew the treasury had been buried here for safe keeping but they had no notion where. For the earth was churned to mud by heavy hob-nail boots and there were holes dug here and there as though an incontinent trenchman were shitting his breeches each tenth step of the way. “Did yer knight say from whence the treasure was taken? Why he was bearing a message south and not north? Why the damn thing was concealed within a far-ranging piss of the Lincoln wall?” Wormwood began to grow restless, as he always did. He saw traps in every shadow and no wonder, for he among us had been bandit longest and fled the law at every turn.

“Twas gathered from Warwick’s house in London,” said I, “and as for going south, the army was on the move. The treasure was concealed so as not to let it fall into some lesser rebel’s hands, less the lordling’s prick harden and he turn the whole lot over to Henry for a pardon. Lincoln is a strong seat of Warwick’s power, and our knight Sir Dartmore was certain the lord Neville’d return with time.” This all Dartmore told me, or I concocted myself upon the road. I no longer recall which was truth and which my own confabulation.

It was enough to satisfy the murderous physician. He gave a sharp nod and directed me to find the place for only I knew where it lay. This is where the trouble began. Lackhand was doubled up in pain, his wound giving rise to a sweet stink. Curtis perched upon a stone and hummed a tuneless ditty. I hunted along the ground, looking for precise the spot whereof Dartmore spoke. At last I hit upon it, for it was marked by a small cut in the base of the maple tree. “Here,” said I, “Here we dig.” So at once the shovels were unpacked. Lackhand was left to watch the road, burping and groaning as he went to find a spot in the brush from which to stand our lookout.

Wormwood’s mind had already begun to turn, and Curtis must have gone not long after. We struck upon the first chest with a clatter and a clank and all at once we went quiet; till then we’d been telling ripping tales of elder days when we first roamed upon the Fens, laying abbots and townsfolk way and taking from them shining silver. But now we were all hushed anticipation. No lock adorned the dirt-logged trunk, but it was clear a nobleman’s belongings for it were plated all about with gold and topaz. “Ope the box,” Wormwood hissed.

Strongbow knelt and pried the lid, and lo there spilled out into the dewey grass a pile of silver plate and candlesticks. This fortune was but the beginning of the haul. Our eyes grew wide. I remember looking to Curtis to share a glance Lackhand’s way. What good had he been upon this trip? Damn, but he was slow and ungainly. He’d like as not die before we e’re returned to London. But when I looked at Wormwood he looked not back; his eyes were all turned below, to the treasure spread upon the earth. His sunken eyes glittered horrible cold and his balding brow was all asheen. God, if ever I have seen the look of purest avarice, it was in that moment!

A second trunk, and then a third. A fourth and fifth to follow. “We need Lackhand to carry this weight,” I muttered. Without a barrow we would not be able to move it all, three men. Curtis gave a sigh and a nod, but Wormwood, without once even giving glance to the Strongbow nor I, breathed, “There are farms aplenty here. Go with Lackhand and find a cart or barrow.” He glanced at me. “Go!”

Hesitant I was to take my leave, lest Curtis and Roger Wormwood somehow take the treasure for themselves. Never before in all our lives had such riches been before our fingers. We were to be transformed from lesser men into noble princes by the act of a morning! But how much greater would we each be if there were no other long-time friends for us to split the treasure with? How much more grand, how much more noble, if all that glimm’ring hoard be mine and mine alone? But such thoughts were ever the bane of bandits, ’twas merely that the stakes were never quite so high.

So off I went to gather up a means of transport. Lackhand was laying on the grass along the path. He gave me our old salute as I passed, and I scowled at his prostrate form. What a lookout he turned out! This hardened my heart against him, methinks, so that what came later was less a shock. An outlaw without a good watchman is an outlaw hanged, you see, and thus to fall at less than the mark when giving watch… that is the most radical and basest of sins.

I found a barrow and hauled it back, pausing only for a moment’s time to avoid the farmer from which it came. When I was returned, Curtis and Wormwood began at once to load the silver. “Go and dispatch Lackhand,” Wormwood said. “His time is come, our will be done, on earth as it is in heav’n.” He gave a lopside grin and I felt a stone within my throat.

I whistled to the crippled knight. He turned from his bed of grass and bracken to look up upon my face. “You know what comes next,” whispered I to him. I knelt at his side.

“Just leave me be,” he spake with husky voice. “I ask you nothing more. No treasure, no aid, not even a morsel left for eating. Just leave me here. I’ll not follow.” Had he known we would turn upon him since we left the circuit of London? He seemed, if left, certain to die. But greater certainties have been denied by Providence. Leaving him behind us, even to die, might leave him also to warn the forces of our lord Warwick that we’d absconded with a great treasure that was by rights his own. No, the risk was too great.

I took my cloak and made a wad. This I placed upon his face. He tried his valiant best to throw me off, kicked and flailed his arms, but it was not enough. My knife found flesh soft and pliant, and slipped with ease through throat and pipe. His blood bubbled from the wound, his whistling breath came ragged through the hole. Then, once more, he was still.

I returned. “The duty’s done and all discharged,” I said. Wormwood nodded and off we went.

Lackhand’s cloak we now threw over the treasure. Mine own we used to cushion the plate and candles so they neither jangled nor clanked upon the road. For ourselves, we made pretense that we were three brothers, farmers all, who were returning after long pilgrimage to our homes. Thus we took to the roads and trusted our cunning and our tale to keep us safe. We wended our way south and kept head down when patrols came thundering by upon the road. The whole countryside was in a continuous uproar when we reached Cambridge town. We huddled beneath a grain barn owned by the commune while we waited out a great rainstorm that swept down on the land from the North Sea.

Rain ran amongst the thatching and dripped upon my brow. Wormwood fingered his knife which rode high upon his belt. How long, I wondered, before we fell to? Curtis would stand by me, I was certain, for though Wormwood had a certain force to his speech and a kind of low and evil suasion to his voice, he was never well-liked by the band. There was too much of the rat in him, and too much of the wolf. He never did belong in the company of other men. The rest of us had come to our outlawry by mischance, misdeed, or, in my own case, the ease of a life away from the torturous work of the field and lane-house. We were men without skill, save that of plying our one good trade. Wormwood was not like us. He had been a wealthy man, upon a time, in the ranks of the Company of Grocers as a bonded apothecary and medicus of the capitol. He was a man of means.

This, he had thrown away. Ministering poisons instead of med’cines, murdering those poor souls he’d sworn to protect. Verily, we had all done a bit of murder here or there… but he alone had been secured a place amongst, perhaps not the noblest of the land, at least the wealthier crew. I came from tradesmen who never brushed shoulders with the local lords and sheriffs. Curtis was the son of a huntsman from Devonshire who was himself half-outlaw and lived in the wild wood with his mother. We were men of a kind. Wormwood, that creeping crawling creature, was something else entirely. We’d only ever seen the insides of gaols; Wormwood had been entertained in houses just as fine as the Earl of Warwick’s. For him this was not a theft but a return to position. All this I thought upon the road.

Roger Wormwood carried always upon his person a little satchel filled with crystal vials. These, he stocked with death’s swift messengers. In Cambridge we waited for rumor of the stolen treasury (which had then begun to spread throughout England like a wildfire caught in dry thatch) to pass into memory. It would not do well for three men to of a sudden appear laden with silver and gold on the heels of such turmoils for no doubt at once we’d be suspected and rightly of being the thieving parties. So of a night in Cambridge I came to Curtis and laid bare my plan: I would, like the creeping shadow, steal into Wormwood’s pack and procure a single draught of some deadly distillate. This we would feed him in his mutton or his wine. When well dispatched our physician was, we would split the treasure and flee for France where we could yet be lords. All this Curtis took in stride, as though he’d thunk the selfsame thoughts without my prodding. This set my soul at once to rest: there’s nothing for a thief and murderer such as knowing you’ve a fellow friend in the doing.

But on the night I was to steal his fatal drug, I fell into a such a stupor of ale that I could neither recall my position nor my name. I spoke of treasures fine and told tales of caverns of Arab gold that were hid but a hair’s breadth beneath the earth of Lincolnshire. All of Cambridge round must have come to heard my tales, for the barman kept me afloat while taking none of my coin—so much did I increase his custom. The drunker I became, the louder I spake, and all the time Curtis whiled away the lonely watches waiting for me to appear with death’s draught. He came to seek me near the dawn and, finding me in such state as I’ve already told, he dealt me a cuff and dragged me back to our lodging.

“Fool’s work well begun is half way gone to being hung,” he reminded me. We outlaws have a great stock of such aphorisms with which to beggar and cheat the common man. Just as kings keep their secrets, so, too, do we. I begged his apologies and swore I’d not let it happen again. We were both afeard of Wormwood’s wrath when he discovered I’d been blabbing to the townsfolk of our prize, even if it were well-disguised in faerie story. More, I feared our friend and one-time leader was growing impatient with us altogether and meant to remove us to the shroe of some distant undiscovered country; the banks of the River Styx, with nary an obol to pay our fare.

Thus, that night Curtis made certain I did not speak a word to any man, but rather stole into our Roger’s room and plucked the poison from his bag. Come morning we fed the drug to Wormwood and watched as his face twisted over his mulled wine. He fell gurgling, knowing not what had murdered him, and died in the mud. Thus pass all men from this world.

Our goal then was not to tarry, but to move with all speed to Dover. There we’d catch ship to Calais and become lost amidst the French. I fancied the south, while Curtis spoke often of Bretagne. Let him go to the French Cornwall and live as a king there; I would be a mere baron on the southern sea the Romans called theirs. Our course was set.

But on the road from Cambridge there waited no fewer than fifteen of King Henry’s men, and they stopped us with our barrow. “Whither do you go?” asked their leader, all dressed in the Tudor rose.

“Devonshire,” said I.

The sarjent of the king’s service sneered at me. “You are not the man who told fabulous tales of gold in Lincoln’s hills? Not, perhaps, the very thief who took the treasury of Warwick and disposed of your companion to flee south?”

I balked. Curtis said naught. We were caught. The sarjent chuckled at our discomfort. “Never fear, my lads, for you’ve done your good king Henry a favor. We’ll take that treasure—and you’ll be on your way.”

What could we two men of the road do but yield? My strength did drain away as we unveiled our haul. For a moment I thought Curtis fool enough to stand up to this foraging party, but he was wise enough to bow down. Well, thought I, this has all come to naught. The murder, the stealth, the lies… here we end upon the highway as we began, with nothing left but the clothes upon our backs. The king’s men took even the barrow. They wheeled it off laughing, glad to carry such triumph back to London. Meanwhile, Curtis and I stood dumbfounded upon the high road.

We got to walking and after a moment’s time, Curtis said, “I kept some of that treasure, you know.”

Clever bastard! A few silver goblets, a fine dagger, a handful of coin. He’d squirreled it away. When? To get it out of the accounting of shares back when we first dug the damn thing up, most like. I was surprised and yet horrified to see that Curtis had been cleverer than I. That night we counted the remains of our haul by firelight. Not enough to make lords of us, but more than plenty to buy a little house in some upland place, away from the tax assessor and the machinations of the court. We toasted that eve with rancid sour ale. “To the new barons!” said Curtis. “To the lords of the realm,” said I. After all, it were the lords what gave us this windfall when it came to it—squeeze it from us, so to us should it rightful return.

Perhaps ye’ll think it sad to say that in the morn Curtis was stiff as an old log. I gathered up what was left of our great haul. Not much, not pitiful much. A farm would it trade for, and little more. I needed no farm. Wine, then, and women, and followers a-plenty to ply the road. If I could not be a nobleman of the countryside, why I would do just as well upon the highway. I tapped out the last black medicine of Wormwood’s vial lest I drink of it by accident. Then I was off. After all, I was born a rogue.

Fiction Friday: The Mirrors of Chelyabinsk

The Fiction index!

When Mikhaíl Nikolaievich Arkhipov first arrived at Chelyabinsk, it was with a certain nausea brewing in his stomach. The town was a tiny nothingness in the dark of Near Siberia, a few poorly defined dirt tracks that crossed one another in front of the rotting shell of Chelya Fortress. He'd been forced to get off the train half a hundred versts back, for that was the nearest station. From there he'd hired a coach, which followed the road of crushed gravel as far as it could, then dove over farms and countryside towards Chelyabinsk. Mikhaíl's presence in the town was something of a prodigy. The imperial government didn't care much about Chelya these days. The threats of banditry were over, and there hadn't been rumors of rebellion in fifty years. Those dark nights had belonged to the distant past, to a generation now too old to care if the hand of Imperial Russia spread out over their land, too crooked and riddled with ague, pox, and time itself to raise their guns in rebellion against the Tsar. There was no reason for officials to come to Chelyabinsk, then, at all. Except Mikhaíl had come. Autocrat Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, left nothing to chance. His brother Aleksandr had been implacable as Tsar; Chelyabinsk had, for a brief time, been a circus of activity as those imprisoned in the failed Decembrist Revolt were shipped ever northward into the wilds of Siberia.

Nikolaievich felt as though he must void his stomach into the snow. This filthy lane of hovels and its attendant versts of snow-covered farms were to be his commission, the reward for his years of service to the imperial government. The fortress which he was sent to command was a decrepit ruin. There were no signs of any soldiers within—no lights, no fires burning, and none of the easy camaraderie of men stationed in the back of beyond. He had hoped to find coffee at least, but none of the serfs in the town were likely to have it. It was a luxury that only city-dwellers and soldiers were like to have, and there seemed to be no soldiers here. Before he stepped from the hack, he opened the large logbook he had been provided. Yes, there were fifty names there where he thought they should be. Yet there was no possible way the fortress contained fifty men. He could see from here, even peering through thick veils of falling snow, that the barracks' roof was caved in and many of the walls partly pulled down. Probably the serfs had started attacking the brickwork once the place was abandoned to make it into walls for their fields.

He hauled his luggage from the coach with the help of the driver. "Where can I go to stay?" he shouted against the wind. His gut was rebelling, threatening to spill into his mouth. What had he ever done to deserve this post?

"I don't know," the driver bawled back, "I don't know this town. No one comes here!"

"I am the first," Mikhaíl said.

The driver nodded. "Yes," he confirmed, "the first. Goodbye."

So there he was, alone in the snow, with his cases like standing stones all around him slowly gathering a dusting. He cursed the Tsar and the luck that had sent him here. Where would he go? Certainly not into Chelya Fortress to freeze to death in some dank cellar. The serfs would simply have to put him up. After all, he was an Imperial Officer; they couldn't very well refuse.

The first door was answered by a glowering woodsman the size of a horse. His brow beetled at seeing Mikhaíl's uniform, and his lip curled back in something like a sneer when his eyes alighted on the pistol and sabre in his belt. "I must find the Intendant of Chelya Fortress," Mikhaíl said. "And suitable lodgings for the night."

"The Intendant," the ogre repeated back to him. His beard alone could have covered an ox with ease. He said no more and the two men stared at each other. Mikhaíl felt the stirring of anger in his breast, comingled with fear. He wasn't going to be cowed by an idiotic peasant on his first assignment, no matter how huge the man was.

He gripped the hilt of his sabre firmly and threw back his shoulders. "If you cannot tell me where he is, I demand you step aside at once and offer me the shelter of your home—as is your duty."

"My duty," said the man. Perhaps he was slow, Mikhaíl thought. Perhaps he had been kicked in the head by an ass. "My duty to whom?"

This beggared belief. Mikhaíl put as much fire into his gaze as he could, pushed forward so he was nose-to-chest with the giant. "Your duty to the Tsar of Russia, you swine! Now stand aside and let me in or I shall be forced to thrash you. I have a flogging whip in my effects. Do you wish to see its use?" He snarled.

The titan shrugged. "If you say so," he said, and then turned to bellow into the house. "OKSANA! We have a guest by order of the Tsar! Prepare him a bed and some food. You would like some food? Good."

He was lead into the filthy domicile of this churlish behemoth and suddenly hugged tight by the warmth that permeated the house. There was a fire blazing in the hearth, throwing shadows every which way. The interior of the house seemed ghastly bright, more so even than coming in from the dark could account for. It took a moment for Mikhaíl to realize what he was seeing: light reflected in crazy patterns off three huge silvered mirrors hanging on the far wall. He frowned. Where had peasants gotten such things? But he hardly had time to consider it before the giant guided him to a table where he was served a simple peasant fare for his dinner.

As he ate, he began to realize that there were other oddities about the house as well. There seemed to be, upon every shelf and surface, little brick-a-brack. Small trinkets that were nothing in and of themselves, but upon examination and close study turned out to be... buttons. Brass buttons. And there a buckle. Oh, and over there what was unmistakably a powder horn. He had the dark suspicion, suddenly, seize him that the soldiers who were meant to be garrisoning the fort had abandoned their posts and now lived as farm-folk amongst the peasants. Discovering their secret would surely be grounds for murder—who would know that the poor stupid Intendant Nikolaievich had disappeared? It would take six months or more for Moscow to begin to wonder, and by then he would lie in some deeply dug grave in the wilderness. No one would even be able to find his body. Such was Siberia! So he kept his mouth shut and his suspicions to himself.

He was given the loft to sleep in, the giant and his crabbed little woman taking up by the fire. He had a blanket, and a mound of hay to sleep upon, and that was good enough for now. His suitcases were downstairs by the door, but he kept his pistol primed and nearby and his sword hugged tight to his chest. He drifted off with the hot burn of serf's vodka spreading a pleasant warmth through his stomach, his arms, his head. He just had time enough to think that they probably hadn't paid the proper vodka excise on their alcohol before he drifted off.

When he woke, it was to a strangely disorienting sight. He had no idea where he was for a moment, and terror thrummed in his every limb. He remembered in a rush and soon he was able to match the fantastic angles and dim corners of the now-darkened house with the brilliant room he had entered earlier that night. The fire had burned down to evil looking embers, glowing with a faint throb of ruddy life. He leaned over the edge of the loft to find that his hosts were nowhere to be seen. His own face leered back at him from the mirror hanging in the center of the wall and he pulled back.

It was then that he heard the voices, which must have been the cause of his waking. They were whispering: a man and a woman. Too faint to make out what they were saying, the sound of their exhalations was like the long nails of feeble old man too ancient to cut them scrabbling on wood. He pressed his ear against the boards beneath him, but only managed to dampen the sound. He cast around him and saw a small gap in the floor by his feet through which a tiny gleaming eye of red light could be seen. He carefully crawled to it, attentive to make no sounds lest he rouse his hosts to his own presence.

"We will do what we have always done," Oksana was saying. "We will let it be handled by the others."

He heard the giant huff. "I am tired, woman. Tired of all this pretending. Why do we not tell him at once, and let him make his own decision? If someone had given me the choice—"

"Then what? You would have drowned yourself? You lack the courage."

"The soldiers, the soldiers had swords and guns. I could have shot myself, back then. That would have been a mercy. Now there is—" he stopped. There was a noise, a faint slithering sound, from the area of the room near the hearth. Mikhaíl pressed his eye to the hole to see crooked little Oksana shy away from her giant of a husband and the huge man staring grim-faced. The slithering came again, so Mikhaíl backed from the hole and wriggled his way to the edge of the loft a second time.

What he saw arrested him completely and set his entire body in convulsive jitters, small involuntary movements that made no sound, but still clasped and unclasped his muscles in a horror show of tension. His skin was covered with silvery sweat, ice cold as it poured from him. For he saw the surface of the center mirror begin to shift and move of its own accord. There were, reflected in it, three men and two women, all staring into the room with hideous intensity. Their eyes seemed like they could bore through wood, stone, soft and malleable flesh. What peasant sorcery was this? For though they stood reflected in the room, the room was empty.

The worst sight, the most horrible, was the image of his own reflection. For though he was looking at the mirror, the reflection of his own face was looking back at him. It had the same terrified expression, but it was staring soulfully into him. Then, as he watched, his face frozen in terror, he saw a hideous smile come over the face in the mirror, and it winked at him. He screamed and fell from the loft into a tumble below.

A second waking. He was cold, though the room was well-lit by the fire. He was surrounded by soldiers in their uniforms, all murmuring quietly to each other. He shot up. "Where is the mirror? Where are those serfs?"

"Intendant," said a man with a fine mustache and a well-trimmed beard. "Please, don't be agitated. It won't help anything."

"Won't help?" he asked. "Won't help?" He got to his feet. "Why the hell is it so cold?" The men exchanged bleak glances. "What is it, you damn deserters?"

"Deserters!" exclaimed the man who'd spoken. He wore little spectacles as well, Mikhaíl saw. "No, no, no, you misunderstand. We cannot desert. We can't go anywhere, Intendant."

"Well, answer me this: where did those peasants get their cursed mirror from? It's got some kind of damned power!" Another look between the men.

"They took it from Chelya, sir. We had several of them. You see, one day some of the men started acting... strange. I couldn't determine what had caused the lapse. They failed to show up for drills and then their comrades began to speak of unsettling changes that had come over them. Changes that had no explanation. They began to prefer different foods. They seemed not to know the details of intimate relationships they had, only days before, been having with peasant girls. They were... just... different."

"Bohze moi," Mikhaíl breathed, "You're Intendant Dmitrievich."

The man nodded. "I'm sorry you were sent to find out what happened to me."

"I was?"

Dmitrievich looked uncertain for the first time since Mikhaíl had awoken. "I thought so. Doesn't the capital wonder where we are... what we're doing? Why we've made no formal reports?"

"But you have," Mikhaíl argued. "Just last week in Moscow you—"

He blinked. Behind Dmitrievich he saw the mirrors on the peasant's wall. It was reflecting the room well enough, but none of the soldiers were in it. In the reflection, he was sitting at a chair and... eating. And on either side were Oksana and the giant. "What..." he murmured. Warmth, the only true warmth in the room, seemed to flow from the frame of the mirror. He pushed Dmitrievich aside and walked towards it. His hands outspread, he placed them on the glass, which felt like living flesh. From the other room, the room in the mirror, he saw himself turn to look. He gazed into his own eyes and knew, with vomitous horror, that the thing looking back was not him.

Fiction Friday: Le Sergent

Other tales at the Fiction of Yesteryear index!

Hubert was in bad want of a musket. The nearest was eight yards away, where Gautier had been shot clean through the forehead, but it had fallen on the lip of the sunken road and was in plain sight to Spanish fire. "Conneries!" he swore at himself, at the world, at the Spanish, at his men. Lieutenant Seneville was moaning like a stuck pig with a ball in his arm and another one in his leg. His hat had fallen into the mud a mere handspan from Hubert; maybe he could grab it, fling it up, and then dive for the musket. Better, though, if he could just push Seneville into the woods and use him as a bargaining tool. Would the Spanish care to take a lieutenant captive in exchange for the lives of the other partisans? Well, he'd never get the chance to find out. The asses in charge of the column, most likely the colonel himself, had issued all sergeants with huge unwieldy partisans. What was he to do if he got corps-a-corps with a Spaniard? Knife him in the eye, perhaps, while all his men had the luxury of sabres and shot.

Just as he began to slither forward to make a grab at the weapon, the Spanish poured a hail of lead into the thicket. Bushes swayed madly back and forth and tree limbs whined with shot. The puffs of musket smoke rose in a thick choking cloud above the Spanish position. Hubert had had enough. "That's it, boys!" he growled, rising to his full and impressive height. His culottes were stained with the lieutenant's blood, but his men had no way of knowing that. To them he was like some kind of avenging colossus, bloody and proud. "Charge!" he howled. Over the lip of the road they went, their legs pumping to carry their bodies to the Spanish lines before the bastardes reloaded and turned them into so much useless meat.

The Spaniards, evidently, did not think well of their chances. With huge Hubert and his men screaming war cries and ploughing through the undergrowth and their own muskets still unloaded, the foe chose instead to make a tactical withdrawal. So what if that withdrawal had the appearance of a full route, some of the rearmost being sabred to death before they even managed to scramble up out of their hiding places? Hubert, with his ridiculous partisan in hand, never got as near as a handspan to one of the enemy, but it was his action that carried the day. He grinned and told his boys, "The king don't know what he has here in you." That was their work done for the time, and Hubert could hope that they wouldn't be sent out from the column in any other foolish action for a while again. Let them rest, and the lieutenant recover, let the other boys have their turn getting shot at or chopped to pieces.

With the wood secure, Hubert made a mental count of the dead. There was Gautier, of course, and two others. He'd keep Gautier on the payroll and add his own pension to the growing pool that Hubert himself collected and kept from the pay. When were they going to get their money? Probably not until the king captured another town or a party of partisans forced some Dutch to cough up their required taxes. The creditors in Paris were waiting in a line a mile long, and each new army action sent home gold and silver from the Spanish-held Dutch as the soldiers wrung it out of the populace.

Hubert was most concerned about Seneville out of all his lot. He was a lenient commander, and as the lieutenant of the partisan detachment from the Reg. de Lyonnais he was sergeant Hubert's direct superior. He never pried into things like the number of dead men against the number still alive to draw pay or the misappropriation of goods. Hubert had a small business on the side melting down extra shot and selling the lead to the Dutch for the repair of roofs damaged in the war. Gautier had been one of his chief confederates in that operation, which was all for the good because he'd been getting a little persnickety lately. Nothing put an end to a good career in the army like getting snitched out. Oh well. Au revoir, Gautier!

They returned to the column with Seneville on a makeshift stretcher, screaming every time one of the men jogged or jostled him. That left Hubert to make his report to the adjutant, which he did before going off to have a smoke and a fuck in the train. They'd been in the Netherlands for a year and a half now, and the fighting hadn't gone as Hubert had hoped. When he'd first signed on, scrawling his name on that sheet of paper as the drummer played patriotic rhythms and the recruiter had clapped him on the back and bought him a lager, he'd imagined standing up in one or two great setpiece battles, making his fortune from looting the dead, and taking the proceeds to buy a fine farm or some other business.

What had he got? Ten thousand Spanish forts, bogging down the army every step of the way. The clap once, and crabs. The whores that followed the Armée Royale were infinitely less clean than the farm-girls in neighboring villages. But the villages were Dutch and Lebeau had been caught just last week in a rick with some straw-haired lass and had his cock chopped off by her father and three Spanish soldiers before being sent stumbling back to the column, culottes all bloody from his excised organ, to show the French what happens to men who fuck little farm girls.

That was nothing, Alberte said. He was one of the old hands in the war, telling stories from all kinds of campaigns in Europe. He seemed to shave once a fortnight, perpetually stubbly was he. He also stank from refusal to bathe—"It'll rain soon enough, or the damn Dutch will bring the sea to us." It was a kind of fervent superstition. He told stories of Dutch Republican partisans breaking up dikes to flood out army positions and drown horses. "Yer lucky we ain't seen none a' that yet. But we will." We will, we will. That was Alberte's constant promise. Lucky we haven't seen the pox spread through the army... but we will, we will. This litany, this oration, was enough to drive you mad. That was part of the reason Hubert spent so much of his time among the camp followers. The other was, of course, that he had a purse swollen with the money of dead men and not enough ways to spend it. What good would it do to be a rich man only to have your face shot out the next day? No, better to lay with as many women as he could, drink as much as he could stomach, and pass out before the battle.

It was with shock and horror, then, that Hubert awoke to the sound of men acclaiming the king. Le roi de Soleil was present in his column. He scrambled out of his sweat-sodden sheets and tried to dress. The whore was little help to him, pawing at his naked ass and back, purring to receive his custom just once more. He glared at her and thought about striking her, but the ensuing fight would make him even later. For her part, she did her level best to please him and draw him back into bed just one more time—for she had a daughter and son in a village on the border who were in need of food and roofing. If Hubert had known, he might have paid her in stolen lead. As it was, his haste left behind a smattering of silver coins in the straw, for which she wept and thanked the cruel God who had put her there in the first place.

Yes! There it was, the red-plumed hat of the king, and it was by the infirmary where Seneville and the other men from his party were kept. Oh merde, merde, Hubert tripped over his own unlaced boots, pressed his arms into his red sergeant's coat, and prayed his partisan was still by the lieutenant's sickbed. Half a hundred yards from the infirmary tent he straightened up, took a piece of bread from his forage sack, and made the pretense of having been about a breakfast stroll to look at the lines. As he arrived beneath the white awning, the king was saying, "Marvelous work. We've asked your colonel to make you the chief foraging party. That means your men will be given the Chevalier St. Michel in your place for the time being. So cheer up, hmm? You'll be back on the lines in no time and in the meanwhile your men won't get flabby." The king gave Prevert's belly a playful pat. Hubert could see a species of idiot pride glowing behind the man's eyes.

So much for rest! The chevalier St. Michel turned out to be a trim fop with only the vaguest idea of how to conduct himself on a battlefield. So it falls again to me, Hubert thought grimly, to manage this tide of metal and flesh. St. Michel took the men together in a big clump away from the camp and told them their objective: "There is a little fortalice not more than half a day's walk from here. The king wishes to drive his army in that direction, to surprise the Spanish in the big fort yonder." One of those huge ugly star-fortresses stood at the far end of a rolling field and meadow, a quarter mile distant. "But this means that the fortalice must fall so it does not serve as a caltrop in the heel of the Armée. So that is where we go today, mes amis!"

Hubert could have clubbed him senseless. St. Michel had the sure manner and waif-thin person of a dandy raised on horse-racing. Worse, he had a few dueling scars which showed him to be a man incapable of holding his tongue and even poorer at holding a sword. Sweet virgin, following this man into combat would be suicide. But follow they did, across field and dell, skirting a nameless little Dutch village and avoiding Spanish patrols on the raised roads. Hubert wondered if the world would miss the Netherlands were they to sink back into the sea. All the trouble they'd caused!

An hour or two after a hurried lunch they came to the fortalice St. Michel spoke of. It couldn't have housed more than twenty-five men all told but it was a strong position on top of a swell of land and the steep walls were capped with small culverins that could cut the flank of an army to pieces. St. Michel at least at the good sense to stop the party on the far side of a Dutch barn and hayloft before the fortress could sight them. When the farmers ran out to complain, Hubert managed to vent a little of his frustration with his commander by knocking the man down and threatening to break his leg with the butt of the partisan. That made him feel better.

"Are you ready, men?" St. Michel asked. They were most certainly not, clumped up in a group behind a barn. Hubert gave St. Michel one of the famed death glares that usually preceded flogging. St. Michel, insensitive to the normal operations of the army, threw up his hands. "What is it, sergeant?" His voice had the exasperated tone of noble officers everywhere.

Hubert folded his arms and tapped his foot. Some of the men grinned. Good old Hubert, going to give the pompous fool what he deserved. "We should arrange lines first, sir. And wait for the sun. In an hour or so, it will be in the gunner's eyes."

"Ah, yes, well," St. Michel fumbled, "yes. That sounds very good then."

Hubert rolled his eyes. Another day, another war.

Taking the fortress actually proved to be remarkably easy. The Spanish were caught completely off guard and the culverins never so much as fired a shot. Hubert spent the entire time trying to make sure St. Michel didn't get killed, throwing the idiot down when Spanish musket fire crackled from the hilltop and hauling him up when it was safe to charge. So much work for so little reward. Ah well. He would have to soon report some of the dead men, he mused as St. Michel strutted about the fortalice's little courtyard, crowing the victory. Otherwise the party would be so depleted as to risk its existence. Money was all to the good—surviving was better.

Fiction Friday: Le Dieu Perdu

Sit, if you please, monsieur. You've that look about you—you want to hear of my part in the Mazarin affair, hm? Don't start so, that's what they all want who come to my fireside. But I think I give 'em something quite different, something they weren't looking after. I've a fine chocolate, if you like. Keep a good supply whenever I can, buy it up from the ships that come in at Calais through my agents. Have a cup. I assure you, I have plenty and my coffers won't be exhausted in my own lifetime, so there's no worry on that count.

It's all quite fine, is it not? You would hardly believe that my father lost our fortunes in the '20s before the war put us at blows and nearly sold our titles as well. Our debts kept mounting until I saw no other choice but to put on arms and armor and go into the service of Richelieu as a mercenary. I didn't really understand the causes of the damn thing, much as the old Comte tried to explain it to me, but I didn't need to comprehend the ins and outs of the Bohemian Revolt or any of that other Protestant nonsense. I know that Richelieu thought we were in awful trouble, with the Hapsburgs surrounding us on either side and poised to gobble up France, so to hell with co-religionists and we threw in with those Calvin-loving rebels.

So when I came back to Paris in the spring of sixteen hundred forty seven in the year of our lord, I'd had my fill of Protestants. I'd never been happier than to hear Mazarin was planning on forcing those Hugenots left in France to convert when I first visited the salons that year, though the word was that the Edict of Nantes must remain ironclad. And it was said that King Louis was equally hard on 'em, or more so, and he was nearing his majority. Three cheers for our roi, I thought. If I could have anticipated the effects revoking the Edict would have on France... but I was young, and stupid, and full of vigor. I hadn't achieved the great wisdom I was to find in later years.

I had no small fame in those days for my exploits, though the first time I saw a man die I must admit I nearly choked on snotty tears and I never developed a taste for the battlefield. The smell of powder was enough to shiver me right down to my heels. Not that I was a coward, you see, for I still knew my duty. Anyway, the salons were all abuzz with my name. You can't even really imagine what it was like, I know. You see an old wrinkled man, caked with powder and hiding behind his titles and a lifetime of roguery. That's not who I was back then. I implore you, monsieur, to imagine me young and virile, stupid and headstrong. That was the boy I had become. I do not say man, for though I'd already had my fair share of women, I was not yet in any sense a man. That came later, with Monsieur C—.

We met at the salon of Charles de Neufville de Villeroy, Marquis of Villeroy et d'Alincourt. He was Grand Quartermaster of France and a Chevalier of the Holy Spirit, and also old as sin by then. But he ran a most excellent salon in his house in Paris which was frequented by all the great minds of the nation at that time. You'll have undoubtedly heard that l'Hôtel de Rambouillet was the center of all social life in Paris; if it was, l'Hôtel de Villeroy was as an orbiting wanderer. I came there by the invitation of some friend or other who was in the Marquis' good graces. Everyone found it quite commendable to have me—what with being something of a celebrity in those days. I was no slouch at conversation either, I can promise you that. I held converse with some of the finest statesmen and poets of our time.

I remember meeting him very vividly, yes. I was seated in a window overlooking a garden... no, I don't recall where exactly the residence of the Marquis was. Paris was different in those days, you'll excuse me for saying so. More refined and somehow more brutish as well. It was already autumn by then, and the wind was exquisite cold. My breath was frosting the pane and most of the leaves were already off the trees. There was a Lenten feeling to the air, and even the priests were starting to behave more soberly at gatherings. That's how you could tell that Christmas was coming, you know; the closer to it, the less they drank right until the mass was over and then they fell back into their cups, all a-clatter.

At that time I had become somewhat tired of the Paris set, I must confess. I was bored of their chattering, which always seemed to revolve in circles without making any accomplishments or ever coming to conclusions. They drank too much, and they fucked far too often for my liking. I've never shied away from the libidinous pleasure, you know, but after a while it just seems excessive. I come off as a prig now, I'm sure, but let me tell you—I had my fare share of belles across the city! But truly by then the idea had begun to exhaust me and I was looking for one woman to settle down with and remain peaceable. Perhaps I could parlay my skills into a commission for the crown and earn myself a living through the army. I thought I would quite like that, as long as it didn't take me to the front again and away from the civilized comforts of France.

It was in such a mood as this that Monsieur C— found me for the first time. He has an instinct, a sort of knack, for knowing when people are at their weakest points, non? He approached me and I admit that for a moment I thought I saw a double of myself: a young, handsome, dark-haired man with pale green eyes that trembled like emeralds bedecked with dew. But as he drew nearer the illusion vanished and I saw he was far my superior in looks and grace. He wore a finely slashed doublet of gold and deep maroon breeches that ended in a cavalcade of golden tassalry just above his high boots. He had the natural fluidity about his movements that spoke of long training at the épée.

"And you too," he asked me, "find this gathering tedious, yes?"

I snorted and sloshed the wine in my glass. I can recall the feeling of the warmth spreading through me, realizing that I was already somewhat tipsy, perhaps because I had taken so little for luncheon. "How can you tell, monsieur? Surely I thought it well disguised." I spoke sarcastically, of course, for I had my back to the twittering women and expounding philosophers and had been focused on the gardens and their leafless greenery for quite some time.

"We-e-e-ell," he said, and he joined me upon the seat. He didn't make eye contact, just sat beside me and examined the horizon. "If I had wanted to discuss the price of joint-stocks I would have visited a grocer's."

"And if I'd wished to debate the likelihood of the Trinity, I'd have taken orders," I added with a smirk. Of course, no one would be quite so harebrained as to debate theology of that level at a salon, but it served my point and Monsieur C— laughed heartily. I look back now on that genuine and pleasant belly laugh and wonder if he meant it. Probably not. Appearing to care deeply and truly was one of his myriad gifts, and probably the chiefest of them all.

I decided that I liked the company of Messr. C— and he evidently liked my company as well. I told him where I had my lodgings, but he never returned the favor. I didn't think it odd then, but I wonder now where he lived during my time in Paris. Never once did I see a dormitory, a room at an inn, or anything even resembling living quarters for Messr. C—. But that never seemed to matter and I only realized it when I looked back on those years in light of the things that were still to come. C—, as I began to call him, was expert in finding the finest soirées and the most important houses.

We fell in with one another like old amis, drinking and whoring together once the slow circular conversations of the salons became too much to bear. We were bon amis together as though we'd known each other our whole lives. C—felt like my oldest and greatest friend, though I'd only known him for a few weeks. We were inseparable, he and I; wherever I went he came as well. Wherever he went, he invited me along. It all seems so hollow now, looking back on it, a sham put on for my benefit. He was too friendly, and we got along too well. I couldn't tell at the time, of course. Who can? It was a little like being in love. You may find that strange, perhaps, but I don't. Not after what I've seen. C— could make you feel that way, like the rest of the world had simply stopped existing.

Best were the times when we were snidely mocking the cream of Parisian society to their faces. Le reine was still regent in those days, but Mazarin had the rule of the nation—and for good reason. But everyone was slurring him in their parlors, as though they had a better grasp of foreign policy than our own Italian genius in the Louvre. While the peasants outside were growing more and more discontent with the crown and Mazarin particularly, the fops were dancing and laughing at the plight of the Bohemians. So we sneered at them and made them into jokes in their own salons.

The town began to talk about us. Those hellions, those rapscallions we became. Yet somehow, C— always got us into the chic gatherings anyway. I thought we'd be blackballed, but people actually seemed to like us. One night at the Marquis' we each put on the airs of one of Paris' famous socialites: the Mme de Sévigné, who'd just fled the city to get married to Henri de Sévigné a few years prior. She was a nasty letter-writer and some of her claptrap against Mazarin's niece, Mme Mancini, had just come out in society. I flounced across the room, dashing off mimed letters one after the next in an orgy of laughter while C— pretended to be Mazarin himself, fretting over what they portended; "Ees-a thees-a plot?" he gargled in perfect imitation of the statesman. We'd become social satirists, the toast of the town.

One evening, when I'd gotten quite a lot of champagne and port down, C— convinced me to imitate the abbé d'Aubiniac, François Hédelin, who I did a passable impression of. We were at l'Hôtel de Rambouillet, which was obviously not the best choice of venue for the occasion. Indeed, even Mme Sévigné was there, scowling at us as though we'd killed one of her prized pets. In a sense, we probably had; her reputation was a shambles, at least for a few weeks. Anyway, what I didn't know then was that Richelieu himself was watching when I, as the abbé, pretended to grapple and fuck C— in the ass while he pranced about proclaiming himself the duc de Fronsac. You maybe don't know enough about France back then. You see, Fronsac was one of Richelieu's nephews and Hédelin was his tutor.

Of course no one said anything, they just let us make complete asses of ourselves. That night, when we were wandering drunken through the city, C— laughed and told me that he'd known Richelieu was there all the time. "I saw him from the minute we stepped in!" And then he laughed. That stupid, ugly, beautiful charming laugh that threatened to draw me in and disarm me. But I wasn't to be disarmed. No, I was furious, seething. My chances at advancement had just been shot in a single go. I railed at him, I nearly cuffed him. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't restrained myself. He might have killed me. I didn't know then that he could have, just like that.

"I'm going home," I said sullenly. He laughed at me and assured me everything would be alright. Just come for another drink, ami, just one more. "I'm going home, damn it," I replied, to show him I was serious.

Didn't I just? He took me by the shoulders and looked into my boozy eyes. "You think they didn't deserve it?"

"Deserve it? You've sunken my hopes for a captaincy, you god-forsaken fiend!" I railed. "The cardinal! In front of the cardinal, we as much as said that his nephew was raped daily by that bloody lawyer!"

"Come with me," he said, and he grabbed me roughly by the arm and began to walk in a very determined manner away from the Île de la Cité. I wanted to fight him, but his grip was iron-strong. His fingers bruised my flesh and I glared occasionally at him to let him know I wasn't having a good time any longer. He didn't seem to care, for his face was all pale and trembling with anger.

He took me into the darker quarters of the city. When I asked where we were going, he refused to answer. It was clear that he knew his way—he took no turn at random, but every step was purposeful and determined. At last we slowed. I knew were we were: one of the roughest patches of Paris in our day. "Why are we here?" I demanded of him. He just piloted me into an alleyway and pointed at the lean gentilhomme at the far end. Some nob getting sucked off, it seemed to me, until the moon caught his face. By God! It was the abbé d'Aubiniac, may the Lord strike me down if I'm mistaken! And the little figure attending to his cock was a boy of no more than twelve. Some street urchin. "How did you—?"

C— cut me off. "I know everything that goes on this city, ami. You just don't understand that yet, to your loss."

Over the next few days, C— took me to gambling hells and showed me how to make money. Not that I could replicate the feats he pulled off. He simply told me where to place my silver or when to draw cards and I did as he said. My money began to rapidly multiply. "In exchange for losing you Richelieu's favor," he explained. All very well, save for the mysterious manner in which my sous seemed to come pouring in. But you don't look a gift horse in the mouth, unless it's brought to you by Greeks.

I used the money to buy better lodgings, better clothes, and better perfumes. C— complimented me on my taste often, and we bought a shared stake in a brothel off the Rue de Temple, ironic as that may sound to you now. We continued to attend parties and salons. Though I wanted to reduce the number of shows of "witticism," C— would have none of it. We burned our bridges as fast as they were made, lampooning the great and small alike.

Around this time the crowds were starting to get ugly. Winter was in full swing, and the price of bread had come down again thanks to Mazarin's price controls, but people still complained about his taxes. They didn't understand, I suppose, that the taxes were what enabled the cardinal to release food and subsidize the city granaries and flour. It didn't matter, for no one at the salons seemed to care in the slightest.

I was sleeping off a terrible gueule de bois from the night before when C— had plied me with three bottles of port, a jaunt in our own bordel, and a midnight hack ride at high speeds around the city. The driver was mortified but we just laughed and laughed, the freezing Parisian air stripping our throats dry as we leaned from the windows to howl at the moon. C— came to my lodgings the very next afternoon and roused me from my stupor. I cursed him and threw a mug at him, but he only laughed and got me to my feet. "You remember Mme de Sévigné?" he asked me. Of course I did, I told him, how could I not? After our little joke, the Madame had scuttled three engagements of mine to meet fine young women.

"You know I was trying to settle down," I told C—, to which he only grinned fiercely, like a baboon.

He tapped me on the forehead with the silver grip of his stick cane. Now they're all the rage, but back then I think he was one of the only people who had one. "Her husband has come to the city, and I think it's time we take a look at his parlor."

I didn't know what he meant, because of course it was still light out and there would be no salons opening until later in the day. Besides which the Mme de Sévigné didn't keep a salon of her own—she preferred visiting others. But C— led me towards the Île de la Cité again and I realized that we were going to the townhouse the Sévigné's owned along the Rue Saint-Séverin. "We'll never get in there," I grumbled, pointing out the footmen, the gate, the high spikes of iron along the walls, and the well-tended garden. Once again, C— just smiled. It was then that I think my love of him peaked. I'm not ashamed to say that I felt a burning urge to kiss him on the mouth, and damn be to the consequences. I didn't, of course. Don't look at me that way, young man. If you'd known C—...

He took me around back, weaving through the side-alleys until we came to a servant's entrance near the stables. "She parades her marriage around, speaking of her husband as though he were a golden Adonis," C— said. "And meanwhile butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." He gave me a puckish glance, the twinkle in his eye that spoke of imminent evil and danger glimmering. "But we'll see about that, eh, mon ami?"

The servants appeared to know him, and let him in without a second question. We crossed through a back courtyard and went into the Sévigné house through the kitchens. Old women and young men alike bowed before him and greeted him with a deferential air. The head chef, a fat middle aged creature with dugs down to her waist, gave us both toasted almonds to eat and nearly fell over herself fawning on him. I was a little jealous, I'll admit. How did he know these people? He'd barely been out of my sight in months!

We walked through the twilight rooms of the house, passing drawn curtains and slender shafts of light as though they were a forest of silence. He pointed his cane at the staircase that swooped down into the main foyer. "Now we shall see the loving couple for what they are, hmm?" At the top of the stairs there was a grotesque trophy of the kind that Henri de Sévigné liked to keep. He was a hunter, both with bow and pike, and he apparently killed fifty or more Bretagne harts each year. There was a great stag's head right at the top of the stairway, uncouthly mounted upon the wall, its ugly little mouth partly open. I don't know what he was thinking or what person in their right mind would ever deign to be entertained in a house with such a gory keepsake on public display... but there it was, right against the fine Damask-style wall papering.

Quietly as church mice, we crept up the stairwell. C— stayed at its head, but pointed with his cane to the place where I should go and listen. There was a door part-way open, a pool of winter sunlight spilling from it. On soft feet, I slunk towards it. I could hear the murmuring of voices, one male and one female, on the far side. As I drew nearer, they resolved into words. "I can't help it, woman. It's not my fault!"

"Oh, truly? Is that it Henri? It's my fault then?"

I glanced back at C—. He gestured for me to peek inside. I did as he bid me, and I saw the elegant spread of the Marquis' bed, the unbolted windows, and the Madame de Sévigné sitting on the bedcovers. Henri was propped up against the crown of the bed, his cock flaccid in his Madame's hand. She was partly undressed, her breasts free and her gown part-way torn. I nearly choked at the sight. "I can't say this has ever happened to me before we were married," Henri said.

"And yet it seems every night and afternoon's occupation, no matter what steps we take," his wife replied acidly.

I wanted to flee, but I knew if I moved quickly I would draw attention to myself with the noise. I gave C— an imploring look. There was something strange about the way he stood, all outlined in the dim shadows of the hall. It took a moment for me to realize what it was and then: spreading horns. He was framed just so against the head of the stag. He seemed to tower nearly nine feet in height, and from his brow there sprouted the grim shadows of the stag's horns. The illusion vanished as I made my way toward him, but the whole scenario left a sour feeling in my gut for days.

Of course, C— hadn't just brought me there to give me a glimpse of the home life of the Madame. No indeed, for he began cajoling me just the following day that I must make use of our new found knowledge. "She has interrupted your pursuit of a bride," he said. "So now you must interrupt her marriage. She clearly isn't being satisfied in the boudoir."

I knew better than to ask him how he'd found that secret out. At the time I thought he must have half the servants of Paris on his payroll. There was no accounting for the things he seemed to know, otherwise. Ha! If only that had been true. But then, I wouldn't be so stinking rich now, eh? And I certainly wouldn't have been able to make myself a Duke.

At his urging I pursued the Madame de Sévigné until I had her in a cloak room. She purred for me, and C— fed me just enough information that I would always know what to say or do to keep her close. I was beginning to resent his interference just a little bit; it had started in good fun, but it seemed he was intent on being my guide through life, and each time he drew back the curtain to show me something sordid I felt a little part of myself drain away. The final straw came when he offered to let me take money from the coffers of Notre-Dame. "My God, C—! Does your wickedness know no bounds? Those are men of God!"

That was the end of our relationship. He scowled at me, snarled. "You think they're men of God, do you? Is that what you think? I'll show you what those men are!" I didn't want him to, I told him as much, but that night he dragged me all the same to the cathedral. I half expected it to be locked, but the doors sprang open to his touch. Damn, I thought, I wish he would stop! Just for a moment halt his relentless attack on everything around him. Society was corrupt, yes, everyone knew that! But it was still a place where people had to live—where I had to live. And he was making it nigh unlivable for me. I wanted to be ignorant, I realized then, I wanted to ignore the evil truths that made up the underpinnings of my station. Did I tell you that he showed me a slave market? No? Before that, a week or so before, when I was still bedding the Mme, he took me to a slave dock where Africans and some Europeans were chained up and sold off the coast to be bound for the Americas.

That night he led me through the maze of pillars, naves, aisles, and back rooms of Notre-Dame de Paris, I felt like I was going to be sick. The most beautiful building in France, le gloire de Paris, he was going to turn into shit around my ears. "You think these are men of God!" he scoffed again. His voice echoed through the sleepy cathedral but he seemed unafraid of being found out. "You still, after all I have shown you, believe that the world is worth caring about! Ha! You're a fool. Come this way. Come on! I will show you what everything is built upon. The beautiful stained glass stands in a mire of shit, mon ami."

He led me at last to a back room where a big ledger was kept. He opened it and showed me the lists of payments the cathedral had been making. I couldn't believe it—at the behest of Cardinal Mazarin, the canons of Notre-Dame had been engaged in the most heinous graft I had ever seen. There were a great many respectable nobles on the lists, investments in some south seas trading company, payoffs to mayors and comtes, and worst of all—slavery. The canons of Notre-Dame had assisted Mazarin in purchasing interest in a slaving company. I felt as though I was going to be sick.

"What's wrong with you, C—? You're no man! No man could bare to look the world in the face like this. So tell me!" My voice grew in volume until I was near shrieking. "Tell me why you would do this!"

"Pfffaugh," he said, shaking me off like a dog throws off a louse. "I thought you were different. I thought we shared something, that you could be made to understand."

It was then that I realized everything. C— drew himself up and I saw the shadow of those horns sprouting from his forehead. How could he have known the things he knew? How could he have charmed those servants in the household of the Sévignés? There was only one answer. "You are the Devil!" I gasped.

"The Devil!" he cried. "I have been here since before the Devil was born! I am Paris, I am the Boatman. Who are you, damn you? You have sucked from my teat, enjoyed my company, and done my bidding—who are you? I have not made this filthy city. You made it. Men like you, men who think and act and pretend at goodness. I should strike you down!" He raised his stick cane and the spars of stone in the ceiling cracked and leaked dust. He seemed stronger here, as though the very ground of the Île de Cité gave him strength. I cowered. "You ungrateful creature! Look at the ugliness you have made for your own glorification! Look at the edifice you have raised on bones and misery! This is your so-called civilization! This is your so-called France!"

He struck me and I blacked out. The blow should have killed me. I woke in my apartments. I never saw C— again after that, nor heard even a word of him spoken in the salons. Shortly, my invitations stopped coming and I was no longer one of the highlights of French society. But C— had taught me many things about human nature, yes? He had shown me where the levers were, and how to work them. I used his lessons well, my friend. That chocolate you're drinking; do you think I would be able to afford it if I had not been as devious as my old friend, Monsieur le Diable?

I hear they have found an old pagan relic in the earth beneath Notre-Dame. Some kind of obelisk? And it has a horned man dancing upon it, non, engraved in the stone? Yes, that is he, my one-time friend. The beautiful Monsieur C—. So, now you know why I refuse to visit Paris.

Ricohombre

Señor, I beg of you to consider this humble package of papers just the first of many ways in which I shall repay you. I, your slave and servant, could never have survived my ordeal without your support not only in the reals you have given me and the assistance in the courts, but also in the favor you have shown my brother Santiago by having him proclaimed a Hierofante in the Fe de la Sol. From the bottom of my heart, Señor, we all thank you.

Cruzadores of the Fe de la Sol

A visitor to this strange country of ours must wonder how we came here. Is it true that we landed amongst these lush gardens and discovered ancient walled cities uninhabited but ready for the claiming? Si, this is so. Five hundred and fifty years ago we first arrived in this land, and in that time we have become a people to be well-reckoned with. The native inhabitants of the gardens call us now the Militaritos, the Children of War, for so mighty were we that they had never seen our like.

The historiadores tell of a fleet of ships that were commanded by a proud man, noble in bearing and countenance, and of a great storm off a foreign island that sent them scattered by the hands of fate. But rather than be dashed to splinters against the rocks, Capitán Medina (for such is the name of our hero, first king, and first regicide) demanded the old water-witch he kept always by his side save his people. He sacrificed many of them that day, but we were borne from danger to danger. Our ancestors sailed dark and perilous waters, but we they came at last to this place... to Paraíso.

Rey Medina-Sidonia, the first King of Paraíso

The Cities of Our Noble Home
Cascabel, the greatest of our cities. What ancients inhabited it we know not. It was first settled by King Modena in the earliest of times, and served as the heart of our kingdom when we fought the Crudo for possession of the Praderas Centrales. Flowering gardens, mighty waterfalls, and the walls of the forgotten folk define its borders. The Fe de la Sol and the Fe de la Sal both inhabit it in temples they have raised to their own grandeur.

This is the home of the Palacio de la Infanta, from which our proud Reyes rule.

Paraíso, the Isles of the Militaritos

The Nobiles of Paraíso
The Rey and the Infanta
Our most beloved king, Alvaro Trastamara, is the fourth in this noble line. His father's father's father won the throne during the War of the Gardens. He is beloved of his people, who think on him as a doting father. Their love is ever more with him in these latter days, as the Reina Trystina was taken by the White Fever four years ago.

Their daughter, the little Infanta Isabel, is the beloved pride of the entire kingdom. Her every mood is known in the courtyards and marquets of the city by all and sundry. We hang upon her words and pray that her dark spells will not endanger her livelihood.

The Duques and Duquesas
The greatest lords of the kingdom, there are three Duques and two Duquesas. They rule the Central Provinces under the Rey and are arranged around Cascabel like a constellation. Each has their own schemes and plots, but all are loyal to the kingdom.

The Marqués and Marquésas
Beyond the boundaries of the Central Provinces are the hard lands. Marqués and Marquésas govern these territories, granted with vast military powers. The titles are not hereditary, but rather appointed.

The Condes and Condesas
The Condes and Condesas make up the majority of the upper nobility in the kingdom. They are the powers in the Rey's court, and they assist him in the governance of the land. It is from their ranks that potential Marqués and Marquésas are drawn, and them also who support the great edifices of the Cults.

The Barónes and Baronesas
The lesser nobility, the Barónes are charged with keeping their lands safe and the roads in repair, raising troops and keeping them outfitted with musket and sword, and generally ensuring the continuation of the kingdom and the enforcement of the tax structure.

Other Folk of this Land
The Crudo - This race of green-skinned folk inhabited the lands before us. They were here to see Los Antiguos vanish or be destroyed, and they have learned much from them. They are steeped in strange alchemical arts, and know how to make powerful weapons the likes of which we cannot match. Still, their disunity is our strength. The Crudo Principes are more concerned with fighting each other than fighting us. Their daemoniac skills are turned always to self-annihilation.

Crudo Magical Items
The Cazador. While our arma de fuego can spit hot lead, the arms of the Crudo are known for even greater might. The chief amongst their arsenal is a long musket known as the Cazador, which is often made from the tusks of an oliphant and hard horn-wood, all carved into fantastical shapes. The Cazador es let out a great bellow shriek when they are fired and a pale blue ghost-smoke drifts up into the air. The shot penetrates all armor, and those struck by it often die within the hour from a horrible wasting disease transmitted by the ball. No balls have ever been recovered from these dread weapons, so the eruditos believe that they dissolve in flight.

The Perferadora. These are Crudo cannon that have been fashioned from the horns of deceased demons. They are used against city walls, primarily, though I have seen them loaded with crudo alquitran (that is, pitch or tar) which is fired in massive globs to mow down tens of soldiers at a glance and injure hundreds more. However, the primary shot fired by these beastial weapons is an iron ball filled with small innocuous looking filings. When exposed to air, however, they glitter and burn like lightning and may crack stone with ease.

While Crudo are not recommended to be used as a player race, it is possible that they may be slaves or serve the men of Paraísa. If that is the case, the following modifications can be used:

+1 str, +1 con, +1 int, -2 wis, -1 cha

Their stats may be higher than 18. They may be fighters, thieves, Cura Del Sol, other types of priests, and they may even be wizards.

The Ogro - A beastial race indeed, the ogro have served as the work-horses of Paraíso for centuries. They are fit only to be slaves, their limbs thick and slow and their minds incapable of holding much in them.

Ogro are certainly not good for players, but if you decide to allow a player to begin as an ogro slave, use the stats from the Complete Humanoid for ogres.

The Bribon - Also called the dog-folk. The bribon inhabit forests and unexplored dells, and may even swarm over ruins left behind by Los Antiguos. They communicate in a barking howling language, and have been known to overwhelm border posts and caravans. Crudo despise them and kill them on sight.

Kits

These define your place in Paraísone society as well as your background. The rules from A Mighty Fortress should be kept in mind.

Warriors
Ricohombre

The Ricohombres are men and women who beat the boundaries. They push back the edges of Paraíso and settle the wilds. They are known as brutal folk, capable of just about anything. They serve the almighty real and no faith or king. It's said that there are whole bands of Ricohombres in the wilds. 

Requirements: Strength 9+, all races and both genders are eligible. 

Role: Ricohombres are often hired by nobiles to deal with various blights on their property, or to establish colonies for them or otherwise extend their power. Ricohombres are not made for stand-up battle; they often wear light, maneuverable armor and do not drill extensively in the various skills which make soldiers suited for war. Rather they are often skirmishers, and they rely as much on their wit as their weapons. 

They often ply the depths of ruins left by Los Antiguos; from lost cities to ruined castles and other less wholesome dens of darkness, Ricohombres will go wherever the pay takes them. 

Weapon Proficiencies: Ricohombres may begin play with proficiency any personal weapon (but not large weapons such as cannon). 

Nonweapon Proficiencies: Survival is a required proficiency for Richombres. 

Equipment: While Richombres can use any kind of equipment, they prefer to stick to lighter armors. 

Special Benefits: When dressed in an armor lighter than mail, the Ricohombre may subtract 1 point from all initiative checks. 

Special Hinderances: Ricohombres are notorious for their unrefined behavior and suffer a -2 reaction penalty in any settled land. This may be negated or even reversed if the NPC in question has a reason to like Ricohombres.

Esclavadore

There are slaves in Paraíso, mostly those conquered by war or debt. Crudo are often slaves of this sort. Esclavadore must begin the game under the ownership of someone else, but they may be manumitted at any time. 

Requirements: Strength 9+, Con 10+ 

Role: Esclavadores are fighting-slaves who do battle for Crudo Principes or for the señors of Paraíso. They excel at battle, but are skilled with little else. 

Weapon Proficiencies: Esclavadores may learn the cannon group for 2 WP slots but they are not permitted to learn any other ranged weapon lest they turn upon their masters. 

Equipment: Esclavadores may begin play with any weapon they know (save cannon) and a single suit of leather armor. They also have 1d6 reals in spending money and an outfit furnished for them by their master. 

Special Benefits: Esclavadores gain +1 con and +1 strength from their soldiery training. 

Special Hinderances: Besides being slaves, Esclavadors receive only half the standard NWPs.

Caballero

The Caballero are descendants of nobiles or nobiles themselves in full flower. Use the Gentleman Adventurer kit from A Mighty Fortress.

Thieves

Use the thief kits from A Mighty Fortress.

Priests
Cura del Sol

The Cura of the Sun worship one of the Five Hundred Forms of the Sun-God Mithrago. They are statistically normal clerics. Other types of clerics exist, I just do not have time or the room to catalogue them here.

Wizards
Erudito

Erudito use the scholarly wizard from A Mighty Fortress