October 15, 2011

From “The Withdry Line” by Samuel Roth Palmerston

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“Don’t mind him,” the bartender said. “The Withdry family’s always been a boil on our collective asses.”

“I beg your parton?” William Withdry said, stumbling from his chair. “Say that again, you toadsucking waterserver!”

“What, the part about your grandfather being hung for stealing horses?” said the bartender. “From the only ranch in the territory? As I recall, they found him from a monogrammed kerchief he left at the scene–why, yes, that’s right, the Withdrys came in all foppish from back east looking to make a fortune and quickly slithered back into the dust.”

“You’re trying my patience, old man,” William said, swaying a bit on his feet.

“Or maybe you meant your pappy, the great filibuster, who got himself down to Mexico to earn himself a fortune to replace the one his pappy shat on,” the bartender roared. “Spent two years in a Mexican jail after his men deserted him, and your mammy had to sell everything you owned to make bail!”

A pistol was in William’s hand. “Them’s fightin’ words,” he growled.

A shotgun was in the bartender’s. “Oh, you hear that from a real poke, Billy? Where’d you be without this place, anyhow? Blind from your momma’s moonshine?”

 

October 7, 2011

From “The Ut Papyrus” by Alister G. Hawley

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“I don’t think you quite understand,” Thomson said.

“I should say I don’t,” replied Manderley. “You’re waving a piece of ancient paper with mucky-muck scribbles on it and somehow expecting this layman to intuit what it is that’s got you hot and bothered”

Thomson sighed. “This is hieroglyphic script, roughly contemporaneous with the Narmer Palette.” Seeing the blank look on Manderley’s face, he quickly added “The oldest hieroglyphics we know of.”

“Sound like it might be valuable,” Manderley conceded. “Sell it and see that I get my cut as financier.”

“No, no!” Thomson cried. “Narmer was the first pharaoh, who united upper and lower Egypt and transformed a loose confederation of tribes into a nation-state. Most of his cities remain lost to us, including the military outpost at Ut and Narmer’s capitol at Thinis.”

“I’m still leaning toward selling it,” said Manderley. “I think I could sniff out a buyer that could keep us fully funded for a year–more if it’s private and not a museum.”

“Then you’d be about as savvy as the people in Twain’s story that burned mummies for locomotive fuel. This papyrus was located in a dig that appears to be the ruins of the Ut outpost. It contains an exact map to the location of Thinis.”

 

October 6, 2011

From “Iotherne and the Prefect” by Percy H. Lisal

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From a series of clay tablets found in the ruins of a sacked and burned Roman settlement in northern Dacia.

As the local prefect, it was my civic duty to preserve the veneration of the gods and the deified Imperial luminaries. Ordinarily, the emergence of a local cult would have been of no concern, but devotees of this “Iotherne” claimed that their goddess had subsumed our deified ancestors to gain their knowledge and prowess, and that she would soon arrive to purge Rome from the borders of the land.

This led her followers to begin stockpiling weapons and desecrating temples, in addition to making them a direct threat to the hegemony of the empire. I’ve made preparations to have my men enter the nearby settlements and detain or execute anyone who venerates an idol of Iotherne that we have captured. I expect the operation to proceed smoothly, and

Text ends here abruptly

 

September 29, 2011

From “The Forgotten Emperors” by R. Martha Oakgrove

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During the Crisis of the Third Century, when 25 emperors ruled in a span of 50 years, the only qualifications for the purple seemed to be legions and the money to pay them. Such was the case with Caesar Marcus Aurelius Illyrius Augustus, better known to his contemporaries as simply Illyrius, who ruled the Empire from 280-283.

Illyrius came to power in the typical way, by bribing Emperor Probus’ men to assassinate him. A cavalry commander, he was from a long line of Dalmatian nobility who claimed ancestry from the mythical Illyrius spoken of in the myths.

As such, Illyrius began an ambitious program to emulate his idol, Augustus, by simultaneously consolidating power and burnishing the facade of a constitutional ruler advised by the Senate. Senators saw their number and pay increased; coins showed Illyrius in simple Senaate robes, and thousands were put to death for the new crime of seditionem imperium against the princeps.

The most curious thing about Illyrius was his fate: despite being arguably no better or no worse than his predecessors, when he was assassinated by Carus in August 283 the Senate took the unprecedented step of declaring that it was the Emperor Probus who had been killed, implying that he had reigned uninterrupted. This particularly insidious form of damnatio memoriae ensured that Illyrius was left off most lists of Emperors even to this day.

When Carus died of a lightning strike less than a year into his reign, some felt it divine retribution.

 

September 24, 2011

From “The Sualize Seven” by Marcian DuClare

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The soldiers had merely gone home for a few hours–they were all conscripts from the village of Sualize in the Ardennes, which was only a short distance from the front lines. Not only that, they had left the line on November 13, two days after the armistice which had ended the shooting war.

Nevertheless, the French Army arrested each of the seven men as soon as they could be tracked down, and they were sentenced to execution by firing squad by a military tribunal. The order was personally countersigned by Marshal Foch. With mutinies throughout the German armed forces, and unrest and agitation throughout the soldier, sailors, and workers of the Continent, the marshal probably hoped to forestall any similar actions by his own troops with a firm show of force.

The action backfired. By November 20, demonstrations had been organized in Paris and provincial centers demanding the release of the “Sualize Seven.” Their cause became fashionable among French and British socialists, especially in the face of the continuing compromises and disappointments coming out of Versailles. For a time, it looked like the men might be spared, but events in Russia, Hungary, and elsewhere eventually overtook the demonstrators.

With events of world-changing importance afoot all over the globe, interest in the Seven waned. Eventually, three men were picked at random as “ringleaders” and executed, with the other four sentences to long prison terms. Two of them were imprisoned long enough to see the swastika flying over their prison yards in 1940.

 

September 21, 2011

From “The Inland Manifest” by Taylor A. Brindee

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“T. T. Viol,” Max read. “1780.”

“Sounds like an Italian name or something,” Carlson said. “You sure the parchment’s authentic to the Revolutionary War?”

“Near as I can tell,” Max said. “I’d have to cut it up to be sure.”

“Can you make out anything else?”

Max squinted and moved the paper around more under the ultraviolet light. “There’s a list of some kind. I see the phrase ‘port of’ here, and I think this is ‘rope’ or ‘barrel.'”

“Ship’s manifest,” Carlson said. “Signed by the captain or quartermaster.”

“Could be,” Max allowed, “but if what Nesbith told you was true, that trunk has been in her family for generations. And I’m sure you know that in 1780 this was all wilderness, with no port for a hundred miles in any direction!”

 

August 27, 2011

From “Denounced” by Glinka Konstantinovich Lyadov

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“If you are to tell your story–musically, theatrically, operatically–you must do it through proscribed means and with proscribed methods,” Dr. Stasov said. “It is like walking a tightrope.”

“How do you mean?”

“You must set your story in the distant past or the ideal present,” said Stasov. “You must describe it in terms of class warfare between bourgeois oppressors and proletarian revolutionaries, even if it predates Marx and Engels by thousands of years.”

“I want a story of love to be told in my ballet,” Voin said. “I will write the music first and then work out the steps with a choreographer.”

“Then you must be careful,” Stasov remarked. “Perhaps a serf in the era of Ivan can cause a nobleman to devote himself to the cause of socialist equality. Or two collective farmers might bond in the fields, or in a tractor repair workshop. But whatever you do, the nuances of your story must be through that lens. The alternative is denunciation and all that implies.”

 

August 23, 2011

From “The Cobh Reel” by Peter McDonnell Jutland

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They called it the Cobh Reel, and it had only been played and danced once.

During Cromwell’s campaigns in Ireland, a contingent of men pledged to support a free Ireland found themselves caught between the Scylla of a Royalist garrison and the Charybdis of an advancing Republican formation. Their musicians, drawn from the hinterlands, had knowledge of the Reel passed down from the ancient time of the Irish High Kings, and proposed it to their commander. He, a coward that planned to watch the battle from a nearby escarpment and flee if it went ill, agreed.

He saw the Republicans and Royalists clash with his own force caught between. He even heard snatches of the music through the din of battle joined.

He did not see the force that emptied the battlefield of men, bearing them wailing off to parts unknown and leaving only blood and armor behind.

The few survivors were maddened by what they had seen–blinded, deafened, or shouting only in strange tongues. Every last one was caked in the blood of their fellows. Cromwell’s lieutenants reported that his forces had been wiped out by an ambush, and they were right enough about that. But as to who had done the ambushing, and what the Cobh Reel had to do with it, well…there was a reason it was only used once.

 

August 6, 2011

From “The Horror at Demon’s Island” by Jean Phillippe DuClare

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“You consider this to be the lap of luxury, Captain?” Pierre said, indicating his hut with a sweep of the hand. “Believe me, I am almost ready for the regimen and steady diet of penal colony life after this.”

“Tell me what happened, Pierre. And stop talking us in circles or you’ll find yourself under the guillotine or up against a pockmarked wall.”

“The supply ships stopped coming two years ago,” Pierre said. “About when Paris fell. Order broke down, the guards deserted us in the middle of the night and took the only boats. The lucky ones made it ashore by swimming. The unlucky ones? Maybe still on one of the islands. Maybe shark food. Isn’t that what you’re here to find out?”

 

August 4, 2011

From “The 1000 Insane Poets of the Late Dynasty” by Nokin Kobayashi, translated and adapted by Irene York

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“You should be honored,” said the Vice-Counselor. “The Emperor has bestowed a great favor on your younger brother.”

“Imprisonment is not a favor,” said Wei. “My brother should be among family.”

“Your filial piety is impressive, but do not think that absolved you of responsibility should you oppose the Son of Heaven,” the Vice-Counselor replied. “The Emperor’s word is final.”

Wei was led into a large room, richly decorated, where many writing surfaces and quills with inkstones were on display. “Your brother and the other divine poets will be housed here, given access to food, drink, concubines, and the Imperial Library. All the Emperor asks in return is that their maddened scribblings continue to flow.”

“And why is that, exactly?” said Wei.

“For amusement. Many of the writings can be surprisingly beautiful. For insight, as well, since the shen spirits speak to them in an altogether different way.”

 

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