Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Still battling mystery, partly due to serious case of crud. I can’t think of anything non-fictiony to write, sorry, so here is a bit from A Fatal Stain:

Mind you, I didn’t leave the door unlocked on purpose – not as such. But it wasn’t a big deal, because this wasn’t a bad area of Goldport. Oh, okay, so my friend Ben thought that downtown Goldport near the college was a slum and that gangs fought in the street in front of my house every day. But Goldport was never a big town, though it had achieved a somewhat large and definitely rowdy population during the gold boom. That had left its echo in places named Goldpan Alley and Three shots street, and the Leather and Lace hotel up the street which was a bed and breakfast on the site of a famous brothel.

The gold bust had left the town deserted, its fine Victorian buildings falling to pieces, until UC Goldport had moved to town, and brought with it a boom in tech and other white collar jobs.

Goldport was so white bread it was a wonder no one had ever tried to spread butter an inch thick all over it. Even downtown Goldport was as safe as suburbs in larger cities. If gangs fought on the street in front of my house it would be The Paperclips versus The Calculators. They’d be hauling some serious numbers and glaring daggers at each other. They could do serious damage with the edges of their sharpened, gold mastercards.

But of course Cas thought otherwise and there was no point arguing. After all he saw whatever crime there was in town – and for him even a single crime would be too much. If murders didn’t happen, he’d upgrade graffitti to serious crime status.

“I’m sorry.” I gave him something approaching a contrite smile – at least if my acting abilities were up to snuff – while I looked at the table.

It started innocently. At the time we were living in the small mountain town of Manitou Springs. There were the two of us, (of course) our two sons and four cats. So the logical thing for my younger son to ask for, for his fourth birthday, was… two hamsters.

In a sign our lunacy was too far gone, we then named them Butterscotch and Fudge. And then – such our folly – we put them in an aquarium on the back porch. An aquarium covered only by fine mesh net.

Oh, yeah, one more thing – these hamsters were both female.

The cats left the hamsters curiously unmolested, but the hamsters clearly felt that they lived under hostile conditions.

In the dark of night, they would screech in their little aquarium like tribbles in heat. And in the summer – such our folly – we left the back-porch windows open. So their call went out to the world at large and – I only surmise this, but it’s almost certain – all over the rodent world little signs sprang up written in whatever it is rodents write in saying “Free the Aquarium Two.” And “No Mercy For the Captors.” Rodent students organized protests and there would have been rodent demonstrations at our door step save for the fact that at least one of our cats was the great calico huntress.

Squashed, ignored, desperate, digested the surviving neighboring rodents resorted to extreme measures.

His name was Jean Pierre and he was born in the yard of a neighborhood French family, from which he learned protest songs, a disdain for the establishment, and a tendency to smoke really stinky cigarettes.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It started as so many things did with Pete, our oldest cat. You name a cat Petronius the Arbiter, you get what’s coming to you. In this case, it probably wasn’t so much his fault. Pete was getting old. He was fifteen or so, and he caught a cold. As those of you in multiple cat households know, you really can’t have them all together when they are sick. So we locked Pete in the powder room in the attic where we tempted his fading appetite with truly stinky tuna.

Now, to get the action in this story, a little description of the locale must intrude. Manitou Springs looks like a village in an early twentieth century comic, with buildings perched at erratic intervals on the mountain side. Our house was near the top of one of the hills. Our garden was seventeen steps up from the street. The house itself was three floors high and my office was on the third floor. The only doors into the house were on the bottom floor, and we only used the front one, because the back porch one stuck. One of my boys had a door to a second floor porch, but to get to his room you had to walk through his brother’s room AND a bathroom.

The third floor itself, up a narrow staircase, consisted of small powder room, on the left (with a door.) Dan’s office, on the right, without a door (just a railing dividing it from the top of the stairs. And then my office, through the door straight ahead and taking up the entire front of the house. (Not as luxurious as that sounds, since most of it had sloping ceilings. It might explain something about my early writing, that I continuously walked into the side of the ceiling. HARD. To the point of giving myself near-concussion.

On that day, I was running up into my office, to get mail to take out, when I heard the oddest of sounds coming from behind the door of the powder room. It sounded like… an animal choking. I panicked. Pete was getting to be middle aged and a little odd, and I thought he was choking. I screamed for my husband, whose cat Pete was, because if Pete was having seizures, he was more likely to be calm with dan dealing with him.

As Dan came running up the stairs, I threw the door open and…

There was a small, mad-looking squirrel cornered by Pete and making the tcha-tcha-tcha sounds which I believe are French squirrel for “you’ll never take me alive, nom d’un nom.”

So… Dan and I stood stunned in the doorway (not the least of which because a rodent had survived for minutes in a room with Pete.) We stared a moment too long. The squirrel ran between our legs and … into my office, where he holed up behind the printer, singing the Marseillese in squirrel. “Allons squirrels de la patrie” – or, in other words,(Squirrel languages being less diferentiated) tcha, tcha, tcha, tcha.

After running in circles a while, we closed the door on Pete, got the phone, leafed madly through the yellow pages (yes, it was that long ago) and called Animal Control.

Most of them just hung up on us. They knew Manitou had a problem with rodents. Though they seemed to think the problem was endemic plague. And then a bright boy told us “Just leave the front door open and a path to the front door, and he’ll go straight out of it.” Now, this would make perfect sense if the path to the front door weren’t: Down the stairs (ignoring Dan’s office, which we couldn’t block) down a zigzagging corridor. Down another set of stairs (with railings we couldn’t block) past the entrance to the library (no door) and THEN out the door. But we were desperate. And Dan had a window in his office. We thought… Block the stairs. Open the window in Dan’s office. Take screen out. Get out of the way.

So… We didn’t of course realize that this was a special squirrel.

At first it seemed like everything would work. Spying his way clear, the squirrel bolted out of my office and to… Dan’s desk. Where he took advantage of a tiny hole in the back and holed up in a drawer saying tcha tcha tcha * (*translation “I am your worst nightmare, you oppressors of innocent rodents.”)

We called animal control again. One of them took pity on us and told us he wouldn’t handle it, but since the squirrel had probably got in through a hole in the roof, anyway, how about we call his friend who replaces missing roof tiles and has been known to capture the occasional wild animal. At that point, frankly, we’d have called Bezelbub and Sons, Animal Control and Soul Collection. There was something about a possibly rabid squirrel in a house with kids and cats that made our blood run cold. That the squirrel seem to be singing protest songs from inside our desk file drawer just made it even scarier. For all we knew he was collecting our account numbers to pass to the squirrel resistence.

So we called the roof repairman, who was an almost peternaturaly laid back man. We tell him that the squirrel is holed up in the file drawer, that he’s been singing protest songs and that we’re fairly sure we caught a faint wiff of galoises. He didn’t even look like we should be committed. He didn’t even ask us if the squirrel was wearing a beret. Instead, he said, “We’ll get him out,” in the tone of a man who has encountered the Rodent Liberation Front.

For his first attempt, he opened the drawer a little, holding a trap at the ready. He said this often worked. But Jean-Pierre wasn’t JUST any squirrel. Instead of falling for the trap of the oppressor, he holed up further in the drawer, a little mad eye (not that squirrel have any other kind of eye) peeking over “accounts receivable” and his defiant tcha tcha tcha echoing throughout the house.

The unflappable rodent-controller sighed and said “Well, this is more risky, but I have some sleeping gas. I’ll just pump it into the drawer. He’ll be out like a light in no time.”

So he started pumping gas into the drawer. But Jean-Pierre had clearly trained for this eventuality by snorting a little bit of sleeping gas every day.

Once the normal dosage. Tcha, tcha, tcha!

Twice the normal dosage. Tcha, Tcha, tcha!

Three times the normal dosage. I laugh in the face of your puny sleeping gas.

At that point the would-be captor opened the drawer just a little. Taking advantage of this, Jean-Pierre ran out through the opening and into the tinier opening of the drawer above it. Where he holed up saying “Never go up against a squirrel when desks are on the line!”

By now the unflappable man was thoroughly flapped. “I’ve never seen a squirrel do this before,” he said. “It’s like he’s a commando squirrel or something.”

To which Jean-Pierre replied Tcha Tcha Tcha (squirrel for “make my day.”)_

“I’m going to try something I’ve never tried before. I’m afraid of hurting him, but if I give him more gas, I’ll kill him.”

We said okay and fine. Without saying a word – because by then he knew Jean-Pierre understood human English – the man made a little lasso. Then he quickly opened the drawer with one hand, while lassoing Jean-Pierre with the other.

To everyone’s surprise – but PARTICULARLY Jean-Pierre’s – it worked. And, faster than Jean Pierre could formulate curses profane enough, the rodent-catcher threw him a little carrier and shut the door on him.

Our kids, of course, being ours and therefore of dubious sanity, wanted to see the squirrel before the man repatriated him in another neighborhood.

I’ll never forget the squirrel standing inside the cage, looking at us in unquenchable fury. I swear he was holding up his little squirrel fist and singing We shall overcome. Za, Rodentia! (Tcha, tcha, tcha.)

The punch line to this is that a couple of years later, we moved to the neighborhood to which Jean-Pierre, or, as the kids call him, super squirrel, had been relocated.

The very first night, I hear our less-than-bright cat, Euclid, make the sort of meowing sounds that mean that he’s scared of something. I run downstairs. Euclid is staring out the dining room window. And there – in the dark of night (since when are squirrels nocturn?) is a clearly elderly and bedraggled squirrel, dancing along the fence, taunting our cat, singing tcha, tcha, tcha.*

*Allons Squirrels de la patrie……

*A Guest Post by the indomitable Kate Paulk*

I’ve already devoted a fair amount of pixels to my rather less than orthodox view of Vlad III Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad Dracula (his choice of name, based on his letters). In The Allure of Evil (http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com/2011/02/allure-of-evil.html) posted to the Mad Genius Club I talked about the phenomenon of the person who serves good but does evil and how that concept applies to Vlad. The Kindness of Cruelty (http://nakedreaderpress.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/the-kindness-of-cruelty/) posted to Naked Reader Press, is about Vlad’s world and the way that impacted his decisions. Over at Kate’s Corner (my blog), The Man Behind The Monster (http://www.katepaulk.com/writing/the-man-behind-the-monster/) covers how I portrayed Vlad the man and some of the decisions that I needed to make while I was writing Impaler.

That makes it sound easy, doesn’t it? Of course, the fact that I could ramble for days over various aspects of Vlad’s life, times, and likely beliefs and actions doesn’t help matters. Researching someone that deeply tends to bring them to life, and make them part of you in that odd writer-specific way that lets a writer channel someone’s personality enough to depict them in words.

One aspect of Impaler that’s going to get interest is that most people immediately associate Vlad with the Bram Stoker creation – and of course, vampirism (please don’t go giving me counter-examples from Romania or from non-Western cultures. I know I’m speaking within a particular cultural framework. It just happens to be the one where Impaler stands a chance of selling a few copies (and yes, I’d love it to sell way more than a few copies)).

The identification of Vlad with Stoker’s Dracula (please ignore the movie for the moment – I’m talking about the book) is so strong it’s next to impossible to write a Vlad story without invoking the vampire mythos in some form even though if he’d ever run into any vampires he would have staked them through the heart – eventually. It takes a while for a stake to get that far in an impalement.

Possibly the biggest conceit in Impaler is the way I’ve handled the Vlad-as-vampire mythos: what modern readers would identify as vampirism – the need to drink fresh blood, preferably human blood – is something Vlad sees as a curse imposed on him by Mehmed II (also known as Mehmed the Conquerer, although Vlad is never that polite: Vlad usually refers to Mehmed as “Mehmed, may he rot in Hell”). The backstory for this is hinted at when Vlad’s oldest son Mihnea asks if the curse can be passed on to his children, a prospect that horrifies Vlad. There are other hints: mention of relatives who died young because of a mysterious wasting disease.

My theory here – which may or may not hold as medical science advances – is the existence of an inheritable auto-immune disorder with results that resemble anemia on steroids, combined with Vlad’s unpredictable and often berserker temper. Of course, I’ve boosted the effects of fresh blood – which could be a psycho-somatic response, too. For the purposes of the novel, it works. Vlad sees himself as cursed, and believes he may be permitted to atone for the sins the curse drives him to commit if he uses the curse in God’s service.

Traditionally, of course, the vampire is an inherently profane creature, unable to abide sacred ground or the sight of a holy symbol (this would make it horribly uncomfortable for Islamic vampires when the moon is a crescent, but the question of which holy symbol will chase off which vampire is its own post – to quote from a movie I never saw but has at least one memorable line which I read in the Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman compilation Ghastly Beyond Belief (http://www.amazon.com/Ghastly-Beyond-Belief-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0099368307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297301881&sr=1-1), with a Jewish vampire saying to a cross-waving peasant girl, “Oy, yoy, have you got the wrong vampire!” Anyway…).

Vlad is deeply religious, although I’ve taken a few liberties with just how he deals with religion. In his first reign, he clearly favored his native Orthodox faith, and scared the crap out of visiting Roman clerics – to whom he was somewhat hostile, as he presumably saw them as imposing foreign mores on his people. During his time in Hungary, he was offered freedom and a wife if he converted to Roman Christianity. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Matthias’s offer came with the unspoken “or spend the rest of your life in my prisons” – he’d already betrayed Vlad once, and had no reason to assume he’d be safe if Vlad wasn’t securely attached to him by something stronger than a sworn oath (which, incidentally, I haven’t found any evidence of Vlad breaking. His contemporaries treated sworn and signed oaths as inconveniences, but he seemed to attach a good deal of importance to keeping his promises – perhaps because he was betrayed so often by so many people he should have been able to trust). At any rate, when Vlad left Hungary to try to recapture Wallachia, he had a Hungarian wife who was also Matthias’s cousin.

I took the view that in that position, having converted for political reasons, he’d maintain the appearance of Roman practice (it wasn’t commonly known as Catholicism at this time), and probably support both branches of Christianity. Also, being familiar with both branches, I considered it likely that he’d recognize them as fundamentally similar, and that they needed to come to some kind of accommodation if the much greater threat of the Mohammedan Ottoman Empire was to be defeated. Vlad – correctly – recognized that if Europe’s Christian powers didn’t unite to stop the Ottoman advance, there would be no part of Europe safe from them. The fact that his country was one of the most likely Ottoman targets no doubt sharpened his perception of the risk, as did the well-known tendency of the Ottoman Sultans to foment wars of succession and other instability in realms they’d targeted.

The accuracy of his concern is proved by two pieces of history: within 100 years of Vlad’s death the Ottoman Empire had conquered Hungary; and less than 50 years after his death the Pope fled Rome ahead of an Ottoman invasion that was stopped only because of Mehmed II’s death and the battle for succession between his surviving heirs. By that time, Wallachia was a vassal-state of the Ottoman Empire, and remained one until the 1800s.

One of the other substantial twists on the vampire mythos in Impaler is that there are no fangs. Vlad might need blood, but he doesn’t gnaw on people’s necks to get it. Actually, he prefers to get it in the middle of a battle, but since he can’t really be slicing and dicing his many enemies every few days, he has to use other methods – principally volunteers: something that makes him intensely uncomfortable.

I find it difficult to imagine most vampires of fiction having any difficulty with someone offering them blood (this has changed somewhat in the last few decades as vampires have morphed from the always evil undead predator to sparkly sex symbols – a change I devoutly hope will not be permanent), much less preferring not to know who donated it.

Ultimately, while he’s technically a vampire (he needs to drink human blood if he wants to survive), Vlad is without doubt not your mother’s vampire. And, no, I don’t want or need to know why your mother keeps a vampire.

As never fails when I make a push to finish a novel, my younger son brought something weird home. (And recovered from it in 12 hours, the little so and so.) The something weird is making my mouth taste like I swallowed a dragon and it’s burping somewhere at the back of my throat. My head hurts and I just want to sleep.

So, even though I tried to get some work done, the progress yesterday and today wasn’t exactly marked. I took a nap, shoveled the walk (I had to get out of the house or go nuts) and spent a considerable amount of time reading The Horse, The Wheel, and Language. No, I don’t know why. I have a strong feeling it relates, somehow, to this long-shelved project called Mirrorplay.

Also – and this has a tendency to happen whenever I run a mild fever – I found myself in the middle of a weird search. In this case it was for pictures/google Earth, etc. of my place of birth.

First of all, and weirdly, apparently I’m the most famous person to come out of the region in the 21st century. (Poor region.) I.e. if you google the village/ubervillage/city you get… me. This alone almost spooked me into giving the whole thing up.

But of course, I had a fever, so I didn’t. I went on to find a map of the place with pictures people have taken integrated in it. There’s pictures from the place I grew up in and the parish church, and the cemetery which is all white marble, by regulation, and so vast it takes up several blocks on the map. Which was kind of interesting, if a little scary.

And then I got completely lost. I mean, I know the way from the cemetery to my parent’s house on foot. Or I used to. I walked it fairly often. (No, not morbid. The town hall is across from the cemetery.)

So I tried following the roads I would follow and got turned around and completely confused. This in itself is not that strange. I mean, seriously – do you know the name of your childhood streets? Well, maybe you do. And nowadays in Portugal they’re very well marked, but when I was little, I knew streets in other ways “Go by the alley where She of The Little Doggies lives. Turn at the Lighted (private part) ’s house. Then go up to where that pig escaped last year.”

On top of that, in the twenty five years since I’ve been gone, they’ve built countless stack a prole apartment buildings and tore open a lot of new streets. This contributes to my having no clue where I am at any given moment. On top of that, manipulating google-maps with my mouse was… uh… curious. So suddenly I would spin out in an unexpected direction and find myself some place only dimly remembered from adults’ conversations in youth: Paranhos; Sao Mamede Infesta (which I remember because my mom would pronounce it sambamed and my dad would add infesta like it was a joke, which I suppose it can be, because it can mean ‘infestates’);Alfena (from which, for some reason, my younger self was convinced mad people came. No, I have no idea why.)

And in the middle of all this, it hit me. The entire map of my childhood, including the places that sounded distant and far away and that built my concept of “foreign” – as in, they do things differently there – is probably no more than fifty square miles, if that. Put it another way, the place names I associated with wonder and distance; the “foreign parts” I dreamed of seeing (not that type of part. Stop it. Those were lighted.); the things I associate with vaguely strange customs and mysterious ways… that entire area would fit in the space between my home and downtown Denver. Possibly with room to spare.

Oh, and the place I always thought of as a “region” – not the village, which was much smaller, but the bigger entity, with the townhall and the church and the cemetery – is described as a village, relegating my childhood world to a hamlet, I suppose.

Weirder, though, was seeing the woods — called “Lightening Rays”, though, from reading the book I’ve been reading, it could also be a cognate of the word for “things that turn” in proto-Latin. Who knows? — and how small they are in reality. Now, mind you, I’d guess they’ve been halved since I was born, but to me those woods are THE WOODS. I like to think of them as a remnant of some old and primeval forest, but they can’t be because when we trekked in them, dad and I would find ruined homesteads and bits of Roman inscriptions. Still, it backed up almost to my grandmother’s backyard. Okay, there was the backyard wall, about maybe five feet, stone. On the other side was the neighbor’s field, stretching to the line of trees. I know sometimes we went around to the gate up the road and took that route, but most of the time, on Saturday afternoon, when dad needed to get me out of mom’s hair, so she could clean the house without me underfoot, (how’s that for mixed metaphors?) dad and I would just jump the backyard wall, walk across the fields and to the forest.

In the forest there were rabbits and birds, and lizards. And there was some pond where reeds grew. Dad used to make me flutes from them, with his pocket knife. And there were massive dragon flies. And ants. For some reason I was deeply into ants. Down the street to the train stop (it’s now almost a station with coverings, but before it was just a stop. Some trains stopped, some didn’t — and it didn’t always mean they weren’t supposed to) there were three or four anthills (that street was dirty.) We used to take them bread crumbs on Saturday and sit around watching them carry it in…

But now looking at it on the map… I think some of my friends have bigger backyards. My entire world of adventure and wonder, where every day something new happened or something unexpected revealed itself – my world of surprises and enchantment turns out to be just a little corner all too easy to fly over on Google maps.

And yet I’d trade dominium over continents and power over countries for the joy I found in my grandmother’s backyard and for the dreams with which my imagination peopled the narrow band of trees beyond it.

I figure I’ve lived a blameless life these last few weeks. The death threats and exclamations about my moral depravity and lack of social caring (read ability to toe the line) have slowed down to an almost imperceptible trickle. In other words – I iz doing it wrong.

The start of this post was something Dave put up. It’s not that far away, it’s not that inconceivable, and it’s not at all unlikely one way or another that at some point humans will find a way to do the reproduction thing without one of the genders. I grant you this is more likely to occur with women first since babies need a leasehold in a human body while growing. However, that too might not be insurmountable with a bit more biological research. Bio-wombs of some sort might do the trick.

So, we come to… Planets where the entire population is one gender. Yes, Bujold did it, and she did it, arguably, in the difficult way. But she was published by Baen.

Unless I missed something, the flood of these stories is mostly one way – mostly we’re in some idyllic future where men have been disposed of. All is peace, love and harmony. And that figure retching while reading is me.

Why? Because it’s stupid. And while a lot of science fiction is stupid – really? In the world of Star Trek no one gets paid? People just work because they want to? Behold homus novis! – this particular trope is something that drives me up the wall until I cling to the ceiling by my frayed nails.

So, why does it have this effect on me? Two reasons.

One is that it’s the suck-up’s route. (I don’t like suck ups. I used to wait for them behind the metaphorical bike sheds and beat seven kinds of… never mind. Like Pratchett’s character, I only ever managed to get six anyway.) These stories are easy to publish, they make you feel good and “progressive” with an added side of “speaking truth to power” WHILE at the same time the power – which for these purposes is the person publishing you – is cooing and billing over how wonderful you are for doing this. You want to impress me with an all-woman-peaceful world? Make it good enough that it will sell to Baen despite the publisher not being enamored of the idea. Then I’ll take my hat off to you.

Two is that it is such a gross violation of reality we know – with no explanation. And it gives people who have never experienced the unique female form of war and evil the mistaken impression that we born without a penis are some sort of angels. (It used to be most of the people who believed this were men, and that didn’t disturb me much, since deceiving them is just the nature of our game. However these days there seem to be a lot of young women raised on the fictions and neurosis of older women, who actually believe this. Unfortunately thinking they’re like onto angels, means they feel empowered to do ANYTHING: abuse, attack and attempt to destroy any victims of their collective wrath, for instance. The “mean girl” thing. Having seen this pulled on my son, I can neither endure nor countenance it.)

And if you’re wondering why I say it’s a gross violation of reality with no explanation, you’ve spent too much time in these books. And you might even believe in the original, primeval, matriarchal, all peaceful civilization…

Oh, boy. Get a chair. This is going to be a long one. I’m not going to pronounce on the original matriarchal civilization. It might or might not have existed. I suspect in some places it existed to an extent, in the dim future when the men traveled to “hunting camps” and women kept the fixed home-base. To the extent that women kept the place with its “memory” and ways of doing things, and raised the next generation of both males and females it’s quite possible they had the power in the society. But–

Peaceful?

I bring a tale of woe, my friends. Long ago and far away, I attended an all girl school. A terrible place, where I got to see the behavior of an all-girl society. One on one and woman on woman, women are less likely to pound and pummel. Too bad. Bruises heal and the friend you pounded last week becomes your friend again.

Women… sneak and betray. They tell tales. They build networks. They strive, continuously for dominance.

Pardon me if I sound mysogenistic. I’m not. This is the result of evolution too. Women gathered while men hunted. Our survival depended on manipulating the other women in the band so our children got priority and were watched very closely while we were busy with the berry bush. Bitch queens – bless their hearts – had a LOT of descendants. And their daughters did equally well if they bred true. Men, on the other hand, hunted. Yeah, they were more violent. On the other hand, a man who was unswervingly loyal to his mates knew a spear would rescue him form the mammoth’s tusk. Because he’d saved someone else last week.

(Yes, the patriarchal societies MIGHT have whooped the behind of the matriarchal ones, but my guess is the patriarchal ones were nomads, moving their whole tribe, and they waited till just the women were in the camp. It’s also possible the women didn’t have horses or the wheel. There are other explanations than women-good, men-evil. Not ALL losers were the good guys. In fact, in history… oh, never mind.)

So, are all males loyal, etc. ? Oh, please. There’s a spectrum. Just as there is for women. They are just differently VILLAINOUS. And differently violent. We know for a fact that most mass murderers who kill strangers are men. Most of the mass murderers who kill their nearest and dearest – particularly children in their care – are women. And it might be oppression making them do it, but I doubt it. The behaviors seem to hold true in every society.

So if we did away with me, what would we have? As it happens I have a novel plotted called Starsong, in which women are the dominant gender (there are reasons. It’s alternate history.) What would happen would be the Borgias writ large. At least that’s my opinion. Perhaps no armies in the fields – maybe – but a lot of inexplicable mass poisonings.

Given that, you see why the peaceful all-fem planet makes me ill. But, as announcers say, there’s more: to a vast segment of the male public (most of them in positions of power in publishing) this meme is even more of a win-win. Because not only do they get to don a feminist mantle and completely betray truth, but – even better – they get to have scenes of girl on girl sex. (Which at least one male editor [who, surprisingly, went on to buy me afterwards, for which he has me respect, considering the response I gave to this,] assured me “even girls like”. My response had to do with “only a small percentage.”)

And that ANNOYS the living daylights out of me. I have nothing against lesbians. Some of my best friends are lesbian. I wouldn’t mind if my (adopted) sister married one. BUT I do mind this sort of thing being used to scratch an itch and not even acting like honest porn but instead disguising itself behind high-minded nonsense.

If you don’t find this glorification of women at the expense of males, if you don’t think it infects society to a ridiculous degree, do me a favor. Next time you’re watching TV, take one of the commercials featuring a family. Change the roles of husband and wife. Now, are you offended? Should women be portrayed like that, as total dunces and men as all knowing?

If you tell me current commercials are more realistic, then you’re too far gone…

What memes seem to you to violate reality as we know it? What do you think has caused them to become entrenched? Which of them are just silly and which of them potentially reality-distorting in their ubiquity? And what do you think can be done about it?

*Crossposted at Classical Values and Mad Genius Club*

by Robert A. Hoyt

It’s that time again. Streaming live to you from the Entertainment and Sports Brain Network, this is your only source for real fantasy football, the annual Ultra Bowl game highlights. This year’s matchup is one of the starkest contrasts in playing style in Ultra Bowl history, with the New York Ninjas versus the Alaska Yetis. This year the game was held in the brand new Tesla Memorial Stadium in Colorado (Interestingly, the stadium was not built specifically for the Colorado C’thulus, who will be moving instead to a new home stadium in Ryleh. The project is due for completion sometime in mid to late 2011.). After some of the temporal and spacial problems caused by the malfunction of a local inter-dimensional transporter unit, it was thought that the field would be unusable. However, thanks to deft, and according to some, slightly illegal, deals with local safety officials, the field was cleared for use right on schedule. Fans marveled at the shiny weather-proof force field and luxurious ultra-modern anti-gravity seating, with most figuring out how to use said seating after sustaining only minor injuries.

· The Yetis, in characteristic fashion, arrived on the field loudly. The din from the arrival of the team was clearly taken as a challenge by the Yeti cheerleaders, who responded by jumping up and down and yelling back even louder. The sight of an angry, strategically shaved female yeti cheerleader is indescribable, but even if we could, for legal reasons, we wouldn’t. No one is entirely certain when the Ninjas arrived. The referees eventually had to ask where they were, whereupon they materialized from various hiding places around the field, including one player who was disguised,ironically, as a referee.

· The coin toss went to the Ninjas, who communicated their desire to receive through secret pieces of microfilm hidden in various places on each of the referees. One of the referees petitioned to have the Ninjas barred from the game on the grounds that “a man’s underwear is private”, but the writers of the Ultra Bowl rulebook (now revised twice a year, to be on the safe side), apparently hadn’t thought of that one yet. One of the Yetis, upset by the coin flip, thoroughly smashed the coin with a fist before plodding off to their end of the field.

· The Yetis offered a magnificent kickoff, which made it the 70 yard mark. Ninja receiver Arnold Itsimoru caught the kickoff with a magnificent triple somersault and began to run up-field. In an unanticipated move, with Yeti defenders closing in, Itsimoru threw a smoke pellet into the ground, and continued running as the bewildered Yetis collided behind him. The confusion allowed Itsimoru to get an unheard-of touchdown on the return.

· The Yetis bounced back quickly, unmercifully using their aptitude for snow and ice spells to literally freeze the Ninjas in their tracks. At this point it became clear that even a Ninja is not especially agile when suffering from severe frostbite. Counteracted by strategic and agile defense by the Ninjas, the Yetis made a hard-won struggle for dominance of the field, scoring a goal but failing the conversion thanks to a deftly handled Katana by Ninja defender Jordan Faraday. The teams were stalemated for the remainder of the first quarter.

· In the second quarter, Snowfang, quarterback for the Yetis, threw a high arc long bomb just out of the reach of the Ninjas to Windchill, a young yeti whose relatively small size (standing just seven feet, four inches), and uncharacteristic agility have made him a favorite for the MVP spot three years running. Although the ball was intercepted by Daniel Lee of the Ninjas, the speed lost in intercepting the ball allowed Windchill to catch him. A personal foul was called on Windchill, however, for proceeding to hold Lee upside-down and shake him until smoke pellets and throwing stars dropped from his uniform like confetti.

· The Ninjas managed to wrest control of the ball back from Yetis soon after, scoring a touchdown in quarter two. The Yeti line did not realize until it was too late that they had one additional player, Ninja tight-end Barry Wader, who had cleverly disguised himself as one of the Yetis, and who, upon catching a thrown bomb, proceeded to run the opposite direction at speed. The Yetis made a point of counting their players before each play from this point on.

· The Ninjas also scored via the brilliant tactic of using the imposing yetis as ladders before they could cast spells. Though not always successful, it was enough to put severe pressure on the Yeti linebackers and seriously disrupt their play style. Complemented by a variety of fascinating pyrotechnic abilities which counteracted the Yetis’ snow casts, the ninjas began to reclaim dominance of the field. Experts near the field began to pass comment about the effects of the spells on the fabric of reality, and asked that measuring equipment be brought in.

· Preservering, the yetis also scored a goal when Snowfang grabbed the ball, wrapped it tightly in his arms, and charged directly though the line of much-smaller ninjas. To the disappointment of Yeti fans, additional points were not counted for the three Ninjas and one Yeti Lineman kicked through the uprights by Pinecrusher on his mighty conversion kick, which ended the first half.

· The halftime show was provided by Pterodactylysis , a symphonic electronica band with strong big-band influences. The crowd thrilled to “Trilobyte Rhythm” which has enjoyed a three week run in the top ten on the pop charts. A brand-new, undebuted cover of the song “Ode to a Martian Girl” also made an appearance, the cool, thin harmonics striking a haunting and nostalgic feel in the air. But the mood quickly picked back up with “Towerfall” and finished with a spectacular rendition of “Heart of Krakatoa”, including taking advantage of recently perfected virtual reality technology in Tesla stadium, which finished the halftime show with a fully immersive simulation of a volcanic eruption. To say that the audience was surprised would be something of an understatement. Paramedics were called to deal with the results of the stampede.

· In an ironic note, therefore, the second half began with an opening play by the Yetis designed to even the field, wherein Snowfang cast a spell that deep-chilled the entire stadium, turning the supercooled grass into thousands of tiny spikes. The Ninja’s kicker nevertheless made an almost impossible leap off the goalpost to deliver a very respectable kick which was intercepted by the Yetis via throwing Windchill into the air. Fans scrambled to get out of the way as he tumbled from thirty feet in the air and plowed to earth, knocking over the goalpost and leaving a swathe of destruction through the stands, scoring a definitive return touchdown and moral victory for the Yetis.

· A t this point, officials in the stands started to pick up some worrying signals as the increasing levels of magic usage weakened the already damaged fabric of reality in the immediate vicinity of the stadium. After the goalpost was put back, the Ninjas took possession. Responding to the aggressive Yeti tactics, they summoning a full-sized dragon made of fire, which burnt craters into the ground and set yeti defender Winterbranch’s hair on fire. The fire dragon is a perfectly normal cast by the Ninjas in the late game, but in the circumstances it also mysteriously turned all the seats in the stadium into giant rubber ducks. It was generally agreed, however, that this made them far more useable.

· Not to be outdone, the Yetis called on the favorite Ultra Bowl tactic of tampering with the weather, encouraging a storm of freezing rain so aggressive that it shorted the weather-proof paneling on the forcefields (giving semi-serious electrical shocks to some of the fans), and seriously cooled off the dragon that had assisted the Ninjas in fighting their way up-field. Their ace lost, the Ninjas nevertheless scored an additional touchdown while they had the advantage of field position, Ninja Quarterback Francis Pretori spinning deftly down the field while touching the spiky turf only with a pair of knives. Two would-be tacklers on the Yeti side withstained superficial wounds while attempting to stop his advance up the field. In a related event, several of the vendors found that their wares had turned into horrible tentacled creatures with far too many eyes. Through a twist of good fortune, however, it was discovered that the creatures were delicious when wrapped in bacon or when dipped in chocolate. A major ice-cream company has since expressed interest in using them to expand their product line.

· The Ninjas began to move from their more defense-oriented stance, traditional for ninjitsu, to a more magic-heavy stance, casting an impenetrable haze of black smoke over the field to give themselves cover to maneuver. The Yetis, however, adapted to a very harsh environment often prone to conditions of limited visibility, soon proved that they were perfectly capable of detecting the ninjas through other means, swatting them away with suprising ease. The attack was finally ended entirely by a well-aimed freezing tornado that sucked up the smoke, four Ninja linemen, two jumboscreens and a chocolate-covered-otherworldly-creature-on-a-stick vending cart.

· To gain the upper hand, the Yetis strategically adjusted their weather spell into a thick downpour of snow. The Yetis managed to wail on the Ninjas through the tactic of magically packing on thick layers of snow and ice that both protected them against blows and increased their size and strength (an innate ability that gained yetis the name “abominable snowman”). Opposed only by the occasional well placed bomb, which would blow a lineman apart in an avalanche of snow, the Yetis proceeded to recoup two touchdowns with more relative ease than any team that has yet gone against the Ninjas, evening the score by the end of the third quarter. Key structural supports in parts of the stadium turned variously into glass, cookie dough, and a giant llama, but fans were evacuated quickly and no fatalities occurred. The llama, however, is still at large.

· As the fourth quarter opened, with everything still to play for, the Ninjas opted for a spell that caused giant, red-hot steel blades to pop suddenly out of the field without any apparent pattern. This is a rarely used spell for the Ninjas, but their superior training gives them an advantage that their opponents do not have, and it showed. The spell made the oversized, snow-packed Yetis too encumbered and slow to react sufficiently in their environment, and the Ninjas pressed forward for all they were worth, battling the Yetis to within ten yards of their goal line. In an unorthodox move, the Yetis used a desperate last minute spell to bury everyone, including themselves, in seven feet of snow. With their massive snowshoe-esque feet allowing them to tread over the top of the buried blades, the halfback, Iceclaw, pushed the ball back 40 yards, before dropping into a crevasse that had been melted in the snow by a blade. After a short consultation with the doctors, then with a necromancer, Iceclaw returned to play with only a slight lingering craving for brains.

. At this point, due to the ongoing magic usage, the traditional rules of gravity began to wear a little thin. Dense balls of snow and huge sections of ground hovered around the stadium according to local gravitational effects. Fans continued to cheer from the stands, some sitting on any available comfortable spot on the ceiling or wall, some having fastened themselves somehow to their rubber ducks, and in a few unsettling cases, some having used the seat-belts that the ducks appeared with in the first place. A confusing scrum started on the bottom of one of the larger snowballs which drifted slowly towards the Ninja side as the players fought for control of the ball. Most plays, however, involved the player in possession of the ball leaping from patch to patch, occasionally lurching sideways and falling into the bleachers or experiencing the dreaded fall-into-the-sky (at least until they left the vicinity of the stadium, whereupon they generally would fall back down). This allowed for some interesting ambush plays by Ninjas, who would often sneak up on Yetis from underneath to steal the ball (often to have a yeti smash the entire globe they were standing on a moment later). At one memorable point, a chase encircled one of the larger globes of snow four times before the whistle was blown. Despite the confusion caused by the fifty yard line drifting to roughly twenty yards from the Yetis and the thirty yard line for the Ninjas getting lost entirely, the teams appeared dead even.

· With one minute left on the clock, Snowfang fell back to regroup. In a final all-or-nothing move, he arranged the pieces of snow into a larger version of the individual snow-packing spell used earlier by the team. The resulting snow-golem, resisting the conflicting gravitational forces, began to trudge toward the ninja end zone with Snowfang on its shoulder. In response, a contingent of Ninjas quickly erected an enormous yin-yang patterned shield to block the advancing giant. But, taking advantage of an upward gravitational current, Snowfang jumped off the golem and high into the air above the stadium, shooting back down again at terminal velocity and puncturing the roof as he fell into the Ninja endzone, thus scoring the final touchdown of the game. Due to the combined duress of the golem spell and the impact of the falling Yeti, the entire outer shell of the stadium turned into Swedish to Venusian Dictionaries and blue peanuts and exploded.

So it looks like, though both teams fought hard for it, the Yetis will be the ones taking home an Ultra Bowl trophy this year. There will be a lot of very happy yetis out there tonight, especially in the cities along the Alaskan interior. In the meantime, Tesla Memorial stadium has been shut down, pending major repairs and an overhaul of local spacetime. Despite warnings, many fans are taking home their rubber ducks as souvenirs. Some investors are predicting a serious uptick in sales of jumbo bathtubs as a result of the event. A couple of Ninjas felt an unfortunate necessity to commit hari-kari after the match, but the good news is that many of the undead teams, such as the Baton-Rouge Bonedolls and Washington Zombies, have expressed interest in recruiting them. Thankfully, not all of them took it that badly. At least one is believed to have left the stadium disguised as a rubber duck. That’s all for this year. Thank you for tuning in, and goodnight.

I’m now deep in the throes of finishing the mystery. It looks like it should be done tomorrow at the latest (fingers crossed.) Unfortunately, I’ve reached that stage where I can’t really think of any other type of writing until this book is done.

This will happen periodically, usually in my last week of a book. I hope you guys can survive without my sparkling musings :).

I suppose I should have posted yesterday, but we went to a superbowl party at the home of an old friend. This is always pleasant, as we get to see friends we hadn’t seen in a long time. (Though this year we seem to be running into Rebecca and Alan Lickiss a lot more than usual — and that’s a good thing.) Anyway, they keep their house much colder than we keep ours — look, children, I grew up in a coastal Mediterranean climate. The air should be about seventy year round. That’s all — so by the time I got home and warmed up to Sarah-normal, I got sleepy, as one does.

So, today I’m going to sit here, with D’Artagnan the cat draped across lap and finish A Fatal Stain. If I have brain left by tonight, I’ll write something fun for you guys.

I have it on good authority that there will be an ultra bowl report from my son, later. If you don’t know what I’m talking about and even if you don’t — particularly if you don’t, maybe — care for football, you should check out:

Ultra Bowl 2010

Ultra Bowl 2009

I’m fairly sure I’m not to blame for this. At least, I hope not.

Here is an excerpt from Death of a Musketeer, coming out later this month from Naked Reader Press. This will be the first time the novel has been available in digital format. If it does well enough for NRP, I will resume the series with number six, The Musketeer’s Confessor, probably early next year. Enjoy!

***

Prologue

Or

How I came by the other Diaries Of Monsieur D’Artagnan

My first encounter with the gentlemen known to all the world as Athos, Porthos, Aramis–and, of course, D’Artagnan–came at a young age when, searching through the shelves of my grandfather’s library, I was called by several leather-bound volumes bearing the name Dumas on the spine.

I hardly need tell anyone who had the good fortune of reading Monsieur Dumas’s works at an early age with what rapt attention I followed the actions of the brash young man from Gascony and his three daring companions.

Over the years, I’ve returned to the same book — and its companions Twenty Years After, and Viscount de Bragelone — every winter, when the snow first fell. I re-read the adventures of the four charming rogues, again and again, by my cozy fireside. But I knew I’d never encounter them in any other writing.

I was wrong. This winter, when snowflakes first danced on the thin mountain air of Colorado and while my slippers and my hot chocolate waited with a leather-bound book by my comfortable chair, a delivery service dropped an unpromising battered cardboard box on my front porch.

Inside it was a brief note from my father-in-law, some of whose ancestors immigrated to the New World at the end of the seventeenth century.

Not a French speaker, he said he thought it best if I were given these papers, found in the estate of an elderly relation.

I confess I perused them, at first, with some distaste. The pages had mildewed to an unappetizing shade of greyish yellow and I had to turn them with the greatest care to prevent their falling apart. I picked a word here and a word there, amid decay and mildew. The spelling was quite the oddest I’d ever encountered.

However, on page two I found the name D’Artagnan, on page five the name Athos and on page ten the names Porthos and Aramis together. By page fifteen I realized these diaries referred to murders investigated, solved and often avenged by the three musketeers plus one. I was hooked.

After that, I devoured the twenty mildewed diaries with the eagerness of one too long separated from a childhood friend. Woven around the events that Dumas told the world of in his books, the diaries started with the fateful duel at the Barefoot Carmelites. However, they very quickly turned into a series of murder mysteries often involving the highest nobility of France.

The bulk of it was written in ink that had faded to brown, and in an angular hand that marched across the pages with the certainty of a military officer on campaign.

However, over it all, there were notes in other hands, squeezed in the margins and scribbled between the lines. I soon learned to identify the small, sharp, inclined hand with Athos, the round, well formed ecclesiastical one — still with a hint of violet to its tints — with Aramis and the laborious printing with Porthos. The notes gave details that the writer of the main diaries — certainly D’Artagnan — couldn’t have known at the time he wrote them.

I do not know how his friends came to editorialize D’Artagnan’s diaries. And I have no idea how or by what crooked lines of descent and inheritance or happenstance and luck those diaries passed into the hands of my family.

The only thing certain is that those diaries, which I edited for coherence and adapted to our modern storytelling mode, reveal murders as intricate and fiendish as any writer could dream, and that these crimes could only be solved by Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan.

To whose spirit, nobility and courage I hope my retelling will do justice.

Sarah D’Almeida
January 2004
Colorado Springs

The Duel that Wasn’t;
Where the Cardinal’s Guards are Taught a Lesson;
A Handy Guide to the Taverns of Paris

D’Artagnan knew he was going to die.

It was April 1625 and the spring sun, fierce and blazing, shone like an unblinking eye over the bustling city of Paris. Henri D’Artagnan, aged seventeen, a slim, muscular young man with olive skin, dark hair and piercing black eyes, had arrived in town just the day before.

Now, under the noon sun, he stood outside the convent of the Barefoot Carmelites, a religious house situated in a conveniently deserted spot on the outskirts of town.

Around him spread fields of green wheat. The wind being still and no breeze stirring the sheaves, the only sound was the drowsy droning of insects, drunk with midday languor and heat.

And D’Artagnan thought this was the last day of his life.

If he weren’t himself, if he were not the only son of nobleman Francois D’Artagnan, a hardened veteran soldier, D’Artagnan could have turned and taken off running through those fields, relying on his young, agile legs to get him away from death.

His mind cringed at such an unworthy thought.

His opponent, with whom his sword was crossed, scraped the sword lightly along the length of D’Artagnan’s. Just enough to gain the young man’s attention.

And D’Artagnan turned towards him, at the same time that his opponent’s second, who served as their judge in this case, dropped the white handkerchief signaling the beginning of combat.

His opponent came at D’Artagnan like a tiger, his sword pressing D’Artagnan close and demanding all of the young man’s concentration.

The man was called Athos, and he fought like a veteran duelist. Which he was, being one of the older and more experienced and — as far as D’Artagnan could determine — one of the most feared members of his majesty Louis XIII’s corps of musketeers. Other things D’Artagnan had heard, once he’d given himself the trouble of checking: That the man had the personal friendship of Monsieur de Treville. That he was of noble birth. That Athos was a nom-de-guerre, picked up to hide disgrace or guilt.

Athos attacked, driving the young man back and back and back, till D’Artagnan’s shoulders were solidly against the white-washed wall of the convent and only his quick wit and quicker reflexes permitted him to step sideways and avoid being skewered.

D’Artagnan flitted and skipped, danced away from trouble and contorted away from tight spots, but his mind became oddly detached.

His body moved and seemed to think with a reasoning of its own, while it parried and thrust, and made Athos back away. Meanwhile D’Artagnan’s mind — what his mother used to call his quick and lively mind — had gone away, to some place at the back of himself. Some place away from the battlefield, where it could do its thinking.

When Henri D’Artagnan had left the paternal abode, his father had given him only one substantive piece of advice. And that was that he fight often, that he fight well and that he never tolerate any insult from anyone but the king or the Cardinal who was, truth be told, as powerful as any king.

Henri had tried to follow his father’s advice and, on the road to Paris, in the small town of Meung, had challenged a nobleman who laughed at his attire and horse. This had cost him dearly, as his opponent had his servants hit Henri from behind. While Henri was unconscious, the stranger had stolen Henri’s letter of recommendation to Monsieur de Treville. The letter that would have got him into the musketeers this very day.

But I don’t learn, do I? D’Artagnan thought to himself, as he pushed hard with his sword arm, forcing Athos’s sword away, shoving the musketeer back at the same time.

Athos fell away and tripped and bent down upon his knee.

I had to challenge three musketeers for a duel today. Three. Musketeers. Today, D’Artagnan thought, as he jumped nimbly back, ready to parry Athos’s next thrust.

No, he didn’t learn. He’d continued following his father’s advice, until he’d managed to challenge the three men that the rest of the corps called the three inseparables: Athos, Porthos and Aramis. One of whom would kill him today.

D’Artagnan’s mind was so preoccupied with its gloomy thoughts that he didn’t at first realize that Athos hadn’t got up from his position, half-bent over his knee.

“Monsieur,” he said, when he did notice it. “Monsieur, if it would suit you to adjourn our appointment to another time….”

He noticed Athos’s hand pressed hard at his right side, and he remembered the scene, that very morning, in Monsieur de Treville’s office, where an obviously wounded and ill Athos had come in to present himself to his captain and to deflect Monsieur de Treville’s anger at all of the three musketeers who’d been bested in a skirmish with the Cardinal’s guards.

“Monsieur, if you are in too great a pain…,” D’Artagnan said. He’d got in this duel with Athos by careening against the musketeer and making him bleed. And failing to apologize sufficiently for the injury he’d caused.

But Athos only shook his head. He took a deep breath, audible in the midday stillness, and he rose slowly from his knee. “It’s nothing,” he said, his face ashen. “It is nothing. I didn’t want to distress you with the sight of blood you haven’t drawn.” A red stain showed on the side of his doublet. He changed his sword to his left hand. “If you don’t mind, I will fight with my left hand, though. It will not put me at a disadvantage, as I can use either hand to equal effect. But it might be harder for you to defend yourself.”

D’Artagnan nodded. He knew he would die anyway. And if he was going to die, perhaps it would be best if it was at Athos’s hands. Of his three potential opponents, he liked and admired Athos more than the other two. It was no dishonor to be killed by such a man.

Athos straightened and pulled back a stray lock of pitch black hair, which contrasted glaringly with his alabaster-pale complexion.

D’Artagnan had heard that Athos was considered handsome by many men and even more women in Paris. This opinion baffled D’Artagnan.

Athos’s face was spare, with high cheekbones and intense, eyes burning with zeal. The rest of his features, precisely drawn and finely sculpted, made the man look less like a living being and more like those caryatides of Greece and Rome — columns given human form and forever holding aloft the white marble roof of a temple or palace.

Athos’s character, like his appearance, seemed as spare, as certain, as controlled as those columns. Rightly or not, he gave the impression of a man who served a cause greater than his own whims, purer than his own advancement.

And this, D’Artagnan thought as Athos raised his sword, was what D’Artagnan would have liked to be — if he ever got to live beyond his present seventeen years.

Aramis, Athos’s second and D’Artagnan’s next arranged opponent, stepped up. He was a blonde man, so dainty-looking that one might fail to notice he was almost as tall as Athos and as muscular. Accounted a gallant by all who knew him, he was said to be popular with the ladies and rumored to be entertaining duchesses and princesses by the score.

D’Artagnan, who had challenged him to a duel over an argument started on a point of honor, had at first thought him just a dandy and nothing more. But Aramis’s bright green eyes showed such a keen appreciation for the irony of D’Artagnan’s situation, that perhaps there was more to him.

As he stepped up, picking up his white handkerchief from the ground where it had lain, he said, “You must restart the duel.”

D’Artagnan noticed that Athos was very pale still, his skin tinged with the grey of a man fighting extreme pain, and realized that Athos’s old fashioned Spanish-style doublet was laced tightly over his musketeer’s tunic. “I would not object if you undo the ties on your doublet, since the sun is so devilishly hot.”

But Athos shook his head. “I thank you for your courtesy,” he said, “but really, I’m afraid if I do it will restart the bleeding. The wound is bothering me.”

“Do not misunderstand me; I am eager to cross swords with you,” D’Artagnan said. “But if you wish to wait and perhaps drink something for your present comfort…”

Athos smiled, a flash of genuine amusement. “Your sentiment does you credit, but I believe in collecting my debts promptly and drinking afterwards. And then, it is not the first time I’ve fought while wounded.” He shifted his feet and tilted the upper half of his body forward, baring his teeth slightly, as if allowing the animal to peer out of his noble features.

“Come, come,” Porthos spoke, from where he stood by the white wall of the convent, hands the size of hams folded over the guard of a very substantial sword. A redheaded giant, he dwarfed other men with the size of his lean, muscular body. Each of his arms looked to be the size of D’Artagnan’s thigh, each of his legs like an oak tree trunk. And yet he gave the impression of suppleness, of not a wasted ounce on his huge frame. “You are all talk. Less talk and more fighting. Remember, Athos, he owes me satisfaction after you and Aramis have your turns. He offended me most horribly on a matter of fashion.”

Did D’Artagnan fancy that a smile crossed Aramis’s and Athos’s lips, when Porthos spoke?

Aramis raised his eyebrows and, still holding his handkerchief aloft, turned towards Porthos. “When you wish to be so rude, you should speak for yourself only, Porthos. I have no objection to the noble and proper sentiments these gentlemen express. Indeed, I will gladly listen to them for as long as necessary, before they feel it fit to cross swords.”

And now another flinch of remorse came to join D’Artagnan’s regret that he would die so early, leaving so much untasted of life’s joys: that he would never get to know these men better. There was such an easy camaraderie between the three of them, so devoid of the formality of most friendships, that he imagined they could have been his friends.

“Only,” Porthos said, pulling a large red handkerchief from his sleeve and mopping at his forehead with it, “it’s too blazing hot.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Athos said, and leaned forward, displaying his teeth, again, in that expression that was more animal threat than human smile, “for we are ready.” He pushed his sword against D’Artagnan’s and said, “En garde,” between clenched teeth.

Aramis dropped the scarf.

A throat was cleared, nearby, neither by Aramis nor by Porthos.

Their swords still crossed, D’Artagnan and Athos turned to look. Five men stood near them — so near that they could only have approached unnoticed while the musketeers and D’Artagnan were distracted with talk and worry for Athos’s wound. All of them wore uniforms similar to those of the musketeers, but where the musketeers wore blue, their knee breeches, tunics and plumed hats were bright red, like freshly spilled blood.

They were guards of the Cardinal, sworn rivals of the Musketeers, their enemies in a thousand brawls, a million street skirmishes.

“Well, well,” said the leading guard, who had a suntanned face and a Roman nose. “What have we here? Dueling Musketeers? What? In open and defiant contravention of all the edicts against dueling?” He smiled unpleasantly, revealing a wealth of very large, yellowed teeth. “I’m afraid we’ll have to arrest the lot of you.”

“Leave us alone, Jussac,” Athos said, without turning to look, his sword still crossed with D’Artagnan’s. “I promise you if we found you in the like amusement we’d sit back and let you proceed. Enjoy and amuse yourselves, have the profit of our injuries with none of the pain.”

Jussac smiled wider. “That’s as it may be, Monsieur Athos. But the thing is there is an edict against dueling and our master, the Cardinal, wants laws obeyed.”

Athos lowered his sword. He turned to Jussac and, with an air of strained patience, said, “Nothing would please me more than to oblige you. But, you see, our captain, Monsieur de Treville, has forbidden us from being arrested.”

Jussac sighed, in turn. He lifted his hat and scratched under it at his sweat-soaked hair. “Think about it,” he said. “There are only three of you, one of you wounded. Three of you and a child who was dueling you. If you force us to fight you, they will say it’s murder.”

The three musketeers formed a circle, from within which their worried voices reached D’Artagnan’s ears.

“I’m afraid he’s right, you know,” Aramis said. “There are only three of us, one of us wounded. And there are five of them: Jussac, Brisac and Cahusac, the three fiercest fighters in the Guards, and two of their companions. They will slaughter us.”

Athos paled yet further and glared, his zealous blue eyes seeming to flame. His features hardened into a harsher pose of dignity. “I would rather die than appear before Monsieur de Treville defeated again.”

“Me too,” Porthos said.

D’Artagnan remembered the scorching reproach that Monsieur de Treville had inflicted on the three musketeers that morning. Everyone waiting in the captain’s antechamber had heard it. He didn’t blame the three for not wishing to face such humiliation again.

“Very well, then,” Aramis said. He straightened a little and squared his shoulders. “We’ll die here.”

“You, the child,” Jussac said, pointing at D’Artagnan. “Save yourself. We’ll allow you to go.”

D’Artagnan looked at the three musketeers who were so calm, so resigned, gallantly preparing themselves for death rather than facing dishonor. He looked over at Jussac, who smiled benevolently at him, showing long yellow teeth.

He pushed himself into the musketeers’ circle, shoving his sweaty face between Aramis’s and Porthos’s shoulders. “You are wrong,” he said. “When you say there are only three of you. I count four of us.”

They looked back at him, and for a moment it looked as though Porthos were on the verge of asking who the fourth one might be. But, before he could, Athos smiled. “You’re a child,” he said. “And someday you’ll be a man I’d be proud to call a friend. But right now you’re a boy. And this is suicide. Our chosen death. Save yourself.”

“No,” D’Artagnan said, his certainty growing with the rebuff. “No. I’ll stay and fight by your side.”

“But, you’re not a musketeer,” Aramis said. “Why would you want to die with us?”

“Though I don’t wear a musketeer uniform,” D’Artagnan said. “In my heart I am a musketeer. And though I might only be able to give you very little help, if I leave and save my life, I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

For a moment Aramis stared at him, Porthos frowned at him, and Athos furrowed his brow as if in deep thought.

And then Athos smiled. “You’re right,” he said. “There are indeed four of us. Athos, Porthos, Aramis and–your name, my friend?”

“D’Artagnan,” D’Artagnan answered, as his heart hammered faster and faster in his chest, and once more he was sure he was going to die.

This time he knew he was going to die at the end of the guards’ swords. But he would die next to musketeers. He would die almost a musketeer. His father would be proud.

“Well, then, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan. One for all and all for one. If death is to come for us, let us not keep her waiting. Let us go out and meet her halfway, like gallants, and receive her kiss proudly.”

“We grow impatient,” Jussac thundered, outside their circle. “Will you save yourself or not, boy? Because if not, we’re coming to get you.”

The circle broke apart as though they had rehearsed, and the four of them faced the five guards.

“We’ve made a decision,” Athos said, his voice steady and calm.

“Oh,” Jussac said. “I hope it’s a sensible decision.”

“Very,” Athos said, and removed his hat, and bowed with a deep flourish. “We’re going to have the pleasure of charging you.”

Before the guard could snap shut the mouth that he’d let drop open in his astonishment, Athos’s hat was back on his head, and Porthos and Aramis had unsheathed their swords.

“One for all and all for one,” they shouted, as they fell on the guards.

By the rational odds of combat and war, they should have lost. There were but four of them, one of whom was severely wounded, and the other little more than a child.

D’Artagnan’s only experience of dueling had been his mock duels with his father, in the field behind their house, in the calm Gascon countryside.

If that duel had been decided on body count, or on experience, or even on the relative size of the opponents, surely the guards of the Cardinal would have won.

But wars and duels are fought with the mind, the heart, and that other thing – that thing that is neither loyalty nor camaraderie, but which has hints of both.

That thing allowed D’Artagnan to know and come to the rescue when Athos’s breathing grew too labored. That thing allowed him to go away when Athos had recovered enough to resume his own battle.

And duels are also fought with pride and fear. The three musketeers were too proud to surrender, too fearful of Monsieur de Treville’s wrath to allow themselves to be arrested. They fought like fury unleashed.

Porthos fought and defeated two enemies at once.

And so, fifteen minutes later, the only one left standing of the small army of Cardinal Guards was de Brissac – like D’Artagnan, a Gascon, and like D’Artagnan, ill-suited to surrender. Surrounded by all the musketeers, he broke his own sword upon his knee to avoid losing it.

But then he gave up. He helped the musketeers and D’Artagnan take the wounded and dead to the convent’s door. And stayed behind with them, while the musketeers and D’Artagnan rang the bell and walked away.

Years later, D’Artagnan would try to recall the rest of the afternoon. All he would remember was Athos’s promising that he would show D’Artagnan the best taverns in Paris.

And then they’d gone to the Louis, where there were ten musketeers and where, when Porthos had told their story, people had rushed to buy them strong, sweet, fiery liquor. From there, they’d walked a block to The Maiden’s Head, where the seven musketeers present had listened to their story with awe. And then to The Head and Bucket, where, at the telling of their tale, musketeers and sympathizers had bought them a sparkling white wine.

D’Artagnan remembered there had been a pause between The Grinning Corpse and The Coup de Grace, while he leaned against a wall in an alley and lost most of the wine he’d drunk in the preceding hours.

But then they’d taken him to the Drinking Fish for a few mugs of house special, and from there to The Drunken Lord for something that tasted like liquid fire.

Night had fallen when D’Artagnan found himself stumbling along the back alleys and narrow staircases of the working-class neighborhoods of Paris, one arm thrown over Aramis’s shoulder, Porthos’s huge hand on his other shoulder, singing softly a song about the queen, the king and the musketeers that would surely be treason if they weren’t all drunk and all so loyal that they’d just risked their lives to ensure the king’s own musketeers suffered no defeat.

“We should take the boy home first,” Athos said. He had to be drunk. He’d drunk more of all the various liquors than all of them combined. He had to be dead drunk. But he walked steadily and his voice sounded, if anything, a little slower and calmer and more controlled.

Porthos giggled. “‘s right,” he said. “It is past the time schoolboys should be asleep.”

“Where do you live, D’Artagnan?” Aramis asked.

“Rue des Fossoyers,” D’Artagnan said, glad he’d rented lodgings before going in search of his fate outside the Barefoot Carmelites. Looking back it had been presumptuous to think he’d survive three duels. But, at least, he’d have a place to sleep tonight.

“Good,” Athos said. “That’s just around–”

He turned, as if to get his bearings, and as he turned, and they with him, they all saw a figure in the uniform of a musketeer cross the alley right in front of them.

“Oh, I say, wait,” Athos said. “Wait, friend. King’s Musketeer, hold. Have you heard that we defeated Jussac outside the Barefoot–”

The musketeer jumped, as if touched with hot iron, and took off running, the sound of his steps echoing and reverberating through the maze of narrow streets.

The musketeers stopped and frowned at the space where the unknown musketeer had been.

“That’s abominably rude,” Aramis said.

“Musketeer or no, someone should teach him some manners,” Porthos said.

“He should buy us a drink to make up for it,” Athos said. “After all, there must be a place still open.”

As one man, they ran, pursuing the fugitive. D’Artagnan followed the sound of their steps.

They ran down so many blind alleys, careened precipitously down so many worn staircases, that D’Artagnan was sure they’d never find the runaway musketeer. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get separated from his friends.

But at last, they all surged into an alley. And there, on the ground, the musketeer lay.

The three musketeers had been calling and jeering and laughing, but now all their noises stopped.

It was suddenly very quiet, in that alley. Far away, an owl hooted, chasing prey in some attic. D’Artagnan drew a deep breath that sounded too loud in the silence.

“It can’t be,” Aramis said, under his breath.

But though D’Artagnan had never seen a dead body, he knew the musketeer lying on the muddy, smelly ground of the alley was dead.

If asked, he could have given no more justification than a certain angle of the arm protruding from under the body and the stillness, the eerie stillness of whole body.

“He’s dead,” he said.

Aramis crossed himself and Athos stepped forward, towards the corpse.

*Crossposted at Classical Values.*

Hi everyone. My name is Havelock Vetinari D’Almeida Hoyt, though mommy calls me Havey cat.

I asked her what she was doing for her blog today and she told me to go away, because she was writing something called “Dyce.” I don’t know what this means but it must be terrible, because she keeps pulling her hair and saying it just isn’t funny enough.

I offered to help her with that, but she told me that, no, thank you, cats have no sense of humor. So I offered to do this blog. First I want to apologize for not knowing LOLcat grammar. I’ve been so busy fighting to establish my territory over D’Artagnan (the anti-cat) that I haven’t had any time to learn to speak like a cat. (I mean, all the drinking and running downstairs to pee on the sofas takes time. The sofas ain’t gonna p*ss themselves.)

Second, I want to point out that as the most tragically beautiful cat, ever, I have a very difficult life. No, seriously. Do you know how hard it is to lie down in all these poses, to make the humans go “aw”?

But enough about me. Let’s talk about me. The thing is that mom is thinking of adding another cat to the mystery because she says that would be funnier. I want to request that you make sure you request me and not D’Artagnan (who IS the anti-cat.)

Who would you rather have? Cute, cuddly, soft-as-cashmere me?

Or the anti-cat?