Hold Your Fire

by Lisa Mangum

  “Oh, you people are nuts,” Henderson said. But he yanked his rifle off his shoulder, put down his pack, and stripped down to just his fatigues, belt, pistol, and canteen. “There’s no way you’re standing up to that.” He jerked his head toward the enemy.

  “Run fast,” Olson ordered.

  Henderson shook his head, looked around at them one last time, and took off down the slope.

  “Man runs like a rabbit,” Crater said.

  “Let’s hope that comes with the lucky feet. We’re gonna need it,” Olson said. “All right, boys, spread out, stay low, stay quiet, and don’t do anything stupid.” As the men started to move, he said, “Perkins, with me.”

  After the others were out of earshot, the sergeant lowered his voice. “Your daddy tell you how that story ended?”

  Perkins nodded. “Spartans were wiped out to a man. Didn’t figure that was a good part to share right now.”

  Olson shook his head. “You’re something else, Perkins. Catch.” He tossed the medallion back.

  Perkins looped the chain over his head. “Thanks, Sarge.”

  Time ticked by slowly. Olson redistributed the remaining supplies. Henderson’s rifle and all the extra ammo stayed with Ryan. Olson made sure everyone had one grenade; he took the extras, since he had the best throwing arm, even with the gunshot wound. The sergeant spent a lot of time with Ryan, who carefully kept under cover, out of the sunlight, and used the rifle scope to report on how many they were up against, where their officers were, and anything else that might be useful. Olson made careful notes in the battered notebook he’d carried since being given his stripes.

  By the end of the second hour, the sun climbed higher, and everyone got thirstier. Three more men found their way to them, telling them about a crazy guy who was running like the devil was on his heels, west toward battalion headquarters. The newcomers looked a lot less happy about linking up with the squad when they saw the Germans at the bottom of the hill.

  Perkins once again told his story of the Spartans, remembering how his father had spoken about the elite warriors, and they nodded, slowly.

  A third hour slowly passed. The June sun was beating down on them, and the low brush wasn’t offering a lot of shade. Crater was just starting to say something about how he hoped the day would end and the Germans would bed down for the night when a noise cut him short.

  Looking down the slope, he signaled that two men were climbing up the hill. He shot a look at Perkins, and everyone tensed. One of the Germans carried field glasses.

  Olson leaned close to Ryan and whispered, “Still got that captain picked out?”

  Ryan nodded.

  Olson said, “Him first.”

  They waited, hoping the men would turn back.

  They didn’t.

  Finally, Olson flashed a hand signal at Perkins. Perkins and Crater shot at nearly point-blank range from their spot in the brush, and the two surprised men fell back down the hill. Almost at the same second, Ryan fired, and the German captain fell.

  In the half-second of shocked silence that followed, Perkins yelled “Spartans!” and began firing at the group below them.

  Olson lobbed all the grenades he could at different spots in the enemy formation, and Ryan coolly worked his way through the officers.

  A murderous fire roared up the hill, shredding the bushes and adding blood to the stench of sweat, fear, and gunpowder that already filled the air.

  Hours later, when Henderson returned with the lead element of a company that clearly doubted his story, they found a gorge full of dead Germans. Casings littered the rim of the small valley, and blood was everywhere. A few battered and bleeding men had bandaged themselves up the best they could. The bodies of the rest were laid out as neatly as possible.

  Next to the big man with the sergeant’s stripes was a younger private with a medallion in his hands.

  Months later, the push to Berlin.

  Sergeant Rosen looked at the new recruits. They all looked like kids to him. He wasn’t actually much older than they were, but he’d seen so much. Too much.

  “Are we really going to go after that whole group? Aren’t they just going to surrender soon anyway?” Rosen thought the kid’s name was Baker.

  “Scared, kid?” he asked, not unkindly, and low enough the others couldn’t hear.

  “That’s a hell of a lot of Germans over that hill,” Baker answered.

  Rosen smiled. “Let me tell you a story about a guy named Tom Perkins.”

  About the Author

  Wayland Smith is a native Texan who has moved around a lot but is presently living in Northern Virginia. His rather unlikely list of jobs includes private investigator, comic book shop owner, ring crew for a circus (then he ran away from the circus and joined home), deputy sheriff, writer, and freelance stagehand. His novels include In My Brother’s Name and the Wildside, Inc series about superhuman mercenaries. He has also been in numerous anthologies, including HeroNet Files Volume 1, and SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror. His hobbies include gaming, reading, and movies. (Of course I want popcorn!)

  The Last Waking Princess

  Kat Kellermeyer

  Close your eyes. Clear your mind of all distractions.”

  Zeriah sat on a pile of cushions opposite Esdras, eyes shut and her fat, fluffy tabby who wouldn’t still in her lap. The princess had lost track of how many times they’d sat like this, Esdras droning on in his low, easy tone telling her to close her eyes and clear her mind. Closing her eyes was the easy part, but it only helped her notice what she hadn’t before: the birdsong coming from the eastern window; her cat, Renana, trying to wiggle herself loose; the soft chatter of the kitchen servants making the day’s bread at the far end of the hall.

  “My princess.” Esdras’s voice snapped her back to the present, and she mumbled an apology. He just closed his eyes and resumed his posture. “Clear your mind,” he repeated. “Let it settle into a void, like a still pond on a moonless night.”

  Zeriah took a deep breath and tried to fish the distractions out of her mind pool. She was still searching for calm when he spoke again.

  “And when you have done that, I want you to search for your happiest thoughts. The thoughts that make you feel most loved, most safe. Most happy. This is a happiness larger than a new toy or a fancy party. This is the largest happiness you can summon. Don’t reach. Simply let the thoughts rise to the surface of your mind.”

  Zeriah’s mind was still a cluttered puddle. Birdsong, cat, chatter—happy. The happiest thing she could remember.

  There was the time Momma played hide-and-seek with her in the sand gardens. No, she’d tried that last week.

  The time the kitchen surprised her with a batch of her favorite sweet rolls. No, she needed Big Happy.

  Of course, her last birthday party! The one with the magician in the solarium who pulled miles of colored scarves out of his sleeves while he sang. She’d worn a brand-new purple gown with pink-chested bluebirds embroidered all along the hem. Just thinking about it made her feel warm. They’d had a tall cake with sea-glass colored frosting and shells adorning the top. She’d loved all of her gifts, and when it came time to blow out the candles, she did it all by herself—all eight of them! It was the first year she’d done it without needing Papa’s help.

  A shadow passed over the memory. Papa.

  The thought slipped from her grip like a river stone and tumbled back into darkness. Renana made a low wail and kicked until Zeriah let her go. All the distractions came flooding back at once.

  “My princess. Where are you now?”

  Zeriah couldn’t tell if she was imagining the disappointment in Esdras’s voice. She wasn’t sure she understood the question. “I’m … here?”

  Esdras let out a great sigh. “That’s what I was afraid of. Open your eyes, my princess.”

  Zeriah winced as she did, but any worry was quickly snuffed out by Esdras’s easy smile.

  “It has been a long week, my princess. Perhaps we
should take a break from your studies—”

  “No!” The echo that came back to Zeriah sounded like the whining of a baby. She squared her jaw and did her best to sound grown-up. “No. I want to try. I want to help—”

  “It is not helpful to strain yourself like this,” Esdras told her. “And it will not serve to draw your magic out—”

  Zeriah shook her head. “I can try harder. I can be quieter! I can make my mind a pool—”

  “These are not lessons one beats into oneself like punishment. The more you try to close your hand on your magic, the more it will elude you.”

  That didn’t make any sense, and Zeriah said so in the loud, distinct tone of a princess.

  Esdras laughed. “Sense only applies to what we understand, my princess. And there are none living who truly understand magic.” He rose from the cushions, robes of ocher and violet shaking loose to his ankles. “Go. Keep yourself busy. And stay out of trouble.” His eyes narrowed, but the smile didn’t leave his face. “I’ve heard stories of how you pester the kitchen.”

  Zeriah shook her head again. “I didn’t steal those oranges.”

  The corner of Esdras’s mouth quirked. “Funny, my princess. I don’t recall mentioning any oranges.” He brushed her shoulder when she stayed staring up at him. “Go. And do try to think happy thoughts, my princess. Big happy thoughts.”

  Zeriah watched him vanish down a hall before she turned and trotted obediently out of the room. At least this time he’d given her an order she could follow. For the last four months, it felt like every day was the same lesson: think bigger, remember happier things.

  Esdras once asked what she was thinking about, and she told him: Momma in the sand gardens, the day that other kingdom visited and they decorated the palace in brightly colored scarves and colored lanterns to greet them, the time Papa came home after being gone for two moons and brought her back a doll with blue stones for eyes. Esdras’s smile went tight, and he asked if she couldn’t think of anything happier. They sat for a full minute in silence until Esdras sighed and told her classes were over for the day.

  Zeriah didn’t understand how she could be any happier. Some days, with Momma sick and Papa sleeping, she didn’t know how to be happy at all.

  She traced her hand along the mosaic on the outer wall as she shuffled off in the direction she suspected Renana had gone. From this high up in the palace, she could see the top of the briar thicket, a wide gash of thorns and brambles and dense trunks. It stretched on like a spill of ink from the palace proper to the distant gates where the city began. She wondered if the city people knew the palace people were still alive. She wondered if any of the city people had tried to get through the brambles.

  The grown-ups had all turned mean since the briar thicket had appeared—since Papa had fallen asleep. Zeriah was sad, but she hadn’t turned mean. Not even when they ran out of strawberries. Not even after Emaron and the funeral fire.

  Emaron had been her favorite of all the kitchen staff, and the only boy in the entire palace her age. He’d been out climbing, the same walls they’d always climbed together. She never thought he’d fall. Not ever. He’d struck his head so badly he didn’t wake up. And with the newly grown brambles, there were no doctors to send for, no alchemists to come administer medicines.

  For two days, Emaron lay in a bed. On the third day, he died. And on the fourth, the priests sang a chant and burned him on the funeral fire. Esdras had corrected her—a funeral pyre—and he’d tried to explain it was as much to honor Emaron as it was a necessity. Dead bodies carried disease. To keep them long was to invite ruin on one’s house. Everyone who came to the funeral fire cried, but no one more than Zeriah.

  It was the first death that was hers. She remembered her grandfather’s funeral and the little memorial they had when their other cat, Theom, had died, but those had not prepared her for this. She’d grown up with Emaron. She always thought they’d grow tall together.

  It had been months since the funeral fire. She hadn’t noticed death before then; the way people talked or didn’t talk about it, like it was a secret they needed to keep from her, or something children weren’t allowed to know about. It was the same way they only talked about Momma and the baby when they didn’t think she was around. The way they talked about the day the man cursed Father, like they knew best, like Zeriah hadn’t been in the room, too.

  To hear the servants tell it, Papa had been cursed by an evil magician with a great and terrible staff. They said Papa fought him in battle and he cursed him as he fell. But Zeriah had seen it all from her seat on Momma’s lap. The man who had cursed Papa hadn’t looked evil. He’d looked sad; he’d looked hungry. He’d come to the palace to talk to Papa about his problems. Zeriah hadn’t followed his story—something about a fire long ago from when Grandfather was king?

  She’d never really known Grandfather. But she knew Papa was a very nice Papa, the kind whose eyes got wet when you scratched your knee and cried, the kind who tried his very best to be good to everyone. Sometimes the servants whispered that Papa was so good because his papa was so mean. Grandfather started fires. Grandfather hurt people. But when Papa heard the man’s story, he cried. He wanted to help, to fix things, but the man only cared about what had already been broken.

  Zeriah didn’t know anything about curses. She didn’t know they could come in jars like the one the man held up over his head. She remembered Momma’s arms closing over her and her belly like a shield. Zeriah watched the jar tumble out of the man’s hand and shatter on the tile like a spark of flint. There was a great black wave that knocked the vision from her, and when she woke, the sad man was a smear of ash on the floor. There were brambles arching out from where he was not that wound up the canopies and walls and swarmed the outer gardens. By that night, they had filled the gap between the palace and the city beyond.

  And worst of all, Papa wouldn’t wake up.

  That first week was the hardest. The briar thicket was too thick for the guards to cut through, and no one seemed to be coming to help them. The kitchen began rationing, and the meals since had been bland and gamey. Papa would not wake for all that his councilors and alchemists tried, and Momma was sick with the coming baby, and they made her stay in bed. She couldn’t go to Papa’s old meetings, or even play with Zeriah. But at least she wasn’t asleep.

  It was the second week when Esdras found the curse in one of his books. He explained to Zeriah that this was a very old curse, something made of hate and sorrow. He said the man must have been in great pain to have made it so powerful. Zeriah liked it when Esdras told her things. He never tried to make his words smaller for her.

  The curse was a simple enough thing to break: a touch of magic would unsnare the briars and wake any sleepers. But there was the trouble. Papa was the only magician in the palace—in the city, in the land. All they required was the simple touch their king could not wake to give, and Esdras—for all his arcane knowledge—had no actual magical ability. There was only one person in the whole palace who might possess a hint of magical ability.

  Zeriah was elated when Esdras told her. Magic had been her father’s realm, a distant land she was allowed to view on occasion but never visit. If Esdras was right, she could travel to that land and end the curse—or at least wake Papa to help end it.

  Her first lesson was that very evening. Papa had been sleeping for long enough the moon had turned dark and was returning in a milky sliver in the sky. The room was filled with people eager to see what might happen, nobles and servants alike who had been trapped with them in the palace. Some had long strands of brightly colored prayer beads wrapped around their hands. Others were crying and murmuring prayers. Momma was the only steady thing she could see, and even she looked like the softest breeze would scatter her.

  Zeriah didn’t like this room. Papa and Momma’s room had always been bright and full of hanging planters that spilled over with ferns and vibrant buds. The room they’d moved Papa to was as dark as a tomb. Momma said the lo
w-burning lanterns were meant to invoke reverence, but the only thing they made Zeriah feel was afraid. In the half-light Papa looked like something carved from wax. Not really alive. His lips looked dry and were flecked with dead skin. The only movement was the soft rise and fall of his chest and the flickering of his eyes under his lids. He barely looked like Papa anymore.

  She didn’t want to hold his hand, but she was good and did as Esdras asked her. They started the same exercise: happy thoughts.

  “Happy enough to provide proper inspiration”—that’s what he’d said the first time.

  Zeriah’s head started aching ten minutes in. She couldn’t think any bigger. By the time thirty minutes had passed, she could hear people starting to whisper.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Why isn’t it working?”

  “Are we sure she’s an arcane?”

  A pair of servants near the door giggled, and the sound rattled around Zeriah’s head until she was convinced they were laughing at her. Because she couldn’t do it. Because it was silly to think she could do it. Because she could never do it and Papa would stay asleep and Momma would be sick when the baby came—

  Zeriah braced a hand on the mosaic wall as she suddenly realized she was struggling to catch her breath. She hadn’t even been running. She slumped on the floor, back pressed against the cool stone. Her head prickled for a bright, dizzy second as she fought to breathe. They still had time. Time for her to learn, time for them to fix all this. Esdras had told her so, and Esdras knew almost everything.