The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  “Where will we fight, sir?” Longbow asked.

  “Aztlan cannot come from the east as they did in the battle of the Penateka Dam. They will have to come at us directly, from the west and south. They will expect us to do what we have done, which is to try to force them through the Bethany Pass,” he looked down at the table, tracking his finger across the worn oak as if a map were there. “Not this time,” he said, looking up into the faces of his men. “Not this time.”

  Phillip walked stiffly over to the window and looked out onto the drive where his own blood had mingled with that of David Wall. The stain was still evident on the ground. Then he turned back to his men, and raised his hand, pointing to the west. “This time we will hit them when and where they will least expect it... as they move across the badlands. We will hit them with everything we have.”

  “But, sir!” Enos Flynn said, with a shocked and confused look on his face. “They will likely have more than 5,000 men! Maybe many more! We’ve never engaged in traditional attacks against larger armies in the open field… never!”

  “First, that is why they won’t expect it. Second,” he said, looking from man to man, “it won’t exactly be in the ‘open field’. Third… the term ‘traditional’ has become difficult to define in this age—especially after the collapse. Let’s just say that, as far as the Ghost militia is concerned, this engagement will be far from traditional.”

  After several hours rest, and some more treatment for his wounds, he was back at work at the table in the Great Room, sending messengers to outlying units, and writing notes on cotton paper with a quill pen.

  His wound was feeling much better now, and the throbbing had died down after the latest round of treatment. A poultice of antibacterial herbs, spices, and garlic had been applied tightly to both the entry and the exit wound. The bullet had traveled through the fleshy muscle and had missed perforating his abdomen and therefore hadn’t hit any organs. The whole poultice had been drenched in what he was told was a tincture made of grain alcohol and the tiny fruit of an indigenous plant the Vallenses called “tickle tongue” or “the toothache tree.” The whole mess smelled of limes and garlic, but he had to admit that the pain had been reduced quite a bit. He was experienced with these types of wounds—if not with the Vallensian treatment for them.

  Every hour and a half he was made to drink a glass of Vallensian beer. Wally the cook told him that the body can process and eliminate the alcohol from one glass of beer an hour, and at his weight and height he should be able to handle the beer without losing any sharpness in his mind. He liked the beer, but he would be glad when this treatment was over. He was anxious to be back in the field, making preparations.

  Wally was going around the room lighting the fat lamps when Gareth and the rest of his inner circle returned.

  “We have informed Betsy Miller of the death of her brother,” Gareth reported. “She took it quite well, considering. Something tells me that she wasn’t that surprised. She said that David had chosen life in the militia, and that, although she was glad that he had obeyed his conscience, her father had taught all of the Wall children that ‘those who live by the sword, are likely to die by the sword’.”

  “Ok,” Phillip replied, sadly. “I don’t pretend to understand these Vallenses, but I’m glad she handled it well. I hope her father and Ruth are able to handle it just as well.”

  “We have more bad news, Phillip,” Pachuco Reyes said, looking intently at the militia leader.

  “You might as well let me have it while I’m loaded up with this beer, Pachuco.”

  “Refugees are arriving from East Texas—from the Piney Woods. They say a large army is moving this way from Louisiana.”

  His head dropped to his chest. I should have expected this. He had almost stopped counting all of his failures in this war. “That has to be the Duke of Louisiana’s army. Prince Gareth told me I should be expecting this. I just had no idea… I had no idea this would all happen so soon.”

  Gareth looked at him and smiled a quirky smile. “Look on the bright side, Phillip. This way the blows will stop falling like sprinkles. Now it looks as if we’ll get the brunt of the storm.”

  “I’m not sure if that is the bright side, Prince, but it does look like we are to be squeezed in that vice you mentioned to me.”

  “Perhaps,” Gareth replied as he walked up to the table and pulled out a chair, “this would be the time to… impolitely and maybe callously… mention that with David Wall dead, and Jonathan gone, we might be able to encourage the Vallensian elders to let their people fight.”

  As Gareth sat down, Phillip stood up. “I cannot believe that, even under these circumstances, the Vallenses will fight.” He stood for a moment but began to feel a little light-headed, so he sat down again.

  “I will speak to them, Phillip. And, I hope you will accept my apologies for already doing so without your permission. I took the liberty of sending messengers to gather the Elders together tomorrow.”

  Phillip looked at the Prince, and after a few moments, he nodded his head. “So, do we have any word from the new refugees how large the Louisianan army might be?”

  “All they said was ‘thousands’.”

  “Thousands?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sat back in his seat and put both hands up behind his head. “Longbow!” he shouted.

  The militia soldier snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”

  “Let the Vallenses know that they are all going to be moving again.”

  “Moving, sir?”

  “Yes. We’re all going to Harmony. You and Tyrell are going to stay here and make sure all of the Vallenses pack up and start moving westward.”

  Prince Gareth looked at him quizzically. “Harmony? What’s a Harmony?”

  “You’ll see soon enough, Crown Prince,” he said as he started to gather up his papers and stuff them into a satchel. “We’ll all see soon enough, because Harmony might just be where the Vallenses and the Ghost militia make their last stand.”

  “Maybe we should have called it Masada,” Pachuco said, sighing deeply.

  “Well, there won’t be any suicides, but one way or another a whole lot of people are going to die.”

  Chapter 24 - English

  Going back through the tunnel followed by 500 Mexican troops wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned when he first escaped with Pano. Good thing we brought better ladders, he thought as they approached the north end of the tunnel, and the inevitable climb back up into La Chimenea castle.

  The attack on the castle by the forces of the King of Mexico was a carefully timed affair. Above ground, 1,500 men had launched their siege on the castle the night before. The seige was designed to get the small force within the castle into defensive battle array for the protection of the castle and the Duke. Today, at precisely noon, the siege forces advancing on La Chimenea were to attempt to breach the castle walls, and at exactly that moment the tunnel force would emerge within the castle and fight their way to the Duke’s private office and quarters. General Loya’s hope was to take the castle with a minimum of actual fighting or loss of life. As a natural pessimist, English was not as optimistic. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, they say. English didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he figured it would go down somewhat differently than how it had been planned by General Loya.

  English had not been in actual combat in almost 20 years. The last two decades for him had been spent in administration. He didn’t know how he’d react to being back in battle, and frankly, he didn’t look forward to it. That part of my life is over. The overwhelming desire for peace and order in his life smothered any residual attraction to the smells and sights of battle. He felt no need to prove his manhood. He had no loyalty to either side in this particular battle—though his disdain for Aztlan grew by the day. He had not quite codified the idea in his thinking, but deep down in the recesses of his heart, he desired to be a better help to Phillip, the Ghost militia, and to the Vallensian
cause. The true longing of his heart was for peace.

  Still, if the Aztlani army was marching towards Central Texas, then he wanted to be a part of stopping that army. He wasn’t sure if taking La Chimenea would accomplish that task, but stranding Aztlan in the badlands with no means of support, no resupply, and no home base to which they might return, sounded like a good enough place to start. If he survived, and if the seizure of La Chimenea was successful, then he’d have to talk to General Rodrigo Loya about what the King of Mexico’s next step might be.

  As they approached the mouth of the tunnel and the entrance into the castle, there was some whispering and trepidation, mainly because it was still unclear if the Duke actually knew of the existence of the tunnel; and, if he did know about the tunnel, it was not known whether he might be expecting an attack from there. If he was expecting an attack, the tunnel force would be in a very precarious position, having to ascend through the bottleneck of the tunnel entrance and into tight quarters once they arrived in the old emergency center within the bowels of the castle.

  By the command of General Loya, he was to lead the force, with his sidekick Pano beside him. One of the causes for his trepidation was that the attacking Mexican forces did not have guns, while everyone knew that the Aztlani guards absolutely would be armed with rifles and pistols.

  English watched from below as Pano ascended the newly replaced ladder, trying to work as quietly as possible as he removed the boards that covered the hole.

  What English absolutely did not expect was what the invasion team actually found—an almost empty castle, and the Duke Carlos Emmanuel with the entire leadership of the Duchy of El Paso kneeling in surrender on the hardwood floors of the Duke’s lavish office.

  The sounds of occasional gunshots could be heard outside of the castle, but resistance was light and didn’t last very long. Many of the domestic workers in the castle had fled with some of the guards when the Mexican army first appeared outside the city walls. The gates to the city were left open—obviously by the people fleeing the city—and the foreign army had marched in virtually unopposed. There were skirmishes and some light resistance from a few loyal Aztlani guards when Loya’s army first reached the walls of La Chimenea, but eventually, as cowards and domestics fled from the castle, the citadel was breached as well. What he had thought would be a tough nut to crack was opened to the invading army with very few casualties.

  The Duke of El Paso had indeed overplayed his hand when he chose to send almost his entire army in an attack on Central Texas; and, on a personal note, the Charles Emmanuel’s stupidity had made it more than obvious that the his success in sniffing English out and manipulating him over the last few years was not the work of the Duke, but of some other offender. Someone, either in the castle or maybe among the Ghost militia, had betrayed him to the Duke, and it was likely that that someone was still in play. Perhaps the Duke could be… convinced… to give up that information.

  Nobody in El Paso seemed to have expected the surprising attack by the new King of Mexico. After the dissolution of the first Kingdom and the rise of the King of Aztlan in California, Mexico had once again become an afterthought in North American affairs. It had been the official position of the King of Aztlan—based on information and ‘intelligence’ received from the Duke of El Paso—that Mexico was no longer a threat. English himself had not considered that there might be an element of Mexican nationalists still operating south of the old border, and though the Mexican force was tiny and poorly armed, they had very effectively concealed their intentions and masked their movements. When the inhabitants of the Duchy of El Paso woke up that morning, not one of them would have conceived of the idea that on that very day the city and the castle would be in the hands of the King of Mexico.

  The clean-up operations were still continuing when General Loya and a few of his officers arrived in the Duke’s office. The Duke and his closest henchmen were exercising their right to remain silent, as Mexican officers rifled through the desks and cabinets gathering intelligence and whatever else might be of value.

  “Sir English,” Loya said, with a slight bow of his head, “we are thankful for your assistance today. We will require your attendance—if you do not object—in our meetings for the rest of the day. There is a lot to do to prepare this place to be defended, and our intelligence officers will want you to be here to help us in our planning.”

  “Whatever I can do to serve you, sir.” English looked over towards Charles Emmanuel, who was scowling at him with unmasked derision. “What do you intend to do with the Duke, here?” he asked, with an equal amount of derision. “There is some information I would like to extract from him, if it pleases you, sir.”

  “The Duke and his men will be removed to the basement where we are preparing a bank of cells for their pleasure. We’ll be… debriefing… them there. What is it you would like to know from the Duke?”

  “I’d like to know the name and current location of the traitor who blew my cover. I’d like to know the name and the current location of every spy the Duke has among the Vallenses and the Ghost militia, and I’d like to get an estimate from the Duke as to how many innocent pacifists he has had murdered so that he could curry favor with the King of Aztlan. Then… I’d like to see him lined up against a wall in the courtyard and shot.”

  “Well,” Loya said, removing his gloves, “then it seems that for the time being we have the same agenda. Charles will be questioned… intently… before his trial. Then,” the General glared at the Duke with a slight smile on his face, “provided he is found guilty by a court-martial made up of my officers, he will be shot by a firing squad.”

  Charles Emmanuel gasped noticeably. “Zhooo… Zhooo… Zhooo will not shoot me! I am a prisoner of war!”

  “You,” the General exclaimed, “are a murderous tyrant, and an enemy to your own people!” Loya slammed his gloves to the ground to emphasize his point, and his eyes flared in flames of fire. “You will now shut your miserable mouth, or I will make sure your interrogation is more intensive than you can possibly imagine! I will extract from you the name of every family member, every distant relative, every friend, and even every bastard child that you have ever fathered, and then I will systematically root the memory of your execrable name from the history of this world!”

  The Duke’s chin dropped to his chest, and he remained silent. Loya turned to English and closed his eyes for a moment, calming himself. “I apologize for my outburst, Sir English. I have a particular distaste for the likes of Charles Emmanuel and anyone of his ilk. Forgive me for losing my composure.”

  “I understand completely, sir.”

  Loya nodded to his men, and they quickly led the Duke and his entourage out of the office. After he had watched them depart, the General turned back to English.

  “We will need to formulate a workable strategy for the defense of this castle and the city. Pano informs me that, despite the fact that you were treacherously exposed to the Duke as a spy, you have long been an able strategist and that you have a very capable mind. We have long desired that you might join us in our quest to protect ourselves from the carnivorous expansion plans of the King of Aztlan.”

  English nodded in thanks. “I appreciate your kind words, and your confidence General. I must tell you, though, that my allegiance has, for these 20 years, been with Phillip and the Ghost Militia.” He walked over to the window, and looked down into the courtyard. Mexican soldiers were moving Aztlani soldiers, what few of them were left, into the yard of the Keep. “I suspect that your goals and those of the militia here in Texas are aligned, but you should know that I serve at the behest of Phillip, and Phillip alone.”

  “I understand,” Loya nodded.

  “From what I’ve gathered,” English continued, “the Aztlani army of El Paso, ignorant of what has transpired here, is marching eastward with the intention of wiping out the militia… and all of the innocent and peaceful Vallensian people. What, may I ask, are your intentions in this regard?” />
  Loya sighed deeply. “I understand your concerns, and I share them. But we are a tiny army—only 2,000 men. These men were all that our king could spare, considering the concerns he has over his own southern border. We have no real cavalry, few guns, and very little experience. It seems that our best plan would be to stay here and defend this castle. We can recruit from among the locals—particularly among the Mexicans who have always disliked the King of Aztlan. We can seize any weapons left here in the castle, and we can train for the defense of El Paso. I do not see how we would be able to assist the militia at all.” The General walked around to the back of the desk, as if he would sit, but he did not. He placed his hands on the desk and looked again at English. “Our mission… the order of our king… is to prevent the incursion and expansion of the King of Aztlan into Mexico. It seems to me that the best way to do that is to keep and defend this city.”

  English grimaced, and his eyes met those of the General. “If your honor will allow me… perhaps I can just offer a few more things to consider.” Seeing Loya nod again, English put his arm behind his back and began to pace back and forth in front of the Duke’s large desk. “An army of 6,000 Aztlani soldiers left here days ago to engage in an operation in Central Texas against a handful of freemen militia fighters and thousands of unarmed pacifists. If that operation is successful, and it seems certain that it will be, that army will be coming back here.”