Ninth Euclid's Prince

by Daniel M. Hoyt

  Nodding, we tried again. If the knife had been real, it would have pierced his kidney. As it was, the practice knife probably left a nasty bruise. He got up, wincing. “I’ll add it to our repertoire.” He jogged away.

  While I’ve practiced killing moves every week for years, I’ve never killed a man or even been in battle, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at me, especially in uniform. I stand more than a head taller than most people, almost two heads more than Lord Oswald — even that tall pretty-boy Prince Vere shrinks beside me — and my arms are as big around as a forty-foot elm tree. Working on a farm for most of my childhood, I developed the muscles to match my size, so killing a man isn’t beyond my abilities. I’ve just never done it, and I hope I never have to.

  Saturdays were always a treat for me. My Lord Oswald took to the road for the day, inspecting his nearby personal legion and scouting out new recruits from whichever of the local legions was in attendance that week. His personal branch of the legion, known as Oswald's Angels, consisted of roughly five thousand extremely loyal troops — loyal to my Lord, that is, not Oasis, or even the empire — whom Lord Oswald hand-picked from the cream of the corps provided by the governors.

  On Saturdays, I got up early and trained with the Angels before my Lord’s inspection. It helped keep me in the lethal shape needed to be able to kill a man, while simultaneously working off the week’s frustrations so that I didn’t have to.

  Whenever we were in the presence of his legion, my Lord grudgingly used his proper rank as Prince.

  “Euclid, my boy,” he told me once before inspecting his Angels, “they used to be in the legion of some random Lord. My legion is special; they have to earn the right to be in this legion. So, if they’re one of the few, they want to feel special. They don’t just fight for Lord So-and-So or even Overlord Whass-Name. They fight for Prince Oswald, heir to the Eternal Empire!”

  At that, he thrust out his chest and strode proudly toward his Angels, the fuzz of dark red hair peeking out from his military cap brightened considerably by the midday sun.

  I hated it when Lord Oswald called me a boy. At twenty-eight, I could hardly be considered a boy anymore, and he was only six years older than I, anyway. Normally, I’d have corrected him, but that time I had no wish to appear to undermine his authority in front of his legion.

  The Angels were a dangerous bunch, especially the women. Female soldiers have never been all that common, especially when it came to battle, but my Lord felt it was a stupid oversight. Women who weren’t set on attracting a Lord were willing to do whatever was needed to win a campaign, even if it meant going hungry for a week while drenched in blood and human waste. True, they didn’t have the raw strength of men, but I had yet to find a man in any legion that could match the endurance of the weakest woman in the Angels. Mothers were the fiercest, and the bravest once their children were grown, and tough young widows, many of whom had lost husbands in the campaigns, signed up in droves once word got out that the Angels wanted them.

  I was actually fond of the women in the Angels, but not for the reason most people thought, given my Lord’s and my frequent visits to certain establishments. Despite popular opinion, Angel women sported virtues as battle-hardened as their bodies; if I made the mistake of treating one of these real-life soldiers like one of the lovelies that pretended to be soldiers at the Lusty Legion Ladies near the palace, I’d leave with very little pleasure and quite a few bruises.

  No, I was fond of them because they reminded me of my only sister, Hannah, when she hit puberty. With nine brothers, Hannah was convinced she was a boy for most of her childhood. We all ran around stripped to the waist, even Hannah. Daddy let her grow her hair long, which looked good with her perfectly straight brown hair, but we Euclids had to keep our curly mops cut short. Hannah’s breasts started filling in — which confused me greatly, as I was four years younger and not yet aware of the changes brought about by puberty — and her hips started widening, and before long, she had her first period.

  All hell broke loose from that girl.

  For the next four years, as her mind adapted to her changing body, she was mightily upset to be a woman. It was our fault for making her a girl when we were all boys; it was our fault for not having painful breasts like she had; it was our fault for stealing her manhood from her before she was born, thus rendering her a woman. And, worst of all, it was our fault for making her bleed every month, and she was bound and determined to make damn sure we would bleed, too.

  Hannah thought it was funny to call out, “Euclid-one-to-nine,” for family dinners, but it was anything but funny when she singled out one of us. “Nine,” she’d sing out, and I’d know from her voice that I should run away. “I need a fa-vor.”

  She liked to pick on me because I was the youngest. “What, Han?” I’d ask, approaching her cautiously.

  “I need some ber-ries, Nine. Could you get some?” She’d bat her eyelashes theatrically and point to the blackberry patch out by the entrance to the north fields.

  I’d groan, she’d plead with me, I’d refuse, and then she’d threaten me. Her eyes sparked like the torches of hell when a new soul arrived, and she’d snap at me, “Maybe you’d like to take a nap in the barn, then,” and turn her back on me. That thinly-veiled threat wasn’t lost on me; I’d give in and climb into the thorny rose bushes that my mama, who never excelled at long term planning, thought looked so pretty completely surrounding the blackberry patch, which was no slouch when it came to thorns, either. I’d get the berries, but I’d also end up bleeding for the next hour. Hannah would be ecstatic.

  Once before, in the kitchen, after I’d upset her more than usual with my bellyaching about some triviality or another, she held aloft the sharp bread knife she’d been using and carefully tested its blade. Dreamily, she asked me, “You sleep soundly in the barn, don’t you, Nine?” I knew a threat when I heard one; I just hadn’t known she knew about my nocturnal excursions.

  So, when Hannah mentioned sleeping, I swallowed my reluctance and did what she asked.

  The women Angels in my Lord’s legion reminded me of Hannah during those four years — on a bad day. Pure, unadulterated anger, focused to a point and sharpened into a lethal instrument. They were dangerous, yes, but also a subconscious reminder of my carefree childhood days, which I cherished.

  Of course, the women had to make it through the local legions first, which drove the governors crazy and put a smile on Prince Oswald’s face, so it was worth the trouble.

  And each Saturday, the prince would go to the Angel’s main camp and watch them train, have lunch with them in the mess hall, and check up on his officers. Sometimes he even joined in the battle exercises.

  I’d heard that other planetary governors cultivated their own personal legions, too, but I doubted that they were anything like my Lord’s. To a man, they all gazed upon him with the utmost respect. At some point early in his life, before I met him, he’d ignored his birthright and enrolled in his local legion’s basic training. He’d seen battle on a number of occasions, and had the scars to prove it. And he’d personally trained with many of the officers in the Angels, all of whom were on a casual name basis with him — though none of them dared called him Adrian.

  “Call me Oz,” my Lord told me once at the House of Twelve Toes, while one of the girls was shaving all his body hair prior to a rather intimate interpretation of the House’s famed Toe Dance. It was the first time I’d ever seen the prince without a beard, and instantly I understood his reasons for growing one. Without the beard, he looked as young as a teenager. The girl shaving him cooed over him and called in all the other girls, and they spent the next ten minutes fawning over him, telling him how cute he was without his beard.

  My Lord, ever the diplomat in tricky situations, just sighed and closed his eyes for the Dance.

  It took a week for his beard to grow back, which impressed me greatly, as my own beard would have required a solid month of daily coaxing — and perhaps a salve or
two from a medicine woman I knew back home — to grow to the same length that the prince’s beard did in that week. During that time, he saw nobody and went nowhere, thinking his lack of beard would undermine his authority.

  When he emerged after that week, aristocratic beard restored and his head topped with dark red fuzz, he looked like a prince of legends, and I couldn’t bring myself to call him by his chosen moniker. It just seemed too informal.

  Wiping off large swatches of grime acquired during my mock-fight with the big legionnaire, I glanced up to see my Lord approaching.

  Prince Oswald had just had his hair cut recently, and the fuzz on his head and impeccably trimmed beard reminded me of how he looked after the Dance at the Twelve Toes.

  He whisked past me on the way to his inspection, expecting me to fall in behind him, which I did, despite my filthy appearance.

  Outside, a handful of straggling soldiers in parade dress glanced our way and scurried ahead of us with frightening haste.

  “So, Euclid,” he said, then stopped short, scowling at my disgraceful uniform, as if seeing if for the first time, and raised an eyebrow.

  I shrugged. “Training.”

  He sighed. “Who’s here this afternoon?”

  Lord Oswald was no fool when it came to spending his time or his money. Before I’d met him, every few months he’d waste a good deal of money — not to mention time — packing up his entire retinue and trekking across the globe to inspect all the local legions in a given area, and that cut into his leisure time in a major way. One of the first things I’d done as his personal secretary was to suggest some alternatives that worked more in his favor.

  Under the current system, the governors wasted a good deal of their time and money to bring their local legions to us each week. It was a win-win situation for everyone, even the empire — who technically controlled the legions, although the local legions hadn’t been called to interplanetary war in several generations — and the advantages to Lord Oswald were simply enormous. He could see far more local legions that way, at least one a week, usually more, depending upon the number of troops. The Angels’ camp could host up to ten thousand visitors; the onus was on the governors to work out the schedule to keep it as filled as possible without exceeding capacity. Since the visits were also used for recruiting into the elite Angels legion, and the Angels paid a handsome bonus for each inducted man to his previous legion, the governors were motivated to work out a mutually fair schedule that cycled the local legions as quickly and cheaply as possible. Squabbles between governors were minimized in the process as they sought to maintain their local legions at the highest standards, hoping to win as many of those induction bonuses as they could.

  To be honest, I’d expected the new system to be more expensive than the old way, but the costs ultimately would trickle down to the common man, and the per-man difference would be negligible, once the prince reduced the amount of tribute required from the governors. This had certainly been the case for the first year. Trust a greedy governor to find ways to cut costs and bloat his bottom line, though. The second year most of them showed a profit against the decreased tribute. And Lord Oswald’s cash flow was better, too, even with the bonuses, without all the princely travel expenses.

  Best of all, he was able to shift his legion to a hand-picked model, which ensured that every one of his troops did his best to perform to the level of his prince’s expectations. So Lord Oswald’s legion was a very loyal bunch, the lot of them. Sometimes it was hard to believe that they came from the locals.

  I flicked through my notes for a few seconds until I found which local legion was visiting. “Only one this week, my Lord. Kadish’s second-best, a fairly large one. They infiltrated Hargrave’s capital a few months back.”

  Lord Oswald nodded, looking impressed. “There was a Captain named Coelho, I believe, who distinguished himself then. And another one ... Birgitt Something-or-other. Set up interviews with both of them this afternoon.” He waved a hand vaguely at my notepad.

  I made a note of the names as some more stragglers thundered past us, wondering what the best legion in Kadish was like, if my Lord was that impressed with the second-best. “When? After the Angels inspection or the Kadish inspection?”

  “Between them. I expect we’ll find one or two more to interview after I see them. No need to tie up the entire afternoon with interviews.” He flashed a bright smile, and his emerald-green eyes shone like jewels caught by sunlight. “I was thinking of patronizing the Butterfly Palace tonight.”

  I smiled, too. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

  The Angels were in top form, as always. It was obvious from the inspection that the respect the prince commanded ran deep, and they took a special pride in performing for him on Saturdays. Despite the late runners, all of them assembled before my Lord’s arrival. This wasn’t really a surprise, as his popularity with his troops was unmatched in any other legion I’d ever seen or even heard of. It made me feel like enlisting, myself.

  “Get cleaned up,” my Lord said casually, as the troops began their obligatory parade review.

  Sprinting off, I showered and changed into parade dress in record time, then ran back before the last man passed my Lord.

  The interviews went well, too. So well that the Angels found their number enhanced by another three men — two men and one woman, to be exact, after the inspection and five more interviews, although they were all considered men in the legion. It was only detail-oriented people like me that cared how many of them were women. Loyalty was what was important, and my Lord punished disloyalty severely.

  After the interviews, the commander ushered us into his quarters.

  “Holding back a little from our tribute to New Rome?” Lord Oswald muttered casually. He glanced around the room, no doubt mentally cataloging the changes from his previous visit.

  The camp commander’s official office was sparsely furnished, with simple wooden chairs and a largely unadorned desk along one wall of the small room, directly opposite the single public door. No pictures hung on the walls, just a flag with the insignias of New Rome and the Eternal Empire, and a shield with Prince Oswald’s personal crest, which also graced the Angels’ uniforms. The walls were painted in a dull tan, bright enough to reflect light in the room, but boring enough to make visitors uncomfortable and develop a burning desire to leave within the first half hour. The whole ensemble created an atmosphere that spoke of utility and orders. It was effective.

  The receiving room in the commander’s quarters, on the other hand, spoke of pleasures and excesses. The walls bled red velvet, perfectly complementing the dark gray floor-to-ceiling silk curtains that flanked windows on three of the walls. The stuffing in the large chairs carefully positioned around the room threatened to burst the seams on the white leather. A lamp was thoughtfully located near each chair, so that we could read without straining our eyes, and an end table waited so close that I didn’t need to struggle out of the body-enveloping chair to set down the drink our host provided as soon as we entered his quarters. Several pictures hung on the walls, most of which appeared to be original art, and some of them had individual lighting. Glossy wood floors, a rarity for outworlds like ours that were more than a day’s travel from Eternity III, hid below expensive old-style silk rugs, another luxury hard to find since the advent of self-cleaning flooring several generations ago.

  One of the plush leather chairs nearly swallowed Lord Oswald, leaving only his red fuzz peeking over the top of the cushions and his two legs sticking out the front. A ring of cigar smoke floated up from the red fuzz, dissipating slowly while drifting up to the ceiling.

  “Z,” said Prince Oswald to General Zanuck, the commander of Oswald’s Angels, as he slipped into the room as silently as a panther, “I’m glad to see the legion is still in top form.”

  It was never made clear to me why my Lord was uncharacteristically informal with the general, because the knowledge of his connection to my Lord was kept under tight control.
What I’d gleaned from palace gossip over the years was that the previous Prince Oswald, my Lord’s father, had taken Zanuck into the palace at birth with the explanation that the future prince needed company to prevent him from being too selfish.

  Zanuck grinned and handed my Lord a brandy, before sinking into a chair facing the prince’s. “Your new recruits look good, especially that Captain.” He chuckled. “Mind you, I may have to demote someone to find a place for him if he can prove his worth.”

  Snickering, Prince Oswald said, “Keeps the officers on their toes. Don’t worry about it.”

  The general nodded. “Yeah, Harris has been slacking off lately. He could use a reminder that this isn’t a puff job.” He raised his glass in a toast. “To the new recruits.”

  “To Captain Coelho,” the prince said.

  I toasted, too, and sipped the exceptional brandy while my Lord and the general chatted about their good old days in training camp together.

  “Remember Mad Dog?” Lord Oswald mentioned at one point. “What was his name? I forget.”

  “Madigan?” General Zanuck asked, and they both burst out laughing, apparently remembering something that undoubtedly would turn out to be hilarious only if you were there.

  Mid-guffaw, the prince stopped dead, looking suddenly serious, as though he’d swallowed a pint of jetpack fuel. He rose smoothly to his feet from the chair somehow and motioned for me to stand. “Sorry, Z, it’s been fun, but we must be going. Got an appointment catching butterflies.”

  Zanuck stood, too, but with considerably more difficulty, and nodded his head lazily. Clearly the brandy had more effect on the general than on my Lord. “I understand,” he said, with a wink. “Go have fun.”

  They shook hands and we left, but Lord Oswald was silent for the entire walk to his jumper, except for occasional greetings to passing soldiers. He seemed preoccupied with something, I didn’t know what.

  Sensing my confusion, he stopped outside the open door to the jumper. “You’re wondering what that was all about, right?”