Root and Branch

by Tripp Greyson

  Again they laughed, though not as heartily as their army had, especially after I told them that all those soldiers were dead.

  I begged them again to send us their precious children.

  Again, they refused.

  I wept as the bombs dropped, and the powdery, stinking gas, which would never be more than an irritant to those of us who did not eat of humanity, started to make thousands of women, teenagers, and elders begin to jitter, spasm, convulse, foam at the mouth — and jump straight into the air like giant grasshoppers before falling back to Earth, to the utter horror and trauma of their unsullied children.

  Those, at least, who were not sexually mature. Those who were died with their parents.

  Chapter 12

  We had prepared for our war with the Waykans for four months. Not counting travel time, the actual war took less than a day. We used no marble bullets, bricksies, or kicksies, no arrows or crossbow bolts. Only I even unsheathed a sword. It was all down to the gas. It wiped out the entire Scholarly population, except for the children, exactly as it was designed to. Cleaning up the bodies and taking care of the survivors and rendering aid took weeks, especially when we learned how many of the Gormless there actually were. There were many more of the slaves than there were Scholars.

  This time, I made myself watch the gas attack. All of it. I'd instructed my father to make sure that my enemies' deaths were horrifying and horrible, and he had done just that. After the gas was released, I gave the order for our entire army to retreat precisely half a mile, where they were to wait for me, without watching what happened when the gas took effect.

  I will have nightmares about it the rest of my days; but that is my penance for killing nearly 3,000 people without even raising a weapon.

  I made sure to walk into the center of the football field and look everywhere. I saw women die. I saw men die. I saw old and young alike die. I saw individuals I considered children die, because they were old enough to be Scholars, and had added human meat to their diet — as they considered their right. It was not their right. It is no one's right to eat the flesh of another human being, and it never will be. Not while I am alive, and not while my Goddess is in charge, even if she is less in charge than the Wold.

  The worst part of it was, the Waykans had ignored our advance warnings, and refused to listen when I literally begged. They had not separated the children out so they could be easily saved and, most importantly, nowhere near the Scholars when the attack occurred. And thus, thousands of innocent young children witnessed their older siblings and their parents die in horrible ways, and were terrified and traumatized.

  I hadn't expected that. I didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't know how I was going to deal with it. By the time all the Scholars were dead, I had broken down in tears and was just about ready to fall on my sword. I didn't, because too many people, including a Goddess and a demigod, depended on me. But I never forgot. I will never forget, even though we found a way to help the children heal. Thank Goddess for the Gormless, who protected and saved some of the children as we had instructed; and thank Goddess for them taking charge of the surviving children, and leading them to safe places where they didn't have to deal with the corpses of their families surrounding them.

  Later, my army converged on the football field, and began sorting the dead into neat rows and counting them. I did my best to help; but the second time we found an infant in his dead mother's arms, bruised black by her convulsions and nearly smothered by her body when she fell, I fled the scene and went back to the darkness of the Provost's home, hardened my heart, and cleared it of their remains. I covered the bodies with sheets.

  Later, I sat on the steps and rocked, and finally raged at my Goddess; and after a time, She raged right back at me, for She had found out that we had disobeyed Her and allowed the children of the Waykans to live. She was a welcome distraction, and I preferred that to thinking of those frightened, hurt babies. She had told me in the past that she lacked the ability to borrow against her Quintessence as our son did, but still she manifested before me, ten feet tall and terribly beautiful in her wrath, her hair writhing in some wind that only she felt.

  "HOW DARE THEE DISOBEY ME, FELL TOBIAS!" she boomed.

  "They're just little kids," I muttered.

  "THERE REMAIN 7,312 SURVIVORS OF THE SCHOLASTIC EMPIRE OF WAYKO!" She informed me.

  I shot to my feet. "You're counting the Gormless?" I shouted. "They refused to be cannibals, and for that they were treated like slaves! You've already destroyed my soul! I will kill no more innocents, this day or any other! I will never again take up arms against anyone unable to take up arms against me, innocent or not! THIS WAS NOT WAR! THIS WAS AN ATROCITY!"

  I fear my voice was as loud as Hers for a moment.

  An unseen force pushed me off my feet, so that I sprawled painfully on the stairs. "YOU WILL NOT SPEAK TO ME IN THAT TONE OF VOICE! I WILL NOT HAVE CANNIBALS OR NEAR-CANNIBALS IN THESE LANDS OR ON THIS WORLD!"

  "There's no such thing as near-cannibals!" I yelled. "That's like being slightly pregnant! You are or you aren't!"

  Her eyes narrowed. "I KNOW THAT OUR UNBORN SON AIDED THEE IN THY DECEIT, SO IT MAY VERY WELL BE THAT I WILL NOT BE PREGNANT SOON!"

  I jumped to my feet and screamed, "DON'T YOU DARE HURT LITTLE MAGIC, YOU EVIL BITCH! HE'S PURE GOOD AND NEITHER OF US DESERVE HIM!"

  "CURB THY TONGUE, MISCREANT! I MADE THEE, AND I CAN UNMAKE THEE!"

  "Go ahead! I'd rather be dead than worship a Goddess like you!"

  The Goddess of Dawn, my first love, raised a hand crackling with Glory, ready to unmake me as we both wanted; then the world froze in yet another example of deus ex machina, a circumstance of which I had grown more than a little tired.

  A voice that put either of ours to shame thundered, THIS IS GETTING OUTTA HAND. LOOK, LADY, OLD JAWEH MADE THIS GUY, AND I REMADE HIM, 'K? YOU JUST FIXED HIM. HE DID WHAT WAS RIGHT AND PROPER. SO SAYETH THE SUPREMITY OF THIS WORLDLINE YOU FUCKED UP, AURORA. NOW OFF WITH YOU BOTH.

  I don't know where he put Aurora, but I found myself in a tent miles north of Wayko in the last column of Gormless we'd sent away from the fight — to my surprise, and the delight of the Moggie officer whose tent it was. After a relaxing night, it took me close to four hours to get back to Wayko and the after-battle chaos.

  Chapter 13

  For a war in which we killed several thousand people, we got off incredibly lightly. None of my infantry suffered a single wound, but we did have casualties among the Air Force.

  Our Pixies, Imps, Fairies, and Buzzard Riders were small and hard to hit for a ground-based force lacking firearms, but before the gas-bombs hit — and perhaps after, while they convulsed — the Waykan Army did manage to strike a few with thrown weapons and starcasters, which hurled weighted gopherwood shurikens. Most of the injuries were broken limbs, cracked ribs, crumpled wings, and a few concussions, and were healable.

  But not all.

  I stepped into one of the stone homes of the Gormless, where seven small forms lay huddled on a dinner table, six silent and wrapped in blood-stained handkerchiefs, their weapons lying beside them. The seventh knelt over one of the silent, weeping bitterly. The dead included a Fairy and five Newdies.

  Michelangelo clutched the body of a violet-haired Dixie to his chest, wailing, "No no no no no no no no! Why why why why why why why why, oh why!" The violet-haired boy had suffered the bad fortune of taking a shuriken point-first in the chest. "No! It's not true! Wake up, Leo! You gotta take care of Sindra and Guesi! It won't be long now!"

  The violet-haired boy was named Leonardo. He had loved pulling pranks, drinking beer, and Memegwesi girls, and had two children on the way. He was also my son. I had lost another child in this war, surely just one of the many to come when we fought the Tejarkanye and the Bejar Coven and whoever the hell else stood in our way.

  I must have made a small sound as I begin weep, because little Mikey looked up at me, eyes wide and bright. "Daddykins! Leo won't wake up! Tell him
to wake up! He has buns in the oven and girls who love him! Wake up, Leo!"

  I couldn't speak; I just cried harder — until I was shocked back to my senses by an enormous voice that gently told us, HE WILL NOT WAKE UP, LITTLE WARRIOR. HE HAS GONE TO THE HEART OF BLISS.

  Mikey looked around wildly. "Whoa! Are you God or somethin'?"

  ONE OF THEM.

  "Oh! What's the Heart of Bliss?"

  A SPECIAL HEAVEN FOR SMALL FLYERS LIKE YOU.

  "Wow! Did you hear that, Daddykins? Leo's in Heaven!" I nodded silently. "When will he come back, God?"

  HE ALREADY HAS. HIS SOUL WAS REBORN INTO A SPRITE IN EIRE LESS THAN AN HOUR AGO.

  "But when will he be back here?" Mikey persisted.

  NEVER. HIS LIFE AS LEONARDO IS OVER. BUT HE DIED A HERO, AND WHAT MORE CAN A DIXIE ASK? I felt the Wold begin to withdraw, so I asked the question I had to ask:

  "Did… did my Icarus pass through the Heart of Bliss, too?"

  …NO. HE WAS PERSONALLY ESCORTED TO THE AFTERLIFE BY YOUR GODDESS, AND THERE HE REMAINS.

  Then It was gone, leaving us to our grief.

  Mikey started crying again. After a little while, he laid Leonardo down on the table and carefully covered him up with the stained handkerchief. Then he stood and turned to me. "Leo was a hero," he said.

  "He was," I agreed.

  "He was supposed to be my little brother, you know. Not my big brother. I was chewing on his arm when my fangs fell out."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Yeah. He was so mad at me, he pushed ahead in the birth order so he could be the Leonardo instead of me. I came out of the greep right after him. And then I punched him in the face."

  "That I know," I said, laughing a little through my tears. "He told me. He thought it was hilarious."

  "It was." Mikey wiped tears from his eyes and flew to my shoulder, where he said, "Daddykins. Let's go get drunk and remember Leo. An' Icarus."

  "Let's do that, son." We left to find a flagon and a thimble for our beer and wine, and that wasn't the last time that night that Michelangelo and I laughed and cried for his fallen Hero Dixie brothers.

  ❖

  The next day, I sent messages by Dixie to the soldiers guarding the Gormless we'd rescued. I had them inform the Gormless that they were free to come home, to swell our ranks at Icarus Township, or to stay in the communities where they found themselves, and repopulate and build up the area between Icarus and Wayko as much as they liked. Due to the old Central Tejas tradition of building structures from fieldstone, there were plenty of empty houses, and just as many farms and ranches waiting to be brought back into use. I also made sure to inform them that they were now citizens of the Commonwealth of Icarus, as we had just annexed Wayko, its environs, and the corridor between our two cities.

  Most of the Gormless chose to come back to Wayko, where they had surviving family. On the way, the nearer group (at the prodding of my son Ahriman) stopped long enough to loot the bodies of the Waykan army at Kollins Street, and for sanitary reasons, to collect the dead in tidy piles and burn them. I would have had them buried, but honestly there wasn't enough empty land nearby. Everything was quite urban in that location, and even much of the old eyeway was intact. So burning it was; and by the time it was done, it had become Icaran tradition that we burned the dead of our enemy after battle.

  Our own six dead, including my son Leonardo, we interred in a new section of a local cemetery during a grand funeral that the entire army and many of the Gormless attended. Acheron and Michelangelo lowered their brother into place, weeping openly; and the other five were consigned to their places by their own brothers or, in the Fairy's case, sisters. Later, I arranged for the crafters among the Gormless to raise a monument above their common grave, carved with their names. We had dead here now, and we would not be leaving them. Wayko was ours.

  Out of respect, at least for the youngest, I had the Provost's family buried rather than burned, at an undisclosed location only I and a few of the Gormless knew of. I visited it frequently in the early years, whenever I was in Wayko.

  The same day I sent out my messengers to the Gormless, my army and I moved into the quarters recently vacated by the Scholars of the erstwhile Scholastic Empire. The Gormless had gathered the traumatized orphans of the Scholars together, and were treating them lovingly, trying to help them recover. For some, it was an easy process; the awful gas had rescued them from abusive parents and/or lives they didn't want. Already, I could hear children play-screaming and laughing.

  But there were also children who were still true-screaming in horror at what they'd seen, and turned deathly pale or fainted when they saw a Taura, or Centaur, or Faunlet. They couldn't bear to look up at the fliers. I had no idea what to do with them, except continue to treat them kindly and keep them away from the funerary efforts. There were thousands of bodies to be cremated, and we had barely begun the process of removing their bodies, especially from the football field.

  The Gormless immediately pitched in in their own thousands. For them I thank the Goddess, though she no longer spoke to me. Apparently she had turned me loose. And I had yet to hear from Little Magic since his Mother had discovered our disobedience. All there was in my mind was a hole where he used to be. If I could still pray, I would have prayed for him to manifest before me, even in that ridiculous young Elf outfit, and tell me he was okay. That didn't happen.

  The evening after the funeral, as I sat working on a message to send back to Icarus Township, Acheron flew in through the window, holding his hands over his ears. As he landed on the table, he pulled his hands away, and winced. "Dammit, I can't even escape it in here, Dadinator!"

  "The Hero Dixie song?" I asked drily.

  "Hell yes! It's giving me a headache, and I got enough troubles on my plate!"

  I rolled my eyes upward, looking at the ceiling. Outside, the Newdies and Imps had just started their latest verse of the Hero Dixie song, which I was monumentally tired of myself. This one had to do with their mighty sexual prowess, and I won't repeat it here. They were endlessly inventive, the Dixies.

  Achy cried out, "Oi! Now I know why you used to complain about First Clutch!" And that from a fellow who played something he called More Cowbell in a scream-metal band that could be heard a mile away on a bad day. Don't ask me why they called it More Cowbell. Maybe because it was so big he couldn't lift it? All he could do was beat on it with sticks.

  I tried to think of some way to tell my wives I had just killed 3,000 people with poison gas, but I couldn't. Instead, I reached under my table and got one of the special Imp chairs made to accommodate their size and wings, and put it on the table. Achy collapsed into it gratefully, heaving a big sigh.

  "What a war, what a war," he muttered.

  "Yes," I agreed, "and I can't figure out how to tell the people at home, especially my wives, that I won it by murdering thousands with a poison gas my son helped my father create."

  Acheron sat straight up, clutching the arms of the chair, glaring at me so hard I was afraid flames would shoot out of his eyes. "It wasn't murder! Those people deserved it!"

  "Even the youngest ones?" I had seen children as young as 15 or 16, what Old-Father father would have called "tweens" for some reason, die from the gas. Only a few, admittedly. They had been considered mature enough to join the ranks of Scholar, thus knowingly consuming human flesh. But to me, they were still children. And I had killed them in a coward's way, for a reason used by so many murders throughout history: because my Deity told me to. In my case, of course, I wasn't under any delusion; my Deity really had ordered their deaths. At least I had saved the children, though that had gone against Her direct orders. And now Little Magic might have paid the price.

  "Some of them were children," I said in a low voice.

  I suddenly found Acheron in my face, his wings buzzing so fast they were almost invisible, his forefinger jabbing at my nose. "Father!" he shouted to get my attention. Then he made the point that chilled my blood: "If they'd had
a chance, those monsters would have eaten my Saul!"

  I leaned back, breathless, and Achy returned to his seat, moaning, "My Saul, my Saul," and crying into his hands.

  "There, there," I said, feeling useless, stroking his back with a finger.

  "I can't stand the thought of him being eaten! I've already lost three brothers!"

  I was still somewhat clueless about most people, having been such an odd duck growing up, but this I could understand. "You miss Saul terribly, don't you?" I commiserated.

  After a while he looked up and wiped away his tears as he replied, "…Not really." I was taken aback, since they were such close friends. Then he failed to clarify his statement by saying, "I mean, he's right there, all the time."

  I blinked. "What do you mean, son?"

  "I can feel him. He's happy. He's warm. He likes running with our Pooka brothers. He really likes Mama Coulter's boobs." He wiggled his eyebrows. "Don't blame him, actually."