Swans Over the Moon Read online

  The Judicar mounted his horse and galloped back to the line. The earth cast barely-visible blue rays over the rock-littered plateau, filling the widening void between them with a ghostly curtain of light.

  Heterodymus climbed the ramp, which was worn from centuries of use as an approach to the highest observation point overlooking the Rüinker Plateau – the apex of the bluff from which seven dynasties of generals had laid their battle plans and waged their wars. The ectoplasmic remains of countless officers and soldiers eddied in the dust as he scaled the steep slope. The curve of the ramp ended in a straight ridge, like a lizard's tail leading up to the spine, on which the observers sat, though the women and girls who had come to watch the scene knew little of the weighty decisions that had been made from this point in the past, the ebb and flow of empires that commenced and ended right there. From this point the Judicar's adviser would observe the coming battle.

  He negotiated the steamer trunks and portable tea pantries that stood hidden behind the women's parasols, careful not to interrupt a pair of pygmies who were playing chess with stylized Scaramouche and Procellarian Knight pieces. A group of some dozen or more servant spectators listened with great interest as the opening moves were called out.

  b2-b4

  g7-g5

  Heterodymus walked around them, the sounds of the contestants' declarations growing fainter, but still a part of the background noise. He then stepped through the umbrellas and into Selene's sitting area. Her Tarans gave a start as he surprised them with his sudden appearance. They flitted quickly up and away, nearly choking the young lady with her own scarf. Heterodymus stifled a giggle as she shot bolt upright.

  “What!?” she shrieked, a demand as much as a question.

  “Many pardons, M'lady. I think I may have given your . . . your . . . young ones a bit of a startle,” Dexter said softly his sarcasm as subtle as his smooth voice. Sinistrum followed, his grating voice in utter contrast to his other half. “Beg pardon, Madame.” He bowed.

  She looked up cautiously to see the disposition of her Tarans. “My pets, are you well?” she said in a sickly sweet voice. “Oh, my babies. The ugly man won't hurt you, my pets.” They cooed their lamentable best.

  Satisfied that her Tarans were safe, she took up her opera glasses and turned her attention to the battlefield below.

  “I see that the Queen of the Savages has entered into negotiations,” she said disinterestedly. “Perhaps she will surrender, though that would be a bit of a shame.”

  “A shame?” Sinistrum almost snarled. “Surrender would spare her life, young lady Selene. There is no shame in it.”

  “Let us not speak of age. Even the oldest may prove the most unwise, counselor of the Judicar. Senility comes to the aged, not the young.” A few nearby women giggled at her cutting remarks. Sinistrum glared at her.

  Dexter spoke, the Tarans looked at him jealously, frustrated by their inability to express themselves verbally, as he could, despite the chronological similarity of their faces. “My apologies, Lady Selene. I only thought that you might be concerned with the ultimate outcome of your sister's decision.”

  “And why should I be?” she sneered.

  The heads looked at each other with combined perplexity and disgust, unable to decide between them whether to be outraged at her callousness, or merely to pity her lack of compassion. “My brother,” Sinistrum spoke carefully, “is blood of my blood. I should not want to see him come to harm, under any circumstances. Our shared love . . .”

  “You couldn't break from each other if you wanted to,” Selene interrupted. The gaggle of women snickered again. “Whereas all my sister and I share now is our father. Besides, your emotions get in the way of proper administration. Cimbri has betrayed my father, whom I love. She is a traitor to both man and kingdom and thus must reap the consequences of her choices.”

  The other women along the line nodded their approval and whispered to one another in an aural wave expanding to either side of her, as if she were a stone pillar pushed over into a conversational pond. Her pronouncements caused ripples in the social fabric of the nobility.

  “Your father does not want to fight Lady Cimbri,” Sinistrum crackled.

  “He still loves her and remembers how she used to be,” Dexter added.

  “She used to be a monopolizer of her mother's time. Now she monopolizes my father's time with her meaningless entreaties. And where did she get that ridiculous outfit?” Laughter again pulsed up and down the line. “Besides all that, the Judicar will do what he knows is right. He will behave responsibly for the kingdom and its people, unlike my rebellious sister.”

  “You seem to have been offended by her,” Dexter said. Sinistrum was now glaring at the Tarans, trying, quite successfully, to scare them. They continued to rearrange scarves, but with a wary eye on the left head, sure to keep Selene between them and the ugly man.

  “I think she was more offended by me,” Selene said.

  “No, never!” Dexter said in mock sympathy, dripping with sarcasm.

  She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts and observations that she did not catch the mockery. “Yes. She never did care for me, more especially since mother died. It's plain to see that she is jealous of my relationship with our father. Of course, this may be the misplaced affection of an old maid who has never known a man. Some people wear their insecurities on their sleeve.”

  The two heads looked at each other with a sly grin. “There, M'lady,” they both said in cacophonic unison, “you speak nothing but the truth.”

  Heterodymus turned away from Selene, a two-faced smile spreading over him, in spite of the battle unfolding on the plain below.

  Chapter 3

  The Scaramouche moved first, a slowly-marching rectangular formation spiked with extended weapons. The army looked like a giant, sea urchin-encrusted barge crawling across the barren moonscape. The prickly ink flow seethed with purpose In a cadence of stately progression, flowing over rocks and through dry wadis unimpeded as the blue planet loomed ever larger up above.

  Ten pairs of Procellarian vedettes galloped out to scout weaknesses and harass the enemy's flanks and rear. They rode in two lines, crisscrossing each other in “S” patterns across the dust of the Rüinker Plateau, forming wide, flat figure “8”s the breadth of the approaching formation. A volley smoked forth from the front of the black rectangle, dropping a dozen riders before they bore down on the soft flanks. The rider-less mounts of the slain meandered off to the northeast, no doubt fated to become meat for the multiple-legged, long-toothed denizens of Crater Mairan and Mare Imbrium beyond, voids across which no sane man, at least none who wished to keep his reason, would dare to pass.

  On the crest overlooking the battlefield, the pygmies continued their game:

  White Nb5

  Black xb5

  The Judicar waited until he could hear the clang of his skirmishers' shields on Scaramouche equipment and the ricochet of enemy musket balls off of his soldier's breast plates. Then, with the sound of metal on metal as his battle call, he bolted forward, leading the cavalry charge, nervous breath hissing through his gritted teeth. The Procellarian knights, four score strong, galloped forward toward the heart of the enemy formation, where they would attempt to carve their way back and out to meet the skirmishers that even now harangued the black army from the outside, thus cutting the enemy force into thirds.

  Dust choked the air by the time the Judicar reached the first line of enemy troops, and it was only with great difficulty that he placed his first shot. His horse jostled underneath him, trampling the enemy under hoof. His blunderbuss pistol discharged point blank into the Scaramouche's face, spattering mask, bone, and flesh in a mist of gore that coated his lap and right leg. He drew his rapier, slowly circling his horse to get a clear view of his surroundings above the fray, but the tourbillon was too great. He soon found himself in the midst of the enemy, completely surrounded.. His horse buckled beneath him, its armor punctured by dozens of enemy bayonets. The
weight of the animal's falling body crushed several Scaramouche troopers, their immense top hats flattened beneath the horse's mass. The collapse of the beast cleared an opening into which the Judicar tumbled as he flew from the saddle.

  White Kxd5

  His mind was awash in memorized ancestral epics wherein the Scaramouche were treated with scorn, a sort of clown-people who fled with whoops and silly dances when confronted by enemies with even the least bit of resolve. Surrounded, now, he wondered if the ghosts of those caricatured Scaramouche had returned to aid their descendants in turning the table of ridicule on the Procellarian monarch. He noted that they had never fought with such determination, usually breaking and fleeing even before the initial charge. This battle would long be remembered as the first great resistance of the Scaramouche. No matter, he thought. He had carried the day against more fearsome opponents under more compromised circumstances. His forces would win, of this the Judicar had no doubt. The only unsurety lay in the number of pages who would need to be knighted to fill the ranks of the fallen. The wailing of the Procellarian women would be insufferable, and the nobility would be sorely taxed to muster enough able youth into the army.

  He carved a small space with his rapier, barely big enough to use his sword. The dust cloud kicked up by the fall of his mount gave him enough reprieve to draw his poniard and fight two-handed, the way he preferred it. He heard, rather than saw, the battle – the diminishing rate of musket discharges to his rear, the echoes of ringing metal on metal, a scream from one of his troops far out on the left flank, the almost-silent fall of Scaramouche corpses before his sword and dagger – through all this he created an aural map of the battlefield. Despite his success in melee (he had cut down at least five since his horse died, and taken as many with his falling steed), his knights were slowly losing to the Scaramouche's superior numbers. Doubt now began to prod at the edges of his thoughts, and he wondered if his confidence would begin to bleed out of him, assuring his defeat.

  He thought he heard one of his knights nearby, a familiar voice among the chaos. He cut down two more of the enemy with one stroke on the way to his battle companion's voice. Too late did he realize that the voice screaming above the din belonged not to one of his knights, but to a woman, and that his foray had landed him even deeper in the midst of the enemy. Doubt was making inroads, and a tingling fear rose in his gullet. The battle pushed outward, away from him, like an expanding bubble. The growing void around him did nothing to embolden him. Instead, he felt naked and vulnerable. This apprehension to exposure scattered his battle focus so that he startled when he turned and saw Cimbri in the expanding circle. He knew then that it was her voice that had drawn him there.

  White Ke5

  Black Qe6

  They spotted each other simultaneously and both were struck by the cosmic inevitability of their encounter here, alone, at the heart of the battle. They circled each other, looking for an opening to present itself, an opportunity to strike, she with a blood-encrusted bayonet, he with his rapier and poniard. The clatter of battle continued to recede from them, the shuffling of feet and dust and their breathing becoming louder in the eerie vacuum.

  Cimbri had the demeanor of a crazed dog, hair standing out at odd angles, eyes agape, blood and saliva falling from her mouth. Every nerve was aware and tingling with electricity. Blood-lust overtook her.

  She used the length of her weapon to keep the Judicar at bay. He feinted with a downward thrust toward her legs, but she caught the deception, following through with a low strike, piercing his thigh deep into muscle until she hit bone with the tip of the blade. She smiled a crazed smile, twisting the bayonet with a turn of her wrist and a grunt of effort, holding her weapon against the Judicar's leg bone, further emphasizing his vulnerability. But her face dropped quickly into despair as he took advantage of her gloating, hacking her strong hand off at the wrist with one swift slash in her momentarily glory-numbed second of inaction. She dropped to one knee as he slid his leg off the bayonet. The pain of extraction burned and pounded far more than the pain of the initial penetration. He limped over to where she knelt, in a whirlwind of confusion, unable to steady her weapon while simultaneously gripping the stump of her wrist. She quickly put her free hand to her breasts, tearing out a frilly jabot and pressing it to the crimson-spilling wound to staunch the uncontrolled flow of blood.

  The Judicar lowered the point of his sword to her neck, held her chin up with the weapon's blade. He looked into the eyes of the daughter he once loved.

  In his peripheral vision he caught flashes of ivory on black through the dust, the muffled pattering of approaching footsteps drummed from somewhere beyond his sight. A warm gust of wind blew the wall of dust away and the Judicar looked around to find himself surrounded by Scaramouche, three dozen or so, their bayonets all pointed toward the familial pair, a fanged maw of steel about to sink its teeth into the prey.

  “Stalemate,” he rasped.

  “No,” she conceded, “you have won. I will soon pass out from blood loss and they will flee, leaderless. You will, no doubt, rout their army and kill the weak and the stragglers. But before that, I want you to hear and understand.” She shivered, and her breathing became erratic. Her eyes fluttered uncontrollably, though she strained hard to maintain consciousness.

  “You have fought bravely. I will grant this request – as one warrior to another.” Any hint of parental affection was lost in the formality of his voice.

  She nodded and, as she did, a low moan sounded from the surrounding Scaramouche, a moan that rose and dipped, struck and eddied, wheeled into a plaintive, beautiful song.

  The Judicar looked from side to side, fearful and perplexed, but saw that his enemy's bayonets no longer pointed at him. “What is this witchcraft?” he demanded, pushing her chin up again with his blade.

  His daughter, nearly breathless with the effort it took to stay awake, replied. “Listen. You will recognize . . .”

  He acquiesced for the honor of the oath. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end when he placed the haunting tune.

  Images of his daughters and wife wheeled back in time, like a stack of daguerrotypes being flipped rapidly backwards from present to past by some invisible hand, the light of his memories fluttering like candlelight in their wind. The visions slowed, then stopped on a scene of his wife playing a harp, the blue of earthlight at night cascading down through the glass roof above the royal bedchamber, oceans dripping liquid music from the instrument's strings. Her voice, warm and serene, almost filled their bedchamber, the cooing of a baby – Cimbri, and, years later, her younger sister Basia, then Selene. The room was filled with a fulsome warmth that created a feeling of sanctuary from the dying world on the cold lunar surface above the bedchamber.

  The comfort of those most private moments filled him, momentarily. But the bedchamber evaporated before his eyes as nervousness, then a deep-welling resentment, flowed from him as he returned to the present, surrounded by Scaramouche singing this song, a song that only his wife could have fully known. “How?” he questioned, his voice full of accusation. “How do they know this song? This was your mother's song.”

  “No,” Cimbri cried, “It is their song, father. It tells of a mother's miraculous discovery that she could feed her child from her own breasts, that the child need not kill to eat until it grew, and the peace that entered childhood as a result of that discovery. It is one of their founding myths. I did not teach it to them. They had it first.”

  “Then your mother,” a searing revelation dawned on him, “your mother learned it . . . from them?”

  A weak smile creased Cimbri's pallid face. “I see beauty where you see darkness. And in that darkness, mother hid this thing from you. She feared that you would not see their beauty as she and I did. I fear she was right.”

  The song slowed and the Scaramouche sauntered northward just as the sound of hoofbeats sounded from the south. The Judicar's freshly-rallied troops crashed into the rear column of the retreating
Scaramouche, breaking them into small pockets that gave little resistance to the slaughter inflicted on them. The hoofs of the Procellarians’ horses became encrusted with a pink paste composed of the soil of a dying world mixed with the blood of a retreating army. The Judicar involuntarily fell to one knee and watched the waning battle paint the landscape in long streaks to the north.

  The Procellarian knights cheered the rout, then helped their enfeebled commander onto the back of an abandoned steed. He rode back to the cliff and ascended with assistance, wounded, but un-defeated. Selene greeted him with a kiss and a glass of wine, which he drank deeply, not stopping until the vessel was empty and dry as the plains to his back.

  “Father,” Selene said dramatically so that all would hear, a theatrical performance as much as a greeting. “Another victory for our people. Hurrah!”

  The women and girls cheered him as his knights, working on the bleak plain below, constructed a gallows with the bones and muskets of the dead and dying Scaramouche. There the Judicar's traitorous daughter was hung for treason on the bodies of those she mistakenly loved and led, astride their weapons of sedition.

  The Judicar, weakened by his wound, slumped down in Selene's chair and fell into blackness. His closing vision that night was the sight of Selene and the knight's women clapping and cheering to the death throes of his Cimbri. The Tarans floated up, Selene's long white scarf framing in a circle beneath them the last sight of that place. His daughter, Cimbri, a broken body swinging on the wind of the lunar night.

  Chapter 4

  The dead were buried, per Procellarian tradition, under mounds of white roses that were then ritually watered by the tears of the deceased's kin. The Judicar oversaw the ceremony, then led the knights back to the palace strapped to the saddle of a fallen knight's horse. The dead knight's family considered this the highest honor and walked alongside the steed, keeping their leader from sloughing off to the side from exhaustion.