Tales From The Occupation: A Fae Wars anthology (The Fae Wars Book 4), page 1
Fae Wars
Volume IV
Tales from the Occupation
Created by Lucas Marcum and J.F. Holmes
Edited by Michael Morton
Stories
1. J.F Holmes Hearts and Minds
2. Alex ShawOne Man’s War
3. Michael CraigForget me Nots
4. John OlsenA Wing and a Prayer
5. Cedar SandersonThe North Way
6. James CopleyHopper Station
7. R. Kyle HannahWhere There’s Smoke …
8. Brian GiffordTukor and the Iron Maiden
Hearts and Minds
By J.F. Holmes
Prelude
“Better a jail cell than a dungeon, right? I mean, no Iron Maiden or thumbscrews, and it’s dry.”
Sheriff Bannerman tipped his hat back and leaned forward. He was old but tough like me, though to be honest, sixty-six felt like a hundred sometimes. “Mike, I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough. The elves are going to be here in a few hours and then you’re going to wish for a torture chamber.”
“Fred, I don’t have to remind you, but back in ‘70, we got drafted and sent to that hellhole we called Vietnam.” I didn’t like to think about that time, matter of fact I had buried a lot of those memories.
“Yeah, and I spent a year in an air condition warehouse at Cam Rahn routing material to guys like you out in the bush,” said my friend, a guilty look on his face.
“Can’t help it if you scored higher on the tests than I did! I got sent out there because I’m a dumbass, as you can see,” emphasizing my point by waving my plastic MRE spoon at the cell bars. “This, though,” and I held out the field ration, “is a hell of a lot better than a C-rat. Not as good as your wife's steaks though.”
“Not anymore, they came and took over Paulson’s this morning, gave all the prime beef cows to some orcs, slaughtered them on the spot,” he said bitterly. “Yeah, we get plenty of food for nothing at the market, but it’s not exactly the good stuff.”
It’s started already, and he hasn’t been dead more than a day. I grunted and then said, “Doesn’t matter to me now.”
“I suppose not. Gonna tell me why you did it though? Me being the law and all, such as it is.” As he said that, a look of disgust ran across his face. Fred Bannerman had, before the Invasion, taken the job of policing our small town, and the bigger county, seriously. Even if we were in the middle of nowhere, the wrong side of the Catskill mountains in New York, with more cows than people.
I sighed and said, “You’re gonna be mad when I tell you, Fred.”
“Try me, Mike.”
***
It was, I think, about two month after the Invasion when I met Lord Bilarien Tavor. That was his title, but eventually I just called him Billy. He was a fifth nephew once removed or something of THE Tavor, the shithead ruling New York City. The one in the video, where he got taken down by some special operations guy in a damned sword fight. He showed up that week, about time the son was in charge, I guess, same one that’s ruling the City right now. Bilarien had been ‘given’ our valley up here in the back side of the Catskills as ‘reward’, meaning being sent out to the middle of nowhere for being too nice a guy to his prisoners. His troops loved him, though, both Red Arrow and White Hand. He had a platoon of each, tasked to keep order in the county, but like I said, it took them a while to get here.
No one had really bothered us up here in the sticks. There was a National Guard armory in Binghamton, an engineer unit, that got mobilized on Day Two, and none of them had ever come back. All five soldiers from our town gone just like that, and the State Police barracks over in Cobleskill was empty too, apparently. Well, Chrissy Somerston, a Spec Four in the Guard, showed up two months later, but she wasn’t all there and ate a pistol a week later. I think on the third week a convoy showed up, a bunch of humans driving semi’s and escorted by a troop of elven cavalry. Good thing because food was getting pretty damn short. I did notice, though, that the drivers were scared shitless and one of the trucks was running on a flat and another was smoking badly from under the hood. That and bullet holes in the cabs and trailers, as well as a few empty saddles. Good, fuck ‘em. At least someone hadn’t stopped fighting.
As for the locals, well, the panic of a small town running out of food had pretty much taken the fight out of us before it started. Seriously, what were we going to do? New York had for the most part, with their stupid gun laws, stripped us of anything to fight with. We were a thousand people scattered across a small town and a bunch of dairy farms in the middle of the mountains. Most of the roads were two lanes that ran between the narrow valleys, one farm to the next, with our town being the biggest. We actually had two stop lights.
Plus, I think we were in shock over how fast everything happened. I know I was. Recently retired from the state, working for the DEC managing state lands. Not the best paying job, but it kept me out of doors like I wanted. And we had made it work, me and Anna raising three kids who had all jetted out of here as soon as they could. Can’t say I blamed them, because I was a bit of a dick for quite a while after I got back from ‘Nam. How she put up with me for as long as she did, I don’t know, but she was a better woman than I deserved. I think she was in California last I heard.
Me, I just hung out at the Hamlet. It was a diner slash coffee shop, and I had one or two other old timers like me that met occasionally to argue about politics, but mostly I read the paper. Even that last one from the Albany Times Union, three pages of complete confusion and bullshit. I was kinda amazed they managed to get that printed and out, since I heard the Fae went after the Watervliet Arsenal and the NY Guard HQ at Albany airport hard. We had some refugees but honestly the city folks just stuck to what they knew, running from one urban area to another. Didn’t matter, the fighting upstate was over in a week.
So, I sat and drank my coffee and shot the shit with the other old guys, flirted with the waitress who, if my kids had stayed, probably would have gone to school a little bit before my granddaughter. That is, I did until a Friday morning, a week after the Fae had rolled into town and left a squad of orcs to despoil the local library.
I never sat with my back to the door, a habit I learned almost fifty years ago, so I saw them come in. My coffee sat untouched as I watched first a big bruiser of a White Hand orc, though I learned later that their tribe ran small compared to the Red Arrow. Shit, I wouldn’t have taken him on if I was forty years younger. He cleared everyone out from a couple of booths with gestures that easily conveyed his threat, then went back and opened the door again, the entrance bells jangling in tune with his chainmail.
In stepped three elves, the first two, well, knights I guess you would call them. They wore swords and well broken-in plate mail, and they looked like some seriously dangerous fuckers. I learned later that they were the landless nephew and niece of Lord Bilarien, a brother and sister named Ashut and Lathy. I learned to like them, in a way, because having been a fighting man myself, I could respect their skills and, to be honest, they said what they meant and meant what they said. Not a lot of humans lately that were into that.
Behind them stood another elf, similar in features to the first two but wearing a shiny ass chainmail shirt under a hand tooled leather coat that looked like it cost a million bucks. This dude was, I’m not afraid to say it, beautiful. Even the scar on his face just made him more rugged looking, like a model for western wear or something. The waitress and the other two women in the diner just stared. Now I know that pretty much all elven nobility, and even the ‘commoners’, have that effect.
I picked up my coffee and took a sip, trying to play it cool, like a dumbass. I wasn’t sure what to expect; I had seen videos of people getting killed for not kneeling fast enough or somehow pissing them off, and I realized that maybe I had just given myself a death sentence. Well, I should have died fifty years ago in that bamboo cage. Lord Bilarien looked at me, the only one doing anything other than staring, quietly gave an order and nodded in my direction.
Jack and Jill, my private names for his two retainers, moved quickly towards me and pinned my arms in grips of steel, no screwing around. Like I said, I’ve been an outdoors kind of guy my whole life so I’m in decent shape for my age, but these were, well, fighters. I’d say young, but who knows with elves?
Then the brute squad, their orc, gave me a professional once-over that was the most intimate contact I’ve had in years. He immediately found the Colt 1911 that I carried every day for the last, well, almost fifty years. Never used it once, but then again, my house never burned down either and I still had a fire extinguisher. He laid it on the counter, just out of reach of anyone, and proceeded to finish his pat down, ending with a grunt of “he’s clean” or whatever it was in orcish. The two Fae forcefully sat me down on my stool at the counter and stood behind me, no doubt ready to cut my head off.
The head elf walked and pulled up a chair, turning it around to sit on it backwards, taking off the leather coat and handing it to another creature I hadn’t seen come in, kind of a cross between a monkey and a dog. The thing, which I later learned was an honest to God demon servant, growled at me, took the coat and disappeared. Not beat feet, literally disappeared.
Seeing the look of discomfort on my face, Bilarien said, in perfect American accented English, “Sorry if Grau disconcerted you, he’s perfectly harmless. This, on the other hand,” and he took up my Colt and started examining it.
“Careful with …” I started to say, but he dropped the magazine, racked the slide, snatched the ejected round out of the air, slipped the round into his pocket then field stripped it faster than any Drill Sergeant I had ever seen, laying the pieces out on the counter. Then he smiled, closed his eyes and put it back together just as fast. Last, he put the magazine back in the well and then handed it to my, butt first. No round in the chamber, of course. He wasn’t stupid but he wasn’t scared, either. Of course, he was in no danger at that point, I’m sure my head would have been separated from my shoulders before I even started to pull the slide back, never mind cocked the hammer. I took it and put it back into the holster on my belt, my heart racing.
“Thank you,” I said, kind of awkwardly. What exactly do you say after that?
“One can’t be too careful, there are bears in these woods,” he said with a smile, then leaned forward and continued with a wink and conspiratorial tone, “and in the case of dashing men and elves such as us, jealous husbands! Just between us, it is very hard to be this good looking of a rogue, is it not?” Then he turned and shot a dazzling smile at the other waitress, who was almost my age. Sally blushed fearfully.
I laughed. That was how I came to meet the new boss, very different from the old boss.
***
We all expected Bilarien to jump in with both expensive boots and rule the way we had seen things going all around the country. Occasionally people came up from New York City and told us about the fighting still raging in the suburbs, and we saw it on the internet. Apparently, remnants of the military were giving them hell, but all was quiet here. We were mostly a farming community, the town being a hub for supplies like tractor parts and tools and honestly, we were an older population. Kids had been leaving here for decades, and most of us just wanted to live our lives.
Instead, the guy was a good leader. He treated everyone with respect, set himself up as a judge for criminal court and was pretty damn fair. A lot harder on people who had been getting a free pass, like Willy Johnston who had been beating his wife for years. He got forty lashes and was banned from the community, his wife getting a job at the once vacant casino & summer resort that had become Bilarien’s estate. Other disputes, the Fae took the time to listen to both sides and his judgment was, well, fair. No one was ever completely happy with what he pronounced, but as time went on people learned to either be right or not complain. He was often harder on false complaints than on losers in legitimate cases. A few hours in the stocks did a great deal to put people into a less litigious mood, and once word got around that whippings were a thing, whatever petty crime we had disappeared.
What sealed the deal for the county was when a group of, I don’t know, bandits, gangbangers, refugees, whatever, drove down from Utica. It was stupid shit that had been happening a lot more often even before the Invasion, mostly car theft. They attacked a farm and, well, raped and killed the couple living there. One of Bilarien’s flyers saw the smoke, investigated and sent some kind of message to him. Next thing we knew his cavalry troop of a dozen elves were hauling ass down main street, whatever kind of magic they had moving their horses faster than a car. When they came back, a couple of hours later, he had a bunch of heads tied to his saddle and three kids with his riders. The heads were stuck up on spikes at the off ramps leading up into the mountains with a proclamation from the elves that they basically weren’t fucking around. That kind of thing put a dead stop to anyone coming into our quiet countryside again, and Bilarien’s stock went way up.
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it always does, and it kind of did. I was sitting having my morning cup of weak coffee and Bilarien walked in through the door. He had shown up several times since our first encounter and Jack and Jill now only stood on either side of the doorway. The orc, Grishna, stood outside the diner and probably scared the shit out of anyone who tried to come in. The owner didn’t care because gave him a five-gold piece tip every time he ate there, and dollars were rapidly becoming useless. He sat down across from me at the counter and Sally poured him a cup of the real thing, strong. A nod from him and she poured me one, too.
We had talked several times since he had first shown up, mostly him asking me questions about humanity in general, never any specifics on local people. What the hell, the better he understood us, maybe the better he would treat us. Coffee between us had become a regular thing, a couple times a week. Crap, I even taught him how to play spades, and he picked Grishna of all people as a partner. That lasted for only a few games until I caught Sally giving him hints as to what cards she held. The dude couldn’t help his effect on women, and I had fun, more than I had had in a long time.
Now, though, he had a troubled look on his face. “Tell me something, Michael, son of Giovanni. I have a human problem and I seek your advice.”
Human problem? I took a moment before replying, “Uh, I don’t know if human medicines work on elves, but we have this thing called ‘penicillin’ if you, uh, caught something from a woman.”
He seemed amused, chuckling as he said, “No, we Eldorai aren’t subject to the same ills and diseases that the weaker races are. And even if I were, I would just go to a healer.” Then he grew more serious. “I need to know how to deal with some humans.”
“I’m not going to rat on anyone here,” I said emphatically.
“Rat?” he replied with a raised eyebrow. “What an interesting word, but I understand. No, I have been ordered to do something that is … distasteful. I’m being given a group of prisoners who have been sentenced by Lord Tavan to life in slavery. They were warriors who were captured during the Battle of the Bridge.”
“I’ve heard of it.” Dangerous ground. Had to be careful what I said. The fight at the Brooklyn Bridge had become almost legendary in the few months since the Invasion, with the Golden Harp being spray painted by insurgents at the scene of their attacks.
He snorted and said, “The sooner we get rid of your ‘social media’ the better off this entire land will be.”
“Every young person in America will rise up against you!” I wasn’t exaggerating.
He smiled at that one and said, “Thank the gods I have avoided having children so far. But we digress. These men fought honorably and extracted an enormous toll on our forces, for which I have a great respect. All my life I have trained for this war and though my part in it was minor, I saw enough to understand their sacrifice.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, where did you fight?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, you’re of House Tavor, probably one of the most powerful if they were giving New York City to rule, so I think you would have seen action there.”
“I … I do not follow my uncle’s creed. I am … I was a boon companion of my cousin Elarissa. We believed in a different way, especially when it came to being a liege and the way to rule. The way of the fist may be how most of the Eldorai think they should deal with their subordinates, whereas Elarissa and I think … thought …” He paused and took a deep breath. This man, well, elf, was in pain and I felt for him. I had lost buddies back in ‘Nam who were closer to me than family, but I hadn’t lost any actual relations. I had heard of Ellarissa and seen her statue.
I waited and eventually he began again. “There is a school of thought that duty goes both ways. If you are a ruler, you are under an obligation to provide for those you rule over. My uncle believes that rule should be through strength, not persuasion or example. I believe differently.”
“You didn’t tell me where you fought,” I said.
“No, I didn’t. As I said, I trained for this war my entire life, but I have been studying humans in general for just as long. I knew we would win, so when I learned that our House was going to attack this country, the one you once called the ‘United States’, I learned the language, studied your armies, your weapons, what we knew of them.”
