Back of the Envelope

Sluggy Freelance — Pete's still doing stick figures this week, but as it's a superhero story about Riff and Torg, it's all kinds of fun. I enjoyed it more than most of Oceans Unmoving.

Day by Day — Kofi Annan, pork, GOP spending, and Ward Churchhill get savaged. Meanwhile, Chris has accepted a commission from the Republican National Committee. Jan is not happy.

Scary Go Round — Esther and Erin have a sleepover, then try to figure out the teachers' evil plot. It looks like the upcoming Halloween party is going to be almost as much fun as one of Sluggy's.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — A hard drive crash means that Maritza's computer is down for a count, so there are only a couple of comics this week. At least she came through the hurricane okay. It's almost as if some powerful force is trying to prevent this story from being told. The few strips Maritza managed for the story show an ongoing fight between Dave and Margaret, while Mike's bungee jumping and looking for April. I don't know what Mike has planned.

General Protection Fault — Ki finishes her story about Sam, which gives Nick the opportunity to broach the topic of Todd. And we all thought that he didn't know.

Schlock Mercenary — Lieutenant Commander der Trihs goes shark-hunting. One of the sharks has already been killed, but there are more out there. Unfortunately, the police still are not buying the shark theory.

The Storyblogging Carnival is an opportunity for bloggers around the blogosphere to submit examples of storytelling in blog format, whether they are fiction posted online or something else. The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the thirty-first, and it will be going up November 7th.

If you'd like to participate, Please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum.mit.edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, November 5th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Doc Rampage has been having some health problems. Not as bad as first feared, fortunately. Stop by and wish him well.

The big news today is that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her name from nomination to the Supreme Court. The reason given is that she doesn't want to put Executive Privelege at risk by allowing the Senate to demand documents that couldn't be turned over. The real reason is probably the conservative uproar over her lack of qualifications. I never really cared about the nomination one way or another. I considered her an acceptable nominee, though not an outstanding one, but I found the uproar and the belittling of her annoying. I guess I'm just glad it's over.

The latest Christian Carnival is online at White Ribbon Warriors. With 45 entries, there's a lot to read. Go have a look.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that this Iraq country I keep hearing about might actually succeed:

Iraq's landmark constitution was adopted by a majority in a fair vote during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday. A prominent Sunni politician called the balloting "a farce."
...
The vote on the constitution was 78.59 percent in favor of ratification and 21.41 percent against, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (search ) said. The charter required a simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be defeated.

The referendum results, announced after a 10-day audit following allegations of fraud, confirmed previous indications that Sunni Arabs (search) failed to produce the two-thirds "no" vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat the constitution.

Slowly but surely, Iraq is making progress. I think that in ten years' time, no one will question whether this was the right thing to do.

Ben Schumacher of Zeroth Order Approximation is back and blogging again. I also noticed a post of his from a while back which, while long, is really good. It's called A Physicist Talks to Theologians. It's from a talk Ben gave, and it begins thus:

The subject for my talk to you is "What I wish my pastor knew about Physics" -- a title and topic, I should add, that has been helpfully supplied by my brother. (Thanks.) It seems to me that there are two presuppositions in this title. First, there is something that my pastor may not know. Second, there is something that I wish that my pastor did know.

It's a great post, and I highly recommend reading it if you have any interest in faith and science.

For today's misleading headline, how's this, from Fox News: "Study: More Women Being Imprisoned than Men"? If you read the actual article, what it really says is:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports the number of women in state and federal prison rose by four percent last year, while the number of men increased by less than two percent.

And it says women accounted for nearly one in four arrests.

Study co-author Paige Harrison says the increase is largely due to women's increased participation in drugs, violent crimes and fraud.

Overall, women now make up seven percent of the nation's prison population.

Okay, let's do some quick math. If women make up seven percent of the prison population, we can write that as x+dx = .07t, where x is the number of women in prison a year ago, dx is the number added over this past year, and t is the total prison population now (dx is not the number of women sentenced to prison, just the increase, as it doesn't take into account the number released). Meanwhile y+dy=.93t, where y is the number of men in prison a year ago and dy is the number added this year. Later in the article, we're told that t=2,200,000. We also know that dy=.02y, as the number of men in prison rose 2%, while dx=.04x, since the population of women in prison increased by 4%. Now, according to the headline, dx>dy, the number of women in prison increased more than the number of men. Some simple algebra tells us that, rounding to the nearest thousand, dx=6,000 and dy=40,000, meaning that the number of men in prison increased at 6.5x the rate the number of women did. The headline is therefore wrong. The female prison population is increasing as a relative percentage to men, but that's about all that can be said.

Welcome to the thirtieth Storyblogging Carnival. We have ten stories this time, from nine authors. Mark Rayner kindly contributed two stories this week. He's prolific, ain't he? If you're not familiar with it, storyblogging is simply storytelling in blog format, usually but not always fiction. More Carnivals can be found on this page. But for now, let's get on with this Storyblogging Carnival:

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Thag not want get tattoo!
by Mark A. Rayner of The Skwib
A 300 word brief story rated PG.

Another in the continuing series on Thag, the caveman with problems. This story deals with another aspect of human nature — how we tend to avoid new experiences as we get older. It's still comedy though.

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After Nelson
by Mark A. Rayner of The Skwib
A 450 word brief story rated PG.

On the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, I image what history might have looked like if Lord Nelson hadn't been there to win it.

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The Sad Story of Princess Helga
by Gary Sieling of The Secret Life of Gary
A 529 brief story rated G.

Princess Helga meets a sorceress.

[I wrote the blurb for this one. -DSC]

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Little Redfern's Trip to the Supermarket
by Jonathan Holley of Johnny America
A 765 word brief story rated R.

I looked up from my bucket to leer at two bickering coeds who were at the other end of Aisle 14. I thought about mouthing the sequins on brunette's blue miniskirt. I guessed from the flesh-toned Band-Aid on her calf that she’d nicked herself shaving...

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Pineapple Upside-down Cake
by Andrea Graham of Adam's Blog
A 1,015 word short story rated G.

A child's eye view of death and food.

[As the author didn't send a blurb, I wrote one for her. -DSC]

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The Journey (part 4), Part 14 of Scale 7 Artifact (Beginning)
by Dave Gudeman of Doc Rampage
The next 1,165 words of a 22,304 word story rated PG.

Yet another chapter in the greatest saga ever told about the exploration of the third moon of a gas giant in another solar system by a guy named Daniel with a scale 7 artifact on it.

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Romero is a Pain Redux
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 1,265 word short story rated PG.

The Sage of Wales and Claire try to keep a straight face as Rupert explains how he got out of the mess he got himself into on an island in the middle of the sea. Written by request of Storyblogging readers.

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Part XXI of The Spy Novel
by The Colossus of The Colossus
A 2,521 word chapter of a 41,958 word novel in progress rated PG-13.

Eric Ashley's summary: "Cold, controlled, paranoid, and searching speculation based on tiny clues, this story sucks you in, and grabs you. Who are your friends? Is the hero that, or simply a protagonist of questionable virtue, although undoubted skill? When will the betrayal come, and who will do it? Crisp writing style, and more questions than one can shoot with a full clip of ammo."

[I always enjoy a good description of the underground lair of a secret society of gardeners. -DSC]

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The An-sul Warlock, Chapter 9 of Fire (The Whole Story)
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
A 3,266 word chapter excerpted from a 90,110 word novel rated PG-13.

The Dominus has a mad plan to help Gaius and his men escape. If Gaius thinks it's bad, he should see it from Gar's point of view, the Orc warlock who's on the receiving end.

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Chapters 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, and 113 of The Child (Beginning)
by Sheya Joie of Tales by Sheya
The next 3,474 words of her 86,273 word novel rated PG.

At long last, they reach the enemy's fortress - and now they must find a way to sneak inside.

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Chapters 29-34 of CLOWN
by Theron Marshman of Harkonnendog
A 6,271 word short story rated R.

Chapters 29-33 of CLOWN, during which Clown gets drunk, schizo, depressed, horny, has a philosophical discussion with a priest who ALMOST saves his soul and...

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And that's it for this carnival. If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Sluggy Freelance — Lady Noga escapes, as does Bun-bun, leaving John Jacobs very unhappy. Unfortunately, between Slugween and trying to get a book out, Pete spends the rest of the week on filler and stick figures.

Day by Day — The good news is Saddam's on trial and the Iraqis have approved the new constitution. The bad news is that politics in the US is as crazy as ever, and technology is still beyond Zed's grasp.

Scary Go Round — Trying to interest The Boy's class in the Dark Arts isn't going so well, so it looks like the teachers may run out of coffee before they run out of students. The Boy's trying to figure out Esther, while Erin's caught on to the dark plot.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Only three days of comics this week as Maritza battens down for some nasty weather. Let's see, Mike's plotting (to protect Marsha from the Dragon), Roger's crazy (to be hitting on the Dragon), and Dave's whining (about Margaret). You know, I think that sums up every week which has all three of the guys in it.

General Protection Fault — Ki backs out at the last minute, which gets Sam very upset. Fortunately, she has Fooker to turn to for help.

Schlock Mercenary — John der Trihs escapes from prison rather than waiting on bail, while his crew goes vacationing without him.

The Rest of the Story: The whole of Fire can be found on my Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on this page.

This is the first time I give Gar's point of view. I never really intended for him to be a very important character, but I found him so interesting once I got to know him that I started coming up with ways to give him more screen time.

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Chapter 9
The An-sul Warlock
Gar cursed Talnek one more time for good measure. He had better things to do than chasing after this ragtag patrol of humans. The warlocks did not have any hierarchy along the same lines as the Coven, but Gar did have influence among his colleagues, enough that his place was in council with them, discussing the coming war. Whether out of spite or actual respect for Gar, Talnek had insisted that he deal with these Novari personally. The force which first encountered them had come away bloodied, two of their warlocks dead and a third mortally injured before they fled. The remaining warlock had informed his brethren of what had happened before he died, which had allowed Talnek to respond with this extravagant effort, thousands of Orcs trying to catch a few hundred humans. Dozens of small patrols, scouts, and hunting parties had harried them, weakening their number and slowing them to a crawl while a larger force, at least twice the human numbers and with more warlocks than would normally travel with an army five times the size, rushed ahead to place themselves between the humans and their goal. Talnek had given them the task of stopping any messengers that slipped past the other patrols and destroying the main force if it made it this far. The warlocks, who could sniff out any human coming within miles, had already caught five scouts riding their massive beasts hard in a vain effort to reach the pass. Now they headed toward the second part of their task. The scouts had told them what the warlocks already knew: the humans had turned and fled at the sight of them. The Orcs followed at a walk, certain that the exhausted humans could not outrun them.

Gar had secretly hoped that the humans would be destroyed before reaching this point, but they had proved resilient, likely due to their Domini. The warlocks remembered the Domini from the last war, men with power nearly equal to their own. Some whispered that it might even surpass theirs, but no serious student of history believed that. Gar wondered how many Domini it had taken to defeat three warlocks. The dying survivor of that encounter had only seen one.

The opportunity to meet these Domini in magical battle kept Gar from complaining too loudly. Battles were what warlocks did. They had other abilities, of course, but in most things the witches could match or even best them, though their potent charms and potions took longer to prepare. When it came to raw power, though, the warlocks had the edge, and nowhere was this more apparent than in war. Most battles among Orcs had warlocks on both sides, working magic and counter-magic with equal enough skill that no one saw any outward sign of magic. This had led to the rumor that warlocks only pretended to fight one another in battle, saving their magic for use against those armies which refused to hire enough of them. The fact that enemy warlocks usually died first once one side gained the magical advantage did little to dispel the rumor. The sul wanted to believe the worst of warlocks, and with the sky raining fire, who paid attention to who died first? Once the warlock’s magic became visible, his job was done. Those with refined taste much preferred the magical dueling, with the strike, parry, and counter, to the actual destruction victory wrought. Gar wanted to test the mettle of these Domini, see if they could challenge him. Few warlocks could. In raw power as well as skill, he overwhelmed most opponents, giving him worthless victories. He didn’t expect much challenge from the Domini, but the sheer difference in their magics intrigued him enough to keep him sitting on this animal when he would rather have his feet on the ground.

Gar sat on his pony uncomfortably, but he did not fidget or complain. Sul riders jostled for position all around him, their eyes sometimes wandering from the forest ahead to glance in his direction. To show weakness in front of these sul would reinforce their condescension towards him. He always felt uncomfortable among the sul. He detested them, of course, hated the fact that they considered him inferior to them simply because he had been born an-sul. Though he was as smart as any of them and more educated than most, they considered him a lesser Orc on the basis of his birth and his features. His skin had a deeper shade of green, his eyes were smaller and his nose larger. He looked an-sul, but the differences between him and the sul ended there. The sul thought differently. They refused to acknowledge the an-sul born with the intellectual gifts that would have raised them to the sul class in another age, insisting that they remain in the class where they had been born, that the birth of a few intelligent an-sul was an aberration rather than a blurring of the distinction between the classes. They would point to the superficial physical traits as proof, though Gar suspected that the physical features of which the sul were so proud came from nothing more noble than inbreeding.

He had grown up an-sul, where he had always known that he was different from the others around him. They could not begin to grasp concepts which seemed simple to him. His questions about such things as the sun and the moon, the nature of animals and plants, drove his parents mad. Most of all, Gar had questioned the distinction between sul and an-sul. The an-sul lived in squalor, in wood or clay huts with dirt floors, drawing water from dirty streams, while the sul lived in palaces and dug wells for clean drinking water. The an-sul performed back-breaking labor in the fields for a mere pittance of food, coarse barley and a rare bit of nearly spoiled meat. The sul took the lion’s share from the fields and meat for no labor at all. While an-sul might grumble about the nature of things, they all groveled before the sul, whom they knew to be better by their educated speech and intelligent manner as well as their refined features. Gar did not see them as any better than he, as he could affect their manner and speech easily. That he did not know about the things of which they spoke was a mere function of education. When he asked his parents about learning, however, they gaped at him as though he were mad. He could not possibly think he could learn to be like the sul. They had forbidden him from making the attempt, but he had long since decided that his parents lacked the ability to guide him. When he turned to the sul, they had coldly rebuffed his plea for education, regarding him as they would have a talking dog, a clever and unusual freak, not an equal. With no other options, he had sought out the warlocks. The an-sul warlock he went to tested him and found him capable, but although the master who discovered a new warlock usually apprenticed him, that one had had no desire for an apprentice. Instead, he sent Gar to a half-sul warlock.

All Orcs despise warlocks. Unlike the witches, who had managed to find a place in the religious system, the warlocks had no place. The Orcs feared their powerful magic, sought their help in war, but that did not make the warlocks any less outcasts. They in turn had little concern for the customs of Orcish society, including the separation between sul and an-sul. Since either might manifest the magical ability, the warlocks trained any recruit to the best of his ability, regardless of class. Gar’s new master had recognized both his mental and magical gifts, so he had taught him more than just the magic. He had given Gar a full education, in reading and writing, arithmetic, history, the physical world: all he knew he passed on to his pupil. Gar’s experience with his mentor did not soften his view of the sul, however. His master had hated the sul even more than Gar did, since he thought himself robbed of the birthright his mother’s class should have brought him. A jealous aunt had made sure his family disowned him just before he reached legal age. He too had gone to the warlocks rather than live out his life as an-sul.

Gar wished he didn’t have to spend so much time with the sul. Maybe he didn’t fit in among the an-sul, being educated and a warlock to boot, but he preferred their company to the arrogant sul whose fear of him barely masked their contempt. He preferred the an-sul’s honest fear over false courtesy. Besides, when Gar spoke with the an-sul in their own simple yet quick-paced dialect, they would become almost comfortable with him. The an-sul warlocks, who did feel comfortable around him, were the closest thing that Gar had to friends.

Gar pulled his pony to a stop, nearly falling as it stumbled in the mud, in order to avoid running down a ragged an-sul Orc who was hopping up and down, shouting something barely intelligible. “Man in black. Des-lar say come.”

He couldn’t grasp what the an-sul meant, aside from the fact that the fool whom Talnek had put in charge of this expedition wanted him. Gar almost respected Talnek. Though he certainly didn’t like him, Gar thought him intelligent enough to think past his prejudices, even if the Kawyr had too much influence. Gar had a much lower opinion of the other chieftains. The warlock supposed he might have ended up with someone worse than Deslar, who was paranoid but at least had enough brains to be afraid. Gar could intimidate him.

Gar kicked the pony, and nearly fell from the saddle when it lurched into a trot. Soon the pony was moving more quickly than Gar felt safe traveling. He managed to stay in place through sheer shame at the thought of the most powerful warlock killed by his own riding ineptitude. He wove through the thick trees, following the muddy path left by Deslar’s retinue. The sunlight filtering through the green roof above only reminded Gar of how much he hated this dark forest.

He began to feel the slow throbbing, gradually increasing in intensity, at the same time the small crowd of Orcs came into view. His body seemed to vibrate with it, though he knew that only his sensitivity to the magic made him aware of it at all. The only thing his mundane senses detected was Deslar, with a warlock on either side and guards all around, watching an an-sul hack at a figure in tattered black cloth. With each stroke, sparks flew and metal rang. At first, Gar thought that someone had placed a black robe on a statue. He soon realized that the figure was human, a Dominus whose body had somehow hardened to stone-like rigidity. No matter how hard the Orc swung his axe, not a drop of blood flowed.

The throbbing was becoming more and more powerful, and the other warlocks clearly felt it and just as clearly had no idea what was happening. Gar could feel them wrap their magic around the statue to contain its crescendoing power. Their efforts would not work against this, and realizing this, one of them, sweat beading his forehead and breath panting, tugged at Deslar’s sleeve, urging him to move away from the Dominus. Deslar seemed inclined to agree.

Gar shouted for them to flee, meaning Deslar, the warlocks, the poor, ignorant an-sul hacking away at the seemingly harmless statue, for everyone within earshot. Mostly though, he meant it for himself. He whirled his pony with all the skill he could muster, yelling, kicking, lashing it in an attempt to coax it into a gallop. The pony promptly reared in response, depositing Gar on the ground before it galloped off without him. The warlock rolled onto his stomach, black spots flashing in his eyes, to find himself looking at the Dominus again. Deslar’s pony ran past Gar, his guards trailing behind, on its way to the main force which was still marching in this direction. They couldn’t escape that way. The two warlocks remained near the statue, valiantly but stupidly trying to surround the now audibly humming statue in their magic. The an-sul axeman obliviously chopped away.

He couldn’t run--he wasn’t sure he could stand--so he crawled into a depression behind a large tree root for some shelter. He huddled there within two hundred feet of the statue, much too close. The other warlocks, who must have forgotten their lore, continued in their hopeless magic. The Domini had used this magic on only two occasions in their last war against the Orcs. They had the ability to transform their own bodies into weapons, destroying themselves and everything nearby, but they lacked the resolve to use this ability as an effective battle tactic. Whenever one did show a willingness to sacrifice himself, he wrought untold devastation. The hardening of the body may have been deliberate or a side-effect, but Gar had recognized the sign of this magic right away.

His magic came to him when he called it, humming through him in counterpoint to the throbbing which still grew. He wrapped the magic around himself, not even attempting the selfless actions of the other warlocks. He couldn’t save the others, but he might save himself. His magic blanketed over him, sealing off the human magic, surrounding him in stillness which the pulsing penetrated faster than he could shut it out in layer after layer of power.

Then the buzzing statue burst. A blast of light seared his tightly sealed eyes, heat scorched his skin, a great rush of air and magic tore away his magical protection. He grasped hold the magic as it fled, trying to hold it in place, and felt his spirit being flayed as it flew from his grasp, layer by layer stripped away in a moment. When the last layer had gone, he discovered what Hell was like.



He was dead. Gar saw no reason to deny it. No one could have lived through that. He had felt his body burning and suffocating even before his protection had vanished, when he had been blinded, deafened, and burned as the concussive force literally picked him up and threw him. He could not have survived that.

Yet he had always believed that in death there should be no pain, and right now he hurt all over. His leg twisted in some odd way that said it had broken, bruises covered his body, his eyes burned and saw nothing. In some places his skin felt dead, while in others he thought he must be alight. The witches, who claimed that their power came from direct communion with the ancestors, taught that death released the trapped spirit to become the god it had once been. Since this did not describe his current state, that left Hell. The witches insisted that all warlocks went to Hell, banished there by the ancestors who judged them unworthy. The witch-run religion did not have much of a following among the warlocks, but Gar’s disbelief in Hell had never kept him from fearing it. If this was Hell, Gar was disappointed. In his imagination, it was not a place of fire--the domain of warlocks--but a place of cold darkness. That much seemed true enough, but missing were the horrors of mad, jabbering voices and unseen, unknown things that would touch and hurt him in mind, soul, and body. In short, though it was dark and cold and he hurt all over, this did not live up to his vivid imaginings of Hell.

He realized that he could hear voices, though they sounded hushed and fearful rather than mad and jabbering. In addition came the sounds of rhythmic pacing, interspersed with shuffling. Gradually, his eyes began to pick out stars overhead, as well as trunks illuminated by a nearly full moon, just creeping over the trees. As he stirred, Gar reluctantly concluded that he still lived. He wondered how long he would remain living: those voices were not speaking Orcish.

He sat up, his leg protesting any such movement, but the effort allowed him to see. Of himself, he could make out little, which was probably for the best. Aside from the twisted leg, he seemed to be covered in burns and bruises which he could not tell apart in the darkness. Only charred bits remained of his red robe. He had lain in a fold in the ground, one of many created by the explosion, where the ground had rippled outward like water. The black earth had shaken loose and gathered in the troughs, while red clay, scorched and cracked, lay exposed on the crests. While the explosion had not completely consumed the great trees near Gar’s current location, more than a few had toppled over, blackened and stripped, roots torn from the ground and branches strewn about, leaving a gaping hole in the canopy.

Where the Dominus himself had stood, nothing remained but burned clay and a shallow crater. All else, trees, rocks--and apparently an an-sul warlock--had been tossed aside. A human army traveled through this devastation, some marching, most staggering along, a few riding on their oversized ponies. Mostly the seriously wounded, as well as a few officers and scouts, rode. They all seemed well equipped, with uniform armor and weapons marking out those who had originally been foot, mounted, and archers. The equipment looked like steel, and in better condition than the men. Most marched with their heads downcast, moonlight glinting on their armor, and looked only at the ground directly in front of them, but some of the officers kept glancing sharply from left to right, making Gar cautious. The scouts might miss him in the darkness, but he had to keep still. Less than a thousand feet separated him from this army.

Maybe he shouldn’t call it an army after all. There looked to be no more than three hundred, exhausted, wounded, and demoralized. If no other Domini appeared, he could handle that many. On a better day, he could have. He too was exhausted, wounded, and demoralized. He tried to consider his odds rationally, and the difficulty of thinking it through indicated his weakness more clearly than any mathematical weighing of odds. He could hurt them but not stop them, and they would kill him before it was over. Most likely, riders were already on their way, and it would only take one to upset the surprise Talnek wanted. The mission had failed, and Gar alone had survived. That did not bode well.

He watched and counted as he waited for them to pass. Once Gar could no longer see or hear them, he carefully prepared his report so that it wouldn’t get him killed. Watching the dancing flame in his hand, he repeated his message until he felt certain it would do more good than harm, both for himself and for the Orcs. As satisfied as he was going to get, he released it. The flame lifted toward the sky, then streaked eastward, toward a warlock whom Gar trusted to make sure Talnek heard the message.

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This is a 3,266 word chapter of a 90,110 word novel.

The God Or Not Carnival is looking for more theist submissions discussing the topic of proof. The topics are purposefully vague, so any post discussing proof in the context of theology will qualify. Go ahead and send submissions to Eternal Revolution at submit-at-godornot-dot-com. Instructions can be found at this site. The entries are due by November 4th, as the carnival will take place on November 7th.

There's a post by Chad at Eternal Revolution discussing the idea that fairy tales have more truth in them than non-fiction:

If asked condescendingly whether I believe in fairy tales, I would answer with a resounding and unequivocating “YES”.

Actually, I believe there is a whole lot of truth in fairy tales. Oftentimes fairy tales are much more truthful and meaningful to me than the ‘real world’. I am convinced of the existence of abundantly more insight into the true innerworkings of our humanity in Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia than in Reality TV or 24 Hour Cable News...

Have you ever found yourself reading a fairy tale or some other mythology and have come across a thought that strikes a chord with your soul? I’m talking about a deep, emotional impact that’s triggered. The most eloquent non-fiction prose in the world cannot quite produce those moments of revelation. I think a large part of it is due to the fact that fairy tales (as well as other more creative outlets such as music and poetry) can transcend the limitations of language to communicate core truths at a gut level.

I write fantasy, and as such, I don't think of it in these terms. I think it's unwise of authors to think of their works as archetypal, or communicating something powerful to the very soul. That sort of hubris makes an author so absorbed in writing something meaningful that it's no longer any fun. The best writers communicate to the soul not by attempting to do so, but by writing their own souls.

As I've said before, I myself approach writing as a way to pit my hopes and fears against each other in a concrete way. Concrete doesn't necessarily mean hyperrealistic, so much as taking abstract ideas and philosophical arguments and connecting them with people and situations, giving them flesh and blood and seeing what happens. I often write fantasy and horror, first because I enjoy those genres, but secondly because I like having a broader stage. Writing "realistic" fiction means that I can pit a character against his inner demons, but not against real demons. That I can struggle with the idea of any human being superior to others, but not with the moral obligations of an objectively superior being. That I can bring defined cultures into conflict, but I can't define those conflicting cultures. To do what I need to do, to examine the hopes and fears that I need to work out in my writing, I need the freedom I don't find in realistic fiction. That, to me, is the purpose of speculative fiction, and that is why I write it.

Okay, I'm really, really late this week. My apologies. As usual, this will go to the correct point in the archives once you've all had a chance to mock me for my lateness.

Sluggy Freelance — As usual when his plans fall apart, Bun-bun resorts to bloody violence. After slaughtering the crew of the skiff, Bun-bun lets B.A. drive it directly into his ship, turning it into a whirling top, which upsets Lady Noga's plan. The ship's damaged, but fortunately Kada can fix it.

Day by Day — The usual suspects are in for a whipping: the United Nations, Sandy Berger, Daily Kos, and the like. I particularly enjoyed Sam's longing for piracy, though.

Scary Go Round — While Shelley and Amy settle in at home, the board in charge of The Boy's school are planning to slaughter some students so they can afford coffee.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — A fight between Margaret and Marsha finally busts the door open and everyone's out of the closet. The Dragon corners Mike for a little chat, and then confronts him about his "girlfriend."

General Protection Fault — Uh-oh. Ki recounts her past, talking about the rumors about her old boyfriend's unfaithfulness. She confronted him, but quickly accepted his protests. She was willing to do almost anything to hold onto him.

Schlock Mercenary — With one crewman lost, John Der Trihs tires to convince the police that maybe, just maybe, a shark ate him. His argument obviously isn't convincing enough, as he's arrested for murder.

The Storyblogging Carnival is an opportunity for bloggers around the blogosphere to submit examples of storytelling in blog format, whether they be fiction posted online or something else. The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the thirtieth (the XXX is the number, not the rating!), and it will be going up October 24th.

If you'd like to participate, Please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum.mit.edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, October 22nd. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. By lengthy excerpt, I mean that it should be a significant portion of the story, at least 10% of the whole thing. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

I apologize for vanishing for a couple of days without explanation. I was reading Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams, Book 11 of The Wheel of Time series. It's one of those series that started out well but started to drag around the middle. The problem is that Jordan creates too many story threads, and by the time he's done re-introducing what's going on in each thread, he's halfway through the book and nothing has happened. I myself have a tendency to follow a lot of threads in my own writings, as you know if you've read Fire, which has four distinct threads: Victor with the Domini, Lucia, the Orcs, and Gaius with the Novar legions. However, I do my best to keep things from spreading out too much, whereas Jordan has six major threads and a dozen minor ones. This slows things down considerably.

I am, however, happy to report that things seem to have picked up in this most recent book, enough so that I've had trouble putting it down long enough to blog. I'm done now, so I'll try to do better this week.

I've started a Yahoo group to serve as an e-mail list for the Storyblogging Carnival. If you've received an invitation and haven't yet signed up, I encourage you to do so. If you didn't receive an invitation and want one, please contact me.

I missed it when the last Christian Carnival went up. Either there was no e-mail or I overlooked it. Anyway, the latest Christian Carnival (at least until XCI goes up later today), is online at Attention Span. Have a look.

Last night, the Park Street Writers' Group tackled the first four chapters of Eyes in the Shadow. This being my work, for the most part I kept silent and let them discuss it. They seemed to like it, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot of criticism. Which is good, as the story won't get any better without it. They made some very good points, and came up with suggestions for two additional scenes which I think would greatly add to the story as a whole. They also made some suggestions which I don't agree with, which doesn't mean I get to ignore them. There are ways to address the difficulties they had with it other than how they suggested doing so, and I think that's what I'll try to do. As I think I've mentioned before, I do intend to do the second revision of this story, and when I do so, I'll be taking the advice from my group into account.

In the end, the question is when and how I want to publish this work. Unfortunately for my ambitions, Eyes is too short for a novel. If, in the course of the second revision, it grows from 50,000 to 80,000 words or more, then maybe it will be long enough. I don't want the story to be 37.5% fluff, however. We'll see what happens.

Update (10/11/2005): Corrected poor math. 80,000 is 60% bigger than 50,000, but if the additional material is all fluff, it's still less than 40% of the result.

David Long, the author of Ezekiel's Shadow, is discussing his book with J. Mark Bertrand on their respective blogs. Dave is currently an acquisitions editor for a Christian publishing company, and the purpose of this exercise is to teach writers how to look critically at their own works with an eye toward improving them.

The latest Storyblogging Carnival is online at Tales by Sheya. There are thirteen stories from eleven authors this time.

I'll be hosting the next carnival myself, here at Back of the Envelope. Let me know if you'd like to join in.

Mark Steyn takes a more balanced approach to Miers:

The most bungled Supreme Court pick in recent years was Bush Snr’s: Dubya’s dad picked my fellow New Hampshirite David Souter knowing nothing about him and, ever since he joined the bench, he’s been one of the Left’s most reliable votes. If Junior’s sin is that he’s only comfortable with cronies, dad’s problem was that he was way too trusting: whatever else she may be, Harriet Miers is no Souter Two.

For what it’s worth, my sense is that Harriet Miers will be, case by case, a more reliable vote against leftist judicial activism than her mercurial predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor. Why do I say this? Well, she’s a strong supporter of the right to bear arms. The great Second Amendment expert Dave Kopel says you have to go back to Louis Brandeis 90 years ago to find a Supreme Court justice whose pre-nomination writings extol gun rights as fulsomely as Miss Miers. According to an old boyfriend, Judge Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court, she packs heat — a Smith & Wesson .45 — which I can say with certainty the other lady justice, the far-left Ruth Bader Ginsberg, never has. She is also very opposed to abortion, and a generous contributor to pro-life groups.

In other words, what seems to be emerging is a woman Bush responds to as a fellow cultural conservative and evangelical conservative (she’s a born-again Christian) rather than as a judicial conservative — a label Judge Bork dislikes, preferring quite correctly that we distinguish judges not as conservative or liberal but as either originalists or judicial activists. I find it hard to discuss Harriet Miers seriously in those terms, but on balance she seems likely to vote the right way for whatever reasons. She’s thus another representative of Bush and Karl Rove’s belief in incrementalism — that the Republican majority can be made a permanent feature of the landscape if you build it one small brick at a time. Miss Miers is, at best, such a brick, at a time when conservatives were hoping Bush would drop a huge granite block on the court. But, given that she started out as a Democrat and has been on the receiving end of the partisan attacks on the administration for five years, she seems less likely than any detached effete legal scholar to be prone to the remorseless drift to the Left that happens to Republican Supreme Court nominees.

That doesn't stop him from a bit of wishful thinking at the end:

Of course, this could all be one big Karl Rove head-fake to make conservatives so hopping mad that the Dems scent blood and kill the Miers nomination, after which they’ve shot their bolt and Bush nominates Scalia Mark Two....

Well, we can dream, can’t we?

Read the whole thing.

Sluggy Freelance — Kada gets the Bloody Bun moving, while Lady Noga closes in. She's got a pretty impressive trick up her sleeve, although it doesn't work too great for her Lieutenant Shanklin. However, if Bun-bun thinks he's in trouble, then it most be pretty good.

Day by Day — Jan and Damon try to figure out how to have a relationship, including working out the formula, but there's always room for gun jokes. Miers gets a mention, but only just.

Scary Go Round — Shelley and Amy hightail it home, now that the old men discovered they weren't the old maids they pretended to be. Of course, it turns out that Shel had matters well in hand the whole time, on account of her legal brilliance.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Margaret tries to avoid telling Dave she loves him by claiming she slept with Roger, which causes Roger to spill the story, but it's not as if Dave's listening to him now. And with his mother at the door, Mike hides in the closet with the rest of them, just in time for April to come along and claim to be his girlfriend. I wish I knew what she was thinking.

General Protection Fault — Sam, Ki's ex-boyfriend, seems okay at first, but things start to fracture soon, both because of Sam's parents, and because of Sam's attitude towards Fooker.

Schlock Mercenary — While Tagon's on his way home, something is attacking his crew. It's up to Der Trihs to deal with this. Too bad he isn't all there. The odd thing is that he shows occasional flashes of competence amongst all that stupidity.

As you may have noticed it has been quite some time since my last response. My school projects are mounting to a degree that makes participation in extracurricular activities difficult. Since I find the soul argument a little more interesting than the miracle one, and since I'm pressed on time, I'll respond to this side and let the other one rest.

Donald has used the analogy of the soul as software. Though he acknowledges the limitations of the analogy--e.g. that the soul is not simply stored information--I don't think that the limitations of the analogy have been made as clear as they should be. In fact, the analogy seems to result in a form of reductionism.

The point that I want to make about consciousness is twofold:
1. That the type of consciousness we have is intimately related to the types of (biological) beings that we are--that is, the specific type of physiology we have.
2. That the specific identity we have as a token instance of that type of consciousness, is intimately related to the particularities of that specific biological system (including, of course, the "recorded" history of one's biological system).

So, by way of analogy once again, it seems to me that Donald's argument amounts to this: we can take the liquidity of water, remove it, and place it into oil. That is, we can move a soul around, and put it into another body. But is it the same "liquidity" or soul at this point? Hasn't the identity of the phenomenon collapsed?

Numbers of problems arise in this idea. First of all, how can one possibly transport something that is not physical? Can you pick up digestion and move it around? Or is digestion a way of describing certain processes that are taking place? Don't misunderstand me, I think that some things can be transported even though they are not, strictly speaking, physical--we send information through the air waves all the time. But is the human form of life like that? Are humans the kinds of beings that can be removed from their bodies and moved through the air? Can humans be reduced to information that is simply copied and pasted onto something else? Secondly, even if we could put a particular instance of human consciousness into a body of the exact same type (human physiology), the question remains as to whether identity can remain without putting that particular instance into the particular physiology from which it both arose and was sustained. My argument is that identity collapses at this point.

In short, the idea of souls migrating sounds like a bit of science fiction that I'd prefer to abandon in favor of a more natural approach. I see no reason to believe anything other than that human consciousness is an aspect of particular biological systems, and when those systems which support it collapse and die, then consciousness, which was a product of it, collapses as well. If someone goes even a few minutes without oxygen, then if we get them back their "soul" is radically altered (in fact, both their brain and soul are "mush," if I may be so crude).

Human consciousness is a delicate thing, and cannot survive without the mother system that produced it initially. We can make analogies all day, but do we have any reason to believe that are analogies are anything more than wishful thinking? Do our analogies have ontological import, or are they clever ways of articulating our hope for something that we should learn to live without?

I'm not sure if posting this on my blog will help, but I figure it can't hurt. For the last couple of days, my cell phone's informed me that I've missed a call each day. The caller hasn't left a message, nor has he or she managed to reach me. The originating phone number is area code 214, which I've discovered is a Texas number. Now, I'm not entirely sure if I know someone living in Texas--I have plenty of friends I haven't done a great job keeping track of, so it's entirely possible one of them made it there. It could also be a cell phone belonging to one of my friends living in the Boston area. I probably don't have the cell phone number of everyone who has mine, and I'm not upset if a friend who does know it gives it to another friend who doesn't. So it could definitely be someone I know trying to reach me. Or it could be an awfully persistent wrong number--my voicemail does clearly state who I am. Or it could be a telemarketer. Anyway, for future reference for anyone reading this blog whom I trust enough to give my cell phone number to, it's generally not good during workdays. For the time being, my work has a no cell phone policy, so you can't reach me by it during working hours. You can always leave a message, or try calling after work hours. Or better yet, send me an e-mail. I'm much better at keeping track of, and responding to, e-mails than phone calls anyway. Just use the blog's contact form.

Apparently, al Qaeda's hiring (from Wired):

The London-based Asharq al-Awsat said on its website this week that al-Qaida had "vacant positions" for video production and for editing statements, footage and international media coverage about militants in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and other conflict zones where militants are active.

The paper said the Global Islamic Media Front, an al-Qaida-linked, web-based organization, would "follow up with members interested in joining and contact them via e-mail."

The paper did not say how applicants should contact the Global Islamic Media Front.

Okay, there's a problem when the world's most famous terrorist organization can openly advertise for positions. I just hope this presents an intelligence opportunity for us.

When I first heard that Harriet Miers was selected for the Supreme Court, my first reaction was disappointment that it wasn't a highly credentialed conservative. I won't go so far as to accuse Bush of cronyism, but he definitely bases his selections on how he feels about someone rather than using a more objective judgement. However, after days of listening to people complain about her subpar education and her mediocre career, I'm beginning to get more annoyed with the complainers than with Bush and his nominee. I have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT, so I know a bit about the importance of an excellent education. And frankly, it's less important than people seem to think. As I said in my post about IQ and Leadership, I am less concerned with the abstract measures of performance than with how well people actually do their jobs. I don't know whether Miers is a good pick or not, but I intend to wait for the hearings before jumping to conclusions.

Dave at Faith*in*Fiction talks a bit about the cliched use of symbolic character names:

Today, you might want to give a second thought to naming your character something obviously symbolic. Yes, Grace and Faith and Hope are women's names. And popular women's names. But, these names appear very often in submitted proposals. They don't stand out anymore. (Likewise, Cain as a villain's name, appears quite often.)

As always when someone complains about something they've seen in writing, I do a quick check to see whether I'm guilty. I think I usually steer clear of symbolic names, at least when it comes to first names.

In my Christian horror story, Eyes in the Shadow, the main characters' names were Ryan, Emily, and Dominic, all of which are free from symbolic connotation. On the other hand, Ryan's last name is Majison, which is significant, but more as a matter of family history than symbolism. It's a history I haven't explained yet, but hopefully I'll get there.

In my fantasy novel, first names are indications of nationalities. Aulus, Victor, and Gaius are Novar names, Kulsin and Sularin are Kairnin, and Micah and Nathan are Manuelite. Deslar, Talnek, and Anyua are Orcish names, although the an-sul Orcs tend to have more monosyllabic names, such as Gar. The only symbolic name I can think of is Principius, the last name of the Imperial family, which is derived from Principus, meaning first, as in the "First Man in Rome." Of course, that name comes from the fact that they are the Imperial famiy, and have been for centuries.

The Rest of the Story: You can find the complete, uncut version of Fire, in PDF format, here. Or you can read the story that's been posted to the blog so far on this page.

When I started posting chapters of Fire as my contribution to the Storyblogging Carnival, I had hoped that this respite would give me a chance to work on Fire's sequel. Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way, and I've instead been spending my time first working on a fanfiction for Maritza's College Roomies from Hell!!! and then working on my entry for Faith*in*Fiction's Conversion Story contest. Now that I've finished both of those, I'll hopefully be able to return to Fire's sequel. Wish me luck!

Meanwhile, here's Chapter 8 of Fire. I particularly like the scene at the end.

---

Chapter 8
Flight
Paulus came up to Gaius, looking as haggard as the tribune felt, with the blood splattered on his face smeared where he had wiped it from his right eye. All around him, men looked equally bad, most sitting or lying on the ground in exhaustion. A few tried to care for the wounded, but most lacked the strength for even that. Paulus saluted, hand to his heart, before he spoke. “Commander, the men want to know if you want to disband our century.”

Gaius blinked at him stupidly for a moment, then slid from his horse and into the muck, where he stumbled and barely managed to right himself. “Disband your century? Why would I want to do that?”

“There are only thirty of us left, and with the centurion and his second dead, no one is left in charge. If you disbanded us, you could use us to fill out the other centuries.”

“The men selected you as their spokesman?”

Paulus looked nervous. “Yes, sir. I didn’t mean to presume—if you’d rather—”

“Paulus, you’re now the centurion. I’m afraid I don’t have an extra set of silvered armor to outfit you.”

“I’m centurion? But sir, I’m not qualified at all. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“You’ve already begun. Just keep it up.” Gaius wondered if he looked as frightened as Paulus did. Well, now there’s two of us who aren’t so sure they’re prepared for their job, he thought.

“Sir, if I may ask, we’re wondering what you plan to do next.”

“What I plan to do next? Victrinus, and I, had planned to visit two more villages before returning to the pass.”

“Yes, sir,” Paulus said slowly.

“But you don’t think we should?”

“We think that it’s time to go back.”

“You think we should run? Would Victrinus have run?” Gaius said, his voice hardening.

Paulus’s eyes dropped, but only to Gaius’s chest before he took hold of himself. “Yes, sir, he would have.”

“What did you say?” Gaius asked, though he knew he had heard correctly. “Don’t mutter.”

Paulus raised his eyes to meet Gaius’s. “I said that Victrinus would run. We’ve seen the Orcs and we know they’re heading west, towards the pass. We need to go back there and report, not get ourselves killed trying to complete some mission that no longer makes any sense. I-I... I’m sorry, sir, I only meant—”

“I know what you meant,” Gaius said. “More to the point, I agree with you.” If he hadn’t been so determined to live up to Victrinus, he might have managed to do so. “Congratulations, you’re now First Centurion.” Gaius ignored the look of shock on Paulus’s face. If they lived through this, they could worry about the propriety of raising a first-time enlister to the rank of First Centurion. “You need to get the men together, get them ready to move. We can’t stay here, even for a day. And tell that physician to tend to the Dominus. If the man’s still alive, I want him to stay that way.”



It was raining again. The rain plastered Gaius’s hair to his face and crept into his armor. Despite the discomfort, Gaius was grateful to the cold rain for keeping him awake, filling eyes with water so they couldn’t drift shut and sending a shiver down his spine to keep him upright. Even so, he moved like some sort of walking corpse, shambling along with no real will of his own.

Though the men were striking camp, preparing to return to the pass and their home, most believed wouldn’t make it. The Orcs may have fled, ground to a fraction of their original numbers by the Novar soldiers, but there were more out there, and it worried Gaius that they had no way of knowing how many. He just hoped that the two legions at the Austral Pass could stop them. Meanwhile, he had to get his men back there and hope that if he brought warning soon enough, Publius could summon reinforcements to the Pass.

Gaius stopped as one of the slaves came running up to him and nearly fell as his shambling feet came to a halt. Pulling himself together, he blinked his eyes clear of water until they could focus on the man. “What is it?” he asked.

“The physician, he says that the Dominus will live.” The man didn’t seem to regard that as good news, but Gaius was relieved. He didn’t like Domini at all, and he had formed a particular dislike of this one, but the man had proven his worth against the Orcs.

“Tell the physician to make sure he rides in one of the carts. If he has to displace someone more seriously wounded, put that soldier on my horse.” That reminded Gaius of another problem, that the battle had resulted in too many wounded for the physicians to tend to them all properly. They used carts to carry the wounded, but they couldn’t hold all the injured. They should have brought more, he supposed, but just moving two through the forest had been difficult, the lack of trails making for difficult going, even with the paucity of underbrush in this forest. Those whom the carts could not carry would have to ride, although the physicians said it might kill some of them. They had found what remained of Victrinus soon after the Orcs had fled, so the responsibility to make that call had fallen on him and he had decided to move on now at the cost of those lives. He didn’t like the choice, but with Victrinus dead and no other centurion senior enough to tell an Imperial prince what to do, he truly did lead the cohort now.

It took Gaius a moment to realize the slave had left. He ceased staring blankly at where he had stood and left to make sure things were proceeding apace. He wanted to leave within an hour. Though he couldn’t be certain, with the sky hidden by leaves and clouds, he thought that the sun had just passed his noontime peak, leaving them with enough time to put a few miles between themselves and the site of this battle. With any luck, they could keep ahead of the Orcs all the way back.



The Novari had a notoriously vague concept of the afterlife. For the most part, it insisted that the spirits of the dead hung around in the real world, influencing the lives of their descendants; however, there were also more fantastic myths, which persisted more for their poetic descriptions than for any real belief in them. Among those lurked Tartarus, the dark and terrible place where the gods punished the truly wicked for eternity. A sense of futility and hopelessness united these punishments, from Tantalus, parched and starving, with water below his knees and grapes above his head, both of which would recede even as he reached for them, to Sisyphus, forced every day to roll a tremendous boulder up a steep and rocky hill, only to watch it roll back down at nightfall. Gaius could well imagine his return journey to the Austral Pass as one of those punishments.

They had traveled all the way to the Kawyr village without encountering a single Orc. Now Orcs appeared everywhere. From small parties of a dozen riders to larger forces with scores of footsoldiers, the Novari encountered them at every turn. Gaius’s cohort fought where necessary, but for the most part they ran, driven north, south, sometimes even east, while all the time they strived to turn their path westward. They could have fought through the small forces they encountered, but Gaius could feel the Victrinus’s prophesied “much larger force” closing in on them. So he avoided the Orcs altogether when he could, taking detours rather than engaging them. When he had to stop and fight, he drove them off but did not pursue them when they fled the Novari. Even so, it had taken seven days to travel as far west as they had traveled in three days eastward, and the young tribune felt certain that they had ended up much further north than when they had begun.

The march had taken an incredible toll on his men, with a third of their number dead, and those remaining exhausted and demoralized. They plodded along as quickly as fear could motivate them through the weariness, gulping the muggy air as the rains turned the ground to mud and drenched men already damp and miserable with sweat. Many became ill, but he could not give them the option of bed rest. They continued as long as they could, but many simply gave up, succumbing to their misery and dropping on the side of the road. Gaius refused to abandon any of them. Though they had abandoned the wagons days ago, he ordered those too weak to walk carried by horse or donkey. Still, the physicians could not keep all of them alive in these conditions, but not even they advised stopping to rest.

The Dominus refused to die. Though obviously ill, he had managed to ride upright since the second day. His magic had preserved them against more than one encounter with Orcish forces, but it had dimmed to a shadow of the wonders he had performed at the Kawyr village. He confided to Gaius that restoration to full strength would require a full week of rest, without which he didn’t think he’d be a match for any warlocks. Fortunately the army managed to avoid those.

Gaius himself was beginning to feel ill. He felt weak and tired, his eyes burned and his face felt feverish, and despite the damp air, or perhaps because of it, his throat felt raw and dry. He pressed on anyway, sitting his horse as best he could, doing his best not to show weakness, continuing to shout orders when his voice worked and personally receiving every report from his scouts.

One of the forward scouts rode hard toward him now. He signalled a halt, then reined in his own horse. No sense going forward into trouble. He watched the column behind him come to a halt as the remaining calvary, who served as screeners and scouts, adjusted to the change in pace. Gaius had eschewed conventional wisdom for travelling in Kawyr lands, and so far it seemed like a good choice. If the Kawyr were about, they had not caused his scouts any trouble, and his scouts spotted the Orcs at least as often as the Orcs spotted them. They had managed to avoid more than a few encounters that way. Five men had even taken on the task of delivering a message to Publius, riding hard to try to make it to the pass alone.

The scout pulled up right in front of him, both man and horse winded. His scouts traveled lightly, not even wearing the usual leather armor, which Gaius didn’t have for his cavalrymen-made-scouts. Panting, he made his report, “Orcs... a large force... more than we had at first... straight ahead...”

“Ahead? How’d they get ahead of us?” Gaius demanded.

“Most likely by moving faster than we did,” came a voice at his shoulder. Gaius didn’t even jump at the Dominus’s sudden comings and goings these days. It shouldn’t surprise him that the man had come once he saw the scout, anyway. “That wouldn’t have been hard. You should have taken my advice and left the wounded behind.”

Gaius snorted, “In that case, I would have abandoned you that first day.” And been better off for it.

“Perhaps you should have.”

Gaius wondered yet again whether the man could read his thoughts, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. “Can we get around them? Avoid them somehow?” he asked the scout.

“No... I think they know we’re here. They’re coming straight toward us,” the man’s voice cracked. “Sir,” the scout added for the first time. He was scared, and Gaius couldn’t blame them. Now might be a good time to pray to those gods he didn’t really believe in.

“How long do we have?”

“If we stand still, maybe an hour.”

The Dominus spoke while Gaius was desperately trying to think of a way out of this, “Were there any warlocks with them?”

The scout didn’t wait for Gaius’s nod, “The ones in red? I counted seven, but there could be more.”

Gaius looked at the Dominus, who had not bothered to obscure his face since the first encounter with the Orcs. His expression told him everything he needed to know. “You can’t handle seven, can you?”

“In this state, I doubt I could take two.” He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, his face hardened to reflect the look in his eyes. “Take your men, turn them around and head back in the direction you’ve come as quickly as you can move. When it happens, reverse direction again and come straight through here. Your path will be clear: you should break free of the forest by tomorrow evening.”

“When what happens?”

The Dominus ignored him. “They want to stop you from reaching the pass, going through a lot of effort to bring this force here. If they’re this afraid you’ll give warning, we still have time. Maybe a few days, maybe a month, but if you reach the pass quickly enough, you can give your people and mine time to prepare. They might even be able to stop the Orcs.”

“When what happens?” Gaius insisted.

“Don’t question me. Just do it!”

Gaius looked into the Dominus’s eyes for a moment longer, then turned to the scout, “Tell Paulus to get the men turned around. Now!”

It took surprisingly little time. Weariness and injuries made parade ground precision impossible, but the soldiers were well-trained. Within minutes, the column had turned around, and within ten, they began marching in the opposite direction, taking the Dominus’s horse with them. That gesture convinced Gaius that this might be his last opportunity, so he waited behind, watching as they moved out. When they had gone about a quarter mile, he turned to face the Dominus, who didn’t return his look. The black-robed man stood with his back against one of the huge trees, head down with his enormous black hood hiding it, hands clasped together. Gaius had seen that position held by Manuelites when they prayed, though he couldn’t imagine a Dominus doing so. The rain had ceased for the moment, and small spots of sunlight skittered across his damp cowl.

Gaius dismounted and walked to position himself in front of the unmoving Dominus. Drawing his sword, he placed the point at the man’s throat. The Dominus looked up. “Now what?” he asked wearily. “I have work to do, and it’d be a lot smarter for you to ride off.”

“I have a question I want you to answer.”

“Or else you’ll kill me, is that it? I could burn you where you stand.”

“Before I could open your throat? I don’t think so.”

“You’d be surprised at how quickly flesh can burn, but go ahead and ask your question.”

Gaius leaned forward, so he could see the man’s eyes beneath the hood. He had wanted to ask this since the journey began, and he had started to believe that he could when the Dominus had admitted his weakness. A Dominus wrapped in mystery and power was untouchable. One who confessed that he had grown too weak to deal with Orc warlocks was one that Gaius thought he could force an answer out of. Gaius noticed his sword trembling in his too rigid grip and forced himself to take slow, deep breaths and relax his muscles. His eagerness and trepidation made this harder than it should be.

“I want to know what you did to my brother.”

“Marcus? I didn’t do anything to him. He was perfectly fine when we left the pass.”

“Don’t toy with me, Domine. You know I don’t mean Marcus.” At least he should know that. The fatigue hadn’t made him that stupid, had it? “I mean Victor. The one you took eight months ago.”

“Oh, him.” Maybe the weariness had dulled his wits. “That I cannot tell you.”

“Why not?”

“It is not permitted for me to say.”

“Tell me! Or else I’ll—”

“Yes, I know. You’ll kill me. Do you think that matters? What I’m about to do will kill me anyway. If you do it first, you’re only sealing the doom of you and your men.”

Gaius paused at that, “What do you mean?”

“You obviously didn’t think this through, did you? You need me. If you kill me now, those Orcs ahead will have no problem massacring your little army. You’re threatening your only hope of survival.”

It was true, Gaius hadn’t thought it through. He didn’t really want to kill the Dominus; he wasn’t even sure he could kill the man. Gaius had only thought that he could coerce him into a confession, but the Dominus had called his bluff and empty threats would not do the trick. Something else had caught his attention, however. “What do you mean, you’re about to die anyway?”

“What I’m saying is that the situation looks like it’s a choice of either all of us dying or just me. Even worse, if the Orcs catch up with us, there’s a chance they might take me alive. That I won’t let happen. So I’m going to do the only thing I know that might stop them, and it’s going to kill me.”

“What is it?” Gaius asked, still searching for some way to get his answer.

“I’m going to cause an explosion, one much larger than anything you’ve seen me do before. In order to do that, I’m going to use the substance of my own body to fuel it.”

“That will kill you?”

“I won’t have a body left. What do you think?”

“Then what does it matter if you tell me? You’ll be dead anyway.”

The Dominus began to shake, a soundless heaving of his shoulders which Gaius recognized after a few moments as laughter. A spot of blood appeared where the sword pressed against his throat. “Sometimes, you’re much smarter than you look. Sometimes. Telling you may be worth your life. Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. I don’t care about the penalty.”

“Neither do I. I’ll be dead, so it won’t matter to me, and I don’t much like you anyway.” Bitter amusement laced his voice. “So why not? The Order took Victor Julius Principius to be trained.”

“Trained? For what?”

“To become one of us, of course. What, did you think Domini grow on trees? We must get our recruits somehow.”

Gaius’s head spun. His brother, a Dominus? He looked at the man whose presence he found repulsive and tried to imagine his youngest brother wearing those dark robes, that arrogant sneer, that condescending manner. He couldn’t imagine it of Victor, not his quiet, shy, polite brother. What would these monsters do to him?

“So... he’s still alive?”

“Probably. The training kills some, but not this early on.”

“What—?”

“That’s enough. Now that I answered your question, you should go. I have work to do.” Gaius made no move to leave. “Hurry! If you die in the blast, you won’t be able to give your warning. The Order will want to know what’s coming as much as the Novari will.”

Gaius sheathed his sword and mounted Zephyrus, sparing a backward glance at the man as he kicked his horse into motion. The Dominus didn’t move, still standing there with his head down and hands clasped. Gaius wondered whether he could do what he intended, then decided that he didn’t want to wait around to find out. He rode hard to rejoin his men.

---

This has been a 3,322 word chapter of a 90,110 word novel. A total of 40,476 words have appeared in this blog.

One of the front page, above the fold stories of MIT's student newspaper, The Tech, this past week was headlined "Anti-Gay Statements Written in Bathroom In Walker Memorial". It begins thus:

An anti-gay slogan was found on Sept. 12 in a bathroom near the Rainbow Lounge in Walker Memorial. The incident is the most recent in a year-long series of anti-gay graffiti that has appeared in the same place on campus. The Rainbow Lounge houses student groups addressing lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgendered issues as well as a library of LBGT-related literature and films.

The slogan started with the sentence: “Homosexuality may be politically correct, but it will never be BIOLOGICALLY correct,” and proceeded to graphically describe homosexual sexual acts, ending with, “Small wonder that’s a prime vector for contracting AIDS. Enjoy.....”

MIT Police have increased patrols in the affected areas but will have to catch an offender in the act to open an investigation, said Police Chief John DiFava.

James A. Nadeau G, who reported the Sept. 12 incident, said that the slogan was written at the top of a blackboard in the basement men’s bathroom in Walker and would have required a chair to reach. He said that this made him think that someone “really, really wanted to write it.”

I think some perspective is in order. Having gone to MIT, I've seen some of what's written on the bathroom walls. It's always vulgar and often rude, and quite frequently graphic. Accusing the reader of homosexual practices is what passes for a clever insult, often answered by another graffiti artist accusing the writer's mother of bestiality. By that standard, this is rather mild (although that "Enjoy..." at the end is nasty). It is not an anti-gay slogan, but an argument, albeit a crude one. That's apparently the problem: "The slogans found in the Walker basement bathroom are difficult to handle, Bruni[vice-president of the Rainbow Lounge] said, because of the intellectual style they adopt." and "Nadeau [who reported the writing] said the writing struck him because it was not 'derivative and puerile,' but seemed to want to make an intellectual statement." The writing is insulting, but not threatening. As it was written on a blackboard, supposedly in chalk, I'm not sure this even counts as vandalism. However, it makes people uncomfortable:

Francis [project coordinator of Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgendered Services, Resources, and Outreach] said that according to MIT’s non-discrimination policy, everyone has the right to work and feel welcomed in their own space. The writings’ close proximity to the Rainbow Lounge, she said, may cause people to feel threatened in a space reserved to make them feel welcome.

MIT's a private institution, and it can have whatever non-discrimination policy it wants, but it needs to be honest about it. That's why I find this theme, repeated throughout the article, disturbing:

The separation between free speech and hate speech is a fine line, he [Bruni] said.
...
The graffiti has not been categorized as hate speech, DiFava said, although he said he felt these incidents differed from free speech because a person desiring an intellectual discussion would use more important venues than bathroom walls to promote his or her opinions.
...
Bruni said that the group should address what can be done in response to hate speech, both by the community and by the police. The distinction between hate speech and free speech should be examined, and contacting more administrators about these incidents should be a goal, he said.

Apparently Supreme Court rulings allowing the Klan to have public marches hasn't been enough to get people to understand this point, so let me say this clearly: "Hate speech" is free speech. They are not separate categories. Hate speech is a subset of free speech, and clearly protected by the same First Amendment that lets people call the President an evil moron and a murderous bigot. A private institution can regulate what its students and employees can and cannot say, and exercise disciplinary action based on that, but is it too much to ask that they at least not try to redefine free speech so it doesn't include the things they don't like? And how is hate speech defined anyway? Does it include everything that some group finds insulting? There's no lack of groups ready to find insult in pretty much anything you can say. I do my best not to take part. If I complained every time someone insulted Christianity, I wouldn't