Beware the Well Fed Man (The Ebon Chronicles) by Chris Capps

Author:Chris Capps [Capps, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2014-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

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In the days following our first battle, I could tell Crassus was different. The first night, as we laid down in our respective bunks, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in a long while. He had once again taken up the habit of letting moist eyes get the better of him as he fell asleep. Though he tried to hide it always, it had been a long time since I had heard Crassus actually crying. I leaned over my bunk and called down to him,

“Hey.”

He didn’t respond at first, so I swung my legs around and hopped to the floor, sitting in one of the chairs we had pulled into the sparsely furnished apartment. His fists were over his eyes, and he dragged them down finally to look at me. After a moment’s pause he asked, a hint of accusation in his voice,

“Why did they poison themselves?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. After a moment, I realized the lie wasn’t going to hold up so I added, “They probably thought it would be a better way to go than having their city conquered. I don’t know if you still remember my history lessons, but the Teutons did the same thing after the Battle of Aquae Sextiae. Hundreds, maybe thousands strangled one another in the night rather than suffer under the yoke of slavery.”

“What were we going to do to them?” Crassus asked. His eyes had cooled significantly since the battlefield when I saw the fire within him. He was wounded now, unsure of his place now that it was over. With my eyes closed, I remember breathing relief that he hadn’t lost his gentle character. Though he could be driven by passion to defend his home, he wasn’t destined to become a tyrant.

“I don’t know,” I said reassuringly, “I know we wouldn’t have killed them.”

“They would have,” Crassus said, “The Thakka Cluster. They would have killed everyone. And if they’d found the bomb, who knows what they would have done? They worship death. Somehow, they’ve tasted it already. Those years wandering in sickness, sharing it between them. And they’re our problem now. Our troubles are multiplying.”

He was looking at a piece of paper he had pinned to the wall. It was the pyramid of rats, the mathematical principle Euclid had offered to explain how the Plexis had been built. Exponential growth. He stared at it now uneasily, agonizing over some mystery hidden in the future. He continued, “I don’t want them to die. I just don’t want them here. This place is ours.”

The next morning the Thakka Cluster returned. Their dead had been consumed by some mysterious ritual somewhere out of sight. And now they stood in a line of nearly a hundred in front of the Plexis’ front door. The door, rare as it was, happened to be closed that morning.

Thunfir and I were on Floor 19 making small talk shortly before the line spilled over the horizon. I sat and he stood staring out at the rising sun casting shadows on the hill.

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