Tag Archives: fiction

April 17, 2013

The Jailer’s Dilemma, Part 2 of 2

(continued from Part 1)

Crowfeather was almost asleep when he heard a key turn in the lock of his cell. The door opened and an uncovered lantern shone light on the face of his father, the head jailer. The older man stepped aside from the door and motioned him out.

“Come on, son. I volunteered for the first watch tonight; no one else is around. You can leave and no one will stop you.”

Crowfeather stood up but did not approach the door. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “They will kill you.”

“It is my guilt to bear, son,” the jailer said. “Your crimes are because of me and although I tried to evade them with the name O’Keefe, I will always be Henry Robins: your father and a thief.”

“I have not seen you in many years,” Crowfeather persisted. “You are not to blame for everything I have done since then. You were right when you said that you did not teach me to counterfeit. I am a man now, father. I can stand on my feet, as you see.”

“If you will not go for justice, then go as a last gift to your father,” the jailer said. “Go and reform your ways. It took a ruined knee to teach me honesty, but it will not for you, I hope.” He tossed a small pouch to Crowfeather, which clinked as he caught it.

“Come with me then,” Crowfeather said, moving towards the door at last. “There is no reason why you should stay here to undergo punishment. Let us go together.”

The jailer was already shaking his head, a sad smile on his face. “I would just slow you down, and in any case, the guilt must be paid. Go and sin no more. I will stay.”

* * *

Crandell, the deputy jailer came in to take the second watch of the night and found the head jailer not at his post. He walked the corridors and saw that the last cell door was slightly ajar. Inside he found the head jailer, sitting alone on the stone bench.

“Where is the prisoner?” Crandell asked in alarm.

“He is gone. I let him go. He was my son.”

“You are mad, sir! This is treason. You will be put to death.”

“Even if they transfer his punishment to me, I will take it calmly,” O’Keefe said.

“Do not even say such things,” Crandell said. “I would glad kill you here with my sword before I let you go through something that terrible.”

“Do not do that,” O’Keefe said. “Then the guilt would pass to you, since it would be seen as the murder of an innocent man. No, let me do this: the guilt must be paid.”

* * *

A month later, in a city fifty miles away, a man walked into an inn looking for work.

“What your name?” the innkeeper asked, sizing the man up with a critical look.

“Gabriel Robins,” the man said. “I just came in from the hill country. I can do anything you need me to do. I’m just looking for some good, honest work.”

“Well, there’s plenty of that around here. You can get to work mucking out the stables, if you wish. Hey, if you’ve just come from the hills, you must not have heard the news about the king’s head jailer. They beheaded him a week or so ago after he released one of his prisoners. They say his face shone with joy right before the axe came down. Do you know what his last words were?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘May God bless him.’ Now what do you think of that?”

22 Comments | tags: father, fiction, justice, prison, prisoner, son | posted in Dusk

April 16, 2013

The Jailer’s Dilemma, Part 1 of 2

By David Stewart

“Sir, we just received a new prisoner. He’s under penalty of death.”

The head jailer Joseph O’Keefe nodded. “What’s his name?”

“They couldn’t find out his real name, but he calls himself Crowfeather. He—sir, are you okay?” The guard stepped forward, seeing the jailer sway suddenly, but O’Keefe waved him off.

“It’s just my knee.” He sat down, massaging his knee and not daring to look up in case his face betrayed anything. “Get out of here, would you. I’ll go check on the prisoner.”

The guard left and a moment later O’Keefe stood up and limped slowly down the dank stone corridor, all the way down to the Cells of the Condemned. He had never known it to take so long and his heart was pounding so painfully it felt as if his arteries were filled with acid.

Peering through iron bars, he saw the prisoner sitting in a pile of moldy straw. He did not see the baby that he had bounced on his knee or the little boy he had taken to market that first time. There was only a prisoner.

“Crowfeather?”

The prisoner looked up. “Yeah?”

“I like Gabriel Robins better.”

The prisoner was on his feet in an instant, his fists clenched. “How do you know that name?” O’Keefe looked at him steadily and watched as recognition grew on his face and the anger drained away from his expression. “Father. So this is where you ended up.”

“And this is where you ended up,” O’Keefe said. “What did they catch you doing?”

“Counterfeiting.”

A thrill of horror went down O’Keefe’s spine. “Counterfeiting!” he hissed. “Are you mad, boy? Do you know what the punishment is for that?”

The prisoner shrugged. “Death is death in the end, no matter how you get there.”

“I have witnessed many executions and not all deaths are created equal. Men would give all they had to choose their death; to avoid the one coming to you.”

The prisoner sat down again, shrugging in defiance. “So, did you come here to gloat? To say I was stupid? You taught me to do this, after all.”

“I never taught you to counterfeit!”

“No, you only taught me to steal, to pickpocket, to hold a crossbow to a man’s throat while our friends took his horse and everything he owned in the world. How is that much better?”

O’Keefe put his forehead against the wood of the door. His knee was throbbing.

“Father,” the prisoner said. “What happened that day at Hind’s Crossing, when the ambush went bad? You disappeared and we thought you were dead.”

There was a moment of silence before O’Keefe spoke. “After they counterattacked, I knocked one of the soldiers down with my staff. I thought he was out, but he crushed my knee with his mace. I killed him after that, but then fell into unconsciousness. After the fighting, when you and the lads had fled, I woke to find myself bandaged and lying on a stretcher. There were two groups of pilgrims in the party we ambushed and both thought I was part of the other one. They carried me with them, all the way to this city where I slowly healed, at least as much as possible. I changed my name and got a job as a jailer.”

“Why didn’t you try to find me?” the prisoner asked.

“It was too far for me to travel like this, and even if I had, I would have been a burden on you. I have found a better way, through my suffering.”

“When is the execution scheduled?” the prisoner asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Will you come to it, to see me?” For a moment, O’Keefe heard a touch of the boy he had known in the prisoner’s voice, the child looking up to his father for assurance and advice.

The jailer stifled a groan and punched his fist into the door. The physical pain seemed like a blessing compared the torture filling his mind. “How could I go? How could I watch them do that to my only son?”

“What will you do then?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” O’Keefe turned and shuffled back down the long hall to the guard room. His knee was screaming at him by now, the pain shouting accusations.

The deputy jailer William Crandell was in the guard room when O’Keefe entered. They nodded at each other in professional acknowledgement.

“William, the new prisoner—do you know when the execution will be?”

“The counterfeiter? Yes, I just received the news. It will be in two days. They need time to fill and ready the cauldron.”

O’Keefe gave a quick nod and turned to hide his long, shuddering breath. He had only seen one execution that had involved that squat, black cauldron. The images were burned into his memory, and now his mind unwillingly combined the iron monstrosity with the tiny tin basin he had used to wash little Gabriel in front of the fireplace. The little boy had splashed and laughed, spilling water on the dirt floor. In O’Keefe’s mind, he could see the water thickening into oil around the small boy, the surface swelling and bursting in sickening pops as the oil began to boil.

(to be concluded in Part 2)

17 Comments | tags: father, fiction, justice, prison, prisoner, son | posted in Dusk

April 15, 2013

The Chronicles of the Moldlands: Forgotten Bagel

By David Stewart

Warning: While this is technically classified as Apocryphal History, some may consider it more in the genre of Horror because of its subject matter. If you have a phobia of mold, you’ve been warned. But read it anyway, since it’s a good laugh.

Life first sprang into being on the high plateau of Fridge, on the rising mounds of Forgotten Bagel. It was a primitive sort of life: growing, eating, spreading slowly, and happy just to discover the occasional half-buried blueberry. A filmy plastic covered the hills and so life was contained for a while.

The gods inhabited the Great House at that time, but soon there came the time of the Impromptu Vacation, and the gods departed from the house for the far country of Aruba. They never returned to the house again.

The civilization of Forgotten Bagel thrived until it had covered the hills and was straining to break the filmy bonds that constrained its expansion. It was the great explorer Schimmel Penicillium who led the first voyage to find the way out of the barrier. He came out into open air and into the strange land of Kitchen. He founded colonies wherever he found suitable ground and the Cillium Empire was formed. Schimmel claimed the title of Grand Mouchla and set up his capital in the caves of Bread Box, which were much more central than Forgotten Bagel. He assimilated the locals and for a while, the Cillium Empire grew like an infestation.

Try not to think of what this was originally

But there were areas of concern. Scouting spores returned to report a deep cavern of mystery named Trashbin that was filled with food and land of unimaginable richness, but was also inhabited by strange and wondrous monsters. Then there were the legends of the dark underworld known as Drain. The people of Drain were said to be dark and strong, with a touch that poisoned everything.

The Cillium Empire flourished and soon built foil mines and developed weapons and aircraft out of aluminum. So it was that the first Cillians landed in the wide basin of Sink and stood before the mighty entrance to the dark land of Drain.

Drain was wet and slick and the entrance was surrounded by slimy black fortifications. The Cillian forces were wary but approached with weapons at the ready. Still, they were not prepared for the onslaught that came. Suddenly millions of black Cladospores poured out, overwhelming the Cillians and capturing their aluminum aircraft and weapons.

The defeat caused panic throughout the Cillium Empire. The Grand Mouchla–at this time the great-grandson of Schimmel Penicillium–stationed guards around the borders of Sink. However, the Cladospores did not spread beyond the borders of Drain and slowly the panic subsided. Still, the Grand Mouchla did not like having such a potent threat so close to his empire.

Then one of the patrols came back with an interesting report. They observed water dripping from the dead waterfall of Tap. Some of the Cillian scientists conjectured that the Cladospores depended on this water and if they could totally shut off Tap, the Cladospores would die. The Cillians had recently discovered a cache of huge and terribly strong steel cables called Twist-Ties and now they undertook a project to bind these together and attach them to the upper portion of Tap, hoping to pull it closed.

After two generations, the grand project was finished and a long line of Twist-Ties was looped around the upper part of Tap and up to a hook above it. Cillian engineers winched the Tap up, but they quickly found that they were very mistaken about the workings of Tap and instead of shutting off the water, it began to gush out in a flood. The Cladospores were obliterated, washed down into the furthest recesses of Drain and a great threat to the Cillium Empire was gone. Some worried that this was only inundating the Cladospores with the resource that they needed most, but most agreed that while Tap was pouring forth water, the Cladospores would never again be able to emerge from Drain. And so, for a time, there was peace in the wide land of Kitchen.

13 Comments | tags: chronicles, civilization, creepy, fiction, kitchen, mold, quirky, short story | posted in Light

April 14, 2013

The Lotus Ocean – Visual Fiction

By David Stewart

Morning dawned on the world of green.

The inhabitants awoke from their verdant beds to find that the central ocean had been replenished, as it was every night.

“Dad, where does the ocean come from?” the boy asked his father as the family walked down one of the jade veins that radiated out from the center of the leaf.

“It comes from the sky,” the father said. “Every day it dries up and then is replaced during the cool of the night.” They reached the edge of the ocean, which towered above them, curving out of sight. They could see others gathering on the far side of the ocean, their forms skewed by the curved surface of the water.

The family drank, putting their mouths to the wall of water in front of them and drinking deeply. After several minutes, when all were refreshed, they began the climb back up the leaf to their home.

“Dad?” the boy asked. “What if the ocean stops being replenished?”

“Do you mean the legends, son?” the father asked. “The legends of terrible cold or burning heat? That is not likely to happen, but if it does, we will move to a different leaf. There are thousands of them, you know.

“What if it happens to all of them?”

The father only smiled and ruffled his son’s hair but the fear tightened inside him, the fear that he would admit to no one. It was the same fear that they all felt, in the private recesses of their minds if the night was long or the weather turned strange.

What if the ocean stops coming? What if extreme heat withers the leaf? What if cold freezes everything into an uninhabitable wasteland?

What if?

11 Comments | tags: fiction, flash fiction, Jeonju, Korea, lotus, photograph, visual fiction | posted in Visual Fiction

April 12, 2013

In Your Dreams, Inc.

By David Stewart

People are weird. Their thoughts are weird and their dreams are even weirder. I should know—it’s my job.

Have you ever had one of those dreams that made perfect sense, even after you woke up? It was like someone was writing a movie and playing it out in your brain while you slept. It had production value. Of course, the next night, it’s usually back to some jumble of nonsense about teddy bears, an ominous-looking toaster, and your Grade 4 teacher driving a taxi.

Imagine you could dream those cool, complicated dream every night—chasing bad guys, flying around like Superman, and still waking up fresh as spring breeze? You can now, thanks to In Your Dreams, Inc. It’s popular, let me tell you. The guy who founded it is a multi-billionaire now. Not that I see much of that though—I’m just an extra.

Source

* * *

“Brad, here’s the script for the Harper drug-bust scenario.” Heather hands me a single sheet of paper.

“What is he this time, the drug lord or the cop?” I ask.

“Actually, he’s the briefcase. They carry him in, open him up, then test the drugs. When the cops show up, he’s thrown into the evidence locker for a while, then ends up as Exhibit B in the trial. That’s when he wakes up. Hey, I got you a speaking part this time.”

I look at the script and find my name. “‘I gotta go pee”? What kind of a line is that?”

Heather shrugs. “He wanted to throw a subliminal hint into the dream somewhere. He says he always wakes up with his bladder almost exploding and he wants to start waking up before that point. Don’t worry; everybody starts at the bottom. You do a couple ‘I gotta go pee’ gigs, then move on to ‘you got the drugs?’ or ‘the giant lemon bounced that way.’ Before you know it, you’re the guy explaining to the dreamer how he’s the only one who can save the planet. Baby steps, Brad.”

An hour later, I’ve gotten through makeup and am on the sound stage with the rest of the actors. Abraham Lincoln is the drug lord this time. I’ve worked on a few Sammy Harper dreams before and for some reason Abraham Lincoln always shows up somewhere. I was a giant Raggedy Andy in a tea party dream of his and sure enough, Lincoln was the one serving the tea.

“Places, everyone!” the director Kyle Dresden shouts. “Sammy Harper just fell asleep. We’re live in twenty minutes.”

We always do dreams live, while beaming them remotely into the dreamer’s brain. There is a huge screen set up at one end of the stage that shows us exactly what the dreamer is experiencing. That’s essential since dreamers rarely stick to the script, even ones they’ve helped write themselves. We always have to keep an eye on it while we’re acting.

In this scenario, I’m one of the drug dealers. I’ve got a bazooka—which is insane—but that’s Sammy Harper for you. Other drug dealers have AK-47s, elephant guns, and one has a tiger on a leash.

The blue “Dream On” light goes on and we advance towards the middle of the room. Abraham Lincoln is in front, holding the briefcase. The director signals the giant marshmallow Peeps to start jumping around in the background. The theme song to “Cheers” starts playing.

The actor playing Lincoln-as-a-drug-lord puts the briefcase on the table and opens it. The other gang leader samples the drugs inside. I look up at the dream screen and see that in the dream, the briefcase has grown wings and is flying around the room. I knew Sammy Harper couldn’t be content to just lie there as a briefcase and let everyone else have the action. The briefcase in the dream has now sprouted arms and is firing a Tommy gun at us.

This is where improv takes over. We all keep an eye on the screen to see where the briefcase is firing and when it gets near us, we fall back as if we’re shot. The customer is always right, after all.

The dream briefcase fires in my direction and I drop to the ground, writhing as if shot. I’m about to full-on die when I realize that I haven’t said my line yet. The first line of my career and the dreamer goes off script and kills me. Not this time. I let out a dying scream. “I gotta go pee!”

* * *

It’s 6am and I stumble through the door of my apartment and fall onto the bed without even undressing. I just want some nice black-screen sleep. I used to like my dreams, but now, I don’t want to remember a thing. It’s too much like work.

Source

13 Comments | tags: Abraham Lincoln, actor, crime, dreams, drugs, fiction, funny, job, quirky, science fiction, Superman | posted in Light

April 10, 2013

The Rust Queen – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

The Rust Queen

My favorite teacher was Miss Ferrous, but we just called her Rusty. She had a tattoo that said “Rust Queen” on her arm.

We once took a class trip to the junkyard. We shot rats with a shotgun and Rusty showed us how thermite could burn through an engine block. We collected all the cool-looking scraps and dragged them back to school, where Rusty showed us how to weld. I made a scrap-racer and named it The Rust Queen, after her.

Even today, it sits on my porch, a tribute to the best kindergarten teacher a boy could ever have.

57 Comments | tags: fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, junkyard, kindergarten, rust, teacher, teaching, thermite, welding | posted in Light

April 8, 2013

A Night of Loss and Grief – Fantastic Travelogue #14

By David Stewart

Sometimes you have some amazing adventures you just have to tell everyone about. Read the rest of this account here.

Synopsis: I was hiking in the mountains of Korea when I got lost at night and came out in a strange valley. I couldn’t understand anyone, but I found out they knew Chinese characters. I met a young woman name Ain-Mai, and later, her brother Sing-ga. While I was there, a creepy woman appeared. Ain-Mai and her brother told me that the creepy woman was named Hengfel and came from another world. Hengfel eventually captured all three of us and brought us back to her world. They separated us, but Sing-ga and I got out and rescued Ain-Mai, although I got quite injured in the process. We took shelter in the air vents. Sing-ga went to find water, while Ain-Mai bandaged me and took care of me. Sing-ga finally came back, bleeding badly and very injured.

I had never seen anyone die before, but I was there, kneeling next to Sing-ga when he died. I heard his breath catch, as if he were choking on something and then it just stopped. I kept waiting for him to breath again, but he didn’t. Ain-Mai, on his other side, was starting to become frantic. She was hyperventilating and shaking him, calling his name. Finally, I reached out and touched her arm and she wilted, her arms falling down to her sides.

In the faint light of the moon and stars that was coming in through the opening, I could see that Sing-ga’s arms and face were covered with circular bites. If he had been attacked, how had he gotten away? And could there be things that were still looking for him? I wanted to get away, but I wasn’t sure where to go and I was in no shape to travel.

A light, skittering sound came from up the tunnel. Ain-Mai didn’t seem to notice. She was smoothing back her brother’s hair and crying softly.

“We should go,” I said. She paid no attention.

Something the size of a dinner plate flew out of the darkness at me. All I saw were thin, clawed legs outstretched towards me before the thing wrapped itself around my arm and I felt the sharp pain of it biting into my flesh. I shouted in terror and ripped it off, hurling it savagely out through the grating and into open space. More came leaping at me and I fought them off desperately, pure adrenaline overcoming the pain of my injuries. From what I could tell, they were like huge spiders, with clawed legs and a sharp-toothed mouth in the middle of their body. Even now, I sometimes have nightmares about those horrors jumping out of the darkness at me.

One got caught in Ain-Mai’s hair. She screamed, but it roused her to action and she fought back, lashing out at the monsters when they jumped at her.

“We have to go!” I shouted, not caring that she couldn’t understand me. I started to move in the only direction that was open to us, out the opening and onto the sheer outer side of the tower. I hesitated when it came to actually stepping out of the opening and onto the rough plates of the outer wall, and it was Ain-Mai who took the lead and held out her hand for me to come out.

I had just taken her hand when one of leaping spider-mouths latched onto my shoulder and bit in deeply. I writhed to get it off and felt myself slipping. Ain-Mai pulled me back to the wall and reached down to rip the vile creature off my shoulder. It gave a thin cry as it disappeared into the darkness far below us.

I did not wait to see if more were following us but gripped Ain-Mai’s hand and followed her along the ridges of the wall. They stuck out at an angle from the wall and were easy to hold onto, but they were also irregularly shaped. My right foot was bandaged and extremely sore, so I hopped along on my left.

The spider-mouths didn’t follow us out. I thought this was strange until I remembered poor Sing-ga’s body lying just inside the tunnel. I was sick with horror, but it came out as anger. I shuffled along, swearing under my breath, spitting out profanities with every hop. I’m not even sure who I was angry at: at the spider-mouths; at Hengfel for bringing us to that terrible place; at myself for getting Sing-ga and Ain-Mai caught with me and in doing so, causing his death. I was thankful for the calming effect of Ain-Mai’s hand in mine, which kept me from doing anything stupid.

We came to a hollow in the outer wall a minute later, which was fortunate because I could not have gone on much longer in my condition. It was probably a dragon nest at one point, but it was deserted and we collapsed into it. I put my back against the stone wall and tried to regain my strength and calm my mind. Ain-Mai slumped down by my side, sobbing. I put my arm around her and she drew closer.

Ten minutes later, she had quieted and lay still against me. I had my eyes closed when I felt her stir. The next thing I felt were her lips on mine. She was kissing me in a quick, breathless way, not romantically, but as someone desperately needing comfort in the midst of despair.

For a moment, it was as if time stopped and the Choice stood in front of me. We were alone together in an alien world. Ain-Mai had just lost her brother and was overwhelmed with grief. She needed me. As for myself, I was lonely and tired and she felt so good next to me that in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to abandon myself to her kisses and caresses.

But then I thought of my wife–by herself and worlds away from me. I imagined her going about her daily life, wondering where I was, hoping I was safe, and I realized that she was the only one I really wanted. Still, it was one of the hardest things I have ever done to pull away from Ain-Mai’s embrace. “I,” I said, and then took her hand and drew out the character for “married” on her palm. I guess she understood my meaning one way or another; she nodded and then put her head back down on my shoulder. She started crying again, very softly, and I put my arm around her again. I didn’t know what else to do.

The next thing I remember was opening my eyes to see the sun breaking over the far horizon. Ain-Mai was sleeping with her head still on my shoulder. Then I noticed with a start that a large bird-like creature was perched on a wall plate next to the hollow. It had wings folded behind it and small arms in front, each with a large golden bracelet on it. We looked at each other for a moment until it put its hands over its eyes and bowed deeply to me.

(to be continued…)

3 Comments | tags: blood, death, escape, Fantastic Travelogue, fantasy, fiction, fortress, injured, kiss, monster, other worlds, travel, travelogue, tunnels, wife, woman | posted in Travelogue

April 7, 2013

Blue Storm – Visual Fiction

By David Stewart

For those who are new to my blog, I do a Visual Fiction flash fiction every Sunday, based around a picture of mine that I find inspiring. If you’d like to join me in this, feel free to use the picture to write your own story. Just give me the link to yours in the comments, since I’d love to read it. I write stories of all genres and moods, although this one happens to be rather dark.

Taken in Jeonju, South Korea

I knew that magic had a price, but it never occurred to me that it might extend beyond the one foolish enough to try to wield it.

“Jules, you’re mad! Quit it!” I shouted, trying to be heard above the rising winds. Jules was standing in the circle he had drawn in the forest clearing, shaking convulsively. At the time, I thought it was some sort of ecstasy of unholy power, but now that I reflect, it looked more like a person who has grabbed onto an electric fence and has tapped into a source of power far too vast for them to handle.

I ran, just as the clouds overhead began to seethe and spread a poisonous blue hue across the sky. It moved faster than I, and by the time I returned to my apartment, it had covered the city. A rift of dazzling light appeared in it and the last thing I saw before I shut and locked my door was a rain of dark objects beginning to fall.

It has been two days. I have not heard from Jules, but if he is dead, he is lucky. The city is in a panic at the unearthly scourge that has overrun it. There are many names for them: imps, goblins, demons. No one knows what they are, only that they are incredibly hard, if not impossible, to kill.

I sit and cower at home now, regretting any part I played in Jules’ mad schemes. I know that if they should find me, the concrete walls of my apartment will offer me little protection. Still, I wait and pray that this storm, like all others, might eventually pass.

27 Comments | tags: clouds, demons, fantasy, fear, fiction, flash fiction, Jeonju, Korea, lovecraft, magic, monster, photograph, storm, visual fiction | posted in Visual Fiction

April 4, 2013

Gutter – 33-Word Flash-Fiction

By David Stewart

Eric Alagan has a weekly micro-fiction challenge on his blog, Written Words Never Die. The prompt is a single word, this week’s word being “Gutter”. I decided to give it a go, and even tried emulating his signature style of presentation.

I’m convinced they do this, by the way. I will give an unspecified reward to anyone obtaining photographic evidence.

7 Comments | tags: ants, Eric Alagan, fiction, flash fiction, gutter, micro fiction, quirky | posted in Light

April 3, 2013

Just Following Orders – Friday Fictioneers

By David Stewart

From Scott Vanatter with permission-Copyright- Indira

Just Following Orders

The general handed Marcellus the white signal flag. “Fly it from that far tree. The cavalry must retreat. We are being routed.”

Orders were everything. Marcellus ran, keeping low, but enemy archers spotted him. He climbed, arrows thunking against the trunk. A pain in his leg, then his shoulder. Then his back.

Must complete the order. Darkness finally swallowed his sight and he slumped, the flag suspended below him.

* * *

“The signal! What color is it?”

“White? No . . . it’s red!”

“A charge? Is he insane?”

“We must follow orders.”

Later, they called the charge that won the day the Marcellus Charge.