Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

The armorer fixed me up with just what I wanted. I got a crushin’ longsword, lighter than what Milo carried. I could barely lift one of those big suckers off the ground, but I could swing the smaller sword with both hands. I figured like I’d be a hell of a lot quicker on the draw than those big zods. One of those guys takes a hack with his sword, he needs five minutes to recover for another swipe. Meanwhile, I could shred him with a combo of point and edge work. I also took this tasty dirk and a spear. I wanted a helmet, too—an open-faced helmet with the nosepiece like the ancient Greeks wore, okay? With the 1spear and the helmet I’d look just so kill, like Athena, who was fully ruff and a legend in her own time.

“Nosepiece,” the armorer goes, in this fractured language they called Mehrikan. 1 could barely make out what he was like saying. “You got a big nose on you to protect.”

I just gave him my Number Eight Smile—icy, totally aggro, Warning to Others: This Is Dangerous Territory. “You want to like do your job? I don’t need your constructive criticism.”

He shrugged. “What about your shield?”

I hadn’t planned to carry one; I was going to use both hands on the sword, right? I told him, and his eyes got wider. He muttered something under his breath: “Ahnaiyeestah.” I found out it meant “without a shield,” and that’s what that bunch called me from then on: Mahreenah Ahnaiyeestah. My nom de guerre, can you believe it?

I also got this way rad draped white gown that I could wear with my crested helmet and spear and like really do the Athena number; and I was fitted with this outfit, the leathers and the chain mail, for battle. I was all set. Now we were like waiting for Milo’s scouts, who were hauling ass all over the countryside looking for the Union army.

So a couple of days later, still moving east, we got a frantic report: like the advance guards of Thoheeks Djaik Morguhn’s Red Eagle warriors made contact with these hungry Pure-Blood Union foragers. “I didn’t want to fight a battle here,” goes Milo. “And, I’ll wager, neither did Senior Strahteegos Lahmbrohs, our shrewd enemy. But look at the map; it is a coincidence, nothing more, forced on us by geography. This town is the junction of all the main roads for many miles around. I hoped that we would pass through it well ahead of the Union troops. I wanted to put my army between Lahmbrohs and his source of supply, far away in Karaleenos. There’s nothing to be gained by wishing it was otherwise. I’ll reinforce Djaik Morguhn and hope that Lahmbrohs chooses to disengage. There are more favorable places to come to grips.” Milo looks at Prince Bili, Djaik’s older brother, and Bili nods. I didn’t like offer any advice, ’cause like I didn’t have any. In Milo’s tent, it all looked like toy soldiers on a gameboard, but it was really weird on account of I knew men had already started to die for real.

Milo sent out his orders. Thoheeks Djaik was to hurry to bail out his advance unit and do what he could to slow down the withdrawal of Lahmbrohs and his Union rebels. Meanwhile, the Confederate units, scattered all across the damn countryside, would zoom up as fast as their mammoth horses could carry them.

I was like just hot to get into my first battle, you know, but everybody I talked to kept saying, “Just wait, you’ll see.” Nobody would tell me what I’d see, and I thought maybe they didn’t want to fight. That was dumb. I should have known better. They were all brave dudes —stark was their word—and they’d tussle every time they had to. It was only like they could think of other things they’d rather be doing. I know about that: I was very popular on Saturday nights. I mean, it was that Athena look that did it. And it was the Athena look plus the spear and the longsword that kept them from bipping my boobs, too. See, you don’t feel up a warrior woman. Not if you don’t want people calling you Lefty for the rest of your life, I’m sure.

In the middle of the next morning, Milo got another report from Djaik Morguhn—he had sent a third of his infantry and cavalry to the town, under Strahteegos Kehrtuhs Hwiltuhn. Hwiltuhn was ordered to see what the Union strahteegos planned to do, and to like head back toward our main body when he got that news. Things sort of didn’t work out the way Milo and Djaik planned. Hwiltuhn did as he was told, but like when he got to the town, the battle was already boiling and he couldn’t fall back. A whole horde of Ehleenee hodads were riding into town from the other direction, but most of the Union troops were like still quite a ways away. Old Hwiltuhn was famous for staying in fights when other leaders might decide to retreat. His men loved him for his guts and his totally hot-blooded but battle-wise experience. Hwiltuhn sent word that whether Milo wanted it or not, the fighting was going to happen around this sleepy town. He said he’d like try to slow the enemy up as much as possible while Milo got the rest of the Confederation army to the front lines. He was busily sheltering his men in a thin forest across a bare field from the Ehleenee when a few arrows from the Union kahtahfrahktoee fell around them. One skanky arrow caught old Hwiltuhn in the throat, and he fell right to the ground, like totally dead. No others of his men were wounded. The battle was like begun, okay?

Milo ldt out this long, deep breath when he heard the news. “Kehrt was a good man,” he goes, “one of the best.” He shook his head a couple of times, and like that was it. He couldn’t spare more time grieving for his old friend, there was warlording to do.

I had my own horse now, a small mare 1 called Mr. Ed. You’re totally not going to believe why I called her Mr. Ed. Because I could talk to her. No, Bitsy, she wasn’t a talking horse; she was like a telepathic horse. I heard her voice in my head, and she heard me. It like freaked me out at first; but we made friends fast, and she told me she’d been in battle before and 1 wouldn’t have to like worry about leading her around, she’d know what 1 wanted and the best way to get there. We still had to catch up with the forward troops in the town, so Mr. Ed and I had a while to just kind of gossip, you know? Like you and 1 used to do. Turns out Milo with his tubular silver-streaked black hair was already married. 1 would have bet a million dollars that he was, but 1 had these hopes, okay?

Later that afternoon we came up to the town. Kehrtuhs Hwiltuhn's men had tried to hold their positions, but like there were just too many Ehleenee slimeballs pouring down on them. The bad guys seemed to have an ocean of reinforcements. Sooner or later the Confederation had to like back off, and they retreated at last right through the town.

Now like you remember my daddy, don’t you, sweetie? The original Great Social Undertaking, dressed up like a WASP to get insight into the Goyische Experience. When he was told to put down his pencil and turn in his answer booklet, though, he figures out he’s really hep to this way rad life. He has become an honest-and-true Them, I’m sure, okay? Like he traded his Abraham & Straus credit card for one that says Penney’s, you should forgive the language. He got rid of the sexy Giorgio Armani after-shave I gave him for his birthday and started using Old Spice, like a grandfather, for God’s sake. And he joined clubs, said it was good for business. He turned into—and I totally lost my lunches for two weeks when I heard this—one of those freaky guys who run around in toy uniforms carrying toy weapons and recreating historically heavyweight battles nobody hardly remembers anymore. Little puffs of white smoke and like dudes valiantly clutching their chests and going “Oooh, I’m dead,” then they got to lie around on the wet grass till everybody else is either dead, too, or historically captured or accepting someone else’s sword or something. Daddy clutched his chest a lot, ’cause dudes with more seniority got to be the hotshot conquerors. That didn’t bother him any. A few more years he’d be General Sherman or George Washington, but he’d have to die his way into the good roles.

I got to watch these crispo mishmoshes, over and over. I learned some history and got like sunburnt and rained on. That’s how when Milo and me and his army rode up to reinforce Kehrtuhs Hwiltuhn’s panicky men, I made an observation that saved the Confederacy a bunch of time. I sat on a hilltop with Old Man Morai and it hit me like a kablooie from Athena or even Zeus himself: I pointed to another hilltop. I go, “That’s Little Round Top!”

Milo goes, “Excuse me?”

“Little Round Top. I used to trudge all over this land with my daddy. I know this place. I’ve studied every square inch a million times. That’s Little Round Top, this is Cemetery Ridge we’re stuck on, that’s—”

“That must be Seminary Ridge,” Milo goes in a quiet voice that for him was wild and crazy excitement.

“And the town is—”

“Getzburk.”

“Gettysburg.”

“That’s right,” Milo goes.

“Nothing new under the sun,” 1 go.

“The geography makes the armies come together in the same place, for the same reasons. It really isn’t such a huge coincidence.”

“We’ll like ponder it all later,” I go. “Right now we’ve got a battle to fight. We’ll see how close to real life it plays out.”

“Sister Mahreenah, this is real life,” he goes.

“Depends,” 1 go. He was going to have to prove it to me, step by step. Then I started having like doubts, you know? “Oh my Godl And you’re the Confederacy, and the Confederacy lost the Battle of Gettysburg.” I was scared, because I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t always win. In fact, I was so insecure in those days, 1 thought of myself as the Black Hole of Victory, where winning was sucked down and lost forever, and defeat got bigger and blacker all around me.

“I assufre you,” Milo g;oes with a gentle smile, “the fact that we're the Confederation fighting a Union army at Gettysburg is mere coincidence. If I recall my ancient history correctly, it was Meade’s Army of the Potomac that occupied this part of the battlefield, and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia that attacked from Strahteegos Lahmbrons’ position. The words Confederacy and Union have been switched around, that’s all.”

“I’ll like believe all that when I see them try Pickett’s Charge, I’m sure, you know?”

“I doubt that they will,” Milo goes. “It was an act of desperation back then. The chances of it happening again are very slight.”

Yeah, right. Gag me with a supernova, okay? I mean, that was one hell of a bloody fight, thousands and thousands of dudes shot to like bits. And for what I’d seen—okay?—our “futuristic” medical team was just as primitive and clumsy as during the Civil War. You know, like no Demerol and no anesthetic and amputations done in the dirt with a hacksaw. If Milo hadn’t told me that I was immortal, right, and all my wounds would heal immediately, I would have been nervous. Being immortal kind of lets you relax. I just felt sad for like all the troops who weren’t undying, you know? All 1 could do that night was go up and down the Confederate line going, “Where are you from, soldier?” and “There, there, everything will work out just fine.” I felt like a crud.