We are the Music Makers
a short story by Garry Kilworth
In the month of June, at the beginning of the century, the men began
to drift back from the wars. By July they were arriving in Bohemia by
the thousand, some still in soiled and shabby though recognisable
regimental uniform, but mostly they were in rags. Their muskets had
been thrown away to rust in foreign ditches. Their cannons and
mortars were stuffed with dirt and moss. Their swords were broken
or hidden under rotten logs, along with ammunition pouches full of
percussion caps.

'It was a massacre,' Alexi said after the attack. 'We were cut down
like wheat under scythes.'

The colonel was shocked. 'What are you saying? It was a the turning
point of the battle. If we had not charged, the day would have been
lost.'

The wars were not yet over, in fact they had only just begun again.
But this was not even their fight. The men of Bohemia had joined one
army or the other for various reasons, mostly to do with poverty
rather than patriotism, while their officers had gone out seeking to add
glory to their other accomplishments, needing to be rich in honour if
not in wealth.

'You are my friend, Alexi,' said the colonel, 'but I totally reject your
view of this incident.'

'It was no incident, it was a slaughter.'

There were those of course, who had returned with limbs missing,
parts of their bodies left lying in the mud of some alien land keeping
company with dead and rotting comrades. These men tended to
cluster round the Charles Bridge, in the beautiful city of Prague, where
they begged for crusts of bread. The narrow cobbled streets around
the bridge, whose architecture and statues were the envy of all other
European cities, echoed with the clump of wooden crutches, the
scraping of dragged legs, the clip-clip of the blind man's cane. They
clogged the passageways under nearby arches in the rain and hindered
the carriages on the bridge when the sun shone.

Once the war has no more need of such creatures, cripples become
an embarrassment to the state.

'Henceforth,' muttered the colonel, turning from his former friend, 'we
are as strangers.'

'As you wish,' replied Alexi, stiffly, 'but you know, I'm not blaming
you. I'm simply giving my opinion. You should not turn from the truth
because it hurts.'

The authorities issued a decree that any man found loitering in the
streets, with no visible means of occupation, would be deemed a
vagrant and thrown into the city's prison. Thus their numbers were
thinned and those who remained behind gathered together such coin
as they had and purchased barrel organs and hurdy-gurdies, on which
  Let us know what you think of infinity plus - e-mail us at:
                    sf@infinityplus.co.uk
  support this site - buy books through these links:
 A+ Books: an insider's view of sf, fantasy and horror
     amazon.com (US) | Internet Bookshop (UK)


                        top of page
[ home page | fiction | non-fiction | other stuff | A to Z ]
     [ infinity plus bookshop | search infinity plus ]