[ A tale of medieval warfare earmarked by a gritty sense of humor, Christopher Painter weaves a delightful tapestry that is chock-full of witty dialog, biting sarcasm, splendid imagery . . . oh yes, and the odd severed limb. ]
On the peat-choked bog of Moorgan Moor, on a battlefield layered with ripening dead, on a day as dismal and grim as the prospects in an executioner’s social life, two figures met.
"Bless my father’s lace stockings!" the first figure exclaimed upon seeing the other. "TallyMaster Groat! Well, you’ll pardon me if I titter like a small girl and swoon flat to my back from giddy delight!"
TallyMaster Groat squinted contemptuously at the individual through thin, watery eyes. His assailant was a slender, perky young chap, with a red dab of color to his face and a dollop of curly cherry hair. The TallyMaster frowned as if his very being displeased him, then asked, in a voice as dry as parchment, "Do I know you, boy? Or are you simply feeling a bit clairvoyant today?"
The young man gave a beaming smile. "Oh, no, nothing quite so ‘witchy’ as all that! It’s just, well, in tabulation circles, you’re something of a legend."
"Really?" TallyMaster Groat said, screwing up his mouth. "Well, best to be known for something, I suppose."
"Oh yes, absolutely."
The two stood in ringing silence for several moments, after which TallyMaster Groat turned away and focused his attention on the battlefield where they stood. Moorgan Moor was a sludgy, marshy mess, about six miles long and half that in width. Nothing prospered there except a particularly stubborn plague or two, and nothing lived there except the occasional hermit, whose body was the favored meeting place of the aforementioned plagues. But most certainly, nothing lived there now.
The Imperial Armies of the Kingdom of Pith and the Empire of Fornoch lay all about the wet lands, hacked, hewn, severed and sliced. The bodies of the men were hopelessly entangled, the result of charging madly at one another with lances and swords and bellowing fierce and morally questionable battle-cries at the tops of their lungs. Their clash had been nothing short of spectacular -- the largest in the history of tiny Pith, and no small affair for the enormous Fornoch. Both armies marched down from the tops of the only two hills in all the moors, and after arranging themselves in perfect set-piece formation, swearing fealty to their gods, and giving their armored trousers one last good soiling in the name of naked fear, they engaged to the thunder of drums, the shrieking arc of a storm of arrows, and the red scream of metal on flesh.
But now the site of the final battle in what had proven to be a lengthy campaign was quiet. It was unknown how many perished that day on Moorgan Moor. That was why the two Counters were there.
TallyMaster Groat surveyed his surroundings from the center of the battlefield. His eyes instinctively sought the muted yellow smudges of tunic and standard that indicated the presence of his fellow Piths. To his right for half a mile were the destroyed remains of the proud Singing Beaver Cavalry, horses chopped out from beneath them by vicious Fornoch foot soldiers, who lay several yards away with lances protruding from their faces. To his left was a unit of Pith heavy infantry, their huge flanged gothic battle maces lying about like pillars from a ruined cathedral. He had spoken only yesterday with many of the young men assembled here now. He had said, "Let’s hope I don’t catch you lying down tomorrow, eh?" followed by uncomfortable laughter all around.
TallyMaster Groat turned to the young Fornochian standing before him, who, quite to the TallyMaster’s annoyance, was still there, and hadn’t stopped staring at him since their last exchange. The lad was dressed in a drooping brown robe, at his side an enormous satchel, filled with quills, inks, reference books, and copious notes. When compared with the TallyMaster’s wardrobe and accessories -- a high, black, brimless hat decorated with skulls and shards of bone, a tattered black robe fitted with skulls on the enormously wide shoulders, and many other fashionable uses of the skull motif on belts, gauntlets, and codpieces -- it was no wonder the lad was still staring.
"So, boy," the TallyMaster began in a disinterested drawl that barely invited a reply, "what do they call you in Fornoch?"
"Oh, my name is Belleview," the young man said, surging forward with his hand thrust out in greeting.
TallyMaster Groat regarded the hand as if he were being offered a piece of fatty gristle on the end of a dirty twig. "Ah huh. And how long have you been a Counter, Belleview?"
"Well sir, I’ve been counting all my life. I would count my father’s sheep in Dormuxville, my mother’s lovers in Cheddix, my sister’s remaining years in prison at Fort Mothschire, and my brother’s bulbous lip sores in Pud. But if you mean -- and, heh heh, I think you do! -- how many battles I have officially determined the outcome for, well, this is my maiden voyage. Sir."
"I see," said TallyMaster Groat tonelessly. "Think this is a glamor job, do you?"
"Well, I fancy it can be dashed-all thrilling to announce your army as having emerged victorious before a hysterical, patriotism-crazed crowd that has been whipped into a frothing lather by the suspense of your words. I hear the men throw flowers and the women remove their undergarments. Their own undergarments, not the men’s, obviously..."
"Hmmph," muttered the TallyMaster. "Wouldn’t know."
The old man turned to his side and shuffled by some corpses lying at his feet that were armored in fine chain mesh and polished plates of steel. He stopped when, after a few feet, he came to a red and white striped lance, protruding up three feet or so from a pile of knights and leaning at a jaunty angle.
"Sir Talmidge of Hexom," the TallyMaster whispered as he identified the shredded standard that still flew from halfway down the lance. "Your wife was talking about you this morning at the pre-post battle briefing. She kept gushing on about your legendary prowess." He paused, and as he turned away, he mumbled, "Perhaps she was talking about something else."
TallyMaster Groat faced the young man again. "I’m going to start my tabulations here, at this lance, as it is a suitable landmark from which to begin. So if you wouldn’t mind not speaking to me in any way..." Turning his back on the boy, he began to scan the field.
Belleview’s jaw was agape with concentration as he watched the elder craftsman. Then he said, "Um, excuse me, sir."
"Yes, what is it Fornochian?" the TallyMaster grunted, not looking in his direction.
"Well sir, when I mentioned earlier that it would be smashing grand to tell the teeming throngs of citizens at the war briefing how our brave lads won the day at the battlefield, you rather implied, and maybe I’m reading into this and forgive me if I am, that you had never had such an experience." He paused, and looked incredulously at the TallyMaster. "Is this true? Have you never once announced a victory for Pith?"
The TallyMaster narrowed his eyes as he examined the earthly remains of a member of the 12th Roaring Peacocks division of medium infantry archers.
"Yes, that’s right."
The two were silent, and the TallyMaster turned to Belleview.
"I’ve never announced a victory for Pith, because Pith has not emerged victorious in battle since the reign of Arno the Wide began fifty-seven years ago. Which unfortunately was when I began the Counting." The TallyMaster turned away from the young man, and addressed the field of dead knights before him. "I have so wanted Pith to come off the field of battle with a victory clenched in its teeth. Not just because I’d like to see some of these lads return home once in a while, instead of always finding them here and adding their names to the Master List, but for reasons I suppose are selfish as well. I’ve always..." The TallyMaster paused for just a second before he continued, "I’ve always wanted to address the crowd at the assembly and give some good news, for a change. Up there, in front of mothers, wives, children. To hear their loving roar as I proudly proclaim, ‘Citizens of Pith, it is with the greatest joy in my heart that I announce to you the victory of our Imperial Armies! Damn it, we won!’"
In response to the TallyMaster’s trembling speech, all the lifeless combatants spread out before him raised their fists in a shout of victory -- "HURRAH!" -- over and over, until it became a droning chant that filled the old man’s ears. But then the spectral vision subsided, and the dead knights’ arms sunk back to the earth as the jubilant cheers in the TallyMaster’s ears echoed slowly away.
"Instead," the old man continued solemnly, "instead all I ever hear is mournful wailing. Often I am unable to finish my address at all. I seldom get as far as ‘Citizens of Pith, it is with the deepest sorrow that I...’ before their sounds of grief drown me out completely. It has gotten to the point where they hate to look upon me. I am a Wraith of Doom to them, a harbinger that precedes the most terrible grief ever to shatter their lives."
"Oh my," said Belleview softly, because he felt like he should say something. "Well, surely your citizens must realize the outcome of the battle is not your doing. And you must realize it as well."
"It doesn’t matter," the old man said over his shoulder. "They may realize it, yet they still require someone to embody their pain. You may realize it, but it doesn’t make you feel any less like excrement."
"Well, I’m prepared to face the worst," Belleview added in what he hoped was a stalwart manner, "and I want you to know that I’m not in it simply for the women’s underthings. No, I’ve studied hard on the Counting techniques, and I’m here for the sense of national duty."
"You’ve studied, have you," TallyMaster Groat mimicked unkindly, shambling over towards a small forest of arrows that stuck straight up from the ground and several warriors. He peered at the shafts of the arrows closely, then turned to Belleview with a sly grin. "Boy, come here. A puzzle, for your book-taught mind."
Belleview trotted over anxiously, and gazed at where the old man was pointing. It was a grisly sight, and he crinkled his nose.
"A Pith lies dead, struck down in the glory of battle by a number of thick sheaf arrows," TallyMaster Groat began dramatically, indicating the cadaver that wore the drab yellow colors of Pith, and the dull brown arrows with yellow fletching embedded deep in his body. "Arrows, fired not by a Fornochian, but by a fellow Pith. A tragic accident, a miscalculation of trajectory, someone in the wrong place at the very wrong time."
"By jove, they are Pith quarrels," the Fornochian said with disbelief.
"Who," TallyMaster Groat asked slowly and deliberately, "gets the Point?"
Belleview crossed one arm over his chest and rested his fist on his chin. "Well, that’s tricky, but I would have to say the Point goes to Fornoch, because it most certainly is a dead Pith."
The old man squinted at the Fornochian with loathing, and smiled, "Wrong, boy. Very wrong. It’s those types of calls that ruin history."
Belleview flushed with deep shame. "Point for... Pith?"
"Point for Pith," TallyMaster Groat confirmed. "For you see, my textbook-educated lad, the kill was caused by a Pith, so Pith gets the Point. If Fornoch was to get the point for that dead Pith that died from Pith arrows, how would that prove Fornoch superior in battle?"
Belleview studied his toes and fidgeted for a second. "Well," he muttered softly, "I suppose it would prove us superior because we don’t bloody well shoot our own men."
When he looked up, he flinched at the fury in Groat’s eyes.
"Shut up, you pebbly little turd!" the TallyMaster spat, causing Belleview to flinch several times in a row. "You think you know more of the Counting than I? My brain is broken up into beads on a rack, like a... a..."
"An abacus?"
Belleview flinched again.
"Shut up! You think you’ve even begun to count? I tallied the Skirmish of Bedsley Beach! I was the one who had to tell the Piths at the assembly of our worst loss in history! Lady Pembroke was so overcome with grief at the news of her husband’s death that she pulled a dagger from a man’s belt and slashed her throat, right before my eyes!"
His loud, trembling voice carried across the hushed moor. Only a crow some distance away deigned a response, pausing between pecks at a slain Pith’s eye to give a forlorn "caw." Belleview was rendered speechless.
The TallyMaster nodded silently, then held up a gnarled digit. As he did so, his furrowed brow unknotted, and his demeanor brightened.
"But."
Belleview blinked. "But?"
"But," the TallyMaster said confidently, "today... today is a good day for Pith." He turned around and shuffled past Belleview, giving him a sideways glance as he went by. "We shall see what the Scores indicate, but I have an... excited... sort of feeling."
Belleview opened his mouth and drew in breath to start a reply, but the TallyMaster shot him a look that closed it.
"Alchemy, you see," said Groat as he knelt beside a Fornochian who had been hit so hard in the face with a Pith’s flanged gothic battle mace that the back of his head had bled. The old man glanced at the younger, daring him to speak. Belleview said nothing, staring at the elder Counter with confusion.
"Since this was to be the final battle, King Arno the Wide advocated the use of certain... alchemical concoctions to boost the strength, stamina, and virility of his troops." The TallyMaster looked at the Fornochian with the pulverized face, then back at Belleview, thinking that he liked the comparison. "Sorcerous elixirs, the formula given to the king by the Battle Chemist of Luxburg, and whipped up by his own court apothecary on the eve of the engagement." He gave a satisfied chuckle. "An edge that no one would be expecting from little Pith."
The TallyMaster grinned maliciously, showing off his three remaining teeth. Belleview looked astonished, then impressed. "Cracky. Well, I must admit that Pith’s armies could really use all the help they could get," the young man said, then winced as the old man stood.
"Shut up, you piss-bug! For you to mock these valiant troops is an insult I would not even tolerate from an unclever dolt! You should be ashamed! A Counter’s job is one that requires impartiality! How can you determine the outcome of great battles when...," he searched for a minute, "when your head is up your ass?"
TallyMaster Groat paused as if he expected Belleview to answer, but when the boy opened his mouth, the old man interrupted.
"Aaah," he groaned as he waved his hands at him, "you will know shame soon enough, when you whimper back to your Fornoch and relate to them the glory of the armies of Pith this day! For today shall be glorious. I can feel it in my bones. Specifically, this group of bones here..." he said, gesturing vaguely around his clavicle. Then he stood his bent form upright, and his back popped and crackled with the effort. "My preliminary examinations are complete. I now go to begin the official Counting. Disturb me no more, pathetic dung creature."
Shuffling back over to the landmark lance, he paused for just a moment, then began to slowly work his way north. He examined every single body in his path -- every knight, footsoldier, archer, squire, and peasant. Where there was at least one shoulder intact, the TallyMaster touched it lightly with his gauntleted hand, and indicated its presence in his mind with a tick mark. Where no shoulders could be found, he improvised, touching instead a shattered pelvis, exposed stomach lining, or clump of suspicious hair. In one instance, all he found was an eyelid.
Belleview stood awkwardly idle for a moment, fascinated by the old Pith’s methods. Sighing with wonder and professional envy, he rummaged through his satchel and produced the absolute smallest notebook he could find, along with a stump of a pencil. Then he hurried over to the lance from whence the TallyMaster began, and, as he felt "pathetic dung creature" was not exactly an invitation to join him, headed off in a southerly direction.
And the day progressed. TallyMaster Groat’s northward journey from the lance eventually bent to the east, and Belleview’s southern jaunt did the same. The smoky gray sun was just shy of its highest arc when the paths of the two Counters converged on the east battlefield.
During this period, when Belleview was within hearing range, he listened to the TallyMaster’s mumblings as he touched the shoulders of dead Piths and Fornochians. It was unclear at first, but he was saying the same sort of things repeatedly: "Citizens of Pith, it is with the greatest joy... hmm, the greatest glee... it is with the greatest, joyful glee..."
Belleview began to suspect that the old man’s speech preparations may be well-founded. In all his years of study, he had never seen the equal of the destruction heaped upon his fellow Fornochians by the Piths on Moorgan Moor. Arms were not just cut with Pithian swords, they were cut off. Torsos were not simply stuck with Pithian pikes, they were stuck through. Buttocks were not merely lopped off with Pithian bum-loppers, they were then worn as earmuffs and amusing comedy breasts. If the Piths had used alchemy to enhance their odds of taking the field this day, it had proved murderously effective.
After their paths parted on the east side of the field, the TallyMaster circled south while Belleview swung north, then both made their way west. As the sky slowly bruised from light gray to dark, the solemn quiet of the moors was interrupted only by the unsettled rumblings of Belleview’s stomach, and the occasional whoop from the south, which caused the young Fornochian to bite his lip with concern. The numbers were not looking good for his country. By the time he had covered half the moor, Belleview’s count was nineteen hundred and eighty-one for Pith, and only seventeen hundred and five for Fornoch. The only thing that kept hope from vanishing completely was the vast contingent of slaughtered Piths ahead, victims of the Fornochians’ legendary and dreaded Dark Black Wicked Elite Dragoons.
The old man had not yet counted these casualties.
When TallyMaster Groat came into view on the western side of the field, he was practically skipping. He giggled heartily as he waded into an entire flank of dead Fornochian heavy swords, licking his dry lips. "‘Citizens of Pith, it is with a joy wider than our beloved king that I announce to you... our Victory! Oh my, thank you, heh heh heh, that is a saucy undergarment indeed! Does your mother know you wear that?’"
Belleview swallowed hard.
The two passed one another and headed into their remaining quarters, each of which had its share of decisive engagements. To the south, it was the slaughter of the Fornoch heavy swords, to the north, the tide-turning damage caused to Pith by the Fornoch Dragoons. Two Points for Pith here, three for Fornoch there, one here, another there, then two more here.
And so went the maddeningly close race, until Belleview again came within sight of the TallyMaster, and the lance of Sir Talmidge of Hexom.
Gone were the cheery victory frolics from hours before, and the TallyMaster was now planning no speeches. Instead, sweat poured down from beneath the edge of his brimless hat, his narrow eyes were wide and darting, and his hands trembled as he touched the shoulders of the dead. His voice was pierced with sharp moans, and his bottom lip quivered with frantic horror as he counted the last dozen bodies.
"Pith Pith Fornoch Fornoch Fornoch Pith Fornoch Fornoch Pith Fornoch Pith FornaaaAAAAAGH!" The TallyMaster shrieked and threw his eyes up to the sky as if he were on fire. His hat toppled off the back of his head and thumped to the ground, revealing his bald, shiny pate. "AAAAUUUGGGHHH!" he screamed again, a howl that exploded from the very back of his soul, "IT CANNOT BE! A TIE!"
He spun about to Belleview, his eyes wide and fearful, and pointed at the young man’s notebook, gurgling voiceless sounds. The Fornochian struggled to focus on the shaking notes before him.
"Yes, yes sir," he stammered while attempting to maintain some dignity, "Um, it appears the Battle of Moorgan Moor is a... a tie."
"NOOOOOOOO!" TallyMaster Groat bellowed, his fists clenching up and spasming. He looked about frantically, and before his eyes appeared a vision of Lady Pembroke, grasping the dagger in slow motion and tearing across her throat. As red waves pumped forth, and the dagger reached the end of her neck, the moist, gaping wound opened wider, and moved like a mouth, spitting blood as it spoke: "THANK YOU, TALLYMASTER, FOR A JOB WELL DONE. SO. GUESS WE ALL DIE NOW, EH?"
The TallyMaster screamed like a flogged lunatic and the specter dispersed. He blinked erratically, then wheezed, "I think I... er, I may have miscounted at some point. Yes, I began to feel a bit fatigued around the area where that cloud of diseased flies was swarming, so I believe I may have caught the plague and counted the same Point for Fornoch twice..." He felt his forehead earnestly, checking for plague.
Belleview paged rapidly through his notebook, scribbling and figuring. "No sir," he said, trying to calm his voice, "no, I believe that since we both came up with the exact same numbers -- five thousand two hundred and seven for Pith, five thousand two hundred and seven for Fornoch -- there really is no way we could both be wrong. Um, sir."
This last bit was added hastily when he looked up from his pad and saw the TallyMaster glaring at him with rage.
"But that cannot be! Pith must win! We took every measure to ensure our victory! The alchemy! We boosted our strength with alchemy to make us stronger!"
"And it worked sir," Belleview said, swallowing with some difficulty, "for as you can see by the Scores, Pith has had its finest day ever!"
"Not good enough, dammit!" the TallyMaster said, turning around and viciously kicking a Fornochian head into a pile of spears. To follow up on it, he picked up a long sword and hurled it with a clumsy grunt at nothing in particular, then seized a great helmet and lobbed it with both hands over his head after the sword, then grabbed the grip of a Pithian flanged gothic battle mace and attempted to heave it up. It proved weightier than he had anticipated, and so he paused, panting, the head of the mace still resting on the ground.
"If only..." he began, gasping through his few clenched teeth, staring out over the battlefield, "if only... somewhere... there was another Point for Pith."
"Well, that’s unlikely sir," said Belleview behind him, "since the only people left on the field that haven’t been counted are, heh heh, well, are myself and you."
It was quiet for a moment.
TallyMaster Groat had frozen in place, his breath halted in his lungs. His eyes slowly narrowed as he looked to the side, and a grin wormed its way onto his face. His heart began to thump in his ears as he tightened his fingers around the cracked leather grip on the mace in his hands.
"Yes," he said blandly, "yes, I suppose you’re right. Help an old man with his hat, will you?" He jerked his chin over his shoulder, toward the skull-encrusted headgear that lay on the ground several feet behind him.
"Certainly sir," Belleview said, walking over towards it. "And might I say right now, sir, that regardless of the buggering nature of the Scores here today, it has been a roaring pleasure working with you."
But the TallyMaster was not listening to him. He was muttering very quietly under his breath, a whisper inaudible to the Fornochian. "‘Citizens of Pith,’" he mumbled ecstatically, "‘it is with sweet joy that I announce to you...’"
As Belleview leaned down to retrieve the hat, TallyMaster Groat spun about fiercely, hefting the heavy mace from the ground.
"‘...Victory for Pith!’" he screamed as he hauled back with the weapon.
But the momentum of its heavy flanged top continued over the old man’s head, pulling his arms and body along with it. Trapped in the fumbled swing, the TallyMaster lost his balance, staggered backwards a step, and fell, crashing with a bloody crunch onto the upturned lance of Sir Talmidge of Hexom.
Belleview started when he heard the scream, and glancing up, saw the TallyMaster impale himself on the striped lance. The metal tip drove into his back and burst out the front of his chest as the old man slid down. The TallyMaster’s eyes were wide with horror, and he stared at the weapon poking through his body, all trace of the white stripe gone as it now gleamed a wet red. He then looked at Belleview, who stood up in shock and rushed over. But dimness clouded his vision, and TallyMaster Groat’s gaze wandered up into the sky as its foul expanse of deep gray became all that his eyes could see.
"Bless my mother’s chafing trousers!" Belleview wailed as he put a hand on the dead man’s shoulders. "What a brave, brave, brave man...!" All feelings of national pride fleeing, he sobered up and proclaimed aloud, "I shall whimper home immediately to Fornoch, to tell them that, due to the unselfish sacrifice of one hero, we must hang our sorry heads in utter shame! For I shall explain to them that, as any good Counter knows, a Pith killed by a Pith is a Point for Pith! And so I say... Victory for Pith!"
Then Belleview leaned in toward the dead man’s face, and said with glowing admiration, "Damnably clever bit of strategy there, sir. Never would have thought of it myself, but then, who am I, eh? ‘A pathetic dung creature’, I believe. Suppose I’ll just have to get used to the misery of admitting defeat, like you said, sir." Rising again with his clenched hand in the air, Belleview shouted, "Victory for Pith!", grabbed his satchel, and hurried off.
And all the dead knights on Moorgan Moor raised their fists triumphantly and shouted -- "HURRAH!" -- as the jubilant cheers in the TallyMaster’s ears echoed slowly away.
Astonishingly, "Christopher Painter" was also the name of a Mars rock prodded by the Sojourner probe. In high school Chris could throw a Frisbee farther than any of his classmates, and in 1994 he was one of only three reported cases of influenza in the United States. He has been paid to draw funny cows, create role-playing games, write for "The Tick" comic book, and buy Sydney Pollack's deodorant. Currently he is employed at a Big Hollywood Studio as the assistant to a sitcom hyphenate. He lives in Los Angeles with a pug named Gladys and a writer named Alysia, who makes him laugh more than anyone else in the world.
Drop an e-mail to Chris at E2ChrisP@aol.com.