The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  It was the King’s job, English taught him, to punish evildoers, while rewarding and defending the righteous. Any Kingdom that has a tyrant as a sovereign will eventually fall; and any nation built on endless consumption, the drive for empire, and the oppression of its own people, would inevitably consume itself and perish in a storm of violence and death.

  History is the long tale of empires rising to power founded on vision, hard work, and productive capability, only to be eventually morally poisoned by the insatiable drive for conquest and domination. If anything could be learned from the collapse of America, it was that consumption as a creed, and comfort as a maxim, would lead any nation to ruin.

  Aztlan, under the reign of his father, had followed the beaten path that leads to destruction, and would certainly fall if something radical were not done to stop it.

  Posing as an assassin and a spy, joining forces with the rebel army, and actively supporting his father’s greatest enemy would be considered an act of treason—that much he knew. Yet, it would have been a greater treason to allow Aztlan to continue on its way to destruction.

  As a prince, he proposed to follow the path of freedom and peace, but, if his father could not see his own folly, the kingdom would not survive long enough for him to be crowned.

  There were good people in Aztlan—people who wanted peace; yet, for it to be restored, first the better angels of their nature would need to prevail by removing the foul and wicked rulers who oppressed them. Although Aztlan had been born an outlaw nation, there was no reason that she must remain so. Gareth firmly believed that, if his father could be overthrown, there would be hope for Aztlan and her people. If not, then he would rather die having stood against the evil empire—even if it was ruled over by his own father.

  Here at Bethany, though the battle had lasted only minutes, there were moments that, for him, seemed to last an eternity. Plunging into the tumultuous and surging mass of men, some on horseback and some on foot, all fighting to the death, was one of those times.

  The militia troops had long been at war with Aztlan, and were adept at such skirmishes. Most of the Duke’s men, to the contrary, had merely been involved in destroying peaceful villages, riding down unarmed citizens, or fighting small groups of relatively untrained men trying to defend their towns or lands. Even with the numerical odds in favor of Aztlan, this was a slaughter, rather than a battle.

  In the assault, as he had engaged his first enemy soldier on horseback, there was a moment when the man recognized him. In the heat of battle, with death dancing on every side, the man had looked up to see Gareth of Aztlan, the Crown Prince of the realm and heir to the throne, advancing on him with sword drawn. Their eyes met for what seemed like minutes, but could only have been seconds.

  The man was instantly overcome by a wave of confusion, lowering his sword to his side he tried in vain to process the reality of what was happening.

  When Gareth swung his sword, the shocked man was barely able to parry the strike. More instinctively than willingly, he had raised his weapon just in time to intercept the first blow, the reality of being attacked by his own Prince still not completely understandable to him.

  Just as Gareth raised his sword to strike again, another militia fighter riding by plunged his sword into the hapless man’s neck, instantly ending the Aztlani soldier’s battle for clarity in his thoughts and worldview.

  Looking down as the soldier bled out into the Vallensian soil, Gareth faltered for just a moment, as he realized that the man had died because he could not assimilate the sometimes incomprehensible and contradictory winds of life, politics, and battle.

  Slowly, clarity returned. Some men had to die in order for the dream of peace and stability to reign in this world.

  Spurring his horse, he returned to the business of bringing that dream to fruition. These Aztlani men, at the command of his father and the Duke of El Paso, had chosen to wage a war against a peaceful people. In his mind, death was the wages of that sin.

  After the battle, he looked out over the field of dead and dying men, his own sword stained with the blood of his countrymen, and he shook his head at the irony of it all. In order for life to come, there needed to be death. For peace to reign between Aztlan and the Vallenses, the peaceful Vallenses would need to be brought into the war against Aztlan. This was his mission. Like war, irony is a fickle business.

  He now stood with Phillip, David Wall, and several of Phillip’s soldiers, and watched as the spoils of war were loaded onto wagons.

  “Over 250 pistols, 100 rifles, somewhere north of 400 battle swords, not to mention ammunition, some armor, boots, a ton of other standard issue soldiering goodies and supplies,” reported Rollo, the man they called The Mountain. “The men have also rounded up around 50 horses, all of which are now expertly trained and experienced in not getting killed in a battle.”

  “We have dead on the field, Mountain, so let’s keep the humor and japes to a minimum, shall we?” replied Phillip.

  “Of course, sir. My apologies. Apparently Jonathan Wall is on his way here to retrieve the body of the Vallensian man who was killed in the gap.”

  David looked up at Phillip and nodded. “My father will want to take Jack back to his parents as soon as possible, but I assume he will also want to meet with you so he can be apprised as to the situation here in Bethany. There are thousands of refugees encamped within a mile of our ranch, and thousands more who have fled north and east of Lake Penateka. Father will want to know if it is safe for the people to return here.”

  Gareth helped Phillip latch the back of the wagon, and then the men all stepped out of the road into the shade of a towering pecan tree that loomed over the south side of Main Street in front of Grayson’s smith shop.

  Looking eastward down the street he could see men with wagons and oxen moving up the Bethany road, as crews continued work pulling Aztlani dead from among the boulders near the base of the mesas in the gap.

  When he looked back at Phillip, he said, “I can’t imagine that it is safe for anyone to return. We don’t even know if this was the main Aztlani force. We don’t know how they got here as fast as they did, although I suspect your outriders will learn that they used trucks to get across the badlands, at least as far as San Angelo.”

  Phillip shook his head, “Since the crash, no army I know of has used trucks or burned precious fuel to get to the battlefield.” He rubbed his beard and then scratched his head, “Our men are searching south and west of there. We suspect that you are probably right, though I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have come all the way to Bethany if that were the case. I know the roads are bad, but they are worse from El Paso to the frontier.”

  Gareth tried to put himself in the mind of the Duke of El Paso, who would have planned the assault himself. “I suppose,” he said, scanning the street as the work there progressed, “that fuel was the final arbiter of how far they could go. It would determine how much they could carry, and how much they would need for the return trip. When your men find the trucks… if they find the trucks… we’ll know more. There should be a fuel truck with them with enough fuel to get at least half of the trucks back to El Paso. If there is no fuel truck, and if there is clearly not enough fuel on board for the trucks to return home, then all bets are off.”

  David spoke up. “That would mean that it was a suicide mission?”

  “Could be,” he said, “or a test. Possibly even a diversion. Perhaps it could mean that the Duke felt that the initial force might be sufficient to take and burn the town, but if that attack failed, we’d think that the war is over, when it is not.”

  “So there could be another assault coming?” David asked.

  “Oh, I can assure you that another assault is coming. The question is whether this first battle was a colossal failure on their part, or the first move in a broader campaign.”

  “I don’t know,” Phillip said, sighing demonstrably. “Aztlan has proven to be just arrogant enough to believe that this assault woul
d accomplish their designs. I guess, I really don’t know what to think yet. When the outriders get word to us from San Angelo, we’ll know more. Until then, we’ll need to prepare for another… another larger battle.”

  “We’ve work to do, then,” Gareth said, looking from Phillip to David.

  “We do,” Phillip replied as he put his hand on David’s shoulder, pausing for a moment before continuing. “You’ve done a phenomenal job David. Every man and woman in the area now owes you a debt of gratitude. I know that this action has cost you a lot personally, and might have a… negative impact… on your relationship with your father. But had you not acted when you did, and in the way that you did, Bethany would have been lost, and we would have been fighting uphill to try to stop Aztlan from destroying all of the Vallenses.”

  “I, like you, must obey my conscience,” David said.

  “Well, unhappily, you must now obey your conscience and me—since you are now a militia soldier. I’m going to ask you to handle the arrangements and the meeting with your father. You know everything I know. I’d be glad to meet with him if it is necessary, but there is nothing that I can tell him that you cannot convey yourself.”

  “Yes, sir,” David replied.

  Gareth and Phillip began strolling back down Main Street, walking slowly and silently for some time, as they each considered what the future might hold.

  At the Livery, horses moved about and whinnied as men treated wounds on the battle-wearied mounts. Between the Livery and the General Store, there was a small park with wooden tables and some red mesquite chairs shaded by massive pecan and oak trees.

  “I continue to pray that your wife and children are safe, Phillip,” Gareth said as they sat down on two chairs, one on either side of a mesquite table.

  “It won’t help to send anyone northward for word of them,” Phillip replied almost, but not quite, unemotionally. “We cannot make the messengers arrive any faster by wasting more men to ride out to meet them. We’ll just have to wait.”

  “I’ll wait with you until we hear.”

  “Thank you, Prince.”

  “No more ‘Assassin’?”

  “No more, Prince Gareth.”

  He pointed at Phillip. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. When did you figure out that I was the Prince? Thinking back, it seems you had known for awhile.”

  “I suspected it almost immediately from conversations and letters I have received from English over the years. Sir Nigel Kerr is very fond of you, and often spoke highly of you. I did not know for certain until the other night when we were talking in the darkness at camp up north, just before Rob Fosse and Sir Gerold showed up to confirm my suspicions. You said something that was curious to me. You said, ‘God sees through barn roofs just as well as castles’, and I think it was at that moment that I absolutely knew that I was speaking to the Crown Prince of Aztlan.”

  Gareth laughed. “Yes, I suspected as much. Not a minute later you said, ‘Monarchs rule by right of blood—each son ruling in the place of his dead father’. I think that was when I realized that you knew. I’m just grateful that you figured it out. Your men would have killed me right then.”

  “Yes,” Phillip said, smiling, “they would have. In fact some of them still would like to go ahead and kill you just to be safe.”

  “Perhaps, in time, they will grow to like me.”

  “Fat chance! Still, I do think that they respect you for your integrity, and for your courage and bravery in the battle.”

  “I don’t think I was very Princely.”

  “Probably not, but it was your first engagement. You did well enough.”

  They were silent for a moment as they reflected back on the battle.

  “We’ve lost twelve men,” he said, as he scanned Phillip’s countenance for some clue as to what that meant to him.

  Phillip nodded. “Twelve good men. Twelve friends. I have known, trained and fought with most of them since they were just boys.”

  “Do you ever grieve?”

  “I never stop grieving,” Phillip replied as he looked to the top of the mesa. His eyes were clear and blue. The afternoon had grown hot, and the mesas blocked the southerly wind, which was one negative in the placement of the town of Bethany.

  “Will you stop riding… stop fighting, if there is peace with Aztlan?”

  “There will never be peace with Aztlan until they are defeated.”

  “What then? When they are defeated; when Aztlan is humbled; what becomes of the Ghost?”

  A wagon piled high with corpses to be buried rumbled by. “I suppose that I’ll end my days like those men, but if I don’t… If I don’t… I’d like to stand on the top of that mesa with my wife and look out over a free and independent Texas. Maybe that vision is God’s will, or perhaps it is just what my flesh wants. All I can do is fight until I know the difference.”

  “Do you fear God’s wrath, Phillip?”

  “I know that, if we let these people be slaughtered by Aztlan, I’d have every reason to fear it.”

  “Will the Vallenses fight now?”

  Phillip shook his head. “No.”

  As they sat in silence pondering the wrath of God, an outrider came riding hard from the direction of the thicket. Phillip jumped up from his chair, and met the rider in the street.

  “Is it my wife and children? Are they safe?”

  The rider dismounted, nodding a salute to Phillip. “I come from the south, sir. We’ve found the trucks. There are ten of them, hidden in a caliche pit about ten miles northeast of San Angelo.”

  “Was there a fuel truck? Or any means of refueling for the trip home?”

  “Not that we found, sir. The trucks were disabled and burned. A complete loss, sir. They were just blackened shells. It seems the Aztlani men were never intended to make it back home.”

  Chapter 11 - Ana

  Her hands moved swiftly and expertly as she gathered the wheat into her left hand and cleanly cut the stalks off near the ground with her sickle. When the sheaf in her hand became difficult to carry easily, she tied it off with a few strands of wheat straw and then stacked it, grain heads up, with the other sheaves on the ground, creating a pile known as a ‘shock’ or a ‘stook’ of wheat.

  In a few days, provided it did not rain and the wheat had dried sufficiently, other workers would come by with a large flatbed wagon pulled by two draft horses and they would grab the dried stooks with large hayforks and bring in the sheaves to the threshing barn to be threshed and winnowed.

  War had come to Central Texas and to the Vallenses and now there were thousands of mouths to feed in and around the Wall family ranch. Every hand was needed to help bring in the harvest. Each family that needed help with sustenance would be getting a weekly ration of wheat, so long as they were unable to return to their homes. The harvest teams were also traveling to nearby farms to harvest those crops, knowing that every kernel would be precious if the war was to last very long.

  Ana didn’t mind helping with the harvest; in fact, even if the war had not come, she would have been out here. She always pitched in during the wheat harvest, even if her position at the ranch did not mandate it. She liked it, even on the hottest days. Harvesting reminded her of all the parables of the Bible regarding wheat, threshing, and winnowing. Seeing the grain processed from the beginning to the final product as bread or cereal grains impressed and amazed her.

  Almost automatically, her hands worked the wheat and she continued rhythmically up the row. Her thoughts detoured from the parables of God, and retreated to the path of her old life and what it had been like once upon a time. She constantly told herself not to dwell on the past, but the flesh is weak—especially when you are alone with your thoughts.

  Before he died, her husband wanted to avoid—at all costs—the agrarian life she now prized. Five years before the crash, she was compelled to start studying and looking into a simpler and more sustainable way of life. The world had become a frightening place to her, and the trite answers of the
mainstream religious authorities, as well as the prophetical inferences that had once enamored her, had become wholly insufficient to offer her any comfort at all.

  Her studies led her to Jonathan Wall’s books on biblical worldviews, simple living, and Agrarianism. Her husband Hamish vehemently rejected everything she had started to believe was the truth. He told her that God had given men advanced and curious minds, and that using their minds to make their own lives easier and more comfortable was the fulfillment of God’s wishes.

  His utilitarian religion wholly embraced and encouraged his utilitarian thinking. Expediency was his only rule and law. In fact, Ana had learned that utilitarianism had become the religion of the entire world, no matter what name or title was put on it. There were many religions and denominations, but almost all had joined the one-world cult of efficiency, which did not allow for any doubting or questioning of technology, modernity, or the ways of the world. The cult of modern religion promoted the view that whatever coddled the flesh or made life easier and more comfortable, was a blessing from God and ought to be wholeheartedly received—no matter what the real effects were to the individual, the society, or the culture.

  She tried gently and lovingly to help her husband understand that the Bible taught otherwise, and that the immoderate creature comforts of modern life were actually what had caused modern religion to apostatize, but he would have nothing of it.

  Her husband had received the seed of his faith among the thorns. He heard the word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches had choked it out. Consequently, he banned her from reading anything Jonathan Wall wrote and forced her to continue in, and increase her dependence on, a modern world rocketing towards collapse. The more the world stumbled and reeled from gluttony, greed, and consumption, the more Hamish insisted that everything was just fine, and the angrier he became with anyone who even hinted at abandoning the sinking ship.