Beware the Well Fed Man (The Ebon Chronicles)

by Chris Capps

  “The spider city,” I said, realization slowly creeping in. His words resonated in my mind, ‘I heard about this place and swore my feet would not touch the ground until I reached it.’

  “The nameless, faceless, soulless spider city. My home, yes. Full of soulless people. They subjugated the land, taking from it what they wished. But they did nothing in return. You see, that’s the main thing the old world knew about that we don’t. Sacrifice. Once upon a time people worked together until their fingers bled, not because they were slaves, but because they shared a common vision. They had an identity that extended beyond themselves. Beyond even the simple collection of friendly tribes and warbands. They crafted societies that demanded respect, and enforced order. And a long time ago, the city I was from did that as well.”

  “Where did it come from?” I asked.

  “A time before us. Much more than that I can’t tell you. Information was surprisingly lacking back home. They had theories, but inbreeding claimed most of the genuine intellect decades ago. Then one day they came across a small village, shortly after a slave rebellion left them without living laborers, and they found me. I was garbage when it came to anything useful, but an old man took mercy on me. He showed me books, taught me the principles of math, and found me to be an exceptional student. When he died, I was freed and became an engineer. Of course I also had other talents. My real skills turned out to be planning for the future. Kitchains, that fat puppet you met, was not in charge of the city. No one was. Well, I guess the machine was. The machine and whoever was worthy enough to truly operate it."

  “So when you heard of the Plexis, you rode here and decided to take it all for yourself,” I said, “Is that right?”

  “No, I didn’t ride here right when I heard of the Plexis. First I told Kitchains and a selection of the city guard that we’d need to get rid of the vagabonds following us around. After that, I told them to lag behind. I was to infiltrate the Plexis and gain its trust, then when their heavily outgunned militia started fighting with your tribe, I was to sabotage your weapons stockpile - most likely by blowing it up with the facility’s stockpile of gunpowder. When they saw us crafting the Serpentine, they knew the trap was being set.” He rapped his fingers against one of the barrels of gunpowder, then pulled the stopping cork from its side.

  Golden sand poured out from the barrel into his upturned palm, “Only the gunpowder never made it to our weapons stockpile, or to our reactor. It was placed instead at the Achilles heel of the walking city. That explosion was enough to break what was left of the huddled peoples’ will to survive.”

  “What about the Thakka Cluster?” I demanded, eyes transfixed on the harmless sand spilling through his fingertips onto the tiled floor, “The sending away of my tribe?”

  “Eventually the Plexis and the Thakka Cluster would have attempted to vie for supremacy over the region. You were, after all, the only two fighting forces to speak of outside of wandering bandits and the non-native spider city. But neither of you could save the region the way I needed. There was nothing inherently dangerous about the Plexis tribe, so I sent them on their way - after they helped me in taking care of the city. As for the Thakka Cluster, they’re animals. I can train them.”

  “Saved the region?” I asked incredulously. Euclid clucked his tongue,

  “Ah, you probably think I’m doing this for personal gain, but I’m not. And your brother would never have done something like this unless he understood that the future of humanity was at stake. He knew you’d see reason as well, eventually. He knows you. Do what you will now, but you will eventually see things our way.”

  The door slid open. Crassus, as timid as I had ever seen him, walked in. His eyes were on the floor. And he was holding a gun.

  “Crassus,” I said, enraged. Spittle was flying from my lips and I took a single step forward and stared down at him, “Was it worth it? Was it worth betraying your family? After everything I’ve done for you. I’ve protected you, raised you, taught you everything I learned. Why? What is your goal?”

  “What was your goal?” Euclid said, a note of shock entering his voice, “You were given the most incredible advantage imaginable, a city that makes everything its citizens could possibly need. What were you going to do with it? Sit inside and wait to die? This is bigger than us, bigger than any single tribe could possibly be. This windfall requires a grand vision. You won’t like to hear this, but you were destined to become like the citizens of the spider city. Parts of the machine rather than masters of it. They had more in common with you than you realize. They had inherited a wondrous item from another time, and yet they used it to further their own short sighted appetites. Now that arsenal will be put to proper use. Repairs could take years, and it will take at least that much time to build up a force with a back broad enough to build a nation on. But empires must be built. Humanity must be allowed the opportunity to emerge from the wild untamed land. The land should cower before the might of mankind, not the other way around. And so must we betray your little sedentary tribe.”

  “I’m sorry, Ebon,” Crassus said, his eyes never leaving the tiled floor, “You have no idea how much I agonized over this, but the logic was unavoidable. It became the only thing to make sense. In time I know you'll see the reason for it. And you’ll forgive me. If you don’t join us, you’ll be kept comfortable until you change your mind. I promise you that. We’re brothers.”

  “No,” I said, dropping my rifle and staring him dead in the eyes, “We’re not.”

  “What?” he said. There was a deep fear in him, one that had never been acknowledged between us. I watched the pillar at the core of his spirit shake slowly with his head. There was a look in him, one begging me not to say any more. It was the desperate look of fear only family could recognize. And me.

  I told him.

  “We’re not brothers. I found you when we were very young. You were hugging a dead ripper dog. You have no family. You’re alone.”

  It was a pregnant, tense silence that followed - that rare silence where you swear time might stop forever.

  Euclid stood, his hand leaning on the nearest barrel. I could feel him calculating this turn of events, trying to factor it into the vast and flawless equation he had made a home in.

  “You told me there’s nothing more important than family,” Crassus said meekly. His voice had an undercurrent to it, but in that moment I couldn’t identify it, “And I’ll never know what family is.”

  “You do know,” I said, “They’re in the hills now. You sent them away.”

  The equation was playing out, shaking Crassus’ hand and making him nod as it entered his deepest thoughts.

  “No. They’re less family to me than you are,” Crassus finally said raising the pistol and aiming with reddened wet eyes. There was a fire in those eyes. It was a deep fire, eating away at him. The kind of fire that leaves nothing behind, “Cover your ears, brother.”

  I did. And it did nothing to shut out the tremendous thunderclap that filled the room. In a brilliant flash it all shattered. I turned and saw Euclid holding his gut.

  Sputtering, with blood bubbling from between his lips, he shook his head. He was trying to say something, looked almost like he would smile. He grabbed at one of the barrels to steady himself, but it tumbled over, spilling sand beside him. The sand and blood spilled into one another, blending the all too familiar colors of the thirsty land. And with that, Euclid spoke his last words, as his eyes focused in on something we couldn’t see,

  “Will you look at that?”

  Holding his empty hands over his ears, Crassus sank to the floor shivering. The gun had already clattered to the ground. I didn’t hear the sound I expected. It wasn’t metal hitting metal, or Crassus sobbing, I heard the familiar hiss of a door opening. Ignoring the departure from the reality I understood, I rushed over to Crassus and knelt down, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him violently,

  “Crassus!”

  I thought about striking him. Every
muscle in my body was constricting, ready to throttle the life out of him. And then he looked up, resigned to the fate he had sealed for himself. The fire that had been eating away at him was now gone, and I saw what was left of him in those eyes.

  When we were young, only a few years after I had found him I had come back to the hovel we had taken residence in. It was an old dusty adobe structure, three full rooms piled up with refuse. But it had a table, chairs, and even two flea-bitten cots. I had told him to stay in, to remain hidden from the skies, in case there was rain. After a long day of hunting without any luck, I finally found my way back to the house. Crassus, in my mind’s eye was no older than nine. It was early spring, in a year when rains would kill and poison most quarry we could find. They were desperate times.

  After leaning my rifle down against the door, I spotted Crassus. He had a small bowl of water next to him, and something else on the table.

  “It’s a turtle,” the child Crassus said in greeting that evening, “A great big one. I found him in the shadow of a great fallen tree.”

  “Well done,” I remember saying, “At least one of us had luck today.”

  But when I pulled out my hunting knife to kill the creature, to sustain us for a few more days, I felt Crassus’ small hand on my wrist.

  “Don’t,” he said simply, almost scientifically, “I’ve figured out a way to communicate with it.”

  “Crassus,” I said, ready to dismiss his childish fantasy in the name of our collective survival, “If you don’t eat, mom and dad are going to be mad when they come back and find out I haven’t been taking care of you. You’re skin and bones as it is.” That was another lie in those days. We had never addressed it as he grew older, the fact that we weren’t looking for parents, it simply eroded away over time.

  “Look,” he said dipping two of his fingertips into the small bowl of water, “Turtles can understand what we say. Isn’t that right, Turtle?”

  Before I could protest further, he had taken his fingertips and gently touched them against the turtle’s head. With its gold and black eyes staring out dumbly, it rolled its head backward, letting the water trickle down the scaly landscape of its elongated neck. It looked upward, then back down. To the eyes of a child, it did look much like a nod. I remember hearing Crassus laugh, clapping silently to himself that he could now share his discovery.

  “Ask it any question,” he said, “He’s a traveler looking for his family.”

  With my stomach twisting itself in a knot over the thought of another night without food, I sighed laboriously and asked my own question,

  “Would you like it if we ate you? Can we do that?”

  “Ebon!” Crassus cried, “We can’t eat him, he’s my friend.”

  “If he says we can eat him, I don’t think there’s any harm in it. Turtles aren’t like people. Some of them like being eaten. And if he’s your friend, he might want you to grow up strong”

  “Turtle,” Crassus said, leveling his head on his hand in front of the creature and dipping his fingers in the bowl of water, “Is it true that turtles like being eaten? Do you want us to eat you?”

  He placed his two fingers on the forehead of the turtle, letting the bead of water drip onto it. The turtle twisted its head sideways, letting the water droplet cascade over the ridge of its head as it slowly swayed from side to side. The water splashed in a tiny droplet onto the table, and the turtle considered it, letting its dry beak soak it up. There was no mistaking how Crassus would interpret this. He squealed again, leaping up from his chair and laughing, his eyes still transfixed on the slow creature,

  “He doesn’t want us to eat him. I told you, he’s looking for his family.”

  “Then put him back outside,” I said clutching my hair between my fingers, “His family isn’t here.”

  “But Ebon,” he said, “He’s my friend.”

  “Crassus,” I said turning harshly and staring into his misting eyes. That’s when I first saw it - the mystery. It was an innocence, an alien optimism. He had constructed a world where we would bring the turtle with us, and he had done it using nothing but loss, ash, and bone.

  Together the three of us would find our families, together we would find home. Or build it. My gaze softened, “His family isn’t here. He’ll have to find it on his own. Help him find the door.”

  That sunset as I sat, I remember staring into a hollowed out television set to the tune of his hungered whimpering, marveling at our collective madness.

  That was what the fire had left behind. I realized then that Crassus was different from the rest of us. This is why he would ask the Plexis the same question a hundred different ways. This was why he had so fiercely defended our home, abandoning his gentle demeanor when the trial of battle raised its head. This was why he had betrayed us all when offered a chance to build a new world. There was an untamed, innocent hope within him. Euclid’s words alone would never have been enough to turn him. There had to be a genuine belief that it would work. And now he projected that hope onto me, realizing something even I couldn’t understand. I would never hurt him. Powerless, I let go of him.

  So that’s where this whole thing should have ended. With my hate eroding away like so much sand, I would feel him place a hand on my shoulder and he would say something hopeful,

  “Let’s bring our family back.”

  With the bad-guy shot, and the city of villains fallen, we should have just wandered into the wasteland and called back the Plexis tribe. We may have been able to catch them in less than a day if we ran. We could have even taken what we learned from Euclid, understanding that our destiny in the region was to learn how to build a better future from what we had been given.

  Rather than Ebon the Waste, Ebon the Builder could stand for more than just simple furniture. It could mean Ebon the builder of cities, Ebon the founder of good laws, Ebon the worthy father of our nation.

  That’s how it should have happened.

  I felt hands pulling me up. Rough, wild hands. The same I had felt the night I had been brought before the Thakka matriarch. Torn from my fugue, I realized we were not alone. The room had silently filled up with nearly a half dozen of the Thakka cluster’s attendants.

  Down the hallway through the open door, I could see the Matriarch staggering forward. She was bruised, dragging her wobbling legs and a high-powered hunting rifle as she shuffled into the room unassisted. With her free hand she was grasping the wall that her bandaged eyes could not see. I struggled briefly as the seizing hands gripped my shoulders tightly, and I felt a noose descend around my head.

  “Crassus!” I shouted desperately, “Run!”

  He didn’t respond. They had him too, and they were looping a rope around his neck as well.

  “Do not kill the traitors,” the Matriarch called out, a note of scorn mingling with her own grunts of exertion as she struggled into the room. Her belly, previously swollen in the last stages of pregnancy was now empty. She heaved leg over wobbling leg and passed through the threshold into the room, sniffing the air like a wild creature, an act her followers could only hope to emulate as they strained their own noses in the still air, “Whose blood is that?”

  “It is their mather,” Thurrus, the matriarch’s grey eyed acolyte said from behind me. Thurrus, the man who had promised me my death held the rope around my neck, “The younger one killed him.”

  “Euclid,” the matriarch said as one of her attendants took her by the hand and brought her into the room, “Then the Plexis is ours. Remove the veil.”

  A younger woman walked up to the matriarch and drew a knife from her belt, gingerly placing her hand on the horns adorning the strange woman’s crown, and slipped it between her face and the blindfold covering her eyes. Pulling with one swift movement, she cut the blindfold off and let it fall to the ground. Reeling from the sudden bright light, the matriarch was dazed, once again being granted the power of sight. Once her green eyes adjusted to the light, she strode up to me. Somehow she knew I was the one she had
spoken with before. She knew my fear.

  “Already dead,” she whispered, confirming some hidden suspicion she had developed over our few brief conversations as her eyes explored me for the first time, “Your name was Ebon. Ebon the Waste. You came to offer me ashes while you lived in paradise.”

  Impatiently, she reached her hand out and snapped her fingers to a nearby attendant. The young woman standing beside her dove her hands into a bag at her side quickly, producing a bundle of leaves. She struck a match with her fingernail and lit the leaves, squinting and covering her own nose with her wrist as a plume of smoke drifted up from the bundle.

  She handed the leaves to the matriarch who brought her face close to mine, letting the smoke from the bundle snake in through her nostrils. A gentle pleasure crossed her lips. The smoke was thick, overpowering. My eyes watered and my lungs burned as the wisps drifted over my face.

  “Crassus we need,” she said, “Euclid and this one are traitors. Euclid has already died, but the other - Ebon. Do not stain your blade. He will breathe his last gratefully, slain by his own hand. Thurrus, do what you will to ensure that happens.”

  “I will see to it,” Thurrus said with a twisted grin, tightening the noose around my neck, “He will graciously fall on the blade when I give it to him. I promise you on my life.”

  The matriarch turned to Crassus,

  “Ebon's suffering stops when you agree to help us.”

  “Help you?” I asked, feeling the breath stolen from me moment by moment as the noose tightened, “Help you do what?”

  “What did Euclid want with this place? He was going to turn it into a war machine, wasn’t he? My scouts described the images the walking city was projecting on its screen. It was a glimpse into their past and our own future. Only in our wake, nothing will remain.”

  A laconic cheer erupted from the small assembly.

  “Burn them all.”

  “Time to go,” Thurrus said roughly jerking the noose and dragging me from the room, “Crassus, you follow. We’re going home.”