The Golden Vulture-Headed Exarch Is Covered In Oil...

15 safar 1328 A.H.

...because we dumped him there, accidentally. We were mid-parley regarding the recent spread of civil discourse in the White Apple region, discourse regarding some conversations had by the Zu-Priest (Gyrosphyrinxian) of the hamlet of Loha and the "Mad Hunter," who was once one of our men, when we first landed here. Their discourse, apparently, is quite polemical, recalling those dialectics of Plato and Socrates that have fueled the thought of the Greeks and their heirs (the Romans, the Byzantines, and now ourselves, the Saracens) for some centuries. We know of our traitor's talks with the Zu-Priest--a candidate for Grand Zu-Priest, I am told--only thanks to an owl that has learned to speak from a Maronite whistling champion named Zim.

All this is hearsay, of course.

I auscultated the sea-sounds for a while before leaving the coast to return to the War Tent, which had been erected hopefully by young Brevis, a Basque we stole from his parent's rotten shack along the way to ship-wrecking on this wretched magickal continent. Brevis wants me to declare War on the traitor and command the horsemen to ride out, on their mules (the natives ate the horses), to seek the traitorous "Mad Hunter" and his supposedly brass-nippled chattel-girl. To render un-done his slight against us: His leaving an empire of God to seek a barbarian's throne.

But this tent and my sitting here and writing this before my eager crowd of men, who press smellily upon me like so many blood-wet haunches at the butcher's... [they back away] Has no bearing. The bearing has been had by fault of Clumsly Rashid, who tripped and knocked himself into the Golden Vulture-Headed Exarch of the nearest-by village, the village of Ouxoakum, whilst they were haggling over olive prices.

Thus we are at war, whether we wish to be or not. We must go forward, and we will win. Unless, perhaps, the Zu (the Gyrosphyrinx--the slinking, baby-chewing hell-cat) strikes first...

...

I eat an apple here now in dusky contemplation, my men having traveled to town to get drunk before attacking. This is a preemptive attack, of course. The Golden Vulture-Headed Exarch has not ordered his men to attack my men. But if my men do not attach his men, what will my quavering blood hear in the morning? The sound of itself choking itself... The ear travels forward in time and hears a certain tinny rush; it is not un-delightful, and everything is a bag of positives and moodinesses and embraces with the sleeping realisation that death becomes us. And that we have not long to glory ourselves in this life. Really, the only justification we need to go to war with peaceful Ouxoakum is... brevity of mortal coil.

...

The apple core is spindle now, no longer flesh-encased.
And midnight soon embraced despoils all need for sword or plow.

...

[Margin, in blood: (But dry cider-wine, we still need that!) ]