Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey by Forrest Aguirre

man whose name was unknown to you?”
    “I don’t even know if it was a man, truth be told. It was an unusual arrangement, I’ll grant you that,” the Serb said.
    “It was, indeed. Did you ever meet the man?”
    “No, never.”
    “And yet you trusted him?”
    “I didn’t know the person’s, for the sake of conversation, we will say ‘the man’s,’ intentions. But I couldn’t assign evil intent to a . . . man who offered what I wanted most.”
    “And how did you know that he could offer you what you wanted?”
    “That, my friend, was a matter of faith.”
    “Faith?”
    “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I was, first and foremost, a man of logic. I was well-studied in the art of war, which is no art at all. It is a calculated equation, but the variables are so many that theoutside observer sees war as a chaotic threnody. But I assure you, it is logical, calculable, and cold. Remove variables and you simplify the equations, no?”
    “I wouldn’t know of such things,” Heraclix said. “But the logic seems sound enough.”
    He paused for a moment, growing solemn, then continued.
    “I was good at figuring the equation. So good that I climbed the ranks quickly after graduating from the academy. My birth assured that I would never rise too high in the courts, but my reputation became such that I did gain much responsibility in the field. I commanded irregulars on the periphery, the rabble who knew the terrain and had been raised fighting. The kind of hard, barely disciplined men that fought like wild dogs, vicious, unforgiving. We fought other irregulars in rough country, where borders aren’t so clear and allegiances fluctuated wildly. You can see how such an environment would change the equation quickly.”
    “Yes, I could see that,” Heraclix said.
    “No one could have solved the equation for long out there among such people, in such places. But I was very good at one thing: I was good at systematically eliminating variables by harnessing and directing that wild-man ferocity that simmered within my men. And that is just what I did. I believed that I was doing the right thing, setting aside sentiment for the sake of order, of justice. I was the equalizer—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand. And again, I simplified the equation, eliminated variables present and future, eliminating the very possibility that variables might crop up again in the next generation. I felt that I could do better than follow the rules and win the game, I could rewrite the rules themselves, change the boundaries of war, and assure my victory.”
    “A very bad man,” Pomp said with a scowl.
    “And yet,” Heraclix turned to the Serb and diplomatically interceded, “here you are with us, admitting that you thought you were doing the right thing.” He paused, then spoke again, this time more slowly. “By inference, your perception must have changed. What happened?”
    “Clarity came to me, unbidden. I didn’t ask for it. That day was like many before it: nothing special. But for reasons unknown tome, as I looked down my bloodied saber blade into the eyes of my next victim, the next variable to be eliminated, I was suddenly sick of the killing. My boots were sticky from walking through gore. I had swung my saber so much that day that I could hardly hold it up. My ears were completely deaf to the cries of the dying.”
    “Then she looked up at me. Ten years old, no more. She had seen so much death in her decade that she had no fear of it. It was common to her, banal. She simply didn’t care. And now, after a career of killing, because of the emptiness I saw in her eyes that day, I did care. I understood that she was . . . another human being. One that might have felt emotion, love, happiness, joy, if war hadn’t cut these things from her heart.”
    “But you couldn’t repair her heart,” Heraclix said.
    “No, I couldn’t. However, I resigned my commission, took my pension, and began to build this place.”
    “This