The Feast of Crispian

This is an older story, from back in 2007. At the time, I was reading up on the controversy about the authorship of the works of Shakespeare. I thought it would be amusing to write a silly short sci-fi story about it.

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The Marlites struck again, and this time made it all the way to the 35th folio before being repulsed.

Slavering, barbaric, they surged onwards, their strange and heretical tattoos above their right eyes glaring in the light of our torches like bleeding and infected wounds. To a man they continued their mad rush forward even as our weapons discharged into their ranks and they crashed upon our makeshift barricade. To a man they died, their corpses littering the open space between our checkpoint and the lifts to the upper folios.

I approached the barricade, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and tapped Horatio on the shoulder. He nodded and headed back down the sloping tunnel, to get some much deserved rest. He favored his right arm, and I noted the darkening stain upon his sleeve. A seemingly minor wound, but I looked back out at the sea of Marlite bodies, still clutching their discharged Abigails, and cursed them: both the men and their poisoned projectiles. The chirurgeon would have to cut off the arm, before the infection spread further throughout Horatio's whole body.

I nodded to the other men standing watch, and leaned my Falstaff up against the makeshift barrier we had erected yesterday upon hearing word that the Marlites were on the move. We didn't dare go up to the higher folios now, but obviously our brothers up there had been overrun and killed, or worse. There were fifteen other barriers between this folio and the surface, and if the Marlites were here, on folio 35, then the men at those barriers were lost. Marlites are savages, and eat their fallen enemies, dead or not, and I tried not to look too closely at the scalps clipped to the belts of the dead Marlites nearby. Someone would have to clear out that mess, but not until we could secure the lifts.

Moments like this, trying to hold a slow retreat while wave after wave of unreasonable heretics continue to kill and maim, seeing your friends fall from poison, or worse, could seriously make a man doubt the reason for being out here. The Director had warned us about this sort of fatigue, this creeping fear and despair, at the last Company Intermission, and had suggested carrying the words of The Will with us into battle, to give us solace and to remind us of what we were fighting for. I reached into my jacket and pulled out a worn and tattered paperback copy of the Complete Words of the Will.

I didn't open it, but I held it to my chest, feeling my own heart thud sharply against the cover and to my surprise, my mind seemed to clear, just a little bit.

One of the Marlite corpses stirred, and we sprang to attention. I dropped my copy of the Words, and grabbed up my Falstaff, but a dozen other men already had their weapons trained on the enemy.

He coughed up some blood, and stumbled to his feet. Our sergeant bellowed out at him: "Drop your weapon, get down and put your hands behind your head!"

The Marlite steadied himself against the wall of the tunnel, something grasped in his hand. It was too small to be an Abigail, but he might still be carrying a grenade or something...

The Marlite raised his arms, the object suddenly gleaming in the torchlight, and shouted: "EXILE!!!!"

The sergeant cried out: "FOR THE SAKE OF THE WILL, SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM!!!! SHOOT HIM!!!"

A dozen Falstaffs erupted in fire, and the man went down, a dancing mass of fountaining blood and flesh.

It took several moments for the echoes to fade, and longer for my ears to stop ringing. The sergeant strode forward, past the safety of the barricade, and stood over what used to be the Marlite soldier, and nudged at something with his toe. Carefully, almost nervously, he moved a small object away from the body. Then, flipping over his Falstaff, he popped open the rear barrel. A torrent of flame leapt from his weapon, incinerating the dangerous object the Marlite had been carrying.

They were likely all carrying them, forbidden objects more dangerous than a thousand Abigails. They would all have to be burned, all of the hated texts that carried poison to corrupt the souls of the unwary.

The words of their devil forbearer.

The Words of the Exile.

I reached down and picked up my copy of The Words of the Will, and clutched it closely. "Protect us all from heresy," I murmured to myself.

The sergeant moved back behind the barricade, crossing himself and muttering: "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will."

We all answered together: "And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will."

We all looked at each other, and a dozen grim nods echoed the same determination in the flickering torchlight.

We would hold them here, and we would retake Folio 34, and eventually all the way back to the surface. We had to. We had no where else to go.

We had lost Earth, though we had managed to destroy Mars to keep it out of the Marlite hands. Jupiter and its moons were held by the Baconians. Saturn was firmly in Oxford hands, and Venus still teetered in a state of constant struggle between the Marlites and the Zubairites. Here, on Mercury, we Stratfordians would make our final stand, and should the Will be willing, we would push the heretics off of this rock, and begin our push to retake all of these worlds for the glory of the Will, and eventually retake Earth.

We moved to reinforcing the barricade, and one of the men started singing "Swan of Avon," and soon we were all singing as we worked, good work, holy work. I knew that the Will was with us. I knew that this year, we would reclaim the surface. This year, we would begin the great push.

This year we would reach the Promised Land.

This year, we would reach Avon.