In honour of Aisie’s brilliant takedown of contemporary high fantasy on TikTok, I was inspired to post my latest draft chapter.
Her central point — that high fantasy has been hijacked and gutted by colonial capitalism and retooled as corporate propaganda — is exactly why I am writing The Last Coffle.
In my own small way, I am trying to reclaim The Magnificent Seven from the dark side and convert it into a tool that will somehow help my fellow authors and readers see our current condition for what it is.
Kindle slaves unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.
99 – SMUDGES (1st Narrative Draft)
Six horses left Churnwood Livery on their three-day journey to Eastwatch. First they would negotiate the meandering, seesaw climb into Copper Mountain Pass. There they would cross the boundary into the Eastern District and begin a long descent into the East River valley. At the bottom they would cross the river then follow it downstream to the mining town known as Copper Creek. If things went well, they would leave Copper Creek and reach Eastbranch headquarters by afternoon on the third day.
Lieutenant Kurt knew this road well. His cousins held every important office in Eastbranch and he had practically grown up there. Copper Creek brothels were the causes of his first hangovers and the sites of his first sexual encounters. “This is mule country,” he proclaimed as they passed another in a series of flax-faced miners leading pack animals out of the Eastern District.
That the animal was, in fact, a donkey, was noted by every ranger in their troop – including Darrell. Like the others, Sherman allowed the comment to pass unchallenged. He, too, had spent a great deal of time in the Eastern District, a significant amount of it in the very same brothels as his commanding officer. But as a deputy, he had spent most of his time outside the walls of Eastbranch, interacting with the people and their animal helpers.
“They love their goddamn mules up here,” Kurt told Darrell, riding beside him, “don’t they Sergeant?” The lieutenant turned in his saddle to make sure his sergeant agreed.
“Not many horses up here,” Sherman confirmed.
“I gotta take a shit,” Darrell announced, standing in his stirrups and looking around for a place to stop.
“We’re stopping in the pass,” Kurt replied. “Keep your pants on, Ranger.”
“Fuck, Lieu, I don’t think I can hold it that long.”
Lieutenant Kurt sighed and shook his head. “Ride on ahead then. We’ll meet you at the top.”
A clearly grateful Darrell clucked his mountain horse to an amble and forged ahead while the rest of the troop continued the ascent at a steady walk.
“How long since you been back, Sarge?” Harlan asked, moving forward in order to get a break from riding alongside Cleetus all morning.
“It’s been a few years,” Sherman admitted without knowing a precise answer. “I left after the first Copper Creek riot. Haven’t been back since.”
“First?” Harlan reacted to new information. “How many riots have they had?”
“Been more than a year since the last one,” Lieutenant Kurt jumped in, defensively.
When Sherman said nothing further, Harlan moved his horse forward alongside the lieutenant while Cleetus moved up to take his place next to Sherman.
“What were they pissed about?” Harlan asked.
“Taxes” Kurt said dismissively.
Cleetus glanced at Sherman to check his reaction, but the Sergeant remained pokerfaced.
“What kind of taxes?” asked Harlan.
“Exit taxes,” Kurt replied.
“Exiting where?” Cleetus inserted himself into the conversation.
“Malachite miners earn a shit load of money,” Kurt explained.
“Yeah,” Harlan and Cleetus acknowledged what everyone jealously understood.
“People from the Western District come here to work the mines. They earn more in a year than they would from farming in three. Then take their gold and go home,” Kurt continued.
“So?” Harlan didn’t see the problem.
“So all that money we pay them should be staying in our district,” Kurt explained. “It hurts our merchants when they take it out to spend in the west.”
“So Eastbranch started taxing miners who were taking money out,” Harlan said, connecting the dots.
“Well… how much was the tax?” Cleetus asked.
“About six months wages,” Kurt replied, “for most.
Cleetus’ eyes widened. Harlan glanced back at Sherman, who remained stoic in his saddle.
“It’s voluntary,” Kurt emphasized. “People don’t gotta pay it. They can keep every copper they earn. All they gotta do is stay here and not run off.”
Cleetus nodded in deference.
“Ain’t right to cut and run,” Harlan stated righteously.
“Exactly,” Kurt replied, as Darrell’s riderless mount came into view. The animal was pulling at some dry weeds with its teeth. It lifted its star-marked face to greet a passing donkey for a moment before continuing.
Atop the small beast of burden sat a young curly-haired woman holding an infant, its wool swaddling snow white against the sooty skin of her hands and face. Her flaxen-eyed husband glanced momentarily at the deputies before fearfully pointing his nose to the ground and giving the uniformed men as wide a berth as the mountain trail permitted.
Darrell, meanwhile, was scuttling around in the bushes with his breeches down around his ass.
“Fuck’s sake, Darrell,” Cleetus heckled from atop his chestnut mare. “Pull your breeches up before a bear hunter puts a dart in your hairy ass.”
“I gotta find some moss.”
“You’re s’pposed to do that before you unload, Darrell,” Cletus joined the heckling.
“I couldn’t…” Darrell explained, holding his pants up with one hand and moving branches aside with the other, “had to –” Crash! “ – fuck me!!”
The entire group broke into laughter as Darrell vanished beneath the underbrush.
“Y’alright?” Cleetus called.
“Ow. Goddamnit,” Darrell’s voice sounded from the tangles.
“Y’alright, Darrell?” Cleetus repeated, swinging a leg over his mountain horse and stepping down.
Every word of Darrell’s response intensified his expasperation. “No… fuck… I tripped in… a fucking raspberry… fuck… fucking raspberry fucking patch.”
Having completed the long ascent into the pass, it was time to rest the horses. Sherman gauged the sky in order to predict what might happen over the next few fingers. Descending a mountain during a period of active rain was high on his list of least favorite activities — immediately behind falling snow.
Dense heavy clouds, bulging boulders, stained grey as sunwashed granite, outlined by glowing white seams, hung over the pass and the valley beyond, hiding the snow-covered peaks above. He could see no streaks of rain in the sky nor any fresh white on the trees at elevation.
This… was Eastern District. Winter was tough here. Heavy rain or deep snow could drop like a hammer at any moment. So for three moon cycles every year, the quarries closed and the miners went home. Those who could, returned to where they came from. Those who couldn’t, had to take their chances and wait it out in Cooper Creek or a half-dozen mining towns just like it.
“What do you think, Sergeant Sherman?” Lieutenant Kurt asked, looking up at the clouds.
“Eat quick and walk the horses,” Sherman replied. “Best to save them in case we need them.”
The rangers dug cold food out of their saddlebags and unslung their canteens. Out of habit, they also used this break as an opportunity to stretch their legs and relieve themselves. Darrell spent most of the rest period picking thorns from his hands, neck, and ears. Mountain raspberry plants produced abundant large berries prized for their juice and the calories they provided. However, every berry came with a dozen inky thorns that tattooed exposed skin with black dots that could take several years to wear off.
Sherman was chewing on elk jerky gazing in the direction of the Copper Mountain quarry as Darrell approached him from behind. It had been nearly two years since the sergeant’s last visit to the pass. The quarry’s scar on the mountain’s face had grown considerably since then. Stripped of trees, the bare ground was terraced and golden against the dark green forest surrounding it. On the left, where the mine had played out years ago, new vegetation was growing on top of the steps, creating clear separation. On the right, where mining was more recent and the spoils were fresher, the terraces were more jumbled, less distinguishable.
“What are they mining?” Darrell asked, squinting as he tried to pull fine barbs from his left ear with his fingertips.
“Copper. Malachite,” Sherman replied, turning to see a dense cluster of bloody smeared dots marking the pale skin of Darrell’s neck, cheek, and ear. “Anything else they might stumble on in the process.”
Darrell was unlucky. He wasn’t particularly dumb, not any dumber than other grunts his age. But Sherman had never met a young ranger with Darrell’s gravitation to unlucky chance. If there was a hole, Darrell would be the one to step in it. And when he fell, a raspberry bush would be there to greet him.
“Better eat,” Sherman ordered the young ranger. “We gotta move.”
The walk down was a mirror image of the ride up. Miners leaving the district with their wives aboard donkeys passed regularly. Sometimes they carried babies. Sometimes they were accompanied by a second woman. But for the most part, they travelled in pairs or groups of four.
“Why are all the men so yella?” Cleetus asked at one point.
“Comes from working the mines,” Sherman replied.
“Are they sick?”
“Might could be,” Sherman admitted. “Whatever it is, healers can fix it.”
“What about the women?”
“Women don’t work in the mines. So they don’t get yellow.”
“No,” Cleetus objected. “Their hands, I mean. They all have dirty black hands.”
“Oh,” said Sherman. “Those are stains from raspberry picking. The wives pick raspberries while the men work in the mines.”
“Why?”
“Work. Food,” Sherman explained. “Raspberries grow everywhere here.”
A pair of uniformed men on horseback appeared ahead of them on the trail as Sherman talked with Cleetus. The sergeant recognized them as Eastbranch deputies on patrol the moment he set eyes on them. He wondered if he knew them. It had been a while, but he figured that surely some of the men he worked with must still be on patrol.
As the two groups closed on each other, recognition became mutual. Sherman recognized one of the deputies first – a man known as Spitz. Then Spitz recognized Sherman and, a few moments later, Kurt. He and Sherman had shared guard duty at Eastbranch for several years before being promoted and moving outside the walls to share patrol duty. Both were sergeants now.
“Sergeant for the cha fucking teau” the deputy turned his head to spit. “You moving up, son.”
His youthful, ginger companion grinned enthusiastically.
Sherman lowered his head and looked sternly at his old friend through the tops of his eyes. Spitz caught his look and immediately changed course.
“And you,” he said to Kurt. “a goddamn lieutenant already!”
“Sometimes you gotta leave home to be ‘preciated,” Kurt replied, squaring his shoulders.
Sherman and Spitz exchanged another look just as the deputy’s horse swung his head around to side-eye a group of a dozen women approaching it from behind. The road to the summit was more than wide enough to accommodate everyone, but Spitz and his partner had stopped their horses at angles that made walking past them a challenge.
If the women went one way, they risked getting horse-kicked off the escarpment. If they went the other way, they would have to scramble up a slope that would surely see them slide into the feet of the animals. The only other option was to wind their way through the maze of men and horses occupying the middle of the road. Faced with these three equally unpleasant options, the women stopped and patiently waited a respectful distance away.
“You planning to stop in Cooper Creek?” the deputy asked Sherman, spitting on the ground and ignoring the women behind him.
“That’s the idea,” said Sherman.”End of day tomorrow, if we’re lucky.”
“Keep your head up then. Things are a bit tense.”
“What’s up?”
“Mines are closed. Lots of miners in town.”
“Lotsa ravers,” his buddy added with a cryptic grin.
Sherman wasn’t sure he heard what the ginger had just said, but he had more pressing concerns. “We gonna be able to get a room?”
“You’re in uniform, son,” the elder deputy said, spitting. “They’ll move someone out for you.”
“There’s six of us though,” Sherman reminded him.
“Don’t matter,” Spitz assured him. “They know who’s who. Ain’t gonna make no deputies sleep in the street.”
Two more women joined the group waiting behind Spitz.
“I think these women want to get by,” Sherman up-nodded toward the growing group behind the deputies.
“The smudges?” The sergeant asked, spitting into a shrub. “They can wait.”
“Why are the women travelling alone?” Sherman asked Spitz, suddenly aware of that fact.
“Husbands can’t pay the toll, problee” the other sergeant shrugged. “Or maybe dead.”
“They’d leave their husbands behind?”
“Sometimes,” Spitz nodded.
“The smart ones leave,” said the redhead.
“Our trouble is getting them to stay,” said Spitz.
“You want them to stay?”
“Of course,” Spitz asserted. “If we can get ‘em to stay, we own ‘em. Come on,” he said, spinning his horse around. “We’ll fasttrack you through the toll gate.”
As Sherman and the rest of the rangers climbed up into their saddles, Spitz wheeled around and spurred his horse to a sudden start, charging through the smudges. Several of the women screamed and jumped out of the way. One lost her balance on the edge of the escarpment and started to go over. A second woman reached out to save her, but her friend’s momentum carried them both shrieking over the edge.
The ginger deputy laughed with delight and Cleetus joined in gleefully before they clucked their horses and took off down the trail after Spitz. The rest of the men sat dumbfounded while the group of women recovered and ran to the edge of the escarpment to look for the fallen.
Darrell and Sherman glanced at each other and immediately jumped to the ground. Sherman unlooped his rope while Darrell ran to the edge.
“We’ll meet you at the bottom,” Sherman said to Lieutenant Kurt.
“You are not gonna –”
“We’ll be right behind you,” Sherman said unapologetically, cutting his lieutenant off and striding across the trail to where Darrell was looking over the edge.
Luckily for the women, the pair didn’t fall far before snagging a small spruce growing out of the slope. So it was easy enough for Sherman to tie a rope around Darrell’s waist and lower him down to help the ladies.
“Why do you think the smart ones leave?” Darrell asked Sherman as they neared the bridge at the bottom of the trail.
Sherman was puzzled by his question.
“The ginger,” Darrell explained. “He said the smart men leave.”
“Can’t say for sure,” Sherman admitted, remembering the comment.
“Wouldn’t it be smarter to stay? And not pay the tax?”
“Seems so,” Sherman agreed.
At the bottom, the trail paralleled the roaring river. A narrow stand of towering everwoods separated them from the bank. A short while later, their side of the river cliffed out and the trail turned a corner toward a stone arch bridge, where they found their troop in the midst of uproarious laughter.
“Hey, Sarge,” Cleetus greeted him, laughing. “Guess what? Darrell’s a smudge!”
Sherman looked at Darrell, whose forehead dipped momentarily before he looked up with a good natured smile.
“He’s a fucking smudge,” Cleetus giggled, slapping his knee.
“He’s a dirty fucking raspberry picker,” the ginger volunteered eagerly, grinning so wide Sherman could count most of his yellow teeth.
“On account of him falling in the raspberries,” Sherman acknowledged.
“They tattooed his ass,” Eli howled.
“And his neck,” Cleetus squirmed with enthusiasm.
Sherman nodded, wondering how Darrell felt about his new nickname.
“More taint than smudge, if you ask me,” Harlan volunteered, twisting the knife a little deeper.
“Let’s go,” said Spitz, turning his horse toward the river.
As the troop crested the top of the stone bridge’s arch, a toll gate came into sight. It was a miniature wooden fortress – not much more than a barbican – supported by a barracks. A single portcullis and a dozen men were stationed there, holding back a crowd of what Sherman estimated to be nearly two hundred people.
Led by Sergeant Spitz, the troop of rangers rode through the gates without issue and flowed into the pool of commotion swirling on the other side. Filthy beggars immediately surrounded their horses, arms reaching, pleading for money. Spitz and his carrot-topped companion beat them and pushed them back with their horses to create space.
Moiling desperation created a sense of madness here. Hopelessness and helplessness were present in equal portions. Yellow-faced men wandered aimlessly through the throng arguing with unseen opponents. Bedraggled women with sunken eyes, blackened teeth, and bony, spotted fingers offered sexual favours in exchange for coins. Soiled tents and grimy children were scattered along the trail amongst the trees.
“They’re trying to get out,” Spitz explained, after leading the troop through the encampment. “River slows down in the winter. When they get the chance, they’ll rush it.”
“Most of the dumb fucks will drown,” the redhead chortled.
“The men that don’t will be picked up on the other side,” Spitz continued.
“Why not let ‘em go?” Darrell asked.
“You’re such a fucking moron, Darrell,” Kurt barked. “If they go, they get cured.”
“Cured of what, exactly?” Sherman’s eyes narrowed.
“Cured of whatever the fuck makes them ravers,” Kurt replied.
“Meanin the men get cured of whatever makes them yellow,” Sherman slowly clarified.
Kurt let out an exasperated sigh. “Yeah. If we let them go, they get cured.”
“But you don’t… want them cured,” Sherman continued, treading carefully.
“Healers can cure them clean,” Spitz explained. “But then they move on. Take their gold and go. So the mines worked a deal with the healers. Cure the men just enough to keep ‘em working.”
“And the mines want the men half healthy,” Sherman continued cautiously teasing out the truth.
“Mines and healers split the money seventy-thirty,” Spitz explained. “Gives them a chance to claw back some of the coin back. Otherwise, the company’d go broke payin these wages.”
Sherman nodded at the revelation. “And Eastbranch taxes the mines.”
“And the healers,” Kurt added proudly. “Whole thing’s fucking genius if you ask me.”
“I suppose,” Sherman raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, looking at Kurt with a hint of mirth playing over his lips. “Company always finds a way.”