Grantville Gazette 38

clatter that attracted Mitzi's attention. Turning, he saw the brigands. They were all trooping over the hill, dressed in flashy tabards and shirts. 'Uncle Olek, here they come. I think it's all of them, all right. They must all be really hungry.'

Uncle Olek was inside the window, at the top of the stairs. 'Mitzi, can you tell if they're carrying any guns?'

Mitzi shaded his eyes and looked carefully. 'No, Uncle Olek, I don't see any guns. I don't see any crossbows, either. Almost all of them have a club or a sword, but that's all I see. I don't think they expect us to resist.'

The Cossacks marched right up into the courtyard of the village. Everybody was safely inside. Mitzi crouched down on his rooftop so they wouldn't notice him, but none of them looked up.

Jarusz dismounted and walked over to the tables. 'Very nice spread.' He turned to the men. 'You there, Pavel. You get the first taste.'

Pavel was a young man, but Mitzi didn't like the looks of him. The wastrel had close-set eyes and greasy, unkempt hair. He stepped up to the table. 'Smell that? Fresh food!' He picked up a piece of bread and tore into it hungrily.

The captain watched him for a moment and then grinned. He slapped Pavel on the shoulder. 'I guess it's not poisoned. Have at it, men.'

Pavel looked startled, but then grinned and picked up a hunk of cheese. The rest of the men surged forward. 'That sure makes me hungry,' said Pavel.

With a rush, the outsiders flooded into the courtyard, crowding around the table and grabbing samples for themselves. The mood among them turned almost festive as they congratulated themselves over their easy conquest of this village of sheep.

Mitzi watched closely. When the last man was inside the village, Mitzi called in a clear piercing voice, 'Now!'

With a crash, barricades were thrown up across the entrances to the center of the village. At the same time, second story windows overlooking the intruders were thrown open, and cauldrons of boiling grease were poured on the men below. The resulting howls of rage turned to fear when flaming bundles of straw were cast down on the men. The grease caught fire.

The Cossacks ran from side to side, trying to dislodge the barricades, but these were the bolsters used at harvest time when the hogs were driven into town from the surrounding woods. They were very sturdy and pig proof.

The fire spread following trails of the hot grease, and the food on the table was now aflame. Many of the brigands were on fire as well. Some of them were trying to climb over the barricades, and others were pounding on the village doors, trying to escape the building conflagration. The houses had all been built in a day and age that called for fortification from time to time, so the doors were very thick and reinforced, and there were no windows on the first floor, only small arrow slits.

Now, any time a man came within range of one of the arrow slits, a rain of crossbow bolts drove him back to the center of the courtyard. Upstairs, now that the grease was all spent, pots of boiling water were dumped on the men in the center. And from the rooftops, Mitzi and his cousins sent an avalanche of field stones onto the heads of the men below.

A group of five or six men picked up anything they could use as shields, and together they forced their way through the barrier on one side of the courtyard. But they were the only ones that escaped. Smoke and steam obscured the sights below, and finally the screams stopped.

For a moment, the village was silent. Mitzi felt an odd feeling of horror. It had been much worse attacking these men than it ever was dealing with slaughtering the hogs. The picture of a man covered in flame, trying to climb over the barrier kept repeating in his mind's eye.

Then his father, Hans stuck his head out of the garret window. 'Mitzi? Are you all right? Come in here, boy.' As he scrabbled down off the roof, he started thinking about exactly what they had accomplished. They had won! The Cossacks were dead! He climbed back into Uncle Olek's house.

When he walked out onto the square, he really was a mixture of emotion. He was relieved that it was over, he was still excited by the battle, and he was sickened by the carnage.

The flames had only scorched the stone fronts of the old houses, but he couldn't bring himself to look at the bodies yet. He felt his stomach clench. A wave a nausea flooded his mouth, and he had to run out of the courtyard and empty his gut over and over. And still the vision of the flaming man was before his eyes.

****

The gunman lay crumpled face down in the red dust of the street. A wisp of smoke curled away from Mitzi's six shooters. Mitzi looked around. In that window protruded a rifle barrel. From the door of the hardware store, Uncle Olek with his big old horse pistol looked out. And there was Mitzi's mother, gathering up the family pistols from his brothers and sisters. He might never know exactly who shot Black Bart, but he or his family, it was the same.

****

Mitzi bent over and grabbed another chunk of rock. With a quick twist of his shoulders, he threw the rock to the pile at the edge of the field. It just wasn't fair. After everything that happened, here he was picking rocks again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Then he heard a familiar whistle over the hill. Aleksy was home! He hurried out of the field just as Aleksy came to the wall. 'Aleksy, you're back!'

'Yes, when the news of your difficulties came to the ear of the count, he insisted that I hurry home to help. But from what I heard in town, I'm too late. You have already saved the day all on your own.'

Mitzi grinned, and then his face fell. 'Yes, I guess we did. But Aleksy, you didn't see it. It wasn't like the book, not the same at all.'

Aleksy nodded, and the two of them walked toward the village together, not speaking. When they came into the village, Mitzi shouted, 'Aleksy is home!'

That brought everyone out of the houses. Herr Piotroski slapped Aleksy on the back. 'It is definitely time for a party tonight.'

****

That night, the table was set up in the courtyard. Everything had been repaired after their encounter with the thieves, but the town still felt uncomfortable with the awful truth.

So the first thing they did that night was hold a torchlight procession out to the hill near the manor. There they placed a sign on the mass grave dug in the hill. And it said:

'Here are the graves of twenty-seven men.

They came to steal our food and burn our houses.

They never left.'

New Olbermann Grange

The Lesser of the Two Evils

Jack Carroll

The Duke of Saxe-Weimar's hunting preserve

'Yuck!' Seth Turski stared morosely into the pot he'd just snatched off the campfire. The hot cereal didn't look all that bad, but the burned smell was enough to give the dry heaves to a coyote. He was probably going to need sandpaper to get the pot clean again.

Dave Mora looked up from the plate balanced on his knees, where he perched on a chunk of firewood in front of his tent. 'Oh, boy, you gonna eat that?'

'Guess so. I didn't bring anything else. It's that or hike back to town without any breakfast.'

Jan Brinker went on washing up. 'Be glad you have a choice. Plenty of times I didn't. What happened, anyway?'

'Didn't stir it enough. I got busy breaking camp, and forgot it for half a minute too long. The heat goes