This story is inspired by true events.
Our narrative begins in the year 1839. Missouri has been established as a member of the Union for 18 years. Much like today, it is a place of both ill repute and demonstrable barbarism. Directly to the north lies the Iowa territory. After chasing out the French and supplying the natives with less-than-healthy amounts of whiskey, the Iowans have pacified the region and turned it into the pleasant-smelling civil agrarian paradise most modern readers would recognize it to be.
We find ourselves in medias res, following Duncan Fairchild, a tax collector for the state of Missouri. After a night full of grog and incestuous dealings with a first cousin, Fairchild has found himself in a disorienting and only mildly shameful tizzy. In his confusion, he has stumbled across the border into the Iowa territory and wandered onto the property of a Mr. Friedrich Schrock…
Fairchild pounded his meaty fist against the settler’s door. After a moment, the door was removed from the frame and set aside within the home, followed soon by the appearance of the owner. A man of sturdy Alpine stock, he had trouble fitting his wide-set shoulders through, and had to crouch to clear his head of the beam overhead. His face was half-shaven, still wet and partially covered with shaving soap.
“Good morning,” the settler bellowed in a light German accent, “How can I help you?”
“Marnin’ sir. It’s the ferst a’the munth.”
Shrock peered at the greasy little man quizzically.
“It is indeed.”
Fairchild returned the settler’s look of confusion, albeit far uglier and with a distinct lack of control over his more delicate motor skills. After a minute of this vacant stare, he finally clicked with realization and pointed to an open burlap sack on the ground before his feet.
“Am here fer d’taxes.”
“I don't pay taxes.”
“Shore as hail don’ in dis grate state a’Missourah.”
“I don't live in Missouri, and I don't intend on paying taxes I don't owe.”
“YOU-FER- YA WHA’? You ain't gonn’ pay no taxes?”
“No sir. I would suggest you pay a visit to the Marshal’s office, he may be some help in clearing up this confusion. Now good day.”
Without another word, he vanished back inside and returned the door to its frame.
After two minutes of intellectually vacuous staring on the part of Fairchild as he thought over the previous events, the tax collector finally stepped away from the door and back to his crippled donkey, which was tied to a fence post at the edge of the property gnawing on clods of dirt. Approaching the ass, Fairchild first kicked the dirt away from its hungry mouth before retrieving a rusting iron hatchet from one of its saddlebags.
Lining the south end of the settler’s property were a succession of mature oak trees, their leaves a vibrant and glowing green. Nestled high in the branches several large beehives were ahum.
Eyeing up his first target, Fairchild quickly went to work and fell it with a chain of quick and steady blows. Sweat was beginning to accumulate under his numerous folds of fat by the time the fourth fell, but before he could descend upon the fifth he felt the cool skin of a gun barrel against the back of his neck.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he heard Shrock explosively inquire.
His hands raised, Fairchild turned to face the proprietor and the 12-gauge tube of steel which served as an extension of his stoic Roman nose.
“Em tekin’ the honey as colored-all seeing as y’all ain’t gon’ pay nun-yer taxes.” He indicated to the busted and angrily buzzing hives amid the fallen branches. “Them’s gon’ fetch a high price.”
“You’ll leave immediately or I will shoot you myself.”
“But em-jus-a civil serven’! It’s m’job!”
Shrock began to pull back the shotgun’s hammer, and Fairchild was already back on his ass stumbling down the road before it clicked into place.
---
Not even pausing to wash his face, Shrock hastily dressed and ran into town. The settler village was bustling with productive energy. All members of the township were joyfully going about the business of self-improvement, dedicating each free waking moment to the perfection of their respective crafts.
Climbing the polished ivory steps of the courthouse, Shrock whistled and waved his hands. Everyone about set down their work to gather around, attentive and respectful.
“A crime has been committed!” He exclaimed. A murmur passed through the crowd. Ole, a Norwegian woodcutter whose work had been utilized in the private quarters of the archduke of Prussia, raised his hand.
“Shall I fetch the marshal, Mr. Shrock?”
“No Mr. Flogstad, I don’t think that will be necessary. This act is beyond his reach.”
“Pray tell.”
The crowd closed in, and Shrock had to take a moment to briefly enjoy the soapy lavender scent of his fellow townsfolk.
“A Missouri tax collector cut down some of my prize oaks.” The audience gasped. Shrock nodded. “Indeed. Should this horror go without retribution?”
“That was awfully rude of him, if I must say,” a farmer muttered.
“I’ve nearly had enough of these Missourian rabble myself,” responded another.
“One stole my horse!”
“One fucked mine!”
The usual good temperment of the Iowans was starting to give way to an uncomfortably obvious level of annoyance.
“Have you weapons?” Shrock asked.
“Have we weapons all,” the crowd returned.
Dispersing, the people of the town went back to their homes to produce their armaments. Revolvers, shotguns, rifles, scythes, rakes, shovels, picks, lengths of rope, and even an antique French artillery piece were among the arsenal. Ole had in his hands an ancient Nordic war axe and round huscarl’s shield. Somebody began the even beat of a war drum, and following his rhythm, the people began to march.
---
Fairchild was resting outside a tavern when the mob descended upon him. His cousin had yet to rear her head after previous night’s events, and he was beginning to be plagued with worries that he had perhaps confused her with a hog; which wasn’t difficult, seeing their obvious physical similarities.
He was sitting in the mud, pulling from a clay pot filled with the contemporary equivalent of rocket fuel when his thoughts were interrupted by the steady booming of the Iowans’ war drum and a strange yet pleasantly inviting aroma.
They crested the horizon, rifles afront and bayonets skyward, all wrath and vinegar. Dripping mud and shit, he first tried to turn and flee, but Shrock pointed him out and the Iowans fired a series of warning shots over his head, sending him sprawling to the ground. The mob was on him before he could stand, kicking him and binding his hands and legs with rope.
“Wut’in’d’fuckin’ell?” a voice cut through the pack violence. The Iowans wheeled about to face a man made of mud and faded leather. His slack jawed mouth was agape in astonishment, revealing his two remaining teeth to be as brown as his clothes and dirtied skin. From underneath a topless hat filthy blonde hair shot out at odd angles, held up by months of scalp grease.
An Iowan levelled his rifle at the man.
“Who are you, if I may inquire?”
The man lifted his thumb to his chest, where he wiped an inch of the grime from a rusted sheriff’s badge.
“Name’a Llewellyn Boggs. Sherf fer this-hear’a Clark County.” He peeked through the assembled rioters at the bleeding, sobbing, and urinating tax collector at their feet.
“Own wut aw-thorty y’all takin’ dis man?”
Shrock stepped forward, looking down at the sheriff.
“This man attempted to unlawfully collect taxes from me and then proceeded to destroy my property.”
Boggs looked past Schrock, glancing Fairchild over again.
“Well he is d’tax collector.”
“Are you attempting to insinuate that this man has authority over me?”
“Y’all tryin’ta start-sum trebble here sir?” the sheriff’s hand went to his hip, where a flintlock pistol was hanging from his belt. As his fingers brushed across the sticky wooden handle, Ole bashed Boggs with his Viking shield, dropping him in the dirt. The Iowans cheered. Schrock called for the rope and in a moment the bruised civil servants were bound together and in tow back to the border.
---
“You did what?” Jethro Cannerby, the marshal assigned to the unincorporated township from which the mob originated, impatiently asked the ragtag militia. None of the Iowans responded, but the beaten Missourians bound in their hands provided an apt enough answer.
“It’s a citizen’s arrest,” Schrock explained plainly. The federal agent watched him vacantly for a moment before sighing with exasperation and finally speaking.
“I’m familiar with the concept,” he began, gently plodding through his words, “I’m not clear on the grounds or authority by which you chose to perform said arrest.”
A confused glance wove through the crowd as each of the slowly-sobering Iowans sought an answer from one another.
“One of ‘em fucked my horse,” Lowell, a farmer who had joined in the attack armed only with a plow, feebly interjected.
“Birds fly. Fish swim. Missourians fuck animals. But you don’t see me arresting the fish in the river,” Jethro sternly returned. “You’re going to have to cut them loose. And to whoever’s fault this is, I’m going to have to place you under custody.”
“Sir I should apologize for not being forthright,” Schrock’s booming voice echoed as he stepped forward from the gang to face the marshal. “I’m afraid that this was my doing.”
“Mr. Schrock, correct?”
“Friedrich, please.” The pair shook hands.
“You care to provide an explanation?”
Schrock pointed at the bound and gagged tax collector at his feet, whose beady eyes grew wide with terror.
“This man came onto my property this morning demanding money under the guise of being a tax collector. When I refused to pay, he proceeded to cut down a number of my trees.”
The marshal glanced at Fairchild quizzically.
“Well is he actually a tax collector?”
The tax collector nodded frantically.
“Well if he is indeed I would wonder by what authority he may claim to seize my taxes.”
Jethro looked again at Fairchild.
“Do you know where we are?”
The tax collector attempted to speak through the gag, and so Jethro tore it from his mouth. Fairchild retched on the ground before regaining his breath to speak.
“Th’grate state a’Missourah!”
Jethro nodded towards the wall where a topographical map was hanging. In solid black font at the top of the paper was printed “THE IOWA TERRITORY”. Fairchild’s asymmetrical jaw fell slack.
“I will have to arrest you for unlawfully collecting taxes outside your municipality,” Jethro apologized. He turned to Schrock. “Mr. Schrock I’m afraid I’ll have to take you in as well.”
“For what?”
“Instigating mob violence for one.” He pointed at Sheriff Boggs, who was still bound before them. “Kidnapping a publicly elected official for another.”
“You would punish me for defending my rights?”
“No, for depriving another of his.”
“Then by what authority do you have to deprive me of mine?”
Jethro again fell silent. He spent some time looking at the settler, then presented Schrock with his six-pointed star badge.
“The U.S. Federal Government.”
Ole bashed Jethro’s head with his shield and the marshal collapsed, nose bleeding, unconscious. The Iowans exploded in cheers.
---
“They dun-wut?” Lilburn Boggs, brother of Llewelyn and governor of the state of Missouri, had been busy shovelling greasy chicken necks down his gullet with unwashed grimy sausage paws when he was interrupted by a courier.
“Yessir they dun did all that.”
“An’they got Llewelyn?”
“Yessir.”
“Well if I ain't got-damned. If this ain't…” the Governor paused to catch his breath through the enormous jowls which threatened to stifle his air supply. “If this’ear ain’t a rat’n proper mess.”
“What y’all fixin’ to do sir?”
The governor had already lost interest in the conversation, drowning out the courier’s question with loud slurping from his slop trough.
“Shoode aye rally up d’militia sir?” the courier finally interrupted, with some impatience. The governor grunted in the affirmative, then wiped his snout with the cuff of a filthy sleeve.
“Git that idjut brother’a mine safe’n sound, y’all hear?” He belched. “An teach them good-smellin ferries a thing’er too ‘bout how we do it in th’grate state a’Missourah!”
---
Once the marshal, sheriff, and tax collector were safely secured in one of the marshal office’s cells (Jethro would later be relocated to the one neighboring out of pure olfactory respect), Schrock had barely a moment of serenity to himself when he was interrupted by Lowell, whose face was stone-grey. He sat the young farmer down on a bench by the street, and asked him what gave cause for such worry.
“I went home to feed the hogs and give the horses a groom and they were completely frightened, some of them even were trying to hop the north fence. Took me close to an hour to get them calmed down. Even then they had their rears to the wall.”
“You don’t think…?”
“I do. Their senses of smell are impeccable.”
Without hesitation, Friedrich dispatched the farmer to the township’s schoolhouse, where the townsfolk were utilizing the bell as a general alarm. Within minutes all able-bodied persons of the town were assembling upon a long ridge overlooking the border. Cleared farmland provided an ample line of sight for several hundred yards at its southern base, while the steep hill’s dense vegetation provided the Iowans a thick wall of cover.
Schrock made his position within a small clearing at the highest point in the ridge, amid a smattering of Ice-Age glacial boulders. Lowell and Ole awaited orders patiently at his feet as he peered over the forward-most stone through a telescope. All along the ridgeline the Iowans were talking quietly amongst themselves, weapons out and eyes fixed forward. The mid-afternoon heat was beginning to set in, and the wet air made their clothes heavy and brows drip. Fat mosquitos boredly hopped on the air like puppets on strings, dancing to the steady croaking chorus of the cicadas in the branches above.
Far down near the eastern end of the line, in a tangle of trees overlooking a quiet downhill-running creek, one of the farmers’ sons (called by some in the records as Becher), was sitting cross-legged with a woodcutting axe propped up between his feet, the shining head resting on his shoulder. In his hands he held a thin leather-bound journal, within which he was boredly doodling with a piece of charcoal. His puppy bulldog was happily gnawing on an old deer bone at his side. The heat was growing on him, and he could feel his eyelids grow heavier with each passing moment. Just as his eyes shut, soothing the sting of the sweat dripping from his lashes, the dog whined.
He shot up, finding his pup to be cowering between a mossy rock and fallen tree-stump, making itself small in the already-limited space. Becher frowned. Then he smelled it. The very reek of evil- only attainable by the deepest pits of Hell or two hundred unwashed beastial and incestuous proto-humans. It was being carried by a strong north-eastern wind. He bit his lip, and looked westward down the Iowan line. His father had gone to collect powder for his rifle from the next position down. They were out of sight and certainly from earshot, but a lack of response throughout the ridge made the teenager compulsively run his hands through his wonderfully healthy and tumbling Irish amber hair.
Pacing at the base of his tree, he watched the treeline beyond the fields below. The smell was intensifying. Still, the Iowans were silent. He bit his lip.
The pages of his journal, which had fallen face-up and open when he had slipped into sleep, were fluttering in the wind.
He snatched the book up, savagely sifting through the debris on the ground to find the missing pencil. The smell was growing to a sickly taste in his mouth, and he had to continuously pause to gag and choke back his vomit. The dog whined and cowered, covering its face with its paws. The cicadas apathetically droned on. Tears began to well in Becher’s eyes, and for a moment he wasn’t certain if it was the stress or smell.
A beam of golden light shot down between the trees upon him, accompanied by the stroking of a harpsichord and a chorus of thousands of angelic voices singing in perfect harmony as one great, ancient voice. Immediately following a blast of cold air, carrying tones of nectar and ambrosia, blew away the heat and stench and silenced the insects in the trees.
When Becher lowered his hands and looked from the ground he saw that he was now at the feet of an impossibly tall figure, several heads over him even if he were to stand. Initially, a golden aura about the being was so intense that all of its features were obscured, leaving only a rapidly shifting silhouette visible within. The glow slowly dampened until it offered no more light than a match; hardly casting light on the being’s surroundings, but giving Her skin a visual living warmth.
Above Her bare feet golden greaves were tightly fastened to the fronts of lion-like legs; such was their elegance and power. She draped Herself in a silver fabric that rippled like disturbed stillwater, and when it caught the light through the trees above reflected endless expanses of ivory clouds and cavernous azure skies. At a point near Her collarbone, a round disc decorated with an infinite churning fractal loop of multilingual symbols and insignia held the robes together. From underneath thick curls of inky hair, which drifted on the still air as if it rested on the surface of a pond, the face of divinity peered at him with a gunsteel gaze. A narrow jaw elegantly reached to Her high cheekbones, upon which sat those immortal cold sea eyes; those which had inspired centuries of poetry and praise. Working in tandem with thin black brows, Her expression was that seen only in the stern mercy of a reacquainted ex-lover. Her lips, which would have drowned the militiaman with endless rivers of song and wisdom had they been opened, instead sat in mute reserve, offering nothing forth. Splitting the sunbeams which made it through the canopy into hundreds of before unseen colors was a great Corinthian helmet, which She chose to wear as a crown at the peak of Her head. The plume flowed from the sapphire crest like fresh ink running on a page; everywhere it drifted, letters fell to the ground where they became words whispered by the Earth. Bringing Her hands together with sacred precision She motioned for Becher to likewise hold his afront as a cup, as if he were taking holy communion. He followed her instructions, sinking to his knees and averting his gaze as the world and all of time spun about Her, reaching a roar as Becher felt himself blowing away like a disturbed drift of snow.
She dropped a pencil in his hand and promptly vanished.
Shrugging it off as a part of the narrative, Becher leapt upon his journal, scrawling madly across a fresh page.
Missourians smelled directly to center, downwind of command. Notify of their approach with urgency.
After clucking his tongue several times at the bulldog, it finally gained the courage to emerge from its hiding place and approach Becher. He stuffed the folded note between its collar and neck; then, ensuring that his back was to the east, he sat the dog down so that it was looking directly at him. He cleared his throat with a cough and spoke at it.
“Wut be yer name-by ye call yerself li’l one?”
The dog, surprised his master had managed to hide his true identity for so long, yelped in pure terror and went off sprinting through the trees towards the center of the line.
---
Ole caught the puppy with the toe of his boot, picked it up, and placed it inside his shirt so that the shaking thing could poke its head through his collar. The note was crumpled and torn from the dog’s desperate bid to escape, but enough of the message had by and large survived to be legible. Schrock tested the direction of the wind, and nodded gravely.
“Those lucky bastards,” he muttered, peering through his telescope. All was quiet along the border. “So where the Hell are they? We should be staring them right down.”
Lowell nudged Schrock, then motioned to the treetops on the Missouri side.
They were beginning to wilt and turn, choking on some invisible encroaching tide of despair. Schrock turned grey.
“Ole, all the left is with you. Lowell, take the right. Tell everyone the fight is here.”
---
Leading his column of Missouri partisans, Major David Willock set the pace by being as disastrously clumsy as the laws of reality would allow him to be. Due to close genetic ties between his parents he had a number of physical deformities which caused walking to be a chore; he would often have to remind more civilized people that he wasn’t in fact wearing his shoes on the wrong feet, insisting “them’s just the way [his] foots is”. The governor had hoped the militia would reach the border sooner in the day, but a number of roadblocks had slowed their progress substantially. One fallen log had managed to trip nineteen of the soldiers in a row, leaving many incapacitated with twisted ankles. Willock halted the company to give his engineers enough time to construct a rudimentary bridge for the troops to cross the obstacle safely. Another hour was spent trying to collect the survivors from amid the rubble when the bridge ultimately collapsed on its first use.
Now with their numbers nearly halved by the march through the woods, the remaining Missourians rallied and reformed just before the treeline. Willock peered it over while pissing on a tree stump. Nothing but an open stretch of farmland. He shook twice more than appropriate then stood before his exhausted men.
“That-thar th’place, boice. Ah-wah.”
The militiamen grumbled. Jacob Sullivan, a middle school graduate and one of the most renowned scholars in the state who had volunteered for the mission out of pure patriotic zeal, stepped forward from the ranks of the ragtag company. A master orator, he always sculpted his words into precisely the correct tool for any given crisis at hand.
“Wut if-ah they-yall got guns? Were tarred as right hail.”
“Y’all got guns too y’all dern fools.”
“But were tarred as right hail!” They all retorted in unison.
“But th’gov-ner’s brother stuck in jail as hail!”
“Mar-chin in th’woods, gettin’ all stuck in harm… gon’t’Ah-wah when them’s-all got guns’n shit. Got dang.”
“Y’all got-damned fools,” Willock was getting red in the face. “Them’s got good food, clean warter. Git us sum-oh dat tax coin.”
A ginger headed river rat in no more than single-strapped overalls spat a fat wad of tobacco juice in the dirt.
“Ther’gon be hawgs?”
Willock bared his scurvy-black gums in a toothless grin.
“Yer got-dang rhat ther’gon be hawgs.”
The Missourians cheered, each reaching for his rifle and powder. Willock drew his pistol.
“Y’all reddy boice?”
They roared.
“LET’S GIT US SUM!” Willock bellowed, then charged forward into the field, the militia taking the form of an unstructured mob behind his lead.
The hill exploded in gunfire.
“GIGGITY-GOT-GOT-DANG WUT IN THE RHAT BLOO HAIL!” Willock was so astonished by the Iowans that he stumbled over his feet, forgetting to distinguish left from right. On hitting the ground he inadvertently pulled his revolver’s trigger, shooting himself square in the temple; though incredibly, due to the small size of his brain the bullet passed harmlessly through his mostly-hollow skull.
All the Missourians dropped to the dirt and started hooting like apes confronted by an open flame. When a break in the shooting finally came, they scrambled on all fours back to the relative safety of the treeline, leaving their fearless leader bleeding and swearing in the high American sun.
---
The smoke drifted from the Iowans’ rifle pits across the hill as they watched their foes abandon the 9 feet of progress they had made in the corn below. Schrock collapsed his telescope as Ole and Lowell approached, faces split by beaming grins.
“An excellent show of force, sir.”
“Showed them a thing or two.”
Schrock was unmoved. The sun was beginning to set and shadows were being cast long across the battlefield.
“I don’t think we’re finished with them quite yet,” he muttered. He looked at Lowell. “I’m going to need you to get a team of horses and confident riders together tonight. Be ready at first light tomorrow morning.”
---
Past nightfall, what was left of the Missourians were resting around a meager fire when Willock shuffled into the light, eyes wide, face red with rage and caked in drying clotted blood. The simple creatures recoiled from the obvious apparition, howling into the night.
“Shut yer mowths ye rhat dam fools. It’s me.”
The River Rat was the first to settle down, approaching his commander with a bowl of steaming grey sludge.
“Y’all want sum chikkennecks bawss?”
“FUCK no ah don’wan’no got danged chikkennecks. Ah want y’all t’git off yer fat grizzy asses’n git’em over’t’Ah-Wah.”
Sullivan was reclining by the fire, picking foreign bodies from between pale webbed toes with his grubby fingers.
“Shit bawss it’s dark as all hail out.” He found a particularly fat grub and popped it in his mouth.
“Eye’ll give ya some real hail boy if y’don’t shut that big mowth’a yers.”
“Ree-lacks bawss we got us a plan.”
“Waw-kin yer asses back int’Ah-wah?”
“Hail no, a’leas’um not t’night. Pops had him an idea.”
Sullivan nodded his head toward the one the partisans called Pops, a volunteer lacking boots and wielding a tree’s branch for a club. Modern excavations of his family plot have led many scientists to theorize that the soldier was no less than three-quarters Homo heidelbergensis.
“Y’all had yerself an idear Pops?”
The hairy giant grunted in the affirmative.
“Well what y’all reckin’ that to be then?”
“Muh cuz’n,” the caveman growled. Taking the cue, the trees around started to rustle and crack. The Missourians bellowed.
Shuffling forth out of the gloom came dozens upon dozens of Pops’s relatives, all square-jawed with broad protruding brows. Each had in his hands a tree branch club and all were snorting and drooling like a herd of beasts of burden. Their reek made even the other Missouri militiamen take momentary pause.
Willock’s eyes went wide.
“This’ear might be just wat we’re needen’on boice.”
---
Before the sun was above the horizon the Iowan cavalry was mounting behind their lines. There were thirty in all, atop immense family-owned steeds. The animals’ muscles rippled and flexed beneath their gleaming fur. Lowell watched them with a beaming grin as he adjusted his hat, a relic from the Napoleonic Wars, that he had managed to recover from a trunk in his barn. Rumor held that it had belonged to Lord Wellington.
Once they had assembled, he led the column from town and past the Iowa militia’s farthest position. In the humid morning cold, the field which straddled the border was flooded with heavy sheets of dense corn fog. Clucking their horses forward, the cavalry vanished into the thick low clouds one after the other.
They plodded their way through the corn, each man silently counting the passing rows to himself.
The leaves shuffled and rustled by. Somewhere a hawk was crying. The fog dripped from the brims of the horsemen’s caps.
A white horse whinnied. Its rider cooed and placed her hand on its neck.
Lowell stroked his steed’s golden mane. His face folded into a grimace and his free hand shifted to the pistol at his side.
The white horse stomped its hooves and refused to go any further. Lowell waved at its rider. Her silhouette shrugged.
A northbound wind began to blow.
Through the fog came a smell so vile that no less than nine of the riders immediately renounced their faith in God; later explaining to close friends that no natural force could achieve such wickedness in the world of a benevolent creator. The horses tried to turn and flee, and many of the riders were too busy vomiting to try to turn them to face the foe. They toppled to the dirt as their mounts left them to face their doom.
“CHARGE-” Lowell bellowed, cut off by a deep dry heave. Pulling bandannas or shirts to their faces, those remaining kicked their animals forward.
They limped out of the fog, coming face-to-face with a line of fur-covered and snaggle-toothed giants. The monsters roared, lifting tree trunk clubs over their heads. The Iowans fired from their hips, but the bullets caught in the creatures’ dense body fat and fur harmlessly.
Lowell’s horse was swept from underneath him. Leaping from the animal, he landed heavily in the confines of the cornfield, beyond the proto-human’s immense reach. It growled with rage.
Routed, the Iowans sprinted head over heels through the corn. While they all returned to their territory physically unscathed, many walked away with lasting psychological harm that plagued those afflicted for the rest of their natural lives.
Lowell took the defeat personally, forever renouncing his participation in any future cavalry charges; though he stressed that he would merely abstain from leading the theoretical efforts himself, but had no qualms serving as an NCO if Iowa needed him to do so, so fierce was his patriotism.
The Iowans were given no chance to breathe, as the cavemen pressed the advantage and pursued the fleeing cavalry into the field. However, they soon became disoriented in the fog and so their attack figuratively froze in place for several hours until the sun rose high enough in the sky to burn the mist off. Even then, they accidentally attacked the Missouri line, rendering the entire skirmish essentially moot.
Schrock wasted no time. He sprinted down the line until he found the rifle pit of a man named Theodore, a renowned engineer who had led several public works projects across the modernizing frontier. The engineer put down a violin he had been plucking as his commander approached.
“Good morning, sir.”
“What do you know about walls?”
“What kind?”
“Tall ones.”
---
As the Missourians attempted to reorganize themselves for another push, the Iowans set quickly to work. Under Theodore’s direction, they carved two terraces into the hill, the one in the rear placed several meters higher upslope from its counterpart. Upon these terraces they set high walls of tree trunks, the higher one twice the height of the first. In front of the lower wall a trench some five meters deep and as many wide was carved into the dirt and filled with jagged scraps of wood and piercing steel caltrops. So magnificent was his vision and strong the will of the Iowans that the entirety of the project took no more than three hours, including time for a forty-five minute lunch break.
---
“Wut’n th’got-danged hail.”
The Missourians, who had spent the entirety of this time trying to catch a field mouse from which they could make a greasy camp stew, collectively looked to the source of Willock’s sudden outcry.
On the hill across the field the Iowans’ now-completed fortifications rose above the grass and corn with stoic indifference to the plight of the invaders.
The remaining members of the Missouri incursion force who hadn’t deserted or gotten lost in their own sleeping bags assembled at the base of the hill. Their rifles hung lackadaisically from shoulders and most of the troopers simply milled about, kicking dirt or spitting in the dust. Just as the Iowans had hoped, the thought to simply walk around the fortifications failed to enter a single one of their heads.
Willock gnawed on a fat plug of tobacco while he scratched his balding snow-pale scalp and peered the walls over. Though he could not see his foe, their divine smell permeated the air and reminded him of his childhood, long ago and lost in a far more civilized time and place. Setting his rifle and cap in the dust, he sat cross-legged on the ground and let the sun bake his filthy skin. Pops curled up in a ball next to him and happily snorted to himself while the commander absentmindedly scratched him behind the ear.
Sullivan approached and joined the pair on the ground.
“Wut we fissin’t do bout this’un sir?”
“Not sher’am fissin’t know, Sull’vn.”
“Y’all reckon we can beld us-uh ladder?”
Willock pondered it for a moment, removing his tobacco plug and feeding it to Pops, who swallowed it graciously.
“Y’all know how’nt go bout all that?”
“Seems awl too thea-ret-cal’t me bawss.”
“Well we gotta take’m them walls sumwaze.”
As the cretins conversed, a trumpet blast from atop the walls drew their eyes skyward. A white flag fluttered, signalling for armistice.
Under the careful watching eye of the Iowans’ rifle-points, three men descended from the fortifications. Their clothes were so clean and odors so pleasant that Willock and his men had to avert their gazes lest they go blind and without scent. Pops, slower on the uptake than the other baboons, did not break eye contact with the Iowans and shortly under a minute his eyes were covered over with thick, milky cataracts.
Once his eyes began to adjust to the glare Willock lowered his hand and looked at the three that stood before him.
The man leading the procession towered over both his companions and the Missourians, with cannon-barrel arms and saucepan hands. His chiseled face was half-covered in creamy shaving soap.
To his immediate left was a young fair-skinned farmer in simple canvas coveralls and brandishing a large Navy revolver. His amber hair was close to his scalp and combed back like a soldier for strict practicality.
On the other side of the Iowan giant was a man who was very likely accustomed to and had a firm understanding of what was and was not appropriate to wear, but outright rejected these norms in favor of a Viking helmet, from which thick chestnut curls of beard tumbled onto his chain mail-harnessed chest. In his hands he gripped a massive round shield and war axe.
Their boots rustled on the approach. The giant raised his hand in salutation.
“Good morning gentlemen.”
“Dat’s May-jer t’you fellah,” Willock returned coldly. The giant held his hands up in defense, nearly blocking out the sun.
“My apologies, sir. Major…?”
“Will’ick.”
“Pleasure. My name is Friedrich Schrock, commander of the the Iowan forces here. These are my associates, Mr. Flogstad and Mr. Thomassen.”
“Chawm’d.”
“Major, if your men are anything like mine, then they’re growing wary of this senseless violence. There have been rumblings among the ranks. They wish to return home to their farms and families.”
Schrock allowed a sly grin to crack on his face. His words weren’t exactly truthful, nor were they completely false. Though it was true that those who were under his command wished desperately to see their homes and loved ones again, after so many days away, all had undying devotion to the cause and knew that their sacrifice was for the common good of all civilized people in this barbarous part of the world and place in history.
“Tern-round then. We’ll all be needin’ the gov-ner’s brother. Y’all still got’im.”
“Major, all the hostages in our possession are being held lawfully according to the rules of statecraft, warfare, and nature. If the Missouri governor’s brother truly is under our custody, then he is for violating both federal law and our sovereignty.”
Drool came from the Major’s mouth along with accompanying black smoke from his ears and the audible grinding of mental gears on one another like a bag of rusted nails. He had gotten caught on the meaning of the word “hot-sausages” and thus all following information got badly clogged in his barely flickering synapses, leading to a complete shutdown of all motor and mental functions. The gaping hole in the side of his head did little to help the matter.
Schrock spent several moments snapping in the Missourian’s face and patiently awaiting his return to reality. Understanding in his deep and primal subconscious that the joke could only go so far and the story had to progress, Willock awoke at the end of this sentence.
“Wat?”
“The governor’s brother will not be returned lest you and all of your men leave the Territory by sundown tonight.”
“Y’all a man’ah-onner Mr. Shark?”
“I try to live honorably, but beyond that I cannot say.”
“Then y’all unnerstand eye cain’t do that.”
“If I believed it were possible for a man of your stature to be capable of acting honorably.”
“Wat’s all that fissin’t mean?”
“You were born to be sheep. We to be shepherds.”
“Eye’awtta gut’ye fer that.”
“Good luck Major.”
Without another word, the Iowans turned on their heels and resumed their positions on the ramparts high above. Willock watched them go and stewed furiously to himself. With Sullivan and the blind Pops in tow, he marched back to camp and mustered his men. They lazily gathered, some chewing on their rifle-tips or picking their rotting teeth with rusted bayonets. Willock stepped onto a piss-soaked stump and looked over their heads.
“HOW WE DOIN’ BOICE?”
The men about grumbled amongst themselves.
“Nuntoo bad, ser, how’bowt yerself?” Responded the River Rat. Willock shot him an evil glare.
“Y’ALL SICK OF EAT’N ON DEM FIELD MOUSES?”
A couple of the troopers shrugged at one another.
“Thain’t too bad wit’a’lil chikkeneck stew,” the River Rat interjected. Willock withdrew his pistol and this time literally shot him.
“Y’ALL LOOKIN’ FER SOME HAWGS?”
The troops exploded in cheers.
“THEN GIT OVER THAT GOT-DANGED WALL.”
Surging forth from the treeline like a foul-smelling tsunami, the militiamen whipped through the corn and within a minute were already bounding over the trench which sat at the base of the first wall. The Iowans, completely taken by surprise, were away from their rifles and didn’t get a single shot off until the Missourians were mobbing at the foot of the wall.
“ARMS AFRONT!” One of the Iowan militiamen howled over the din of battle.
Harkening to his call, dozens of the settlers rushed to his aid, some forgetting their weapons in their haste. Taking hold of anything they could, including stray rocks and branches, they began to dash them against the heads and reaching claws of the invaders, who had begun to tower upon one another and clutch at the Iowans’ outstretched limbs in an attempt to pull them from their perch.
“SHOOTHEM GUNZ-BOISE!” Willock screamed.
The orchestral blast of the Missourians’ rifles roared, and the sun was blocked by smoke. The Iowans returned their volley, which the Missourians quickly gave back in sheer lust-filled determination. They could almost hear the hogs snorting in blissful ignorance. Pops shouldered troopers up to the wall’s edge with his animal strength, allowing them to climb atop the ramparts.
Ole muscled his way to the front of the line, bringing with him a train of men driven by similar Nordic courage. The Iowans who were at the parapets had begun to falter and retreat from the wall’s-edge, allowing a number of the barbarians to gain a footing, where they were locked in desperate hand-to-hand combat. He stepped to the first he saw and dropped him with a single shield-strike to the torso. Swinging around, the fierce Norseman brought his axe hammering down on another’s head, splitting it in twain. The man’s last breath escaped him with whispering dreams of bestial love.
Before he could turn around and call more to the front, a stray rifle shot pierced his shin, felling and removing him from the fray. The other Norwegians, Swedes, and Men of the North surged forward to cover his wounded form, beating back the now-swarming Missourians with rifle butts, pitchforks, and bare fists.
Sullivan, who had managed to push his way to the top of the wall, spotted the fallen officer between the legs of his compatriots. Seizing the initiative, he levelled his pistol and downed a Swede named Karlsson, momentarily exposing the squirming Flogstad.
“GIT’AT MAN DER-BOISE!” He wailed, grabbing another man by the collar and pushing through the melee. Gathering a chain of Missourians, he landed another pistol-shot on one of Ole’s guardians as his men mobbed the meatshield. Getting within the reach of their weapons, Sullivan’s men managed to lock arms with the Iowans, turning to teeth and maw. Though their famous Nordic courage was fierce, the settlers began to be beaten back by the Missourian squad’s sheer numerical superiority.
Seeing a break in the line, Sullivan pushed his way forward until he locked eyes with the wounded Flogstad. He whipped his pistol up and fired a shot, but Ole managed to heft his shield above his torso and rendered it ineffective. Before he could reload, Ole threw the shield into Sullivan’s knees, sending him to the ground in a squealing heap. Not giving the Missourian a chance to recover, Flogstad followed quickly through with his axe, bouncing its face against his head and knocking him unconscious. The Missourians who had accompanied him, fearing their leader dead, lost their fortitude, broke formation, and turned and fled. This gave the remaining Norsemen a breath and chance to drag their leader to safety, though the main body of the Missouri force was now pouring over the edge of the wall unabated.
From atop the higher second wall, Shrock harkened to the panicked cries of the Iowans and rushed to the edge where he witnessed them begin to break under the pressure and run for safety. Enraged, he grabbed Lowell by the collar and brought him near.
“WE NEED TO TURN THEM BACK.”
The young farmer’s eyes were darting with panic.
“The reserves are already down there!”
Shrock swore to himself and let the farmer go. For several moments they watched the struggle below begin to turn to a full-scale rout. The few available men atop the second terrace were sharpshooters and were very clearly apprehensive about joining the carnage. Their eyes shiftily darted from Shrock to the struggle, waiting for his orders.
With the blasting of a trumpet that shook the very ground upon which the dissidents fought, the sky opened with a flash of burning holy light and on a throne held aloft by singing angels sat the lost Autocrat of the Romans, Constantine Palaiologos, pulled from his resting place at the fallen walls of his dead and ancient city. The din of battle subsided as the fighters paused to look upon his golden and bejewelled splendor. Taken by his grace, the Iowans dropped to their knees and averted their gazes, unable to look on such magnificence without offending the eternal emperor with their mortal irreverence.
Willock, who had managed to lead a contingent to the base of the second wall, slapped the faces of his drooling men and pointed to the fortification.
“WAT THE HELL-Y’ALL DOIN’?”
“Were rhat fucked, sir,” one of them mutttered.
As the cherubim bearing the throne began to reach a crescendo, the pitch and volume beyond Earthly measure, Constantine raised his immense world-turning hands, holding in each a divine icon. In his left hand he bore the gleaming ivory shield of Ajax the Greater, which had helped cover Achilles’s fallen body from Trojan missiles in that distant fabled land. In his right he held the tricolor Iowan flag, which bled vibrant rubies and sang shining sapphire. The eagle in its radiant center roared, and the ghost of the Roman war machine manifested among the ranks of the Iowans. A young lamellar-anointed Greek looked at his suddenly physical hands.
“Εξαιρετική,” he muttered, only with the dryest hint of sarcasm.
Forming an impenetrable wall of steel shields and spear-points, the divine intervention force pushed against the Missourians, turning them to heel and flight. The Iowans whooped and cheered, firing potshots at the exposed backs of their panicked foes.
Stumbling and trampling over one another, some of the invaders found themselves lost in the terror and confusion and, trapped between the walls, surrounded and slaughtered. All the while the voices of Heaven sang praise of this sacred deed, and the Iowans began to fight with a yet-unreached level of savagery and vigor alongside their undead Roman comrades. Promises of sweet hog love was lost in the minds of the Missourian force, and Willock’s desperate pleas to turn back fell on their deaf ears. Those who managed to escape threw themselves from the wall, falling on one another and breaking arms and ankles on the ground below.
“Y’ALL DAM-FOOLS! Y’ALL COW’ERDS!” The Major howled. His back was to the wall’s edge, and he suddenly found himself alone amongst his dead and dying comrades, facing a human wall of wrath and divine retribution. Drawing a knife from his boot, he dropped his rifle and pistol, charging headfirst into the defenders, rabid and savage. He fell dead at their feet, run through and shot as the surviving members of his force abandoned their equipment and ran, never looking back. The blind Pops smelled the passing of his friend and ally, and screamed with rage. Wheeling like a top of fur and fat, he knocked the soldiers aside, though a number of well-placed rifle shots quickly managed to drop him to his knees. A gang of ghostly legionnaires descended upon him, stabbing and slashing at him until he finally breathed his last.
The Iowans, victorious, celebrated with a traditional meal of corn on the cob, then unceremoniously threw the corpses from their walls. Among them was the unconscious Sullivan, mistaken for dead. When he awoke, battered and bruised but nonetheless alive, he laid in wait as the Iowans washed themselves, a practice entirely strange and foreign to him. When darkness came, he crawled back to the meager fires of the few remaining Missourians at their camp.
---
While separating the prisoners had initially helped alleviate the suffering done to Jethro by the reek of the Missourians, the days of neglect had let their various body odors escape their cell through bars in the door. By the next morning, the stench had built up in the main office and was beginning to seep into the Marshal’s cage. Shortly before noontime the next day he had already attempted suicide by leaping headfirst into the brick wall, to no avail.
Around sunset, he had lost the ability to pray and had reverted to pure will to live and raw U.S. law enforcement discipline. Propping himself with his bunk to his back, he turned to kicking at the base of the wall; rumor has it that to drill through the entirety of the wall took him somewhere shortly over three hours, so strong was his will to live. Regardless of how he managed to escape, he was reported missing by sunrise. Locals claimed that he was spotted running into Des Moines, handcuffed, singing “God Bless America” sometime shortly thereafter. Stumbling into the office of Territory Governor Robert Lucas a cussing mess of fury, he reported the situation, flipped off the official, then boarded the first train out of town to D.C.
---
The sun rose on the broken Missourians, who were stoking their dying fires in melancholy silence. Sullivan was alarmed to see that at first light, only twelve of their company remained; and among the survivors, four had wounds that kept them from any further fighting. He gritted his teeth on seeing Willock was not among the living.
“Wat-y’all reck’n we owtta do, Sull’vn?” One of the younger partisans distantly asked. Sullivan shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
“Am fissin’t git m’ass home,” another muttered.
The fighters fell silent. The fires softly hissed. Across the field, the Iowans were still in revelry, singing old European folk songs. Someone plucked a twanging fiddle.
There was a rustling among the branches. The beleaguered militiamen lifted their heads in time to see a column of hundreds of their countrymen emerging from the thick brush. They were fresh-faced and eager, burdened down with rifles, ammunition, and other supplies. Immediately, these reinforcements went about building a new camp, digging trenches and other fortifications, assembling tents, and even dragging cannons into position. Across the valley the singing and dancing came to a sudden stop.
“Wha-tha’hail’s all this boice?” A booming voice asked through shallow, heaving gasps.
Sullivan looked to the source of the voice to find Lilburn Boggs, in his fat and greasy hog-like glory, riding atop a throne carried by an innumerable amount of African slaves. “Hoose in charge-oh dis outfit? Ware-the hail’s Will’ick?”
“Misser Gov-ner, I reckin’I owtta be in charge here. Name’ah Sull’van. Will’ick’s dead.”
“Dead? What the hail happ’nd all in here?”
“Them fuckin’ Ah-wans kicked are asses!” One of the survivors from Willock’s brigade shouted from the ground, where he was nursing a broken leg.
“Them did?” The governor asked incredulously, pointing to the hillside opposite. He grunted when he lifted his fleshy cellulose arm.
“It’s been a hole-mess, sir,” Sullivan tried to explain. “You’ll gotta have’ta read the story.”
“I cain’t read, private.”
“Well what y’all reckin’n to do, sir?”
“Keep up dis-here fight. Git mah brother from them ornery Ah-wans. Kick some-there ass.”
“Sir, we ain’t in no-shape’t fight.”
“Oh, hail boy. Were Misery-ans. Y’all scared’ah bunch-uh frilly l’il Ah-wans? Them’s ain’t nuthin’but a bunchah damn for-ners. Got-danged youro-peens.” The governor wiped sweat from his grossly red and bulbous face, breathing heavy. He looked upon each of the beaten faces of Willock’s surviving men. “Ware’s yer courage? Y’all gonna go git up’n thar’n fight tha- GOO.”
Everybody fell silent and turned to look at the governor, whose face was beginning to turn purple and eyes bulge from his skull.
“Y’allright sir?”
“GATH-GER!” With that, Boggs’s struggling heart finally exploded with the force of a small stick of dynamite, rippling through his countless square yards of slippery fat. With a final heaving death rattle, his boulder-sized head fell against his mountain-like tits, and he said no more. His slaves looked at each other, then at once darted for Iowa. The troops looked at one another and upon their smelly obese leader in dumbfounded silence.
“Whale, shit,” one of them finally mumbled.
Sullivan clenched his fists.
“I ain’t gon-have come this far wit’out hav’n done nuthin’ for it,” he whispered to himself. Looking upon the faces of the new troops, he did some complex calculations in his head (unknowingly discovering the practice of addition for the state of Missouri, which would do countless public goods for the decades to come), and eventually came to realize their numerical superiority over their foes. Stepping atop a piss-soaked stump, he waved his hands and put his mastery of spoken word to good use. Though his words have been lost to history and the terrible epidemic of Missourian illiteracy which plagues the state even to this day, it is known to have stirred the men who heard it into a frenzy. Even those who were suffering from wounds from the day previous begged to join in the fight. Modern historians have debated endlessly at what was said that day, the best guess thus far is something along the lines of “Let’s go get us some of them hogs”; translated for a civilized reader, of course.
Roaring, the men ran in a dead sprint at the wall. The Iowans exchanged nervous glances, then settled in for a final battle, wiping the blood and sweat from their eyes and preparing their improvised weapons, having lost many of their rifles in the previous day’s attack.
The gap was closing fast. Barbarous rage burned in the attackers’ eyes.
“STOP. FOR FUCK’S SAKE EVERYBODY STOP!”
The Missourians stopped so suddenly many were taken by their momentum and fell to the ground. The Iowans peaked over the top of their battlements.
In the middle of the field, at the head of thousands of federal Congressional guardsmen in their Union blue, Iowa Territory governor Robert Lucas sat atop his horse with his hands in the air. Between his immense sideburns, his face was red with rage.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE ALL DOING?” He screamed. Everybody stared at him blankly. He pointed to the Iowans atop the wall. “YOU. YOU ALL GET DOWN FROM THAT FUCKING THING.”
Iowans being a people that have never been known to possess a lack of respect for authority, all members of the citizen’s militia immediately complied, abandoned their weapons, and climbed down from their fort and gathered in the field.
“WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?” Lucas spat. Schrock raised his hand and came forward, followed closely by Lowell and Ole. “What’s your name?”
“Schrock, sir.”
“You’re Friedrich Schrock?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lucas motioned to a couple of the federal troops, who came forward, knocked the Swiss man unconscious with a rifle butt, shackled him, and dragged him away. When Lowell and Ole attempted to interject, they were given the same treatment, and vanished among a sea of blue uniforms. The territory governor looked at the remaining Iowan militiamen.
“Anyone who refuses to disperse will also be placed under arrest. UNDERSTOOD?”
The Iowans nodded and promptly left, homeward bound. Lucas then fixated his rage on the Missourians, who were still vacuously staring at him.
“If anybody here wishes to fight the UNITED STATES ARMY, please stick around. Congress has ordered this nonsense to stop at once. Now FUCK OFF.”
The Missourians, confident in their own arms, initially stood ready to face off; then the federal troops began fixing their bayonets and the militiamen realized that they would literally be fighting the United States Army, and immediately high-tailed it back across the border into Missouri, never to return.
Thus ended the Honey War. Ironically, Lewellyn Boggs, brother of the deceased Missouri governor and the arguable cause for the Missouri war effort, had managed to drill out of his cell days before due to his close relation to a common ground mole, and had been in a Missouri bar getting piss blind drunk for the entirety of these reported events.
No one seems to know what became of the tax collector Duncan Fairchild, although it is rumoured to this day that there is a breed of Missouri hogs which bear a startling resemblance to his horrid visage.