The Musketeers of Haven: a Science Fiction Story by M S Lawson - HTML preview

Epilogue

Later the humans built a monument at terminus. Two statues of a musketeer and a Black Band Midi were put side by side on a common stone base, looking out over the plain of death at about where the final, desperate battle in the centre had occurred. A section of the fort walls were left in place and later a cannon was dragged to the base of the monument, the mouth concreted off so that the disrespectful could not force rubbish down it. A car park and picnic tables followed and, in time, the veterans of the Musketeer Corps of Haven brought their own families to this picnic place. The youngsters would mount the monument and howl across the field just as their parents had done.

The Midis, for their part, avoided the monument and the field of Terminus. It was full of ghosts and demons they told the humans. The Right People who had been there at night had seen the gigantic demon of cavalry that moved with blinding speed, chopping off heads and limbs; the cold, metallic demon of artillery which destroyed The Right People with thunder, and had felt the invisible, all knowing, life sucking demon of Room Nine. But the most terrifying of all was the demon musketeer with a fire stick that banged and a knife on that stick red with the blood of The Right People. On moonlit nights in particular, they said, they could hear the ghosts of the musketeers killed at Terminus howling.

The humans smiled but did not discourage such talk or point out that younger humans sometimes went to the fort monument to howl at the moon. Instead they considered the legend of the demons a useful reminder to the Midis that if they did not keep the peace then the humans would remember their violent, blood stained past and the Musketeers of Haven would reform to howl once more. The Midis did not want that.