La Guerre des Mondes – Part Three
The royalists rode hard for several hours, leaving Paris and their revolutionary pursuers in the dust cloud kicked up by their horse’s hooves. As the sun began to sink behind them, shadows lengthening on the road ahead, the group’s pace began to lessen as night closed in around them.
“We cannot push the horses much harder,” Lisette called out from her position at the front of the pack, “They need to rest or they will fail us long before we reach the border.”
Marcel grunted his agreement, swaying dangerously in his saddle. After the catastrophic crash that had totaled their carriage, the group had not had time to stop and tend the executioner’s wounds. While it was not in the taciturn fellow’s nature to complain, it is human nature to bleed and Marcel had been doing so steadily for the last few hours, splattering his mount’s flank with crimson stripes.
“Look there!” cried Andre, “Is that a barn I spy through yonder treeline? Mayhap that rickety structure might provide a moment’s respite whilst we rest the horses and tend to our ills?”
The barn appeared to be unoccupied, though it still stank strongly of the livestock that had once been stabled therein. Candlelight flickered behind the windows of a farmhouse on the other side of the plot, but there seemed little cause for the folk living there to visit the barn in the small hours of the night. Quietly, the royalists settled their horses and prepared to gather what strength they could before the next leg of their desperate flight. The King seemed mired in a melancholic despair, so Marcel began frying some delicious horse sausages to cheer up the miserable monarch. The smell of sizzling meat soon filled the barn, lifting everyone’s spirits.
“We should all get what rest we are able,” Marcel suggested, once everyone had eaten their fill, “We cannot linger here long and had best be away before sunrise.”
“Are we safe here?” Marie Antoinette asked, casting a fearful glance into the dark corners of the drafty barn.
“With my sword sworn to your defense, you are as safe here as you were at the palace!” Rugue boasted, puffing out his chest, “Well, up until the point that the rebels attacked and we had to flee for our lives.”
“Fret not, your Majesties,” Marcel added, glowering at Rugue, “I will take the first watch.”
---
The next few hours passed uneventfully. Marcel stood his watch, listening to the whisper of velvet wings as the bats nesting in the loft of the old barn fluttered out into the night in search of prey. Something large came snuffling around the door, perhaps attracted by the lingering smell of the party’s dinner. The executioner’s heavy eyelids were just beginning to droop when he heard another, considerably more alarming sound. A great howl of displaced air rent the silence, followed by a titanic, earth-rattling crash in the adjacent field. The rest of the royalist party woke with a start, crying out in surprise and fear as their rest was so dramatically disturbed – all except Rugue, who slept on, blissfully ignorant of the calamitous event.
“What was that?” King Louis gaped, rising from his bed of mouldy straw, “The Jacobins! Have they found us?”
“That sounded like a cannon!” Andre said, fumbling for his eyeglasses, “I thought they were trying to take us alive?!”
“My King, my Queen,” Marcel implored, “Please wait here while we investigate. We will leave Rugue to protect you.”
“That’s not my baguette….” Rugue mumbled sleepily, “My baguette has a bell on the end…. zzzzzzzzz.”
---
Warily, Andre, Lisette and Marcel inched out of the barn. The adjacent field was ablaze with red flame, in the midst of which lay a great, metal ship; half buried in the earth by the force of its landing.
“What is it?” Lisette asked, hanging back lest the drifting embers settle in her hair.
“It looks like some manner of vehicle…” Andre mused, edging as close as the heat would permit, “A horseless carriage for traversing the stars! But where is the driver? Surely he cannot still be trapped inside! My god, he’ll be burnt to a crisp!”
“No, look here!” Marcel called out, “Tracks leading away from the crater! They’re heading towards the farmhouse.”
“They are so small!” Lisette gasped, staring at the tiny footprints, “Could there have been a child upon that curious vessel?”
“Only one way to find out for sure,” Marcel grunted, turning his steely gaze towards the isolated farmstead.
---
The night grew colder as the royalist trio moved away from the burning field. The farmhouse before them looked to be in as poor a state of repair as the old barn they had hidden in. The front door yawned black and inviting as the maw of a serpent. Andre crept up to one of the shuttered windows and pressed his face up against the weathered wood.
What he witnessed inside the farmhouse almost caused him to lose his mind!
In one corner of the squalid room into which the young scientist peered cowered a family of four; a man, his wife and their two young daughters. What they were cowering from defied description; Andre could scarcely credit the evidence of his eyes, so strange was the creature that menaced the poor family. It was no taller than a human child, but with a great, swollen head glistening with green slime, encased within a bubble of transparent glass. Two bulbous eyes goggled from within this curious helmet, wide and unblinking. In its hand, the creature held an alien device, the like of which Andre had never seen.
“Ack? Ackackack! Ack!” the creature barked, pointing his strange weapon towards the quavering farmer.
“Ooh ar! I don’t ken what manner of beastie you be,” pleaded the man, “But don’t you be harming my young ‘uns!”
“Ackack? Ackackackack!”
Without warning, the creature activated the device, firing a beam of green light into the farmer’s chest! Instantly, his rough, homespun clothes burst into flame and his ruddy flesh melted into a foul puddle of pink goo! All that remained of the unfortunate man was a grotesque, green skeleton!
“Agghhhhhhh!” screamed the farmer’s wife.
“Agghhhhhhh!” screamed the farmer’s children.
“Agghhhhhhh!” screamed Andre, recoiling from his peephole and tripping over his own feet.
“Ackackackack!” screamed the creature, twisting around and firing another blast of green light at the shuttered window, passing through the space that Andre’s body had occupied not five seconds earlier. Andre, Lisette and Marcel stared at the creature through the ragged hole in the farmhouse wall. The creature stared back at them.
“What in God’s kingdom is that thing?” the executioner cried, exhibiting the bare minimum of manly surprise required when confronted by the unknown.
“Bleeuurrghhh!” gushed Lisette, noticing the smoking, green skeleton sprawled at the creature’s (tiny) feet.
“Ackack? Ack!” the creature barked, aiming its weapon at Lisette’s head.
Launching himself forward, Marcel hurled his trusty head lopper at the murderous creature. The blade bounced off the hardened shell of the creature’s helmet, leaving a long, spidery crack in the glass. Almost immediately, the creature dropped its weird gun and collapsed onto the floor, rolling around like a fish out of water. After a minute of wild thrashing, the creature became still; its long, green tongue lolling obscenely from one side of its mouth.
“I don’t believe it can breathe our air,” observed Andre, picking himself up off the floor and pretending he had done something more heroic than collapse into a gibbering heap at the first sign of trouble. Exhibiting greater courage than he had when the thing was alive, Andre crouched beside the creature’s corpse and held his nose close to the crack in its helm, “Smells like… methane? Has that been discovered yet?”
Marcel picked up the strange weapon the creature had wielded and turned it over in his hands. Damned if he could make sense of how it worked. Shrugging, he tossed the device over to Andre, who immediately dropped it.
“Well, looking on the bright side,” Lisette added sunnily, “At least Robespierre’s men didn’t take advantage of our distraction to recapture the King and surround our position with overwhelming numbers.”
“Ahem...."
The royalists turned. Robespierre’s men had taken advantage of their distraction to recapture the King and surround their position with overwhelming numbers. Rugue waved sheepishly and was clobbered with a musket butt for his trouble.
“Salaud!” Lisette cursed.
To be continued….
