Ulysses Dies At Dawn

Broken Horses

Sometimes, the screaming ceases. But most often, free-flowing tears fall unnoticed from Ulysses' eyes, as they relive the painful memories.

They, indeed, as sometimes they can't tell for sure anymore who exactly they used or are supposed to be, and may refer to themselves as such. Unfortunately, there is little else to say—the tale is too old, the story half forgotten, swathed in veils of legend and hearsay. Was Ulysses man, woman, both, or neither? The records are long since lost, and when it comes to this fallen hero, the only rumour still floating around has it that they were dark, beautiful, with a pair of cold blue eyes unable to hide the things they had seen.

You'd better get used to it. Ulysses isn't about to change just for the sake of a tale, and their memories aren't going anywhere.

Buy some soldiers another pint, and they will tell about their past, about comrades down in the mud and family left to rot at home, about flowers of fire and blood blooming in the night, sighing that warfare is just another name for Hell. Not Ulysses. In fact, Ulysses will simply stare at their bottle, wondering as always if devils themselves also get nightmares of all of their victims.

Horses. This is how they call the dead. Broken horses, staring and still, like the ones Ulysses killed and cannot outrun. Like the ones they built, and that now constantly ride them down with shattering guilt and blame.

For Ulysses the drunk was once Ulysses the soldier, and a high-ranking one at that, in the City's militia. A general. A sharp and witty mind. The one all eyes would turn to when circumstances got fucked up beyond all relief. The one who would bear the weight.

And what a weight it turned out to be.

***

The orders came one morning, some twenty years past. Not mere paperwork left discarded on a metal desk in a dusty office, not a command one could ignore. It should have been another uneventful day; Fate had other plans for Ulysses, urging them to leave everything behind and rush towards the rebel sector of Ilium, which wanted to break free, its people too proud to discard their history as a once ruling nation under the eternal sky and blazing sun.

At this point, it is worth mentioning how many districts had blossomed in the City: too many to be counted, like thousands of tiny islands in a sea that didn't exist anymore. Minor crime lords rose and brought to fame the sectors under their control, to better watch them vanish into oblivion as they fell. Ilium was one of them; Ithaca another, bestowed upon the wily general through a series of contracts with Poseidon Industries. Why the latter wanted to partake such a takeover on the rebellious district was anyone's guess; money, likely, as well as its Board's decision to make an example after having been severely fucked over in a deal. Fool me once, death unto you. The Industries do not forgive.

'Pick your best warriors, and make haste.'

A message displayed on a terminal, a few lines, a place and a time, were all it took. Before Ulysses knew it, they found themselves laying siege to the doors of Ilium, at the hands of a band of revolutionaries posing as a family. Old Priam and his ruthless wife. His sons, handsome and fierce fighters on the battlefield, although Paris could've done with a bit more wits to his name (also, Mr. Memnon from the Board of Directors really didn't appreciate to see his own wife run away with the young man, and now operate as one of Ilium's most efficient spies). Last but not least, the Cassandra Network, whose information was not always the most trustworthy, but still retained quite a reputation among spooks of all kinds.

Like most revolutionaries, Priam had plans. Grand ones. Like most revolutionaries, he made the best use possible of guerilla tactics. The militia soon found itself at a loss, and what should have been a brutal and quick siege became a slow, agonising war of attrition against one of the best defended districts in the City. A war that Ulysses the soldier, Ulysses the General, was determined to end; they would never go home otherwise.

Ilium's siege is one cautionary tale still whispered in the streets, its gruesome outcome a testimony to the horrors human minds come up with when facing an impregnable maze of alleys, barricades and citizens striving to keep their part of the City under tight control—and out of any other hands than their own. Ulysses sure can testify to that.

After a decade of fighting, still Ilium's defences stood firm, no matter the weapons used or the men and women sent to die at its doors. With each passing day, the militia came one inch closer to initiating a rebellion of its own. And so, tasked with the mission of bringing those rebels down, Ulysses made themselves heartless and cunning and scheming, in order to confirm the final victory. Because, frankly said, the general was also one inch from saying 'fuck you' to the Board.

Ten years into the siege, they came up with a solution: peace and independence for Ilium, freed from the City's clutches, in exchange for trade agreements advantageous to Poseidon Industries, to be discussed in details later. Such a proposal would never have held water during the first weeks or even months, but both parties decided to accept the compromise: Ilium all too happy to see their coup work, and the militia too depleted and too full of discontent to want anything else than leave and consign that huge mistake to oblivion.

In a gesture to commemorate this historic occasion, the Board commissioned a large bronze horse-shaped statue, meant to send a message of hope and friendship. It would honour Ilium's valiant combatants and their past as famed breeders of steeds, back when such beasts still existed. (It is hard at times to remember that the City was not always here, and that animals once known as equestrians, long since extinguished, roamed the planet's vast plains with nothing to fear.)

Ilium's people were far from stupid—Paris the exception, but by then he had already got himself killed—and remained wary at first, making the most of twisting one of their old and famous sayings about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Literally. They sent engineers and scientists to scan the statue for explosives and bioweapons, even to look for soldiers hiding in its belly, as silly and paranoid as the idea seemed. They found none. They looked again; again, they found naught. A few days of discussion, reports, and shouting contests later, Ilium's war council accepted the gift, and joy swelled unconfined between the district's walls.

Of course, the negotiators hadn't thought of scanning the magnificent effigy for a soft, almost undetectable signal being broadcast, thanks to a clever mesh of wires mixed with the building materials themselves. A signal of Ulysses' design, aimed at a specific part of the human brain, to drive to madness those who heard it.

The militia left. Just like that. A believable act, since Ilium's spies did witness contention among the soldiers, and a deep, general desire to pack.

The next day, as they stood sheltered in a sector under their full control, Ulysses triggered the deadly beacon.

Chaos reigned free, unbidden, unseen by anyone but its victims.

After a week, all in Ilium was ripping and rending and tearing and blood.

The story shall not tell how exactly those events unfurled, for no cameras survived to replay their records, and no fingers committed to computer, paper or even wall graffiti the minute details of that atrocious part of the City's history. The only information left lay in what the militia later discovered, in the pictures its soldiers never archived, but retained etched behind their eyelids and in their minds, in spite of their efforts to forget.

When they finally opened the gates of the district, no soul was left alive. The war was definitely over.

And what of Ulysses? Well, Ulysses stood in puddles of blood that oozed between cracks in the road—and has been standing there since then, the horses haunting their mind, decades later.

Ilium's desire to honour its past brought its downfall. The district still lies in shambles, as nobody was crazy enough to tread in there for fear of the mysterious signal (the Board trusted Ulysses, but not that blindly). Statues are all that remain now, their riders fallen at last from their broken horses, silent and stone—all because of one famed general, who can't bear to face what they once did.