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“I don’t like it, Corporal.”
“Sarge?”
“It’s too quiet.”
“Quiet, sir?”
“And still; too still. Why is it just sitting there, doing nothing?”
“Beats me, sir.”
“They’ve got the proportions right, I’ll give ’em that. Can’t have been easy.”
“No, sir.”
“You’d have thought they’d have painted it, though.”
“Yes.”
“I mean, all that exposed wood… in this heat… it’s bound to warp.”
“Mmm.”
“And you say it wasn’t here last night when you handed over to the night watch?”
“No, Sarge.”
“So, it must have arrived during the night.”
“Reckon so.”
“I wonder why the lads on the night watch didn’t see it arrive? It’s big enough!”
“Sleepin’ I ’spect.”
“Not much of a night watch if you ask me. That thing turns up, and no one notices.”
“Mmm.”
A comfortable silence persisted for a while, allowing both men time with their own thoughts. The wind blew, as it always did, off the desert and into the fort, bringing with it vast quantities of unwelcome sand. From their vantage point on the fortress walls, the pair scanned the empty horizon. Eventually…
“You’ve got to admire the workmanship that’s gone into it, and all those joints.”
“Mmm.”
“I mean it must have taken days, weeks even, to complete.”
“Probably.”
“And all that wood, it must weigh a ton.”
“Must.”
“I wonder how it got here in the first place?”
“Dunno, Sarge.”
“And then, it’s just left here, out in the open. Very odd that.”
“Yes.”
“No note, no explanation. Nothing.”
“No.”
“I heard over breakfast this morning that the top brass are meeting now.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Apparently, they’re discussing what to do with the damn thing.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, they’re not going to get their hands dirty with it.”
“No, Sarge.”
“They’ll just order the likes o’ us to deal with it, as always.”
“True.”
“And I bet they’ll wait and get us to move it when the sun’s hottest.”
“Probably.”
Over the next couple of hours, the sun did indeed grow warmer. As lunchtime approached, orders were given from the top brass down to the lower ranks.
“You heard?”
“No.”
“They want us to go out there, inspect that thing, and report back.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, what’s that going to achieve?”
“Dunno, Sarge.”
“It would be far easier, far more practical, if they just inspected it for themselves.”
“Right.”
“Cut out the middleman, so to speak.”
“Exactly.”
“But no, we’ve got to go out there, in the full sun, and inspect it. Madness!”
“Quite.”
But orders were given and followed, an inspection carried out, and a report made. This was then followed by further discussions, in private, by the top brass.
“I told the brass what we found. Wooden construction, well made.”
“Right.”
“They wanted measurements more precise than the ‘bloody massive’ I gave them.”
“Did they?”
“Oh yes! So we gave them our estimates, guesses really. No one challenged us.”
“Lucky, really.”
“They all seemed more interested in retelling old stories of former victories.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, there they were, moving lunch things around the table and talking tactics.”
“Oh.”
The dialogue tailed off, and both men immersed themselves in their private thoughts. By late afternoon, the sun had arced sufficiently to allow the shadow of the citadel to cast shade on the men guarding the walls. Their reflections continued.
“It doesn’t seem to have any purpose. It’s just standing there, outside the gate.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
“But what I want to know is, what’s it for, and what are we going to do with it?”
“No idea.”
“The top brass, who reckon they are so bloody clever, think it’s a gift of some sort.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. Bit of an odd gift, though, if you ask me.”
“Who’s it for?”
“Her, of course, who else? Her high and bloody mighty ladyship, that’s who.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Thinks that just because she’s so beautiful, she can get whatever she wants.”
“The beautiful ones always do.”
“I know the men lust after her, Corporal, but remember she’s way out of our league.”
“Our league, right you are, sir.”
Both men spent a few private moments revisiting their own thoughts and feelings concerning her ladyship. As they considered her beauty from all angles, smirks grew on their faces, and warm feelings developed within. It soon became apparent that, for both their sakes, a change in topic was needed quickly.
“I got the impression, from what I overheard, that they’re going to try and move it.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I think I heard one of the top brass talk about bringing it into the camp.”
“Really?”
“Of course, they won’t move it themselves, will they, not personally like?”
“No?”
“Oh no, it’ll be the likes of us what’ll have to move it. Lots of ropes and heaving.”
“Probably.”
“Bloody stupid idea, if you ask me—which they didn’t, of course, they never do.”
“No.”
“I mean, they know nothing about this thing.”
“Nothing.”
“It could be anything for all they know, but they insist it’s a gift. What arrogance!”
“Yes.”
The Corporal remained patiently silent as the Sergeant replayed various scenarios across the scarred battlefield of his mind.
“What if, right, what if it’s a trap of some sort?”
“Could be, s’pose.”
“We’d look a bunch of Charlies if we bring it in the fort and something goes wrong.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
“And all because of her bloody ladyship.”
“Mmm.”
“History would think of us as a really stupid shower.”
“True.”
“The only way I can see, though, for this to be a trap, is if there are soldiers inside.”
“Go on.”
“But when I inspected it earlier, I couldn’t see any way in or way out.”
“Really?”
“I think there was, maybe, a window or door in its head. Didn’t inspect it though.”
“No? Why not?”
“Well, stands to reason, my mum told me never to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Oh.”
(First published in ‘Witcraft’, on 17 December 2024.)
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AUTHOR BIO:
Michael Smith is a British writer, based in Europe. In the past year, in addition to Fabula Argentea, his fiction has appeared in several online literary journals. He has self-published Gruseltal (a humorous novel), two collections of short stories, Fonts and ‘Songs’, and is about to publish his second novel, Dinner Time, all available from online bookstores.
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “The Gift”:
Author Michael Smith gave us this well-done, all-dialogue, imagined account of two soldiers of Troy contemplating the legendary Trojan Horse. (The Trojan Horse, by the way, was a myth—or at best a highly exaggerated siege tactic—not a real thing.)
“The Gift” is an amusing piece made more so by the ending cliché and by concealing until the end what the two soldiers are really looking at.
This piece exemplifies what we look for in the pieces we publish, particularly in flash fiction: the different and the unexpected. While the story of the Trojan Horse is certainly not a different one, the inventive presentation here is.