I first published this in 2016 and immediately decided that it would be a long time before I ever wrote another sequel again. Sequels are hard, man. But it was satisfying to bring this story and its characters to a conclusion, however rough around the edges this book was.
Some day, I might return to these characters and tell the story of how they all came together. But in the meantime, this excerpt might be one of my favorite parts of the book.
If you enjoy this excerpt, physical copies of The Arrows of Defiance can be purchased here and e-book copies are available here.
Hours later and the sun was shining, there was not a cloud in the sky, and yet there was hardly a car to be seen on the streets of downtown Madison. The entire city seemed to be drowning in nervous anticipation—the tension only growing since the students had taken over Bascom Hall and thrown the University of Wisconsin into chaos three days earlier.
Some people were venturing out though- most scurrying to their destinations and then back to their homes like frightened rabbits trying to outrun a thunderstorm. But some were attempting to embrace normality, wandering up and down State Street, mixing with the usual motley crew of transients, skateboarders, hipsters, and college kids looking for a bite to eat or a place to flip the boards and practice the latest trick.
A sudden concussive boom shook the sky and people began glancing around, wondering where the thunder was coming from. But then another came. And another. At the far end of State Street, the empty state capitol echoed with the sound of them, the accumulated dust of two decades starting to dance.
Inside the capitol, in the office that had, years ago, belonged to the Senate Majority Leader, on a ratty, dusty old couch that she had shoved against one wall three years earlier, the disheveled form of Mary Elizabeth Ringold, Governor of Wisconsin, sat bolt upright.
Another boom. And another. Ringold, her brown curls askew looked around, trying to gather her thoughts as the dream she had been lost in slipped away from her. She heard the civil defense sirens spring to life and begin to scream in the city outside. She swung her feet over the edge of the couch, pushed herself into a standing position, straightened her clothes, and adjusted her hair as she did so. Another loud boom and she sprang into action, reaching her desk in three easy steps and grabbed for her phone just as it began to ring.
“This is the Governor.”
“Governor—” there was a hiss and a crackle “—under attack! Heavy bombardment by—” The voice faded out again. “What do you want us to do?”
“Who is this? What’s going on?”
“Governo—” The line went dead. Ringold spat out a string of curses as she slammed the phone down and then picked it up again and dialed another number.
“This is the Speaker.”
“Bill, it’s Mary. What’s going on?”
“We’re not sure,” he said. “Our communications with the rest of the state are spotty right now, but from what we can tell the Territories have launched airstrikes against targets all across the state.”
Ringold laughed. “I told him! I told that jackass Miller to be careful, but would he listen? No!”
“Governor,” the Speaker sounded apologetic. “I know it’s somewhat cumbersome, but I need to know what your orders are.”
That brought Ringold up short, her mind racing. “How much are they throwing at us?”
“A lot,” he replied.
“Then have our people secure whatever military hardware they can and hunker down. We’ll ride this out and then decide what to do next.”
“Things are happening fast, Governor,” the Speaker said. “We should start thinking about our next move.”
“I need to think,” she said. “I want updates every half-hour.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. Then he hung up.
Ringold slowly put the phone back in its receiver, thoughts turning over and over in her head. So the Territories had made the first move and, apparently, had done so decisively. War had come again and, as it had been too many times in the past two decades, Wisconsin was in the eye of the storm.
She began to walk, as she always did when she needed to think, out through the half-open door of her office and into the empty Capitol. It had been empty since the very last days of the Great Revolt: the legislature had fled to Platteville before federal forces had surrounded Madison and taken it and even after the ceasefire they had stayed there, refusing to come back until the Federal Council was overthrown and democracy restored.
The Governors, however, had remained in Madison—some living in the empty Capitol building, others eschewing it for more comfortable quarters. Ringold had been all too happy to move in, though. Her husband of nearly two decades had died of a sudden heart attack just months after she started her first term and after that… After that, everything had changed and the job had become her life. She had settled into seclusion, appearing as if by magic in Platteville to sign bills and deliver a State of the State address and then vanishing again.
It was nice, in a way. She had been left alone with her grief at Phil’s death, burying herself in the work and walking with the ghosts of the empty Capitol building. Their children were all grown and had scattered across the country—after the funeral, they had promised to call every week, but weeks had turned into months and they had all gotten busy with their own children and their own lives. She didn’t blame them. She had just kept working and eventually embraced the isolation, the peace, and the quiet.
The problem was, the isolation was starting to make her a little bit crazy. She was on a first-name basis with most of the transients that hung out in Capitol Square now and had spent the better part of a week vacuuming the Assembly chambers and clambered up behind the Speaker’s chair to dust off Old Abe, still sitting on his perch. It was time to get out more, she knew. She didn’t know if she cared enough about the job to want to run for re-election, but the past three years had turned her into the incredible vanishing governor that nobody ever saw. She was becoming the slightly demented grandmother that you only ever saw at Thanksgiving or Christmas and that, she sighed, that was a problem of her own making.
As she walked out into the main rotunda, her steps echoing throughout the building, she looked down to the floor below, marveling at the size and the scope of the building, a morass of lines, curves, buttresses, and stairs that had somehow come together to produce an elegant and beautiful, if somewhat dusty, state capitol. She heard the sirens outside continue to wail and the bombardment kept echoing like a constant rumble of thunder, so she kept walking.
Thoughts were turning over and over in her head, plans fusing, dissolving, and swirling around, again and again. Miller had overplayed his hand and had underestimated the resolve of the Territories and now they were at war. Again. She shook her head and hissed in irritation. Damn him. Damn them all. But she had to be careful now, despite her burning desire to be anything but careful. She wished she could be reckless. She wished she could rail against the stupidity of the Federal Council and declare herself and her state an ally of the Territories and join them in the fight.
However, Wisconsin still nursed old wounds and scars just beneath the surface. The years after the Great Revolt had not been kind to the state. A long-running insurgency had erupted in the north of the state that had taken years to be put down. Eventually, the Federal Council had suspended the state constitution, imposed a three-year military occupation, and starved the insurgents out. People still remembered. She still remembered. The widespread hunger and fear stalking the streets. Neighbors had turned on each other and old grudges had been used by many to settle scores in the worst way possible—informing Homeland Security.
It had taken years for the state to recover, but what had they sacrificed for their recovery? No one talked about those grim and desperate years. People erased them. They didn’t exist. They were never spoken of. And they had cleared the rubble, rebuilt their lives, enjoying a period of prolonged economic growth for the first time in decades.
She found herself at the southwestern entrance to the Capitol, looking out over the barren grounds, so unkempt and ragged, listening to the ceaseless wail of the sirens and distant sounds of explosions echoing through the city. There, in the distance at the head of the steps leading up toward the Capitol was the statue, Forward, her arm raised skyward, staring defiantly into the west.
She blinked as a thought came to her. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She could do that. It hadn’t been done in over two decades, but it was her right as governor. She took her phone out of her pocket and dialed the Speaker.
“This is the Speaker,” Bill said.
“Mr. Speaker, I’m calling a session.”
“Um, Governor, we’re already in session, if you wanted to come down to Platteville to address the legislature—”
“I’m invoking Clause Five.”
There was a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. “Governor, I—”
“Mr. Speaker, Clause Five affords me the right to summon the legislature back to Madison under extraordinary circumstances and in times of emergency, and these more than fit the bill.”
“Ma’am I—”
“I’ll expect you all here at 11 a.m. sharp, Thursday morning,” she said. “You’ll forgive me the delay, but I need to do some dusting.” And with that, she hung up. She smiled as she slipped the phone back into her pocket. She had made a decision. It was done. Her smile grew and became very unpleasant indeed at the thought of the consternation she was going to cause. Calling the first joint session in Madison in over two decades would get the Federal Council’s undivided attention, and what she might say would undoubtedly make them very nervous indeed.