They gathered in their usual bar, and the bartender tried his best to ignore them. It wasn’t difficult; they didn’t make much noise. The hard part was trying to ignore him. He didn’t say anything, even to his three compatriots. He just sat there in his pale robes, a flicker of a lit smoke in an unseen hand. You could feel his eyes on you, though. It gave the bartender the creeps, though he didn’t dare say it out loud, not to him.
The other three were quieter than usual. Clancy clutched his ragged old uniform about him and stared into his drink. “Well,” he said, “Now what?”
“Why do you care?” the man next to him said bitterly. He twisted a golden circlet over and over again in his hands. “For you it would’ve been just another conflict, but for me… I was on the verge. I would’ve won.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Clancy said. “Well, the fight’s off anyway. So what now?”
“Go start another, of course,” the third member of their group said. She was perhaps the most cheery. “Even if the big one’s on hold, there’s lots of lovely little ones still going. Oh, look!” Her phone buzzed as if on cue. “Over in Muldavia they’re short on grain supplies, and you know that’ll start something!”
“Maybe,” Clancy said. “Funny, I thought they had a good harvest this year.”
"They did.” She smiled into her dry martini. “They did.”
Clancy grunted. He knew what that smile meant. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I want to start in on another fight just yet. I’ve been in this a long time-”
“So’ve we!” the man holding the golden circlet cut in angrily. “I rode with Septimius Severus when he sacked Ctesiphon!”
“I won’t be so crude as to name names,” the woman with the (very dry) martini said, “but of course I was there when the first farmers ran short of seed, and the first villages fell empty, you know. I was.”
A sudden chill swept through the bar. The figure in the corner rose. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
“Okay, okay,” Clancy said, raising his hands. “Settle down, big guy. We know you were there first. We’re not challenging.” He glared at his friends. “Are we? Mina?”
The woman with the (impossibly dry) martini rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course not. As if I’d ever.”
“Nick?”
The man with the circlet hesitated.
“Nick,” Clancy said quietly.
“Fine,” he said. “We’re not.”
“There,” Clancy said, turning back to face the figure in the corner. “Satisfied?”
The corner was empty.
Clancy shrugged, picked up the sword that been laying against his stool, and slung it across his back. “Figures. Well, see you.”
He rose and strode out of the bar without waiting for them to reply. His own dull red horse stood patiently in the cold alongside the other two, one white, one black. The fourth horse, as he expected, was already gone. Only the burnt-out end of the smoke remained, a faint hint of ash lingering in the night.
I was inspired by this after a chance reading of Revelation 6. You might say it’s in the same universe as The Good Guys.
For your inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaXznfBPbyM
The four horsemen are fun to write about.