My most loyal friends—
My eyes turn back, my heart aghast—
A true king defends
His people – holds fast
The rearguard in flight—
A king must be the last
To break from the fight
In desperate retreat,
For his is the plan, his the oversight,
His success or defeat—
But here I stand, outside a fallen gate,
While inside, bravest warriors entreat
And bid me run – and then a spate
Of arrows, and many speak no more.
One Centaur, biding fate,
Says nothing, only bows his head, before
He turns, with courage burning in his eyes,
To face the slaughter on the courtyard floor—
"Peter – the bridge!" Caspian cries.
Heartsick, I spur on after my allies;
Behind me, Narnia dies.
This will hopefully eventually be worked into a longer narrative poem encompassing the entire castle raid, but this moment is what truly inspired me – although I may have issues with the invention of the scene as a whole, there's no denying the pain in Peter's eyes as he is forced to abandon his friends and followers after the catastrophic attack.
The poem is based in dochmiac meter, which is associated mainly with classical Greek tragedy and "extreme agitation or distress" (thanks, Wikipedia). I liked the idea of using such a heavy, harrowing meter for the heartbreaking moment when Peter looks back at his trapped army. However, as even awkward, five-syllable lines catch a certain rhythm when there's enough of them in a row, I haphazardly interspersed them with lines of random lengths. Don't try to make comfortable metrical sense of it; there is deliberately none.
Oh, and there's a quote from King Lune of Archenland in there, too: "For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land."