To watch a sunset is to see death in all its beauty.
Cradled between two proud mountain ranges, cold and rocky, with a crown of white snow, there was a valley of serene beauty. In the orange haze of evening light, projected by the fiery mass of the setting sun that glowed in the distance, half sunken beneath the earth, it seemed to shine gold. The valley had two forests, running the border of each of the mountain ranges like a blanket at their feet, and lying in between them was a smooth and shimmering field of tall grass. The blades grew to a man's height, and swayed in sedated step with the tug of the breeze. In the centre of the field there was an obelisk that did not suit its surroundings—a man. He was buried below his shoulders by the dancing grass, his loose tunic flapping along with it, staring at the sunset. He seemed perfectly at ease.
He had chiseled, pointed features that gave him a hard sort of look. A mane of tangled brown hair fell to his shoulders, and his eyes, glinting in the sunlight, were a deep blue. He didn't appear to be troubled by the cold that was beating against him, signaling the evening's arrival, or by the grass that whipped his face playfully. He just stood there, transfixed, for what might have been hours, or perhaps mere minutes. Time seemed frozen at this junction of man and his maker.
Twilight had approached before his trance was broken. Turning towards the one of the forests, he began fighting his way through the sea of grass. When he finally escaped the thicket he found himself at a wall of solid bark—the trees were equally as overgrown as the grass. They stretched high into the sky, and seemed to offer entrance to a cave rather than a forest, for he could see for only a few dozen feet inside before there was only darkness. He glanced back at the valley, its golden rays beckoning him to stay, but turned resolutely to the forest and began to make his way in.
His environment changed starkly. Within a few minutes the sun appeared only in thin rays which penetrated the thick canopy above, otherwise everything was now painted in a shade of dim blue that allowed him only the barest view of his way forward. His boots crunched against the matte of twigs and dead leaves that littered the ground, and he negotiated the shrubs and tree stumps that littered his path with a familiar ease. The blue sheen seemed to become denser the further he went, until it looked as though he were walking in a watercolour.
Without warning the trees parted and he found himself in a large clearing—perfectly circular, and unnaturally free of foliage. In the centre of it was what looked like a large, moss-covered boulder. It took a moment for the wisp of steam brewing from its summit to become noticeable, along with the hollow slits dotted around its surface, and round outline carved into its face with a wooden slab pressed into it that was unmistakably a door. He walked to it, and it swung obligingly forward as he pushed it open and crossed the threshold.
The structure, on the inside, revealed itself to be a kind of hut. The half-circular room in which he found himself seemed to have been crudely built from the materials of the forest itself. The walls resembled a mixture of mud and rock, while the floor was simply slabs of stone pressed together. The roof was low, looming only a couple of feet above the man's head, and the rafters were worn and rotted. There was a small hole indented in the wall next to the door, within which a fire was crackling, and which provided the only light outside from two small windows on either side of the room.
The furniture, too, appeared to have been handmade from the forest wood itself, from the rustic chairs clustered around the fire to the long table pushed into a corner. The only things that gave the place any signs of life were the mish-mash of clothes, blasters, and tools that had been variously strewn about the place.
His boots clicked audibly as he walked across the cold stone over to the opposite wall, where a piece of tapestry hung to guard a second threshold. Ducking under it, he found himself facing a woman, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to an open fire, over which a spit was supporting a large iron pot. The woman was peeling vegetables with a large knife, and behind her was a counter made of smooth stone, on top of which were several baskets filled with food. She didn't look up as he entered.
"Hi," she said in a disinterested voice.
"Hey," he replied.
The man walked past her to the counter, where he examined one of the vegetables before taking a bite. He chewed in silence for a few moments, looking out of the only window in the room, from which descended a lonely ray of blue light. The forest outside already seemed darker than when he had left it.
"Where is everyone?" asked the man.
"Mira is at the village getting supplies I think. Rhoke and Tin are hunting. How was your walk?"
"Fine," he said, taking another bite. "It was a walk."
More silence.
"Crectus," she said eventually, with a trace of exasperation, "how long are you going to keep this up for?"
She set down her knife and looked at him. Her face was oval-shaped, plain, but like the man's had that a firm quality about it. She was younger, perhaps thirty, but there was a subtle look of weariness in her almond eyes that seemed to age her beyond her years. They were visibly crinkled at the edges, her lips were thin and pale, and amongst her black hair there could be picked out a few strands that were turning grey.
"Keep up what?" Crectus asked, still gazing out the window.
"This...lethargic thing you've been doing. For weeks it's like you haven't even been here. All you've done is sit by the fire, or go for walks or...look at old holovids."
Crectus substituted another bite for a response.
"Are going to talk to me?" she asked.
"I'm just thinking," he said.
"About what?"
"Life, the future. A lot of things."
"Do you...want to talk about it?" she asked, though she didn't sound like she very much wanted to.
He turned to look at her, studying her face for a few moments.
"You look tired. I've never realised how tired you look. I must seem worse," he said, smiling.
She returned a weak smile, but her eyes betrayed concern.
"Have you ever thought what this does to us?" he asked.
"What what does to us?"
"The memories of all of it. The failures, the guilt."
She blinked at him.
"Crectus, it's been...twelve years."
"It hasn't been for me."
He tossed the remains of his vegetable through the window and walked back towards the tapestry, pausing for a moment to rest his hand on her shoulder, before he ducked into the other room. The fire crackled benignly as the steam from the pot began to curdle.
Darkness came quickly. When it arrived its grip was engulfing, swallowing the hut and forest whole. Outside the windows the blackness was such that it looked as they were untethered from the earth, floating in space. The only indication of their temporal bindings was the gentle whistling of the wind and the rattling of the leaves which protested it. The wind grew to a howl as the night went on, sending leaves flying into the hut, so that the shutters had to be closed.
Darkness found Crectus ensconced in one of the high-backed chairs by the fire, which he had moved so close that the flames licked his boots. He was hunched over, his hands clasped together in his lap and their tips touching, staring at the burning logs with an intensity that was incongruous with his peaceful disposition.
In the sharp relief of the fire light, the features of his face could be seen in complete detail. They were like tangible memories; the long scar that ran across his forehead; the misshapen cheekbone that looked as if it had been broken and crudely rebuilt; the leather-like quality of his skin itself. His long brown hair, which had flowed gracefully in the field, now looked wispy and frayed. And his eyes, with their piercing blue, seemed to droop—as if they hadn't tasted sleep in years.
The door was suddenly thrown open. A pair of figures stormed in, ushering in with them an explosion of noise and force. The torrent of the wind thrashed about the room, sending sparks flying from the firepit and all manner of debris from the forest hurling across the floor. Together the two figures struggled against the current to shut the door again, and slammed down its wooden latch.
Silence settled again.
It seemed to take them a few minutes to recover from the assault, but slowly they drew down their hoods, and began to remove twigs from their tangled hair. They were two men, though one looked considerably older than the other. The first was tall, several inches taller than Crectus, and had a far more hulking physique. Broad chested, with hair even longer and more unkempt, he had the immediate impression of a soldier. His face was well-sculpted, proud-looking, with a small goatee and shared that same hard, unforgiving air about that everyone in the hut seemed to possess.
His companion, the boy, could have been no more than fifteen. He, unlike the others, seemed to have been untouched by whatever force had shaped the other three. His face bespoke innocence, had no scars or markings adorning it, but for a boy, still seemed to carry himself with a man's confidence.
The two began to strip their belongings, discarding their long shawls, satchels, and long blasters that had been slung across their back. Crectus, who had merely cocked his head towards the door in acknowledgement of the intruders, now returned to contemplating his fire. At the same time the woman stepped through tapestry, her arms folded defensively.
"Well?" she asked apprehensively.
"Nothing," the taller of the two men said without looking up, hurling his satchel at the floor as if it had offended him. "Absolutely nothing."
She hung her head over her arms as they continued to extricate themselves from the remains of their journey.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, perhaps more to herself as it was almost a whisper.
"Figure it out," said the man simply, throwing his balled up clothes into a corner and pulling up one of the chairs nearest to him. It let out a groan as he sunk into it, staring at the floor, and looking utterly expressionless.
"How?" said the woman, looking up now and walking over to him. "They won't honour clan rights. How will we get supplies? How will we eat?"
"We'll find more game."
"There isn't any!" she whined, sounding close to tears. "Haven't we realised that by now?"
"We can farm," he said, and half-smirked at the floor. "We can find a patch outside the forest where there's more sunlight and—"
"And grow what, vegetables? We'd never make it a ye—."
"I'm am not," he interjected. "We—we are not going to those damned cowards and asking for help." He said, sounding angry now. "I'd rather starve in peace than be damned in shame."
"We?" she asked. "Are you sure starving is what all of us want?" Her eyes flicked for a moment to the boy.
The man looked over at him. He had been quietly leaning against the wall by the door, looking at the fire and seeming not to be paying attention to their conversation.
"We'll find another way."
"No, we won't," said a voice. Crectus' voice seemed to come from the chair itself, for he was completely hidden behind it. Silence fell on the room.
"Well, vod," began the man, "what do you suggest we do?"
Only the wind replied as it moaned against the shutters.
"The pacifists," said the chair after a moment, "are cowards. But do you really think this is honourable? If we starve because the game has dried up, what exactly would we have died for?"
"Tradition," the man retorted without pause. "For your brothers who gave their lives for tradition, so that you can sit in that chair and decide whether or not you want to follow that same tradition in leisure. Or would you say that's how you define real honour?"
The crackles of the fire seemed to be magnified so that it was the only thing one could hear in the room. The woman looked tense, and her eyes kept revolving from the chair to the man. The man was staring at the back of Crectus' chair, as if he expected it to move.
"You know," said the man slowly, "I think you never came back from the war."
Crectus said nothing.
"You left some part of yourself on Concord, the better part of you. You've never been the same since."
"Rohke, please," said the woman in a quiet voice. She put her hand on the man's shoulder as if to quiet him, but he seemed to be unaware of it.
"What happened to you?" Rohke said as if in awe, ignoring her pleas. "You were once a man, you were a warrior, you led men into battle. Now look at you. Pathetic. You've become nothing but a shadow of yourself, wasting away by that fire."
Still the chair remained resolute.
"Haven't you anything to say for yourself?"
Crectus, slowly, got up. His head and torso, in the wake of the firelight, looked like black silhouettes. When he turned to face the other three his face was shadowy and could barely be discerned, giving him an ominous appearance. His shadows stretched to the opposite wall.
"I've decided to leave," he said.
"Leave?" Rohke queried, looking directly into his eyes. "What do you mean 'leave'?"
"I've been offered a job," Crectus said, returning the stare. "It's an off-world job. I can't tell you about it because I've sworn not to, but I've decided to accept it."
Wind whispered through the shutters. There was a long pause.
"How long have you known about this?" asked the woman, who seemed uncertain how to react. Her face seemed frozen, unable to choose an emotion. The boy's face was similar. He seemed to be on the brink of saying something but unable to bring himself to do so.
"A few weeks now. I've been tossing it around in my mind and didn't know how to tell you."
No one said anything.
"I'm sorry," he added.
"Filth," Rohke spat suddenly. He seemed to have recovered sfrom his stupor. His eyes were wild, his face contorted into livid complexions. "You filth! Coward! How dare you," his nostrils flared and his eyes danced around Crectus, seeming to search for the words that he could not find.
"How dare you!" he yelled again. "After all the sacrifice, after—everything, you think you can just walk away, disgrace your heritage!"
He suddenly got to his feet, knocking the chair over, his hand shot for his belt.
"No!" screamed the woman.
All three reacted instantaneously. The woman lunged for the Rohke's wrist and caught it just as his hands had touched the butt of his blaster. Crectus was aiming his own steadily at Rohke's chest. For a second they all stared at one another, frozen, unsure of who would move first.
"Stop!" yelled the boy, who ran in between the trio and held his arms aloft as if to keep them apart. "Papa, put down the blaster."
Rohke did not move.
"Please."
The man was still breathing heavily. Slowly he slacked his arm and moved his hand away from the pistol. The woman released her grip. Crectus waited for a few moments before lowering his blaster and restoring it. Both men continued to eye the another appraisingly, like wolves encircling each other. The woman and boy were rooted to the spot, uncertain of what to do.
Rohke walked slowly to where Crectus stood, stopping just short of being able to touch him.
"Go then," he said. "You're as weak as she was."
What happened next unfolded so quickly it appeared as a single blur. At these words Crectus, like a sprung trap, snapped his hand at the man's neck, but it was caught and he was thrown the floor, his jaw hitting the stone with a crunch and a smack. Instinctively he gripped Rohke's arm back and forced him down, elbowing his stomach as he did and pouncing on top of him. He drew a dagger seemingly from nowhere as he did so and pinned it against Rohke's throat, just as his hands had closed on Crectus' own neck.
A stream of blood ran down Rohke's throat where the dagger was grazing it, and a pool of blood was gathering in Crectus' mouth from where it had smacked the stone floor. Rohke's hands were still on his throat, but had not closed upon it, his eyes looking down at the thin blade. Each face was contorted with hatred.
"Mention her...again," panted Crectus. He declined to finish the threat. There was a vein pulsing in Rohke's temple and his teeth barred as he seemed to consider his options, but at last he released his grip. Crectus withdrew the blade and pushed himself off the floor, coughing, and slipped the dagger into his boot. He looked back at the other man, kneeling on the floor and also breathing hard.
"Look at me?" Crectus said, running two fingers across his jaw and glancing at his own blood. He spat it out on the floor near Rohke. "Look at yourself, vod. You call me pathetic, and maybe you're right, but you're no different. Clinging to your honour because it's all you have left, wanting to starve to death rather than swallow your pride, you're no different than the Death Watch. Only you won the war, and now you've got to live with it, and make sense of it. Only you can't make sense of it—of any of it."
He turned back to the woman and boy, who looked positively terrified.
"Maybe one day you'll realise that, and you'll leave too, before there's nothing left in you. But I have a feeling it's already too late for that."
He glanced back at Rohke, who was slowly getting back to his feet, and before making his way gradually back to his chair. He lowered himself into it and said nothing more.
The woman, having been temporarily stupefied, walked to the boy and gripped his hand, ushered him out of the room and up a tiny spiralling staircase that had been crammed into the far corner, which whined with each step. Rohke walked to the door without looking back and let it swing open, before slamming it shut behind him. Once more only the crackles of the fire filled the room.
The fire had died to embers. The wind was but a gentle breeze against the shutters now, and Crectus was slouched over in his chair, asleep, when the door groaned open again. A slender figure walked in and shut it, the sound jolting Crectus awake and making him look around. Standing before him he saw a woman, her hair as red as the fluttering embers, wearing a thick travelling cloak and seeming to have been untouched by the storm.
She walked over to the fire and sat in the vacant seat next to Crectus, her eyes slowly becoming more focused on him as she lowered herself.
"What happened to you?" she asked.
Crectus shook his head.
"Rohke?"
He nodded.
She sighed and lowered her satchel by her chair, staring into what was now little more than charcoal.
"I'm leaving," Crectus said abruptly, and she perked up at him. He seemed to have lost the will to be delicate.
"Leaving?" she said, sitting straighter. "What do you mean leaving?"
"There's a job," he said. "It's an off-world job and I said I'd take it."
The familiar silence followed.
"I'm sorry," he added, only this time his face reflected it.
"I understand," she said after a long pause. "This is something you need to do."
He smiled at her, and she gave a little smile back. But there was sadness in her eyes as well as his.
"Thank you," he said, and he rested his hand for a moment on hers. "I'd hoped you would."
"There's nothing left for you here," she said. "Oban would have agreed."
He took a long breath.
"I think Oban would have been disappointed in all of us," he said.
"Why would you say that?"
"Because we've failed. All of us. Me more than the rest."
"You haven't failed. You survived, Crectus. You were honourable."
" 'Honour'," said Crectus with mock formality, looking away from her, towards the ashes of the fire. "I don't think I believe in that anymore."
There was silence for a little while. Crectus seemed lost in his thoughts.
"Where will you go?" she asked eventually, not having taken her eyes off him. They were green, bright, and seemed to twinkle even though there was little light left in the hut.
"Somewhere," he said simply.
"But, why can't you tell me?" she pressed.
"I've promised I wouldn't."
"How illegal is it?"
He grinned.
"It's a government job, probably the most legitimate thing I've done."
"What could the government possibly want with us?"
"The only thing we're good for. Fighting."
"Fighting who?"
"Don't know. It won't be me, I'm just the instructor. One of them at least."
"But, I don't understand. Why does a government hire merc instructors?"
"To train an army."
These words fell slowly, seeming to take several moments to be processed. The woman looked concerned, but seemed to be trying to conceal it. Crectus looked at her.
"You can't talk about this," he said. "I'll be dead as far as anyone knows."
She nodded, but still seemed apprehensive.
"I wish...," she began, but her voice stalled. Crectus met her gaze, and for a while they seemed to speak wordlessly, completing thoughts that words could not reach.
"I should be getting to bed," said Crectus. "The transport leaves with or without me."
She nodded again.
"Just promise you'll be safe," she said.
"I don't think I've ever been safe in my life," he said, and gave a little smile.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. They locked eyes for another moment before she got up quietly from the chair and walked quietly to the staircase, tiptoing above it with a subtle creak with every step. He watched her as she left, and his eyes lingered on the stairs for a little after she was no longer there.
The door crept open under the curtain of the early morning light—a purplish blue that made the clearing resemble a flower, blooming amongst the thick foliage. A man, clad head-to-toe in a suit of shining metallic armour with patches of maroon on the chest, legs, and arms, and a helmet with its distinctive T-shaped visor, stepped onto the dirt. He was hoisting a small sack over his shoulder, and a blaster was dangling over his hip. He didn't glance back as he made his way towards the trees.
By the time he had made it out of the forest and into the field it was bathed in the brilliant yellow of morning light, making his armour glint as he crossed the field. He paused when he reached the middle to watch the rising sun. The polarisation of his visor let him stare directly at its golden rays, climbing higher into the cloudless sky. He could see a flock of birds, silhouetted black pinpricks in the distance, cross over it. He thought, as he turned away and started heading towards the mountains, that perhaps he would miss one thing from Mandalore. For he doubted that wherever he was going—whatever lay for him beyond those mountains—that the sunrise would never again be quite as perfect.