A Breakfast of Chicken
She yelled when she saw me coming. I suppose I should not have been surprised, given that if I were returning this night, it meant death was following close behind me. She flung her arms around me, heedless of the armor that separated us. There had been little optimism in her eyes when I left, and there was none now. They were deader than those of the chicken she had just strangled, which hung limp in one hand. Even if eggs were the normal fare for our breakfast, which would be happening shortly after this time under normal circumstances, she wanted our final meal to be special and, if nothing else, the spices she had been saving would be wasted in the burning that was soon to consume us.
"Is it over?"
"It will be soon." I could not stand the idea of dying apart from her. It had been a long night; the fear of unknowing was pervasive. With knowledge comes certainty, but when you spend countless hours with only the muted pulse of drums beyond your sight ringing in your ears, your only knowledge is fear, and the only check on it is your fear that, when those around you gather in taverns twenty years hence and recall this night, they will spit derision on the name of him who bolted. The knowledge that you will die, and the certainty that there will be no gathering twenty years or even twenty days later, is thus quite liberating. I had stopped shaking, and a macabre calm overcame me. I waited a few minutes to make certain this new sensation was not temporary, and then stepped away from the line on the excuse of taking a piss and simply never came back. She was more important to me than the possibility, which I thought remote, that, staying with my unit, I might take a few of the enemy down with me.
When I saw that her hopelessness matched mine, our course of action was set. One last tumble, for old times sake, while the bird cooked, followed by a last meal and a carefully applied knife. We would die as we had lived, on our own terms. I did not regret that I had never married my chicken raiser's daughter; it would have only made this more difficult.
We walked inside, leaving the other birds to enjoy their last sleep. She began getting the chicken ready, with a smooth haste that only came from having done this all her life. While she prepared it, I cast off my armor. There was an undeniably perverse pleasure in violating every regulation regarding the proper care of the equipment and throwing it aside without regard for the dints I would make and joints I would loosen. None of it mattered anymore.
Once the meat was over the fire, she led me into the bedroom. There was no foreplay. The desperation of our situation made us excessively needful, and neither of us had any mind to be gentle, as was our mutual preference. It occurred to me that we might have been happier dying before we parted, but I lacked the foresight to bring the knife.
We were still together when something made us stop. A terrible moment of silence and fear cut through the city, permeating every stone and shattering the illusory mortar of safety that the walls provided. Even as the noises of distant fighting returned to our ears, neither of us moved except for our furiously beating hearts and rapid breathing, both of which were now attributable to a different cause than they had been the minute before. We were both terrified beyond anything either of us had experienced, and the carnal lust lay completely forgotten between us as we unconsciously submitted to wide-eyed panic.
It was fortunate that neither of us had undressed completely, because we quickly scrambled for a few most treasured possessions, preparing to join the frightened masses milling through the street. The dam that had held back our fear was breached, and we all heeded the primeval call to 'flee, flee for our lives,' even though there was no place to flee to.
We had just stepped through the door when a new voice cut through the chaos around us. Ostoher was greeting the dawn. I shook my head to clear the confused thoughts. Dawn? No, this night was unnatural, and would bring no dawn to our living eyes. But I looked all the same.
There the old rooster stood, giving the same lusty crow that had hailed every other dawn in his life. And, like every other dawn, there were the rays of the sun to which he was responding. But there was something odd in his voice. It was strength, it was life, it was love, it was… hope.
I dashed back inside. I donned my armor in haste, this time disregarding procedure not out of despair but because every minute I took was one more minute that I was away from my role in liberating the city. When I came back out, she was standing still, as though in shock, but a thin, girlish grin had formed on her face as she listened. I heard it too: the notes of horns echoing off the mountain. They permeate my being, and make me a new man. For the first time since I began serving the Steward, I understand how it feels to hope. I see a future laid out before me.
I turn to her, trying to pour all the love I feel into a glance, an embrace, and a kiss. "When I come back, will you marry me?" She breaks into the most genuine smile I have ever had the honor to witness. "You do not know how long I have wished for you to ask. With all my heart." She kisses me lightly, and sends me forth to do my duty.
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March 17
I identified him today, in the fourth row they took me past. They gave me a bag with the personal possessions he had, but I cannot open it alone. All the dead have been stripped of everything save their undergarments; that which belongs to the army must be passed on to those who continue to fight. They let me see his body. He had taken a grim wound through his thigh and probably bled to death. They speculated that his cuisse (the technical term for the part of armor covering the leg between the knee and the hip, they had patiently explained to me) had not been attached properly. Worse looking, though probably sustained after the fatal wound, was his bicep, most of which was missing. As near as they could guess, an orc had decided to take a quick bite during the battle. Based on the apparently profuse bleeding from that wound, they believed he had still been alive when the orc visited him. I have spent all day trying to purge that horrible image from my head, so far without success. When I got home, I threw the chicken that I had been saving to welcome him back to the dogs, and then spent all afternoon sitting, working up the energy to make this entry. I anticipate another night with little sleep.
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Author's Notes: So I'm back, after a three-month hiatus. Several plotbunnies have bitten, but this is the first to draw enough blood to bring it to completion. Hopefully I'll be able to do more over the summer, and maybe something humorous or at least less depressing. Ostoher is named after the seventh king of Gondor, who rebuilt Minas Anor and spent his summers there. Reviews are always appreciated.