The old man always limped, as did he now limp down the road following his compatriots. He frowned in a sad melancholy way. Being a new and unknown soldier to this company, curiosity had drawn one of them to earlier ask him about his story...
She was young, already a leader, quick of both feet and wit, with an inner fire that burned like the brightest star.
He thought, 'My story, what could I tell her???'
'What could I tell her... that would not make her spirit ache and prematurely old, that would not force burning tears to mar her young life'
There was the pain, it haunted him. His constant companion of the proceeding decades. It nearly consumed him at times.
There were his sorrowful deep regrets. His heartaches of lost opportunities and missed choices that would have made better his now dismal existence. His what if's that distracted him from the now.
There was the few remaining memories, the unforgotten past. His ancient history was a fortress locked away since his terrible head injury of youth. He knew the sound a dying horse or a man makes as it's life spills into the battlefield, so too of a thousand men and a company of cavalry, he knew the inner coldness that grows when you have many times followed the order for war or given the drummed signal to begin in war, to be covered in the blood of men whom fought only for the right to live another day and a hot meal from the chow line they shuffled down without cheer or words to explain the horrifying events experienced. The memories he cherished were too few and the memories indescribable far too many.
There were his troubling fears of no future existence. His deep seated desires to finally be rid of the crippling pain, yet over burdened with the foreboding wish to avoid the final empty and hollow end inside the wall that he knew was near to come. The nothing, scared him more than the worst pains.
There was the pain, it haunted him. His constant companion of the proceeding decades. It consumed him at times.
'What could he tell her of his life?'
The old man stumbled in his plodding march, his outdated armor a heavy burden and contrast to those of the youthful company.
He pulls out his flute to play a ancient song with a sad melody about a young man, a vigilante whom murdered war raiders that had burned a village's wheat stores before winter and stolen the town's daughters to be slaves. He is to be hung from a bridge post. A drum sounds. The young man feels the taut hangman's line snap as he falls. He swims through the river as arrows rain about him. The rough current carries him quickly away from the pursuers, but is itself a danger. At last dragging his sodden body from the watery grip, he runs as a man newly born with his endurance and strength unequaled. For days he runs to familiar and more friendly lands. This finally sees him return in glory, to run across lush fields of his own homestead. His wife and children await him on the front porch. He runs and she rushes forward. He runs as his lungs fill with joyful air overflowing, she runs arms outstretched weeping for his return. He runs and reaches for at last to touch his love again... As the plank falls into the rushing river below, he dangles, kicking as if running for his final moments. With little word those foreign soldiers that captured him turn and march down the road toward dinner.
