The Sound of A Slipping Sword, Part 2: Enduring Infinity
You did not expect it. You expected to face eternity, to see the Saints or… see what happens after all of this. Instead, you're faced with continued life, with some unknown infinity before you. For every second held an infinite number of moments, and so every breath was yet another endless moment, or so one philosopher had once claimed.
It had seemed absurd until you'd been in battle. Then all at once some years ago, it made sense, and you had gone back and seen: yes, he had been a soldier. He had been in a war, long ago.
Your war will continue, and you can hear people whisper now every time you enter a room. You've built up expectations. Even more stunningly, somehow you are alive.
You left everything in that battle just to hold long enough. You killed a Church Hussar in single combat, albeit by trickery. And you saw how little mercy Cazarosta had, even to himself. It should not be a surprise, but… your fury and outrage were not feigned.
"Well then, Lieutenant Castleton. We should best prepare for their next attack."
He would have tried to pile the bodies to hold out long enough to make killing you all a work of two minutes rather than one. Almost all of your anger is at the absurdity of pushing himself, of pushing you, but a little bit of it is--what?
You think you'd have rather gathered up what you could and stayed with him for whatever fleeting seconds remained.
Yet the next night you sleep and dream, and what you dream of is the furious words.
"Are you out of your mind?" you ask, vision blackening and swaying.
He would have simply looked at you.
Then, what? With what tiny fraction of strength left you would have said. "Is there anywhere to retreat within the fort?" Sway. Sway. "We can… grab the Hussar's weapons, something to hold us, and drag the wounded back. Rubble. There has to be rubble."
"A solid suggestion," Cazarosta might have said, grudgingly, or perhaps he would have scoffed and assumed that it was cowardice and then you would have, what?
You know you cannot abandon him, but you know--in reality, if not in this dream--that you would have passed out before you could do much more. But perhaps you could have passed on the orders.
You don't know. Even in your dream, even in your nightmare, it is a cold, miserable thing. And you don't have time to tell him… tell him…
About the. Oh! About the choice you gave him and…
***
You woke, exhausted and in a sweat. You have your men to see, what remains of them. They are not enough to fill more than half of the roster. Four left. Twelve were standing at the end, and, you're told, ten more pulled through--but four of those ten will never fight again, and three of those ten will probably not be active until the fall.
They gave everything for you, you gave everything for King, Regiment, Country, and Cazarosta, and the last is quite the heresy, by the Saints.
But he was on that list: not first, but was this a properly ordered list? Was Country above Regiment? You are not thinking clearly. You have not thought clearly in two days.
You know what you need. You need rest, and planning, you need to think and you need to read something. You need poetry and conversation. You need a chance to figure out Elson, one you will never get.
But you also need Cazarosta. You need to see him, not just hear that his eye was recovered, that his face was marked but his soul no doubt the same as it has ever been. He has risen further than he thought he would.
"However, if the Saints wish me to give my life for their plan, this would seem a perfect time: No captain would sell their commission to a Deathborn so I may advance no further in rank."
This time you do not find him in prayer. He is in his room, and you remember the last time you shared a room. He was sixteen, and you were eighteen, and it is baffling to know that you are both young men and already risen so far and so fast. He does not feel younger than you or anyone else, truly he does not.
You do not flinch away from the scars. He earned them. It was--though here lies the crux of your disagreements--his choices that brought him further than he could ever hope.
"Sir Cazarosta," you say, happy to be able to say that, "Captain. I am glad to see your eye was saved."
Cazarosta nodded. "Sir Castellon. Captain." A moment's consideration. The same regard, you feel, reflected back more quietly. "Our purpose is not yet brought to its end, the Saints yet have need--"
"Need for the sabres," you say, interrupting him.
He looks. Surprised.
And surprised at his surprise. It is faint and fleeting. "You remember."
"Cazarosta, I value heavily everything you say." He went almost blank at that. Almost. "Of course, I remember. I was thinking of it when I made my stand."
He inclined his head, and a part of him seems aware that you have the floor. That he has said his piece before, and that this perhaps is a return volley. In war he would never give the enemy the honor of being able to return fire, but this is not war and you are not his enemy.
"I gave them a choice, those who stood after we had run out of almost all our ammunition. A few left, to face whatever desertion would bring them rather than certain death. The others stood, and by their choice they were strengthened in their purpose. They were forged anew. And I believe it was a choice. You can say that they cannot help how they were made, that they are…"
You open your hands. You invite his scorn.
Instead, you get a soft, intense answer.
"A cannonball in flight. They cannot choose not to impact the ground, now that they are in the air."
"Yet you called it an illusion, and what I saw was no illusion: they fought better, and survived better because they had had the ability to leave revealed to them. They would not have done as well, I might not have survived if I simply ordered them with a hard word to stay and die or I'd kill them myself."
You could never do that. Even the ones who deserted, you almost wish you could save. But you cannot. Even allowing them to escape like this was something not to be focused on when it is time for reports to be written.
"No," you say. "I think that our choices matter, else how would the Saints judge us worthy or unworthy? I chose to be where I am… and I chose to stand by you." A pause. "Just as I chose to talk to you that night when you told me what you thought."
When you enchanted me in some strange grim fashion. Your vision, you do not say, was nothing I'd ever fully agree with but the quiet intensity that you delivered it needed an answer. "I know this is not… a philosophical response. But a few left, and most stayed, and it felt as if that was an answer to what you said, Cazarosta. An answer I would not have hit upon if it were not for you."
You cannot express the strange gratitude you feel towards him.
He considers it and nods. It is not a nod of agreement on your point, nor is it even--you think--an attempt to consider what you were saying and test it out. No, it is something all the sweeter, all the better.
It is all you ever truly wanted out of this conversation.
it is a nod of understanding. He understood why you thought as you did. That you had not come to it from books or prejudice or sheer blind optimism of the most absurd sort, but through practical means, through testing it.
You are a man of letters, an intelligent warrior, as best as you can be. You want to be understood and think that of all the things you can try to grant Cazarosta, all the things you would die to try to grant him, Understanding is one of the ones you are most capable of.
And you feel this, at least, returned.
"I have heard about your actions. They were well done, and played an important role in our victory."
I would have died without them.
It is not a thank you. But do you think to expect one? Do you understand him well enough to know…
Know that he has lived his entire life under a shadow, under the kind of pall that even without context cannot be underestimated? Know that he is not used to this, that he is as clumsy as you were with a sabre before he helped you towards basic competence.
Your heart aches for all of your men that died. It has nearly broken, but even if it had those words would have brought it back.
Brought it back to something.
You talk a little bit longer, small talk on the war, a subject which should exhaust you but all at once does not. You would talk for hours with him if need be. You should, and you should not care about your reputation at all.
But instead, after a few minutes he helps you extricate yourself, more solicitous--bafflingly--for your reputation and good standing than he is for his own.
There is a faint ghost of a smile on his lips as you part, and a spring in your step.
There is still a war to be won, and you gaze out over the gorgeous spring day.
Infinity stretches before you, and you, Sir Alaric d'al Castleton, Captain in the King's Service, Knight of the Red, have work to do.
You have plans and schemes to enact, units to reassemble, and work to do--and you have a brother Knight who will face the same burdens. You know he will excel at them, as well or perhaps better than you.
When has he ever shied from enduring infinity?
You think that there are some books you have yet to read, and that you should write more thoroughly about what happened at the battle, to find the lessons for the future. To improve yourself in this deadly science. You may have a lot yet to learn, newly a Captain, but you've always been a quick study.
You'll survive.
