Tale of The Broken Sword

Chapter Forty Three : The Resistance

1st March, AD 1657

Veillrichtstadt, Ansteig Empire

Everything seemed to be dream for Everent. He convinced himself that it would be dream. It had to be a dream. They were going to shoot him senseless and mercilessly.

“Hey,” Everent got up to his feet. “What time is it?”

“It’s a quarter past two already.” Gunther responded gloomily. And then he added for the sake of confirmation just in case that Everent had lost his sense of reasoning. “In the evening.”

A quarter past two, that’s forty five minutes... before the procedure. And while he was thinking, counting, time was already flying past. Once Everent had tried to imagine: what would someone do if their pitched against their worst fears, in the face of death, or hours before their known death? Was it regret? Or was it fear? Or maybe he felt hatred for his executioners?

But he was empty inside. His mind was completely blank. His heart was thumping hard in his chest, his temples were throbbing, and blood rushed up to his head like a strong river carving through a deep canyon. The only things that Everent could make up were that:

He will die in the hands of a firing squad. They would kill him mercilessly.

He would then cease to exist, wiped away from the minds of those who witness the execution and those who were close to him, never to see him again. Everent couldn’t imagine it; he couldn’t bring it up into his mind.

Everent knew that death is unavoidable. Everyone else knows it. Death is a part of a daily life in this universe. But it always seemed that nothing unfortunate would happen, like dodging bullets and diseases would be avoided. Death due to old age was a slow affair so one would not have the time to contemplate about it.

One couldn’t live in constant awareness of their mortality. When those thoughts would somehow eventually come to their own minds, they would try to forget about it, to smother it; otherwise they would affect the person’s own mind and make their life a misery.

Everent knew that that he can’t think of the fact that he’ll die constantly. It’ll make him go mad, trying his best to avoid it when he’s only delaying the inevitable. But there’s only one thing that could save him, or anyone from madness, which is uncertainty. For others, it might be the time of their own departure. For Everent, it might be the way he died or maybe the officers had compassion for him and turned his sentence into a jail term, like Gunther.

No, Everent is a national enemy now. He was declared a spy, a soldier who betrayed his own nation in pursuit of achieving his superior’s goals. And the public knew what Everent had done, through the ever effective propaganda of the Ansteig army. There is no chance for him to go away unscathed.

His hands were already being tied behind his back, and the rope was digging through his wrist and he had lost all sensation. Everent tried to cry out, but only a rattle came out of his mouth. It did alert a guard standing nearby though. He approached Everent’s cell when he noticed Everent’s attempts to get his attention.

“What we have here?” He grinned. “A scumbag who’d just woke up!”

Everent threw his head back to see the guard’s face and whispered with difficulty, “I need water...”

“A drink?” The guard pretended to be surprised. “What do you need that for?” You’re about to die being shot and all, and all you wanted was a drink?” No, we won’t be getting you any water. You’ll suffer greater that way.”

It was settled. Everent would not get his own share of water. He was thirsty and his lips were dry as a desert. The thought of it would make him ever thirstier and Everent kept his head down.