Breaking Ranks

Grant: To Pick My Final Berth

The thing about despair is it can be clarifying. When you've given everything you have and more, it's best to just call an end to the whole endeavor. I had waited too long with the leg and the rot was spreading, sending waves of nausea throughout my thinning and fever-wracked frame. Once I had been a strong man. Once I had had two legs. Well, I had waited too long then and I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

The boy had taken some convincing, and had stalled for a while, but he had eventually agreed to help. I threw the ruined house in as a bonus, if you can call it that, and perhaps that may have swayed the deal. I was glad he had agreed, in any event. This would be hard enough as it was, but having him around made things a good deal easier. I was still a sergeant, after all, and I could put a brave face on if a recruit was around. Even if he had only been a recruit for a week... but what a week it had been.

Now it was just time to pick my final berth.

We halted as the small Imperial delegation made their way through the Port Gate, the Observer flanked by his two Seraphim and a baggage train that could have supplied a whole regiment trailing behind them, cart after cart along with attendants. At the very tail end of the column came a sour-faced trader with a partly-full cart of sweet potatoes, upon which rested a dirty figure with a strange grin, as if he was privy to a joke he couldn't share. He even half-raised a hand in greeting to us as he passed.

Marcus chuckled even as he cordially greeted the departing man, and then spoke to me sideways in a hushed tone. "I don't think he'd be in such fine a mood if he knew I had been stealing those sweet potatoes."

"Marcus, Marcus," I chided him. "You've got to put that kind of life behind you. You won't get to working for those Core types by skulking around and thieving."

He shrugged. "Maybe not, but what does an honest life get you? The chance to haul dung around?"

"Well." I thought on this a moment as the cart trundled off, the column leaving a trail of dust in their wake. "He's going out smiling. So there is that."

The boy gave me a peculiar look and it seemed like he wanted to say something. After a while, though, he pushed my wheelchair along and we followed the departing column.

Time past gently as I rolled on by.

The boy pushed me on the rickety wheelchair out through the Port Gate, and we went a ways through the plains and into the meadow I had mentioned. It was, perhaps, the most peaceful place I had ever been in. The wife and I had spent a merry time here, but she had not been a wife then.

"I need to get out of here," the boy muttered.

"Out of Sandstone?"

"Sandstone. Just... out of everywhere."

I chuckled. "There's no getting out of everywhere."

"There has to be something better than this."

I leaned back in my seat. "I'll try and send you a sign if there is."

He seemed satisfied enough at this. "I'll be watching," he promised as he began to dig.

"Listen, boy, if I've learned anything it's that this fighting business is a rotten life. If you keep at it you'll end up like me."

He shrugged, and the dirt piled up. A few grains trickled down into the hole and I was reminded of a device I had seen once in the baron's estate. A little thing that could be turned, and sand would trickle down until the top part was empty.

"Promise me you won't," I said, suddenly desperate. "I mean, not unless you have to. City under siege, well, that's one thing. But looking for a fight is a fool thing to do. Promise me you won't."

There was a long silence as he continued to dig. "I've been mucking out the stables at a tavern, lately." There was a wry chuckle. "Guess I'm better with a shovel than a blade."

I chuckled back. "That's good, lad, that's good." I found that I was crying now, but I wasn't sure why. Well I suppose it was fine. Babies cry when they're born, so why not end it the same way?

"Yeah. I've been getting some jobs from them. They liked that I did some fighting on the walls." There was danger in that comment but I was past noticing, thinking of the wife and I in this meadow. Marcus was a good lad. The wife had been burned almost past noticing, but I had noticed. You live with someone for twenty years and you can tell what they look like, even if they look like charred meat. Marcus had seen to it, and I smiled at the upraised pile of dirt next to the hole he was digging. Beside each other once again. Well, that wasn't so bad. I could go out smiling.

"I reckon that hole's big enough, Marcus."